Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons

by Blaize Clement

  “I guess not.”

  Cora said, “Well, you have to find that baby and bring her home. Her mother’s not going to be able to help you much. Women aren’t much good at getting things done when they’re scared and grieving. Men are better at that. Seems like they can turn all their grief into action. Go bomb something, shoot somebody, start a fistfight, bust up a saloon. Half the time they make it worse, but at least they can move. At least they can do something.”

  I said, “The baby’s father is a race car driver.”

  Cora’s pale blue eyes lit with some old memory. “Race car drivers are good at taking action. They’re good at breaking hearts, too. If I was you, I’d get the dad to help you get that baby back. See if he’s got the gumption to do something besides break a woman’s heart.”

  From the acid in her voice, I thought it was a safe guess that Cora’s heart had once been broken by a race car driver.

  I said, “I don’t know the father very well.”

  She shrugged. “You can fix that.”

  As usual, Cora had oversimplified a complex situation that she knew nothing about. But for some fool reason I felt as if a huge load had been lifted from me. I even felt as if she’d given me a solution of sorts. All I had to do was figure out how to put it into action.

  I put away our tea things and kissed the top of Cora’s feathery head.

  I said, “Thank you. For the bread, for the tea, for listening to me.”

  She patted my hand. “You’re a good girl, Dixie. You just have to stay strong.”

  As I rode down in the elevator, I told myself Cora was absolutely right. I needed to stay strong. And maybe, just maybe, Zack Carlyle was the person who would help me find Opal.

  Before the elevator came to a stop on the lobby level, I had pulled out Cupcake’s card. By the time the valet brought my car to me, I had called Cupcake and asked to meet with him. He seemed to have been expecting my call. We agreed to meet in thirty minutes at the Daiquiri Deck on Siesta Key. When I rang off, I almost felt as if I’d accomplished something.

  22

  A favorite meeting place for both locals and tourists, the Daiquiri Deck is a raised veranda restaurant on Ocean Boulevard. Partly a young people’s pick-up joint, partly a viewing platform to watch passing foot traffic, and partly just a place to get tasty food and drinks, the Deck is the spot where everybody who comes to the Key eventually ends up.

  I took an umbrella table where I could watch for Cupcake, ordered an iced tea, and scanned the menu while I waited. Cora’s chocolate bread had helped, but I needed more food in me before I left for afternoon pet rounds. I asked for an order of buffalo shrimp with bleu cheese sauce, and had just dunked a crispy fried shrimp into a bowl of sauce when Cupcake appeared at the top of the steps. Zack was with him, looking suspicious and unhappy.

  I waved at them and took a bit of pleasure from the way men’s heads turned to watch them walk to me. I had been invisible before, but now every male on the Deck looked at me with new appreciation. Not because I had suddenly become a guy magnet, but because I knew Zack and Cupcake. One or two men actually stopped Cupcake and Zack to ask for autographs, and the others gazed at them with such shining eyes you would have thought the hottest chick on the planet had arrived.

  Cupcake and Zack pulled out chairs and sat down without speaking to me. Not in an unfriendly way, just all business. Cupcake eyed my buffalo shrimp and beckoned to a waitress. “Bring two more orders of that, and a Corona on draft. Zack, what do you want?”

  Zack looked startled. “Um, I’ll have a Corona too.”

  The waitress scurried away, and Cupcake watched me lay a shrimp tail on my plate.

  “You don’t eat the tails?”

  “I just use the tails as handles.”

  “Where I come from, people think the tails are the best part.”

  I opened my mouth to ask him where that might be, but Zack interrupted us.

  “Why did you call?”

  He sounded like a man who’d been tricked into making an appearance before, only to discover that somebody had merely wanted to be seen with him.

  I said, “Zack, I just want to help you find Opal.”

  Zack fell silent, as if listening to some other voices inside his own head. I guessed some of the voices belonged to his father. A beat passed, and he spoke as if he’d been contemplating speech for a long time.

  “It’s hard to know what to do, you know? When to give a woman what she wants, and when to be a man and hang tough.”

  Cupcake visibly tensed.

  I said, “Maybe being a man is giving a woman what she wants.”

  Zack moved his lower jaw back and forth as if he needed to line up his teeth.

  “Before she died, my mom had to prop her head up with her hand. For two or three years she went around with one hand on the back of her head holding it up. She even drove like that. You’d see her going past, one hand on the steering wheel and one hand holding up her head.” He stared into the hot sky. “My dad didn’t do a thing to stop her. Not one thing.”

  “Was there a medical problem that made your mother’s neck weak?”

  “Nah, she just wanted Dad’s attention.”

  He seemed to be comparing himself to the kind of husband his father had been and finding himself superior. I wondered if he thought Ruby’s involvement with Myra had been like his mother’s weak neck. Maybe he believed he’d been more of a man because he’d turned against Ruby because she’d worked for Myra.

  His lips tightened into a mirthless smile. “The Thanksgiving before she died, she asked Dad if he couldn’t say something nice about the big dinner she’d cooked. He said he didn’t intend to thank her just for doing her job.”

  It occurred to me that he was a younger version of Mr. Stern, which was probably why Ruby had been drawn to him. She was familiar with men who couldn’t show emotion or give affection.

  I said, “Every woman in the world wants attention and praise from her husband, Zack. And by the way, Ruby didn’t marry you for your money. She truly loved you.”

  Zack looked shocked and suspicious, as if he’d caught me trying to put one over on him.

  Cupcake heaved a sigh that seemed to have a lot of history with Zack’s distrust of women behind it. “When you called, you said you had information. What is it?”

  “I think I know who took Opal. And I think we can put our heads together and figure out where she is.”

  Zack’s blue-purple eyes almost disappeared in a skeptical squint. “If you know something, you should tell the cops.”

  “I’m afraid telling what I know could make matters worse.”

  I wiped my shrimpy hands on a napkin and leaned forward. I gave them a quick rundown of how Vern had kidnapped me the day before and taken me to Kantor Tucker’s place. I told them I believed Myra had seen me in Mr. Stern’s courtyard and ordered Vern to grab me. I told them about the young woman I’d seen at Myra’s window.

  The waitress came bearing beer and two orders of buffalo shrimp. She put a plate in front of each man, but Zack pushed his across the table to Cupcake. Deftly, Cupcake transferred all the shrimp to one plate and handed the empty to the waitress.

  As soon as she left us, Cupcake circled a finger the size of a bratwurst for me to go on with my story.

  “This morning, after everybody left Mr. Stern’s house, I saw both Tucker and Myra leave. I thought the young woman might be in the house with Opal. It was stupid, I know, but I went into Myra’s house looking for Opal.”

  Zack looked disapproving, Cupcake put a whole shrimp in his mouth and beamed at me.

  Zack said, “So you like to involve yourself in the affairs of well-known people, is that it? Think you’d like to see your name in the newspaper?”

  I felt heat rising to my face. “My name has been in the newspaper several times, Zack, and I hated it. Once was when my husband and child were killed. I know the pain of losing a child, and I hope you and Ruby never feel that pain.”

  Za
ck looked chastened.

  I said, “Just for the record, I was a deputy for several years.”

  Cupcake raised a plate-sized hand. “Dixie, there’s something you should know too, just for the record. The arson investigators found some nitrous oxide canisters in the bedroom where the fire was. They questioned Zack about them.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Zack’s voice was bitter. “Pro Modified racers use nitrous oxide to supercharge their engines. I don’t do Pro Modified racing, I’m Pro Stock, but whoever started that fire tried to implicate me with those canisters.”

  I said, “There was a weird sweet smell along with the smoke.”

  “That would have been the nitrous oxide. It’s not flammable itself, but it intensifies fire.”

  “I don’t imagine the kind of people who kidnap babies and set fire to their bedrooms would get all moral when it came to leaving false evidence behind.”

  “You’re right. Sorry to act like an ass. Go on with your story.”

  I could see why Ruby had fallen for him. He had a problem with expressing emotion, but he made up for it with integrity.

  I said, “I went all through Myra’s house, but it was empty. I can’t be sure, but it looked like somebody had packed a suitcase in one of the bedrooms. Before I could leave, Myra came home with a young Hispanic woman named Angelina. I hid, and I heard enough to know that Angelina had run away from a house where Vern had taken her. He had frightened her so badly that she’d gone out on a highway where a woman picked her up and took her to a bodega on Clark Road. She had called Myra to come get her. Myra was furious at her, and called Tucker to tell him he had to drive Angelina back to where she’d been. She got even more furious when Tucker told her she’d have to do it herself. She said she didn’t have time to drive forty miles to deliver Angelina. She had no choice, though, so she promised Angelina that Vern wouldn’t bother her again, and they left. That’s where Opal is, forty miles away.”

  Both men stared at me.

  Cupcake said, “Forty miles in which direction? In which house?”

  Zack said, “This isn’t information, it’s gossip.”

  I said, “Think about it. Angelina said there were lots of alligators on the road, on both sides.”

  Dryly, Cupcake said, “Well, that narrows it down to about every road in Florida.”

  “Not really. She sounded like the alligators were very close to the road, the way they are along Highway Seventy-two where it goes through Myakka State Park. The alligators along that stretch of road are huge. They’d scare anybody walking along the shoulder.”

  Cupcake dipped two shrimp at one time into runny bleu cheese. “I don’t think there is a shoulder on that stretch.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  Zack said, “Have you told this to the officer handling the investigation?”

  I studied his face, looking for a sign that would tell me he had the imagination to think in a non-linear, non-rote, non-lockstep way. The only thing I saw was a young man dazed by shock and misery.

  I said, “If either of you repeat what I’m going to tell you, I’ll deny that I ever said it.”

  Their necks straightened and their eyes widened. Cupcake even stopped eating.

  “You know when Myra and Tucker spoke to Ruby this morning? And how Ruby told you she’d been wrong to think Myra had anything to do with the kidnapping? Well, she lied. I heard what Myra and Tucker said to her. They didn’t exactly spell it out, but they made it plain that Opal would be kept safe if Ruby zipped her lips at Myra’s trial. But if Ruby tells the truth about where Myra put all the money she stole from investors, Opal will be thrown to sharks.”

  A spasm of pain flickered across Zack’s face. He took a long, shuddering breath, his jaws clamped together so hard that his lean cheek muscles quivered.

  I said, “If this were a TV show, I’d go tell the investigators and they’d arrest Myra and Tucker, find Opal, and bring her home. But this is the real world, and Tucker is richer than the state of Florida. He probably owns a crooked cop in every county. The minute Tucker becomes a person of interest in Opal’s disappearance, one of his informers will call him and warn him. He could dispose of Opal’s little body in a million different ways, one of which could be tossing her to alligators in one of those swamps in Myakka Park.”

  Zack said, “What do you have in mind?”

  “First, we have to find out where they’re hiding her. Then we have to go in and get her.”

  A look passed between Cupcake and Zack, one of those Are-you-thinking-what-I’m-thinking? looks that old friends do.

  Cupcake said, “Chainsaw’s.”

  Zack nodded. “If anywhere, that would be the place.”

  While I tried to figure out what the heck they were talking about, Zack seemed to go inside himself and wrestle with an inner demon. After a long moment, he looked from Cupcake to me with a stern young face. “Ordinarily, I’d say we had to play it by the book, not play vigilante and take the law into our own hands. But not this time. This time my baby’s life is on the line, not some principle.”

  Cupcake gave Zack a dimpled smile. “Atta boy.”

  I said, “Who’s Chainsaw?”

  Cupcake said, “It’s a what, not a who. Dive on the edge of Bradenton where lowlifes like baby-kidnappers hang out. Somebody there may know something.”

  In one fluid motion, Zack stood up and tossed money on the table. “Let’s go.”

  I said, “I’ll follow you.” No way in hell was I going to let them go without me.

  Zack was moving toward the steps to the sidewalk as if the decision to act had galvanized him. Cupcake and I hurried after him.

  Cupcake said, “You got a cap or something? Somebody in that place might recognize you.”

  I had already had the same thought. If Vern or one of the guys who’d kidnapped me hung out at the bar, they’d spot me at once.

  I said, “It’s in my truck. Also some dark shades.”

  On the sidewalk, Zack and Cupcake rushed to Zack’s convertible and I loped off to my Bronco. Zack waited to pull away from the curb until there was a gap in traffic big enough to let me swing into the street behind him. You can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle being the lead car in a two-car convoy. Whether they’re thoughtless or aware, whether they’re able to gauge their speed so both cars end up on the same side of a red traffic light, whether they weave in and out of traffic or stay in the same lane. Zack was a good leader. My respect for him was climbing, but I still wished he would be his own man and not let his father push him around.

  Chainsaw’s turned out to be a squat building in one of Florida’s few remaining old fishing villages on Cortez Road, a narrow street connecting Anna Maria Island to the mainland. Grill net bans have mostly put commercial fishermen out of business, but nostalgia and stubbornness have kept a few areas free of high-rises and hotels. Chainsaw’s was in one of those moldy places. It sat at one end of an almost abandoned strip center. A Goodwill store was at the other end.

  Neither looked as if they were frequented by people living the good life.

  23

  I parked next to Zack’s car in an odd-shaped graveled lot full of potholes deep enough to lose a child in. I rummaged in the Bronco’s glove box and dragged out an old black cap with a big bill and a fishing lure embroidered on the front. It had originally belonged to Michael, and it had been in my car long enough to acquire a patina of aged dust. With my ponytail coiled under it and the cap pulled low over a big pair of dark glasses, I felt sufficiently disguised to pass under Vern’s nose without being recognized.

  Crossing the uneven lot toward Chainsaw’s entrance felt as distasteful and dangerous as slogging across the river Styx. To add to the feeling, Chainsaw’s entrance was flanked by a row of humanoid figures crudely carved from driftwood. Every head was identical, with round maniacal eyes like sixteenth-century gargoyles. A tattoo parlor next door to Chainsaw’s had a big red NO DRUNKS! sign on
the front door, but the sign looked as if it was accustomed to being ignored.

  Inside, it was so dark that we had to wait a moment to let our eyes get accustomed to the change from bright sunshine. Considering the early afternoon hour, the place was surprisingly crowded. Shadowy masculine figures that looked a lot like the driftwood carvings slumped on bar stools, other men hunched over tables centered by dim lights inside thick red shades. A few heads turned to look our way, but mostly the men seemed too absorbed in their own bored resentment. Florida fishermen have long memories, and they’ll never reconcile to being ruined to further tourism and development.

  When we could see, we followed a waitress way too old for the loose tank top that revealed sagging bare breasts in front and a mermaid tattooed across her back. She showed us to a table, took our orders, and weaved her way through tables and drunks coming from the men’s room. We sat back and scanned the room, not certain who we were looking for, but hoping we would recognize him if he was there. The men at the bar were silent, drinking bottled beer and staring at the wall covered by faded photographs of fishermen and their boats.

  To one side of us, a drunken middle-aged man and woman were deep into sloppy pre-coital grins and slurred innuendos they believed were clever. He probably had a wife somewhere at work, but for the moment he was caught in the illusion of being free and desirable. They pushed back their chairs and left as the waitress brought our beers.

  With practiced disdain, she watched the couple maneuver through the door with their arms around each other’s waists. “Between you and me, that woman’s days for making money with her body should have ended about ten years ago. Now she’s got it all held together with them elastic underthings, those whatcha-call-’em, Stanks.”

  I said, “Spanx.”

  She set our beers down with sharp clicks.

  “You go around pushing things out and pulling things in that nature don’t mean to line up like that, it’s the same thing as lying to God and think he don’t know no better.”

  I said, “You got that right.”