Блейз Клемент - Raining Cat Sitters And Dogs

It was probably my imagination, but her eyes seemed to light up at the sound of Michael’s name. Lots of females have that reaction.

Outside, the sky was dark and dense as dryer lint. Along the shoreline, coquinas and mole crabs fed on the surf’s salty broth of nutrients as gulls gobbled down the feeding mollusks. Nature is efficient. Going down the stairs, I trailed dew-moistened fingertips along the rail. In the carport, a snowy egret who was balanced on one knobby-kneed leg atop the roof of Paco’s truck twisted his head full circle to watch me pass. A brown pelican on my Bronco unfolded himself, spread his wings to their full six-and-a-half-foot span, and flapped away.

I made it to Midnight Pass Road without waking the parakeets in the trees, and turned north. Tom Hale’s condo is only a short hop away, so I was at his door in five minutes. Tom was still asleep, but Billy Elliot was waiting for me with a big happy grin. We had the parking lot entirely to ourselves for our run, and when I took him upstairs Billy’s tail was wagging in pure happiness. I read somewhere that you can tell how satisfied a dog is by the direction its tail goes when it wags. If it circles to the right, the dog is happy. To the left, not so much. Billy’s tail was definitely doing clockwise circles.

There was still no sound in Tom’s apartment, but as I unsnapped Billy’s leash I noticed a filmy pink scarf tossed on the sofa. It had been a long time since Tom had allowed a female guest to sleep over, and I was glad to see that he’d quit sulking over the loss of the last girlfriend. Especially since she hadn’t been nearly good enough for him and Billy Elliot.

I made a circle of my thumb and forefinger and whispered, “Awright!” to Billy. He waved his tail to the right.

I had two new clients that morning, a husky male Shorthair named T-Quartz and his house mate, a snow-white Persian named Princess. T-Quartz was stolid and watchful, not ready yet to commit himself, but Princess threw caution to the winds and immediately made me her new best friend. I wondered if their names had affected their personalities. I wasn’t familiar with their house yet, so I spent a bit longer with them and got to Max and Ruthie’s house later than usual.

Ruthie and I were now so slick at our pill-pushing routine that it had become performance art. We could probably have sold tickets and drawn a crowd. Max beamed while we showed how smooth we were, and then he took Ruthie in his arms and told her she was absolutely the smartest cat in the entire world.

I left them basking in mutual adoration and zipped to Big Bubba’s house. As I turned into his driveway, a dark sedan passed in the street behind me. The car slowed almost to a stop, and in the rearview mirror I saw the driver’s head turn toward me. It was just a glimpse, but he looked like Jaz’s stepfather. I put the Bronco in reverse to get a better look at him, but the car sped away.

I didn’t like the idea of Jaz’s stepfather seeing me in Reba’s driveway. If he had something to do with gangs sent out to burglarize houses, I didn’t want him to catch on that Reba was away.

Inside, Big Bubba squawked with excitement when I removed the cover from his cage. “Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me?”

I laughed and opened his cage door. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

He laughed too, as if he’d heard the funniest joke in the world. I left him climbing to the top of his cage and went to the kitchen for his banana and apple slices. For an extra treat, I got a couple of crackers as well. When I went back in the sunroom, he had sailed to the floor and was at the slider waiting for me to open it so he could go out on the lanai. Big Bubba was one smart bird.

As I opened the door, I said, “Your mama will be home in a few days.”

He said, “Did you miss me?” He was smart, but repetitive.

While Big Bubba and his wild cousins yelled the latest avian news to one another, I put down clean carpet and fresh food and water. Then I got out the hand vac and sucked up all his seed hulls. When everything was clean and organized, I turned on Big Bubba’s TV to his favorite cop show.

Except his cop show had been interrupted by a news flash. A hyperventilating newswoman was standing on a dock pointing to a boat belonging to the Sarasota Sheriff’s Department. The boat was empty, but the woman wanted the world to know that it had recently been occupied by a dead body.

“The dead man is believed to be Victor Salazar,” she said. She smiled while she said it, but she pulled her eyebrows close together to show that she could be as empathetic as the next person about a dead body. “Mr. Salazar was kidnapped several days ago, and his body was found early this morning by some fishermen. His widow, Maureen Salazar, is in seclusion and has not issued a statement since her husband’s body was found.”

Saddened and vaguely alarmed, I stood motionless as the scene shifted to a newsman back at the studio, who gave the particulars about Victor Salazar and his business. Salazar was sixty years old and a native of Venezuela, he said, and had extensive holdings in Venezuelan oil production. He didn’t mention anything about oil trading, just oil ownership.

I was surprised at Victor’s age. I’d thought he was a lot older because he’d seemed ancient to me when Maureen married him. But if he was only sixty, that meant he’d been forty-five when he married Maureen, and that didn’t seem so old now. On the other hand, compared to Harry’s thirty-three, sixty was old.

As I got Big Bubba back into his cage, my mind raced through all the ways I might get in touch with Maureen and tell her how sorry I was. Either by design or negligence, she had never given me a phone number, and I was sure it would be unlisted.

I changed the station to the Nature channel, told Big Bubba I would be back in the afternoon, and left him. He seemed subdued, as if he sensed my mood.

Back in my Bronco, I called Information and asked for Victor Salazar’s phone number. As I had expected, it was unlisted. I asked for Maureen Salazar’s number. It was unlisted too. Of course the numbers were unlisted, they were rich people. Harry Henry probably had a phone number for Maureen, but I felt squeamish about talking to Harry again. I might find out more than I wanted to know.

I needed breakfast, but before I went to the diner I drove half a block to Hetty Soames’s house. At least she might have good news about Jaz.

She didn’t.

Looking strained, Hetty said, “Dixie, something has happened to that child. She liked me and Ben. She wouldn’t just disappear without saying goodbye.”

I said, “I’m sorry, Hetty.”

She said, “I have a really bad feeling about this. A really bad feeling.”

I did too, but I didn’t say so.

As I left Hetty’s house to go pounce on breakfast, another dark sedan pulled close behind me. At first I suspected it was the same one I’d thought was driven by Jaz’s stepfather, but some other cars got between us after I turned onto Midnight Pass Road and I decided I was being paranoid. Half the cars on the street are dark sedans, and one looks pretty much like all the rest.

As I entered the Village Diner, I glanced at the big-screen TV over the counter. It was turned low enough not to bother people who didn’t want the latest bad news with their breakfast, but high enough so people at the counter could hear every word. I caught the name “Victor Salazar” and the word “kidnapped” but I didn’t slow down.

Judy was prompt with my coffee. She said, “Did you hear about that kidnapped man? His wife paid them a million dollars and they drowned him anyway.”

“I heard.”

“Damn, if she’d known they were going to drown him anyway, she could have saved herself a million bucks.”