God, had it just been this morning? It seemed like eons ago when I’d met the woman with her bulldog.
I sipped coffee and tried to remember the woman’s exact words. “She said her dog’s name was Ziggy Stardust because she was a David Bowie fan. I said that was the second time I’d heard about a pet named Ziggy, but the other one was an iguana. Then she said, ‘You’ve just heard about him? You haven’t seen him?’”
Guidry was leaning forward as if he wanted to soak up every word. “Then what?”
“I said I was on my way to see him right then, and she said ‘Good’ and ran off. In a minute or two, I saw her driving away in a sedan.”
“That’s all?”
“Something about it seemed odd. I had the feeling she’d been watching for me. She was relieved when I said I was on my way to see the iguana. Then, when I saw her picture on Kurtz’s table, I knew there was a connection.”
“You said you asked Kurtz about it. How did he react?”
“That was odd too. For a second he looked excited, and then he said it was purely coincidence, that the woman in the photograph was dead. I’m almost positive it was the same woman.”
Guidry sat back on the couch and gnawed on the inside of his cheek.
I said, “There’s something about the name Ziggy that has meaning. Kurtz changed when I told him the man who called me said the iguana’s name was Ziggy. I think it’s some kind of code, a message of some kind.”
As soon as I said the word message, I sat up straight. “Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“I got a phone message this afternoon. It was the same man with the Irish accent who called me last night, the one claiming to be Kurtz. He apologized for lying to me and told me to give Kurtz a message.”
“What message?”
“I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget it, but I remember it. Ziggy is no longer an option. You must act now.”
Guidry said, “Did you give Kurtz the message?”
“That’s why I called you this afternoon, to tell you about it.”
“But you didn’t tell me.”
“When you accused me of killing the guard, I forgot.”
“Kurtz doesn’t know about the call either?”
I shook my head and winced. “I should have told him. The message must have been a code about the fire. Somebody knew there was going to be a fire and wanted to warn him.”
Another thought hit me, and I sat upright so fast I felt my brain slosh. “Guidry, the man said Ziggy is no longer an option. Did anybody check on Ziggy? Is he all right?”
“The fire marshal spoke to Kurtz, but I don’t know if he specifically asked about the iguana.”
I pushed myself up and stood swaying. “I have to go see about him.”
Guidry got up and took my arm. “The only place you’re going is to your bedroom.”
My heart gulped, and I tried to think of a graceful way to say, “Sorry, but right now I’m having a concussion.”
Then I realized by the way he was guiding me toward my bed that he hadn’t meant it in a romantic way, which made me feel like weeping again.
Guidry said, “I think you can safely sleep now, but I’m going to stick around. I’ll stretch out here on your couch.”
He turned down my covers and waited until I crawled between the sheets, then tucked me in with surprising tenderness. I was too exhausted to do anything except clutch a pillow under my cheek and fall into the abyss of blessed sleep.
FOURTEEN
I woke up to birdsong and bright light and the worst headache of my life. My first thought was of Billy Elliot, who was surely waiting behind Tom Hale’s door with all four legs crossed. So were the other dogs on my list. I had broken the first rule of professional pet sitters, which is to show up, no matter what.
Groaning, I swung my legs out of bed and stood up, only to sit right back down again. One thing for sure, I wasn’t going to be running with Billy Elliot today. A movement at the bedroom door brought my head up—Paco, with a worried look in his eyes and a hopeful smile on his lips.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty. How’s your head?”
“Dire. Why are you here?”
“Guidry met me when I came home, told me what happened.”
“I have to go see to my pets—”
“Guidry said you called somebody to do that.”
Slowly, my brain crawled to the memory of talking to Tom Hale and Joe Molina.
“Oh, yeah, I did. I forgot. Does Michael know what happened yet?”
“I had to tell him. He’ll be okay.”
I winced, getting a mental image of Michael at the firehouse flinging a water hose around like a cowboy’s lariat, practicing to capture the person who’d hit me.
Paco said, “Michael will be home tonight. Since he worked somebody else’s shift last night, he has an extra twenty-four off.”
I let out a pent-up breath I hadn’t known I was holding. Until Guidry caught the person who’d killed Ramón and knocked me out, I would feel a lot safer knowing my brother was nearby.
Paco was watching me closely. “Guidry wants you to call him when you can.”
I was afraid I would bawl if I tried to talk anymore, so I said, “I need a shower.”
“Boy, I’ll say. What’s that on your sweater?”
I hauled myself to my feet and shuffled to the hall like an old woman. “You don’t want to know.”
Of all civilized inventions, hot water is the best. I stood under a steaming torrent for a long time and let its healing power work magic. When I finally stepped out, my head was still heavy, but I didn’t feel like I had feathers for brains. I pulled my wet hair back into a ponytail, catching it just below the sore spot where I’d been clobbered, and made a fast pass at my lips with rosy gloss. With a towel around me for modesty, I padded down the hall to my office-closet and shut myself inside. When I reached for a lacy bra and thong bikini, I knew I was going to live. Otherwise, I’d have settled for cotton Hanes. I listened to my messages while I pulled on clean jeans and a fresh T, holding my breath at each one for fear it was the same man who’d left the message about Ziggy.
One was from the night before. Ethan Crane, his voice warm and intimate. “Dixie, it’s Ethan. I stayed behind at the Crab House for a while and listened to the music, and when I left there were fire trucks at the Kurtz house and a Bronco that looked like yours. Are you all right? I hope you’re safe and sound in bed, but would you let me hear from you so I’ll know whether to worry?”
Oh, shit, I’d completely forgotten about the evening with Ethan Crane. Even as I dialed his number, I wasn’t sure if my memory failure had been because of the concussion or because my subconscious hadn’t wanted to remember. Since I knew he could see the call was from me, I started talking when the line clicked open.
“Ethan, this is Dixie. I’m sorry you were worried about me last night. Actually, I wasn’t in bed, I was at Sarasota Memorial. Somebody hit me in the head and I had a concussion.”
“A concussion?”
“You know, swollen brains.”
“I know what a concussion is, I’m just … how do you get mixed up in these things, anyway?”
His voice sounded a bit aggrieved, which was all I needed to blow up. “I sure as hell don’t try to get mixed up in them, Ethan. I’m sorry you were worried, sorry I didn’t call sooner, but this is the best I can do.”
I slammed down the receiver and laced up clean white Keds, ignoring the ringing phone and not listening to the recording because I’d had all of Ethan Crane I could take for the morning.
I found Paco standing in front of my refrigerator looking morosely into its innards.
“Don’t you keep any food here?”
“Guidry ate it all.”
“Is that why there were dishes in your drain?”
“He washed dishes?”
“Come on, we need sustenance.”
Since Michael was still on duty at the firehouse, that meant going to the Village Dine
r on Beach Drive, where I have breakfast almost every day of the year.
When we went out on my porch, a flock of robins who’d been having a committee meeting on the railing fluttered away. Funny thing about robins, while they’re visiting us in the winter they form cooperative flocks and happily feast on berries and seeds and ripening fruit. As soon as they fly back north, they revert to their old ways, squabbling over earthworms and chasing away any other robin that comes into their self-assigned domain. Human snowbirds do the same thing. Here in Sarasota, their diet is heavy on oranges, mangoes, papayas, strawberries, avocados, and guavas, and they’re as friendly with one another as a bunch of wintering robins. But in the spring, they head back home, shut themselves up in their respective houses, and go back to meat and potatoes.
Downstairs, I saw Guidry had kept his word and had my Bronco driven home. It was parked in the carport with the keys in the ignition.
Moving toward it, I said, “I’ll meet you at the diner. I’ll have to go see to the cats after we eat.”
Paco hesitated a bit and then nodded. That’s the great thing about Paco. He protects, but he doesn’t hover.
When I passed the Kurtz house, I slowed to stare at a chubby man dressed in a long brown caftan that looked like it was made with feedsack burlap. He had a giant cross hanging from a rough chain around his neck, and he was wagging a sign at passing traffic. The sign had a Bible verse in red lettering—Revelation 13:15-18. Not being one who knows Bible verses, I didn’t know what it referred to, but I wasn’t surprised to see him. Murders bring out crazies of every stripe. It’s simply something that law-enforcement people accept as part of the terrain.
When I got out of the Bronco at the diner, I dropped my car keys into my shoulder bag and heard them clink on metal. A prim little voice in my aching head said, Dixie, you still have that man’s door keys. In no mood for a lecture from my conscience, I said the F-word to the prim little voice and trudged into the diner.
Inside, the windows were sprayed with fake snow, and somebody had draped a string of Christmas lights around a miniature tree at the cashier’s stand. They had also put little pots of fake poinsettias on each table, which made me remember we were a day closer to Christmas.
Bleh!
I’m such a regular at the diner that Tanisha, the cook, starts making two eggs over easy with extra-crisp home fries and a biscuit when she sees me come in the door. Today she did a double-take and rolled her eyes when she saw me with Paco. He has that effect on women. Makes them go all swoony.
Judy, the waitress who’s been at the diner for as long as I’ve been going there, grabbed two mugs and trotted to my usual booth with her coffeepot at the ready. When Paco turned to slide into the seat across from me, she surreptitiously eyed his butt, which is understandable, since Paco may have the best butt in the Western Hemisphere. Paco ordered a Denver omelet, fries, bacon, and biscuits. Judy wrote it down as if he were Moses handing down holy commandments and swished off, fanning her bosom with her order pad.
From the booth behind us, a woman’s nasal voice floated over the partition. “Ed don’t understand me one bit,” she said. “We can go to a movie, and I swear to God when we come home you’d think we’d gone to two different shows. We just don’t see things the same way. He’s not my soul mate.”
A second woman’s voice said, “Honey, a soul mate is just a man you haven’t heard fart yet.”
There was laughter, and three women stood up to leave. One of them said, “You want a soul mate, get a dog.”
They walked out grinning at their own cleverness, and Paco and I exchanged a pained smile. Love may not make the world go around, but it certainly occupies a lot of people’s thoughts—both the best and the worst of it.
He said, “What’s up with the iguana thing?”
I sighed, weary with telling it. “Some guy called me and asked me to go feed an iguana named Ziggy. When I got there, it turned out the owner of the iguana, a man named Kurtz, hadn’t called me and didn’t know who had. He also didn’t know somebody had put Ziggy in a cold wine room, which is bad for iguanas. I got him out and warmed him up and fed him. But before that, somebody had shot Kurtz’s security guard. And before that, a woman with a miniature bulldog named Ziggy had stopped me, and later I saw her photo on Kurtz’s nightstand. Then his nurse disappeared. Nobody knows where she went, and she had wiped away all her prints. Wore latex gloves while I was there. Last night on the way home, I saw the woman’s car in the driveway—the woman with the bulldog—and went to check on it. Somebody hit the back of my head and gave me a concussion, and while I was out a fire was started. Behind the house, not in the house itself. Guidry thinks it was a chemical fire of some kind. The woman was gone. Guidry checked the car’s tags, and it was stolen in Virginia. I guess that’s all, except I got a message to give to Kurtz. I’m supposed to tell him that Ziggy is no longer an option and to act now.”
Paco said, “The iguana and the dog are both named Ziggy?”
“That’s what I mean! How strange is that? Oh, and I forgot that Kurtz has blue skin, like an all-over bruise. Has something seriously wrong, and now he doesn’t have a nurse to take care of him.”
Judy came with our orders lined up on both arms, a talent so impressive to me that it seems second only to discovering DNA. She got everything settled without dropping anything, which also seems amazing to me. I love watching people do their work well. While she hustled away to get her coffeepot to give us refills, I salted everything in sight and inhaled the wonderful fried fat odor of Paco’s bacon. It was cooked just right, stiff and brittle, with no icky white spots.
Paco said, “Want some of my bacon?”
“I never eat bacon.”
“Yeah, like I never drink beer.”
He slid half his bacon onto my plate just as Judy came back with the coffee.
She said, “She conned you into giving her bacon, didn’t she? She does that with everybody. Girl gets more bacon off other people’s plates than a sneaky dog.”
She sashayed away with her pot while I shamelessly nibbled at Paco’s bacon.
Paco said, “Why’s the guy blue?”
“I don’t know. He’s really sick, though. Lots of pain.”
“Silver nitrate poisoning causes your skin to turn blue, but I don’t think it causes pain or serious illness.”
“His skin is covered with dimples that jerk and quiver.”
“Jesus, poor guy. Where’d he come from? What kind of work did he do before he came here?”
“I just went there to feed his iguana. I don’t know anything else.”
“The man who called you, how’d he sound?”
“Muffled, like he was talking through cotton. He had an Irish accent.”
Paco grimaced. “Oldest trick in the book, Dixie. Use a foreign accent, and that’s all anybody remembers. You sure it was a man?”
I hadn’t even considered that the speaker wasn’t really a man or really Irish, but of course an undercover agent like Paco would think of that first thing.
Uncertainly, I said, “Sounded like a man to me.”
Paco chewed for a moment while his dark eyes sparked with speculation.
He said, “Any idea why they chose you to call?”
“My guess is that they saw me on the news when … you know.”
“That still bothering you?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes I feel like killing somebody caused me to slip over the line that separates good and evil. You ever feel like that?”
“I don’t know about good and evil, Dixie. Those are subjective terms. But if you mean do I feel a kinship with the criminals I catch, sure. Criminals and cops are the same kind of people, we’re just on different sides.”
“But you always know you’re on the good side.”
“Depends on how you look at it. When I bust a guy for selling drugs, and selling drugs is the only way he can feed his family, which one of us is good and which one evil?”
“He could find anot
her job.”
“No, you could find another job, and I could find another job, but maybe he can’t, or maybe he doesn’t know he can. I don’t make those judgments. Criminals choose their lifestyle, and I choose mine. If I have to take a criminal out when I’m doing my job, that’s just how it is. You did what you had to do. It wasn’t good and it wasn’t evil. Given the choice the guy had made, it was inevitable. It doesn’t have to be a defining point in your life unless you make it one.”
I said, “Bottom line, killing is wrong, no matter what.”
Paco’s dark eyes were calm. “There’s a story in the Mahabharata about a civil war between cousins. One of the warriors went to an avatar named Krishna, who by the way was dark indigo blue, and said he couldn’t kill his own relatives. Krishna told him that if he thought he actually killed anybody or that anybody actually died, he just didn’t understand life. In essence, he said that life is eternal and that a warrior’s job was to go to war and kill other warriors, and to just get on with it.”
I spread jelly on my biscuit and wondered what the odds were that any other woman in the world was sitting in a diner eating bacon with a drop-dead gorgeous undercover cop who knew the Mahabharata, something I didn’t even know how to pronounce.
I said, “Why was Krishna blue?”
He grinned. “Don’t know, but I doubt it was for the same reason your guy is blue.”
“You think I should give him the message? About Ziggy not being an option?”
“How would you feel if you didn’t, and the iguana died of some condition that Kurtz could have treated him for?”
Ziggy seemed about ten or twelve years old to me, not terribly old for a healthy iguana, but maybe he wasn’t healthy. Maybe the caller knew something about Ziggy’s health that made it imperative that Kurtz take some sort of action before it was too late.
I said, “You think that’s what the message means?”
“Hell, Dixie, I don’t know what it means. I also don’t see why they can’t just call Kurtz and tell him directly. They’ve got some kind of game going, and sending mysterious messages must be part of it.”
Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues Page 12
