Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues (24 page)

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Authors: Blaize Clement

BOOK: Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues
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When I got home, I took one of the packets of emergency kitten food that I keep in the Bronco upstairs for Ella. She was waiting at the door for me, as if she’d known all along that I was coming home exactly at that time. She really was an exceptionally smart kitten.
I left her eating in the kitchen and took a quick shower to get rid of all the clinging pet hairs. I had left the bathroom door open, and Ella came in and watched me blow my hair.
I said, “I guess I’ll just let my hair hang straight. What do you think?”
She blinked at me in what seemed a female-to-female sign of approval.
I sprayed perfume on the backs of my knees and on my navel. I said, “Don’t get any ideas about that. It doesn’t mean anything. This is just a date. You remember I told you what a date is.”
Her ears twitched. She knew what the perfume meant. It was embarrassing to be so transparent.
She followed me into the office-closet, where I put on a black lace bra and bikini. I figured she knew what that meant too, but I was a grown woman and she was just a kitten, so who cared what she thought?
I put on a short black skirt with a white cotton turtleneck. I took off the white turtleneck and put on a black turtleneck. I took off the skirt and the turtleneck and got myself into an old dress that zipped up the back. I nearly broke my arm zipping it up, and when I stood in front of the mirror I remembered wearing it with Todd, and nearly broke my arm unzipping it. I stuffed my feet into high-heeled sandals for inspiration and stood in my underwear surveying my pathetic
wardrobe. I hated everything I owned, and what I didn’t hate was either out of style or worn bald.
I said, “Everything I have is shit.”
Ella turned and gnawed on her back ankle, a sure sign that she thought humans were incredibly stupid.
My lower lip was beginning to push out in a little-girl sulk at the whole business of gift-wrapping myself to go eat dinner with a man. The kitten was right, it was too dumb to credit, especially when I wasn’t sure I even wanted the dinner or the man. I kicked off the sandals and pulled on a pair of clean jeans and the black turtleneck, then climbed back onto the heels because it was a date after all. Now that I felt more normal, I slicked my lips with pink gloss and grabbed my purse. I would eat Ethan’s food, but I would not go gooey just because he was gorgeous and I hadn’t had sex in four years.
I picked Ella up and pressed my nose to her nose. I said, “Don’t pee on anything. I don’t know when I’ll be home.”
On the way to Ethan’s place, I passed the Kurtz house again. The marchers hadn’t returned, and smoke was still curling from the chimney. Maybe Ken Kurtz was in his living room sitting in front of a roaring fire. Maybe Jessica was with him. Maybe they were discussing how they could escape both the FBI and BiZogen and ZIGI and run off to Argentina and take tango lessons and live happily ever after. Or maybe Gilda had come back and was administering the antidote to whatever Kurtz had, and maybe the two of
them
were planning to run away together.
Personally, I wasn’t going to run away with anybody
to anywhere. I was simply going to have a quiet dinner with a man and come home. Maybe I would make out a little bit. Kiss some, touch some, but that was it. I ignored the proven fact that I had never wanted to stop if the kissing and touching were good. I was older, now, and wiser. At least older.
Ethan’s house turned out to be an ultra-modern cypress hidden behind a thick tangle of oaks and sea grape and palms on Fiddler’s Bayou, where John D. MacDonald used to live. When I eased the Bronco down Ethan’s shelled driveway, he was outside with a gray-muzzled bloodhound on a lead. The bloodhound was on the scent of something, with his head so low his eyes were hidden under drooped folds of skin and his ears were sweeping the ground. Ethan waved at me and then was jerked forward by the bloodhound.
I slid out of the Bronco and yelled, “What’s he trailing?”
Ethan grinned. “Ghosts, I think. I’ve seen him go hard on a trail that ended up at a rock.”
I went over and stood beside Ethan and watched the hound sniff the ground. With his liver-and-tan coat, he cut a fine figure. The hound, not Ethan. Except for my high heels, Ethan was dressed in pretty much the same clothes I wore.
I said, “I didn’t know you had a dog.”
“Something else I inherited from my grandfather. He always had bloodhounds, wouldn’t even think of any other dog. Sam is the last. He actually did a little bit of police tracking when he was young, but he’s ten now.”
He didn’t need to add that a ten-year-old bloodhound won’t be around much longer.
I said, “He looks healthy and happy.”
“Yeah. I think he misses my granddad, though.”
And right then I decided that I might not leave after dinner after all.
We went inside after Sam found his quarry, which was a rotted knot of oak buried in dead leaves. Ethan praised him liberally and gave him plenty of time to climb the curving steps to the front porch, then held the door for Sam and me. We went into a large round room with a dark wood floor and mostly glass walls. With the exception of a couple of curved walls that I assumed hid bathroom and closets, the entire house was one big room. With soft uplights illuminating the green foliage against the glass, it was like being in a snug tree house.
I said, “Wow. This is fantastic.”
“Thanks. My brother built it. He’s a genius.”
The kitchen was marked by curved cabinets and black polished countertops, and a bed with tall pilasters draped with sheer white linen announced the bedroom. A grouping of white linen chairs and sofas sat around a white shaggy rug. A glass-topped dining table flanked by Japanese benches sat on another white shaggy rug. A clear glass vase of paperwhite narcissus was in the middle of the table—not a poinsettia plant like ordinary people all over the country had, but paperwhite narcissus. I mean, how cool is that?
Leaving a discreet trail of drool on the dark floor, Sam drooped over to an elevated dog bed and crawled into it with a contented sigh.
Ethan tossed a paper towel on the floor and skated it along Sam’s drool trail.
“Want some wine?”
Of course I wanted wine. I wanted to sit on the white linen sofa and drink wine in that enchanted room for the rest of my life. Ethan flipped on soft music and poured two glasses of red wine without even asking if I’d rather have white, which was somehow very satisfying. We sat on the white linen furniture and talked about bloodhounds and cypress houses and genius brothers, and I forgot that I was on a date.
After a while, Ethan went in the kitchen and clattered around for a while, and I carried my empty wineglass to the curved counter and watched him dish out steaming lasagna onto plates. A salad bowl of oil-coated greens sat on the counter next to salad plates, so I showed my domesticity by putting salad on the plates and carrying them to the table.
When we sat down, I said, “You cooked this?”
“Are you kidding? I bought it at Morton’s and heated it.”
“Oh, good. I was afraid you’d cooked it. I mean, not that I was afraid it wouldn’t be good if you cooked it, it’s just that everything else is so perfect I couldn’t stand it if you were a good cook too.”
I didn’t even care that he laughed. Dating was fun. I loved dating.
The lasagna was delicious, the salad was sublime, and dessert was chocolate-tipped strawberries, of which, so far as I’m concerned, there is no whicher.
I helped him clear the table and put away leftovers, and then he poured us teeny cups of very strong coffee to take with us to the white linen furniture grouping. The coffee was flavored with cinnamon and it was
delicious too, but it wasn’t exactly romantic. It was more like something to give wine-drinking guests before they drive home. The music wasn’t romantic either. It was the kind of music you listen to when you’re working, the kind to keep you alert. Like a not-so-subtle announcement that romance wasn’t on Ethan’s mind.
I sneaked a quick look at my watch, which said it was close to midnight. I stood up and carried my cup to the kitchen counter.
I said, “I have to get up at four, so I’d better say good night.”
He said, “I’ll walk you to your car.”
Sam raised his head and thumped his tail goodbye as we went out the door, and for a moment I felt like falling on the floor and having a fine leg-banging tantrum. Here I’d worried all week about how I would handle the sex thing, and there wasn’t any sex thing. I’d been invited to dinner and that’s all I’d got. I hadn’t even been offered a choice, just like I hadn’t been offered white wine.
At the Bronco, I turned to Ethan and said, “It was a lovely evening. Thank you.”
He didn’t answer. Just put his hands on my arms and leaned down and kissed me, long and hard.
“Good night, Dixie. Drive safely.”
I poured myself into the driver’s seat and started the Bronco and backed out while Ethan stood in the headlights and watched me. I didn’t begin to breathe until I was on the street.
I was surprised my breath didn’t come out flaming.
The world seemed to have taken on a new clarity as I drove home, as if the evening with Ethan had sharpened my senses. The streets were bright with both moonlight and man-made light, with deep pools of shadow under oaks and clumps of palms, many of their trunks outlined by teensy Italian Christmas lights and weighed with plate-sized bursts of night-blooming cereus. I put the Bronco’s windows down and inhaled the salty night air drifting from the sea. I felt oddly deflated and exhilarated at the same time, as if I’d failed to get something I greatly wanted and was wildly grateful for failing.
I thought about the kitten waiting for me at home, and it felt good. I wasn’t planning on keeping her, but a kitten waiting for you to come home is a spot of love in your life, and that’s nice. It’s actually very nice.
Approaching the Kurtz house, I automatically swiveled my head to look down the moonlit driveway. As I did, another part of the puzzle fell into place. I not only knew there was another room between the garage and
the wine room, I knew what kind of room it was and how it was being used. I also knew without a shadow of doubt why somebody had tried to steal Ziggy, and what Ken Kurtz was up to in that house. The realization caused my hands to shake on the steering wheel.
Another thing about being a little bit off-center is that it robs you of your ability to justify things that are just flat wrong. Normal people come up with all kinds of political explanations and religious rationalizations and rose-colored social delusions when they’re confronted with things that shouldn’t be. Slightly loopy people can’t do that anymore. Like the kid compelled to blurt out that the emperor was naked as a jaybird, we can only see things as they are and tell things as they are.
The way I saw it, I had no choice but to go inside that house and find what I knew was there. I didn’t think past that, I just knew I had to do it.
Every sensible bone in my body told me to call Guidry and tell him what I’d figured out. Every experienced bone in my body said no judge would give him a search warrant to look for something that nobody knew existed except me, especially since I had nothing to go on except intuition and a knowledge of iguanas.
In the not-so-distant past, I would have gone home first and got a weapon, but I couldn’t do that now. Not just because Guidry hadn’t returned my .38, but because I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I killed anybody else.
I eased the Bronco around the curve in the driveway and parked in front of the garages. I was careful not to let the door make a loud click when I closed it and then
covered the pavement as fast as I could to get between the long garage wall and the privacy hedge in front of the house. I wished I had spare Keds in the car. To keep my high heels from clacking, I had to walk almost on tiptoe.
When I reached the glass wall of the living room, I kept my pace steady, as if I had legitimate business there. Through the glass, the living room was in darkness but I could see a subdued glow in the great fireplace, as if Kurtz had left a fire burning and gone to bed. Okay, so far so good. I tippy-toed back down the walk and turned the corner to skitter past the row of closed garage doors. In the bright moonlight, I felt like the sky was shining a spotlight on me. If anybody was watching the house, they could surely see me.
Ducking into the narrow alcove to the side door, I fitted one of Kurtz’s keys into the lock and eased the door open. Once inside, I left the door slightly ajar in case I needed to make a hasty exit. I was banking on the second key being to the wine room. I looked down the southern corridor toward Kurtz’s bedroom, where everything was dark and silent. Creeping down the southern corridor past the wine room, I stuck my head around the corner and looked into the living room to verify that it was empty.
The room was quiet, the only sound the sighing and subtle crackling of white-hot logs in the fireplace. My guess was that a big fire had roared there about an hour ago, and without care it had dwindled to a hot memory of itself. I stopped for a minute and considered my options. The most sensible one was to retrace my steps, get in my Bronco, and drive home. But no matter how
much my head told me to do that, my feet turned toward the wine room.
Holding my breath, I slipped the second key into the lock and turned the doorknob. Closing the door behind me, I flipped the light switch to fill the room with a ghostly red glow, and almost tripped over Ziggy. He was stretched on the floor just inside the door, and when he felt me he raised his tail and whipped it back and forth. I leaped out of the way, and he lowered his tail. Not because he couldn’t reach me, but because he was too weak to lash at me. In the chill of the wine room, Ziggy was closing down. His normal bright green had darkened to ripe avocado, which meant he hadn’t been in the room very long. My guess was that Kurtz had moved him to the wine room at about the same time he’d left the fire to burn itself down.
I whispered, “I’ll get you out of here later, Ziggy, but right now I have to find a secret door.”
I moved to the back of the room and began looking for a hidden control that would open a passage to the room that I knew lay between the wine room and the garage. I felt along the underside of every wine shelf and on each side of every supporting column, but I didn’t find anything. I was making my second sweep down the back wall of wine bottles when I tried pulling on the columns. One of the columns moved, and an entire section swung outward on invisible hinges.
With my breath trembling, I faced the dark recesses of the room I’d known I would find. A peculiar iodine odor permeated the room, the same smell I’d noticed on Gilda. I stepped inside and fumbled for a light switch.
Before I found it, I was caught in the beam of a blinding light. I gave a shocked yelp and covered my eyes. Of all the dumb ideas I’d ever had, this one was turning out to be a blue-ribbon prizewinner.
I put my hand up to shield my eyes. “Mr. Kurtz?”
No answer, just the ferocious light.
I decided the lack of shouting and yelling might be a good omen. Maybe Kurtz was so lonely there in the house by himself that he would overlook the fact that I’d broken in.
“Could you move the light? We could sit and talk awhile.”
The light held steady for a moment, then swung away to travel crazily over stark white walls and steel tables holding the kinds of things you expect to see in a research lab. Overhead fluorescents fluttered on to reveal a slight young man pointing a .44 Magnum at me. With a resigned sense of inevitability, I recognized him as the same man I’d seen watching Jessica at Ramón’s funeral.
I took a half step backward, watching his hand with the gun and thinking furiously. If I ran, he might shoot me in the back. If I didn’t run, he might trap me in the lab and kill me there.
In a soft trembling voice, he said, “You should not have come here. Now you have ruined everything.”
A cold serpent slithered up my spine.
She had cut her hair and dyed it dark, but the voice and accent were the same. Gilda had returned.
An insulated cooler like people take on picnics was open on one of the stainless tables, with an array of gauze-wrapped vials lying around it.
While I digested the fact that I had caught her in the midst of stealing vials from Kurtz’s lab, I could almost see her brain whirling to find the best way to dispose of me.
I said, “Since you don’t have any business here either, I don’t think it would be a real good idea for you to do anything that would wake Ken Kurtz.”
The only sign that she understood my meaning was a narrowing of her nostrils, as if she’d taken in a rush of unpleasant air.
I said, “Are you really a nurse?”
“I am very good nurse.”
I heard a hint of proud defensiveness and took heart. People who leap to defend themselves or their work aren’t thinking clearly. People who aren’t thinking clearly can sometimes be influenced. On the other hand, people who aren’t thinking clearly can also panic and blow a hole in your head.
I said, “Then you can clear up a mystery for me. Why does Kurtz have a PICC line in his arm?”
“Is for chelation, to take out metals that cause argyria.”
From the way she tossed out the medical word, she had to be a real nurse, maybe even a good one.
Seeing that I didn’t understand, she said, “Means blue skin.”
“I guess the chelation didn’t work, since he’s still blue.”
Her eyes flashed with a gleam of venom. “I tell him is chelation, is really silver nitrate. He is monster, he should have mark of monster.”
I felt a small twinge of sympathy for Kurtz, who
hadn’t understood why his condition had worsened in the past few months. But things were looking up. Gilda obviously hated Kurtz, and if I could keep her hatred directed toward him, I might be able to convince her I was an ally.
I said, “I’ve been told that you hired somebody to kill Ken Kurtz. No woman would do that unless she was forced by extreme circumstances.”
“It was only way. If the man had done it—”
I pointed to the vials on the table. “But the vials you took from the refrigerator were fakes. If Kurtz had been killed as you planned, that’s all you would have had.”
She looked chagrined. “Is true. They were there as test. I do not know why he did not trust me.”
“Yeah, that’s a mystery.”
We were silent for a moment while Gilda puzzled why a man she’d been poisoning hadn’t trusted her, and I tried to figure out how to get that big gun away from her.
I said, “Why did you take the money to Ramón’s widow?”
Her grim expression softened. “There was big mistake and wrong man was killed. I did not want Ramón’s family to suffer.”
“That was big of you.”
I was surprised acid didn’t drip from my lips onto my high heels, but her head bobbed so vigorously that I knew she thought I’d given her a compliment.
“Since you’re a nurse and you were treating a very sick man, it would have been easy for you to kill Kurtz with an overdose of something. Why hire somebody?”
Her eyes widened. “I am not killer.”
“Uh-hunh. Good thing you’re rich enough to pay a hundred thousand dollars to hire one.”
She laughed shortly. “It was not my money.”
I heard a scuffling sound and whirled to look into the wine room’s dark red shadows. Ken Kurtz stood inside the blood-hued darkness, and I could see the glint of his teeth bared in a mean grin. He was definitely pissed, ticked off, disgruntled.
I wasn’t feeling so gruntled myself.

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