Блейз Клемент - Raining Cat Sitters And Dogs

I said, “Wrong on both counts, Bambi. I wasn’t fired and I’m still here.”

Her eyebrows drew together to make a deep vertical groove on her forehead. In a few years, that groove would be permanent and she’d look like an elk. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving woman.

She said, “But you’re not a deputy anymore.”

“I’m a pet sitter.”

In the mirror, her face registered disdain. She ran long manicured fingers through her hair. “I guess you’ve heard what happened to your old skanky friend.”

“I have a lot of old skanky friends, Bambi. Which one do you mean?”

“If you don’t know, then you live on another planet. It’s all over the news.”

I jerked a paper towel from its slot, dried my hands, and wadded the towel into a ball. My hand wanted to throw it at Bambi, but instead I tossed it in the wastebasket and turned on my heel, ready to flounce out. But it’s hard to turn on your heel when you wear Keds, harder still to flounce in cargo shorts. A proper flounce needs ruffles or at least a billowing full skirt. As flounce impaired as I was, though, I managed to get in the last word.

“Nice to see you’re still spreading gossip, Bambi.”

The door sighed closed behind me and I stomped down the hall past the men’s room, the manager’s office, and a public phone. At the counter where people sit if they want TV with their meals, everybody was staring up at the huge screen on the wall. I zipped past them toward the main dining area, and then stopped cold when I heard Maureen’s voice. Weak-kneed, I turned to look up at her magnified image on the TV.

She looked good. She looked like what she was, a not-too-bright woman with great hair and a terrific body who had married money. A lot of money. She wore a hot pink short skirt and close-fitting jacket that had a fluff of something feathery around the edge. The camera was too close to tell what shoes she wore, but only very high heels would have given such a forward thrust to her boobs. Her glossy brown hair was made big as China by curly extensions, her trembling lips were sweetly pink, her eyelashes were thick and dark, and her big brown eyes looking into the camera were moist and pleading. Her voice was so soft it would have made a pit viper weep.

“Please, please bring my husband home to me. I’ve given you what you asked for. You and I know what that was. Now please keep your promise and bring my husband back.”

She raised her chin then, like a woman determined to be brave no matter what.

“Victor, if you can hear me, hang on, darling. I love you very much, and I’m counting the seconds until you’re home with me.”

Bambi Dirk popped from the ladies’ room hallway and passed behind me on her way to the front door. When she saw me watching Maureen, she gave me an evil grin.

“Told you,” she said.

I didn’t answer. I was fresh out of witty comebacks. Besides, what she’d said was apparently true. Maureen was all over the news. Having been all over the news myself one time, that wasn’t what bothered me. What bothered me was knowing that Victor’s kidnappers had said they’d kill him if Maureen told anybody he’d been taken. Instead of keeping quiet, she’d gone on national TV and blabbed it to the world.

Maureen was dumb, but she wasn’t that dumb.

The close-up shot changed to a long view of Maureen’s lime green gate and the palatial raspberry mansion behind it. The gate opened to allow some official-looking men to surround Maureen and help her through it. Then the gate swung shut to keep out a crowd of newspeople holding cameras and notebooks, all of them shouting questions.

As the camera followed the little group escorting Maureen to her house, an announcer’s over-voice said, “That was a rerun of a press conference called this morning by the wife of Victor Salazar.”

While I was thinking, A press conference? the announcer’s voice continued.

“Mr. Salazar was allegedly kidnapped three days ago, and Mrs. Salazar received a ransom demand from his kidnappers asking for a million dollars in cash to be left at a specific location. Mrs. Salazar says that she complied with the demand, but her husband has not been returned. According to a spokesperson with the sheriff’s office, Mrs. Salazar has not contacted them regarding her husband’s kidnapping. The spokesperson stressed that people who believe a loved one has been kidnapped should immediately contact their local law enforcement agency for help.”

The scene switched to three experts with ponderous faces and even more ponderous opinions about the proper way people should respond to a kidnapping. I doubted that any of them would recommend Maureen’s way.

I went to my booth and plopped down on the seat. Judy had my coffee waiting, and I drank it in a little dark cloud. The woman I’d just watched begging for her husband’s return must have been up all night getting her hair and makeup right before she called a press conference. The pink suit must have been carefully chosen too, not just to harmonize with the raspberry house, but because a woman in pink looks feminine and vulnerable but with plucky inner strength. People just eat that crap up, and Maureen knew it. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Maureen had put on a big phony show for the camera.

For the first time, I wondered if Maureen really wanted her husband back. I had no idea what kind of marriage she and Victor had, but I knew that she loved being rich. If her marriage ended, she wouldn’t be so rich, not even after getting the considerable amount the law would allow. But if Victor were dead, she would get it all. You don’t have to be a money-grubbing bimbo to know that when money is the goal, all is definitely better than some.

Judy stopped by my side to top off my coffee. “Who’re you planning to kill?”

“What?”

“You look like you’re plotting to knock somebody off.”

I didn’t want to tell her I was pretty sure my old high school friend was scheming to get her husband knocked off. For one thing, it was too awful to talk about, and for another, if I was right about what I suspected Maureen was doing, I had played a part in her scheme.

Some truths are so solid there’s no point in questioning them. Gravity, for example, or two plus two being four. Luck is another one. Everybody knows that luck surrounds some people. Luck allows a fortunate few to do stupid things and never pay the consequences.

I am not one of those people.

It didn’t matter that I’d tried to get Maureen to call the cops and report Victor’s kidnapping. It didn’t matter that I’d helped her because I felt a debt to an old friend. It didn’t matter that my intentions had all been good. The fact was that I’d done something really dumb, and I could feel the icy breath of consequences creeping up on me.

17

Everything was quiet when I got home, with that peculiar middle-of-the-day lassitude that mutes both surf and birdcall. Ella was in the living room on the love seat, and we spent a few minutes assuring each other that there had never been anybody else in our entire lives that we loved as much as we loved each other. She purred extra loud to try to convince me that she wouldn’t drop me like a hot mouse the minute Michael came home.

I’ve loved Michael all my life so I understood how she felt. I carried her to the kitchen and gave her fresh water, then headed for the shower. On the way, I flipped on the CD player to let Pete Fountain’s sweet clarinet perfume the air.

I usually do my best thinking while water is spraying on me, but this time my thoughts were too scattered to come up with any conclusions. I told myself I should phone Maureen because I was her oldest friend and she was in distress. I reminded myself that fifteen years had passed since we were in high school, that her phone number was unlisted, and that I didn’t have it.