I gathered up my clippers and stood.
I said, “The kitten will get bored with the catnip in a few minutes, but if you leave it on the floor, she’ll come back to it later and like it again.”
The little girl looked disappointed. “Are you leaving?”
“I’ll come back one day and trim your kitty’s nails again. Don’t try to do it yourself. And I’m going to leave you this little bag of catnip. Just give her a tiny pinch, and don’t do it very often. Once a week is enough. That way, she won’t get tired of it.”
She blinked at me, and I remembered that kids don’t think in terms of weeks or months.
I said, “How about every Sunday after church?”
She smiled and nodded vigorously, already seeing herself coming home from church and watching the kitten roll around in catnip.
Paloma materialized at the door again, which gave me the feeling she’d been nearby listening.
I said, “I trimmed the kitten’s nails, and I’ll come back and do it again when she’s older.”
She didn’t answer, just stood silently in the door watching me.
Certain that I’d reached the end of my welcome, I said, “Okay,’bye now. Call me if you need me.”
She looked so sad and lost that I left as fast as I could. I couldn’t do anything about her sadness. My expertise was limited to trimming kittens’ claws, not taking away the numb despair of a woman whose husband had been murdered.
TWENTY-ONE
Ramón Gutierrez’s funeral was held Friday noon at St. Martha’s Catholic Church at the corner of Orange and Fruitville on the mainland. The church’s chin rests on the sidewalk on Orange, and a surprisingly large crowd was climbing the steps to the front door when I got there. Some were probably there because they were members of the church or the Spanish community and wanted to show their support for Paloma, and some were probably drawn by the aura of mystery and violence surrounding her husband’s death.
I sat at the back and watched mourners speak to Paloma and Jochim with the pitying and slightly fearful look that people save for those whose lives have been touched by unspeakable tragedy. Before the service began, Paloma stood up and surveyed the crowd face by face, as if she wanted to burn us all into her memory. She looked surprised when she saw me, then gave me a tremulous smile and raised her hand in a tiny wave.
Mercifully, the priest spoke of Ramón’s life and not of how he died. When the service ended, half the crowd got in line to view the remains, while the other half, including me, headed for the exits. Two or three people ahead of me, a woman in a long dark dress with black hair hanging loose over her shoulders caught my attention. The square line of her shoulders and her rigid spine were so like Jessica Ballantyne’s that I watched her move toward the front door. As if she felt my gaze, she turned and looked straight at me. It was Jessica, and her eyes rounded in surprise when she saw me. It didn’t look like pleasant surprise. She quickly turned away and hurried out the front door and down the steps.
I pushed through the people in front of me in time to see her run down the sidewalk and disappear around the Fruitville corner. At the curb, a thin young man in a dark suit stood watching her too. As I came down the steps, he looked over his shoulder toward me. Even with his dark glasses, I could see him register the same surprise I’d got from Jessica. In a flash, he slipped through the crowd and disappeared too, leaving me rooted to the spot with a vague sense that I knew him.
Since I was in downtown Sarasota, I drove a block to Lemon—we like to name our streets after as many local fruits as possible—where we now have our very own Whole Foods market. Wandering the aisles in that organic emporium, I am always like a newly arrived immigrant made woozy by glorious abundance. The sight of bright-eyed fish caught hours ago in Alaska, red radish globes so recently pulled from the earth that the leaves are still crisp, and creamy cheeses and rich chocolate just off the plane from France never fails to make me thankful that I live in a country where such things are possible. I ended up buying an enormous bunch of yellow freesia, a Mediterranean dip of feta, sun-ripened tomatoes, and Greek olives, and a package of miniature pita for the dip.
Leaving the market, I caught myself watching for another glimpse of Jessica Ballantyne. What was she doing at Ramón’s funeral? For that matter, who was that skinny man who’d been watching her, and why did he look so familiar?
I thought about it all the way home, and I was still thinking about it when I put the freesia in a big blue vase and set it in the middle of my kitchen bar where I could see it from just about every spot in my apartment. I did some laundry, spiffed up the kitchen a bit and deep-cleaned my bathroom until I was a little high on chlorine fumes, then got the Mediterranean dip and the pita and went to my office-closet to catch up on business.
I’m a stickler for detail about my pet-sitting duties. I keep a record for every pet, with every pill given, every bath, every flea or tick treatment administered, and any unusual things the pet did that might signal an infection or some other health problem. When the owners come back, I give them a note of all those things along with my bill. That way, they don’t duplicate treatments, and if there’s the possibility of a problem, they can watch for more symptoms.
Before I had a chance to even taste the Mediterranean dip, the phone rang. Holding a torn triangle of pita at the ready, I waited for the machine to tell me who was calling.
It was a woman’s voice, thin and uncertain. “My name is Paloma Gutierrez. I wish to speak to—”
I dropped the pita and snagged the phone. “This is Dixie, Paloma.”
“Oh.” She laughed nervously, the way people do when they’ve been speaking to an electronic voice that’s suddenly replaced by the human original. “I … um … I have been thinking about what you said.”
“About the kitten?”
There was a pause, as if she were shocked, and I mentally slapped myself.
She said, “No, but it was because of the kitten that I decided to call you. I mean, I saw how much you cared about it, and that made me think about how you said I should remember that Ramón loved me. And he did, you know? He truly did, even though …”
Her voice trailed away, and I swallowed the dry grit of anxiety. I was glad she’d lost some of the bitter jealousy she’d had when we first spoke, but had she called just to tell me that she knew her husband had loved her?
“Paloma, could we meet someplace and talk?”
“Jochim doesn’t want me to tell you anything.”
“Jochim has a man’s fear of the truth. Women know it’s the only power we have.”
I heard a sharp little intake of breath. “Yes. That is true.”
I waited, clamping my teeth together to keep from bellowing Please tell me what you know!
She said, “Do you know the Sweet Pea Café? I will meet you there in thirty minutes. I can’t stay long.”
I said, “Bless you, Paloma,” and really meant it.
Sarasota has a large Amish community. The men wear traditional beards and denim overalls, the women wear modest cotton dresses and little lacy bun covers over their upswept hair. Young Amish men and women zoom through the streets on bicycles, while their parents and grandparents opt for more sedate three-wheelers, some of them with seats wide enough for husband and wife together. Either because they are naturally entrepreneurial or because they can only indulge their love for sugary desserts if they make them, a lot of Amish operate restaurants serving the kind of hearty fare they ate before they left the farm and retired to Sarasota for an easier life.
The Sweet Pea is a cheery little Amish café with ruffled yellow curtains on the windows and religious music playing in the background. At this in-between hour—early for the dinner crowd and late for the lunch bunch—only a few tables and booths were occupied, mostly by elderly Amish couples who had parked their trikes on the sidewalk outside the door.
When I got there, “The First Noel” was playing too loud on the sound system, and Paloma was already seat
ed in a booth at the back, a wan little figure looking like an exhausted teenager who needed a good night’s sleep.
TWENTY-TWO
I slid in the booth opposite Paloma, and a sweet-faced waitress in an obviously homemade dress brought me a mug of hot coffee without being told.
Raising her voice to speak over the music, the waitress said, “Our special today is meat loaf and mashed potatoes. Would you like that, or would you like to see a menu?”
Out of consideration for Paloma’s grief, I hesitated. I remembered what it was like to be unable to swallow anything other than tears, and I didn’t want to seem crass. On the other hand, it had been a long time since breakfast, and I love the unabashed over-buttered, over-creamed, deep-fried, gooey, over-sugared excessiveness of Amish food, even if most Amish cafés consider canned green beans a vegetable.
I said, “The meat loaf, please, with a side of fried okra.”
The waitress and I both looked questioningly at Paloma.
I said, “You’ll have more energy to cope with things if you eat.” I sounded like my grandmother, but she looked so beaten and overwhelmed that I couldn’t help myself.
She managed a wan smile and nodded. “Okay. I’ll have what she has.”
The waitress swished away, her hair tidy in its prim little Amish bun cover, her butt cheeks so firm from riding a bicycle they could have cracked walnuts.
I said, “I’m very grateful that you called, Paloma.”
“I can’t stay long. Jochim would kill me if he knew I left … . There are people at my house, you know, people with food who have come to pay their respects.”
Of course there were. People always bring food to the bereaved because they don’t know what else to do and because they know grief makes people forget to eat.
I said, “It was brave of you to meet me.”
“I always knew it was wrong … I just never thought it would get my husband killed.”
Her eyes darted around the room as if she were making sure nobody recognized her, and I was glad the music was so loud. Maybe it would give Paloma the feeling that she couldn’t be heard.
She leaned over the table toward me. “They are devil worshippers in that house. That woman, that nurse, does awful things with the blood of that animal, the what-you-call-it.”
“The iguana?”
“Yes, the iguana. They use it for devil ceremonies.”
I felt like a hot-air balloon that has just been shot full of holes while hovering above a bottomless abyss. Paloma didn’t really have any information for me, she only had superstitious silliness, beliefs and fears carried over from centuries-old ignorance.
She must have seen my face sag, because her voice rose urgently. “She made Ramón carry the animal in the house for their devil rites. He told me, but he would not tell me exactly what they did, the nurse and the man and of course Ramón too, because they made him join in what they did. Evil, nasty things! He came home with whip marks on his body, scratches too. He was ashamed, I know … they had an unnatural hold on him. Jochim has told me there are people who play torture games … .”
Her voice broke and she grabbed a napkin to cover her face, hiding behind it like a child who thinks she’s invisible if she can’t see you.
The waitress came with a heaping plate in each hand and a basket of hot rolls and corn bread in the crook of one arm. When she spun away to get us fresh coffee, Paloma lowered the napkin from her face and looked suspiciously at her food.
The piped music changed to “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” but there was nobody in our booth feeling joyful and triumphant. For a couple of minutes I was so disappointed that all I could do was fork up meat loaf and mashed potatoes. A few bites of crisp fried okra revived me enough to venture one remark.
“The whip and claw marks on Ramón probably came from the iguana. If you carry an iguana wrong, it will lash you with its tail and scratch you with its claws. Unless Ramón was experienced with iguanas, he probably didn’t know the right way to carry them.”
“He once worked in a zoo. In the reptile house.”
“Did the zoo have iguanas?”
“No, only snakes.”
“Well, there you go. Not the same thing.”
With a slightly lighter expression, she took a few bites of mashed potato. “You really think it was the animal that made those marks on Ramón?”
“I’m certain of it.”
I thought of the lash mark on Ramón’s face when I’d seen him in the guardhouse, but I didn’t think it would make Paloma feel any better if she knew I’d seen her husband dead.
“It doesn’t matter. They were still performing devil ceremonies with the animal’s blood.”
I buttered a square of hot corn bread and looked bleakly at her. I suppose it will take several more millennia before some human beings stop scaring themselves with fables about a cosmic devil or believing that other human beings regularly consort with it.
Dully, I said, “What makes you think they did something with the iguana’s blood?”
“Ramón told me himself. He watched them take blood from the animal. Straight from the heart, not like when they stick your finger, but right from the heart. She did it, not the man, but the man was present every time, waiting for the blood. It was for him. Ramón said he has drunk so much of the animal’s blood that he has turned blue. Is that true? Is the man blue?”
Well, she had me there. No doubt about it, the man was decidedly blue.
I said, “Mr. Kurtz has a blue cast to his skin, but I don’t believe he has drunk iguana blood. That wouldn’t turn him blue, it would kill him.”
Paloma waved her fork at me. “He is very sick, no?”
“Not from drinking iguana blood.”
“Then why?”
She had me again.
“I don’t know why, but I know that humans can’t mix their chemistry with animals’ chemistry.”
Even as I said it, I thought of the legendary Bill Haast, a Florida serpent expert who injects himself once a week with the venom from thirty-two species of poisonous reptiles. His system has such powerful snakebite antibodies that his blood once saved a snakebite victim’s life. Perhaps Paloma was telling the truth. Even though iguanas aren’t poisonous, and even though no possible good could come of it, perhaps in some twisted way Ken Kurtz was trying to emulate Bill Haast.
I said, “Did Ramón actually watch any devil ceremonies?”
She lowered her eyes and patted at her mashed potatoes with the tines of her fork, making little railroad tracks in them.
“When I asked him what they did, he yelled at me to shut up. He didn’t want to tell me what he saw.”
“How can you be sure he saw anything?”
“He had to. He was there. He saw and he was ashamed, but he did not leave.”
I felt a surge of irritation for this pretty woman who was so angry at her dead husband.
“Paloma, was your husband paid well?”
“Sure, they paid him a lot to keep quiet about what he saw.”
“Maybe that’s why he didn’t leave. The money was for his family.”
“That is true. He always brought his pay to me.”
“What will you do now?”
She lowered her eyes again. “We will go home now. All of us, Jochim and his family too. Maybe we will start a business together.”
Something furtive and sly in her expression made me sit up straighter. “A business?”
She gave a little toss of her head. “Jochim is smart. We could do that.”
Keeping my eyes fixed on my meat loaf, I said, “Takes a lot of money to start a business.”
In a proud rush, she said, “That won’t be a problem now.”
“Ramón had insurance?”
“I shouldn’t tell you—Jochim will kill me if he knows I told—but it’s the way you said, Ramón did love me. He had to, or he wouldn’t have provided for us so well. With the insurance money, we can go home and have a good life.”
; Her eyes sparkled with happy anticipation, for a moment forgetting the source of her new wealth.
I said, “I take it you’ve already contacted the insurance company.”
“No, I didn’t even know about the insurance until the man came.”
“The man?”
“The man who brought the money. He came late last night.”
“Let me get this straight. A man came late last night with a check from an insurance company.”
“Not a check, real money. That’s where Jochim is now—he’s putting it in a safe box at the bank.”
“Did the man give you his name?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think so. He was a skinny Anglo in a suit. He gave me an envelope with the money and said now I could take my children and go home. He said that was what Ramón told him he wanted, for us to go home.”
The music changed to “O Holy Night,” and I looked down at my arms to see if my goose bumps were visible. “Do you mind telling me how much money he gave you?”
She leaned forward and in a proud girlish whisper said, “A hundred thousand dollars!”
The likelihood that somebody from an insurance company had hand-delivered a hundred thousand in cash to Paloma was so remote that it boggled my mind that she believed it. On the other hand, it wasn’t much of a jump from believing Gilda had performed satanic rites with Ziggy.
I swallowed the last morsel of meat loaf and said, “I suppose your brother is pleased for you.”
“And for himself too. To tell the truth, Jochim has not been himself here. He has been influenced by bad friends, I think. Now he can start over again.”
I wondered if Jochim was as naive as Paloma or if he was simply taking advantage of a chance to take his family and go home. In either case, I had a feeling that he and Paloma would be a lot safer once they were well away.
Feeling like somebody who’s already seen what’s behind Doors Number One and Two, I said, “Paloma, the man who gave you the money—did he have an Irish accent?”
Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues Page 18
