Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs

28

Instead of leaping to the dock and running away, Maureen rounded the corner of the cabin toward the aft deck and disappeared into the shadows. Like a kid, she probably thought she could escape by making herself invisible. That if she hid from me, I wouldn’t know where she was.

The rain had slackened to a fine mist, with steamy fog ghosting dark silhouettes of sleeping gulls and pelicans. Trembling with suppressed fury, I moved cautiously on the wet deck looking for her. Maureen had got away with using people all her life, and I was determined not to let her get away with framing Harry for kidnapping Victor. Maureen was taller than me by a good five inches, but I’d always been more athletic, and I had righteous outrage feeding me. When I found her, I knew I could overpower her.

I crept around a group of deck chairs, but she wasn’t behind them. I peered behind a pile of coiled ropes and under a table lashed to the deck. She wasn’t there. There was only one other place she could be. I stopped at the tower of Harry’s crab traps. They made a perfect shield for a woman who thought she had the right to use old friends for her own selfish purposes.

I went still as a mongoose, waiting for her to give herself away.

After several silent minutes, the brim of her pink rain hat rose from behind the stack, then her big apprehensive eyes looked over its top at me.

By then I was a volcano ready to blow. All my anger and frustration and disappointment gathered into a bellow that would have traveled five miles in the jungle.

“DID YOU MISS ME?”

She recoiled as if I had put a bullet in her head, and pushed the stack of traps toward me. More furious with every moment, I caught the upper trap in both hands as it fell. I heaved it at her, and she made a noise like a squeaking mouse as she ducked away. She was afraid of me now. For the first time since she’d known me, she was seeing the side of me that had faced down evil and won, a side of me that had killed a man.

Made clumsy by fear and the mist-slick deck, she tried to run, but one of her pink vinyl boots crashed into the escape hole in one of the traps she’d knocked over. Flailing the air for balance, she grunted and kicked her leg as if she would shake it off, but it’s not that easy to disengage your foot from a crab trap. Especially if you don’t know the size and shape of the exit. Especially if you don’t know you have to line your foot up exactly with the hole to extract it. Especially if you’re being attacked by a she-devil from hell.

Lowering my voice to a normal level, I said, “Harry’s been loyal to you for as long as he’s known you. I won’t let you hurt him any more than you already have.”

Her mouth thinned, and I saw her mother’s face. “Oh, you’re so high and mighty! Always thinking you’re smarter than everybody else, better than everybody else. In high school it was always, ‘Don’t sleep with boys, Mo, you’ll get pregnant. Don’t smoke dope, Mo, it’ll make you a loser.’ Well, look who’s the loser now. I’ve got a big house and lots of money, and you’re a pet sitter with a dead husband and a dead baby.”

To this day I don’t know why I moved toward her the way I did. To tell the truth, I don’t remember intending anything, I simply surged forward. She shrieked and hobbled backward, eyes wide and scared. Awkwardly dragging the crab trap on one foot, she hit the low railing, lost her balance, and shrieked again. Her vinyl raincoat was slippery and the railing was wet. In a blink, she toppled over the railing and vanished into the rain-darkened water.

My anger evaporated. Now I was guilt stricken and horrified. Maureen had never been a strong swimmer. Neither was I. We were more at home on the beach than in the water. I ran to the forward deck and looked desperately for help. Not a soul. I ran back to the place where Maureen had gone over and looked into the water. The bay isn’t deep, but Maureen was panicked and she had a heavy crab trap attached to one foot. She could easily become disoriented and not know which way was up.

People underwater for more than three minutes lose consciousness. After five minutes, their brains suffer permanent damage from lack of oxygen. I tried to estimate how long Maureen had been underwater. Half a minute, at least. Maybe more.

Shit!

Old deputy training made me put my cellphone in a protected spot out of the rain before I stepped over the railing. As I dropped into the dark water, I heard a man’s shout and the barking of a dog.

My foot touched something, and I kicked away to come down beside it. My fingers felt Maureen’s slick raincoat. After a jolt of fear when I thought I might be touching a shark, I moved forward to get a grip on her slippery arm. Maureen slewed toward me, clutching at my floating hair. Drowning people don’t cooperate with their rescuers. They don’t go limp and allow themselves to be lifted to the surface. Instead, they go wild with panic. They claw at their saviors, they try to climb them to reach air. Now we were both in danger of drowning. Maureen was weighted down by a crab trap, and I was weighted by Maureen.

As I struggled free of her, my body realized the danger I was in and made my throat close to keep water from going into my lungs. I had only been down a short time, but the smothering need to breathe sent me into the same blind terror Maureen felt.

A form suddenly moved against me, and two arms wrapped around me and tugged me upward. In seconds, my head was above water and I was coughing and gagging. I heard other men’s voices shouting and the thunder of footsteps on the dock. Somebody boosted me toward the deck where strong hands hauled me onto the boards.

I crawled to the cabin wall and leaned against it while Harry pulled Maureen out of the water. She was crying and gagging, and she’d lost her pink hat. Harry stretched her on the deck, gently eased the crab trap off her foot, and carried her into the cabin.

A man squatted beside me. He said, “Good thing Harry saw you jump in and ran for help. Your friend’s going to be okay.”

I said, “She’s not my friend.”

Hef came to my side and nuzzled my neck, which made me burst into tears and bury my face in his wet fur. After a while, Harry came back and there was some genial backslapping as he thanked the men who had helped save Maureen and me.

The men left, and Harry put his hands under my arms and lifted me upright. He didn’t even breathe hard when he did it. Harry was strong.

He said, “Are you okay?”

Through my tears, I nodded. I was still wheezing and weak-kneed, but more upset than harmed.

He said, “Come on, let’s get you inside so you can dry out.”

I knelt to snag my phone from its protected spot and let Harry lead me inside the cabin. Hef followed me with his tail wagging. Mo had taken off her shiny raincoat and boots and was sitting on Harry’s bed wrapped in a big towel. When I came in, she gave me a murderous look.

Harry brought me towels and led me to a chair.

I said, “You saved our lives. Thank you.”

He grinned and shrugged. “I’m more at home in water than you two. What happened?”

Maureen said, “Dixie pushed me overboard. I nearly drowned.”

I looked from her to Harry. I’d never thought either of them was perfect, but then who is? When you’re young, you’re more prone to overlook friends’ faults and forgive their weaknesses because you know you’re all still cooking and nobody’s done. But we were adults now. All three of us had been in life’s oven long enough to rise to our greatest heights.

I said, “I found the script Mo wrote for you to read when you made the fake ransom call. She took it from me and ran to the deck. I chased her and her foot got caught in a crab trap and she fell overboard.”

Harry said, “I saw you jump in after her. Hef and I were coming home and I saw you. I yelled for help, and those other guys came running.”

He didn’t seem to get the implication of my knowing about the note and the fake ransom call.

I said, “Maureen told me that Victor was already dead when you tied the anchor to him and took him out to the inlet.”

The corners of his lips tucked in, so I thought I might be connecting.

I said, “Unless Maureen comes clean and tells how Victor’s drug-running rival killed him, you’ll probably be charged with both kidnapping and murder.”

He looked quizzically at me. Then he turned and looked at Maureen.

He said, “Mo, are you saying you didn’t kill your old man? I mean, for real you didn’t kill him?”

She glared at him. “I told you I didn’t kill him!”

“I thought you just said that ’cause you didn’t want me to know. That’s the only reason I helped you.”

Now it was my turn to finally get it. Harry had thought all along that Maureen had killed Victor. To protect her from a murder investigation, he’d agreed to make the fake ransom call. And on the theory that nobody could prove she’d killed him if his body was never found, Harry had taken Victor’s corpse out in a boat and dumped him overboard. The poor guy had done it all to protect Maureen.

Maureen didn’t share my sympathy for him.

She shrugged. “That’s your problem, Harry. I told you. And that note Dixie found is in the water. Nobody will ever see it, and nobody can prove it ever existed. Anyway, you’re the one who made the fake kidnapping call, not me.”

Harry’s face registered shocked pain. “You told me to!”

She said, “That’s just your word against mine, Harry. Nobody will believe you.”

I had forgotten that Harry could be quick when he needed to be. He was at her side in a nanosecond, leaning over her with one big hand gripping her arm.

He said, “You’d do that to me?”

Drawing her neck back, she swung her other arm up and slapped the air under his face. “Get your hands off me! Who the hell do you think you are? You’re nobody!”

Harry flinched as if she had managed to hit him. Over her head, his eyes sought mine and sent me a look of sad acceptance. I had the feeling that Harry was more disappointed in Maureen for her hateful words than he was for her greed or dishonesty.

Hef didn’t have Harry’s old loyalty to Maureen. All Hef knew was that a person had tried to hurt his friend. Like a shot, the dog ran at Maureen with his teeth bared.

Still in Harry’s grip, she kicked at Hef. “Get that damn dog away from me!”

Every man has his limits, and Maureen had just pushed dumb, good-natured Harry over his.

White faced, he said, “You don’t kick my dog.” To me, he said, “Dixie, get the cops out here.”

She laughed. “Dummy, Dixie’s my friend. She won’t do that.”

I pulled my cellphone from my pocket and punched in Guidry’s number. This time he answered, and the sound of slapping windshield wipers told me he was in his car.

I said, “I’m with Harry Henry and Maureen Salazar on Harry’s house boat. They want to talk to you about how they faked Victor Salazar’s kidnapping. Maureen would also like to tell you about the rival drug dealer she believes killed Victor.”

“Are you speaking in code?”

I said, “Yes, his boat is in the Midnight Pass marina. Five minutes? That would be fine. We’ll wait for you.”

He said, “It’s raining. Give me fifteen.”

I slid the phone back in my pocket and smiled at Harry and Maureen. “The detective is on his way.”

Guidry actually made it in ten minutes, and considering the rain he had to drive through, that was some kind of record. I opened the door when he knocked. With a quizzical glance at my dirty, bedraggled, waterlogged self, he strode inside.

Harry’s grip on Maureen was still firm, and Maureen looked as if she would bolt in a second if she got a chance.

Maureen said, “I want my lawyer.”

Guidry nodded. “Fine with me. He can meet us at the station.”

Maureen said, “She. My lawyer is a woman.”

She said it so defiantly that I felt sorry for her. Maureen was still stuck in an earlier time when it wasn’t so common for women to become lawyers. I guess being the in-house bimbo of a drug dealer would keep you from noticing that a lot of old ideas had changed.

She was right about one thing, though. She definitely needed a lawyer.