Cajun Nights

by Don Donaldson

  CHAPTER 13

  Kit and David returned to her town house four hours after they’d left. Both were slightly wine-giddy and Kit’s defenses were down. So she agreed with David’s suggestion that he come in for a while, the first step in a sequence that usually led to the bedroom. While she sought the lock with her key, the dust mop of a dog that liked to visit came wagging out of the night, sniffed the back of her shoes, and began to paw the door.

  “Yours?” David said, squatting to rub its head.

  “No, but I think he’d like to be. Hold him will you? If you don’t, he’ll run inside.”

  “I’ve got him,” David said. But when the door opened, the dog gave a quick squirm that left David looking at empty hands.

  Kit felt the furry projectile brush her legs. “Oh David!” she moaned, flicking on the lights.

  “Sorry.”

  “You let him in, so you’ve got to get him out.”

  The little dog couldn’t have been happier, and he began to yap with joy and rush from one wall of the living room to the other. “Don’t use up all your energy chasing him,” Kit said slyly. Beaming, David went down on one knee and made coaxing noises to the little creature, who would go a few steps in his direction, drop to his belly, bark a few times, and run off.

  While David and the dog were matching wits, Kit, feeling just the tiniest bit drunk, remembered how to trick the dog out of the house. She stepped into the kitchen and let out a yelp of her own.

  “What’s wrong?” David asked, lunging for the dog and missing.

  “Water!” Kit moaned. “It’s everywhere.”

  David got to his feet and went over to see what had happened. “Jeez, Kit. I think you’ve got a plumbing problem,” he said, looking at the sheen of water covering the floor. “Is there a cutoff under the sink?”

  She shrugged and David sloshed across the floor to look. As he did, the dog dashed into the kitchen and ran to the back door barking happily. He bounced off the door, then ricocheted off David’s back. The dog was in ecstasy and seemed to want to touch everything. But when he pushed off the refrigerator, he gave a sharp cry of pain and fell quivering to the wet floor.

  “What the hell happened to him?” David said, no longer the least bit tipsy.

  Kit went to the dog and carried him into the living room where, after a few minutes, he struggled to his feet and began once again to explore, now with a slight limp.

  “Poor thing,” Kit said. “Maybe he’d like something to eat.”

  Before she could reach the refrigerator, David grabbed her around the waist. “Stay away from there,” he snapped, suddenly knowing what had probably happened. “I think the dog got a jolt from the fridge. Where’s the fuse box?”

  Again, a shrug.

  “How about a flashlight?”

  This time a shake of the head.

  “Never mind. There’s one in my car. Stand right here and don’t touch anything! I’ll be right back.” He went out the front door and returned with a mammoth silver flashlight. “When I find the fuse box, I’m going to cut the power, so when the lights go off, don’t panic.”

  Because of the circumstances, he got off scot-free with his “panic” remark. He found the fuse box outside, next to the back door, pulled the main, and went back inside, where he yanked the plug on the refrigerator.

  With power restored and the fridge pulled away from the wall, the source of the water on the floor was now clear. “Here’s your leak,” David said. “A pinhole in the waterline to the ice-maker.”

  “Can you fix it?” Kit said from the kitchen doorway, the little dog cradled in her arms.

  He held his answer until he had a look under the sink, where he saw a copper tube coming off the cold-water line above the cutoff. It ran in the direction of the fridge. “Can’t fix the hole, but I can shut off the water.” He turned his head to one side and reached deep under the sink. The water spouting from the breached line slowed to a trickle, then stopped. He lifted the refrigerator cord from the water and ran it through his fingers. “Ahhh, just as I thought. The damn cord is frayed clear through.” He held it closer and studied the bare spot. “Have you got mice? This thing looks like something’s been chewing on it.”

  “I haven’t seen any other signs,” Kit said, coming over to have a look.

  “Better get some traps anyway,” he said, handing her the damaged portion of the cord. He looked at the wet floor and sucked his teeth in thought.

  “And?” Kit prompted.

  “I was just wondering why the fridge itself didn’t drain the current away. The chassis was grounded to the plumbing through the line to the ice-maker. The current should have gone from the exposed wire to the water, into the fridge, and out the waterline. There shouldn’t have been enough extra current to do that dog any harm.” He removed the kick plate. “Well, no wonder.” He pointed to one corner of the chassis. “The leveling legs are sitting in rubber casters. Somebody must have put them under there to keep the legs from denting the linoleum. They did that all right, but they also insulated the fridge from the water and made this whole situation more dangerous than it had to be.” He stood up and scratched the poodle under the chin. “You owe this little pooch your life… or maybe I owe him mine. If he hadn’t dashed in here when he did, one of us could be dead. It’s a good thing he was acting so crazy. If he’d been moving a little slower, he might have bought it. Here, when I rock the fridge up off its legs, kick the front casters out. That’s it. Now, can you get to the back ones?”

  When all four pieces of rubber had been dislodged, he gathered them up and fired them into the grocery bag from Gambini’s. “So much for those little bastards,” he said. “What are you going to do with the dog?”

  “Put an ad in the paper and try to find the owner, I guess. Considering what the dog did for us, maybe I should offer the owner a reward.”

  “Be a sure way to get a response. Where’s your mop?”

  “That’s okay. I’ll do it. Would you mind awfully if we called it a night? I’m feeling a little weak in the knees.”

  “Sure you want to be alone?”

  “I’m sure. Thanks for a lovely dinner… and for helping with the mess.” She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the lips.

  He leaned back and studied her face. “Kit…”

  “Yes?”

  “I know sometimes I’m an ass and I often say the wrong thing, but I do care for you and I think we could make a good life together… maybe each of us give a little… find a common ground. What do you say we give it a try? I don’t mean marriage; I know you don’t want that. Move in with me. Let’s find out if we can cut it.” He put his finger to her lips. “Don’t say anything now. Give it some thought and we’ll talk later. Okay?”

  Kit nodded and he kissed her on the forehead. They parted with her feeling much less sure about their incompatibility. At the same time, her growing feelings for Al Vogel and her wish to remain self-sufficient and independent made things difficult to sort out.

  She cleaned up as much of the water as she could, then made the dog a bed next to hers by taking some silk flowers from their woven basket and lining it with a flannel nightie. By this time, the dog appeared pretty much recovered but tired, and he settled into the basket and closed his eyes, opening them every few minutes when she passed.

  After brushing her teeth, she put a small bowl of water next to the basket and gave him a last scratch on the head before getting into bed. It was against the rules for tenants in the complex to have pets, so she’d have to find the dog’s owner quickly, and if she didn’t, well… she’d tackle that problem when and if it was necessary.

  As she lay staring at the ceiling, there was still a bad taste in her mouth from a couple of things associated with the evening’s events. She had not followed David’s reasoning at all when he was talking about “current flow” and the refrigerator being “grounded,” and her ignorance might have cost her dearly had she been alone. Ignorance could be remedied and she decided to
stop by the library in the morning and pick up a book to brush up on the fundamentals of electricity. Nor did she like standing there like a dimwit not owning a flashlight or knowing where the fuse box was. She could learn about fuse boxes from the book she was going to get, and by tomorrow night, there was going to be a flashlight in the house.

  The refrigerator held its temperature through the night and in the morning the dog had ham and buttermilk for breakfast. Kit had a generous helping of hot buttered bread and coffee. After breakfast and a short walk outside, where he showed no trace of a limp and did what was expected of him, the dog went back to his basket and fell asleep. This made Kit much less apprehensive about leaving him alone than if he had been bouncing off the furniture.

  She called the manager of Givenchy Village and he promised to send someone around before noon to repair the refrigerator. When she complained about his practice of using rubber casters on refrigerators to protect the linoleum, he denied any knowledge of them, a response she mentally filed under “B.S.” Now to place the ad to find Lucky’s owner. Lucky! She hadn’t planned on giving the dog a name, but there it was, unintentional and perfect. So he would be “Lucky” until his owner carne for him.

  The ad cost three dollars and fifty cents and they would mail the bill. As she hung up, she found herself smothering a half-hope that no one would answer the ad. She couldn’t keep a dog; she didn’t want a dog.

  Having lived in the village long enough to know the ways of its repairmen, she did not plan on waiting for them to show up but had given permission for them to enter with a passkey and work unsupervised by her, a decision with which she was not entirely at ease. Before leaving for the hospital, she took a last peek at Lucky, who was still sound asleep, and gently closed the bedroom door.

  CHAPTER 14

  As Broussard pulled into his driveway the night following Kit’s adventure, he wondered whether there were enough eggs in the house for the crab quiche he had planned for dinner. If not, he’d simply have to make do. There wasn’t time in his schedule tonight for a trip to the market. Beyond settling on the title, “Insect Larvae as Time-of-Death Indicators in Cases of Advanced Decomposition,” he’d made very little progress on the paper he’d been meaning to write for the last three months. But he was determined that his head would not touch his pillow until the entire rough draft was completed. That would take the sting out of the job and it would not be so hard to pick up again.

  There was a package on the porch that made him forget the quiche. It was wrapped in brown paper and was tied with hemp twine precisely as the previous thirty-six packages had been. It was his monthly delivery from Thomas Garroway Ltd. and his spirits soared. What would it be this time? French truffles? Handmade Normandy Camembert? Perhaps a blue-veined English Stilton?

  He took the package inside, set it and his briefcase on the refectory table, and went immediately for a pair of scissors. The contents of the package were always a thrill, but he enjoyed nearly as much the knowledge that he was dealing with a firm over three hundred years old.

  He snipped the twine and opened the package as he had opened the gauze bundle holding Freddie Watts’s brain, using just the index finger and thumb of each hand, keeping both pinkies raised as though drinking tea from a small cup. With the tape removed, the wrapping fell away from a shiny green pasteboard box bearing the image of a narrow two-story Victorian store building. He lifted the top from the box and eagerly scanned the shipping manifest resting on the contents. He was now in possession of a five-hundred-gram broccio, a liter of Bolognese sauce, and a large package of tri-color fusilli. The manifest also listed a dozen maid-of-honor cakes, a dozen stuffed cabbage rolls, half a dozen smoked brill, two bottles of marinated eels, a package of black radishes, and a bag of dried shitake mushrooms.

  Putting aside the manifest, he surveyed the bottles and tins, cellophane bags and plastic sleeves carefully packed in a bed of fake grass. In their wrappers of multicolored tin foil, the twelve cakes looked like chocolate eggs in an Easter basket.

  With a light step, he carried the box into the kitchen and stacked its contents on the counter. Drawing on a few things already in his larder, dinner would be an event.

  Before tending to his own needs, he went to the garage to feed the cats. It was only when he found the food bowl still half-full that he remembered. There was only Princess. Chuck was gone. He closed the bag of Feline Feast and went back inside, not feeling nearly as chipper as he had.

  Dinner, which he ate as always in the dining room with the lights turned low and Placido Domingo on the stereo, restored his sagging spirits. During particularly brilliant passages, he imagined himself onstage, the source of those glorious sounds. It was his own complete lack of ability in this area that made him so admire those who had it. By dinner’s end, he was in a writing frame of mind.

  Since he could eat but not think with opera playing, he switched off the stereo when he retrieved his briefcase from the great room. Seated at his desk in the study, he spread the contents of the briefcase over the tooled red leather and set to work. In addition to the title, he had drawn up a list of seven points he wished to make in his paper. He began by rereading them.

  From the moment he had entered the room, a vague sense of change had been nibbling away at his subconscious. There was something about the study that was different—different from the other rooms, different from the way it usually was. He lifted his eyes from the seven points and looked uneasily about without knowing why. Immersed again in his seven points, he soon found himself trying to name all the seven dwarfs. Doc, Dopey, Sneezy… He scribbled their names on the margin of his paper. Bashful… He began to hum “Whistle While You Work” and tried to remember the other names.

  A drop of moisture fell on the paper and spread out in a fuzzy sunburst. He looked at the ceiling expecting to see a water stain and felt a trickle of saliva run down the corner of his mouth. Leaping to his feet, he knocked the chair behind him out of the way and charged across the room, arms crossed over his face. As he went through one of the tall windows, he took the draperies with him.

  The ground came up with a blow that drove all the air from his lungs. Facedown in the newly manured east flower-bed, he fought for air and tried to divest himself of the tangled drapes that held him. In his struggle, he managed to roll onto his side and soon got hold of a good healthy breath. Heart hammering, chest heaving, he had no thoughts beyond his need for air, and he lay there for nearly two minutes, till the strobe lights behind his eyes quit flashing. Then he worked himself free of the drapes and got to his feet.

  He patted the dirt from his clothes and combed the debris from his beard with his fingers. In the light from the study, he looked at the shards of glass on the ground around him without comprehension. How did the glass get there? For that matter, how did he get there? Dazed and confused, he ran a finger over the splintered remains of his study window. At that moment, the immediate past had never been.

  But soon his mind, accustomed to years of sorting and cataloging, put itself in order and he remembered. He had realized what was happening to him and had crashed through the window to escape before the final symptoms appeared. Somehow, the Escadrille toxin had found its way into his home. No, that wasn’t exactly true… into his study was more accurate. He had been all through the house earlier and had no symptoms until entering the study. He recalled now how uneasy he’d felt just before the symptoms began. What was it that had made him feel that way?

  Favoring his left leg, he went to the garage and let himself in through a side door. With all that had been on his mind lately, he hadn’t returned any of the equipment he’d gathered for testing the Escadrille. Consequently, his respirator was right where he’d left it. Protected by it, he went into the house through the kitchen.

  From the study doorway, he scanned the room. Only the shattered window to the right of his world globe on its gleaming oak stand seemed out of place. The hunting prints on the oak overmantle hung as straight as ever, the sp
ines of the books behind the glass doors of his towering oak bookcase were still perfectly aligned, and the… He cocked his head to one side.

  Inside the mask, each breath was transformed to an alien hiss that resounded in his ears; but between breaths, he heard something. He suspended his breathing and listened, then turned and listened again. When he could hold it no more, his breath escaped into the mask in a rush that blocked out all other sounds. But he had heard enough. Unlike the other rooms in the house where the central air conditioner produced a steady hiss much like his own exhalation into the mask, here in the study the sound was pitched higher, almost a whistle.

  The vent, which delivered hot air in the winter and cool air in the summer, was above and to the left of the hunting prints, just under the crown molding at the ceiling. By standing on his movable library stairs, he could easily reach the vent but couldn’t see into it.

  He left the room briefly and returned with a long screwdriver with which he removed the screws holding the vent in place. Inside the mask, his face was flushed with exertion and he was breathing heavily. A fog was beginning to build up on the mask’s faceplate.

  Using the screwdriver as a lever, he pried first on one side of the vent and then the other. When it seemed loose enough, he pocketed the screwdriver and worked the vent with his hands. One side and then the other, back and forth, back and forth. A final impatient tug and it came off so easily that he nearly went over backward. With the screwdriver, he probed the ductwork and felt the tip hit something soft. Two quick rachet-like movements of his wrist brought the edge of a piece of blue terry cloth into view.