Блейз Клемент - Even Cat Sitters Get The Blues

I took a long shower, and when I was drying off I found a big blister on my right heel. Wars were breaking out in remote spots on the globe, loggers in the Amazon were destroying a large part of the earth’s supply of oxygen, emaciated babies in African villages were dying of AIDS, and I had a blister on my heel. The blister was the only thing I could do anything about. I could not feel sad enough for the world’s condition to change it, but I could put a Band-Aid on my heel.

I sat on the edge of the tub and stared at the square tiles on the floor. Funny how I’d never noticed how they were connected but still solitary in their surrounding lines of grout. I thought about how I’d felt dancing with Ethan. Was the blister worth the fun I’d had?

Damn right it was. I’d have tolerated blisters on both heels to do that again.

I thought of how I felt every time I was in the same room with Guidry, all warm and soft and ready to follow him home like a stray puppy. I put my face in my hands and whimpered. How could I have gone from expecting and planning to be alone for the rest of my life to being in love with two men?

I wondered if I had blisters on my brain to match my feet.

TWENTY

Jessica was waiting for me outside the beagle’s house the next morning. The sun wasn’t fully up yet, and she startled me when she stepped away from an oak tree beside the driveway. This time she hadn’t bothered with the ploy of walking a dog.

She said, “Did you give Ken the message?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“He told me what happened on the island, about the tsunami flooding everything. They told him you had been killed along with the others. He’s pretty bitter about the company not providing a way for people to get out.”

“I thought it might be something like that. Bitterness about our friends dying, I mean.”

“He wants to see you.”

“I hope you told him that’s impossible.”

“I told him his phone is tapped and the mysterious they are watching him.”

“Thank you, Dixie.”

“He’s very sick, you know. I think he’s in pain most of the time. A lot of pain. And he’s blue.”

As if she were consoling me, she said, “I’m sorry.”

“I just thought you might not know that.”

“I had heard. What do you mean, he’s blue?”

“I mean he’s blue. His skin is gray-blue.”

She frowned. “But he couldn’t have got that much … that doesn’t make any sense.”

I shrugged. “He said it had got worse in the last few months. His skin jumps and twitches too, and he said that started after he left the island.”

She took a deep breath, the way people do when they need strength. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“He looks awful. Freakish, even.”

Her hand covered her mouth for a moment, as if she feared the words that might come out, and she started to turn away. I thought she couldn’t stand to hear any more, and I regretted telling her how bad Kurtz was. I certainly didn’t intend to tell her any more, but my fool mouth opened without my planning it.

“The iguana has an indwelling catheter in his chest wall. Ken Kurtz has one in his arm. You have any idea why?”

She pulled herself sharply erect. “Dixie, don’t be stupid. Don’t ask questions like that. Not of me or of anybody else.”

I said, “I know who you are. Your name is Jessica Ballantyne. And in spite of my better judgment, I sort of like you. But there are a lot of things that make me think you’re not a nice person. Your parents think you’re dead, for one thing, same way Ken Kurtz did. They’ve even buried your ashes, which is a pretty crappy thing to do to your parents, if you ask me. Are you wanted for some crime?”

She gave a short laugh. “It’s the other way around, actually.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Sounding a little desperate, she said, “I’m trying to … you can’t imagine what it’s like to have … you don’t understand how biomedical corporations work, you don’t know their cutthroat rivalry.”

“Come on. You’re not going to tell me this is all about corporate rivalry?”

“You asked what Ken’s connection was to BiZogen. Okay, try to understand this: Ken and I worked for BiZogen in the lab that was destroyed by the tsunami. Ken took his research with him when he left the island, and he contacted a rival company—the Zoological Interspecies-Genetic Institute—and offered to sell them his research. That research will be worth billions to the company that patents it, so ZIGI agreed. But then the FBI began investigating ZIGI over another patent they had fraudulently obtained, and ZIGI thought it prudent to report Ken’s offer. That’s when I was recruited.”

I squinted at her as if that would help bring what she’d said into focus, but my mind had snagged on the word Ziggy .

Stupidly, I said, “Ziggy?”

She gave me a half-pitying smile. “Z-I-G-I is the acronym of Zoological Interspecies-Genetic Institute.”

Feeling like a total idiot, I said, “I guess that’s why Kurtz didn’t know what I was talking about when I said I was there to take care of Ziggy. That’s not his name, is it?”

She laughed lightly. “Scientists are careful not to become attached to the pets they use for research. They’re more apt to assign them numbers rather than names. It makes it less uncomfortable for them if the animal is killed or hurt.”

I clamped my back teeth together to keep from mentioning that nobody seemed to worry about making it uncomfortable for the animal, and forced my mind back to the BiZogen-ZIGI competition.

“Let me get this straight. Ken Kurtz double-crossed BiZogen by going to Zoological-Whatever and offering his research to them. They agreed, and now they’re double-crossing him.”

“That’s about it.”

“And you’ve been hired to catch him or trap him, and you’re double-crossing whoever hired you.”

She frowned. “No, that’s not the way it is. Not at all.” She began walking backward, then turned and jogged away. Over her shoulder, she called, “I’m only trying to help Ken get a fair shake.” Then she disappeared into the shadows under the trees.

For the rest of the morning, I wondered who had recruitedher after Ken contacted the Zoological-Whatever company. BiZogen? The FBI? Some other biomedical research company? Whoever it was, she clearly was divided in her loyalties, and anytime somebody’s loyalties are going in two directions, the end result is always bad.

The entire situation was too complicated to even begin to figure out. It was a lot easier to think about the calico kitten and the awful possibility that Paloma might have her claws removed. That was a situation I could easily figure out. I could even do something about it.

Paloma had seemed a gentle soul, so she probably thought declawing a cat was like giving it a manicure. If she knew the facts, I was sure she wouldn’t want to harm a helpless kitten. I was also sure that a woman grieving her murdered husband wouldn’t want to talk about her kitten’s claws and that my compulsion to go see her was a black mark on my road toward complete sanity.

But Paloma might have already made an appointment with a veterinarian to do the surgery. Even if she weren’t up to it herself, one of Paloma’s friends might take the kitten to be declawed. If that happened, I’d never forgive myself for not trying to stop it.

After I finished grooming the last cat, I crossed the bridge into Sarasota and swung by Nate Tillman’s house. Nate’s a retiree who lives in one of the few communities that haven’t formed a homeowners’ association to make rules about what people can do with their own property, so his neighborhood still has personality. Nate himself has hung old CDs from the boughs of a spreading oak in his front yard as year-round sparkly tree ornaments. If you don’t look too hard, they look good.