I thought about what Guidry had said, that I was using grief to keep the world away. I thought about my mother running away after my father died. I’d always thought she deserted Michael and me because she was too shallow to do the hard thing and raise us alone. I’d always thought I had more courage, more character, more depth. But maybe I didn’t. Maybe my prolonged mourning was really a revolving fear, a hamster wheel I ran on because I didn’t have the courage to move forward. My mother had run away physically. Maybe I had run away emotionally. The question was, What could I do about it? The answer was, I didn’t have the foggiest idea.
With that decided, I went down the hall to the closet and got dressed for my afternoon pet visits.
I carried my .38 by my side as I went downstairs to the Bronco. I could see a few rain-blue clouds out in the Gulf headed toward shore, but the sun was fiercely hot. A pelican dozed in the carport’s shade, along with a couple of great blue herons and an entire chorus of egrets. They all turned their heads to look at me with eyes dulled by afternoon heat, too listless even to flap a feather of alarm when I started the engine.
Michael and Paco were still gone.
My Bronco still had bird shit on it.
Somebody still wanted to kill me.
14
At the Sea Breeze, Tom Hale opened his door before I knocked, his round black eyes peering up anxiously through wire-rimmed glasses. Billy Elliot stood beside Tom’s wheelchair looking a little subdued, probably because Tom was so grim. Tom spun his wheelchair out of the way and motioned me inside.
“Tell me what happened this morning, Dixie.”
I tried giving him a blank look, but he wasn’t having it.
“Everybody in the building knows somebody tried to run you down in the parking lot. Who was it?”
“If I knew, he’d be behind bars by now. It was somebody in one of those pickups with huge tires. Not anybody who lives in the Sea Breeze.”
“He drove straight at you?”
Suddenly cold, I crossed my arms over my chest. “I threw Billy Elliot’s leash aside, Tom. He wasn’t close to me.”
“Good God, Dixie, I wasn’t worried about that!”
We both looked quickly at Billy Elliot to make sure he hadn’t taken offense, but he was smiling with his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
I said, “I guess you heard about Conrad Ferrelli getting murdered.”
“Yeah, it’s all over the news.”
“I was there. I was walking a dog, and I saw Conrad’s car drive away real fast. At the time I thought it was Conrad, but now I know it was his killer.”
“You saw him?”
“No, but he probably thinks I did.”
Tom raised an eyebrow.
“I waved at him, Tom. I even yelled Hey.”
“Shit, Dixie.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“You think the guy in the truck was the one who killed Ferrelli?”
“Who else? Somebody wants me dead, Tom.”
We stared at each other for a minute while the words bounced off the walls. They sounded melodramatic, but they were true.
Tom said, “Look, I can take Billy Elliot for a walk myself. I don’t want you taking that risk again.”
“No way, Tom. I’m not letting that son-of-a-bitch make me change anything. I’ll run with Billy Elliot, and I’ll walk every other dog in my care. I’ll go on about my business same as always. I’ll just do it a lot more carefully.”
“You carrying?”
I patted the gun in my shorts pocket. “You bet, and I’m a damn good shot. I got a first-place marksmanship award at the Police Academy.”
“Yeah, you’re tough.”
“Damn right.”
I grabbed Billy Elliot’s leash, snapped it on his collar, and quick-stepped to the elevator, wishing I felt as tough as I talked. Billy Elliot and I both stopped and looked both ways before we stepped into the parking lot. I wondered if Tom had given Billy Elliot a lecture about how to behave when in the company of a woman who might get herself run over.
Except for my scraped knees complaining, our run was no different than usual. When I took Billy Elliot back upstairs, Tom was in the kitchen busy with his accounting work and merely shouted good-bye. We were both doing a good job of pretending everything was normal.
After Billy Elliot, I only had three other dogs on my list. I walked two of them and then took care of the cats and birds and rabbits before I headed north on Midnight Pass Road for Secret Cove. My mind kept going back to the driver of that truck. At the turn into Secret Cove, my car took over and kept going straight to the dogleg at Higel Avenue. City planners like to keep people on their toes by having streets change identity, so Higel makes a sharp right and becomes Siesta Drive, which goes over the north bridge to the mainland, where it becomes Bay before it crosses Tamiami Trail and becomes Bee Ridge.
I passed Video Renaissance and the tae kwon do studio on Bee Ridge, and turned left on a street of old frame houses where rusted sedans and dented pickups sat in driveways. I parked in front of a big garage with an open bay door and got out, shading my eyes to look inside the darker recess of the garage. Several collectors’ cars sat in half-finished states, and I could hear the whining sound of something grinding on metal at the back of the shop.
Birdlegs Stephenson came out, wiping his hands on a rag and grinning ear to ear. I hadn’t seen Birdlegs in several years, but he was still as skinny as ever, brown hair pulled back in a ducktail, long legs in faded holey jeans, his thin torso covered by a stained Bucs sweatshirt with the neck and sleeves cut out.
In high school, Birdlegs sat in front of me in algebra and fed me answers to stupid test questions like how long will it take a train to travel to Chicago if its smoke is blowing back at thirty miles per hour. Like there are still trains with smoke. That’s how I learned to read papers on somebody else’s desk without appearing to move my eyes. The trick is to tilt your chin upward and let your eyelids droop to half mast. That makes you look as if you’re deep in thought, but in reality you’re staring ahead and down, and if somebody just happens to casually move his test paper to the side of his desk, you can see what he did to solve that idiotic question. If Birdlegs hadn’t let me cheat off his papers, I would have written Who cares? and never would have graduated high school.
He said, “Hey, Dixie, long time no see!”
“How’re you doing, Birdlegs?”
“Can’t complain, how about yourself?”
“Somebody in a hyped-up pickup on huge tires tried to run me down, and I want to find out who it was.”
He raised his eyebrows and lowered his eyelids to look down at me, much the same way I used to look down at his test papers.
“What do you mean, they tried to run you down?”
“I mean I was running in a parking lot and they tried to hit me.”
“Some of those guys put those things up so high they can’t see the ground. Maybe they didn’t know you were there.”
“Trust me, Birdlegs, they knew I was there.”
“Jesus, what’d you do?”
“Hit the ground and let it roll over me.”
“Good God.”
“That’s how I felt about it.”
“Did you see what make the truck was?”
“It was too dark to see anything.”
“What size tires did it have?”
I held my hand flat beside my waist. “About this high.”
He measured the distance to the ground with squinted eyes. “Probably forty-twos, maybe more. Tires that big aren’t safe.”
“Is that what they call a Monster?”
He laughed. “No, Monsters are up on about sixty-six-inch tires. You won’t see any Monsters in a parking lot, just at fairs jumping over cars. What about the rack and pinion?”
“I don’t know anything about racks or pinions, Birdlegs.”
“Probably moved it,” he mused. “Tires that big, they’d have to. Bet they used a chassis and
a lift kit both. Boy, that’s dangerous. Center of gravity that high and no good coil-over suspension system, that thing’d turn over if it hit a piece of gravel.”
“Tough titty if it turns over, Birdlegs. It’s the danger to me I’m worried about.”
“I haven’t heard anybody say tough titty in fifteen years, Dixie. Not since high school.”
“I haven’t matured much.”
“I like that in a person.”
“So do you know anybody who drives a rig like that?”
“Do I look like a redneck to you? Most of those guys are young, feeling their oats, makes them feel big to sit up high looking down on people. Then they get wives and babies and have to come down to earth. Take off the big tires and be like everybody else.”
“This one tried to kill me, Birdlegs. You’ll forgive me if I don’t get misty-eyed over his lost dreams.”
He laughed. “Sorry. I guess I was talking more about myself. Remembering what it was like to do things that dumb. Most of those old boys are okay, though. Just because they drive those dumb high-risers doesn’t make them killers. Tell you what. I’ll ask around, see if anybody I know has any idea who it might have been.”
“I’d appreciate it, Birdlegs.”
“What’re you going to do if you find him? I mean, if you don’t have any proof, you can’t arrest him, can you?”
“I couldn’t arrest him even if I had proof, Birdlegs. I’m not a deputy anymore.”
He reddened, suddenly remembering. “Oh, hell, Dixie, I forgot what happened. I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have mentioned it—”
“It’s okay. Tell me about that car over there.”
Relieved, he looked at the dreamy convertible I was pointing at. It had a glossy red body, black leather interior, lots of shiny chrome, and a sleek silver hood ornament.
“Ain’t that a beauty? That’s a Honda S-six hundred, 1964. Only a few hundred of them still around. Sweetest little car you ever saw. First car Honda mass-marketed. Fifty-seven horsepower engine and a top speed of ninety miles per hour.”
“You did all the work on it?”
“It was a rusted mess. Guy imported it from some place in South America. I’m gonna hate to see it go.”
“What does something like that sell for?”
“Restored like this, about twenty, twenty-five thousand.”
“Is that all? I’d think it would be a lot more.”
“Nah, they’re not in the big leagues, they’re just sweet little cars.”
“Who owns it?”
“Guy named Brossi. Leo Brossi. He collects vintage cars. Buys them and sells them.”
Carefully, I said, “Is he somebody I should have heard of?”
“Nah, he’s not anybody. Just rich. Owns a call center over on Fruitville.”
“Must be a successful call center.”
“Must be. I guess the no-call business hasn’t hurt those places much. They still call me anyway, and I’m on the no-call list. Who has time to report every one of them? They probably get away with it a lot.”
“Is Brossi going to pick the car up soon?”
“Yeah, it’s done.”
“Birdlegs, do you know a state senator named Wayne Black?”
“Sure, Dixie, I hang out with senators and governors and A-rab potentates all the time.”
“How about Quenton Dyer? He’s a banker.”
“Him neither.”
He was beginning to look toward the work he’d left, so I thanked him for his time and started to leave.
“Call me if you find out who might drive that raised truck, okay?”
“Sure thing, Dixie.”
I was tempted to tell him to call me when Leo Brossi came in to pick up his restored Honda S600. I was beginning to be very curious about Leo Brossi.
Mame wasn’t waiting by the door when I got to her house. I found her in the kitchen sitting in front of her food bowl. I knelt beside her and stroked her head.
“Hey, Mame, sorry I’m late. I had to go see somebody about a car.”
She licked the inside of my arm and gave me a forgiving look.
All the kibble was gone, which was a good sign. At least she’d been eating. I washed her bowl and got out the big bag of senior kibble and put about a tablespoon in it in case she got hungry during the night. Then I picked her up and carried her to the lanai for a little play time. She didn’t seem inclined to play, though, so I sat down in a padded glider and held her in my lap, stroking her and gently rocking.
Lanais on Siesta Key are enclosed by screened cages shaped by black or white aluminum ribbing. The Powells’ cage had black ribs and soared two stories high, coming to a gazebolike point above the roof of the house. The swimming pool occupied the far side, and the inner side was protected from the elements by a wide overhang to which the cage was attached. Sitting under the sheltered roof and looking through the screen at the sky and trees and flowers was like being in a luxurious birdcage with a really big water dish.
Songbirds were calling to one another, and young red-shouldered hawks were wheeling above the palms. A line of enormous sunflowers stood at the back of the lot, their fuzzy green stalks twisted hopefully toward the declining sun. A squirrel suddenly raced up the lanai screen holding a sunflower big as a dinner plate. He held the stem in his teeth, with the flower head facing the lanai, so it looked as if the sunflower was zipping up the screen by itself. Mame and I went still and breathless until the moving sunflower disappeared over the roof, and then we looked at each other with wide-eyed amazement.
I said, “My gosh, did you see that?”
Mame didn’t answer, but her eyes were still bright with excitement when I told her good-bye. That racing sunflower had been a once-in-a-lifetime event for both of us.
My feet were dragging when I got out of the Bronco and went to Stevie’s front door. When she opened it, she looked as weary as I felt.
She said, “Thanks for coming by, Dixie.” But she didn’t move out of the doorway, and her voice was flat.
“Do you need me?”
She gave me an apologetic half smile. “Not really. I walked Reggie earlier, and I’m going to turn in early.”
I started to go, and she put out a hand. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate your stopping by. It’s just that everything is so …”
She leaned her head against the edge of the door and closed her eyes, clearly overcome by fatigue and stress.
“Stevie, I understand. You need to rest. I’ll stop by in the morning in case you need anything.”
She gave me a grateful smile and closed her door. Every cell in my body ached as my heavy legs carried me back to the Bronco. With each step, I whispered “Ouch, ouch, shit, fuck, ouch.” I felt as if I had gained about a hundred pounds since my alarm went off at 4 A.M. I hoped Michael and Paco would be there when I got home. Maybe they would have dinner with me and give me some advice. Or at least some pity.
I drove south down Midnight Pass Road, past the village and the fire station where Michael works, past the vacation condos and apartment complexes and waterside restaurants, and finally eased the Bronco down my twisty tree-lined lane. Paco’s car was in the carport, and so was his Harley, but Michael’s car was still gone. I parked next to Paco’s car and gave the storage closets a fast scan to make sure they were still padlocked from the outside. I pulled my .38 from my pocket, holding it out of sight as I pushed the door open. Even with Paco home, I wasn’t taking any chances.
The air under the carport felt like steam rising from a wet dog, but when I stepped into the clear, a whisper of sea breeze moved across my skin. I stopped a moment and looked toward the descending sun, then put my gun back in my pocket. In the presence of such beauty, a weapon of death is an obscenity. The back door opened and Paco strolled out to watch the sunset with me. We didn’t speak, just stood side by side watching an enormous garnet orb touch the sea, hover for a quivering minute, then give itself to the water in a velvet slide that turned sea and sky ruby red.
After a few minutes, I took a deep breath of salty air. Paco squeezed the back of my neck with gentle fingers that knew how to find the point that could stun or kill.
I said, “Where’s Michael?”
“He’s covering for another fireman whose wife had a premature baby. Four-pound boy. It’s little, but they think it’ll be fine.”
“Awwww.”
“You wanta go for sushi?”
My heart lifted. Michael calls sushi expensive bait and won’t touch it, but Paco and I slip off and indulge sometimes when Michael’s gone.
I said, “Ten minutes.”
Paco said, “Make it fifteen, and wear something hot. I’m tired of seeing you in that grunge getup.”
My heart lifted higher. I needed to feel sexy. Sexy feels powerful. And nobody in the world can make a woman feel as sexy as a gay man.
15
I hustled upstairs to shower and smooth my aching self with a sweet coconut scrub that left me smelling faintly of piña colada. When I patted dry, I was tender with my purple rib cage and pelvis bones. Since I was going for sexy, I did a little creative work with makeup to disguise the bruise on my cheek. To cover my scraped knees, I put on a long white knit skirt slit nearly up to my crotch in the back. Then I pawed around in the stacks of knit tops on my closet shelves and found a hip-hugging black halter with a low V neckline. I put on strappy sandals with tall heels, screwed my hair on the top of my head with some errant strands falling down as if by chance, and stuck my .38 in a slim black straw purse.
Before I went out the French doors, I fished my client codebook and key ring out of my backpack. I put the code-book in my purse and stowed the key ring in the floor safe in the corner of my closet. Ordinarily, I feel they’re safe in my apartment when I’m gone, but that night I didn’t feel like anything was safe in my apartment, including me.
Paco was waiting for me downstairs on the wooden deck, and we both made exaggerated sounds of appreciation at each other’s knockout beauty. Except I wasn’t exaggerating. When Paco’s in full prowl, he’s like a healthy young panther, sleek and gorgeous. His shiny black hair was rumpled just enough to look suggestive but not messy, and he wore black slacks made of some mystery fabric that fell without clinging to his legs but molded to one of the best butts in the universe. His shirt was clingy black silk that hugged his broad shoulders and slim torso like hot resin oozing from a cedar plank. I had no doubt that he wore an ankle holster under his black slacks, and possibly some other hidden weapons in his armpit or waistband.
Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund Page 12