Блейз Клемент - Raining Cat Sitters And Dogs

My mind felt like a pinball machine, ricocheting between awful images of Jaz taken by young men who wanted to keep her from testifying against them in a murder trial, and the possibility that two people I’d known and liked practically all my life might have colluded to kill a man.

And then there was Michael, who was downstairs with a hand swollen from hitting a U.S. marshal. I had caused him to turn into an avenging angel, and all his vengeance had proven unnecessary. He probably felt foolish, and I needed to go down and explain everything to him.

But as I started down the stairs, Michael slammed out of his kitchen door and strode across the deck to the carport like a man on a mission. He didn’t even notice me on the stairs, just got in his car and peeled out.

Everybody but me seemed to have a definite purpose.

Wearily, I went back inside, took a long shower, and crawled into bed. When I woke, I was a lot less tired but no less depressed about the state of my world. A peek over the porch railing at the cars in the carport told me that Michael had come home, so I got dressed in a hurry and went down to talk to him. It was time to tell my big brother everything that was going on.

I found him and Ella in the kitchen, Ella at her preferred spot on a barstool, and Michael at the cooktop stirring something simmering in a huge pot.

I sniffed the air. “Is that chili?”

Even to me, my voice sounded pathetically hopeful. Michael waved his wooden spoon toward the butcher-block island.

“Get a bowl, I’ll give you some.” Then he did a double take at my face. “Other than kicking U.S. marshals down your stairs, what else have you been up to?”

I got one of our grandmother’s red-fired chili bowls out of the cupboard and handed it to him. I poured myself a mug of coffee from the pot heating on the counter.

Michael ladled dark brown chili into the bowl, put Godzilla-sized pinches of grated cheddar cheese and chopped onions on top.

“Hold on,” he said. “I’ve got corn sticks ready to come out of the oven.”

Ella and I watched raptly while he opened the door on the wall oven and hauled out two special pans filled with steaming golden brown cornbread sticks. With synchronized flips of his wrists, he turned both pans over a dish towel spread on the countertop, and with a smart rap sent hot cornbread sticks tumbling out. He put two on a plate for me and set it on the butcher block next to my chili.

I sat down at the island bar. “I guess you’ve heard about Maureen’s husband being kidnapped.”

He did a get-on-with-it motion with his hand. It wasn’t swollen, just a little red.

He said, “I know some snook fishermen found his body.”

Careful not to let the inside of my lips touch it, I crunched the tip of one of the hot cornbread sticks between my teeth. I chewed. I moaned softly. I took a bite of chili and moaned again. Venal sinners surprised to wake up in heaven would not have been more grateful.

Michael poured himself a mug of coffee and sat down across from me. Ella lowered her eyelids and gazed worshipfully at him.

“So what does Maureen’s husband have to do with you?”

“You know that night she came here? That’s what she came for, to tell me he’d been kidnapped. She’d got a call from the kidnappers asking for a million dollars.”

“Okay.”

“She wanted me to go with her to deliver it.”

He raised an eyebrow. I ate several more bites of chili in case he snatched it away after I’d told him the rest of it.

I said, “She came and got me the next night and I carried a duff el bag full of money down to a gazebo at their boat dock. Then she brought me home.”

He waited.

I said, “That’s all. At least that’s all I had to do with it. But Guidry told me that Victor had already been dead when he was thrown out of the boat. Somebody shot him. His body had been tied to an anchor, and the rope that tied him was too long. That’s how he floated up high enough for fishermen to snag him.”

Michael’s eyes got a look that said he might laugh. “They tied him to an anchor with a long rope?”

I said, “It’s not funny.”

“It’s a little bit funny.”

I ate some more chili.

Michael said, “So what was the deal with the marshal? Who was he looking for?”

I was almost to the bottom of the chili bowl, so I ate the last of it and polished off the second breadstick before I answered him. I figured I’d need all the strength I could get.

“A couple of days ago, three teenage boys came in Reba Chandler’s house while I was there with Big Bubba. The parrot, you know. I turned around and there they were. They seemed to think a girl named Jaz lived there.”

“You know her?”

“She’s a teenager I had seen at the vet’s office, the same girl that marshal you slugged was looking for. He was with her at the vet’s. He’d run over a rabbit and killed it, and she was upset about it. Cute girl. He claimed he was her stepfather, but he was lying. She’s in witness protection and he’s her guardian or whatever.”

Michael erased the air with a flat palm. “I don’t want to hear about the girl. I want to hear about the guys that came in on you.”

“But they’re all connected. They’re all from L.A., and the boys are part of a gang there. One of them left latent prints on a jar of birdseed at Reba’s house, so the fingerprint people were able to identify him. He’s one of three guys who killed a boy in a drive-by shooting in L.A., and Jaz is the only witness willing to testify. That’s why she’s in witness protection. They hid her here to wait until the trial. Now Jaz has disappeared, and the marshal thinks the gang got her.”

He went still. “Why did he think you’d know where she was?”

“He probably saw my car at Hetty’s house and followed me.”

Michael raised an eyebrow asking for more information. I hate it when he does that.

I said, “Hetty Soames has a new service-dog pup she’s raising, and she took a shine to Jaz and offered her a job. She wrote her address for Jaz, so the marshal knew it. Jaz was secretive about where she lived—well, she was secretive about everything—so Guidry asked me to try to learn more about her. I’ve been stopping at Hetty’s every day.”

“Guidry has known about this?” Michael’s voice was defensive and a trifle hurt.

“He’s investigating a homicide that happened here a few days ago. A man was killed during a gang-related burglary. Some neighbors saw teenagers loitering outside the man’s house earlier, and they matched the description of the boys who came into Reba’s house. The sheriff’s office got a positive match on prints at the murdered man’s house and the prints left at Reba’s house, so they knew they were the same guys.”

“The gang members who killed a boy in L.A. also robbed and killed a man here?”

I could tell he was having a hard time finding slots in his brain to hold so many dismal bits of information. “Their trial in L.A. is the one Jaz is a witness in.”

Michael stood up and got a cornbread stick and ate it in two bites. He does that when he’s agitated. Probably a holdover from the time that feeding himself and me was the only escape he could find from our mother’s self-consumed immaturity.

“Okay. And what else?”

“I’m afraid Harry Henry had something to do with Maureen’s husband being kidnapped. I can’t believe he’d kill him, but I think he’s involved somehow.”

“Harry Henry? Nah, Harry wouldn’t do something like that.”

“He told me Maureen had planned to get a divorce from the first day she married Victor. Then he said he hadn’t seen her for two or three years, but I know he was lying about that. Besides, who else do you know who’d sink a dead body with an anchor but use a rope so long the body could float to the surface?”