I didn’t argue. Technically, my job was to help Mr. Stern take care of Cheddar, but I knew I would not be needed at the animal hospital. Ruby, on the other hand, needed all the help she could get.
I helped Mr. Stern into the ambulance and waited until it had driven away before I crossed the street to sit with Ruby.
Nobody spoke. We waited silently, staring fixedly at the house. One woman had her arm around Ruby’s shoulders and I held Ruby’s hand, but I doubted Ruby was aware of us.
A growling sound of an approaching muscle car intruded into the silence, the kind of sound you usually notice in the middle of the night and wonder who would be driving that fast at that hour. The sound made Ruby raise her head, and when the car sped to a stop in front of her, she got to her feet. The car was a sleek, black, low-slung foreign convertible that I didn’t recognize. Two men were in it, one of them about as skinny and thin-skinned and blond as a Caucasian can get, with eyebrows and lashes so white they were almost invisible. He was young, mid-twenties, and looked like the kind of kid that hadn’t dated much in high school because he’d been more interested in physics or math.
The other guy was the exact opposite, as broad and black and tall as an African-American man can get. About the same age as the white guy, his head was shaved, his muscles bulged in all directions, and he had a face that would frighten criminals on death row. He and the white guy looked like mismatched peas in a shiny foreign pod.
Ruby made a soft bleating sound and stretched her hand forward, while the white guy looked at her with so much pain and anguish that it hurt to watch.
17
With neighbors looking on in rapt silence, the narrow white guy got out of the car and looked across its hood at Ruby, his face a cage holding in roiling emotions. The black guy heaved an impatient sigh, threw open his door, lumbered to Ruby, and enveloped her in his arms. He looked even bigger standing up. Having a brother as big as Michael has made me accustomed to wide shoulders and chests, but this guy was twice as big as Michael.
A spasm of envy crossed the white guy’s face, but he seemed more envious of the other guy’s ability to show feelings than jealous that Ruby was holding on to him as if he were a savior.
I stood up and waited, like a guard ready to leap into some possible fray.
The white guy walked around the car and stood beside me. “I came as soon as I heard.”
Up close, he looked like a young Tom Petty, with a kind of tensile strength under tender vulnerability. His eyes were so dark blue they were almost violet.
Ruby turned a wrecked face to him. “They haven’t found Opal yet.”
The white guy winced, and the black guy spun Ruby into the white guy’s arms. He did it the way someone would move a dish from the soapy water to the rinse water, as if it were the right time. And Ruby and the white guy held one another as if they accepted the black guy’s wisdom without question. Ruby began to keen, her mouth muffled against the man’s chest, while he rocked her back and forth the same way she had rocked Opal.
The black guy turned to me and gave me a dimpled smile that was the sweetest expression I’ve ever seen on anybody over the age of two.
He said, “How do, ma’am. I’m Cupcake Trillin.”
Now I understood why he kept his features arranged in a mean scowl. With a smile that sweet, he’d probably been given the name Cupcake when he was a baby, and grew up having to protect himself because of it.
“Pleased to meet you, Cupcake. I’m Dixie Hemingway. I’m here to help take care of Ruby’s grandfather’s cat.”
My hand disappeared in his, and for a second I could feel the thrum of raw power zinging into my palm. Cupcake was the kind of man you wanted on your side, not playing on the enemy’s team.
As if he wanted to make sure everybody understood what he meant, Cupcake raised his voice. “That man with Ruby where he belongs is her husband, Zack.”
Letting a beat go by for everybody to absorb the full import of both his words and the emphasis he gave to some of them, he said, “What’s the story here?”
He was asking me, not Ruby. Ruby was too lost in her husband’s arms to hear anything Cupcake said.
“The fire started in Ruby’s bedroom where the baby was taking a nap. It came up suddenly and hugely. Ruby tried to go through a wall of flames, but I stopped her. I had to fight her to keep her from going in.”
His eyes were steady on me, intelligent eyes that seemed to understand the entire situation in its entirety. He seemed about to ask me another question, but stopped when he saw Michael come out the front door and head toward us. I knew from the way Michael walked that he did not have good news.
If Michael wondered who Zack and Cupcake were, he didn’t show it. He simply stopped in front of Ruby and waited a second to give her a chance to prepare herself. His eyes were very sad.
Speaking directly to Ruby, he said, “We didn’t find the baby. I’m sorry.”
Ruby swayed toward him, eating his words as if they had tangible form.
He said, “The fire was mostly contained to one spot in front of the bedroom door.”
She said, “I don’t understand.”
Zack said, “He means somebody set the fire and took the baby.”
Her voice rose to a hysterical pitch. “Is that what you’re saying? Somebody took Opal?”
“We can’t make that assessment until the investigators rule out the possibility that she climbed out of her crib and found a hiding place we didn’t uncover.”
As if each word took superhuman effort, Ruby said, “She’s only four months old. She isn’t crawling yet.”
Michael already knew that. He had held Opal on his lap the night before and fed her lentil soup. He knew exactly what the situation was. But he was not in charge of the investigation and he could only speak of what he knew as a firefighter on the scene.
He said, “We’re calling for searchers to look for her.”
Zack said, “It was arson.” He was making a statement, not asking a question.
As soon as he said it, I knew it was true. Now I understood what the strange sweet odor had been. Somebody had put some sort of flammable concentrate in front of the bedroom door and set fire to it. While it raged, Opal had been taken from her crib, carried out the side door, and the door closed, trapping Cheddar inside the room.
Michael said, “I can’t make a call about arson. That’s for the fire marshall.”
Conflicting emotions moved across Ruby’s face like a string of disparate clouds. I knew what she was feeling, because I felt it myself. Michael was offering the possibility that Opal was alive.
Heavy with fatigue and sadness, Michael looked down at her. “As I said, we’ll continue to search the house and grounds for the baby. But if nobody else was in the house … and if she couldn’t get out of her crib by herself…”
As if she had suddenly remembered something terribly important, Ruby whipped her head to stare at Myra Kreigle’s house. Understanding dawned in her eyes, and in an instant her soft young face hardened into a concrete mask of enraged hatred.
Jerking from Zack’s arms, she raced across the street to Myra’s closed door. As she ran, she unleashed a hoarse shriek that trailed her like a bloody shroud. I recognized that howl. It was the sound of anguished rage I had made when I learned that Christy had been killed, the betrayed sound every bereaved mother has made since time began, the cry that echoes forever unto the outer reaches of infinity.
I ran after her. When I was halfway up Myra’s front walk, Ruby began banging and kicking the front door. “Open the door! Open the door or I’ll knock it down!”
The door swished open, and I stopped where I was. Myra was so intent on Ruby that she didn’t seem to register that I was there. Perhaps she was so sure of herself that she didn’t care.
I had seen newspaper photos of Myra, and I’d seen her face at the upstairs window, but this was the first time I’d had a chance to see her up close. She was an imposing figure. At least a head tall
er than Ruby, she was whippet thin, with smoothly coiffed raven hair and the stark white complexion that some dramatic brunettes have.
Ruby shouted, “What have you done with Opal? Where is she?”
Myra’s crimson lips stretched in a saccharine smile, and I had a momentary flash of being eight years old and feeling terror in my heart as I watched Cruella de Vil’s malicious red lips curve on a movie screen.
“Why, Ruby, dear! Whatever is the matter? Have you gotten careless and misplaced your baby?”
Ruby shrieked and charged at her, but Myra stepped back and Kantor Tucker slipped into her space. With both arms stiffened, he grabbed Ruby’s wrists.
Kicking at him, Ruby shouted, “Where is Opal?”
He twisted her wrists and leaned to bring his face close to hers. In an automatic reflex, my toes flexed against the pavement to push myself forward to help her. But the oily sound of Tucker’s voice stopped me.
“I always thought you were a smart girl, Ruby. But a smart girl doesn’t tell lies about people who’ve been good to her. A smart girl knows people who’ve been good to her will be good to her baby, too. Unless she’s not smart. Unless she repeats those lies. Then her baby might end up with the sharks. You understand me, Ruby?”
For a long moment, we were all frozen in place. Then I moved to stand at Ruby’s side. I didn’t know what I could do for her, but she was too vulnerable standing alone. Tucker didn’t show any more awareness of my presence than Myra had. I had the feeling I truly didn’t exist for them. Myra and Tucker had their own little universe, and their rule of it was absolute.
Staring intently into Tucker’s eyes, Ruby had gone almost as pale as Myra.
Through lips gone white with fear and futile rage, she whispered, “I understand.”
Tucker released her wrists and cupped her hands in both his own. “There’s our good girl! And we take care of our own, Ruby. You know that. We take very good care of our own.”
Ruby whimpered a helpless cry as Myra came back to stand beside Kantor. She looked down at Ruby with an expression that seemed genuinely sad.
She said, “I was the only one who was good to you, Ruby. The only one.”
Weeping softly, Ruby choked, “Yes. Yes, you were.”
“You have broken my heart.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“We won’t speak of it again. But you must trust me. You see? That’s what life is all about, two people trusting each other to do the right thing.”
“I understand.”
With a triumphant glance at me, Myra stepped away from the door and Kantor pulled it closed. Ruby buried her face in her hands and sobbed, but there was a shred of relief in her tears, like a beggar grateful for a crust not tainted by mold.
My mouth tasted of ashes. I wasn’t sure what had just happened, but I knew it was something terrible. Perhaps more terrible than arson or kidnapping.
Once, when I was a deputy, I had been present when a man had to be cut from an overturned tanker transporting gasoline. The man’s foot was crushed under tons of metal, the tanker was smoldering and threatening to explode at any minute. The only way to save the man had been to amputate his foot. The tanker blew up seconds after the man had been removed to safety, and his face had worn the same mixture of unbearable loss and resigned acceptance that I saw on Ruby.
Zack and Cupcake crossed the street, both looking confused and wary. They had seen what happened, but they hadn’t been able to hear what was said.
Zack said, “Ruby, what’s going on? Do you think that Kreigle woman has something to do with Opal being taken?”
Ruby raised her head and stood with her hands clasped together like someone in prayer. The despair in her eyes was like a bleeding wound. A few hours before, she had been a pretty young woman. Now she looked old and haggard.
She said, “Myra didn’t have anything to do with it. I just went a little crazy for a minute. I was wrong.”
I was amazed at how easily and convincingly she lied. I was also amazed that she was protecting Myra. From the look that Zack and Cupcake exchanged, I got the feeling they knew she lied and weren’t at all surprised by how well she did it.
18
While Zack and Cupcake and I stared at Ruby, each of us processing this latest piece of an increasingly strange puzzle, two cars screeched to a halt at the curb. One was a black sedan driven by a gray-haired man I’d never seen before. The other was a green-and-white from the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department. Mr. Stern’s house was no longer strictly a firefighter’s problem. The fire marshall would investigate the arson, and the sheriff’s department would investigate the crime of child abduction. The fact that arson had been a cover for kidnapping would require the two departments to join forces. Like trying to get the FBI and the CIA to work together, that would either be a positive thing that would bring a quicker solution to the crimes, or a complication that would throw a wrench into the smooth workings of both units.
Sergeant Woodrow Owens slammed out of the sheriff’s car, moving faster than I’d ever seen him move. A tall, lanky African-American officer, Owens usually moves like swamp water and talks like his tongue is wallowing a mouthful of buttered grits. He also has one of the quickest minds in the universe. I know because he was my superior when I was a deputy.
Two other sheriff’s cars arrived in quick succession, and Owens stopped to speak a few terse words to them. The white-haired man from the other car came to stand in front of Zack and Ruby like a flagpole. His eyes cut disapproving slashes into Zack.
He said, “Son, haven’t you gone through enough because of this woman?”
Stiffly, Zack said, “Dad, the baby’s been kidnapped.”
The older man’s voice dripped ice. “Ruby, I’m sorry about your baby. But that’s how life works. You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”
Zack’s pale face flamed. “She’s not just Ruby’s baby. She’s mine too.”
His father’s lip lifted in a sneer. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that.”
Ruby whirled toward him. “No wonder Zack doesn’t know how to be a father to Opal! You’ve done everything you could to keep us from being a family, and you succeeded! But don’t you dare imply that Opal isn’t Zack’s baby!”
Stung, Zack said, “How could I be a father to Opal when you took her and left? What was I supposed to do when I didn’t even know where you were?”
Zack’s father looked pleased, but Cupcake’s brow creased like a worried hound’s.
Cupcake said, “Look, folks, let’s stay focused. There’s a missing baby. All that other stuff can be straightened out later.”
Zack looked chagrined. “Cupcake’s right. We have to find Opal and bring her home.”
His father said, “Stay out of it, son. Let the cops handle it. That’s their job. And for all you know, Ruby may have set it up herself. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s pulled a dishonest trick.”
I expected Ruby to explode, but she merely gave her father-in-law an anguished look.
The knob of Adam’s apple quivered in Zack’s skinny neck, as if his voice had to climb over it to be heard. “Dad, I think it would be best if you left now. I understand how you feel, but I have to make some decisions and I need to make them without your help. Please.”
The older man looked shocked, and I had the feeling he rarely heard Zack speak so forcefully. He contemplated his son as if he were a defective piece of merchandise. “We all know the kind of decisions you make without my help.”
Zack stood straighter. “Dad, I’m asking you to leave. Please.”
With an exasperated huff, Mr. Carlyle spun toward his car, turning back halfway there to say, “Just don’t let yourself be pussy-whipped, boy.”
Zack’s face burned, and Cupcake’s frown deepened. Ruby seemed too preoccupied with inner pain to notice the latest volley of scorn from her father-in-law.
Deputies began stringing crime scene tape around the yard, and Sergeant Owens headed toward Mr. S
tern’s front door. He saw me and stopped.
“Hell, Dixie, what are you doing here?”
“I’m taking care of a cat for Mr. Stern. He’s the owner of the house. Has a torn bicep muscle.”
His eyes raked my sooty clothes. “Were you in the fire?”
“A little bit, but I’m okay.”
With a nod toward Ruby, I said, “This is Mr. Stern’s granddaughter, Ruby Carlyle. She’s the mother of the kidnapped baby. And this is the baby’s father, Zack Carlyle.”
A light glinted in his eyes. “Zack Carlyle.” He rolled the name over his tongue like a connoisseur of fine wine tasting something rare and wonderful. I decided it was official. Every man in the world knew about Zack Carlyle.
He said, “Who was present when the fire started?”
I said, “I was here. Mr. Stern was here, and Ruby was here. Mr. Stern’s cat suffered smoke inhalation, and the EMTs saved him. Mr. Stern has gone with the EMTs to take the cat to an animal hospital.”
Zack said, “My friend and I heard about the fire on the news and came straight here.”
Owens said, “The baby’s disappearance was on the news?”
“No, just the fire. The house is next door to Myra Kreigle. That makes the fire newsworthy, I guess.”
Owens didn’t ask who Myra Kreigle was. Everybody in Sarasota knew what Myra had done.
To Ruby, he said, “Ma’am, do you know anybody who might have kidnapped your baby?”
She raised her head and spoke clearly. “I think it may have been a cleaning woman who was here yesterday. She cried when she saw Opal, and the other women with her said she’d lost a baby a few months ago. She’s the only person I can think of who would steal Opal.”
I was stunned. Both at the logic of what she’d said, and at the ease with which she’d said it. But I had to admire the brilliance of the lie. The cleaning woman was a perfect suspect. Mothers who’ve recently lost their own babies can become so irrational in their grief that they take somebody else’s baby. For a second, I even considered the possibility that the cleaning woman had actually stolen Opal. But only for a second. As soon as I remembered Tuck’s chilling words to Ruby, I discounted the possibility of anybody other than one of his goons sneaking into the bedroom and snatching Opal from her crib. This wasn’t about stealing a baby, it was about people with more power and money than the entire state making sure that Ruby didn’t testify in Myra’s trial.
Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons Page 11
