Блейз Клемент - Even Cat Sitters Get The Blues

I wasn’t going to get involved, but I was a professional, and professionalism meant I had to find a place to put Ziggy so he would stay warm and still be out of the way.

I also had to feed him, which made me think of the odd packages stacked on the refrigerator shelves. I went back to Gilda’s room, where Guidry was squatting on the floor in front of an opened cabinet in her bathroom.

Without looking at me, he said, “Tell me about the nurse. What’s she like?”

“Beautiful redhead, late twenties, early thirties. She has an accent I couldn’t place, sort of an island rhythm but more like French pronunciation. Her English isn’t very good, and she smelled like iodine.”

He closed the cabinet door and stood up. “Iodine?”

“That same smell is in the refrigerator, too. That’s what I came back to tell you. The refrigerator doesn’t have any food in it. It’s filled with what looks like packages from a meat market, and there’s a strong smell of iodine.”

He was already moving past me toward the kitchen. I trailed behind him, wishing I could go get breakfast, wishing I hadn’t agreed to take this job in the first place.

I said, “I have to go to the market and buy vegetables for Ziggy.”

He stopped and frowned at me. “You call him Ziggy? You know him that well?”

“I don’t know him at all, but that’s his name.”

“Kurtz’s name is Ziggy?”

“No, the iguana’s name is Ziggy.”

“Oh.”

He shrugged and moved on toward the refrigerator.

That’s when I should have told him about the strange coincidence of the woman with the bulldog named Ziggy. And about the even stranger coincidence of the woman’s photograph being on Kurtz’s bedside table. But if I told him that, I’d have to tell him all the rest. I’d have to tell him that Kurtz had lied when he said nobody knew about the wine, because Gilda had known that Ziggy was in the wine room. Mostly, I’d have to tell him about the gun Kurtz had been wearing when I got there. And then I’d have to tell him I’d warned Kurtz to get rid of it before he talked to Guidry.

I wasn’t ready to do that. I told myself that half the population of Florida carries concealed guns, so it wasn’t unusual for Kurtz to have one. It wasn’t even unusual for a gun toter to be paranoid enough to wear it inside his own house. Furthermore, I hadn’t broken any laws when I advised Kurtz to get rid of his gun, I had simply suggested it might be a good idea not to meet a homicide detective while wearing it. It had been a friendly hint, nothing more. And so far as the woman in the photograph, maybe I was mistaken. Maybe it only looked a lot like the woman with the bulldog. And who’s to say it’s unusual for two pets in the same city to be named Ziggy? There are probably millions of pets named Ziggy, and several of them might live right there on Siesta Key. Mainly, I told myself I wasn’t getting involved in this case, so the sensible thing was to keep my mouth shut.

Guidry opened the refrigerator door and turned to look at me with raised eyebrows.

The refrigerator was completely empty. All the packages in their neat white wrappings were gone.

I said, “That’s odd. Gilda must have taken them with her when she left.”

“You think it was meat?”

“I don’t know what it was. It was packages like what you get from a meat market, you know, in that white butcher paper.”

“And it smelled like iodine?”

“That’s what it smelled like to me.”

“Dixie, tell me again why you’re here.”

“A man who said he was Ken Kurtz called me last night and asked me to come today to feed his iguana. He said he was delayed in New York, but that somebody would be here to let me in. He didn’t leave a telephone number, and my Caller ID didn’t register it, so I don’t know where he was calling from.”

“That’s all he said?”

“He said the iguana’s name was Ziggy and that he likes yellow squash.”

Guidry closed his eyes and mumbled something that sounded like Why me?

I said, “I have to find a place to put the iguana while your people are here. I’m going to go ask Mr. Kurtz.”

Guidry grunted, and I headed around the corner to the eastern corridor and Kurtz’s room. Kurtz was sitting up with his eyes closed, leaning back against a headboard lined with shelves of tomes I could tell weren’t light reading. The bottles of medicine were still on the bedside table. The photograph of the woman was gone, probably moved to the drawer in the table.

I said, “Mr. Kurtz? Is there someplace warm and safe where I can put Ziggy?”

He opened his eyes and gave me a level stare. “No place in the world is safe, Ms. Hemingway.”

“Probably not, but some places are less problematic than others, especially for an iguana.”

He tilted his head toward a closed door. “You can put him in the exercise room. It’s warm in there. It’s through the bathroom.”

I left the side of his black satin bed and opened the door to the bathroom. More white ceramic tile, more white bathroom fixtures, more white walls. Whoever planned this house must have had a fixation with hospitals. Another door stood open from the bathroom, and I went through into a fully equipped home gym, with a glass-enclosed dry sauna in one corner and a compact swim-in-place pool in the other. I checked the size of the sauna and decided it would do. Ziggy would be cramped in it but warm.

Back at Kurtz’s bedside, I opened my mouth to tell him I was on my way to get Ziggy and put him in the sauna. But the words that came out weren’t what I had intended to say.

I said, “Who is that woman, Mr. Kurtz?”

He opened his eyes and looked up at me. “Gilda? She’s my nurse.”

“I mean the woman in the photograph.”

“I believe you’re here to take care of my iguana, Ms. Hemingway, not to pry into my personal life.”

Every intelligent cell in my body was jumping up and down and yelling, Let it go! Don’t say anything else!

I said, “She stopped me this morning. I think she wanted to make sure I was coming here.”

The shock on his face was almost too painful to see. “You must be mistaken. It couldn’t have been her.”

“She had a miniature bulldog with her, and she said the dog’s name was Ziggy.”

For an instant, a look of wild joy flared in his eyes and just as quickly died.

“Sheer coincidence. You met somebody who resembled my old friend in the photo, and she had a pet also named Ziggy. That’s all.”

“Your old friend, does she have a name? In case she stops me again?”

He shot me a look that held poisoned arrows. “I’m warning you, Ms. Hemingway, drop it now. ”

I left him and headed toward the living room, taking the southern corridor so I wouldn’t have to talk to Guidry again in the kitchen. My head was whirling, and I felt almost faint. Only pure idiocy could have moved me to ask Kurtz about the woman. Or insanity. Or both. It was entirely possible that I had gone completely round the bend. It was not only entirely possible, it seemed to be a proven fact. I had to get Ziggy safely stored in the sauna and get the hell out of this house before I did something even loonier than the things I’d already done.

SEVEN

Ziggy was still sluggish enough to spare me any tailwhipping resistance when I pulled him close again and carried him to Ken Kurtz’s gym. Kurtz didn’t even open his eyes when I sidled through his bedroom. I laid Ziggy on the floor of the spa, made sure the heat was set just warm enough for comfort but not warm enough to burn, and left him there. He looked a damn sight better than Kurtz. Lying back against his black satin pillows, Kurtz looked more comatose than asleep when I left his room.