Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

In a few minutes she crawled out of my lap and trotted to the kitchen to eat some kibble. We made a hasty run into the yard to let her go to the bathroom, but streaks of lightning were flaring across the sky, and we didn’t stay out long. When I left her, she went to the door with me and wagged her tail good-bye.

The same cars that had been in Stevie’s driveway the night before were there again. There was a tasteful wreath on the door now, with a dull gray velvet ribbon topped by a clown’s mask. The mask was stark white, with red lips and a few black marks on the face, remarkably like the photograph of Madam Flutter-By.

When Stevie opened the door, she looked as weary as I felt. Dark circles were under both eyes, and new grooves bracketed her lips. Her face lit when she saw it was me, and she practically reached out and jerked me inside. She put a hand on my back as if she were afraid I would bolt if she didn’t, and steered me down the hall to the living room. The same crowd was drinking and smoking. Denton Ferrelli was standing at the side of the room, his stained face poker stiff.

Stevie said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you all to leave me alone with Dixie now. We have some things to take care of.”

Everybody looked at me standing there in my rumpled cargo shorts, and I could almost hear their sneers.

Marian, Denton’s bitch wife, said, “What kind of things?”

I could feel Stevie’s hand trembling on my back, and I felt like drop-kicking the highball glass out of Marian’s hand.

Stevie took a deep breath and said, “Marian, that’s really none of your business.”

Marian opened her mouth in a snarl, but Denton walked to her side and took her glass. He set it down on the table with a sharp click.

“Some people care more about animals than people, Marian. Let’s leave Stevie and her dog-sitter to their interests.”

He made it sound as if Stevie and I had something dirty going on with Reggie. We stood silently while everybody gathered themselves and straggled out. Denton was the last one out, and he turned to give me a long hostile look before he slammed the door shut.

Stevie seemed to sag, as if she’d used up all her starch in speaking up to them. She waved vaguely toward the kitchen. “I need to talk to you.”

In the kitchen, Reggie’s used food bowl sat on the floor, and the water in his other bowl was cloudy. Stevie sat at the bar and watched while I washed the bowls and put fresh water out for Reggie. I filled the teakettle and put it on the stove to boil and got down two teacups.

I said, “What about food?”

“What about it?”

“Have you had any?”

She considered. “I had some crackers.”

“When?”

She shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

“Stevie, you have to eat.” I sounded like Michael.

I rummaged in her freezer and found a box of vegetable lasagna that I popped in the microwave. While it heated I tore romaine leaves into a salad bowl and drizzled them with olive oil. Michael would have clutched his chest at my cavalier way with it, but it was food. The microwave dinged and I slid the lasagna onto a plate and poured a glass of wine. While Stevie ate, I dropped teabags in a yellow teapot on the counter and covered them with boiling water.

Stevie seemed to have forgotten that she’d wanted to talk to me. She polished off the lasagna and salad and drank the wine in one gulp.

I poured her a cup of tea and one for myself and sat down beside her.

She said, “I do all right for a while, and then I feel like I can’t go on.”

“But you will. You’ll do whatever you have to do.”

“Was it like this for you?”

I nodded. I didn’t want to tell her that I couldn’t remember what the first few days had been like after Todd and Christy were killed. I’d been deaf and blind and numb. I had no memory of anything.

I said, “It will get easier.”

“When?”

“When it does.”

She nodded as if that made sense.

I said, “Josephine Metzger was hoping Conrad would be buried in the coat she made for him.”

Stevie looked surprised. “She said that?”

“She said he was one of them.”

“That’s true, he was. But Denton and Marian would have a cow if he wore that coat in his coffin.”

“Would you like me to bring it back?”

She blinked back tears and grinned. “Would you? Conrad will love it.”

“I’ll stop there in the morning before I come here.”

I washed up her dinner dishes and left her drinking tea and staring into space. Whatever she’d wanted to talk to me about had drifted away into some mournful void.

A heavy rain shower hit me on the way home and stayed with me all the way. All the blue had left the sky and left it yellow gray, not unlike my mood. Michael was still at the firehouse on his twenty-four-hour shift, and Paco would be leaving soon for his secret job at the telemarketing firm where he wore a transmitter taped under his shirt. I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, and my stomach was pleading for something cheesy, salty, or fried. Preferably all three. In my refrigerator were some jars of mustard and mayonnaise and jelly. In my cupboard were a couple of cans of chopped tomatoes bought in a rash moment when I thought I might make spaghetti sauce sometime, along with a box of Cheerios gone soft with age and humidity.

At my driveway, I kept going, dejectedly making my way through depressing rain to the only possible solution. In the drive-through lane at Taco Bell, I ordered four taco supremes with extra everything. I pulled into a parking space in the front lot and ate them while I watched normal people pass by in twos and threes. I told myself there were lots of other people sitting alone in their cars eating in the rain.

Millions, maybe, or at least a few thousand. One or two, probably.

I knew it wasn’t true. Of the six billion or so people in the world, including the ones in China, I was probably the only one doing that. It was damned depressing.

It was still raining when I got home, and Paco’s car was gone. It was dark under the carport, and I held my gun in one hand while I got out of the Bronco and ran upstairs. My fingers actually trembled while I unlocked the French doors, and I kept my gun out after I got inside. I stood inside the door and tested the air, sniffing to see if I got the same feeling of a recent intruder that I’d got earlier. Everything felt normal, but I still did a search before I went back and lowered the hurricane shutters. If anybody was in there, I didn’t want to trap myself inside with them.

I stood a long time in a warm shower and then crawled into bed with the .38 on the table beside me. I felt like I’d been up for a month or two, and tomorrow probably wouldn’t be much better. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was a pet-sitter, damn it, not a deputy sheriff. I shouldn’t have to be concerned about anything except my pets. Like Mame, who was alone across town while rain beat on her roof. Mame, who was old and deserved better than having her people go off and leave her for such a long time. With Mame on my mind, I fell asleep. Feeling sorry for Mame didn’t make me any happier, but it was at least better than feeling sorry for myself.

10

The rain had stopped when my alarm went off at 4 A.M. I groped my way to the bathroom and went through my morning routine: splash face, brush teeth, pull hair into ponytail, step into shorts, wiggle into a T, tie clean white Keds, sling on backpack, pick up gun. I raised the storm shutters and opened the French doors, scanning the dark porch corners for any lurking killers as I stepped out. The air was sauna-damp, but an early sea breeze kept it from being stifling. The sky was gun-metal gray but clear, and along the rim of the horizon was a pale pink foretelling of dawn. Wavelets broke on the beach with the fizzing sighs of Alka-Seltzer plopping in water, and a few early birds were comparing tales of what they’d done during last night’s rain.