“So the circus home will go forward regardless of Conrad’s death.”
“I don’t see how Denton can stop it. He’s furious about it, but the way his father set the whole operation up is set in stone. My guess is he’s busy as a cat covering shit before the trusteeship looks too closely at the way he finagled the land deal.”
I took a deep breath. “I never dreamed that circus clowns made so much money.”
“Angelo was a shrewd investor. He had an uncanny knack for selecting winning companies and becoming a major stockholder. He screened out ones he thought were bad for the environment or for people’s health, and it paid off. All told, the trusts he set up pay out something like fifty million a year in grants.”
“Do you know a man named Brossi?”
“Leo Brossi? Yeah.”
“He went to Conrad with a story about how his father was Angelo’s brother. He said his father had originated the Flutter-By act back in Italy when he and Angelo were boys, and he wanted some of the money Angelo had left.”
He shook his head. “Leo Brossi’s a con artist always one step ahead of a posse, but I can’t see him murdering anybody.”
“You have any idea who did?”
“Believe me, Dixie, if I did, I’d be the first one to tell the police. I liked Conrad a lot.”
I noticed he had switched to calling me Dixie instead of Ms. Hemingway. I stood up and held out my hand.
“Thanks for talking to me, Ethan.”
“Did it help?”
“Not really, but it was informative.”
“Maybe we could get together sometime and talk about something besides murder or trust funds.”
I turned so fast that I almost tripped over my own feet.
This time he couldn’t help but hear my heels clacking on the stairs. I sounded like a drummer beating a fast retreat. Ethan Crane probably thought I found him repulsive. He probably thought I was a rude, ungracious nut. If I hadn’t been so embarrassed, I would have gone back upstairs and explained that I was … what? An untouchable? A cloistered pseudo-nun made virginal again by widowhood? Or maybe truly an ungracious nut.
As I reached toward the downstairs door to push it open, somebody else pulled it from the other side. Guidry stood in the gaping doorway, one linen-sleeved arm holding the door to the side, his eyes taking in my short skirt and high heels, his face registering about a dozen different emotions.
“Dixie.” Flat-voiced, not letting any surprise slip through.
“Guidry.”
Still holding the door open, he stepped aside so I could go through on my stilty heels.
He said, “I think we’d better talk.”
He nodded toward an open-air café across the street. It wasn’t exactly an order he’d given me, but it wasn’t a social invitation either. Wordlessly, we waited for a break in traffic, and then walked over the steaming pavement to a sweaty, dispirited place where plastic tables crouched under a thatched roof and a scattering of wilted patrons were sucking cold drinks through clear straws. Ceiling fans whirred overhead to circulate hot air and scare away flies, and a few black seagulls strutted about picking up microscopic crumbs from the paved floor.
A mustached man’s head appeared in the window where orders were dispensed, and Guidry called, “We’d like a couple of iced teas.”
The head disappeared, and Guidry tapped his slim fingers on the plastic tabletop.
“You mind telling me why you were at Ethan Crane’s office?”
“I wanted to ask him some things.”
“I guess you have a key to his house, and he discusses all his cases with you while you take care of his furry friend.”
“Wrong on both counts, Guidry. I’ve never even met Ethan Crane’s furry friend.”
The mustached man came out carrying two tall paper cups with plastic lids. He plunked them on the table and pulled out two straws and a stack of paper napkins from his apron pocket.
“Anything else?”
Guidry put down a five-dollar bill and shook his head. “That’s all, thanks.”
I peeled the paper off my straw and jammed it in the X-spot on the plastic lid.
I said, “Conrad Ferrelli named Ethan Crane to head the foundation that’s going to build a home for retired circus professionals. The circus people I’ve talked to are afraid it won’t happen now that Conrad’s dead. They think Denton Ferrelli will put a stop to it. I wanted to know if he could, so I went to see Ethan Crane to find out.”
Guidry’s gray eyes looked at me over the top of his paper cup. He didn’t look natural with a plastic straw stuck in his lips. I doubted that he’d sucked through a lot of straws. Probably had a butler do that for him.
He said, “Aside from the fact that a murder investigation is going on and you’re not part of it, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“I don’t have to get your permission to talk to people, Guidry.”
“So what did you find out? Can Denton Ferrelli stop the retirement home from being built?”
I wondered if that was the question Guidry had planned to ask Ethan Crane himself. Maybe he had a point. Maybe I had interfered in a murder investigation. The possibility that I had made my voice a bit defensive.
“It doesn’t sound like he can. Angelo Ferrelli set up some trust funds that are all under the control of a company that serves as trustee. Conrad was CEO of the trustee company. Denton heads a trust that improves communities, and he brokered a deal that bought a big piece of real estate. The plan was to dock a casino boat there, but Conrad squashed the deal. He took the property for a circus retirement home, and when it’s built all the various trusts will funnel some of their funds into it. Denton is pissed about it, but there’s not much he can do to stop it.”
“So he doesn’t stand to gain from Conrad’s death?”
“Evidently not.”
“You sound disappointed.”
I shrugged. “Everybody who knows Denton Ferrelli says he’s a thoroughly hateful person. He resented Conrad. He hated the way he dressed. He hated his involvement with the circus.”
“Hatred’s a pretty strong motivation for murder.”
“But he’s hated him all his life. Why kill him now, if he’s not going to benefit from it?”
Guidry’s straw made a rude sound at the bottom of his paper cup, and he put the cup down with an annoyed frown.
“You didn’t have any reason except curiosity for wanting to find out about Denton Ferrelli?”
The memory of the voice on my answering machine coiled in my head. I didn’t want to sound like a damsel in distress, but playing tight-lipped martyr could get me knocked off by some psychotic killer.
“A man left a message on my answering machine this afternoon. Just two words: You’re next.”
“You thought it was Denton Ferrelli?”
“I don’t know who it was.”
He tilted his head toward the slim leather handbag I’d laid on the edge of the table.
“You carrying?”
“Yes.”
“Got a CCW?”
I rolled my eyes and gave him an are-you-kidding? look. Up north, especially in landlocked states, it’s illegal to carry a concealed handgun. In swamp-ridden Florida, it’s damn near mandatory. The state’s official stance is, Hey, man, we’re sticking out down here like the country’s hind tit, surrounded by oceans and alligators and Commie Cubans, threatened by hurricanes and tidal waves and foreign tourists, and we by God need to be able to shoot something. Over eight million of us consequently have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, otherwise known as a CCW. That’s why so many retired geezers in Florida wear belly packs over their shorts and knit shirts—they’re carrying semiautomatics. It’s a miracle more of them don’t blow their nuts off.
Guidry sat for a moment twisting his tall paper cup on the table, his face pensive as if trying to make a decision. He snapped the cup down on the table and looked up at me, his eyes clear and direct.
“Dix
ie, this is strictly confidential, but I want you to be careful. This murder has psychopath written all over it.”
I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat and stared at him. There’s a fine distinction between a sociopath and a psychopath, and homicide detectives are careful about it. Sociopaths kill for the hell of it, just because they can. Murder is a cool clinical activity for them. Because they don’t see their victims as fellow human beings, there’s nothing personal about it. But when a psychopath kills, it’s personal. Psychopaths kill with a passionate hatred born of irrational fury over real or imagined injustices. Like a venomous brain cancer that consumes reason, psychopathic hatred gains intensity once it’s unleashed, spilling over to include anybody in the way. When they’ve killed once, psychopaths not only feel personally vindicated, they want to kill again.
I said, “Why do you think that? The lipsticked grin?”
“When we removed Conrad Ferrelli’s body, we found a dead kitten under him. The coroner thinks it suffocated under Conrad. But before Conrad fell on it, the kitten’s legs had been broken.”
My stomach quivered. “I don’t understand.”
“My guess is that somebody broke the kitten’s legs and left it in the bushes for Conrad to hear crying. Conrad is on the street, hears the kitten, goes in to see what it is, and the killer gets him while he’s bending over looking at it. If I’m right, it wasn’t the murder that gave the killer satisfaction, it was seeing Conrad’s pain when he found that poor damned kitten.”
I felt swimmy-headed. The thought of somebody doing something so cruel to a kitten was almost more than I could take.
Guidry said, “Most killers get rid of somebody they think needs to die, and that’s the end of it. Psychopaths aren’t like that. They get their jollies from the way their victims die, not because they’re dead. Whoever killed Conrad Ferrelli wanted that hurt kitten to be the last thing he saw.”
“Conrad always drove Reggie to the beach to run, so I don’t know why the killer thought he would be on the street. Or why he was on the street, for that matter. And how could the killer be sure Conrad would hear the kitten and come looking for it?”
“I don’t know. That’s the hole in my theory. I’m just saying it was somebody with a particularly twisted mind who killed Conrad Ferrelli, so I want you to be especially careful.”
My pulse was pounding at the base of my throat. I thought of the feeling I’d had when I came home that afternoon that somebody had been in my apartment. But it had probably been my imagination. It had probably been fear making me paranoid. No sense mentioning it to Guidry and having him think I was a hysterical nut case.
He said, “Don’t go out and try to solve this. It’s too dangerous. Lay low, keep your protection handy, and let me handle it.”
The conversation was over. We both stood up, and he gave my legs in the tall sandals another sweeping glance.
“I’ll see you, Dixie.”
He left me under the thatched roof and walked across the street to disappear inside Ethan Crane’s building. I hoped Ethan wouldn’t be asleep when Guidry got there.
9
Stray rain clouds had moved in while Guidry and I talked, and on the drive home a few sprinkles plopped on the Bronco’s windshield. In the carport, I took the .38 out of my purse and scanned the locks on the storage closets. I wanted to make sure nobody had opened one and was in there ready to pop out at me. I was tense as a lizard under a cat’s paw. Passing clouds gave the air a curious transparency, so that everything seemed covered by yellow Saran Wrap.
Upstairs, I kicked off my high heels, climbed into shorts and a T, and scooted out to make my afternoon runs. Nobody tried to kill me, and nobody jumped out at me in any of the houses.
At Mame’s I found her in Judge Powell’s study, lying on the Persian rug rung in front of a red leather sofa. She had an expression in her eyes that made me uneasy. Animals always know when their lives are drawing to an end, and when they do their eyes get a curiously sad and patient look.
I sat cross-legged on the floor and pulled her into my lap. She sighed and curled herself between my legs with her head on my knee. I thought she probably missed the Powells, so I made my voice as low as possible, hoping I sounded like the Judge.
I sang, “You can put the blame on Mame, boys, put the blame on Mame.”
In a few minutes she crawled out of my lap and trotted to the kitchen to eat some kibble. We made a hasty run into the yard to let her go to the bathroom, but streaks of lightning were flaring across the sky, and we didn’t stay out long. When I left her, she went to the door with me and wagged her tail good-bye.
The same cars that had been in Stevie’s driveway the night before were there again. There was a tasteful wreath on the door now, with a dull gray velvet ribbon topped by a clown’s mask. The mask was stark white, with red lips and a few black marks on the face, remarkably like the photograph of Madam Flutter-By.
When Stevie opened the door, she looked as weary as I felt. Dark circles were under both eyes, and new grooves bracketed her lips. Her face lit when she saw it was me, and she practically reached out and jerked me inside. She put a hand on my back as if she were afraid I would bolt if she didn’t, and steered me down the hall to the living room. The same crowd was drinking and smoking. Denton Ferrelli was standing at the side of the room, his stained face poker stiff.
Stevie said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you all to leave me alone with Dixie now. We have some things to take care of.”
Everybody looked at me standing there in my rumpled cargo shorts, and I could almost hear their sneers.
Marian, Denton’s bitch wife, said, “What kind of things?”
I could feel Stevie’s hand trembling on my back, and I felt like drop-kicking the highball glass out of Marian’s hand.
Stevie took a deep breath and said, “Marian, that’s really none of your business.”
Marian opened her mouth in a snarl, but Denton walked to her side and took her glass. He set it down on the table with a sharp click.
“Some people care more about animals than people, Marian. Let’s leave Stevie and her dog-sitter to their interests.”
He made it sound as if Stevie and I had something dirty going on with Reggie. We stood silently while everybody gathered themselves and straggled out. Denton was the last one out, and he turned to give me a long hostile look before he slammed the door shut.
Stevie seemed to sag, as if she’d used up all her starch in speaking up to them. She waved vaguely toward the kitchen. “I need to talk to you.”
In the kitchen, Reggie’s used food bowl sat on the floor, and the water in his other bowl was cloudy. Stevie sat at the bar and watched while I washed the bowls and put fresh water out for Reggie. I filled the teakettle and put it on the stove to boil and got down two teacups.
I said, “What about food?”
“What about it?”
“Have you had any?”
She considered. “I had some crackers.”
“When?”
She shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“Stevie, you have to eat.” I sounded like Michael.
I rummaged in her freezer and found a box of vegetable lasagna that I popped in the microwave. While it heated I tore romaine leaves into a salad bowl and drizzled them with olive oil. Michael would have clutched his chest at my cavalier way with it, but it was food. The microwave dinged and I slid the lasagna onto a plate and poured a glass of wine. While Stevie ate, I dropped teabags in a yellow teapot on the counter and covered them with boiling water.
Stevie seemed to have forgotten that she’d wanted to talk to me. She polished off the lasagna and salad and drank the wine in one gulp.
I poured her a cup of tea and one for myself and sat down beside her.
She said, “I do all right for a while, and then I feel like I can’t go on.”
“But you will. You’ll do whatever you have to do.”
“Was it like this for you?”
<
br /> I nodded. I didn’t want to tell her that I couldn’t remember what the first few days had been like after Todd and Christy were killed. I’d been deaf and blind and numb. I had no memory of anything.
I said, “It will get easier.”
“When?”
“When it does.”
She nodded as if that made sense.
I said, “Josephine Metzger was hoping Conrad would be buried in the coat she made for him.”
Stevie looked surprised. “She said that?”
“She said he was one of them.”
“That’s true, he was. But Denton and Marian would have a cow if he wore that coat in his coffin.”
“Would you like me to bring it back?”
She blinked back tears and grinned. “Would you? Conrad will love it.”
“I’ll stop there in the morning before I come here.”
I washed up her dinner dishes and left her drinking tea and staring into space. Whatever she’d wanted to talk to me about had drifted away into some mournful void.
A heavy rain shower hit me on the way home and stayed with me all the way. All the blue had left the sky and left it yellow gray, not unlike my mood. Michael was still at the firehouse on his twenty-four-hour shift, and Paco would be leaving soon for his secret job at the telemarketing firm where he wore a transmitter taped under his shirt. I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, and my stomach was pleading for something cheesy, salty, or fried. Preferably all three. In my refrigerator were some jars of mustard and mayonnaise and jelly. In my cupboard were a couple of cans of chopped tomatoes bought in a rash moment when I thought I might make spaghetti sauce sometime, along with a box of Cheerios gone soft with age and humidity.
At my driveway, I kept going, dejectedly making my way through depressing rain to the only possible solution. In the drive-through lane at Taco Bell, I ordered four taco supremes with extra everything. I pulled into a parking space in the front lot and ate them while I watched normal people pass by in twos and threes. I told myself there were lots of other people sitting alone in their cars eating in the rain.
Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund Page 8