Блейз Клемент - Raining Cat Sitters And Dogs

His eyes shifted to me, as if he still hoped I knew where Jaz was.

Guidry said, “Could she have run away?”

“Her things were all there. If she’d run away, she would have taken her personal things.”

Guilt was pouring over me like hot oil. I hadn’t encouraged Hetty to give Jaz sanctuary, but I hadn’t discouraged it, either. With the best of intentions, Hetty and I had given Jaz an escape from boredom and loneliness, but the escape may have caused her to be killed.

I said, “I followed Jaz yesterday morning when she was on her way back to the hotel. She ran into the nature preserve behind the hotel, right at a spot where a Hummer was waiting at the curb. I think the guys from L.A. were in that Hummer. If I hadn’t been on the street, they would have grabbed Jaz then. They probably went back yesterday afternoon and caught her when she was on the way back to Hetty’s house.”

We all fell silent, each of us knowing the worst might already have happened.

The marshal took out a card and handed it to Guidry. “We’ll cooperate with any local investigation involving one of our charges, Lieutenant, but I doubt you’ll find the girl alive.” Bitterly, he added, “Without her, those guys will walk.”

With a barely civil nod to me, he walked to his car and drove away.

I still didn’t know his name and I still didn’t like him. On the other hand, he had tried to keep Jaz safe. At least he got credit for that.

I said, “How did you know he was here?”

“I didn’t. I came to talk to you about something else.”

Even with my heart heavy because of Jaz, a little bubble like a champagne blip rose through the sorrow.

He said, “I’d like to talk to you about the murder of Victor Salazar.”

I should have known. Now that Victor was dead, the investigation was no longer just a kidnapping but also a homicide. Guidry wasn’t here for any personal reason. He was here strictly as a homicide detective.

The little bubble took on feet, and one of its feet was mired in quicksand. I could almost hear the sucking sound it made as it pulled its foot up and got ready to stand its ground.

I said, “You’d better come upstairs.”

22

I went up the stairs ahead of Guidry. I felt like a bear with a thorn in its paw. Guidry could just ask me his detective questions and leave. If the only thing he was interested in was what I knew about homicides, that’s all he would get.

I opened the french doors and pushed into my hot apartment. Ella was gone, which meant that Michael had come home earlier, moved her to his house, and then left again.

I said, “Sit down, I’ll turn on the air conditioner.”

He dropped to the love seat while I scooted into the bedroom and switched on the AC unit installed in the wall. I tossed my bag on the bed and went into the living room to face the music.

I said, “Let me save you some time. I knew all along about Victor Salazar being kidnapped. His wife is an old friend of mine, and she came right after she got the call from the kidnappers and told me. She said they’d demanded a million dollars in cash. They wanted it left in the gazebo at Maureen’s boat dock. Maureen refused to let me call any law enforcement agency, and she asked me to go with her to deliver the money. I agreed to do it, and she came here and got me. After we drove to her house, she asked me to carry the money to the gazebo alone. I did what she asked, and she brought me home.”

Flat voiced, Guidry said, “You carried a million dollars down to Mrs. Salazar’s dock and left it for kidnappers.”

I firmed my jaw and looked him in the eye. “It isn’t illegal to pay off kidnappers, and that’s what Maureen chose to do. She said it was what Victor had always told her to do if he got kidnapped.”

Guidry said, “How well did you know Victor Salazar?”

“Barely. He and Maureen went off somewhere to get married, and I don’t think I was in the same room with him more than once or twice. He wasn’t what you’d call friendly.”

“What do you know about his business?”

“Maureen said he was an oil broker.”

“Tell me about the million dollars.”

“It was in twenty-dollar bills. Maureen put it in a pink duff el bag.”

“You saw the money?”

I crossed my legs, and a muscle twitched in Guidry’s jaw.

I said, “The money was already in the duff el bag when Maureen came to get me.”

“So you didn’t actually see it.”

Fine hairs on my arms stood up. “What are you getting at?”

Guidry studied me for a moment. “You trust Mrs. Salazar?”

My finger traced uneasy loops on my knee. “Maureen was a good friend in high school.”

“Honest and aboveboard?”

I cleared my throat. “I wouldn’t say Maureen was dis honest. Not really. Not much.”

He didn’t answer, and when I finally looked at him, I knew he was waiting for an explanation. A personal explanation.

I said, “It was complicated. We both had alcoholic parents who’d abandoned us. Nobody else understood what that was like, so we sort of supported each other.”

He let a beat go by, then said, “Mrs. Salazar told me she’d talked to you and that you’d delivered the money. I just wanted to corroborate what she said.”

I took a deep breath. “On the news, they’re saying that Victor drowned. Is that true?”

He shook his head. “He was already dead when somebody dumped him out of a boat.”

“How?”

“Contact shot to the forehead.”

“Like gangland execution style?”

“What makes you think that?”

I shrugged. “On TV crime shows, when somebody’s shot in the forehead, it always means organized crime.”

“You have any reason to think Victor Salazar was part of organized crime?”

“I told you, all I know about Victor Salazar is what Maureen has told me, and she says he’s an oil broker. You know what an oil broker does?”

He said, “Salazar’s ankles were tied to an anchor. Some snook fishermen snagged him in the Venice inlet by the riprap.”

In warm water, it doesn’t take long for a dead body to accumulate enough gas to float to the surface—but not a dead body bound to a heavy weight.

I said, “If he was attached to an anchor—”

Guidry compressed his lips as if he was afraid he might smile. “The rope they used was too long.”

My mouth tried to find something to say, but all I could do was stare at him and imagine a dead body bobbing upright just under the water’s surface, with a rope running from its ankles to an anchor on the silty bottom.

For Guidry, the fact that Victor had been anchored with a rope so long that it allowed him to float to the surface was an amusing fact in an otherwise gruesome homicide. He probably wasn’t even terribly surprised, since most criminals are caught because they do stupid things that make it easy to catch them.

For me, the too-long rope was a red flag that signaled more strongly than ever that Harry Henry had been involved in Victor’s kidnapping. Harry was the only person in the world dumb enough to anchor a dead body with a too-long rope.

Guidry and I didn’t have much to say to each other after that. We said our goodbyes and he left, each of us mumbling something about talking later. I didn’t know how Guidry felt, but I felt oddly ashamed, as if I’d blundered into an X-rated movie and hoped nobody saw me.

I would never have imagined Harry Henry capable of kidnapping or murdering anybody, but every intuitive bone in my body thrummed that he was up to his handsome cheekbones in Victor’s death. Harry had been in love with Maureen since we were in high school, he was loyal as a dog, and if she had asked him to kidnap Victor, he would have done it. But would he commit murder for her?