Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons (5 page)

At times like that I always wish I chewed bubble gum. If I did, I could blow a big round balloon and pop it right in somebody’s face every time they were right and I was wrong. Since I couldn’t do that, I just stuck out my lower lip a little bit like a two-year-old.

Guidry patted my shoulder like I was a puppy. “I’ll follow you home. Check out your apartment, make sure everything is okay.”

I gave him a cool look. “This morning, a man directed me when I backed out of his driveway. It was a straight driveway.”

“Are you saying I’m a control freak like him?”

I leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “I’m saying I’m a big girl, and I don’t need you to follow me home. At least not to check out my apartment.”

He took a deep breath. “If you see that limo again, get the tag number.”

“I will.”

“And be careful when you go home.”

“I will.”

He pulled me close and kissed my sore lips so lightly it was like being touched by a butterfly’s wing. But a good kisser can put a lot of passion into the tenderest of kisses, and Guidry is an excellent kisser. Oh, yes, he is. So good that I may have staggered a little bit when I slid out of his car and got into my own. I hoped he didn’t notice. I mean, I have my pride.

He waited until I started the Bronco and drove out of the lot, then followed me as far as Midnight Pass Road where I turned south. He tooted his horn goodbye and turned north. I drove home with a goofy grin on my face. Somehow the kiss had made the morning’s unpleasantness not seem so bad anymore.

I sure as heck didn’t look forward to the media finding out about it. I didn’t feel optimistic about Vern and his buddies being punished for kidnapping me, either. But it had been cowardly of me to even consider keeping it a secret and I was glad Guidry had pushed for what was right.

Furthermore, even though I hadn’t seen Vern’s face in the mug shots, I knew it would take deputies handling the investigation about two nanoseconds to find out who Vern was. I had no idea what would happen after that, but I knew at least two deputies—Guidry and Paco—who would take an extremely personal interest in the investigation.

Guidry wouldn’t be part of the investigating team because he was homicide, and Paco wouldn’t be part of it because he did drug busts and undercover surveillance, but they would both pay close attention. Female logic made me see that kind of male protectiveness as a good thing, not at all like Guidry’s offer to follow me home or like Mr. Stern directing me out of a straight-shot driveway.

Like a hunting dog finding all kinds of tantalizing scents in the woods to explore, I let my mind trot down several trails. Vern hadn’t struck me as the kind of man who was trusted to make independent decisions, so I doubted he had just happened to see me leaving Mr. Stern’s house and decided to grab me. If I was right, somebody had ordered him to take me to Kantor Tucker. But who? Tucker had no way of knowing I was at Mr. Stern’s, so it wouldn’t have been him. And certainly Mr. Stern wouldn’t have called Vern and told him to follow me and kidnap me.

I thought about the woman who had looked down at me with such venom from her second-story window. Her face had held outraged anger, as if she’d had personal animosity toward me. Could she have mistaken me for Ruby and called Vern to grab me? If so, why had she wanted Ruby kidnapped and taken to Kantor Tucker?

The biggest question of all, of course, was what would have happened to Ruby if Vern had got her instead of me.

Whatever the answer was to those questions, I had to let Ruby know that somebody meant her harm. And as soon as I did, I would be stepping into somebody else’s life, something I had vowed not to do again. But sometimes you have to speak up, especially if it might be a life-or-death situation for another person. In this case, I had a strong feeling that it definitely was a matter of life or death.

6

Sunlight, humidity, and sandy sea breezes have softened all the hard edges on Siesta Key. Petals of hibiscus blossoms are indistinct at their edges, palm fronds are faintly fringed at their borders. Even the thorns on the bougainvillea have a vagueness at their tips as if they might decide to turn soft if the idea pleased them. All over the island the lines are sinuous, undulating, ambiguous.

The Key is eight miles long, north to south. We are bordered on the west by the Gulf of Mexico and on the east by Roberts Bay and Little Sarasota Bay. We have some of the finest beaches in the world, some of the wealthiest part-time celebrity residents in the world, and a steady current of sun-dazzled tourists. We also have every shorebird and songbird you can think of, manatees, dolphins, the occasional shark, and semitropical foliage that would smother us in a minute if we didn’t keep it trimmed back. The Key is where I was born and where I will die. If I moved someplace else, I wouldn’t be me.

Midnight Pass Road cuts a north–south line through the center, with short meandering residential lanes leading east and west. Siesta Beach and Crescent Beach, where the sand is like cool powdered sugar, are on the western Gulf side. Turtle Beach, where the sand is more gray and dense and is a favorite place for people who like to collect shells, is at the extreme southern end.

I live on the south end of the Key on the Gulf side, at the end of a twisty shelled road lined with oaks, pines, palms, and sea grape. Colonies of parakeets live in the treetops, squirrels make their homes in the trunks, and rabbits nibble at the vegetation on the ground. Every time I make the final curve in the lane and see the sun-glittered sea lapping at the shoreline, my heart does a little jig of gratitude for my grandfather’s good fortune to stumble on our little curved piece of beachfront paradise back in the thirties.

He had been traveling through Florida on business, land in Florida was dirt cheap, and he had known then and there that he’d found his true home. He and my grandmother bought a two-story frame house from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue, set it facing the Gulf, and raised my mother there. Later, after my father had died and my mother had left us, my brother and I went to live in that house with our grandparents. I was nine, Michael was eleven. When our grandparents died, Michael and his partner, Paco, moved into the house. Almost four years ago, after my husband and little girl were killed, I came back to live in the apartment above the carport. The house and the apartment are like a lot of native Floridians, old and weathered, but strong and sheltering.

I parked in my slot in the carport and stepped into the brooding torpor peculiar to early afternoon on the coast. During those hours, when the lasering sun seems to draw closer, the sea’s hot breath wilts everything in its path and seabirds and songbirds desert the beach for siestas. Even rippling waves lower their heads to conserve energy.

As I went up the stairs to my apartment, I used my remote to raise metal hurricane shutters that cover the entry doors. The shutters were halfway to their soffit when I got to the top of the steps, and I could see Ella Fitzgerald peering at me through the glass in the french doors. Ella is a true calico Persian mix, meaning she’s mostly Persian and her coat has distinct blocks of vivid red, white, and black. Ella got her name from the little scatting noises she makes. She had originally been a gift to me, but in no time she had given her heart to Michael and Paco. A lot of females do that when they meet Michael and Paco. Fat lot of good it does them.

A long covered porch runs the length of my apartment. It has two ceiling fans, a hammock strung in one corner, and a glass-topped iron table and two chairs. The roof provides shade, but at noon the porch is almost as hot as the rest of the Key. I unlocked the door and stepped into air-conditioned coolness.

Ella twined around my ankles and said, “Thrripp!”

I picked her up and kissed her nose. “I’m sorry I’m late. I got kidnapped.”

She looked deeply into my eyes and blinked slowly. She did it twice, which in cat language means
I love you.
I blinked back at her in the same language, even though I knew she would drop me like a hot lizard if she had to choose between me and Michael or Paco.

Ella officially lives with them, but we don’t like to leave her alone any more than we have to, so whichever man is last to leave the house in the morning brings Ella to my apartment. When I come home, she and I take a siesta together and she sits with me while I do clerical duties that go along with a pet-sitting business.

My entire apartment is the same neutral creamy white that my grandfather put on it when he built it for visiting relatives. I guess it seems spartan to other people, but it suits me just fine. The living room has a love seat and club chair covered in dark green linen printed with red and yellow flowers. My grandmother bought the set for her little personal parlor that she’d created with the intention of finding privacy from the rest of us, but I don’t think she ever sat on it much. There’s also a coffee table and a couple of side tables with lamps. No pictures on the walls. No houseplants. No doodads sitting around.

A one-person bar separates the living room from the kitchen, which is about the size of the postage stamps of some developing countries. A window over the sink looks out at the driveway and its trees.

My bedroom is to the left of the living room. It’s only big enough for a single bed pushed against the wall, a nightstand, and a dresser. Photos of Todd and Christy sit on the dresser, and I always pause to touch them when I come home. Todd was thirty-two when he was killed, Christy was three.

I grieved so deeply when they died that I will never be the same person again. Grief is about the loss of yourself as much as the loss of a loved one. The person you were when you were with the other is gone forever. You’ll never be exactly the same with anybody else, laugh at the same jokes, share the same private memories. The special facet of yourself they brought out is dimmed or erased forever. I have created a new self without Todd and Christy, but they continue to live somewhere in my mind, healthy and laughing. I suppose they always will.

A door in the bedroom leads to a hall where a stacked washer and dryer sit in an alcove. To the left of the alcove is a small bathroom. To the right is a large closet big enough for clothes on one side and a desk on the other. I take care of my pet-sitting business at the desk, so half of my closet—about thirty-six square feet—qualifies as an office for tax-reporting purposes. I’ll bet that gives some IRS guy a big laugh.

I put Ella on my bed, and on the way to the bathroom peeled off my clothes, including my Keds, and put them in the washer. In the shower, I shampooed my hair and stood a long time under a warm spray in case Vern and his goons had shed any of their skin cells on me. Just the thought made my skin quiver.

Out of the shower, I patted myself mostly dry, pulled a comb through my wet hair, brushed my teeth, smoothed on some conditioner, and slicked some Vaseline on my sore lips. My mouth looked like the pouting lips of weird dark-water fish I’ve seen on the Discovery Channel. Naked, I padded to the hall, added my damp towel to the clothes in the washer, threw in detergent, and turned the thing on. Then I climbed into bed and let the washer’s sounds of filling and sloshing and spinning make a homely symphony while Ella and I slept.

When I woke, the kidnapping incident seemed like a dream. Not a nice dream, but not a nightmare either. On a scale of one to ten, compared to the worst experiences of my life, it didn’t even rate a two or three. More like a one-plus. Except for the niggling question of what the connection was between Vern and Tucker and Ruby, I was totally over it.

To convince myself of how over it I was, I focused on my mundane routine as if it were a meditation practice. I made myself a cup of tea, then I flipped the switch on my CD player and listened to Tommy Castro doing “Let’s Give Love a Try” while I tossed wet laundry into the dryer and got dressed. With Ella sitting on my desk, I entered morning visits in my client record. The music changed to Eric Clapton’s blues. Ella flexed the tip of her tail to the beat. After I finished the office work, I took Ella down to the redwood deck between the house and my apartment, put her on a table my grandfather built, and groomed her. I had just finished going over her with a brush to make her coat shine when Guidry’s dark Blazer rounded the curve of the lane. He parked beside the carport and walked to the deck, where he and Ella gave each other appraising looks.

I was all set to kiss him, or at least hug, but he had a removed look that told me he was having some kind of internal debate.

He said, “Ah … I have to tell you something. I would have told you earlier, but it didn’t seem like the right time.”

I felt a prickle of alarm. When somebody is reluctant to tell you something, it’s usually bad news.

I said, “Is Michael okay? Paco?”

He looked surprised. “It’s not anything like that.”

I felt myself blush. “Sorry, I guess I’m still jumpy.”

He colored a bit himself, and seemed sorry he’d said anything. When he spoke, I suspected he’d dredged up something to say that didn’t have anything to do with what he’d originally intended to say.

“I checked the records. Ruby and Zack Carlyle were married eighteen months ago.”

The air seemed to have thinned around us. One of the advantages of having an alcoholic mother is that children get a sixth sense that tells them when they’re being lied to. Guidry wasn’t exactly lying, but I didn’t believe he had come to talk about Ruby’s marriage. He’d had some other intent and then changed his mind.

That’s one of the problems inherent in a new relationship, when both people have scars from former unions. You have to step carefully, be constantly mindful of where you stand and where you want to go.

Taking the safe route, I pretended to believe Guidry had truly come only to tell me that Ruby was married to a race car driver. “So they’re really married.”

“There are no records of a divorce.”

“Any other kinds of records?”

“He’s clean, but the investigators will want to talk to Zack about your kidnapping.”

From the grim sound of his voice, I got the impression that Guidry took my kidnapping personally, as if it had been a gauntlet thrown down for him. I suppose it’s a guy thing to feel that everything that happens to your woman might be a challenge to your masculinity.