Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund

by Blaize Clement

  It’s true. I can be standing in line at the supermarket or the bank or the post office and people will inevitably start telling me the most intimate details of their lives. It’s as if they’ve been waiting for me to show up so they can unload all their secrets. I don’t know why that happens. I don’t invite it. I don’t even want to know other people’s secrets. It’s just something I’m stuck with, like skin that burns easily.

  I said, “Gabe Marks does some kind of work for Leo Brossi. That’s where Priscilla met him, at the call center Brossi owns.”

  “All-Call.”

  Once again, I was surprised.

  Guidry saw it on my face and lowered his eyebrows. “You’re not the only one getting information, Dixie.”

  “They’re all connected, Guidry—Denton Ferrelli, Leo Brossi, Gabe Marks.”

  “Leo Brossi and Denton Ferrelli are an odd combination. Denton Ferrelli is a champagne criminal, smooth, college-educated, well-connected. His contacts are lobbyists and politicians and mob bosses. He’s kept his hands clean, always had somebody else do his dirty work. Leo Brossi came up through the streets, served time for pimping, drug dealing, extortion.”

  “He’s the one who does Denton’s dirty work?”

  “More like Denton is the silent partner, so Leo takes the hit. He’s the one indicted, the one fined, the one with a record. It adds to his gangster charisma, and Denton undoubtedly greases his palm liberally to keep him quiet. With Denton’s political connections, he’s able to keep Leo’s fines and sentences to a minimum, so it’s a good deal for both of them.”

  My fork was suddenly too heavy to hold. “I think it’s pretty clear what happened. Conrad pulled the plug on Denton’s casino boat, and he was getting ready to look deeper into Denton’s other schemes, so Denton got Brossi’s snake-catching boy Gabe to kill him. He used one of the darts he uses to capture alligators. Then they had to kill Stevie, because she was going to take Conrad’s place heading the trusts. And Gabe’s trying to kill me because he thinks I saw him driving Conrad’s car.”

  I hadn’t really known all that until I’d started saying it, and then it had all come together. What I didn’t say was that Gabe now had another reason for wanting to kill me. I had humiliated him in front of Priscilla, and Gabe wasn’t the kind of man to let humiliation go unpunished, especially humiliation from a woman. Inside my flesh, my bones suddenly felt thin and brittle. I reached for my coffee cup, but my hand was shaking so much that I changed my mind and put it in my lap.

  Guidry’s eyes were bleak. I knew what he was thinking. Denton Ferrelli had important business and political friends ready to vouch for his character and his whereabouts when Conrad and Stevie were killed. Furthermore, not a scintilla of evidence had come to light that put Denton Ferrelli or Gabe Marks at either murder scene. Everything that pointed to Denton as the one who had planned the murders, if not the one who had done the actual killing, was based on conjecture, not on actual evidence. The only person who could implicate him would be Gabe Marks, and there wasn’t a chance in hell he would do that because it would put him in the electric chair. Without hard evidence, neither Denton Ferrelli nor Gabe Marks would ever be indicted.

  Guidry said, “I know you’re not going to like hearing this, but would you consider leaving town for a while?”

  “I’m not running away, Guidry. Gabe may kill me, but he won’t make me run away.”

  He didn’t look surprised.

  Now that I’d laid out the reasons why Gabe Marks was probably going to kill me, I went speechless. Guidry didn’t say anything else either. He slipped a hand inside his jacket, pulled out a slim wallet, and laid bills on the table. I gathered myself to stand up, but he leaned across the table toward me.

  “About the newspaper photograph in your floor safe.”

  The old sick feeling of shame and fury began to roil in my stomach.

  Guidry said, “Forensics didn’t get any prints from it.”

  “I didn’t think they would.”

  “You know what your problem is, Dixie?”

  “Plenty of people have told me what my problem is, Guidry. Spare me your opinion.”

  “You never got to finish the howl. You had a good one going, and they stopped it. They had to, seeing you probably would have done serious damage to that fool reporter if they hadn’t grabbed you. But that stopped the howl coming up from your guts. It’s still down there, and you need to finish it. You won’t be well until you do.”

  Nobody had used the word well about me before, as if I weren’t well now, as if I were sick. I looked up at Guidry and checked the expression in his eyes, looking for the slightest sign of ridicule. His gray eyes were clear and direct. Not pitying, not condescending, not even sympathetic. Maybe not even kind. Just direct. Guidry said what he thought, and he thought I needed to finish the howl that had been stopped three years ago.

  I didn’t answer him, and he didn’t seem to expect me to. Wordlessly, we walked across the street to the hospital parking lot and got into our respective cars.

  Afternoon rain clouds had rolled in while we were in the restaurant, putting everything into shadow and stirring up a breeze that fluttered palm fronds and bougainvillea branches. Thunder growled in the distance and thin traces of lightning flitted in outlying purple clouds. We were in for a storm for sure.

  Before he drove away, Guidry gave me a wave that looked a bit like a soldier’s salute. I started the engine and sat for a moment letting the AC cool the car. It was early for my afternoon rounds, but if I hurried I might get them over before the thunderstorm hit. Besides Mame, I had three other dogs on my list. I could get away with a short run with two of them, but the third was Billy Elliot, and Billy would be a quivering mass of nerves if he didn’t get his usual long race. I pulled into a side street that would take me back to the key and Billy Elliot. Sometimes you have to put aside the possibility that somebody will kill you and just get on with life.

  I called Michael while I was in the elevator in Tom Hale’s building and explained where I was and what I was doing. I promised I’d cut all my visits short and get home early. He didn’t lecture me, just promised he’d have dinner waiting. Grateful for not having to hear his worry, I didn’t tell him I’d just eaten a late lunch.

  Billy Elliot and I ran like banshees in the parking lot, both of us looking up now and then at the encroaching dark clouds. Back in his apartment, I handed him off to Tom and scooted out without taking time for chitchat. My two other dogs were nervous about the thunder and willing to make their runs just long enough to squat and do their business and then head back home. I didn’t plan on walking Mame at all, so I made quick stops at the cats’ and birds’ houses. They were all slightly on edge with the instinctive knowledge that animals have when the earth is about to let rip with a quake or a big storm. I gave them fresh water and food and a little conversation and then went to Secret Cove.

  I found Mame in Judge Powell’s study, lying morosely with her nose on her front paws. I carried her outside to use the bathroom and invited her to play fetch on the lanai, but she wasn’t interested. In the kitchen, most of the kibble I’d put out for her that morning was still in her bowl. I took a Jubilee Wafer into the study and held it in the palm of my hand so she could take it in her mouth. Mame loved Jubilee Wafers the way I love bacon. She gave me a patient look and took it, but she didn’t chew it, and I had the distinct impression that she was waiting for me to leave so she could spit it out.

  Thunder cracked overhead, and I gave Mame a quick kiss and left her. I told myself she was safe and dry. The Powells had been adamant that I was not to have anybody stay with her in their house, but I didn’t feel good about leaving her. I didn’t feel good at all.

  I felt even worse when I swung around the circle to check on Reggie and a deputy on guard duty told me Denton Ferrelli had taken him away.

  The wind was up by now, bending saplings and whipping palm fronds like flapping flags. Through the thick trees and foliage, it sounded much
worse than it was, like a hurricane gale. Ominous thunder was rumbling all around too, so that standing listening to the deputy I felt as if I were in a dark cave with a bass drum’s endless echoes bouncing off the walls.

  Angry, I said, “You let Denton Ferrelli take Reggie?”

  “He’s the next of kin, ma’am. Who are you?”

  I didn’t answer, just got back in the Bronco and headed home. I was nobody. I had no right to Reggie, and Denton Ferrelli did. But the truth was that Reggie going off with Denton Ferrelli was almost surely Reggie going off to his death. I didn’t know how I could save him, but I knew I had to try.

  When I got home, a rain-colored car was parked beside the carport, and a man in a white short-sleeved dress shirt and dark polyester pants was standing beside it talking to Paco. When I drove up they both looked around with almost stealthy expressions. Paco backed away with a dismissive wave, and the man opened his car door and got in. His shoes were dull dark leather with thick rubber soles. He wore white socks. Somebody should tell those federal guys that white socks are a dead giveaway.

  He made a sharp U-turn and headed down the lane toward Midnight Pass Road, and I sprinted through quickening rain to my stairs, pushing the remote to raise the shutters as I ran. Inside my dark apartment, I switched on lights and hurried to the bathroom to clean up before dinner. By the time I was out of the shower and dressed in threadbare old jeans and a stretchy T, the rain was coming down hard and fast.

  My answering machine was blinking, so I stabbed the PLAY button and skipped through the messages. I stopped when I heard Pete’s voice and let it play to the end.

  “Dixie, Priscilla and I talked on the way to the airport, and I learned something … maybe it’s … she said Gabe spent Sunday night with her, and he had a little kitten with him … she thought he’d brought it to her, but when he left Monday morning he took it with him … she said he left a little before five, but I saw him leaving in his truck about seven that morning … I don’t know where he’d been between the time he left her and the time I saw him, but I thought it might be something you should know … may not be relevant.”

  I stood looking at the machine while pictures flashed like a montage in my head. The box of free kittens I’d seen Monday morning on Midnight Pass Road could have been put out Sunday evening. Maybe the box of kittens had activated Denton’s need to inflict emotional pain. Gabe could have walked to Secret Cove from Priscilla’s apartment, killed Conrad, and driven Reggie to Crescent Beach. From there, it would have been an easy walk back to Priscilla’s for his truck. But Denton Ferrelli had to have been present when Conrad was killed. Denton had to have been the one who got Conrad to stop his car and step into the woods where the kitten lay.

  I backed away from the answering machine as if it were a ticking bomb. I’d had about all I could take for the day. I couldn’t absorb anything else. On the porch, I lowered the shutters and pulled a yellow slicker over my head before I ran down the steps and across the deck. A golden light glowed through the kitchen’s bay window, and I could see Michael and Paco moving around inside. That was my beacon, my safe harbor.

  23

  I opened the back door and slipped into the kitchen, hurrying to shut the door behind me and trying to shed the slicker without making a puddle on the floor. The kitchen was steamy from an oversized stainless-steel soup pot on the stove. The pot sent out such a tantalizing aroma that my stomach forgot it had eaten in the last four hours. Let’s face it—my stomach is like a female cat. Let a female cat be mounted by a horny tom and she automatically goes into heat. Let my nose get a whiff of spicy food, and my stomach automatically feels lust.

  Two glasses of red wine were already at places set for Michael and me on the wide butcher-block island, and a glass of iced tea waited for Paco. Michael was at the stove stirring whatever was in the pot, and Paco was transferring leafy salad from a big wooden bowl to three small ones.

  Michael waggled a long wooden spoon at me. “We’ve got gumbo.”

  “New Orleans gumbo?”

  “You know any other kind?”

  “Can I do something?”

  “You can put rice in these bowls.”

  I spooned rice from a steamer into three wide bowls stacked by the stovetop. Michael ladled dark gumbo onto the rice and set the bowls on plates. Paco hauled out two crusty loaves of French bread from the wall oven, wrapped them in a clean towel, and tossed them on the butcher block. We all took our seats. By tacit agreement, we would enjoy dinner before we talked about anything that might spoil our pleasure.

  The gumbo was in a roux so dark it was almost black, redolent with spice and shrimp and crab and oysters, flavors so exquisitely married that I had to be strict with myself not to make orgasmic whimpers. Nobody in the world can make gumbo like Michael. Well, maybe some New Orleans chef in a little café hidden in a narrow alley known only to the privileged cognoscenti does, but I don’t know him. Guidry might know him, Guidry, who was from New Orleans … Guidry, who was not Italian but something else … Guidry, who was secretive about his first name … Guidry, who had called me a liar in French and told me I needed to finish the howl I’d started three years ago.

  Paco cleared his throat and I jerked my mind away from Guidry. My bowl was empty and Michael and Paco were looking at me as if they’d been trying to get my attention for a good while.

  Michael said, “I’ve been talking to some people with offshore racers, guys who know who’s who on the water. They say Denton Ferrelli has a really sweet Donzi Thirty-eight ZR that can easily do ninety miles an hour. He docks it at the Longboat Key Moorings next to the Harborside Golf Club.”

  “I know. He takes it out for a run in the bay every morning.”

  “That’s what I mean. Even watching out for manatees, he could kill his brother in Secret Cove and be back at the Moorings in under twenty minutes. Fifteen maybe.”

  I hadn’t realized he could have moved so quickly. If what Michael said was true, Denton could have left Siesta Key as late as six-thirty and still have arrived at the Longboat Key Moorings before seven. From there, all he had to do was stroll next door to the first tee.

  I said, “If he did, nobody saw him dock at Siesta Key. It probably wasn’t Denton who actually killed Conrad. The killer used a dart gun filled with a drug used to capture big alligators. A thug named Gabe Marks makes his living capturing poisonous snakes and alligators, and he uses the same drug. He’s the one who tried to run me down with his truck. I met him today, and I think he could kill somebody without batting an eye.”

  They were both looking at me with identical expressions of dread.

  Michael said, “You don’t think Ferrelli had anything to do with it?”

  I thought of the red-lipstick smile slashed on Conrad’s face. Of the mutilated kitten for Conrad to see just before he died. Of the photograph of herself as a man for Stevie to see. Only Denton would have got malicious satisfaction from those acts of psychological sadism.

  “I think he was there, but I think it was Gabe who drove Conrad’s car away.”

  Paco said, “Denton Ferrelli is a big player. The Feds have been trying to nail him for money laundering for years, but he always manages to wiggle loose.”

  I said, “Is that why the guy in the white socks was here?”

  He shifted uneasily on his stool. “That was for something else.”

  I looked straight at Paco. “Denton Ferrelli and Leo Brossi are connected at the butt, and they’re probably involved with the Mafia. I’ve been told that Brossi’s call center may be a cover for an identity-theft operation.”

  Only somebody who knew him well would have noticed the way Paco’s lips got firmer at the corners. Very carefully, he said, “Every investigation has to focus on one crime and one crime only, Dixie.”

  Michael stood up and began gathering the plates. “There’s another baguette in the oven, and I have chocolate butter.”

  Paco and I went silent and big-eyed. Hell, offer me hot French bread with choc
olate butter to smear on it, and I forget all about the possibility that I might be murdered. Michael tossed the hot loaf on the butcher block for us to pull apart with our fingers. He set out a bowl of soft butter mixed with dark melted chocolate. He poured cups of black coffee laced with cinnamon. A west wind howled through the old oaks outside, and rain drummed against the windows and on the roof. But we were inside, safe and dry, and we had bread and chocolate and coffee.

  I rinsed our dishes and put them in the dishwasher while Michael transferred leftover gumbo to the freezer containers to take to the firehouse. Paco went upstairs and dressed in his All-Call khakis and dark shirt. He and I left at the same time, charging through the driving rain in two different directions. As I went inside my French doors and lowered the storm shutters, Paco’s headlights swung out of the carport.

  I hung my wet slicker over the showerhead to drip into the tub. Rain clattered on the roof and porch in an unrelenting din. I put on a Patsy Cline CD, but it was a tinny sound compared to the storm, and it didn’t calm my twitchy nerves. I tried some mellow jazz, but that didn’t work either. I went into my office-closet and entered my visits for the day in my record book. I wrote up a couple of invoices. I went to the kitchen window and looked through the heart-shaped iron thing at the tossing treetops.

  I went in the bathroom and cleaned the sink and toilet and polished the water faucets until they were shiny. I spritzed the mirror over the bathroom sink with Windex and wiped away the mist. My face appeared in the arc made by my paper towel, my eyes looking back at me with a quizzical challenge. Who are you trying to kid?

  I looked away and concentrated on cleaning the glass, but I finally had to look at myself again. I couldn’t deny the truth any longer, not even to myself. I was attracted to Lieutenant Guidry. The shock of it was like a blast of arctic air. It was not only damn bad timing, what with a killer after me and all, but I hadn’t expected to ever want another man after Todd. And certainly not another cop. But there it was, and I didn’t know what to do about it.