Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons

by Blaize Clement

  Another silence. “Okay. Okay. When your meeting is over, call me.”

  She must have closed her phone, because her next words were to Angelina. “Mr. Tucker says for you to be a good girl and keep your promise so nothing bad will happen to your mother. I’ll drive you back to the house, and you must not leave again.”

  “I not stay in house with that man.”

  “Mr. Tucker promises the man won’t bother you again.”

  Angelina made mumbling noises of reluctant assent.

  Cowering in my tight quarters, I listened to Myra’s high heels clicking to the side door along with Angelina’s soft padding. The door opened and closed.

  I waited until I was sure they weren’t coming back, then eased my cramped self out of the baker’s cabinet and limped to the side door. When I stuck my head out, I didn’t see anybody. I slipped out the door, pulled it closed, and sauntered to the Bronco as nonchalantly as I could manage. The deputy’s car was still at the curb. The neighborhood looked the same. The only thing that had changed was me.

  In the Bronco, a surge of adrenaline caused me to grip the steering wheel and tremble for a while. When the shakes passed, I started the motor and drove away in a state of euphoric frustration. I had learned some valuable information, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

  Neither Myra nor Angelina had mentioned a baby. But I would have bet my entire collection of white Keds that Vern had taken Opal and Angelina to a house somewhere forty miles away where Vern had scared Angelina so much she’d run away. If I was right, she had left Opal alone with Vern.

  With my head pounding from exhaustion, stress, and hunger, I headed home, where the carport looked bleakly empty and the shorebirds walking along the edge of the surf seemed sad and dispirited. In my bathroom, I was shocked when I saw my reflection in the mirror. My skin was streaked with a greasy film of gray smoke, my eyes were red-rimmed and pink-veined, and my hair clung to my scalp in heavy dull strands. I not only felt like hell, I looked like hell.

  Peeling off my smoke-stinking clothes, I stuffed them in the washer. Cupcake’s wrinkled card fluttered to the floor, and I retrieved it and put it in my bag. Just knowing it had been in Cupcake’s big warm hand gave the card a peculiar kind of power I wanted to hold on to.

  As I got into a hot shower, I heard my cell phone’s distinctive ring reserved for Michael, Paco, or Guidry. I let it ring. I was too tired and too nasty to talk to anybody. As blessed hot water sluiced over my skin and hair and washed away the odor and fatigue, I realized that I was still shaking. Fine tremors seemed to be emanating from my bones, traveling through my flesh and jittering my skin in a combination of adrenaline, exhaustion, fear, and shame.

  When I was sure I was free of the stench and grime from smoke, I stepped out of the shower, toweled off, and pulled a shaky comb through my hair. Walking like a feeble old woman, I shuffled to my bed and crawled under the covers, already halfway into the oblivion of sleep.

  I dreamed I was in some cavernous place where shadowy forms moved around me. I knew they carried important information, but none of them would come close so I could find out what it was. When I chased them, they dissolved, and when I stood still and begged them to come to me, they turned into hard boulders that couldn’t move.

  A banging at my french doors pulled me from the dream. Guidry was on the porch yelling my name. I groaned. There are times in a relationship when you are ecstatic to see the other person, and there are times when you just want to be left the hell alone.

  Louder, Guidry yelled, “Dixie?”

  I groaned again and slid out of bed. I was halfway to the door when I remembered I was stark naked, so I detoured to the closet and grabbed a sleepshirt. Not that Guidry hadn’t seen me naked before, but answering the door wearing nothing but skin seemed just wrong. Decently covered, I yanked open the french doors. In the next instant, Guidry was holding me close and I was blubbering all over his nice linen jacket.

  He said, “Owens called me and told me about the fire.”

  I sobbed, “They took Opal.”

  “The baby?”

  I rubbed my face up and down against his chest. “Uh-huh.”

  “Who? Who took her?”

  I opened my mouth to answer him, and the little male secretary in my brain who zips around opening file drawers to retrieve information when I need it came to a screeching halt. Whirling to a specific filing cabinet, he whipped out a file marked “Officers of the Law Are Required to Report All Crimes of Which They Have Knowledge.”

  Once again, I was faced with the partnered-person’s dilemma. I had good reason to believe that Vern had taken Opal and put her in a house forty miles away. But I had to choose between gut instinct, which was to share my awful secret with Guidry, and the knowledge that his integrity as an officer of the law would compel him to take actions that might lead to Opal’s death.

  Pulling away from him, I wiped away tears with both hands. It gave me an excuse not to look up at Guidry.

  “It may have been Vern. Or it could have been a cleaning woman who was at the Stern house yesterday.”

  My little brain secretary smiled and replaced the file.

  “Owens said the fire was arson.”

  “That’s what Michael said, too. He saved Cheddar.”

  “Cheddar?”

  “Mr. Stern’s cat. Cheddar was in the bedroom with Opal, and he hid under the bed. Michael found him and brought him out to the EMTs and they gave him oxygen. He’s at the animal hospital now, but they think he’s going to be okay.”

  Guidry smoothed my damp hair back from my forehead. “What about you? Are you going to be okay?”

  I burst into sobs again. Stood there and bawled like a two-year-old. “I’m hungry, and Michael’s at the firehouse and I don’t have anything to eat.”

  Guidry chuckled and pulled me into his arms again. “Tell you what, I’ll cook dinner for you tonight at my place.”

  I wailed, “I’m not crying because I’m hungry.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t know you could cook.”

  “You still don’t. It’s only a theory.”

  He squeezed me in a hug, kissed the top of my head, and released me. “You need to sleep. I’ll see you tonight.”

  Crying, hiccuping, and sniffling, I watched him walk across my porch. I watched him go down the stairs until his head disappeared from view. Then I pulled the french doors closed, pushed the button to lower the folding metal hurricane shutters, and shuffled back to bed, sobbing all the way. I was still crying when I fell asleep. Maybe I even cried while I slept.

  21

  My nap lasted only about fifteen minutes, way too short, and I woke feeling headachy and depressed. The headache was a no-food-since-last-night dullness. The depression was a crushing weight made from worry about what was happening to Opal, wondering where Vern had taken Opal, and guilt from being partially responsible for the sheriff’s office including in its list of suspects an innocent cleaning woman already torn by grief over losing a baby.

  I padded to the kitchen and put on water for tea. I thought about going downstairs to Michael’s kitchen and raiding his refrigerator, but I couldn’t dredge up energy for more than pouring water over tea bags. While I drank a cup of under-brewed tea, I wondered how long it would take Sergeant Owens to remove the cleaning woman from his suspects.

  When I couldn’t stand it any more, I pulled out my cellphone and dialed his number. It was engraved in my memory from my days as a deputy.

  When Sergeant Owens answered, I said, “This is Dixie. I just wondered if you’d got any leads about the kidnapped baby.”

  He sounded surprised. Not at my curiosity, but that I’d called him.

  Carefully, as if he didn’t want to hurt my feelings, Owens said, “I know you’re concerned about the baby, Dixie. We all are. But it may take time to find her. We’ve put out an Amber Alert, and we have people searching the neighborhood. We also have the cleaning woman’s full name. Doreen Antone. We’ve
tracked down her address, but nobody’s home and her car’s gone. We’ve talked to Doreen’s boyfriend, and he said she might have gone to her sister’s in Alabama. He’s thick as a board, doesn’t know where the sister lives, like what town, but he knows Doreen is from Alabama and that she has a sister there. We’ve alerted airports and bus stations and put out an APB to be on the lookout for an overweight young Caucasian woman with a four-month-old baby. We’re checking high school records, DMV records, everything we can. We’ll find her.”

  My chest felt as if a trapped eagle were inside flapping its wings against my heart in a desperate search for truth that would lead to freedom. But the terrible truth was that Myra and Tucker had more money than all the law enforcement agencies in the country. Money is power, and Myra and Tucker were ruthless in their use of it. If I told Sergeant Owens that following Doreen Antone was a useless expenditure of department energy and money, I’d have to tell him the truth about Opal being held in a house forty miles away. That could lead to Tucker learning he was a suspect. If he did, Opal could be dead and disposed of in an hour. I couldn’t jeopardize Opal’s safety by telling Owens the truth. Like Ruby, I had to swallow my honor and accept the unacceptable.

  I thanked Owens, apologized for taking his time, and rang off with more worry and remorse than I’d felt before I called. Knowing about Ruby’s tacit agreement with Tucker and Myra had given me the ability to see the future with an awful clarity. At Myra’s trial, Ruby wouldn’t remember a single offshore account where Myra had stashed millions in stolen money. In exchange, Kantor Tucker would keep his part of the agreement and fly Opal and Angelina to another part of the country where they would be discreetly installed in a nice house and given a plausible cover story. Angelina would be supplied with all the papers necessary to pose as Opal’s mother, and nobody would suspect that Opal had been kidnapped. In ten years or fifteen or twenty, whenever Myra was released from prison, she and Tucker would collect the offshore accounts. If Ruby was out of jail by that time, they might permit her to be reunited with Opal, but Opal’s love and allegiance would be to the woman who had raised her.

  Now here’s the thing about secrets: Like the Big Bad Wolf, secrets have big jagged teeth and strong jaws. Kept inside, they use their sharp teeth to tear off big chunks of your tender innards, gnashing your flesh in their spring-trap jaws and ripping you to shreds. Secrets have to be told to somebody, just not to somebody who will repeat them or who will be personally affected by them. Somebody like a trusted psychotherapist, maybe, or a spiritual guide. I didn’t know any psychotherapists or spiritual guides, but I knew Cora Mathers, and I felt a sudden urge to get to her as fast as possible. In a feverish rush, I pulled on clothes, grabbed my keys and bag, and hurried out my front door.

  I took the north bridge to Tamiami Trail, followed it around the marina where tall sailboats were anchored, and then a few blocks to Bayfront Village, an upscale retirement condo on the bay. A uniformed parking attendant rushed out to open my Bronco’s door, and double glass doors sighed open to let me pass into the big lobby. Handsome elderly people stood around in groups making dates to play tennis or golf or to go to the opera or the museum or a movie. I don’t know why it is, but rich old people seem to have more fun than young people, rich or poor. Maybe it’s because old people who are rich had to be luckier or smarter than other people to get rich in the first place, so they use the same luck and smarts to enjoy old age.

  I headed for the elevators, and from her place behind a big French provincial desk, the concierge waved and picked up her house phone to let Cora know I was coming. She knew that Cora always wanted to see me, so I didn’t have to wait for permission.

  Cora is in her late eighties, but she’s the youngest person I know. Cora and her granddaughter started out poor, but her granddaughter made a lot of money in ways that Cora has never suspected, and she bought Cora a posh apartment in the Bayfront Village. The granddaughter was murdered while she was a client of mine a few years back, and Cora and I became close friends. She’s not at all like my own grandmother was, but she has sort of taken her place. I’m not at all like her granddaughter either, but in many ways I’ve taken her place. Which I guess proves that friendships don’t depend on any of the things we think they do, they just happen when two people like each other a lot.

  On the sixth floor, Cora’s door was already open and she had stuck her head out to watch for me. Cora is roughly the size of an undernourished middle-school child, with thin freckled arms and legs and white hair so thin and wispy her pink scalp shines through. When she saw me step out of the elevator, she waved her entire arm up and down like a highway flagman, as if she thought I wouldn’t know which door was hers if she didn’t signal.

  Before I got to the door, she said, “You knew I was baking bread, didn’t you? I’ll bet you smelled it all the way across town.”

  I could smell it now, and the scent drew me forward like the odor of cream to a kitten. Cora has an old bread-making machine that was a gift from her granddaughter, and by a secret recipe that she won’t divulge, she makes decadent chocolate bread in it.

  I gave Cora a hug—carefully, because I’m always afraid I’ll crush her—and followed her into her pink and turquoise apartment. It’s a lovely apartment, pink marble floors, paler pink walls, turquoise and rose linen covers on sofa and chairs, and a terrace beyond a glass wall through which she has a magnificent view of the bay.

  The odor of hot chocolate bread made me walk with lifted nose like a hound first getting a scent of something to chase.

  Cora said, “I just took it out, so it’s piping hot.”

  Habit made Cora take a seat at a small skirted table between the living area and a tiny one-person kitchen while I assembled our tea tray. Cora’s teakettle is always on, so it only took a minute to pour hot water over tea bags in a Brown Betty pot, get cups and saucers from the cupboard, butter from the refrigerator, and add the hot round loaf of chocolate bread. I put the tray on the table and took the other chair. Cora watched me lay everything out and pour two cups of tea.

  We each tore off two fist-sized hunks of bread from the loaf—Cora insists that it can’t be sliced like ordinary bread—and slathered them with butter. Cora’s chocolate bread is dark, dense, and studded with morsels of semi-sweet chocolate that have not fully melted but instead gently ooze from their centers. Angels in heaven probably have Cora’s chocolate bread with tea every afternoon. If God’s on their good side, they may invite him to join them. I ate half my chunk before I said a word. Partly because it was so good, and partly because I couldn’t get the words out.

  Cora said, “You look like you’ve been wrung dry. What’s wrong?”

  I don’t know how she does it, but she always knows.

  I sipped tea and put my cup back in its saucer. “A baby I know has been kidnapped. She’s about four months old. Her name is Opal, and she’s beautiful. I’m sure I know who took her, but if I tell, it could cause her to be killed.”

  Cora tilted her head toward the light coming in from the glass sliders at the back of her living room so that the fine lines that etched her skin seemed to shimmer.

  “You’re sure you know?”

  I took a bite of bread and chewed while I tried to figure out a way to tell Cora how I knew that Myra and Tucker had sent Vern to kidnap Opal.

  I said, “It’s too complicated to go into all the details, but I overheard a phone conversation. There’s a man and woman who hired another man to take the baby. They did it because the baby’s mother knows things about them that can get them sent to prison for a long time. If she keeps quiet, they’ll take good care of her baby, but she’ll go to prison. If she tells what she knows, she won’t go to prison, but they’ll kill her baby.”

  Cora laced her fingers together on the table. “It would take a very low person to kill a baby.”

  “They’re that low. They’re about as low as a human being can get.”

  “You don’t think you might have misunderstood what
you heard?”

  I shook my head. “I heard enough to convince me. The baby’s mother has known them a long time and she says the man has flown his plane out over the Gulf and shoved people out. She thinks he’ll do that to the baby if she talks.”

  “My goodness.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid to tell what I know, and afraid not to tell.”

  She took a sip of tea, her hooded blue eyes watching me.

  She said, “Losing a baby is the worst thing that can ever happen to a person. You don’t ever get over it. You can think you’ve moved away from the hurt, but every time you hear about some other baby being lost, you feel like it’s happening to you all over again.”

  My breath caught in my chest as if a hand had grabbed my throat, and in the next instant my face was buried in my hands and I was sobbing again, not about Opal but because my baby had been crushed to death in an insane accident in a supermarket parking lot. Cora did not get up and comfort me. She was too smart for that. She waited me out. And because I knew she was strong enough to wait me out, I didn’t try to dam my flood of tears but let them flow until they slowed to a trickle and stopped.

  When I took my hands from my face, Cora handed me a stack of paper napkins. I mopped my cheeks and gave her a tremulous smile. “I didn’t expect to do that.”

  She said, “Oh, you’ll always do that. It’ll catch you when you’re not even thinking about your child. It’s been over forty years since my daughter died and left me her baby to raise, but sometimes it hits me all over again that she’s gone, and I’m just laid low. I don’t guess it will ever stop, that awful pain. It just goes into hiding for long stretches.”

  I said, “The baby’s mother is very young, and she already has a lot of heartache, and now this goon has kidnapped her baby. It’s just not fair.”

  “I don’t know why people are always surprised that life isn’t fair. It never has been, never will be. You can’t do anything about that.”