Блейз Клемент - Raining Cat Sitters And Dogs

Cora didn’t look impressed. “If love wants to bloom slowly, that’s what it’ll do. If it wants to bust out like firecrackers, it’ll do that too. Why don’t you just let it take care of itself?”

Why did everybody persist in telling me to quit trying to control everything? Good grief, you’d think I was some kind of control freak. I wished I could control them so they’d quit saying I controlled.

I couldn’t think of any honest response, so I told her it was time to make my afternoon rounds. Before I left, I gathered up our tea things and tidied up the kitchen. I left the carton of soup sweating in the middle of the countertop so Cora wouldn’t forget it, then kissed the top of her feathery head.

She said, “You’re a good girl, Dixie, and I’m going to pray that missing girl’s all right.”

24

Before I left the Bayfront campus, my cellphone rang with the special ring reserved for Michael, Paco, or Guidry. With my heart rate up, I pulled to a stop and answered. It was Guidry.

He said, “Where are you?”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and glared at it. “Why do you want to know?”

“Sorry. What I meant to say was that I would appreciate knowing where you are . . . because I would like a moment of your time . . . if you would be so kind as to give it to me.”

“I’m just leaving Bayfront Village, and I’m headed to the Sea Breeze condos on Midnight Pass to run with Billy Elliot.”

“With who?”

“Whom. Billy Elliot. He’s a Greyhound. We run in the parking lot.”

“I’d like you to listen to something. It’ll just take a minute. I’ll meet you in the Sea Breeze lot.”

At least he was being polite.

Even with lighter out-of-season traffic, it took me fifteen minutes to thread my way from Bayfront to Siesta Drive and the north bridge to the key, then to Midnight Pass Road and Tom’s condo building. Guidry’s Blazer was parked by the front door in a guest spot. When I parked beside him, he got out of his car and got into mine.

Guidry had developed new lines around his mouth in the last few days. Even in his fine linen jacket and perfectly cut slacks, he looked tired and drawn. I had to clench my hand into a fist because it wanted to reach over and trace the lines around his lips.

Reaching in a jacket pocket, he pulled out a small tape player and set it on the dash.

He said, “Mrs. Salazar kept the message she got from the kidnappers. I’d appreciate it if you’d listen to the call.”

It was a reasonable request. I had known Maureen a long time, and Maureen had asked me to deliver her ransom money. It made sense that Guidry would think I might recognize the kidnapper’s voice. I didn’t think it was likely, but it was worth a shot.

Guidry hit the Play button, and a muffled man’s voice said a word I didn’t understand, followed by, “Salazar, we have your husband.”

The voice went on to say all the things Maureen had told me the kidnapper said, but I wasn’t listening.

Guidry said, “Anything about that voice you recognize?”

I felt icy cold. I said, “Play the beginning again.”

He rewound the tape and started it again. Again the muffled voice, again the odd first word that sounded like “momissus.” Was he saying, “ No , Mrs. Salazar . . .” or perhaps trying for rapster chic with “ Yo, Mrs. Salazar . . .”?

I raised my hand to stop the sound. “Play it again. Just the beginning.”

It only took a few minutes to rewind and replay that opening, but it seemed like a lifetime. When I’d heard it again, I motioned Guidry to turn it off.

Guidry’s gray eyes were steady on me.

For a moment I couldn’t speak, but I had been raised by a grandmother who taught me to tell the truth.

I said, “There at the beginning, where it sounds like he’s stuttering before he says ‘Mrs. Salazar’?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s not stuttering. He first says, ‘Mo,’ and then he corrects himself and says, ‘Mrs. Salazar.’ Only Maureen’s close friends call her Mo.”

“You know who it is.” It wasn’t a question.

I said, “He would not have killed Victor.”

“Then he doesn’t have anything to worry about.”

I took a deep breath. “His name is Harry Henry. He’s been in love with Maureen since we were in high school. Harry’s sort of a beach bum, gets by working on fishing boats, but he’s a good man. I don’t believe he’d kidnap anybody, and I’m sure he wouldn’t kill anybody. But I’m pretty sure that’s Harry’s voice on the recorder.”

I didn’t add that Harry was the only person I knew dumb enough to anchor a dead man with a rope so long the body could float to the surface.

Guidry slipped the player back in his pocket. “Once again, you’ve corroborated what Mrs. Salazar said.”

“Maureen told you that was Harry’s voice?”

“Why does that surprise you?”

About a million answers occurred to me, like, “because they’ve been lovers for over fifteen years and you’d think she’d be more loyal,” or “because she didn’t mention to me that it was Harry who’d called,” or “because something is very fishy about this whole thing.”

I said, “I guess you just never really know other people. Not even when you practically grew up with them.”

“Mrs. Salazar said Mr. Henry lives on a house boat docked at the Midnight Pass marina.”

That was apparently another thing he wanted me to corroborate.

“I’ve never been on his boat, and I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard that’s where he lives.”

“Okay. Thanks, Dixie.”

He reached for the door handle, but I stopped him. “Guidry?”

“What?”

“Do you ever wish you hadn’t come here? Do you miss New Orleans?”

For a second I thought he was going to open the door without answering, but then his face softened.

“I never wish I hadn’t come here. But I do miss the New Orleans I grew up in, the way it was before the levees broke.”

“Katrina.”

He shook his head. “That name has become a catchword for disaster, but it wasn’t Katrina that ruined the city, it was human negligence. The hurricane had already passed when the levees broke.”

As if he regretted the bitterness in his voice, he firmed his lips and took a deep breath.

He said, “For tourists, New Orleans was great food, Preservation Hall, Mardi Gras craziness. But for people who lived there, New Orleans was the nutty old priest always haranguing people in Jackson Square, the transvestites strutting down Bourbon Street in their mesh hose and feathers, up-and-coming young musicians in the park, ordinary people starting their day with beignets at Café du Monde, all of them giving one another room, looking one another in the eye because they all belonged . And if a funeral parade came down the street, anybody who wanted to could join in, dance a little bit, clown around some, because we all knew life can’t be taken too seriously or it’ll kill you.”

It was the longest speech I’d ever heard Guidry make, and when he finished he blushed a little bit under his tan as if he were embarrassed to have let me see how passionate he was about his hometown.

And right then and there, I finished falling in love with him. Just leaned over the edge of love’s chasm and tumbled straight down. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he looked like an Italian count with a vineyard in his backyard. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he was cultured and intelligent, or that I’d seen him in action enough to know that his integrity was impeccable. It didn’t even have anything to do with the fact that he was one heck of a kisser—oh, yes, he was. It had to do with that hidden passion he’d just exposed.