Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs

6

The thing about going crazy, really, truly crazy with no more pretending that you’re even a little bit sane, is that once you’ve been there you don’t have to wonder anymore what it’s like. Crazy is a dark ugly town. Stay there long enough and you’ll learn all the roads, all the houses and gas stations, until you figure out that crazy is just an alternate territory. You can live there if you want to, or you can leave. It’s your choice. There’s a kind of strength in that, a weird kind of power that people who’ve never gone crazy don’t know about. When you leave crazy and come back to normal, you feel a special closeness to people who were loyal to you while you were there—like the woman calling my name.

Sleep dazed, I grabbed a robe to cover my naked self and ran to open the door to the woman who’d been my best friend all through high school. Maureen had been a total airhead then, but fun. Her father had abandoned her the same way my mother had abandoned me. Being the kids whose parents hadn’t loved them enough to stay with them had drawn us together like orphaned lambs huddled away from the herd. In our senior year, Maureen had fallen in love with a sweet guy named Harry Henry. Everybody had expected them to marry, but right after we graduated Maureen had broken Harry’s heart by marrying a rich old man from South America.

She and I lost contact after that. I went to college for two years and then to the police academy. Maureen learned to travel in private jets and hang out with movie stars and European princesses. By the time I married Todd, a fellow deputy, I was deep in the hard-edged world of law enforcement, and Maureen was deep in the soft world of luxury. She sent me a baby gift when Christy was born, but we no longer saw each other.

But after Todd and Christy were killed and I fell into a bottomless pit of crazed agony, Maureen had shown up one night with a tremulous smile and a bottle of Grey Goose. She had only come that one time, but I’d always been grateful for it. With Maureen, it hadn’t been necessary to pretend to be strong or rational. I could be what I truly was, broken and empty and full of fury. And baring my true self had helped me find the thread that would eventually lead me back to sanity.

Now it was Maureen screaming into the night for my help.

I ran barefoot to hit the electric control to raise the metal shutters. I saw Maureen’s feet step back a bit as the shutters folded into the soffit above the door. Her feet were bare like mine. Even sleep stunned and addled, I knew her naked toes were an especially bad omen.

When the shutters were head-high, I opened the glass-paned french doors and Maureen hurled through. She was sobbing so hard I couldn’t make out what she was saying, just that somebody was gone.

Clutching at me like a drowning person, she said, “You have to help me, Dixie! Please!”

I held her tightly for a few minutes and talked to her the way I talk to agitated animals who need calming. When her convulsive shuddering had calmed to tremors, I led her to the couch and sat close beside her. She wore white gauze pajamas and carried a pouchy brown leather bag. Even without makeup and with her brown curls in a tumble, she was still as beautiful as she’d been in high school. She also still smelled of tobacco smoke.

I said, “Mo, what’s happened?”

Wild-eyed, she choked, “They’ve taken Victor. Oh, my God, Dixie, they’ve taken Victor!”

I had to dig into my memory bank to remember that Victor was her husband’s name.

“Who? Who took him?”

She waved her hand in front of her face as if she were erasing the air. “I don’t know. Somebody who wants money. They say they’ll kill him if I don’t give it to them.”

“When? When did they say that? How?”

“Just now, tonight. They called and told me. They want a million dollars in small bills. They want me to leave it in the gazebo tomorrow night. If I don’t, they’ll kill Victor.”

She spoke as if I was familiar with her private little sunset-viewing house. Actually, I’d only been in it once when she’d invited me to her house for lunch. She hadn’t been married long, and her cook—boy, had I been impressed that she had a cook!—had prepared a tasty little spread that we’d eaten in the gazebo. Her husband had come home while I was there and spoiled it. He’d been stiff and cold and looked at me as if I were a smelly bug. I’d left in a hurry and was never invited back.

I said, “We have to call the sheriff’s department. They know how to handle things like this.”

“No! They said if I called the police they’d kill him for sure. You have to help me, Dixie!”

It occurred to me that Maureen might think I was still a deputy.

I said, “Mo, I’m not a deputy anymore, I’m a pet sitter.”

Her eyes registered mild surprise. “You always were crazy about pets.”

Maureen never had been very interested in what other people did. In high school, that was a trait that had kept her from being nosy and gossipy. It had also kept her from being discriminating.

I said, “Do you know anybody with a grudge against Victor?”

She gave me a round-eyed stare. “Everybody has a grudge against Victor. It’s his business. You know, all that oil-trading stuff is cutthroat. Men in that business make enemies.”

I could tell by the way she said it that she didn’t have a clue what Victor’s business dealings were like, or even how he carried them out. Maureen was sweet and cute, but smart would be the last adjective anybody would use to describe her.

I said, “I didn’t realize Victor was that important. To kidnappers, I mean.”

“In his own country he is. Victor Salazar is a big name there.”

It was creepy to see how quickly she trotted out his importance, as if it justified his kidnapping.

I said, “Mo, I know people in the sheriff’s department. Let me—”

“I’m not going to the cops, Dixie. I can’t take that chance. Victor says this happens all the time in South America. That’s why he keeps such a tight watch on me. He always told me if he got kidnapped to just pay up. That’s what I’ll do too. I have to handle this myself.”

I said, “Tell me exactly how this happened. When did you last see Victor, and when did you get the call?”

She opened her bag and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, then saw the look on my face and put them back.

She said, “I saw him about three thirty this afternoon. He left to go meet some old buddies from South America. Venezuela, I think, or maybe Colombia. Could have been Nicaragua. One of those places. He said they’d come here on vacation and they were all getting together for a five-day camping trip, just those guys, catching up on old times, fishing, boating, you know, guy things.”

For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine Victor out in the woods camping. Or fishing. He had seemed more the type to sit in a deck chair on a megayacht and look at the little people through narrow glasses too dark to see his eyes.

I said, “How long after he left for the camping trip did you get the phone call?”

“I don’t know, several hours. The call came after midnight. I was already asleep, but I thought it might be Victor calling so I answered. When I heard that voice I got so scared I couldn’t breathe.”

“Tell me again what the caller said.”

“It’s still on my machine, I can play it for you, but I played it so many times I have it memorized. It was a man, and he said, ‘Mrs. Salazar, we have your husband. If you want him returned alive, put a million dollars in small bills in a duff el bag and leave it in your gazebo at midnight tomorrow. Do not call the police or tell anybody. We’ll be watching you, and if you talk to anybody, we will kill your husband and feed him to the sharks.’ ”

“And then what?”

She looked confused. “I guess the sharks would swim away.”

“What else did the man say?”

“That’s all. The line went dead then.”

I took a deep breath. It was now after one o’clock. Maureen had got the call, freaked out, replayed it several times, then pulled herself together and come to me.

I said, “What do you know about the men Victor was meeting?”

She shook her head. “Not a thing. Victor never said their names, and they didn’t come to our house.”

“Did he say where he was meeting them? Was he going to leave his car someplace and go with them, or were they going to ride with him? And where exactly were they going to camp?”

I was piling too many questions on her at once, and she waved both hands in front of her face like a besieged child. “I don’t know, Dixie! He just said they were going to hike in the woods and do some fishing.”

“You didn’t ask where he was going?”

“Victor didn’t like to be asked questions about his private business.”

Something about that sentence caused a camera shutter to click in my brain, but I didn’t look at the photo it took. Maureen was an old friend, and my job was to help her, not to analyze every word she spoke.

I said, “When the call came, was there a person you could talk to, or was it all a recording?”

She looked surprised. “I think it was a person.”

I didn’t want to bring up the possibility that Victor had already been killed. But I was pretty sure pros demanded proof the abducted person was still alive before they made any money drops.

I said, “Maureen, this could all be a scam. It happens all the time in other countries. People get a call that their child or spouse has been kidnapped, and they get so scared they give the kidnappers whatever they ask for. Then they find out there hasn’t been any kidnapping at all. This could be a hoax too. We don’t know if the call you got was truly from kidnappers. It could have been from somebody who knew Victor was going to be gone and decided to get an easy million dollars.”

“I think it was real, Dixie.”

“But what if it wasn’t?”

“Then I lose a million dollars and my husband comes home when his camping trip ends. Either way, I get my husband back. I’m not going to nickel and dime when it comes to my husband’s life.”

I suppose that’s why kidnapping wealthy businessmen is so popular in certain circles. To people who don’t mind losing a million here and there, being kidnapped probably seems no more than an inconvenience.

I said, “If they’re watching you like they said they were, they know you came here.”

She shook her head. “Nobody saw me leave. Nobody followed me.”

Maureen wouldn’t have noticed if a convoy of trucks had followed her, and the entire conversation gave me the same weariness I’d always felt in high school when she showed me the inside of her brain. Even then, talking to her had been like zooming to the moon expecting to find life and instead finding a For Rent sign.

I said, “Mo, not to put too fine a point to it, but I’m not crazy about being involved in something like this. If you’re not willing to go to the sheriff, I can’t help you.”

She raised her head and looked at me with the direct gaze of a child. “If it were your husband that had been kidnapped, I’d help you.”

Heat traveled to my face and I looked down at my hands. Remembering how she’d come to me when I was so wild with grief, I felt ashamed.

I said, “Can you lay your hands on a million in cash by tomorrow?”

She shrugged. “Sure.”

She seemed surprised at the question, as if everybody had a million in cash lying around the house.

“Tell me again how they want it delivered.”

“At our gazebo. You know, down on the boat dock? I guess they’ll come get it in a boat. They said to put the money in a duff el bag.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Just go with me. That’s all I ask. Just walk down that path with me to the gazebo. I’ll come here and pick you up and take you back to my house, and then we’ll go together to take the money. Please, Dixie?”

Her hair had flopped over her eyebrows so that her big puppy dog eyes pleaded with me from under a mass of curls. A girlish barrette with a bright red plastic flower on one end had come loose, and the flower dangled like a reject.

She said, “I can’t do it alone. Just the thought of that walk in the dark by myself with that money makes my knees buckle. I’d be so scared I’d faint right there on top of the bag.”

If any other woman had said that, I would have thought she was being overly dramatic. But Maureen had never been capable of handling ordinary things other people take for granted. In the state she was in, she would probably drop the duff el bag in the water or somehow screw the whole thing up.

Every ex–law enforcement bone in my body said we should notify the police and probably the FBI as well. But what if I was wrong? What if notifying the police caused Victor Salazar to be killed? Victor had apparently half expected to be kidnapped for ransom someday, or at least he’d known it was a good possibility, and he’d given Maureen instructions to pay the kidnappers and be done with it. Maybe it was smarter for Maureen to pay up and be quiet.

The bottom line was that it wasn’t my decision to make. It was Maureen’s husband who had been kidnapped, not mine. Maureen was the one to decide how to handle it, not me. All she wanted from me was to lend her support in doing what she had decided to do.

And over and above everything else was the fact that Maureen had been a good friend to me at the lowest point of my life.

I said, “What do you have to do to get the money?”

She looked puzzled. “It’s already mine. I don’t have to do anything to get it.”

“I mean is it in your house, or at the bank, or where?”

She looked wary. “I’m not supposed to tell. Victor never wanted me to tell about the money.”

The little camera shutter clicked again, but I ignored it again.

I said, “I only ask because I want to be sure you’ll be safe carrying all that money if you have to go to the bank to get it.”

“I don’t have to leave the house to get it.”

Okay, so she and Victor had a home safe stocked with at least a million dollars in cash.

“Is the money you have in small bills like they want, or will you have to have hundred-dollar bills changed?”

She watched my mouth while I talked as if she could memorize what I said more easily if she read my lips.

She said, “The money is in twenties.”

Softly and carefully so I wouldn’t spook her, I said, “Maureen, do you know the combination to your safe?”

She looked proud. “Two-four—”

“Don’t tell me! I just wanted to make sure you knew it. Now, do you have a duff el bag to put the cash in?”

She frowned. “How big do you think it has to be?”

Now it was my turn to frown. How many cubic feet of space did a million dollars in twenty-dollar bills take up?

I said, “Bigger than a carry-on, but not as big as one of those long things with wheels.”

She nodded. “I bought a hot pink bag like that in Italy. I’ll use that.”

“I guess hot pink is as good as anything.”

Maureen looked thoughtful, and I knew damn well she was imagining what she would wear for the money drop. My guess was that it would be something that matched the hot pink duff el bag.

Somehow that made my promise to help her seem more sensible. Expecting this child-woman to carry out a kidnapper’s instructions by herself was like expecting a kitten to walk a tightrope over the Grand Canyon.