Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

Michael got up once to turn the stuff on the grill and get hot French bread and orange butter, but he didn’t ask any questions. Which made me nervous. Ever since we were kids, Michael has always known when I’m not being absolutely honest with him. When he thinks I’m holding out, he gets very quiet, like he was now. Paco was noncommittal too. He spooned up soup and listened intently, but he was as silent as Michael, and a couple of times I caught them exchanging enigmatic looks, the way parents do when they’re listening to a child getting herself deeper and deeper into trouble.

When the fish and corn and plantains and chayote were ready, Michael served our plates at the grill and brought them to the table. He topped the grouper with mango salsa and added wine to my glass and his. Paco was sticking to iced tea.

I took a bite and moaned like a satisfied cat. We all ate silently for a few minutes, our taste buds too overjoyed for speech, and then Michael came up for air.

“Who’s investigating the Ferrelli case?”

“Guidry. Guidry’s investigating.” I sounded like an echo chamber.

“Ah, Lieutenant Guidry. So did you tell Guidry everything you knew?”

“Sure.”

“Uh-hunh. Did you tell him whatever it is you haven’t told us?”

Paco looked across at him and quickly stopped himself from grinning.

I chewed and swallowed. I took a sip of wine. I shook my head.

“Not exactly.”

He gave me a stern look.

“What’s going on, Dixie? Why am I getting the feeling you’re involved in something you shouldn’t be?”

Like it might be my last meal, I took a second to enjoy the flavors in my mouth.

“It probably has something to do with the car I saw this morning.”

Michael chewed somberly, looking steadily at me while I took another bite.

I said, “I saw a car driving fast this morning. It was Conrad Ferrelli’s car, and his dog was in the backseat, so I thought Conrad was driving.”

I took another bite and avoided Michael’s stare.

“And?”

“And I waved hello.”

Michael drank half his glass of wine, sort of compulsively, I thought.

He put the glass down and leaned toward me a tiny bit, the way he used to do when we were kids and he was getting ready to tell me he was going to kick my ass clear to Cuba if I didn’t tell him the truth.

He said, “It’s all over the news that Conrad Ferrelli was murdered this morning. They found his car in one of the beach-access parking lots. Are you telling me you saw the murderer leaving and you waved at him?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

He took a deep breath and chomped hard on a chayote slice.

“Did you tell Guidry you saw the car?”

“Sure.”

“But you didn’t tell him about waving to the driver, did you?”

I chewed and swallowed. I took a sip of wine. I shook my head.

“Not exactly.”

“Dixie—”

“Don’t lecture me, Michael. I wouldn’t have waved if I’d known a murderer was driving the car.”

Paco said, “She’s right, Michael. You would have done the same thing.”

I shot Paco a grateful smile, but his face was somber.

He said, “You have plenty of bullets for your thirty-eight?”

Michael slammed down his wineglass. “Come on, Paco, it’s bad enough as it is.”

“That’s why she needs to get her gun out and keep it with her. She’s in and out of empty houses all the time, and whoever killed Ferrelli may know it. She’ll be a sitting duck if she’s not prepared.”

He was right, and I knew it. I had already thought about the thirty-eight.

I said, “It’ll just be for a little while, Michael. They’ll catch the guy.”

“You call your detective first thing in the morning and tell him about this.”

“He’s not my detective, but I’ll call him.”

“Just promise me you’ll stay out of this one, Dixie. I can’t go through that again.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll stay out of it.”

He went silent again, and I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t believe me either. How could I stay out of it when I was already in it?

Paco stood up and stacked his dishes to carry inside. Before he picked them up, he put his arms overhead and stretched, tilting his head back and pulling his spine tall, twisting a bit to get vertebrae lined up right. When a healthy man as gorgeous as Paco stretches out in front of you, you might as well enjoy the sight even though he’s as unattainable as one of the rings of Saturn. As he flexed his shoulders backward, his knit shirt snagged on something on his muscled chest, and a chunk of comprehension fell into my brain with a scary thunk. Paco wore a transmitter under that shirt.

I blurted, “I can see your nipples when you do that.”

Startled, he jerked his arms down and gave me a puzzled look. Michael had the same incredulous look on his face, like What the hell?

I met Paco’s gaze and saw his eyes shift as he realized my meaning.

He said, “Thanks, babe, I’ll remember not to do that.”

Michael stood up and started gathering dishes to take inside, shaking his head and muttering that all God’s children had nipples, for God’s sake, and what was the big deal? Paco and I didn’t enlighten him. Michael worries enough as it is. He didn’t need to know that Paco was going to some job every night to record information that would lead to somebody’s arrest.

Up in my apartment, I locked the French doors and lowered the metal hurricane shutters that double as security bars. In the bedroom, I pulled my narrow bed away from the wall and opened the drawer built into its far side. The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department issues 9-millimeter Sig-Sauers to its officers. When an officer leaves the force, either through retirement or death, the department-issued gun has to be returned. But every law-enforcement officer has personal pieces for which he or she is lawfully qualified, and I had kept both Todd’s and mine in a specially built case in the drawer under my bed.

The guns were all there, fitted into their felt-lined niches: Todd’s 9-millimeter Glock and his Colt .357, along with my own Smith and Wesson .32 and a .38 that was my favorite. The .38 fit my hand the way it fit its niche in the case. I took it to the bar in the kitchen and cleaned and oiled it, finding as always a deep sense of satisfaction from the workmanship that went into making it, all the pieces sliding into one another so smoothly. When it was gleaming and ready to operate, I slid a magazine in the butt and got out two extra magazines to carry in my pocket. I put away the oil and polishing cloth and took the gun with me to the bathroom. I took a long shower and fell into bed with the .38 on the bedside table.

As usual, I dreamed of Todd and Christy. I dreamed of them every night, as if we had a standing dreamtime appointment to get together. This time I dreamed I went to heaven to get them and bring them home. I went to a big barred door and yelled for somebody to let me in, and God came down a long walk to look through the bars at me. He looked like Heidi’s grandfather, with long white hair and a flowing white robe, but he had a wreath of leaves around his head like Caesar.

I said, “You can’t keep them here. It’s against the law.”

He shook his head in a kind of pitying way, the way people do when they hear somebody say something incredibly stupid. “I’m above the law,” he said. “You should know that.”

I said, “Nobody’s above the law, not even you.”

“Ah,” he said, “you still believe that, do you? That’s your lesson to learn in this lifetime: the law isn’t for everybody.”

He turned his back on me and I clung weeping to the bars and shouted after him. “What about Todd and Christy?”