The few extra minutes I’d spent at the vet’s had eaten into my time, but I drove more slowly than I usually do so as not to throw Big Bubba off balance. The sheet covering his cage kept him from freaking out at the passing trees, but he was so upset at being away from home that every now and then he squawked “Hey!” just to let me know he wasn’t happy.
Siesta Key lies between the Gulf of Mexico and Sarasota Bay, and stretches north to south. I’m told it’s about the same size as Manhattan, which may explain why so many New Yorkers have second homes on the key. I don’t know how many people live in Manhattan, but Siesta Key has around seven thousand year-round residents, with that number swelling to about twenty-two thousand during “season,” when it’s cold in Manhattan and other unfortunate places.
Two drawbridges connect us to Sarasota, and every hour or so a tall-masted boat sails through while cars wait. For the most part, we’re a peaceable community. So peaceable that only one sworn Sarasota County deputy is assigned to handle our crimes—sworn meaning carrying a gun. Otherwise, for things like lost bikes or squabbles over who’s responsible for the damage done by a fallen tree limb, unsworn officers of the sheriff’s Community Policing unit keep us on the straight and narrow.
Midnight Pass Road runs the length of the island, with condos and tourist hotels sharing space with private walled estates, and narrow lanes twisting off to residential areas. We have fifty miles of waterways inside the key, so most of our streets are as meandering as the canals they follow. Our sunsets are the most spectacular in the world, our trees are full of songbirds, our shorelines are busy with stick-legged waterbirds, and our waters are inhabited not just by fish but also by playful dolphins and gentle manatees. I’ve never lived anywhere else, and I never will. I can’t imagine why anyone would.
On the key, you live either on the Gulf side or the bay side of Midnight Pass Road. Big Bubba lived at the south end, on the bay side, in a quiet, secluded residential area too old to have a formal name. A swath of nature preserve separated the private homes from a plush resort hotel on the bay.
Big Bubba’s human was Reba Chandler. She had recently retired from teaching psychology at New College and was on a boat gliding down some river in the south of France. I had known Reba and Big Bubba since I was in high school, when Reba had trusted me to take care of Big Bubba while she was away on vacations. Back then, it had been a teenager’s way to make easy money. Now it was my profession. Funny how life loops back on itself like that.
Like most of the houses in Reba’s old-Florida enclave, hers was at the end of a shelled driveway with a thick wall of palms and sea grape screening it from the street. Reba called it her “bird house” because it had been built when people planned ahead for flooding, so it stood on tall stilty legs. Most people who have houses of that era have enclosed the lower part, but Reba had left hers as it was originally, with ferns growing under the house and a flight of stairs to a narrow railed porch. Built of cypress, the house had weathered silvery gray. Hurricane shutters that had begun life a deep turquoise had become pale aqua over the years, giving the house the look of a charming woman who had become more lovely as she aged.
When I pulled up to the house, my Bronco’s tires made loud scrunching noises on the shell, a sound that Big Bubba must have recognized.
From his covered cage, he hollered, “Hello, there! Hello, there! Did you miss me?”
I parked in the driveway and opened the back door to get his cage. “We’re home, Big Bubba.”
He made aaawking sounds and yelled “Did you miss me?” I grinned because that was what Reba had always said to him when she came home from school.
I carried him up the steps and unlocked the front door. Ordinarily, Big Bubba lives in a large cage on the screened lanai, but to protect him from the red tide invasion, I took him to his smaller cage in the glassed-in sunroom. African Greys are temperamental birds. When they’re upset they can take a good-sized chunk out of your finger, so I placed the travel cage so Big Bubba could hop from one cage to the other by himself. Back in familiar territory, he marched back and forth on a wooden perch, bobbing his head and giving me the one-eyed bird glare while I put out fresh seed and water for him.
Congo African Greys are the most talkative and intelligent of all parrots, and they’re strikingly beautiful. With gleaming gray feathers, they sport white rings around their eyes that look like spectacles, and they have jaunty red feathers partially hidden under their tail feathers. Like all intelligent creatures, they bore easily. If they spend too much time without something to entertain them, they’re liable to become self-destructive and pull out their tail feathers. People who take on African Greys as companions have to be smart and inventive or they’ll end up with naked birds.
Big Bubba said, “Did you miss me?”
I said, “I counted every minute we were apart.”
He laughed, bobbing his head to the rhythm of his own he-he-he sound.
I said, “It’s not funny. You’re a real heartbreaker.”
Reba stored Big Bubba’s seeds in glass jars lined up on a wide wooden table next to his cage. While I exchanged witty repartee with a parrot, I poured fresh seed from the jars into his cups. Then I cleaned the sides of the jars holding the seeds. I also cleaned the table the jars sat on. I like to keep things tidy.
I tossed the paper towels I’d used for cleaning in the wastebasket. I said, “I’m going now, Big Bubba. I’ll see you this afternoon.”
He said, “Sack him! Sack him! Get that man!”
Big Bubba was a great talker, but not so hot as a conversationalist.
His TV set was on the table with the jars of seed, and I bent to turn on his favorite cop show. Big Bubba was crazy about shows where police chase killers through the streets and knock over fruit stands. I didn’t know if it was the fast cars or the flying fruit that excited him, but he couldn’t get enough of them.
Before I turned the set on, I heard a sound behind me and jerked upright. Three young men stood shoulder to shoulder in a narrow shaft of sunlight streaming through the windows.
I may have made a small shriek, I’m not sure. I’m strong and I know how to defend myself, but there were three of them and only one of me.
They looked to be around senior high school age, and they were almost comical in their studied scariness. Eyelids at half-mast, lips twisted in identical pouty sneers, hair so messy it might have hidden spiders. They would have looked even scarier if their baggy jeans hadn’t been belted so low that their underwear ballooned around their hips.
One of them, the tallest, oldest, and meanest-looking, said, “We’re looking for Jaz.”
Somehow I wasn’t surprised at the coincidence of hearing the name of the girl from the vet’s office. People with strong personalities seem to turn up all over the place, either in person or in reference, and Jaz certainly had a strong personality. I also wasn’t surprised that she knew these young men. She had the combination of innocent tenderness and hard-shelled toughness that would make her fall for street-gang swagger.
I swallowed a large lump that had formed in my throat, and tried to think of something within reach that I could use as a weapon.
I said, “I don’t know anybody named Jaz.”
Three pairs of grudge-filled eyes stared at me. For a moment, nobody said anything, and I almost thought they might leave.
Then the big one that I had decided was their leader said, “Don’t fuck with us, lady.”
I took a half step backward, and in a high voice that I hoped sounded like a clueless dimwit, I said, “Is Jaz somebody you know from school?”
One of the boys tittered, and the big one scowled at him. “We ask the questions, you answer. Understand? Now get Jaz out here.”
The middle boy, whose jeans hung so low the crotch dangled between his knees, said, “We won’t hurt her, ma’am.”
The big one said, “Shut up, Paulie.”
I traced an X across my chest with my finger. “I swear to God, I ha
ve never met anybody named Jaz. These houses all look alike, you probably just got the wrong address.”
The director in my brain said, That’s good. Don’t act like this is a break-in, act like it’s a normal drop-in by friends. If they rush you, grab a jar of birdseed and bash it on one of their heads.
Big Bubba took that moment to decide he was being ignored. “Helloooo,” he hollered, “did you miss me?”
The most sullen of the three stretched his arm forward with a switchblade knife making a silver extension of his hand.
The boy called Paulie said, “C’mon, don’t do that.”
I took another half step backward. With my heart pounding like a jackhammer, I flashed all my teeth and tried to sound perky.
“He’s an African Grey. He sounds like he knows what he’s saying, but he’s just imitating sounds he’s heard.”
The boy with the knife said, “You got that bird in Africa?”
I said, “He’s from Africa, but I didn’t go there and get him.”
As if he’d had a sudden epiphany, Paulie, the middle boy, shuffled to the table where Big Bubba’s food was arranged. He had to hold his pants up with one hand to keep them from falling. He picked up a glass jar of sunflower seeds and studied it. Probably one of the few things he’d ever studied.
He said, “This is for birds, ain’t it? I always knew this stuff was for birds. Man, my sister eats this stuff!”
The one with the knife said, “I seen a show one time where people from Africa were squeezed in the bottom of a ship, all chained together. Man, that was bad.”
The tall one looked as if he’d like to bang their heads together. He said, “That bird wasn’t on no slave ship, stupid.”
Paulie set the jar of seed back on the table. The jar now had gummy-looking smudges on it, which made me want to snatch the paper towels from the trash and make the kid clean it.
I took another half step backward and wished I had pepper spray with me.
Big Bubba hollered, “Get that man! Get that man!”
I said, “He watches a lot of football games.”
“Hello,” yelled Big Bubba. “Hello! Hello! Did you miss me? Touchdown!”
The boy with the knife clicked it closed and jutted his jaws forward. “I’d like to have me a bird like that.”
The big one said, “Dickhead! How you gone travel with a bird that talks? You need any more attention than you already got?”
I guess that’s why he was the leader, he was the one who thought ahead. He gave me a long look, most likely wondering how long it would take me to dial the police if they left me conscious.
To the dickhead, I said, “You might like a parakeet. They talk too. But if you get one, be sure it’s a male because female parakeets don’t talk. Not like in the human world, huh?”
Three sets of vacant eyes swung toward me. I smiled. Broadly. Inviting them to share my humor. Only Paulie smiled back. I’d forgotten that criminals are too stupid to have a sense of humor.
In a woman’s high treble, Big Bubba crooned, “I’ll be loving yoooo . . . alwaaaaays.” He sounded like he meant it.
Maybe it was because I was doing an Academy Award job of acting like a dithery blonde. Or maybe it was because Big Bubba was making them nervous. Or maybe they were just apprentice thugs who could still lose their cool.
Whatever the reason, the tall one said, “We’re outta here.”
Within seconds, all three had melted out the door and disappeared.
I waited, straining to hear my Bronco’s motor turning over from a hood’s hot-wire, but the only sound was my own heartbeat.
Dry mouthed, I took out my phone and dialed 911.
Deputy Jesse Morgan was at Big Bubba’s house in less than five minutes, crisp and manly in his dark green uniform, his belt bristling with all the items that law enforcement officers keep handy. Morgan is a sworn deputy, and the fact that he answered the call meant the sheriff’s office took the incident seriously.
Morgan and I knew each other from some other unpleasant incidents. When I opened the door he didn’t speak my name, just tilted his firm chin a fraction in greeting. Maybe he thought saying my name would bring him bad luck.
“You called about a break-in?”
From his cage in the sunroom, Big Bubba shouted, “Hold it! Hold it! Hold it!”
I said, “That’s a parrot.”
Morgan held his pen poised above his notebook and waited.
I said, “It was three boys, Caucasian, late teens, all in baggy pants with their underwear showing. They just walked in on me.”
“Just now?”
“Five or ten minutes ago. I called as soon as they left. One of them had an automatic knife.”
“They threaten you?”
“Not exactly. He just flicked the knife open to let me know he had it.”
Saying the word flicked made me tense a little bit, sort of preparing myself to tell the part I dreaded.
“They said they were looking for a girl named Jaz. They seemed to think she lived here.”
He looked up from his notepad. “You spell that J-A-Z-Z, like the music?”
“I guess so. I don’t really know.”
“You know this girl?”
“No, but I saw her this morning at Dr. Layton’s office. I was there getting Big Bubba—he’s the parrot—and this girl was there with a man. She seemed like a good kid. They had a rabbit the man had run over, but Dr. Layton couldn’t save him.”
“The rabbit.”
“Yeah. The man claimed he was Jaz’s stepfather. Only he called her Rosemary.”
He raised an eyebrow and studied me for a moment. “Sounds like you didn’t believe him.”
I wasn’t going there. “How would I know? I never saw them before.”
“Except at the vet’s.”
“Except there.”
His face didn’t give away a hint of whatever he was thinking.
He said, “You’re taking care of this parrot?”
“Yeah, for Reba Chandler. I come here twice a day. I had to leave him at the vet’s overnight, but he’s okay. He’s been having a little reaction to the red tide.”
“Who hasn’t? You have any idea why they came here looking for Jax?”
“Jaz. It’s Jaz. I guess they just got the houses mixed up. She seemed like a nice kid.”
I knew I was repeating myself, but for some reason I didn’t want Morgan to think badly of Jaz just because some thugs were asking about her.
He said, “Jaz doesn’t know Miss Chandler?”
I gave him the look you give people who’ve asked a really dumb question, and then I realized it wasn’t such a dumb question after all. The fact that I didn’t know Jaz didn’t mean Reba Chandler didn’t know her. Maybe she did. If Jaz lived in the neighborhood, it would be like Reba to befriend her. Except I didn’t believe she lived in the neighborhood.
I said, “Maybe I haven’t made it clear those guys were scary.”
“Anything more specific that might identify them?”
“One of them was named Paulie.”
I clapped my hand to my forehead like somebody remembering they could have had a V8. “Oh, I forgot! The one named Paulie picked up a jar of birdseed. It would have prints on it.”
Morgan stopped writing and followed me to the sunroom. He and Big Bubba gave each other the once-over while I scurried to the kitchen to get one of Reba’s canvas grocery bags. Back in the sunroom, Morgan covered the jar’s metal lid with a paper towel and carefully transferred the jar to the bag. Paulie’s latent prints would be lifted from the jar and run through IAFIS for a match. If the kid had ever been arrested by city, county, state, or federal law enforcement officers, his prints would be in the Interstate Identification Index of IAFIS.
I said, “Another thing, one of them said something about traveling.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said, ‘Dickhead, how you gone travel with a bird that talks?’ See, one of the guys said he’d like
to have a bird like Big Bubba, and this one, I think he was the leader, said, ‘How you gone travel with a bird that talks?’ ”
Morgan picked up the canvas bag by its handles. “You know how to get in touch with Miss Chandler?”
I shook my head. “She’s in the south of France on a boat that stops at four-star restaurants.”
Reba had left me the number of the cruise line that I could call in an emergency, but I wasn’t about to disturb her vacation just because some teenage hoods had come in her house while I was there.
Morgan looked as if he knew I could call Reba if I had to, but he didn’t press it. As he went out the front door, he said, “We’ll keep a closer watch on the area.”
I nodded, knowing full well that all the trees and shrubbery on the street did a good job of hiding a lot of innocent behavior. It would hide criminal behavior too.
I gave Big Bubba some sliced banana in case he’d got upset listening to me and Deputy Morgan. Then I turned on his TV and went back down the steps to the Bronco. As I drove down the lane, I saw a pale form through the fronds of an areca palm. I stopped and looked, and for a heartbeat I thought I saw Jaz’s face watching me. If it was her, she was instantly swallowed up by green trees and hanging vines.
I thought for a minute, then drove a few lanes over to Hetty Soames’s house. If Jaz was mixed up with those young toughs who’d come into Reba’s house, Hetty needed to know about it before she got involved with the girl.
3
Like Reba’s house, Hetty’s was hidden behind trees and foliage, but it wasn’t wooden or built tall on stilts. Instead, it was pale pink stucco and sat low under oaks and pines. I followed a side path to the lanai, where Hetty and Ben were playing fetch-the-ball. Racing back and forth with puppy glee, Ben thought he was just having fun, but Hetty was gently training him to return to the same spot each time he brought the ball to her. In a few weeks, he would know to touch her leg with the ball and wait for her to take it.
Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs Page 2