Oddly, I felt myself blushing. Not that talk about sex embarrassed me, but it made me remember what sex had been like with Todd. He had showed me a survey one time in which people who’d been happily married twenty, thirty, sixty years had sheepishly admitted to fantastic sex. They felt a bit freakish about it because they knew the lust part of love was supposed to die and be replaced with warm companionship, but their mutual lusts had never died. Todd had said, “I guess that means we’ll still be chasing each other around when we’re a hundred.”
I thought about Judy saying that if I ever went to bed with Guidry, I’d probably kill him. But what if I was a firecracker ready to explode and Guidry turned out to have no sizzle?
Cora was watching me with an expectant look, so I must have been lost in thought longer than I realized.
I said, “If I ever fall in love again, I want it to bloom slowly, not explode like Fourth of July fireworks.” I liked the sound of that. I thought it sounded wise and mature.
Cora didn’t look impressed. “If love wants to bloom slowly, that’s what it’ll do. If it wants to bust out like firecrackers, it’ll do that too. Why don’t you just let it take care of itself?”
Why did everybody persist in telling me to quit trying to control everything? Good grief, you’d think I was some kind of control freak. I wished I could control them so they’d quit saying I controlled.
I couldn’t think of any honest response, so I told her it was time to make my afternoon rounds. Before I left, I gathered up our tea things and tidied up the kitchen. I left the carton of soup sweating in the middle of the countertop so Cora wouldn’t forget it, then kissed the top of her feathery head.
She said, “You’re a good girl, Dixie, and I’m going to pray that missing girl’s all right.”
24
Before I left the Bayfront campus, my cellphone rang with the special ring reserved for Michael, Paco, or Guidry. With my heart rate up, I pulled to a stop and answered. It was Guidry.
He said, “Where are you?”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and glared at it. “Why do you want to know?”
“Sorry. What I meant to say was that I would appreciate knowing where you are . . . because I would like a moment of your time . . . if you would be so kind as to give it to me.”
“I’m just leaving Bayfront Village, and I’m headed to the Sea Breeze condos on Midnight Pass to run with Billy Elliot.”
“With who?”
“Whom. Billy Elliot. He’s a Greyhound. We run in the parking lot.”
“I’d like you to listen to something. It’ll just take a minute. I’ll meet you in the Sea Breeze lot.”
At least he was being polite.
Even with lighter out-of-season traffic, it took me fifteen minutes to thread my way from Bayfront to Siesta Drive and the north bridge to the key, then to Midnight Pass Road and Tom’s condo building. Guidry’s Blazer was parked by the front door in a guest spot. When I parked beside him, he got out of his car and got into mine.
Guidry had developed new lines around his mouth in the last few days. Even in his fine linen jacket and perfectly cut slacks, he looked tired and drawn. I had to clench my hand into a fist because it wanted to reach over and trace the lines around his lips.
Reaching in a jacket pocket, he pulled out a small tape player and set it on the dash.
He said, “Mrs. Salazar kept the message she got from the kidnappers. I’d appreciate it if you’d listen to the call.”
It was a reasonable request. I had known Maureen a long time, and Maureen had asked me to deliver her ransom money. It made sense that Guidry would think I might recognize the kidnapper’s voice. I didn’t think it was likely, but it was worth a shot.
Guidry hit the Play button, and a muffled man’s voice said a word I didn’t understand, followed by, “Salazar, we have your husband.”
The voice went on to say all the things Maureen had told me the kidnapper said, but I wasn’t listening.
Guidry said, “Anything about that voice you recognize?”
I felt icy cold. I said, “Play the beginning again.”
He rewound the tape and started it again. Again the muffled voice, again the odd first word that sounded like “momissus.” Was he saying, “No, Mrs. Salazar . . .” or perhaps trying for rapster chic with “Yo, Mrs. Salazar . . .”?
I raised my hand to stop the sound. “Play it again. Just the beginning.”
It only took a few minutes to rewind and replay that opening, but it seemed like a lifetime. When I’d heard it again, I motioned Guidry to turn it off.
Guidry’s gray eyes were steady on me.
For a moment I couldn’t speak, but I had been raised by a grandmother who taught me to tell the truth.
I said, “There at the beginning, where it sounds like he’s stuttering before he says ‘Mrs. Salazar’?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s not stuttering. He first says, ‘Mo,’ and then he corrects himself and says, ‘Mrs. Salazar.’ Only Maureen’s close friends call her Mo.”
“You know who it is.” It wasn’t a question.
I said, “He would not have killed Victor.”
“Then he doesn’t have anything to worry about.”
I took a deep breath. “His name is Harry Henry. He’s been in love with Maureen since we were in high school. Harry’s sort of a beach bum, gets by working on fishing boats, but he’s a good man. I don’t believe he’d kidnap anybody, and I’m sure he wouldn’t kill anybody. But I’m pretty sure that’s Harry’s voice on the recorder.”
I didn’t add that Harry was the only person I knew dumb enough to anchor a dead man with a rope so long the body could float to the surface.
Guidry slipped the player back in his pocket. “Once again, you’ve corroborated what Mrs. Salazar said.”
“Maureen told you that was Harry’s voice?”
“Why does that surprise you?”
About a million answers occurred to me, like, “because they’ve been lovers for over fifteen years and you’d think she’d be more loyal,” or “because she didn’t mention to me that it was Harry who’d called,” or “because something is very fishy about this whole thing.”
I said, “I guess you just never really know other people. Not even when you practically grew up with them.”
“Mrs. Salazar said Mr. Henry lives on a house boat docked at the Midnight Pass marina.”
That was apparently another thing he wanted me to corroborate.
“I’ve never been on his boat, and I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard that’s where he lives.”
“Okay. Thanks, Dixie.”
He reached for the door handle, but I stopped him. “Guidry?”
“What?”
“Do you ever wish you hadn’t come here? Do you miss New Orleans?”
For a second I thought he was going to open the door without answering, but then his face softened.
“I never wish I hadn’t come here. But I do miss the New Orleans I grew up in, the way it was before the levees broke.”
“Katrina.”
He shook his head. “That name has become a catchword for disaster, but it wasn’t Katrina that ruined the city, it was human negligence. The hurricane had already passed when the levees broke.”
As if he regretted the bitterness in his voice, he firmed his lips and took a deep breath.
He said, “For tourists, New Orleans was great food, Preservation Hall, Mardi Gras craziness. But for people who lived there, New Orleans was the nutty old priest always haranguing people in Jackson Square, the transvestites strutting down Bourbon Street in their mesh hose and feathers, up-and-coming young musicians in the park, ordinary people starting their day with beignets at Café du Monde, all of them giving one another room, looking one another in the eye because they all belonged. And if a funeral parade came down the street, anybody who wanted to could join in, dance a little bit, clown around some, because we all knew life can’t be taken too seriously or it
’ll kill you.”
It was the longest speech I’d ever heard Guidry make, and when he finished he blushed a little bit under his tan as if he were embarrassed to have let me see how passionate he was about his hometown.
And right then and there, I finished falling in love with him. Just leaned over the edge of love’s chasm and tumbled straight down. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he looked like an Italian count with a vineyard in his backyard. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he was cultured and intelligent, or that I’d seen him in action enough to know that his integrity was impeccable. It didn’t even have anything to do with the fact that he was one heck of a kisser—oh, yes, he was. It had to do with that hidden passion he’d just exposed.
Lots of men are good-looking and smart and cultured. Well, not lots, but some. And a few have unquestionable integrity. Okay, they’re mostly in the movies or in books, but some of them are for real. Guidry had all those qualities, plus passion for a city where people respected one another.
How could I not love him?
It scared me to death.
I said, “Guidry, do you think those guys killed Jaz?”
A spasm moved across his face like a shadow. “I don’t know, Dixie. I hope to hell not.”
His hand moved across the gap between our seats and his fingertips tapped my thigh. It was just a momentary touch, but all my nerve endings sizzled.
He pushed the car door open and left me feeling desolate.
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 pers
onal 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?”
Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs Page 18
