Блейз Клемент - Raining Cat Sitters And Dogs

The voice said, “Are you sure you want to enter here? You can’t change your mind, you know.”

I said I was sure, and the gate clicked open. I walked through and looked around. It was clear in there, with no rain or clouds, just pretty flowers and butterflies and songbirds and little gurgling streams—a standard heavenly environment.

The voice spoke again, and this time it was ahead of me. It said, “Come this way, honey.”

That struck me as funny, to have an archangel or whatever he was call me honey . I followed the voice and came to a place where a lot of women were having a picnic. They had fried chicken and watermelon and potato salad and the little green olives I love so much. The women were all different ages and colors and shapes. The only thing they had in common were big satisfied smiles. These women were enjoying life, big time.

I said, “Excuse me, I’m looking for God.”

They all turned their happy faces toward me and spoke with the sound of wind singing through silver flutes.

And the voice said, “Honey, I AM.”

I woke up smiling, and lay for a minute feeling happier than I could remember feeling in a long time.

Then I remembered that Jaz was missing and perhaps killed, which made me get up and get busy so I wouldn’t think about it. I’d done all I could do that day.

Naked, I padded to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. While I waited for the water to boil, I looked out the window over the sink. Rain was still falling and from the looks of the sky, it would continue to fall for a long time. As I carried my tea to the closet-office, I flipped on my CD player to let Patsy Cline’s no-nonsense, no-equivocation, no-shit voice break the silence. With a fresh burst of energy, I returned phone calls to new and old clients, then whipped through all the clerical part of my business. Then, still naked, I hauled out the vacuum cleaner and sucked up all the dust in my apartment. I cleaned my bathroom too, and washed damp towels along with my wet clothes. Like Harry Henry, I like my environment to be clean and neat. It makes me feel as if I’m in control of my little corner of the world.

When I finished, I still had a little time before my afternoon rounds, so I got dressed in jeans and T-shirt and pulled on a reflective yellow rain slicker. I even put on the matching sou’wester hat with a dorky wide brim that drooped in the back like a dragging butterfly wing. Wearing all that rain stuff made me feel like a kindergarten kid, but at least I wouldn’t get soaking wet again. Just sweaty and claustrophobic. I was careful going downstairs because the steps were slippery, and then I dashed across the deck to Michael’s back door. He was sitting at the butcher-block island with a cup of coffee and a slice of pie in front of him. He looked miserable.

Ella sat beside him on her adoring stool, and when I came in she let her eyes open all the way for a moment. Cats do that in the dark, so maybe she thought my presence caused the lights to dim. Either that, or the sight of my big yellow self had made her think a lion had entered the kitchen.

Michael said, “Want some key lime pie?”

Like Guidry, he had new stress lines around his mouth. We were all too aware of dark fears lurking in the basement of our minds.

I shrugged off the coat and peeled off the hat and poured myself a cup of coffee. He sliced a wedge of pie for me, and I joined him at the island.

I said, “No word from Paco yet?”

He frowned. “I told you, Paco’s fine. He’ll call when he can.”

“I just thought he might have called.”

“I’ll tell you when he does.”

Ella watched us with a worried expression on her face.

I ate a few bites of pie. I drank some coffee. I said, “Guidry has taken Maureen and Harry to the sheriff’s office for questioning.”

Michael’s eyebrows raised. Good, I had distracted him.

He said, “I’m almost afraid to ask you what those two numb-nuts managed to get arrested for.”

“First you have to know that Maureen says her husband was a drug importer.”

“A what?”

“A major drug trafficker in heroin and cocaine. Bought it direct from the big cartels in South America and Afghanistan. I’m talking big dealer. She calls it importing.”

He made a face. “And she stayed with him?”

I said, “Remember, this is Maureen Rhinegold we’re talking about. She’s not any smarter now that she’s Maureen Salazar. Anyway, she says there’s a big shake-up going on in the drug world. Some Colombian top dog, one of Pablo Escobar’s men, has come to Sarasota to meet with all the drug bosses in this country. He’s going to name one American to head the whole North American drug operation. Maureen thinks somebody killed Victor so it wouldn’t be him.”

“She know who it was?”

“She claims she doesn’t, but that may change if she looks at doing jail time for any part she had in Victor’s business.”

Michael looked slightly less miserable at the thought.

I said, “Harry thought Maureen had killed Victor. He helped her because he wanted to protect her from a murder rap. He made a fake ransom call so she could record it, and he took Victor’s body out and dumped it in the Venice inlet.”

“Poor stupid bastard.”

“He had plenty of direction. Maureen wrote out the words for him to say when he made the fake ransom call. I imagine it was her idea to dump Victor overboard.”

Michael grinned. “Too bad she didn’t tell him to use a shorter rope on the anchor.”

“It’s not funny, Michael!”

He got up to rinse his plate at the sink. “Yeah, it is.”

I didn’t tell him about the near-drowning incident at the marina. It was too long a story to go into right then, but I would tell him later. I wanted him to know that Harry had saved my life.

He put the plate in the dishwasher and turned to lean against the counter. “What about that what’s-her-name girl? Have they found her?”

I took a deep breath. “It’s Jaz. Not yet.”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t sound good.”

I said, “If those gang members were waiting for her when she left the resort to go back to Hetty’s house, they could easily have grabbed her without anybody seeing. Even if she screamed, people are all shut up inside their houses with the air-conditioning on, so nobody would have heard her.”

Michael crossed his arms, probably thinking what he’d like to do to the gang guys.

I said, “I keep thinking about those boys, especially the one they called Paulie. He seemed like a pretty good kid. Or at least not as cynical as the other two.”

“Good kids don’t kill other kids.”

“Why didn’t his mother pay closer attention to him? How could he be peddling drugs or robbing houses without her knowing? She’d have to be awfully busy or stupid not to notice. Or maybe she just didn’t care.”

Michael gave me a knowing look. “Why do you blame the mother? The kid had a father too.”

I didn’t answer because I knew it wasn’t a real question. Michael knew why I blamed the mother.

I said, “If our grandparents hadn’t taken us in, we might have ended up like Paulie.”

He gave me a long, level look. “One of the guys at work has a wife who’s close to nine months pregnant. He’s nervous, so she got him some Chinese worry balls. He’s supposed to rotate them in the palm of one hand to relax, but instead he’s more tense than ever.”

“Your point being?”

“You’re rotating all that crap around just like they’re worry balls, and it’s not doing you a bit of good. Not doing those kids any good either. It doesn’t matter why those guys turned bad. They killed another kid, and they’ll have to pay for it. Period. End of story. Quit hooking everything to our mother leaving us. And for God’s sake, stop wondering how we would have turned out if she hadn’t, or if our grandparents hadn’t taken us in. You can’t ever find an answer, so quit worrying it to death.”