Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs

25

I went into the Sea Breeze condos like somebody walking underwater. Even riding up in the mirrored elevator seemed an effort. When I looked at my reflections, I saw an endless procession of sad-eyed blond women in wrinkled cargo shorts and loose white T-shirts. None of those women knew where Paco was or if he was safe. They didn’t know where Jaz was or if she was alive. And none of them could believe that Harry Henry had kidnapped and murdered Maureen’s husband. But all the evidence said he had.

At Tom’s apartment, Billy Elliot was whuffing eagerly at the door when I unlocked it and went in. The filmy pink scarf was gone from the sofa, and Tom was at the kitchen table working on some papers. As I knelt to clip Billy Elliot’s leash on his collar, Tom wheeled into the living room.

He said, “I saw the news about Victor Salazar drowning.”

He wasn’t exactly asking a question, just leaving the door open for any inside information I might want to provide. I didn’t provide any. If the sheriff’s department hadn’t yet stated that Victor had been dead when he was dumped from a boat, it was because they didn’t want it noised about. Besides, I had too many secrets buzzing in my head. If I let one of them slip out, the rest might fly out too. People always think they want to know other people’s secrets, but secrets are like bee stings—too many at one time can be fatal.

I said, “Yeah, I saw it too.”

“Have you talked to your friend?”

I shook my head. “She has an unlisted number and I don’t have it.”

I hustled Billy Elliot out the door before Tom could ask me anything else.

When I brought Billy back after our run, Tom was still working at the kitchen table. I hung up Billy Elliot’s leash and smooched the top of his head.

I yelled, “Bye, Tom,” and beat it. I definitely did not want Tom to ask me any questions about Maureen.

As I went toward the elevator I was sorry I hadn’t had a chance to ask Tom about his new girlfriend. That’s the trouble with keeping secrets to yourself. You do that, and you can’t ask other people about theirs.

For the rest of the afternoon, my mind played with the question of what the heck Maureen was up to. She had been very convincing the night she’d come to beg me for help. She’d seemed truly distraught about the phone call she’d got telling her Victor had been kidnapped. I had believed every word, but now I was suspicious of everything she’d said.

She had told me she’d replayed the kidnapper’s message so many times she knew it by heart, and yet she hadn’t told me it was Harry Henry’s voice. While it was possible she hadn’t recognized the voice until later, that seemed a slim possibility. And when I’d asked her if she ever saw Harry, she’d immediately gone on the defensive and denied she did. Protested too much that she was a faithful wife.

From what Harry had said, Maureen had talked for years about leaving her husband for Harry, then always changed her mind. Harry had denied seeing Maureen for the last few years, but I hadn’t believed him. Now I was even more convinced that he’d lied.

While I cleaned litter boxes, I wondered if Maureen had told Harry one time too many that she was going to leave Victor and then changed her mind. Would that have made Harry kidnap Victor? Kill him?

While I played roll-the-ball with cats, I wondered if Maureen and Harry had actually parted for a few years. If they had, maybe yearning for Maureen had caused Harry to go bonkers and kidnap Victor so he could have her.

While I washed water and food bowls, I wondered if the ransom call Harry had made to Maureen had been for real. Knowing Harry, he might have felt obliged to make the call because he knew from movies that a ransom call was what kidnappers did.

Driving from one cat’s house to the next, I wondered what had happened to that duff el bag full of money I’d left in the gazebo. Had Harry come and got it? If so, where was it now?

Victor hadn’t just been kidnapped, he’d been shot in the forehead. I doubted that Harry Henry had ever handled a gun, much less shot anybody. Furthermore, no matter how Guidry might downplay the mob execution angle, ordinary law-abiding people don’t get shot in the head and then dumped out of a boat with their feet tied to an anchor. I kept remembering Tom’s suspicious face when I’d said that Maureen had a home safe with over a million dollars in cash in it. According to Maureen, Victor had been an oil broker. But why would an oil broker keep that much cash in his house?

By the time I got to Big Bubba’s house, I was worn out with thinking. To spare my arm the effort of moving it up and down while Big Bubba rode it and flapped his wings, I put him on his exercise wheel. He immediately jumped off. I didn’t blame him. To a bird, exercise wheels are probably like treadmills are to humans, and riding a human’s arm is probably like riding a mechanical bucking bull at a cowboy bar. Anybody would choose the bull.

Thirty minutes later, having done bird calisthenics with Big Bubba, I gave him fresh fruit and hung a new spray of millet in his cage. I draped the nighttime cover on his cage and left him muttering jokes to himself.

I weighed about two tons when I trudged up Hetty’s walk. When she opened her front door, she looked as dispirited as I was. Ben was at her feet, the only one of us full of energy.

I said, “Hetty, I have to tell you something about Jaz.”

She stepped aside to let me through the door. “Come in the kitchen, we can have tea while we talk.”

Winston was asleep in a puddle of late sunshine through the kitchen window. He didn’t even open an eye when I came in.

While she made a pot of tea and put out a plate of cookies, Hetty talked nonstop about the weather and Ben and the mint growing on her windowsill. I knew she was talking to avoid hearing what I’d come to tell her.

When she’d run out of irrelevant words, she sat down at the table with me. “Okay, tell me. I know something has happened to Jaz.”

I said, “She’s missing, Hetty. I mean officially missing. You know the man who said he was her stepfather? Well, he lied. He’s a U.S. marshal assigned to watch over her. She’s in the government’s Witness Protection Program because she’s their only witness to a gang killing in Los Angeles. She was brought here to keep her safe until the trial. Those young thugs who came in Reba’s house were looking for Jaz to shut her up.”

Hetty listened intently, as if she were getting directions to a place she had urgent reason to visit.

Hoarsely, she whispered, “Dixie, have those boys killed Jaz?”

“Nobody knows. The marshal said she’d left all her personal things behind, so he doesn’t think she went willingly.”

Tears welled in Hetty’s eyes. “Those new clothes we got at Wal-Mart—they were just cheap little shorts and tops, but she was excited as a kid at Christmas. I don’t think she’s had many things given to her.”

“The marshal said her parents had abandoned her when she was very young, and her grandmother raised her. The grandmother died a few months ago and she’s been in foster care.”

Hetty looked at Ben, also in foster care, who was lying on her feet.

“How did you get the marshal to tell you all this? Isn’t the Witness Protection Program supposed to be a secret?”

My face grew warm. “My brother beat him up, and then Guidry came and was going to arrest him. So he showed Guidry his credentials and explained it all.”

“Your brother beat him up?”

My face got hotter. “I thought the marshal was going to attack me, so I kicked him down the stairs that go up to my garage apartment. My brother drove in just as I kicked him, and he thought I needed protecting. My brother’s a little bit, um, physical when he gets mad.”

Hetty hid a smile behind her hand. “I think that’s nice. Brothers should protect their sisters.”

“I guess the marshal could have been nasty about it, pressed charges or something, but he let it go.”

Hetty’s face grew sad again. “So Jaz is missing, and nobody knows where she is.”

“I’m afraid so.”

There wasn’t anything else to say, and I needed to go home and sleep for a few million years.

As she walked me to the front door, Hetty said, “She’s a good girl, Dixie. She deserves a lot better.”

I thought of what Cora had said. “I guess they all deserve a lot better, Hetty.”

At the door, she said, “If you hear anything, will you let me know?”

“Of course.”

I was on the walk when Hetty called after me. “Dixie, if they find Jaz, does that mean she’ll have to go back to California?”

At first I thought she meant if they found Jaz’s body. But when I turned to look at her I realized she was referring to a living Jaz.

“I don’t know, Hetty.”

“I was just thinking, if they’d let her stay here in Florida, and if she wanted to, you know, I’d be pleased to have her live with me.”

My eyes burned, and I had to make several tries before I could speak. “I’ll tell them that.”

As I drove away, I muttered, “Tell who? The government? The gang? Nobody cares where she lives.”

That wasn’t true, of course. Hetty cared.

When I got home, Michael had a light supper waiting on the deck. I charged upstairs for a fast shower and clean clothes and joined him. Ella was on a chaise in her diva pose, content in her harness with a thin leash attached to a leg of the chaise. The two place settings on the table looked pitifully few. There should have been three.

On the horizon, a thin band of white clouds promised to hide the sun’s setting, but we took seats facing west just in case. Supper began with creamy vichyssoise, then switched to roasted chicken and a green salad. We ate hot french bread with it. We drank chilled white wine. We didn’t talk much, just mostly said, “Mmmmm.”

The cloud bank on the horizon glowed gold and saffron as the sun dipped behind it, and rays of pink and yellow shot toward the heavens. But the sun slipped into the sea without showing itself, a striptease artist coy behind a gauzy fan.

When the colors above the clouds had dulled, Michael brought out a plate of fat strawberries whose tips had been dipped in chocolate.

Michael ate one or two strawberries, I ate about half a dozen. Chocolate brings out the hog in me.

When I’d finally stuffed myself as much as possible, I said, “Guidry met me in Tom Hale’s parking lot this afternoon. He wanted me to listen to a tape of the message Maureen got from the kidnappers.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m almost positive it was Harry Henry’s voice. He even called her Mo at first, and then changed the Mo to Mrs.”

Michael snorted, either to indicate how dumb he thought Harry was to have given himself away like that, or to indicate how dumb he thought Harry was in general.

I said, “Guidry said Maureen had already told him it was Harry.”

Michael moved his wineglass in little circles on the tabletop.

I said, “When she came to see me that night, she was so upset about that call. She quoted it word for word, exactly the way Harry had said it. Doesn’t that seem weird to you? That she would have played it so many times she knew it by heart, but she didn’t recognize Harry’s voice until after Victor’s body was found? Doesn’t that seem weird?”

“Everything about that woman is weird.”

“Cora Mathers thinks nobody would grow up bad if they were loved enough. Do you believe that?”

“Hell, Dixie, I don’t know.”

“Hetty Soames wants to be Jaz’s foster mother if they find her alive.”

“Hunh.”

“Michael, do you have any idea where Paco is?”

He stood up and began gathering dishes to take inside. He said, “Paco and I have an understanding. He doesn’t tell me how to put out fires, and I don’t tell him how to catch criminals. Paco is wherever he is. When he’s finished doing whatever he’s doing, he’ll be home. End of discussion.”

I carried Ella inside and helped Michael tidy up the kitchen. Then I kissed them both good night and went up to my apartment and fell into bed.

In my dreams, I entered a restaurant looking for the perfect stranger. I didn’t have any notions of what that might be, just let my inner guide direct me. In the bar area, none of the line of people perched on stools met whatever criteria my guide had set, so I crossed over to the other side and looked at the diners sitting at tables. Nothing moved me toward any of them.

Just as I was beginning to think I’d got my dream message all wrong, a man came through double doors from a glass-walled kitchen. He wore a chef’s tall hat and an immaculate white apron, and he carried a live stone crab in one hand. He stopped when he saw me, and for a second the only motion was the crab’s waving claws. Diners fell silent watching us watch each other, and the waiters drew to attention against the walls.

I moved toward him, slowly and deliberately. He waited, the crab held shoulder high and beady-eyed. The room was silent as white.

I reached him and took the crab from his grip, holding it out to the side to escape its grasping claws.

The man said, “Good. I’ve been waiting for you to figure that out.”

I woke up with a start and lay staring into the darkness. I didn’t have a clue what the dream meant, but it wasn’t any more confusing than my waking life.