Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

When I was all cried out and clean again, I patted dry and applied liquid Band-Aid to my scrapes. Then I looked hard at my reflection in the mirror and told myself that I had spent three years overcoming the sick weariness that goes along with being a victim, and I wasn’t going back there. The person driving that truck would love to know I felt humiliated, and as long as I did, he might just as well have killed me. That son-of-a-bitch had another think coming if he thought I was going to slink around in fear.

I put on fresh Keds and a clean bra and underpants, this time not going for fancy lace or satin because I didn’t give a shit how my underwear looked when I shot the bastard who had come after me. I was going to find him and I was going to make him feel as much fear as he’d caused me.

11

Ihad two other dogs to walk before I went to Secret Cove, and they were both willing to let me poke along on my sore knees. The cats on my schedule didn’t care one way or the other how fast I moved, but a couple of them wound themselves around my ankles to show sympathy. I carried my .38 shoved into the waistband of my shorts, more or less covered by my loose T. My bruised rib cage reminded me with every movement that it had slammed against hard pavement, and my right cheek had swollen so it looked like an overripe plum. Good thing animals aren’t judgmental or nosy.

With every painful move, I muttered “Ouch! Ooh! Shit! Fuck!” and thought about the driver of the truck. Two big questions had to be answered: who was he and how did he know I would be running in the Sea Breeze parking lot that morning. There was no question about why he’d tried to kill me. I already knew that. He was the man who had killed Conrad Ferrelli, and he wanted to shut me up so I couldn’t testify against him.

Before I went to Secret Cove, I swung by the Metzgers’ to retrieve Conrad’s coat. In the driveway, I dropped my gun into my pocket and put on a pair of dark shades to hide my red eyes. Priscilla opened the door to my ring, smiled shyly, and beckoned me down the hall to the workroom. As I followed her, the Metzgers’ seal-mitted Russian Blues, Elsie and Serenity, trotted to meet me. Aerialists of the cat world, Russian Blues are fine-boned graceful cats with brilliant green eyes. I was flattered they remembered me, because Blues take awhile to warm up to strangers. I was too sore to kneel and stroke their silver-tipped fur, but they didn’t seem to mind, just threaded themselves in and out of my legs for a moment before light-footing it back to the workroom. Maybe they had been showing sympathy too.

In the workroom, Priscilla’s baby was asleep in her playpen, and Conrad’s coat was on a tall white-haired man. Josephine was behind him, moving her hands across the shoulders.

She took one look at me and said, “My God, Dixie, what happened to you?”

I tried to shrug and pass it off but ended up grunting because shrugging hurt.

“I fell.”

“You didn’t get that banged up from falling, Dixie Hemingway. Now what happened?”

Everybody in the room was staring at me, including the man wearing Conrad’s coat.

I said, “A truck tried to run me down this morning.”

Suddenly I was crying again, and Josephine had gathered me into her arms and was patting me and making shushing noises like you make to a baby, and I was leaning into her and feeling a whole lot better. When I was finally cried out, Priscilla scurried out of the room and brought me tissues and thrust them at me, and the man in Conrad’s coat smiled and nodded at me as if I had just accomplished something important. Maybe I had.

He said, “That truck, what kind was it?”

“It was a normal-sized pickup but up high on big huge tires.”

For a split second, Josephine and Priscilla and the man all cut their eyes at one another. They quickly looked back at me, but now there was something apprehensive in their faces, something akin to guilt or fear.

Josephine said, “Did you see the driver?”

“No, it was too dark. I was running with a dog in a parking lot, and the truck just came blasting toward me. I was out in the open and there wasn’t any place to go. I was terrified.”

Josephine said, “Well, I guess so.”

“I fell to the ground—dived, really—and it went over me. That’s how I got bruised.”

They all pulled themselves up stiffly as if they were living the moment with me. The baby made a shrill squeal that startled everybody and broke the tension. Priscilla rushed to her sewing machine and Josephine gestured to the man beside her.

“Dixie Hemingway, meet Pete Madeira.”

His white grin knocked off about thirty years. “Are you related to Ernest Hemingway?”

“People always ask that, but I’m not.”

He waggled woolly black eyebrows that looked like fat caterpillars inching above his pale blue eyes. “I’m not Madeira wine either, but I’ve been known to intoxicate.”

Josephine slapped his arm. “Behave yourself, Pete.”

Pinching fabric at the coat’s shoulder, she said, “Pete wants Conrad’s coat, but it doesn’t fit, and I’m not altering it. The shoulder is the main thing. If the shoulders don’t fit, the whole thing will look wrong.”

It didn’t take a tailor to see that the coat slid off his shoulders, pulling the lapels too far apart and giving the whole coat a sloppy look.

Pete turned his mouth down in mock despair. “Are you saying I don’t have broad manly shoulders?”

“I’m saying the coat don’t fit you, Pete.”

She unbuttoned the plastic chrysanthemums and pulled it from him. He turned to me and spread his arms to the side.

“It’s the story of my life. Women are always telling me I’m not big enough.”

Josephine put the coat on a hanger and hooked it over the rack. “Don’t let anybody kid you, Pete, size does matter.”

The baby chortled as if she got the joke, which made us all grin.

I said, “Actually, Jo, I’m here to take the coat back to Stevie Ferrelli. I told her what you said, and she thinks it’s a great idea.”

Josephine’s face brightened. “Well now, that’s the best news I’ve had in a long time.” She turned to Pete and said, “I told her Conrad should be buried in the coat.”

“Of course he should. I’m surprised you had to point that out.”

Josephine said, “Give her a break. The woman’s probably in shock.”

She took the coat down and brought it to me, but Pete was right behind her, reaching for it.

He said, “I’ll carry that out for you.”

I bit back a reply that I was a big girl and didn’t need a man to carry a coat for me, and handed it over. We said our good-byes to Josephine and Priscilla and went out together, Pete proudly leading the way with the coat laid over his forearms like a holy shroud.

At the Bronco, he carefully arranged it on the backseat and then straightened up with a deep sigh. “You know, it’s the strangest thing. Ever since I heard about Conrad, I’ve felt like it was Angelo who’d died. It’s like going through losing him all over again.”

“You knew Angelo Ferrelli?”

“Close to sixty years. I don’t think anything has ever hurt me as much as Angelo’s death. I’m ashamed to admit it, but losing him was almost worse than losing my wife and daughter. Not that Angelo and I had anything fruity between us, but we started out in the circus together, like soldiers in foxholes in the thick of battle.”

“You were a clown?”

“I am a clown, honey. Just’cause I’m old don’t mean I’ve hung up my clown shoes.”

He gave me a lecherous wink and grinned. If he’d been fifty years younger, it would have been annoying, but there’s something endearing about a flirtatious octogenarian.