I said, “Iguanas and chickens have the same digestive and respiratory systems, did you know that? If Ziggy’s sick, he could take medicine made for sick chickens.”
“Son-of-a-gun, I didn’t know that.”
I sat back with a little sigh of satisfaction. We all have our areas of expertise. Paco knew law enforcement and Hindu scripture, and I knew that iguanas and chickens have the same kind of systems. That may not have made us exactly even, but at least I knew something he didn’t.
FIFTEEN
As we left the diner, I picked up a discarded copy of the morning’s Herald-Tribune from a table by the door. Paco gave me a pat on the butt and got in his car to drive off to whatever secret job he was working at the time. Michael and I don’t ask Paco for details about what he does. He wouldn’t tell us anyway, and if he did the details would make us take up nail-biting as a hobby.
I sat in the Bronco for a minute to scan the Tribune’s lead story about the latest horror in the world. Everybody claimed the other side was responsible, everybody lied, everybody postured, children died. All our realities are dramatic plots intersecting, each with its own creator and climax and theme. I suppose the conflict is the energy that keeps the universe together, but couldn’t it be conflict of man against hunger, man against disease, man against ignorance, man against despair, instead of man against man?
The guard’s murder and the subsequent fire were all over the front page too, with an article full of “no comment” quotes from Guidry and the fire marshal. There was also a photograph of the grieving widow taken on her front porch. The photographer had caught two street signs over her shoulder. Even though the address wasn’t given, anybody familiar with Siesta Key would recognize where it was.
The guard’s wife was a softly pretty dark-haired woman who had lashed out angrily at the female interviewer in what was described as broken English. Without fully understanding what she’d said, the reporter had rather loftily concluded that the widow blamed American society for her husband’s death.
I doubted that a woman who had just lost the man she loved and the father of her children would take such an abstract view of death. Maybe later, but not when her grief was still raw and red. Fresh grief is always personal, and the fury it generates isn’t directed toward a nameless society but toward specific people. For the first year after Todd and Christy were killed, I funneled all my rage toward the half-blind man who had smashed into them in the parking lot, and only later toward a state that routinely allows people to renew their driver’s licenses for a total of eighteen years without a vision test.
I studied the photograph, feeling a kinship with this woman whose husband had been killed in a senseless act of violence. So far as I knew, I was the only suspect in the murder, and I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to know what her husband had told her about Ziggy. I wanted to know if she had any idea who had called me to go to the Kurtz house.
I found the house easily enough, and as I pulled into the driveway I wondered how many other people had identified its location from the newspaper photograph. As I had expected, it was a weather-beaten Florida cracker house, with a front porch wide enough for a swing and chairs for visiting. A new red tricycle with plastic streamers on the handlebars sat on the cracked sidewalk, and an equally new girl’s pink two-wheeler leaned against the porch railing.
As I went up the steps to the porch, I saw a little girl who looked to be about six years old sitting with her legs spread apart to make a nest of her skirt. A calico kitten was in the nest, and the child was tickling the kitten’s nose with a fluff of yarn. The kitten was probably a Persian mix, and definitely a true calico, not a tabby or tortoiseshell that often get mislabeled as calicoes. From the alert way it was leaping at the yarn, I could tell right away it was healthy and intelligent.
The little girl was so intent on the kitten that she barely gave me a glance. Being a fool for kittens, especially calicoes, I went over to kneel beside the child and make the aaahing sounds that probably originated with someone who was kitten-smitten.
I said, “What’s her name?”
The child gave me a level dark-eyed stare. “How’d you know it was a girl?”
“All calicoes are girls. Well, every now and then there’s a boy, but mostly they’re girls.”
She nodded slowly, and I recognized the look I’d always given people when I was her age and didn’t have a clue what they were talking about.
I said, “Calico means she has three colors, black, orange, and white, and the colors are in big separate patches, not striped or swirled together.”
“You wanta hold her?”
That’s the neat thing about kids. They don’t really care about their pets’ official names, and they don’t think it’s weird that a grown woman would want to hold a bit of fluffy kitten just for the pure pleasure of it.
Gracious as a hostess at a tea party, she tenderly scooped the kitten up in both hands and handed her to me. Surprised and offended at the yarn game ending so abruptly, the kitten stretched its little needle claws into my palms.
When I winced, the child said, “Hurts, don’t it? We’re going to get her fingernails taken out so she can’t do that.”
I said, “Oh, no—”
The front door flew open and a Hispanic man stepped out with a furious frown on his face and his stiffened arm palm up like a traffic cop.
“Get away from here! Leave us alone! This is a house of mourning, and you people are … are … you are without shame!”
That pretty much answered the question of whether anyone else had been led to the house by the photograph.
I disengaged the kitten’s claws from my hand, set it back on the girl’s skirt, and got to my feet.
“I’m not a reporter, sir. I’m Dixie Hemingway.”
The little girl was watching us, so I stepped closer to him and lowered my voice almost to a whisper.
“The same person who killed Ramón Gutierrez tricked me into going to the house to take care of the iguana that lives there.”
He dropped his hand and peered at me suspiciously. “You take care of the iguana?”
“Just since yesterday. I’m a pet sitter. I don’t know who called me to go there, but I know it’s tied in somehow with … what happened.” Assuming the child was the murdered man’s daughter, I tilted my head toward her to signal that I didn’t want to talk about the murder in front of her. “I got to the house shortly after … you know. I was hoping I might speak to Mrs. Gutierrez. Maybe her husband told her something.”
“My sister knows nothing.”
He sounded so bitter that I didn’t think he was referring solely to the murder.
The little girl went back to playing with the kitten, but I knew she was listening.
I said, “I lost a husband and a daughter a few years ago. When it happened, people tried to keep me from knowing certain details about how … about the end, but I needed to know everything. Perhaps there are things I could tell your sister that would help her now.”
His face softened, and he looked over his shoulder as if consulting somebody inside.
Low and urgently, I said, “Look, I’m not a cop. I don’t have any authority and I don’t have anything to do with the police investigation, but somebody involved me, and the killer is still out there. I need to have some facts to protect myself.”
A thin young woman appeared beside him, looking anxiously first at the little girl and then at me. Her dark eyes were so surrounded by sorrow’s purple shadows that she looked as if she’d been beaten.
She said, “You are not from the paper? Or the TV?”
“I promise.”
She and her brother exchanged a look, and he stepped aside and gestured me in. He closed the door behind me with a soft finality, and I understood he didn’t want the little girl to listen to our conversation. Adults try to protect children from the realities of death, even though children usually handle it as if it were no more mysterious than any of the other realities they’re learning about.<
br />
With some notable exceptions, the living room was a typical young family’s—a beige sectional sofa curved to offer an entire family viewing angles of the TV, a couple of homemade afghans of the dark brown and cream variety draped over sofa arms, throw pillows showing signs of jelly smears and spilled soda, and a big cedar chest doubling as a coffee table littered with remotes for the TV, coffee cups, a clumsily formed ceramic Santa, a cell phone, a plate with half a sandwich and some chips, a small poinsettia plant in a foil-wrapped pot, a Barbie doll with no clothes on, and several notepads and pens. The out-of-the-ordinary thing was a plasma TV with tall freestanding speakers and a screen big as some multiplex movie screens. Pretty pricey for a rent-a-cop.
As I perched at the end of the sofa, the woman murmured something under her breath to her brother.
He said, “I am Jochim. This is my sister, Paloma. Would you like some coffee?”
“If it’s already made. Don’t go to any trouble, please.”
He said, “No problem,” and hurried from the room. Paloma sat down at the opposite end of the curved sofa, so that we were facing each other. She was much younger than her brother and her husband, with an immature mix of shyness and defiance. For a second, we looked silently at one another, checking each other out the way women do.
I said, “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“He knew,” she whispered. “Why didn’t he tell? He didn’t need to die.”
So far, I hadn’t heard any of the “broken English” the reporter had described. From my own experience with news reporters, I thought it was more likely that Paloma had been so furious she’d been incoherent.
Cautiously, so as not to frighten her, I said, “Can you tell me what he knew?”
From the doorway, her brother said, “Paloma!”
Jochim bustled forward with a mug of coffee, and Paloma wearily settled back against the sofa.
Taking a seat between us, Jochim looked uneasy. He said, “These things you can tell us about Ramón’s death, what are they?”
I took a sip of coffee and wondered what it was that Jochim hadn’t wanted Paloma to tell me.
I said, “It’s just that I know a little bit about how the Kurtz household works, so I might be able to answer questions she may have.”
Paloma spoke to her brother in Spanish, so rapidly that I only caught a few words. She ended with “¡Pregúntele! ¡Pregúntele!”
He swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbled. With a nervous smile, he said, “My sister insists that I ask you about the nurse in the house. She has always wondered if her husband and the nurse were … you know.”
It must be a trait peculiar to women that even when their husbands are lying in the morgue, they want to know if they were unfaithful while they were alive. She was obviously able to ask me herself, but I supposed she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
I rotated my coffee mug on the table, careful not to make eye contact with Paloma. To tell the truth, I’d wondered about the nurse and Ramón myself.
I said, “I only talked to the nurse for a few minutes before she left.”
Paloma sat forward, ashen-faced. “She left? The nurse left?”
“Soon after I arrived. Nobody knows where she went.”
Okay, so this was probably information Guidry didn’t want noised around, but Paloma’s husband had just been killed, and I figured she had a right to know.
She buried her face in her hands, and the keening noise she made sent icicles up my spine. In some corner of my mind I remembered making that sound myself after Todd and Christy were killed.
I said, “The fact that she left doesn’t mean she and Ramón had anything going on.”
Paloma jerked her head up and shouted, “It means she killed him! That’s what it means! And he knew! He knew!”
“Knew what?”
Jochim jerked his head around to stare reproachfully at me.
He said, “My sister has suffered enough. She has children to protect, and I’ve got a wife and kids of my own. We can’t get involved in anything. You understand?”
I understood that Paloma and Jochim knew something they hadn’t told Guidry.
I said, “If Ramón’s killers think you can identify them, they’ll have to get rid of you for their own protection. Help put them away, and you have a chance.”
“It was her,” said Paloma. “She killed him!”
“I was there when the nurse learned he was dead. I think she was genuinely shocked when she learned it. Personally, I think she ran away because she was afraid she’d be killed too.”
“Then they were together,” said Paloma. “She tricked him, but he could have quit when he knew what she was like. He stayed even after he knew.”
“Please, what do you mean? What did he know?”
Jochim said, “Enough! You have told my sister something she needed to know. We are grateful for that, but now you must go.”
In an involuntary plea, my hand opened toward Paloma, and I saw the pinpricks from the kitten’s claws.
I said, “Is that your little girl on the porch? The one with the kitten?”
“Sí.”
“She said you planned to have the kitten’s claws removed. Is that true?”
“Oh, sí, it scratches everything.”
“Please don’t. Kittens outgrow their scratching, and if you remove its claws, it will be crippled. Its balance will be off, and it won’t be able to defend itself.”
Both Paloma and Jochim gave me incredulous looks.
I said, “I know it sounds crazy to talk about a kitten at a time like this, but I can’t stand to hear about kittens being declawed. It’s too cruel.”
Paloma rose to her feet, stiff and creaky as an old woman. “Please go now.”
When somebody tells me to get out of their house, I obey. But first I pulled a dog-eared business card from my pocket and laid it on the coffee table with all the other stuff.
I said, “I wish I weren’t involved in this mess, but I got tricked into it, and now my own life may be in danger. There’s something odd going on in that house. I don’t know what it is, but I believe it has to do with the iguana. Please, if you decide later that you can tell me something without causing danger for yourselves, call me.”
At the door, I stopped and turned to look squarely at Paloma.
“I lost my husband too, and I know the pain you feel. But it’s a mistake to torture yourself with suspicion about him and the nurse. You had a life together, children together. It’s bad enough that you’ve lost him. Don’t make it worse by forgetting that he loved you.”
I pulled the door open and almost made it out without opening my mouth again. But I had to give it one last shot.
I turned back and said, “Please, please don’t mutilate that kitten.”
I left them then, looking toward the little girl and the kitten as I fled down the steps. Both child and kitten had fallen asleep in a pool of sunshine on the porch floor, the kitten cuddled in the curve of the child’s body, both innocently unaware of how their lives were about to change.
As abruptly as we had briefly plunged into winter, temperatures had soared into summer again. It was almost 80 degrees when I left Paloma’s house, causing me to regret wearing long pants instead of my usual shorts. I made quick visits to the pets on my list to make sure Joe and Maria had tended to all of them. At the beagle’s house, I scanned the neighborhood for the miniature bulldog and the mystery woman, but I didn’t really expect to see them again. I brushed the beagle, gave her a doggy treat for being such a good sport about staying alone while her owners were gone, and promised I’d be back in the evening. When I backed out of the driveway, I could see her face in the living room window, dolefully watching me leave. People say “It’s a dog’s life” to mean a life of contentment, but dogs frequently live with boredom and loneliness.
Billy Elliot didn’t seem bored when I got to his condo, he seemed nervous and agitated, which meant he hadn’t got a good hard r
un that morning. He looked highly disappointed when he realized I was there for a social call and not to run with him. I took a bit of nasty pleasure in knowing that Tom’s new girlfriend hadn’t been able to satisfy him—the dog, I mean, not Tom. From the way Tom looked, he was plenty satisfied.
Tom wanted to know all the details about how I’d been conked on the head and what the cops were doing about it.
After I filled him in, he said, “The murder was on the news, but nothing about a fire or about you getting hit.”
“Good. I don’t want reporters nosing around me again.”
“Dixie, you need to take it easy for a few days, give your head a chance to heal. Don’t worry about Billy Elliot, Frannie can walk him.”
The little hard knot of jealousy in my chest nudged. “Tell her she has to run hard with him, two or three times around the parking lot.”
Two little worry lines appeared between Tom’s eyebrows, but Billy Elliot came over to grin and whip my legs with his wagging tail, his way of confirming what I’d just said. I stroked the top of his head and tried hard to believe he loved me more than he loved the unknown Frannie. But in my heart of hearts I knew he loved running, Tom, and anybody who fed him, in that order.
I said, “Tom, would you mind looking up something on the internet for me? I want to know about a company named BiZogen Research.”
In one smooth move, Tom wheeled himself backward and pulled a slim gray case from the kitchen counter behind him. Pushing the tax returns he was working on aside, he laid the case on the table and opened it. He hit some keys while I tried to act like I’d known all along that it was a computer.
He looked intently at the screen for a moment, and said, “There’s a bunch of stuff about BiZogen Research. What exactly do you want to know?”
I moved to peer over his shoulder and read a list of titles and sentences that contained the words BiZogen Research.
“Gosh, that’s a lot.”
“That’s only the first page. There are three more pages. You see anything that looks like what you’re looking for?”
When I hesitated, he clicked on the first thing on the list, and in a few seconds the screen was filled with an article from The New York Times. The article began:
Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues Page 13
