Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons

by Blaize Clement

  For about the millionth time in my life, I had followed an impulsive urge to be friendly to a stranger who had reacted as if I were a CIA operative trying to frame them for a crime. I try not to follow those impulsive urges, but the wisdom of sailing on by is always more obvious after the fact than before it.

  The sun was fully up and the morning’s moisture had dried on every leaf by the time I got to Mr. Stern’s house. When I rang the doorbell, Ruby let me in. Her skin looked dry and chapped, and she had blue shadows under her eyes.

  She said, “I just put Opal down for a nap, thank God. She was awake half the night. Cheddar’s in the bedroom with her.” With a sudden conspiratorial grin, she said, “Come see!”

  All her fatigue seemed to fly away as she skittered down the hallway ahead of me. She was like a teenager leading a girlfriend to see her latest secret, and I was reminded again of how young she was. With exaggerated stealth, she turned the bedroom doorknob and pulled the door open just enough for me to look inside the room.

  When I peeked in, I grinned, too. Opal was sound asleep in her net-sided crib. Under the crib, Cheddar slept in a shallow cardboard box. The box was a bit too small for his entire body, so one of his paws flopped over the edge in boneless bliss.

  Ruby said, “Is it okay to leave him there until Opal wakes up?”

  I knew exactly how she felt. When you’ve finally got a baby to go to sleep, you don’t want to do anything that might wake her.

  I said, “If Cheddar lived in the wild, he would eat whenever he found food, not at some special hour.”

  She said, “Granddad’s in the courtyard feeding the koi.”

  I wasn’t sure whether she was merely relaying information or hoping I’d keep Cheddar’s delayed breakfast a secret from Mr. Stern.

  She followed me into the kitchen and watched me shake dry food into Cheddar’s clean feeding dish. It would be ready for him whenever he and Opal finished their naps.

  I got eggs from the refrigerator and put them in a pan. “Mr. Stern likes me to coddle an egg for Cheddar and boil a couple for him.”

  “It’s nice of you to do that.”

  I covered the eggs with water and set them on a burner. The impulsive urge to tell her that I knew Mr. Stern was wrong to doubt that she was truly married to Zack Carlyle drifted across my cortex and then stopped itself before it came out my mouth. I’d already followed one impulsive urge to speak about something that day, two would be pushing it.

  But my brain must have exercised all the control it could handle, because the next thing out of my mouth was even worse. “Ruby, was Kantor Tucker a partner in Myra’s Ponzi scheme?”

  “I don’t know if he was a partner or just knew what Myra was doing and kept quiet.”

  “Now that you know how far they’ll go to try to stop you from testifying, what are you going to do?”

  The look she gave me was puzzled. “You mean kidnapping me?”

  I resisted saying, “D’uh!” and nodded.

  “Believe me, I already know how far they can go. Tuck had a guy cross him once and he flew him out over the Gulf and shoved him out of the plane. That’s how far they’ll go.”

  She said it flat-voiced, not like somebody repeating a terrible crime.

  I said, “Are you sure of that?”

  “I didn’t see him do it, if that’s what you mean, but he laughed with Myra about the guy being shark food. I don’t think he was joking. If he thought he could get away with it, he’d feed me to the sharks too.”

  A cold snail moved up my spine leaving a slimy trail of dread. Ruby apparently had knowledge of other crimes besides fraud, knowledge that made her even more dangerous to Myra and Tucker.

  “So what are you going to do at Myra’s trial?”

  “What I told the DA I’d do. I’ll tell what I know.”

  Her young face was set in lines I’d seen on my own face too many times. Fierce courage mixed with the kind of faith that only comes from utter naivete. Sometimes that mixture moves mountains. Sometimes it creates an abyss that you walk into unaware.

  I said, “What about Zack? Does he realize what’s going on?”

  She shook her head. “Zack’s a Boy Scout. He believes the world is black and white, good and bad. He thinks I’m as bad as Myra. He wouldn’t believe me if I told him the whole story.”

  A thin cry came from Ruby’s bedroom, and we both froze. But it didn’t continue. Opal had waked for a moment and cried, and then gone back to sleep. Babies do that, and Ruby and I gave each other relieved looks. Ruby was relieved because she was Opal’s mother and attached to her in that mystical maternal way of all sensitive mothers. I was relieved because I felt too much of a connection to Ruby and Opal. Not just because Ruby and I looked alike, but because I knew her. Knew what it was to yearn for a lost mother, knew what it was to be too young or too dumb to intuitively recognize criminal behavior in someone I trusted. Knew what it was to fall head over heels in love with a good man and have his baby and be as close to it as to my own pulse beat.

  The water on the eggs came to a boil, and I turned off the heat, set the timer for three minutes, and used a spoon to fish out Cheddar’s egg.

  I broke the coddled egg over the dry food in Cheddar’s bowl and turned to face Ruby.

  “Do you think Myra and Tuck will try anything else to stop you from testifying?”

  “They might, but until the trial begins, I’m not leaving this house, not even to go in the courtyard. And if the doorbell rings, I’m not answering it unless I know who it is.”

  “A wise person once told me that white-collar criminals are as dangerous as any other criminals.”

  She met my eyes with a fearless directness. “Myra and Tuck would have me killed if they thought they could get away with it. But they can’t. Besides, I’ve already given the DA enough information to convict Myra of every charge they’ve made against her.”

  Something about that line of reasoning seemed wrong, but while I searched for a response, the timer sounded and I hurried to lift Mr. Stern’s eggs from the hot water.

  Mr. Stern chose that moment to come in from the courtyard. With a disapproving look at Cheddar’s food bowl, he said, “Where’s Cheddar?”

  Ruby said, “He’s in my bedroom under Opal’s crib. They’re both sleeping.”

  He made a fitzing sound with his lips, not exactly a raspberry but close. I had the feeling his disapproval came more from jealousy than from concern about Cheddar’s delayed breakfast.

  As if he felt a need to reestablish his authority, he frowned at me. “Are you boiling eggs?”

  “I just took them out.”

  “I’d like toast as well. Make it two. Buttered.”

  Ruby stared at Mr. Stern, and seemed to press her lips together to keep from speaking.

  My own tongue probably got shorter because I had to bite it to keep from telling him that in the first place I wasn’t his maid, and in the second place he was acting like a total butt. I scooped his eggs onto a plate and made his toast while he took a seat at the bar and watched me like a big brooding bird.

  When I left him, my mind was stuck on the fact that Cheddar sleeping under Opal’s crib was making Mr. Stern act like a jilted lover. For a man who claimed not to have any time to waste on a cat, his jealousy was a little bit funny. At least it would have been if he hadn’t acted so snotty to Ruby. Of all the emotions human beings fall victim to, jealousy and possessiveness may be the most unattractive.

  At the time, it didn’t occur to me that it was Ruby, not Cheddar, who Mr. Stern believed had been stolen from him. Or that he resented that loss with a rancid hatred.

  13

  The tension at Mr. Stern’s house hadn’t changed the fact that I was empty as a koi without a stomach. Heading for the Village Diner for breakfast, I paid close attention to all the other cars on the street, especially the occasional limo. I didn’t see anything suspicious. Even so, I sat a moment in the parking lot after I’d parked the Bronco just in case somebody was
there planning to kidnap me.

  I didn’t intend to linger over breakfast. I wanted to get home and take a long nap and get wholly back into my own body. Having Guidry in my life was great, but I’d worked hard at arriving at a place where I was fairly content with who I was, and I didn’t want anything about myself to change. It was another one of those boring versus comforting things.

  Inside the diner, I waved at Tanisha on my way to the ladies’ room. Tanisha’s broad face dimpled when she saw me, and I knew she’d have my breakfast ready by the time I sat down in my regular booth. I liked that. I’m a lot more satisfied with life when it stays the same, day after day. Lots of people would find that boring, but I find it comforting.

  Sure enough, after I’d washed up and got myself as presentable as possible in the ladies’ room, Judy had a mug of coffee ready for me. Like Tanisha, Judy is a good friend I only know through the diner. Judy is tall and angular, with light brown hair that frizzes in the steam from Tanisha’s kitchen, eyes that change from hazel to Weimaraner amber, and a sprinkle of copper freckles across her nose. She’s cynical and snarky and loses her heart to men who hurt her. She was kind to me when I lost most of my mind after Todd and Christy were killed, and she was the first person to predict that Guidry and I would wind up together.

  As I slid into the booth, she said, “Missed you yesterday.”

  I said, “Yeah, I got kidnapped.”

  She grinned and scooted off to pour somebody else some coffee. I am the kind of person whose life is so weird that people think I’m joking when I tell the truth about it. If I’d told her that I’d just come from a house where a woman was up to her eyebrows in a Ponzi scheme trial, she probably would have laughed her head off.

  Judy had just returned with my breakfast when Guidry ambled down the aisle and slid into the seat opposite me. Judy stood aside and watched us, and I knew she could see us exchange the looks of people seeing each other for the first time after they’ve spent the night together. A look that combines a residue of pleasure, a hint of embarrassment at having let down all their defenses, and a frisson of excitement at the hope they’ll repeat it.

  Guidry said, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

  Deadpan, Judy said, “With bacon?”

  He grinned. “Oh yeah, I forgot she never orders bacon.”

  Judy said, “She just steals it off other people’s plates.”

  I shrugged because it was true. I love bacon beyond reason. If I get a choice of a last meal before I leave this planet, I’m going to order a BLT with extra-crispy bacon, no icky white bumps anywhere in it, no curled ends, no droopy middles. I rarely order bacon because it’s bad for my health and for my waistline, but everybody knows that fat doesn’t settle on you if you eat it from somebody else’s plate.

  Judy left a mug of coffee for Guidry and hurried away to turn in his order. He and I gave each other the self-conscious grins of two people who’d slept coiled together like strands of a rope.

  I sipped coffee and looked at him through the steam.

  “I talked to Ruby this morning while I was at Mr. Stern’s house—he’s her grandfather, has an orange cat named Cheddar, lives next door to Myra Kreigle—and she said she’s not sure if Kantor Tucker was a full partner in Myra Kreigle’s fake REIT or if he just kept quiet about it.”

  Guidry’s gray eyes studied me for a moment, and I knew he was having an internal conversation with himself about the way complete strangers told me highly personal and private things. Since his job was to get information from people, it made him nuts that people blabbed everything they knew to me. Sometimes when I didn’t even ask them.

  He said, “Tucker and Myra Kreigle have been connected for several years, maybe lovers, maybe partners in crime, maybe just good friends. If she leaves the country before her trial, he’ll lose the two million dollars he put up for her bond.”

  “He has a private plane at his house. Maybe he’ll fly her out of the country.”

  He grinned. “Not likely. He’d be met and arrested wherever he landed, and his plane would be confiscated. But she may have transferred two million to him from one of her hidden offshore accounts, so he won’t really lose anything if she bolts. But if Ruby’s testimony places Tucker in Myra Kreigle’s deal, it could be his undoing.”

  I had an uneasy feeling that Guidry was placating me, that he really had something else on his mind that he wanted to talk about, but couldn’t get up the nerve to say it.

  Judy came with Guidry’s breakfast, topped off both our coffees, and zipped away without speaking. I took one of Guidry’s rigid slices of bacon. For a few minutes we were quiet. I nibbled my bacon while Guidry ate.

  He said, “I had a friend in New Orleans who was a drag racer like Zack Carlyle. At least he was until he got a detached retina from the jolt of decelerating too fast.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Some of those cars go faster than a space shuttle launch. They have to use parachutes to stop. You go from three hundred thirty miles an hour to a dead stop in less than twenty seconds, and it’ll cause a drag up to five Gs. My friend did that and it caused his retina to detach. His wife said she would be the next thing to detach if he raced again, so he quit.”

  I said, “Ruby said Zack has dark blue eyes that are almost purple. The baby has his eyes.”

  I could tell Guidry didn’t give a gnat’s patootie about Zack’s eyes. His mind had drifted someplace else. He finished eating, took a last gulp of coffee, put money on the table for Judy, and got to his feet.

  He did that shoulder-tapping thing again. “See you later.”

  Judy came with her coffeepot and we watched him leave. I seemed to be watching his back a lot these days. Which wasn’t bad, with those shoulders and the easy way he moved. But it still made me uneasy to see him leaving, as if every time was the last time I’d ever see him.

  It occurred to me that whenever Guidry mentioned New Orleans, his voice took on a longing quality. Like a man speaking the name of a woman he’d once deeply loved and lost. Or a woman he’d once loved and wanted back.

  I was still thinking about that when I headed for the Bronco, so engrossed in all the awful possibilities of the idea that I almost walked into Ethan Crane. Ethan is a tall, drop-dead gorgeous attorney with jet-black hair and dark eyes from Seminole ancestors. When I saw him in front of me, we did that self-conscious side-stepping dance that men and women do who were never lovers but once had the hots for each other. To tell the truth, we sort of still did, but we had both decided that somebody else was really more appropriate for us. Another attorney for Ethan, another cop for me. I had met Ethan’s new girlfriend, and he knew Guidry. We approved of the other’s choice, but my hormones still stood up and applauded when they smelled Ethan, and from the way his eyes lit up when he saw me, I suspected certain parts of his anatomy were also standing up.

  We stood in the glaring sun and bantered a little bit, nothing important, just the usual awkward small talk people do to try to cover up the fact that they really want to ask each other more important questions. Like Do you miss me? Like Are you happy with somebody else? Like Do you ever regret your choice? My answer would have been that I was happy with Guidry and I had no regrets, but I sort of hoped that Ethan sometimes regretted his.

  When we said goodbye, I felt that odd exhilaration that comes with knowing you’ve spent time with a man who thinks you’re desirable. Even if you don’t want him, it’s exciting to know he wants you.

  At home, Paco’s truck was gone, but Michael’s car was in his slot. Instead of going straight upstairs, I walked across the sandy yard to the wooden deck and opened his kitchen door. When he and Paco had moved into our grandparents’ house, they remodeled the kitchen to bring it into the twenty-first century. A butcher block eating island with a salad sink at one end stands where our grandmother’s round pedestal table once took center stage, and Michael has added enough Sub-Zero built-in refrigerators to hold all the fruits and vegetables at any farmer�
�s market, plus two or three steers.

  When I walked in, he was leaning over a refrigerator drawer forcing a stalk of celery to fit into a space already filled with other vegetables.

  He looked over his shoulder at me. “Hey.”

  Ella Fitzgerald was on her assigned stool. She and the guys have an agreement—if she stays on the stool and doesn’t beg for food, she can sit there and adore them. I smooched the top of her head.

  I said, “I want you to hear this from me.”

  Michael straightened and looked down at me with eyes that had suddenly gone slitty. “Hear what?”

  “Well, here’s the thing, I’m here and I’m obviously okay. So it’s not important, but it happened, and I know sooner or later you’ll hear about it, so I just want to be the one to tell you.”

  His eyes got slittier. Ella sat up straighter and looked alarmed.

  I said, “The thing is, yesterday morning a guy named Vern mistook me for a woman named Ruby and drove me out past Seventy-five to that stretch of big estates where everybody has a landing strip and a hangar. He took me to a man named Kantor Tucker, but as soon as Tucker saw me he knew I was the wrong woman. Vern drove me to Friendly’s and gave me fifty dollars for a cab. I called Guidry and he came and got me. That’s all there was to it.”

  “So Vern just asked you nicely to get in his car, and you did, and he drove you to a place where a stranger could get a look at you. Is that how it was?”

  “Pretty much. I’m taking care of Ruby’s grandfather’s cat, and I guess Vern saw me leaving there and jumped to the conclusion that I was Ruby. She’s a witness in Myra Kreigle’s trial. You know, the woman who ran the real estate Ponzi scheme. Ruby worked for her.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s it, truly. Except for the part about the two guys in Vern’s limo who grabbed me and put a hood over my head. Vern drove while they taped my wrists and ankles, and put tape over my mouth. But they didn’t hurt me, Michael. They overpowered me, but they didn’t rough me up or anything.”