Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs (12 page)

Ethan’s office is in the oldest part of Siesta Key’s business district. His stucco building is as old as the streets, with corners rounded and walls pitted by age and sandy sea breezes. The flaking gilt sign on the front door originally named Ethan’s grandfather,
ETHAN CRANE, ESQ
. Ethan hasn’t seen fit to modernize either the sign or the building, so stepping into the minuscule foyer and ascending the worn stairs to the second floor is like stepping back in time to a century when people were more civil and formal. Just the odor of furniture polish and old law books and leather chairs makes me want to live up to a higher standard of conduct.

Ethan’s door was closed, and his secretary was busy at a computer in a side office. She wasn’t the same secretary I’d seen at his office before. The other woman had been older and dignified, probably another inheritance from Ethan’s grandfather. This one was middle-aged and plump, with severe sticking-up hair dyed the color of eggplant. When I stopped at her door, she gave me a scathing once-over.

I said, “I’m a friend of Ethan’s. Is he busy?”

She wore dark ruby lipstick on oversized pillowy lips, and when she pursed her lips the effect was a bit alarming. Like they might have suctioning ability that could vacuum me in.

She said, “Does it look like he’s not busy?”

The woman obviously saw herself as Ethan’s protector,
there to guard him against door-to-door salesmen, scam artists, and women with cat hair on their shorts.

I said, “Sorry, I should have called before I came.”

Her big lips did that scary thing again. “Yes, you should have.”

She had the charisma of tofu.

I said, “So I guess after I leave, you can just tell Ethan that a good friend was here and left because he was too busy to see me. Better yet, I’ll tell him myself and save you the time.”

Some of the air went out of her lips, and her eyes narrowed. With a glance at a light on a phone setup on her desk, she said, “He’s on the phone. When he’s off, I’ll let him know you’re here.”

I gave her a phony smile and she gave me one back. I had won this round, and we both knew it, but sports-womanship kept me from gloating. Thus do women communicate with one another, our little versions of power plays that remain largely invisible to men.

She went back to whatever she was doing on her computer, and I leaned against the doorjamb and waited. From where I stood, I could see the yellow light on her phone board, and when it went out I cleared my throat and pointed.

I got an evil glare, but she punched a button and spoke into an intercom. “Mr. Crane, you have a visitor. She says she’s a friend.”

It was clear from her tone that she didn’t believe he could have a friend like me. She didn’t seem to realize that since she hadn’t asked for my name, there wasn’t
much he could do but see me. I wondered how long it would take Ethan to fire her.

In a few seconds, Ethan opened his office door. When he saw me, he looked pleased. I was sorry the pillow-mouthed woman couldn’t see his expression from her desk.

Ethan is tall and lean, with high cheekbones, smoldering dark eyes, and glossy black hair from Seminole ancestors. He had on lawyer clothes—dark pin-striped trousers, crisp white shirt with onyx cuff links, a dark rose-hued tie.

He said, “Dixie! What a nice surprise.”

He beckoned me into his office and stood aside as I entered. I thought about kissing his cheek and decided not to. He seemed to have the same internal debate, so there was a moment of eye contact at the door that asked questions for which neither of us had answers.

He shut the door and waved me to one of his grandfather’s old dark leather chairs. Sitting down behind his desk, he said, “Is something wrong?”

I flinched at the question, but it was fair. Every time I had reached out to Ethan, it had been because I needed help.

His suit coat was on a wooden hanger hooked over an arm of a mahogany hall tree, the kind you only see in antiques stores. The tree had an umbrella holder at its base. I imagined the countless times his grandfather had hung his own coats on that hall tree, imagined the hundreds of clients shaking out damp umbrellas and sliding them into the holder. All that solid tradition behind Ethan was part of what made me trust his advice. It was also part of what put distance between us.

I said, “Ethan, is it illegal to pay off kidnappers?”

His eyes widened. “Why do you ask?”

“A friend needs to know.”

One of his thick eyebrows lifted, and I felt my face grow hot.
A friend needs to know
has the same ring of truth as
The dog ate my homework
.

I said, “I have a friend whose husband has been kidnapped. She’s planning to pay the ransom. Is that against the law?”

“Not in this country. If she lived in Colombia, she’d be arrested if she paid.”

“What if the husband is
from
Colombia but lives here?”

“You have a friend whose husband is from Colombia, and he’s been kidnapped?”

“I’m not sure where he’s from. It could be Colombia.” I felt stupid saying it, like a receptionist who had failed to get a visitor’s name.

“Kidnapping is such big business in Colombia that the government has made it illegal to pay a ransom.”

I said, “But he lives here, and the kidnappers are here. My friend refuses to report it to the police because she can easily pay the ransom, and that’s what her husband has always told her to do if he’s kidnapped. She just wants to be sure it’s legal.”

My voice quavered a bit when I said that, because Maureen didn’t give a gnat’s ass whether it was legal.

Ethan said, “It’s dumb, but it’s not illegal.”

I said, “So I guess actually
delivering
the ransom money to the kidnappers, like putting it where they said to put it, is okay too?”

“I didn’t say it was okay. I said it wasn’t illegal.”

My lips squinched together to keep from asking what I wanted to know. Then I blurted, “Does it matter where the money came from? I mean, if the ransom money came from something illegal, does that change anything?”

“Let me be sure I understand this. You have a friend from Colombia, which just happens to be a huge exporter of illegal narcotics, and he’s been kidnapped. By a happy coincidence, his wife just happens to have a bunch of possibly illegally obtained money, and she’s going to use it for ransom. Have I got the facts right?”

I didn’t answer. The way he’d put it made it sound a lot worse than anything I’d been imagining.

Ethan sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Dixie, what the hell are you mixed up in?”

“I’m not
mixed up
in anything.”

“You’re going to help deliver ransom money. Possibly dirty ransom money.”

My chin jutted out. “I didn’t say that.”

“But that’s what you’re planning, isn’t it?”

“You just said it was legal.”

“I said paying ransom was legal. I also said it was dumb. Whether they get paid with clean money or dirty money, kidnappers aren’t nice people. Paying them ransom money isn’t like handing cash to somebody at the Taco Bell drive-through.”

I stood up. “Thanks, Ethan. I’ll pass the information along to my friend. I didn’t know anybody else I could ask.”

He stood too. “Don’t do it, Dixie.”

I said, “This is an attorney-client secret thing, right?”

“It’s a stupid thing to do.”

“It’s my friend’s husband. Her decision. I’m not really involved.”

“That’s what people say just before they get into deep shit. Don’t do it.”

This time I kissed his cheek as I left. His cheek was hard and smooth, with a clean, healthy, testosterone-laden scent laced with a musky aftershave. My hormones all stood up and cheered when my lips touched him. I was a fool to leave without throwing him to the floor and doing delicious things to him.

It was nearing sunset when I finished with all the four-legged pets. Big Bubba would be my last call, but first I swung by Hetty’s house to see if she’d heard from Jaz.

She was happy to say that Jaz had returned.

She said, “I was afraid she’d never come back, the way she ran out this morning, but she came back in an hour or two. We made cookies.”

Before I could ask if she’d got information for Guidry, she said, “I was afraid to push her, Dixie. She seems so
scared
. Any little thing spooks her. Something has traumatized that child.”

I said, “If she’s been involved with a gang, that would be enough to traumatize her.”

“She’s a sweet girl.”

“Something is weird about the whole situation, Hetty. Just be careful.”

She said, “It’s weird, all right. Her name is a secret. Where she lives is a secret. Why in the world would it be a secret?”

All the possible answers I could think of were too disturbing to voice.

I said, “Is she coming back tomorrow?”

Hetty looked guilty. “She may come back later today. She said she would try to.”

“Hetty, she knows gang members wanted for murder. Lieutenant Guidry
really
needs information about her.”

“I know. I’ll try, but I’ll have to wait until the time is right. If I push her, she’ll leave and I’ll never learn anything.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I also couldn’t argue with Guidry’s belief that Hetty was probably the only person who could get information from the girl. As a minor who had done nothing wrong, she was not somebody he could take in for questioning. All he had was the fact that she had behaved strangely when pressed for information about where she lived, and that gang members had asked for her by name.

At Big Bubba’s house, I put fresh water and a new millet sprig in his cage, along with some apple slices and half a banana. While I did that, he ran around on the lanai and squawked at the wild birds outside. Big Bubba is bilingual, which is more than I can say for myself. They squawked back, so I suspected he was saying rude things in bird language.

After his food and water were replenished and his cage tidied, I got out some of his toys and we played together. When it was time for me to go, he allowed himself to be returned to his cage, and I draped his nighttime cover over his bars.

I wished somebody would put me behind bars before Maureen came that night. I wished they’d drop a cover over me to hide me from the world.

Instead of going home, I called Michael and told him I wouldn’t be there for dinner. He didn’t sound disappointed. In fact, he sounded as if dinner was the last thing on his mind, which was another indication of his anxiety about Paco. I didn’t need to ask if he’d heard from him.

I drove to Anna’s Deli and got a Surfer sandwich to take to Siesta Beach. Siesta’s powdery white sand is composed of always-cool quartz, and locals believe it has mystic qualities unknown to ordinary beaches. Whether our faith is based on fact or fantasy, I need to shuffle my feet in that crystalline coolness on a regular basis and absorb some of its energy.

I arrived at the beach when a tangerine sun was inches above the horizon. Ribbons of cerise and gold streaked the sky and gilded the edges of baby white clouds. I walked toward the edge of the surf and sat cross-legged to watch. Along the beach, people fell silent and respectful, all of us watching the last quivering moments of resistance before the sun slipped smoothly into the water, sending out brilliant shafts of color.

When the light dimmed and the clouds turned gray, people gathered up their towels and picnic hampers and straggled toward the pavilion while seabirds wheeled overhead. Alone, I listened to a rosy-pewter sea whisper spume-filled messages, then took off my Keds and went down to let the surf wash over my feet.

When I was a kid, I had a fantasy that I could fly and see through walls. Wonder Woman must have started out like that and then grew boobs and got that costume that didn’t move when she did. Anyway, in my Wonder Kid fantasies, I always began standing in the surf. I
thought the sea foam rolling over my toes brought magical energy, so I’d stand there and let the magic seep into me, rising up my legs and into my skinny torso, and finally through my outstretched arms. Only then could I lift off and rise in the air. I didn’t have to flap my arms or kick my legs or anything. All I had to do was think where I wanted to go, and my body went there. In my imagination, I sailed over Siesta Key’s streets and watched cars and pedestrians down below. I hovered over my friends’ houses and watched their families. I sailed around the firehouse where my father was and looked at him laughing with his fellow firefighters. Sometimes I settled down on the firehouse roof so I could be close to him.

I guess I haven’t changed much since then. Feeling the surf tickle my toes still made me feel charged with energy. I don’t believe anymore that I can fly, but by the time I walked back to my sandwich, the Siesta symphony of surf, salt, and sand had soothed my soul.

I would help Maureen leave the money to ransom her husband, and I would not have any more nervous quibbles about it. I had made a promise, and I would keep my word. If the money that ransomed Victor was ill-gotten, that wasn’t my problem. If paying off kidnappers was a dumb decision, it was Maureen’s decision to make, and she’d made it. I was simply being a friend, a sidekick, like Sancho Panza or Tonto.

For the moment, I’d forgotten about friends like Thelma and Louise. It’s good that we can’t see too far ahead. If we could, we’d never go forward.

W
hen I got home, Michael and Ella were in a chaise on the deck. Michael was stretched out almost flat on his back, and Ella was sitting upright on his chest with her ears cocked toward the darkening shadows under the trees. She didn’t wear her harness and leash, but Michael’s encircling hands were ready to restrain her if she decided to investigate the night.

When they heard my footsteps, two heads turned to look at me. Ella flipped the tip of her tail, and Michael tipped his chin.

I said, “I didn’t groom Ella today. I can do it now.”

Michael said, “I already combed her. I’m getting pretty good at it.”

I was disappointed. Grooming Ella is my job, and I enjoy it.

I dropped into a chair and let the evening sounds of whooshing surf and late-hunting seagulls envelop me. One of Michael’s hands stroked Ella. She yawned.