Mr. Stern and I regarded each other with solemn faces. He said, “That’s my granddaughter, Ruby. She claims she’s married to a drag racer named Zack. Maybe she is, I don’t know.”
I said, “The granddaughter who left Cheddar with you?”
“The only granddaughter I have.”
I said, “Now that she’s here, I don’t suppose you’ll be needing me.”
He snorted. “Ruby’s not the kind you can depend on. I want you to keep coming.”
Acutely aware of the emotions in the house, I hurried to clean Cheddar’s litter box. It was in a guest bathroom across the hall from the flower-sprigged bedroom, and while I washed the box and spritzed it with a mix of water and hydrogen peroxide, I could hear Ruby’s soft voice murmuring to the baby. She sounded the way I remembered sounding when Christy was a baby—the voice of a young mother absolutely besotted with her infant.
When I finished with Cheddar’s litter box and headed down the hall, I glanced through the open bedroom door. Ruby had rolled the crib from the corner so it stood in front of glass sliders open to a little sunshine-filled patio. Opal and Cheddar were both in the crib. Cheddar’s nose was touching Opal’s chin, and Opal was laughing with the soft sound of a baby duckling. Ruby’s face was naked with love. Mr. Stern had said Ruby wasn’t reliable, but a woman who takes time to play with her baby and is gentle with pets goes to the top of my list of trustworthy people.
I stopped in the doorway. “That’s a great crib.”
It was, too. Of obvious Scandinavian design—those cold climes must create minds with a keen regard for common sense and practicality—it had a steel frame on large casters. With solid padded ends and what looked like fine fishnet stretched tightly in steel-framed drop-down sides, it combined all the advantages of a regular wooden crib without the dangers of slats or loose-fitting mesh. I was impressed that designers had made such progress in the six years since I had bought a crib.
Ruby looked up and smiled. “It was mine when I was a baby. Actually, my mother slept in it when she was a baby. I don’t think they make them anymore.” She seemed amazed at the idea of a piece of furniture holding up for three generations.
Lifting Cheddar from the crib, she set him on the floor. “Sorry, Cheddar, but it’s time for Opal’s nap.”
Shorthairs are probably Taoists. They accept what is, without making a fuss about it. Shorthairs don’t have legs made for high-jumping like Abyssinians or Russian Blues, so Cheddar watched Ruby raise the crib side, calculated the odds of leaping over the top rail, and yawned—the kitty equivalent of a shoulder shrug. As if sleeping under Opal’s crib had been his plan all along, he oozed under it and curled himself on the floor. I’ll bet cat doctors never see an American Shorthair with high blood pressure.
I wiggled my fingers at Ruby and Opal in a mock good-bye wave, and left them. I found Mr. Stern in the library. He wasn’t reading or watching TV, just sitting on the sofa staring straight ahead. A grouping of framed black-and-white snapshots was on the wall behind him, all of young men in military uniform. One of them, a tall man with fierce eyes, was apparently their commanding officer. He looked like a much younger version of Mr. Stern, and for a second I wondered if he was a son. Then I noticed a framed banner bearing a red American eagle and inscribed: The 281st Engineer Combat Battalion, 1944, and I realized it was Mr. Stern himself. It reminded me that we can never imagine the histories of people we meet, the challenges they’ve faced, the losses they’ve known.
He said, “I guess Cheddar remembers Ruby.” He sounded sad, as if he felt abandoned.
Trying to make my voice tiptoe, I said, “Cats love being with babies.”
He seemed to brighten at the idea that he’d been rejected in favor of the baby instead of Ruby. As for me, a job I’d expected to be neatly delineated had become frayed around the edges by a host of complex emotions emanating from Mr. Stern and his granddaughter.
I said, “I’ll be back this afternoon.”
As if he’d heard a bugle call, Mr. Stern got to his feet and stood ramrod straight. He walked to the door with me, followed me outside, and watched me get in my Bronco. I gave him my most fetching smile and waved at him like somebody on a parade float. He nodded sternly, like a general acknowledging the presence of inferiors, then scurried around to the back of the car and began whirling his good arm in come-on-back motions.
I groaned. Mr. Stern was turning out to be one of those men who believes every woman with wheels needs a man to tell her how to turn them. Which sort of explained some of the tension between him and Ruby. But, okay, what the heck. It wouldn’t cost me anything to let him think he was a big manly man helping a helpless female back her car out of his driveway.
Ordinarily, I would have used my rearview mirror to see if anything was behind me, but with Mr. Stern back there vigorously miming me to back straight out, I sort of felt obliged to swivel my head around and pretend to watch him. But as I looked over my shoulder I saw the young woman at the next-door house again. This time she was at a front window, and I could see her features. She was plump and plain, and something about her seemed indistinct and faded, like old sepia photographs of immigrants arriving in this country at the turn of the century. I kept looking at her until a palm tree blocked my view, and then I remembered Mr. Stern, who was in the street whirling his arm.
He was a nimble man, I’ll give him that. He jumped out of the way at the right moment and back-walked along the curb, circling his arm to signal me to turn the wheel. The only problem was that he was directing me to turn in the wrong direction.
So, okay, no big deal. I pulled into the street pointed the wrong way.
I gave Mr. Stern another parade-queen wave and drove off in the wrong direction past the vacant house with the foreclosed sign. In my rearview mirror, I saw him head back toward his open front door. I also saw a long black limo pull away from the curb half a block behind me. Nothing unusual about a limo on the street. People in Siesta Key’s upscale neighborhoods take limos to the airport all the time. There wasn’t even anything alarming about the way the car stayed the same distance behind me. The street wasn’t made for passing, so we both drove along at a steady speed.
I had intended to turn on a side street and work my way back to a main thoroughfare, but residential streets are short on the Key, and this one had no side streets. It ended in a cul de sac, where I made a U-turn. The limo driver made the same turn, and I felt a moment of camaraderie with him, both of us caught by surprise by a dead-end street. As I passed Mr. Stern’s house, I looked toward the windows of the house where I’d seen the young woman, but all I saw was the glare of sunlight bouncing off glass.
That’s all I could see of the windows of the limo that followed close behind me, too, because the limo’s windows were tinted dark. To tell the truth, I didn’t wonder about who was in that limo. My mind had drifted to Ruby and her unhappiness, to Opal, who was one of the cutest babies I’d ever seen, and to Mr. Stern, who presented a cold face to the world but took his cat into the courtyard at night to watch light play on his waterfall.
I reminded myself that every family has its own drama, and that whatever Mr. Stern’s family’s drama was, it didn’t involve me. No matter how much I felt Ruby’s misery, no matter how cute her baby was, and no matter how much I thought Mr. Stern’s stiffness was a cover-up for a soft heart, it wasn’t any of my business. I was strictly a cat sitter, nothing more.
At the corner of Higel Avenue, I stopped for a break in a gaggle of cars tearing past in both directions. Then I spun right, gunned the Bronco south, and lost sight of the limo in my rearview mirror. Instead, a giant insect with long yellow antennae and a black-and-yellow-striped body hovered just behind me. The insect was atop a dark green van, which made me stop thinking about Ruby and Mr. Stern and try to decide whether the bug was an advertisement for a taxidermist or an exterminator.
Later, I would wonder how I could have been so easily distracted. My only excuse was that I’d had a man in my life—again—for ab
out six weeks, and I still wasn’t used to it.
3
Having a man in your life after you’ve lost the habit is like being hit by a persistent case of embarrassing hiccups. Jerky little blips happen in the midst of things that ought to be smooth and automatic. Like at the supermarket, you have a startled moment when you wonder if you should buy six peaches instead of three—in case he should be at your place one night and want a peach while you have one—but you don’t even know if he likes peaches, so you stand there in front of the peaches like a total idiot asking yourself how it could be that you don’t know if the man you love likes peaches. Or like when you get out of the shower, you make sure you hang your towel with the ends even in case he goes in your bathroom and judges you for hanging your towel crooked. Or like you’re not sure just how the whole relationship is going to go, or how you want it to go. It’s enough to make you batty, just thinking about it.
Which is what I was doing as I turned off Higel to Ocean and drove to the Village Diner where I go every morning after I’ve finished with all my pet-sitting duties. By that time it was close to ten o’clock. I’d been up since four, without caffeine or food, and I was ready for breakfast and a long nap.
That’s my excuse. I was a woman in love, and I was hungry and tired. So when I pulled into the shelled parking area at the side of the diner, I didn’t pay much attention to the black limo that purred to a stop close beside me. Like I said, Siesta Key is a prime vacation spot for well-heeled tourists, so limos are almost as numerous as egrets or herons. But when I opened the Bronco door and slid out, the limo’s back door on my side opened too, which boxed me in. I did a mental shrug. As every year-round resident on the Key knows very well, some tourists are so rude and pushy that we would cheerfully toss them into the Gulf if it weren’t for the fact that they keep our economy going.
Friendly as a Chamber of Commerce volunteer, I closed the Bronco door and waited for the limo’s backseat occupant to get out and close the limo door so I could move forward. In the next instant, a large man in a ski mask lunged from the limo’s front passenger seat and another masked man popped from the backseat. In about two nanoseconds they had my mouth covered, my limbs pinned, and me stuffed in the cavernous backseat of their car. Even in the shocked midst of it happening, while I kicked and grunted and squealed and tried to wrest myself free, part of my mind coolly appraised their expertise. These guys were pros.
The doors closed and the limo backed out of the lot and drove down Ocean at a normal speed. Both men had got into the back with me, so the driver was alone in the front. He kept his face turned forward so all I could see was the back of his head. One of the men in the back put a strip of tape over my mouth, and they had my wrists and ankles bound together before we got to Higel. As the car turned left, they pulled a black hood over my head.
Even with a hood over my head, I could tell they followed the dogleg on Higel to Siesta Drive and over the north bridge to the mainland. For a few seconds, I made angry noises. But they were a waste of energy, so I shut up and tried to pay attention to anything I could use later to identify the men. There wasn’t much. The men in the back stayed silent, and so did the driver.
After the time it would take to get to the Tamiami Trail, the limo stopped, waited, and turned left. We were headed north, which led to Sarasota Bay and the marina. If they planned to put me on a boat, that would be the place to do it. North led to Sarasota’s downtown streets, too, but I doubted they had shops or theaters or restaurants on their minds.
They could also turn off Tamiami onto the fixed-span bridge that leads to Bird Key, St. Armands Key, Lido Key, Longboat Key, and Anna Maria Island. Rich people live on those keys, so if some rich person had hired these goons to kidnap me, they might be taking me to the rich person’s house. But I couldn’t think of a single person, rich or otherwise, who would want to kidnap me.
We didn’t turn off Tamiami Trail, just kept going straight ahead. My mind raced with possibilities of where we could be headed. I doubted it would be the Ringling Museum of Art, or the Ringling College of Art and Design, or the Sarasota Airport. The car kept moving and after a while I stopped trying to guess where we were going. Instead, I started wondering how long it would be before somebody realized I had been kidnapped. That was depressing because it would probably be hours.
That’s one of the problems with living alone and having a weird schedule. I get up every morning at four A.M. Most days it’s ten o’clock before I have contact with any being who doesn’t have fur and four legs. Then I stop at the Village Diner for breakfast. Everybody knows me there, and they would notice if I didn’t come in. Tanisha, the cook, always knows the minute I enter, and by the time Judy, the waitress, has my coffee on my regular table, Tanisha is already cooking my usual two eggs over easy with extra-crispy fried potatoes and a biscuit. But every now and then something comes up and I don’t have breakfast there, so neither Judy nor Tanisha would think of me as a missing person if I didn’t show up. They wouldn’t call the cops and say they thought I’d been kidnapped.
But both of them took breaks, both of them left the diner to go home when their shifts ended. If they saw my Bronco in the parking lot, they’d wonder why it was there and I wasn’t. At least they would if they recognized the Bronco as mine. I wasn’t sure they would. I knew Judy and Tanisha as well as I knew anybody, but I didn’t know what kind of car either of them drove. I saw them only at the diner, not driving their cars, and that’s the same way they saw me. Heck, for all I knew, my Bronco could sit in that lot for two or three days without attracting any attention.
Michael, my brother, would miss me, but not for a while. He and his life partner, Paco, live in the Gulf-side frame house where Michael and I grew up with our grandparents. I live next to them in an apartment above our four-slot carport. Michael is a fireman with the Sarasota Fire Department, so he works a twenty-four/forty-eight shift, meaning he’s on duty twenty-four hours, then off forty-eight. He had gone on duty that morning at eight o’clock, so he wouldn’t be home until the next morning. Paco is an undercover officer with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department. His hours are erratic and never announced, so he might or might not come home and wonder where I was.
And then there was Guidry, a homicide detective with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department. Guidry, with his calm gray eyes and beaky nose and a face that looks stern until you notice little white smile lines etched around his eyes. Guidry, who made my heart clatter when he was near, but who wasn’t near on any regular basis because neither of us was ready yet for any kind of routine. We were more spontaneous. At least we told each other and ourselves that we were, but somehow spontaneous had added up to a lot of evenings together and a few mornings, which made us both skittish as feral cats wanting and fearing at the same time.
If Guidry called and I didn’t answer, he would think I was busy grooming a cat or cleaning a litter box. If he called again and I didn’t answer, he might think I was gathering information from a new client or that I was in the middle of busy traffic. But if I didn’t call him back, he’d think something was wrong. Even then, he wouldn’t consider that I’d been kidnapped. I mean, who gets kidnapped? Children of wealthy parents. Heads of big multinational corporations. Big drug dealers by their rivals. Third-world politicians. Cat sitters don’t get kidnapped.
The limo made a right turn, but I had lost track of where we were. All I knew was that we were quite a way north of Sarasota. After what I judged to be two or three miles, we turned left again. I could hear the whine of car tires and feel the vibration of rolling over highway joints so I guessed we had turned onto Highway 301. After several more miles, we turned right again, and went straight far enough to have crossed I-75 before we made a left, two more rights, and then a left onto a road that threw gravel onto the underside of the limo.
Another left turn, and the limo stopped. I heard electronic beeps like a control board being punched, then a sound like metal dragging on pavement, and the limo mov
ed forward for a short distance and stopped.
One of the men pulled the hood from my head. “Okay, girlie, we’re here.”
I looked out the window at a smooth paved area where a jet sat in front of a gleaming white metal hangar. I don’t know much about planes, but I knew this one was large for a private jet. An area of artfully planted trees and flowering shrubs separated the hangar from a rambling low-slung stucco house. The hangar looked almost like a regular freestanding garage, except it was big enough for a good-sized plane.
A tall, wide-shouldered man walked from the hangar like Donald Trump getting ready to fire somebody. He was middle-aged, gray-streaked hair combed straight back from a receding hairline, ice-blue eyes, a long face that might have been good-looking without the surly scowl.
The driver put down his electric window and grinned. “Hey, Tuck. I got her. Followed her from the old man’s house.”
The man leaned to look in at me, and the two masked men holding my arms tightened their grip and sort of tilted me toward the window for viewing. I did my best not to look scared when I glowered at him.
His eyes raked over my face a couple of times. His mouth twisted, and for a moment he looked frightened. Then arrogance took over again. “That’s not her!”
The driver half turned to look at me. “You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! Good God, I’m surrounded by morons and idiots!”
He fixed his cold eyes on me. “Ma’am, I want you to know I had nothing to do with this. I don’t know anything about whatever these men are up to.”
Turning his fury back to the driver, he said, “Take care of this, Vern!”
“Take care like—”
“No, fool! I mean fix it! With nobody getting hurt! Understand?”
Behind him, some other men had stepped from the hangar to try to get a glimpse of the wrong woman in the limo’s backseat. I had a feeling I would be a lot better off with them than with Vern, so I made some more loud squealing noises, but nobody offered to take the tape off my mouth.
Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons Page 2