Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs (17 page)

“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.

O
n the way to Big Bubba’s house, I made a quick stop at the market for more fresh bananas. At the cashier’s stand, a young girl at her mother’s elbow was doing that maniacal thumb-dancing that kids do when they text-message. Her attention was so rapt on the minuscule screen that her mother had to poke her arm after she’d paid for her groceries and was ready to leave. The mother rolled her eyes at the rest of us so we could share in her long-suffering patience with her text-messaging kid, and several people muttered amused understanding.

As my underripe bananas moved forward on the conveyer belt, the checker said, “Kids are going to give themselves carpal thumb syndrome with those things.”

A woman behind me said, “I caught my grandchildren text messaging their friends during our seder.”

The checker read my total aloud and I handed her money. As I grabbed my bag of bananas, it hit me that I had never seen Jaz with one of the phones that every other
kid in the world has. No BlackBerry, no iPhone, no anything, not even the old kind without a keyboard for texting.

Girls talk to one another. My generation did it by phone, now they do it via typed messages on teeny little computer screens. They tell secrets, what boys they like, what they had for lunch, what music they like, what TV shows they watch, and what they’re doing right that minute. Why wasn’t Jaz doing that?

I thought about that all the way to Big Bubba’s house. I was convinced that Jaz had described one of the honeymoon cottages to somebody she knew, and that person had passed along the description to the thugs who’d come in Reba’s house. How had she done that? It was entirely possible, of course, that Jaz had a cell phone at home and that she text-messaged like nobody’s business when she was alone. I didn’t think so, though. In fact, I could not imagine Jaz alone without seeing her huddled in fear.

Big Bubba was in a loud and aggressive mood. The floor around his cage glittered with seed residue, and he had painstakingly dropped every Cheerio into his water dish. His millet branch looked as if he’d held it in his beak and beat the bejesus out of it against the bars of his cage.

He hollered, “Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me?”

He sounded as if he was fed up with being taken for granted, that he’d reached the limit of his patience, and that if he didn’t get a lot more respect, the world could kiss his red tail feathers.

I turned off his TV and opened his cage door. I peeled one of his bananas while he clambered out. When he was atop the cage, I held the banana up to him so he could
peck at it. He went at it like a woman hitting a newly stocked sales bin at Victoria’s Secret.

I said, “You’re getting bored, aren’t you? Your mom will be home soon.”

In actual fact, Big Bubba had spent a lot of his life waiting for Reba to come home from the college, but I knew the house felt more silent to him than usual.

I spent extra time playing with him on the lanai, and I gave him a shower. While he ran around squawking and flapping his wings to dry them, I put fresh seed in his cups. I vacuumed up all the flung-out seed hulls and hung a fresh millet branch in his cage. I threw away the soggy Cheerios and gave him fresh water. I made his world as clean and organized as possible, but I knew he wouldn’t be completely happy until Reba came home. We all rely on that special someone to make us feel secure.

After I’d coaxed him back into his cage and chatted with him awhile longer, I covered his cage for the night and left him.

It had become habit now to stop at Hetty’s house after I left Big Bubba, but when I got there I saw her and Ben on the sidewalk walking toward home. I parked in the driveway, got out of the Bronco, and leaned on the door and waited. Ben trotted along with the happy look of a youngster discovering the world. Hetty held his leash with enough slack to let him explore interesting rocks and plants alongside the sidewalk, but short enough to keep him focused.

When they reached me, I knelt to scratch the spot between Ben’s shoulders while his tail did a delighted helicopter whirl.

Hetty said, “Come in for a cup of tea.”

She went toward the front door, snapping her fingers at Ben as she went. At least I thought she was snapping her fingers at Ben, but I guess she could have been signaling me to follow.

Ben and I obediently trotted after her, and as I went in the door I noticed a dark sedan parked half a block away at the curb. It gave me a moment of paranoia because cars don’t park on the street in that kind of neighborhood. I told myself I was being silly and went inside the house.

In the kitchen, Winston was asleep, stretched on his back on the windowsill with his front paws bent like a Japanese dancer. If humans slept as much as cats do, we might be as lovable as they are. Well, some of us might be.