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Authors: Blaize Clement

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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 run 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:

BiZogen Research Labs announced today that it has developed a vaccine against the four viruses that cause dengue fever, a mosquito-borne infection of international concern. Predominantly in tropical and subtropical regions of the world, dengue fever and its potentially lethal complication, dengue hemorrhagic fever, affects most Asian countries and is a leading cause of hospitalization and death among children.

I shook my head. “That doesn’t mean anything to me. Try something else.”

He made the article disappear and clicked on the next thing on the list. It was a similar article from
The Wall Street Journal.
So were the next three entries. I relaxed. BiZogen Research was exactly what it sounded like, a research company. And it did good things, like creating vaccines to save lives. I couldn’t imagine why it had a shell company that had built a house for Ken Kurtz to live in, but for all I knew Ken Kurtz was the chairman and CEO of BiZogen.

I was about to tell Tom to forget it when he pulled up another article, also from
The New York Times.

An intellectual property lawsuit was filed today in federal court against BiZogen Research Labs by Genomics Unlimited of Switzerland. The suit charges that spies from BiZogen infiltrated Genomics’ research department and stole records on
their development of a vaccine for dengue fever. BiZogen announced that it patented a vaccine for dengue fever three months ago, but Genomics contends that the patent was obtained fraudulently. The patent is worth billions of dollars over the ten years it will be in effect.

Tom said, “That mean anything to you?”

I didn’t answer. I was too busy reading that 85 percent of espionage crimes were perpetrated by employees.

On suddenly weak knees, I walked around the table and sat down opposite Tom.

I said, “Ken Kurtz must be a scientist wanted for espionage. That’s why he’s hiding out. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him. Dengue fever, I mean.” I stood up. “I have to tell Guidry about this.”

Tom looked worried. “Dixie, you be careful. Don’t go getting yourself involved in something dangerous again.”

I gave him a grateful smile. Tom really was a good friend, even if he hadn’t told me he had a new girlfriend.

I said, “I’ll be back in a couple of days. If your girlfriend just walks briskly with Billy Elliot, that’ll be good enough.”

Tom looked immensely relieved, and I ducked out before Billy Elliot realized I had sold him out.

SIXTEEN

As I got in the Bronco, I remembered that I hadn’t called Guidry earlier in the morning. A concussion not only makes your brain feel like it’s stuffed with chewed-up paper bags, it makes you forgetful. He didn’t answer his cell, so I left a message saying I was okay, in case he cared, and that I had more information for him.

With their indoor potties, cats are about a million times easier than dogs because they’re more self-sufficient. And since Joe and Maria had fed them, I knew they weren’t hungry. Even so, I went into every cat’s house apologizing for not coming earlier to groom them and play with them.

Most of them gave me a supercilious look that said, Oh, is that you? I’d forgotten you were coming.

Cats never let you forget that they were considered divine by ancient Egyptians. So far as they’re concerned, the Egyptians were right. Even divine Egyptians can’t resist being petted, though, so by the time I got out my grooming equipment, they were rubbing
their scent glands on my ankles and vowing to be my best friend forever.

Since the weather had warmed up, I took them out to their lanais for their grooming session, because cats need fresh air the same way humans do. Besides, they like to watch birds and squirrels in the trees. At Muddy Cramer’s house, I found him in the kitchen sitting like a jug facing his food bowl. He looked over his shoulder at me with a CEO’s indignant scowl. Joe and Maria hadn’t known to add chicken livers to his dry organic food, and he was sulking.

I said, “Sorry, Muddy. I had a little accident last night.”

He lowered his eyebrows and peered at me with accusing black eyes while I got out a bag of individually frozen livers from the freezer. When I put one in the microwave to thaw, he whirled around and leaped atop the refrigerator, where he hunkered on his front paws and peered down at me as if I were a bug he might pounce on.

I put the thawed liver in his bowl and left him while I made my house inspection, and by the time I said goodbye, Muddy had calmed down. But his behavior rattled me. Muddy was neurotic, but he was also a cat with a cat’s keen intuition. He knew something was wrong, and he wasn’t sure he trusted me anymore. When a pet doesn’t trust you, it means you’ve lost your emotional equilibrium, that you need to get back to your central self. The question was, Where had my central self gone?

I was backing out of Muddy’s driveway when Guidry called.

“We got a match from IAFIS. Since I gave you a hard time about your woman, I thought I owed you the results. Her name is Jessica Ballantyne. Born in upstate New York, Ph.D.s in both zoology and biogenetics from the University of Maryland. Did fifteen years of germ-warfare research, most of it for the army.” He paused for a nanosecond and added, “Last known address was in London, five years ago.”

Something about that little pause made my inner ears rise. I said, “What is it you’re not telling me?”

I could almost see him doing that inner-mouth chewing thing that people do when they’re not sure they should let their lips say the words that want to be spoken.

“A woman named Jessica Ballantyne died two years ago. Her ashes are buried in the family plot in New York. Her mother says she died on an obscure island in the Indian Ocean where she was doing some kind of secret research for the government.”

“Our government?”

“Yeah, that one. The one that puts people in identity protection programs when there’s been some kind of security breach. The mother sounded bitter, said nobody had ever come clean with the family about the exact nature of Jessica’s death. All they were told is that she contracted a fatal disease and died swiftly. She was cremated on the island and her ashes returned to the family. Or at least somebody’s ashes were.”

“You think—”

“I don’t know what I think, Dixie. This whole case seems like somebody’s idea of a joke. I’m just not sure who the joke’s being played on.”

I said, “Did she ever work for BiZogen Research?”

“Why?”

“Because the house Kurtz lives in is owned by a shell company formed by BiZogen Research.”

There was a long pause. “How do you know this?”

“Ethan Crane told me last night that BiZogen Research built the house. He knows because he was the escrow agent. Tom Hale looked up BiZogen on the internet for me a little while ago.”

Another long pause. “Dixie, it would have been really nice if you’d told me about the BiZogen angle and let me research it.” Guidry’s voice had gone cool and annoyed. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”

“Nope, that’s it.”

“Thank God.”

Without even a perfunctory goodbye, he left me holding a silent phone.

Into the air, I said, “But what about the ballistics report on my gun?”

My head hurt. It was full of ideas banging around in it like a crazed pinball machine. I kept thinking about the calico kitten and wishing there was something I could do to prevent Paloma from having it declawed. I wished I had made a stronger case against it. I even considered going back to her house and talking to her again. Not about her husband’s murder, but about her kitten’s claws. Some might say I had a problem with priorities, but that’s how it was. A lot of people don’t realize that declawing a cat is like amputating a human’s toes, with the same destruction of balance and psyche. Even cats who don’t show any effects, cats who seem perfectly fine without their claws, would be a lot
more sure-footed with them. People who know that and get their cats declawed anyway because they value their furniture more than their cats should be ashamed of themselves. Veterinarians know better, but a lot of them do the surgery anyway because they don’t want to lose clients who demand it. They should be especially ashamed of themselves.

Probably the only thing that kept me from making a U-turn and following through on the save-the-kitten idea right that minute was that I badly needed to go home and take a nap. Sometime I would go back to Paloma’s house and talk to her again about the kitten. But not now. Now I had to go home.

On the drive home, I slowed at the Kurtz house, where three more sign-carrying marchers had joined the ersatz monk. Two of the signs carried Bible numbers from Revelation in runny red paint. One said, 666—MARK OF THE BEAST.

Under my breath, I said, “Oh, doodles, now I get it. They think the devil lives there.”

I hadn’t given it any thought before, but the street number of Ken Kurtz’s house was 666. In Southwest Florida, where people have been known to run screaming from a store if their purchases total $6.66, that’s a number guaranteed to bring out the loonies.

Behind the marchers, the crime-scene tape was still up, but I didn’t see any cars. I also didn’t see a replacement guard. That meant Ken Kurtz was alone, with only Ziggy for solace and comfort.

Well, tough titty. Kurtz was an intelligent adult with money, and he could call a nursing service if he needed one. He could call the police. He could call friends or
relatives. It wasn’t my fault the man was blue and in pain. It wasn’t my fault he was weird or that his guard had been killed or that his nurse had run away or that he had nuts marching in front of his house.

Besides, Paco had been right. If the person who’d called me had an important message for Ken Kurtz, why didn’t he just call him and tell him? All the cloak-and-dagger secrecy was silly, and so was I if I got sucked into it. I had promised to look in on Kurtz and Ziggy once a day, and that was all I was going to do. I would go see Kurtz later and give him the ominous message about Ziggy.

With one last look at the pickets, I drove on, shaking my head. They were too sad to be funny and too funny to be taken seriously.

At the lane leading home, I stopped at the mailbox to scoop out the day’s assortment of pizza ads and offers for discounted lanai cages and haircuts. As I slammed the mailbox door shut, a woman’s firm hand clamped on my wrist.

A husky, authoritative voice said, “I have to talk to you.”

I knew who it was even before my head whipped around and sent stabbing pain down my spine. Without waiting for an invitation, the mystery woman opened the back door and got in.

She said, “Drive,” and from the way she said it, I could almost feel the barrel of a gun pointed at me.

I said, “I’m not taking you to any private place. You want to talk to me, it’ll have to be someplace where there are people.”

“You think I might kill you?”

“Damn right! I think you may have already killed one person, and maybe two.”

In the side rearview mirror, I saw a look of resigned sadness move across her face. “Just don’t go where we can be overheard.”

Feeling like a robot with bad wiring, I pulled back out onto Midnight Pass Road and headed north toward Crescent Beach. We didn’t speak for the entire drive. When I parked by the stairs, we climbed from the parking lot to the pavilion area, where blissful tourists were eating sandwiches and watching the sun sparkle on the waves. I chose a table under the canopied area and took a seat. Swinging her thick dark hair back so it fell behind her shoulders, she sat down opposite me.

I said, “Are you the one who hit me last night?”

Her eyes closed for a moment as if she couldn’t face me. “No, that wasn’t me.”

“But you were there.”

“I set the fire behind the house. It was contained and harmless. I wanted to draw attention, to bring fire trucks and police to the house.”

My head was throbbing in rhythm with the waves lapping at the shore.

“So who hit me?”

“The same person who would have killed Ken Kurtz if I hadn’t interfered with his plans.”

“What a load of melodramatic crap! If you know who hit me, you have an obligation to tell me. Or at least tell the police.”

“I can’t tell you anything more. I’ve already told you too much. If they ever find out I set that fire—”

She broke off and looked down at her clenched hands.

“They? They who?”

“I can’t tell you that. All I can tell you is that it’s not a simple matter of two opposing sides in conflict.”

I said, “I told him I’d seen you.”

Her jaw firmed. “And what did he say?”

“He said you were dead, that you died two years ago.”

She looked startled. “He abandoned me! Ran off and left me to die.”

“He has your picture next to his bed.”

All the color drained from her face, and her eyes glazed with shock. I was almost moved to feel sorrier for her than I felt for myself.

Softly, she said, “There was a time when I loved him more than I ever thought it possible to love another human being.”

It’s the damnedest thing, but ever since I became more loosely put together, people have started spilling things to me that they shouldn’t. Maybe they sense how close to the outer borders of sanity I’ve been, so they know I’m in no position to judge anybody else’s lapses of good sense. This woman had brought me here practically at gunpoint, but now she was talking as if we were having drinks together and discussing old loves.

“Is that why you wanted to talk to me? To tell me you and Kurtz used to be lovers?”

Her eyes met mine and she made a little moue of embarrassment. “I know somebody phoned you with a message to give to Ken. Have you given it to him?”

The bitch had a nerve. The only way she would know the Irishman had called me was if she was in cahoots with him.

“Why don’t
you
give him the message? Why don’t you just call him yourself?”

“They have his phone tapped. And if they knew I was trying to help him, I would be in as much danger as he is. Maybe more.”

There was that
they
again.

I said, “What’s Ken Kurtz’s connection with BiZogen Research?”

Her eyes widened. “Your reputation is correct. You’re quick.”

“I’m also the prime suspect in the murder of Ken Kurtz’s guard, I have a concussion from being hit in the head at his house, and I resent the hell out of the way you’ve used me.”

Her eyelids fluttered for an instant, and I could feel her fatigue. “I can’t tell you about BiZogen, but I can tell you that Ken is in grave danger. It’s imperative that you give the message to him.”

The woman had to be either a complete wacko or something like the head of Army Intelligence. Maybe both. In either case, I felt like a slippery avocado seed skewered with toothpicks and set to hang in a cup of water.

I said, “I’m planning to do that tonight. But how do I know
they
won’t come after me?”

“They know you go there to take care of the iguana. They’d never suspect that you had any information for Ken.”

I said, “The homicide detective traced your car’s tags. Did you steal it?”

She smiled suddenly, and the smile made her look softer.

“I’m not a car thief,” she said. “I just took what was provided.”

“By
them
?”