Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons

by Blaize Clement

  Contrary to their reputation, some greyhounds don’t enjoy running at all. They’d rather sit and watch TV. But not Billy Elliot. Billy Elliot likes running better than anything in the world. He doesn’t run because he’s a greyhound, he runs because he’s like those people who get up early every morning and run two or three miles just for the fun of it. I don’t understand those people, but I’m sure Billy does.

  After he’d peed on every tree trunk he thought needed peeing on, Billy led me onto the track and we set off. Billy is considerate. He always begins slowly so my muscles can get warmed up before he really takes off. But about halfway around the track, he speeds up. By the time we’ve made two rounds of the track I feel like a lab rat trying to stay upright on a moving conveyor set too fast. At the condo entrance, I pulled Billy to a stop and leaned over and panted with my hands on my knees. A grandmotherly woman came from the building carrying a white Lhasa Apso with Cindy Lou Who hair tied with a pink ribbon on top of its head.

  The woman stopped. “Are you all right?”

  I wheezed, “Just out of breath.”

  She walked on toward her parked car while the Lhasa looked over her shoulder at me. Before she got into her car, the woman called, “Awfully hot to be running.”

  I nodded and flapped my hand to say thanks for the tip, while Billy pranced around me, grinning. When we went inside and got into the mirrored elevator, my face was still beet red. Billy was still grinning and wagging his tail in doggy joy.

  In Tom’s apartment, I went in the kitchen where he was at the table typing on a slim laptop computer. Personally, I’m not a computer person. I’m probably the only living person in the western hemisphere without a Web site or an e-mail address. My life is complicated enough without adding all that electronic crap to it, so I don’t blog, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google, or text-message. But every now and then, when I want to take advantage of the availability of instant information, I impose on friends who are computer savvy. People like Tom.

  I got myself a glass, filled it with water from the tap, and rested my back against the countertop edge while I drank it.

  I said, “If I gave you an address, could you find the person who lives there?”

  With his fingertips poised above the keys, he looked at me over the top of his glasses. “What’s the address?”

  I gave him the house next door to Mr. Stern, the one where I’d seen two women looking out the window. In about two nanoseconds, he had the owner’s name.

  “Myra Kreigle.”

  I went still, with the same kind of something’s-not-right feeling that comes just before you realize you’ve stepped into thong bikinis wrong so the crotch part is riding on your hip. I had asked about the address because I wanted to know who had looked down at me with such fury from the house next door to Mr. Stern. Now that I knew she was Myra Kreigle, the way she’d looked at me seemed even more peculiar.

  Tom said, “You know who Myra Kreigle is?”

  “Sure, the big flipper.”

  In Sarasota, big flippers once meant the appendages loggerhead turtles use to propel themselves onto the beach every year to lay eggs. Now it means somebody who fraudulently drove up real estate prices and fueled southwest Florida’s economic meltdown.

  Tom said, “Worse than that. Myra Kreigle was a big flipper with an REIT Ponzi scheme.”

  I vaguely remembered skimming over newspaper headlines when Myra Kreigle was indicted for fraud in connection to her real estate investment company. A vivacious, attractive woman in her fifties, Myra’s photo had usually been in the paper in connection to her investment seminars or because she’d donated money to a charity or an arts association. I had been surprised to learn of her dark side, but since I didn’t travel in Myra’s social circle, she had only been a name to me, not a real person.

  Tom said, “She’s used up all her trial postponements. They’ve already selected the jury, and her hearing starts Monday.”

  I hadn’t even known a trial date had been set. I wondered if the young woman I’d seen at Myra’s window was her daughter. If she was, having a notorious liar for a mother would explain why she looked so unhappy. My mother had been a liar too, so I could relate.

  I said, “Can you tell me in twenty words or less exactly what Myra did?”

  “It’ll take more than twenty words, but I’ll condense it as much as possible. You know how flipping works, right?”

  “Somebody buys a house at its real value, then gets an appraiser to inflate the value. He does a bogus sale to an accomplice at that inflated price. The accomplice gets a mortgage, a banker who knows what’s going on lends the money and gets a bonus, and the accomplice either passes the money he borrowed to the seller or they split it. Then the buyer walks away and lets the house be foreclosed on.”

  “That’s how small flippers worked. Big flippers formed a bunch of post-office-box companies or limited partnerships and sold the same property back and forth between them with ever bigger appraisals, larger mortgages, more profits. Myra Kreigle bought and sold hundreds of properties that way. That in itself was a crime, but Myra had formed a real estate investment trust, otherwise known as an REIT, through which she suckered investors by telling them they would get double-digit returns if they gave her money to invest in real estate. About two thousand people fell for that, but it was a scam.”

  Any time people talk about big money, I always feel like my eyeballs are rotating. Maybe they really were, because Tom grinned and began to speak more slowly.

  “A Ponzi scheme is when a lot of people invest in something too good to be true. The con pays the first investors from the money the later investors put in, so word spreads and more people rush to get in on a good deal. As long as new investors are pouring in money, it works. There’s enough money to pay off people who ask for their profits, and the con running the scheme can live high on the hog on other people’s money.”

  “So Myra never really invested in real estate?”

  “Oh, she bought some mortgages, but most of them were high risk, and none of them paid back what she was promising her investors. The fraud was in sending her investors false monthly reports showing huge profits she claimed she’d made for them by brilliant real estate trades. Most people let their profits ride, but if somebody wanted to collect, she paid them from the investment money. She took in nearly two hundred million dollars that way. Her investors will never get their money back. I imagine most of it is socked away in offshore banks.”

  “I don’t understand how she got away with it for so long.”

  He rolled his eyes. “If pigeons are getting fed, they aren’t picky about who’s feeding them.”

  I nodded, but I still didn’t see how intelligent people could be fooled so easily.

  Tom said, “Ponzi schemes are called affinity crimes because the criminal preys on his own people. Fundamentalists hoodwink fundamentalists, New Agers manipulate New Agers, Catholics scam fellow Catholics. Myra went after her own kind.”

  Myra’s own kind were the cream of Sarasota’s society, the smart set who ordered three-hundred-dollar wine when they lunched at Zoria’s. Smugly confident, they were the beautiful people who traveled the world, went to all the classy parties, had their photos in the society pages. Myra had smiled, beguiled, sucked the fat right off their sucker bones, and left them gasping for air like stranded fish. When they went down, they took with them all the little people who had cleaned their houses, landscaped their lawns, taught their children, and sold them goods.

  Tom continued to tap keys on his computer and peer at his screen. Some people can multitask like that. Personally, I have difficulty talking and walking at the same time. His fingers raised from the keyboard and he leaned toward the screen to read something he’d pulled up. He wrinkled his lips like he’d bit into moldy cheese, and closed his laptop.

  “It’ll take a decade before our economy gets back to normal. Myra Kreigle should be in jail now, and if that Tucker guy hadn’t put up a two-million-dollar bo
nd for her, she would be.”

  The short hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  “Kantor Tucker?”

  “That’s the one. Everybody else thought she was a flight risk, but Tucker is a close friend and put up the money. He can’t protect her forever, though. State investigators have a solid case against her. Several counts of securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering fraud. Unless something happens to make the case fall through, she’ll serve several years in a white-collar-crime prison.”

  I finished off the glass of water and filled it again. “Some guys kidnapped me this morning and took me to Kantor Tucker.”

  Now I had Tom’s complete attention. “Somebody kidnapped you?”

  “They grabbed me outside the Village Diner and drove me east of Seventy-five where Tucker has a place. Big spread with a landing strip and a hangar beside his house. The guys who took me to him thought I was somebody else. When they found out I wasn’t who they thought I was, they took me to a Friendly’s and put me out. I called Guidry and he came and got me. I reported it. I don’t want the publicity, and I can’t prove they did it, but Guidry made me report it.”

  “Good God, Dixie.”

  “I know. I looked at mug shots at the sheriff’s office but I didn’t see the driver of the limo. His name is Vern.”

  “That’s all you’ve got? The guy’s first name?”

  “They put tape on my mouth, and I saved the tape. It may have latent prints on it. I gave it to the investigators.”

  “Is that why your mouth is puffy?”

  “Is it still puffy?”

  “I thought maybe you and Guidry had been playing rough kissy-face.”

  I took another drink of water. “Some of my lip skin stayed on the tape when I ripped it off.”

  His hand rose to his own lips as if he needed to confirm they were in one piece. “Who did they think you were?”

  I shrugged. “They didn’t say anybody’s name.” Strictly speaking, that was true.

  “Do you think grabbing you had something to do with Myra Kreigle?”

  “Not really. Probably just a coincidence that the limo was in front of her house when I left the house next door.”

  I tried to sound convincing, but Tom knows me well enough to know when I’m not being totally honest.

  I got busy emptying my water glass and putting it in the dishwasher. When I left, Tom and Billy Elliot watched me leave with identical wrinkled brows. Billy Elliot was probably pondering how long it would be before he and I ran again. Tom was probably wondering what Myra Kreigle had to do with me being kidnapped.

  So was I.

  8

  Myra Kreigle and her kind weren’t the first real estate swindlers in Sarasota’s history. As Sarasota became fashionable during the 1920s, the town was flooded with land speculators who sent property values skyrocketing. Fortune hunters razed orange groves for subdivisions, but left without completing them. People bought property in the morning and sold it for a profit that same afternoon. But in September of 1926, a destructive hurricane ended the real estate boom. The Great Depression struck next, when businesses went broke and tourism slowed to a trickle.

  By the 1950s, land was selling again, but not to speculators. In a period of sane and responsible growth, shopping centers, housing developments, schools, churches, and condos went up, all intended for families and retirees seeking a pleasant life. Sarasota would not see another overwrought speculator-fueled boom until Myra Kreigle and her cohorts saw the opportunity to cheat people through fraudulent real estate deals. When I thought of what my grandfather would have had to say about Myra Kreigle, I had to grin. He was a man who could be persuaded to suffer fools, but not thieves. More than likely, he and Mr. Stern would have enjoyed each other’s company.

  I pulled into Mr. Stern’s driveway that afternoon around the time retirees in Florida start crowding into restaurants for the Early Bird Specials. As I started up the walk, a three-woman cleaning crew came out the front door lugging a vacuum cleaner and a plastic basket holding supplies. The woman carrying the vacuum was young and obese and weeping. The other two were thin and older, and were murmuring comforting words to her. They passed by me with barely a look. I suspected that Mr. Stern had said something that had hurt the crying woman’s feelings.

  Ruby opened the door with Opal balanced on her forearm. Mr. Stern stood behind her with Cheddar cradled in his good arm. They seemed to be in the middle of an argument.

  Mr. Stern said, “If American GIs had stopped work every time they got upset, we’d all be speaking German.”

  Ruby said, “She lost a baby last month. She got upset when she saw Opal.”

  As if she understood what her mother had said, Opal’s bottom lip trembled and she wept for a minute. Ruby jiggled her and Opal hushed and closed her eyes. She probably thought it was the only way to stop being jiggled. I forced my arms to stay at my sides and not reach for her.

  Mr. Stern said, “How do you know she lost a baby? Did she waste more time telling you about it?”

  “I’ll finish the vacuuming, Granddad.”

  Mr. Stern snorted and stalked off toward the kitchen. Exasperated, Ruby rolled her eyes and walked toward her bedroom, while Opal’s round eyes stared at me over Ruby’s shoulder.

  I followed Mr. Stern to the kitchen where he took a seat at the bar and watched me shake dry food into Cheddar’s bowl.

  He said, “Cheddar takes a chicken liver in his dinner. There’s a tub of them in the refrigerator. Don’t heat it. Just put it on top of the food.”

  The contrast between the consideration Mr. Stern showed Cheddar and the lack of consideration he showed human beings was striking, but not shocking. Pets bring out the hidden goodness in the most hardened hearts, even if it’s only in tiny amounts.

  I dropped a chicken liver in Cheddar’s dish, and Mr. Stern gave a nod of approval. Cheddar jumped on the food and gobbled it up while I washed his water bowl and filled it with fresh water. Mr. Stern’s gaze drifted toward a wine rack at the end of the kitchen counter.

  I said, “Hard to use a corkscrew with one hand. Shall I open a bottle of wine for you?”

  “A Shiraz would be nice.”

  I opened a bottle of wine while Mr. Stern got himself a wineglass. I poured wine in his glass and left the bottle open in case he wanted more. Cheddar had finished his supper and was licking his paws, so I washed Cheddar’s food bowl and dried it while Mr. Stern sipped wine. Of the three occupants of the kitchen, Cheddar was the only one studiously not mentioning Ruby or Opal.

  I got my grooming supplies and opened the french doors in the dining room. Cheddar came and stood on the threshold, half in and half out, peering into the garden as if he’d never seen it before.

  I scooped him up, closed the door, and sat down in one of the deck chairs by the koi pond. Shorthairs don’t need daily combing, but they enjoy it and it helps keep loose hair from shedding on the furniture. I took out my slicker brush and combed his throat with the short strokes cats love, careful not to let the bristles dig into his skin, then quickly moved over his entire body. Cheddar gave an annoyed swish of his tail, so I went back to his throat to soothe him.

  Mr. Stern came out holding a plastic cup filled with koi food. Stone-faced, he leaned over the pond and sprinkled food on the water’s surface as koi came swarming to the spot. He watched them gulp the floating food for a moment before he sat down in a deck chair.

  He said, “Koi don’t have stomachs so they can’t eat much at one time. If they do, they’ll die.”

  Cheddar and I watched a yellow butterfly sail over Mr. Stern’s head, then flit to a mound of lobelia.

  He said, “Filtration is even more important than food. Koi can live for weeks without eating, but they’ll die in an hour in bad water.”

  Cheddar jumped from my lap to the brick floor, then into Mr. Stern’s lap. Mr. Stern’s hand rose in automatic response and stroked Cheddar’s back. Cheddar reared on his back legs and put his front
paws on Mr. Stern’s shoulders, nosing his chin and purring loudly. Mr. Stern’s lips threatened to smile.

  Looking into Cheddar’s eyes, he said, “My daughter died when Ruby was in high school. Ovarian cancer. She was only forty. Beryl was her name. After that, Ruby lived with my wife and me, but I couldn’t control her. Drugs, bad crowd, all that. My wife died a year after Beryl. Broken heart, I think.”

  Cheddar stretched his neck and ran the tip of his tongue across Mr. Stern’s chin. Mr. Stern smiled and bent to rub his nose against Cheddar’s forehead. Speaking directly to Cheddar, he said, “Ruby started hanging out with the witch next door. The two of them got thick as thieves. Ruby moved out, didn’t go to college, I didn’t see much of her. I don’t know how she came to be mixed up with that race car fellow, but she married him. At least she said she did, I never was sure if she was telling the truth.”

  Cheddar tipped his head and rubbed the top of it against the underside of Mr. Stern’s chin. Mr. Stern’s lips pinched into a straight line as if he regretted letting Cheddar know how painful his thoughts were. “She came home when the baby was just a few weeks old. I don’t know if she left him or he left her. That’s when she brought Cheddar.”

  I told myself to get up and walk away. I told myself I shouldn’t be listening to a man’s personal anguish, but my feet were rooted to the courtyard floor.

  Still looking at Cheddar, he said, “She didn’t stay long. One day she just took Opal and went away. I don’t know where she’s been. I called that Zack fellow but he claimed he didn’t know where she was either.”

  I said, “What about Ruby’s father?”

  My voice seemed to startle him. “He was killed in Iraq.”

  His voice quivered, and he turned his head away. Apparently, Mr. Stern felt he had lost a son as well as a wife and daughter.

  I gathered my grooming supplies and stood up. It was time for me to go. The situation in this house was laced with legal, emotional, and familial complications that were way over my head. Ruby and Mr. Stern needed a good lawyer and a good family therapist, not the unavailing sympathy of a pet sitter.