Raining Cat Sitters And Dogs

17

Everything was quiet when I got home, with that peculiar middle-of-the-day lassitude that mutes both surf and birdcall. Ella was in the living room on the love seat, and we spent a few minutes assuring each other that there had never been anybody else in our entire lives that we loved as much as we loved each other. She purred extra loud to try to convince me that she wouldn’t drop me like a hot mouse the minute Michael came home.

I’ve loved Michael all my life so I understood how she felt. I carried her to the kitchen and gave her fresh water, then headed for the shower. On the way, I flipped on the CD player to let Pete Fountain’s sweet clarinet perfume the air.

I usually do my best thinking while water is spraying on me, but this time my thoughts were too scattered to come up with any conclusions. I told myself I should phone Maureen because I was her oldest friend and she was in distress. I reminded myself that fifteen years had passed since we were in high school, that her phone number was unlisted, and that I didn’t have it.

I told myself that I was involved in Victor’s kidnapping because I’d let Maureen manipulate me into taking that damn duff el bag of money to the gazebo. I reminded myself that she hadn’t mentioned me in her staged press conference, so maybe my name would never come up. I rebutted that the possibility of my name never coming up was about the same as the possibility of a summer in Florida without a hurricane.

By the time I stepped out of the shower I was close to being water dissolved but no closer to seeing anything positive about the situation. Pete Fountain was still playing on the CD, but as I reached for a towel I heard a ring on my cellphone that made me shoot out of the bathroom trailing water droplets. Only a handful of people have my cellphone number, and only three people—Michael, Paco, and Guidry—rate a special alert ring. Michael and Paco know they’re on the elite list. Guidry doesn’t have a clue.

I hoped Michael was calling to tell me he’d heard from Paco, but it was Guidry.

He said, “Are you at home?”

I admitted that I was.

“I’m just turning into your lane. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

Damp and gasping, I wriggled into a thigh-length spaghetti-strapped tank and pulled my wet hair into a knot. With Pete Fountain playing in the background, I met Guidry at the door with bare feet and a bare face. His gray eyes tried for objective and neuter, but his irises gave him away. Stand in front of a man with your nipples hard under knit, and his irises will expand like spreading inkblots. The other side of that, of course, was that my nipples had given me away first.

He said, “I wanted to talk to you about the girl.”

My mind had been so stuck on Maureen that it took a moment to realize he meant Jaz. I gestured toward the love seat and dropped into the matching chair. I folded my legs under me, realized I was exposing a lot of thigh, and tugged the tank toward my knees. Ella hopped into the chair with me and settled into the corner. I was glad to have her there. She made a little warm mound behind my hip.

Guidry’s eyes flicked toward the sound of Pete Fountain’s clarinet.

I said, “I saw Jaz this morning at Hetty’s house. She said she and her stepfather live nearby. She doesn’t know the house number but I described Reba Chandler’s house—you know, built on stilts with a tall stairway—and she said it looked like that.”

His eyes said I’m listening, but his head leaned a fraction of an inch toward the music, so I wasn’t sure if he was paying attention to me.

I said, “While we were talking, Jaz noticed the time and got scared. She said if her stepfather came home and found her gone, he’d kill her. I don’t think she meant it literally, just, you know, the way kids talk. Anyway, she rushed out and I followed her. Drove behind her and watched where she went. She ran into the nature preserve behind the Key Royale, so I knew the only place she could be going was there, to the hotel.”

Guidry’s eyes had grown sharper on me, so I was pretty sure he was listening.

I said, “I talked myself into the Royale and one of the employees showed me around the place. They have honeymoon cottages that back up to the nature preserve, and he said rabbits come from there all the time. The cottages are built on tall stilts exactly like Reba’s house, so I think Jaz must have described one of them to somebody, and that’s why those boys came in Reba’s house looking for her. She didn’t have a house number to give them because those cottages are all named instead of numbered.”

Guidry looked skeptical. “You think she lives in a honeymoon cottage at the Key Royale?”

“I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I do. The guy who showed me around said those cottages rent for twenty thousand a weekend. Jaz’s stepfather doesn’t look like he could afford that, but I don’t think there’s any other explanation. I’m thinking he must work there as a security guard, but Don—that’s the guy at the Royale who showed me around—said the hotel doesn’t give living quarters to anybody except the managers. The employees I saw were all well dressed and sophisticated. Not like Jaz’s stepfather.”

He said, “Did you or Ms. Soames ever get a last name from the girl?”

“No, but I found out Jaz is short for Jasmine, pronounced Jas-meen, and she said that’s what her mother named her. She resents her stepfather calling her Rosemary. When she mentioned her mother, she got teary and stopped talking. Hetty doesn’t believe there’s a mother in the picture, and she may be right. Hetty took her shopping last night and bought her some new clothes. She’s also feeding her.”

Pete Fountain began playing “Tin Roof Blues” and Guidry’s eyes changed in a way that made me positive he was as aware of the music as he was of me.

I suddenly felt like a complete dolt. Maybe it hadn’t been my nipples that had caused Guidry’s pupils to dilate, maybe it had been Pete Fountain. Guidry was from New Orleans. His name was Jean Pierre. He spoke French. He came from a wealthy family, and he was smart as all get-out. New Orleans French Quarter jazz might turn him on more than I did.

I said, “Guidry, are you French Creole or French Cajun? What is Cajun, anyway?”

I swear to God I hadn’t meant to say that. It wasn’t an appropriate time or an appropriate question. Besides, I truly didn’t care what kind of French he was. It was just that my mouth didn’t know I didn’t care.

Ella raised her head above my hip to look hard at me. She said, “Thrippp!” and curled up behind my back again. The music had apparently brought out her scatting tendencies. Either that, or she was embarrassed at my nosiness and didn’t want to be seen with me.

Guidry’s gray eyes examined my face for a moment, pretty much the way Ella had. When he answered he sounded a bit like a teacher whose patience is stretched.

“You’ve heard of the French and Indian War? When Canada fought France and Great Britain?”

I shook my head. I was sorry I’d asked. I didn’t want a history lesson, I just wanted to know if he was Creole or Cajun.

“France and Great Britain both claimed an area in Canada that had been settled by Frenchmen. Part of the area was Acadia. Great Britain won the war and ordered all the French settlers to leave. A lot of them went to Louisiana. That’s what the poem Evangeline is about. Since they’d come from Acadia, they called themselves Acadian, but the Americans in Louisiana pronounced it Cajun. French Creoles were already there when they came, and the Cajuns spoke a different French dialect. Still do. It’s about as hard to find a pure Cajun today as it is to find a pure Creole. Lots of intermarrying, lots of different bloodlines.”

“So you’re Cajun?”

He grinned. “When did you get into genealogy?”

“I’m just curious.”

“Okay, here’s my family story. Too bad my sister isn’t here, she could tell you all the details.”

I assumed this time he meant a real sister, like in a family, not a nun who’d taught him to fear girls in school.

He said, “First-generation French colonists in Louisiana were just called French. Their children were called French Creole to identify them as American-born rather than immigrants. My French Creole several-times-great-grandfather met my several-times-great-grandmother at a Quadroon Ball.”

I was only half listening. My mind was back on the fact that he had a sister. I wondered if he had more than one, and if he had any brothers.

He said, “You know what a quadroon is?”

“Old French money?”

He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. “A quadroon was somebody less than a quarter black. A Quadroon Ball was where French Creole men were introduced to beautiful, well-educated young quadroon women.”

I said, “Uh-huh.”

I had a fuzzy mental image of a lovely young bride with skin the color of creamed coffee walking down the aisle to meet a proud French Creole groom.

As if he guessed what I was seeing in my mind, Guidry said, “The women were not introduced as potential wives, but as potential mistresses.”

My neck drew back in distaste.

Guidry said, “Seems hard to believe now, but interracial marriage was illegal until the 1960s. People thought it would be the end of civilization if couples of different races married.”

“But your grandfather—”

“My great-great-great-grandfather. According to family legend, he loved the woman he met at a Quadroon Ball at first sight, and loved her to the end of his life. They had four children, all sons. They were given his name, and he sent them to the best schools in the country.”

Disillusioned, I said, “Did he also have a legal wife?”

“No, Guidry men are one-woman men.”

My cheeks heated. Guidry had told me once that he’d no longer loved his wife when they divorced. I wondered if he had used up all his woman-love on her and would never love another.

He said, “Before you ask, we don’t have a family legend about my mother’s ancestors, but they were mostly French and Spanish.”

As if he’d been deliberately providing background music for Guidry’s family story, Pete Fountain went silent on the CD player.

Guidry looked toward the silence. He sat up a little straighter and looked faintly embarrassed.

He said, “Before I climbed my family tree, we were talking about the girl named Jaz.”

I said, “Guidry, there’s something creepy about her and her stepfather. In the first place, why would a guy who wears polyester suits and drip-dry shirts rent something so expensive? And in the second place, those are one-bedroom honeymoon cottages, which brings up all kinds of awful possibilities if they’re living there together. But Jaz is too young to live by herself, and there doesn’t seem to be a mother in the picture. The whole thing is just weird.”

Guidry said, “The bigger question is where the money is coming from.”

“Do you still think Jaz is mixed up in a gang?”

“How old do you think she is?”

“Twelve or thirteen.”

“When you were that age, were you smart enough to stay away from the guys with the coolest jackets and the hottest cars?”

I said, “When I was that age, I don’t think I even knew a guy with a car.”

That was true. I had been in high school before I knew a boy with his own car. He had been Maureen’s boyfriend, Harry Henry, who had driven an old dented hearse with a rusty tailpipe that made sparks on the street.

Guidry said, “I’ll see what I can find out about the stepfather’s connection to the Key Royale. In the meantime, if you see Jaz again, tell her to stay away from those boys. Particularly right now.”

“Is she in danger?”

“If you see her, try to get her to stay at Ms. Soames’s.”

As if he’d said what he’d come to say, he stood up. His face told me not to ask for an explanation, but I’d got the message. In the law enforcement world, something big was getting ready to happen regarding organized gangs. If Jaz was involved with a gang, she would be hurt. If Hetty and I could keep her away from gang members, she would be safe. Or as safe as a girl could be when she doesn’t have caring parents.

But why tell me to try to make Jaz stay at Hetty’s? I didn’t have any influence over the girl. I didn’t have any influence over Jaz or Maureen or Guidry or anybody else in the whole friggin’ world. I didn’t even have any influence over myself.

I stood up too. “If the stepfather’s involved with a gang . . .”

I didn’t finish the sentence. We both knew the futility of trying to save a child from a destructive family.

Guidry’s eyes held mine for a moment. “I like that dress.”

My nipples jerked up like soldiers saluting. His irises spread again. Okay, it had been my nipples all along, and not Pete Fountain.

Ella chose that moment to jump to the floor and twist around my ankles while she made scatting sounds.

Guidry looked down and grinned. “I see you’ve got your watchcat trained.”

For two cents I would have told him I wasn’t wearing underwear. Heck, I would have done it for free, but he didn’t give me a chance. His hand hovered above my bare shoulder for an instant, and his head tilted to the side a little bit the way a man’s does when he’s ready to kiss you, but then he straightened his head and lifted his hand and went out the french doors like he’d suddenly remembered a pressing engagement on the other side of the world.

He didn’t say goodbye until he was safely on the porch. Then he raised his hand and grunted, “Thanks, Dixie.”

I didn’t answer him because I suddenly felt like a hollow reed without wind to give me music. I lowered the shutters, shambled into the bedroom, and crawled into bed with the sheet pulled over my cold shoulders. When Ella slipped under the covers and settled behind me, I scooted backward a fraction to get closer. The next thing I knew, I was weeping hard, and I wasn’t sure why.

I would like to think it was because my old friend’s husband had been kidnapped, or because kids were growing up with nobody home to give them milk and cookies after school, but I don’t believe that was the reason. There are times when tears just demand to be shed, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Sometimes I feel as if my heart has been held hostage for a long time by some unknown assailants—alien beings who have abducted me and transferred me to a world very similar to but not the same as the world I knew before Todd and Christy died. In that alternate universe, I go about my business, I talk and walk and eat and sleep and to all outward appearances lead a real life. But my true self is locked inside somewhere looking out, and I’m not entirely sure that other people are their true selves or empty vessels like me.

At times like those I think I should start a club for other empties. I could call it Empties Anonymous and we could have meetings and eat cookies and drink tea and not pretend to be. That would be a relief. To not have to pretend for the sake of others who love me that I am a person of substance. I’ll bet other Empties feel the same way. We could all get together and support one another’s not being.

When I was all cried out and not feeling so hollow anymore, I fell asleep and slept until almost time to leave for my afternoon rounds. With Ella on my desk, I made quick work of transferring notes to client cards, then got dressed in my usual cargo shorts and sleeveless T.

My thoughts kept going to Maureen, wondering what was happening now that she’d gone public about Victor’s kidnapping. I wondered if she was cooperating with the sheriff’s department. I wondered if they could be of any help to her now, or if it was too late.

I left Ella snoozing on my bed and headed for Tom Hale’s condo. He and Billy Elliot were watching Oprah, where two couples were describing how they kept romance in their marriages by having open affairs. Oprah didn’t seem to like the idea, but she was trying to be respectful. I’ll bet sometimes after she talks to certain guests, Oprah goes backstage and hollers into a wadded-up towel.

Tom clicked the show off and turned his chair to watch me clip Billy Elliot’s leash to his collar.

He said, “A marriage counselor on that show said romantic love lasts exactly eighteen months, no more and no less. I guess that means if people wait eighteen months to get married, they won’t.”

I said, “Oh, phooey, I know lots of people who’ve been married forever and they still have the hots for each other.”

He grinned. “You oughta go on Oprah.”

“Tom, did you see Maureen Salazar on the news?”

He was still grinning when he looked up at me, and the grin died as he registered my question.

“The oil broker’s wife? Good God, Dixie, was Salazar the guy you asked me about yesterday?”

“You saw her?”

“She said her husband was kidnapped and that she’d given the kidnappers a million dollars to get him back. She got that money out of her home safe, didn’t she?”

Billy Elliot whuffed to let us know he’d endured our chatter as long as possible, and I let him lead me out the door. Billy was right. My job was to run with him, not to prod Tom into speculating about why a man like Victor Salazar would keep buckets of cash in his home safe.