Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

To change the subject, I said, “Cora, have you ever known any circus people?”

“Sure, lots of them. Ringling used to be a good place to work. We had a neighbor in Bradenton had something to do with the elephants. Dyer. His name was Dyer. Had a sneaky boy named Quenton that was sweet on Marilee, but she never had anything to do with him.”

As I remembered, every male in Florida had been sweet on Marilee.

Cora said, “Why’re you interested in circus people?”

“Oh, I met a man whose father was a clown, and that got me thinking about it.”

“That fellow Dyer had to shoot an elephant one time. It went crazy or something, and he shot it with a gun that had drugs in it. He said it ran a few steps and then just keeled over dead. He felt bad about it, but you can’t have a crazy elephant running around trampling people.”

We were both subdued after that, thinking about what it would be like to shoot an elephant with enough drugs to kill it.

As we were leaving, I held the door open while Cora inched her way over the threshold. Noontime traffic zipped past on the street beyond the parking lot. A dark blue pickup raised up on tall tires drove past, and I jerked to attention. It sped south, toward the curve and the north bridge to Siesta Key.

Cora stood on tiptoe to see what I was looking at. She said, “How do they get in those things? Do they have to use a ladder? Silly things, you ask me. Look like they’d be dangerous.”

As I stepped off the curb to help Cora down, pain from my bruised ribs shot through my torso. “They’re damn dangerous.”

After I took Cora back to Bayfront Village, I wanted more than anything to go home and take a nap, but I stopped at the market to pick up staples: fruit and yogurt and cheese and Cherry Garcia ice cream. In the ten-items-or-less line, I read the headlines on idiot magazines while I waited behind a man who had at least twenty items. When it was my turn, the checker rolled everything over her scanner and stuffed it in a plastic bag.

When I handed her money, she said, “If I eat ice cream, it just runs right through me. Takes about fifteen minutes, and out it goes.”

Not knowing how to respond to that fascinating information, I said, “No kidding?”

She counted out my change. “Yep, I have a problem with fat. It’s in one end and out the other, whoosh!”

She demonstrated, shoving both hands down her sides. The man in line behind me suddenly wheeled his cart backward and went to another checker.

She gave me a friendly smile. “Have a nice day.”

The automatic doors sighed me through, and I crossed the parking lot carrying my fatty ice cream and watching for speeding blind people or pickups on monster tires. Life is treacherous.

13

When I made the last turn on the twisty drive leading to my place from Midnight Pass Road, I saw that neither Michael nor Paco was home. I also saw a dark Blazer parked at the side of the carport. Guidry was in it, sitting like a meditating Buddha with the windows rolled down.

I said, “Shit.”

I pulled into my slot, took the gun from the glove box and jammed it in my pocket, got out of the car, and opened the back to loop plastic grocery bags over my wrists. Guidry ambled around the corner like a tourist coming to watch the pagans do their worship rites to heathen gods. He had on a linen jacket the color of white asparagus, pale olive pants, and a darker olive knit shirt. He looked cool and unhurried. His bare toes in his expensive leather sandals looked clean and manicured. His gray eyes were calm and alert. I hated his guts.

He said, “Can I help you with those?”

I said, “I’ve got them.” I didn’t sound very gracious, but then I didn’t feel very gracious.

He followed me up my stairs and waited while I unlocked the French doors. I didn’t invite him in, but he came in anyway and took the one stool at my so-called breakfast bar, casting a speculative eye at my bare white walls. I tossed ice cream in the freezer and dumped fruit in a basket and finally looked directly at him.

He said, “Want to tell me how you got those bruises?”

“I fell.”

“Uh-hunh. Would that have been around four-thirty this morning? In the Sea Breeze parking lot?”

My face went hot and I felt my lower lip creep forward like a four-year-old’s.

He said, “We got a nine-one-one call this morning from a woman in the Sea Breeze who said she got up to go to the bathroom and saw a truck try to run a woman down in the parking lot. She said it looked like it rolled right over her. She watched the woman get up, and then she went back to bed and waited until daylight to report it. She said the truck was already gone and she didn’t want to bother anybody so early, but she thought we ought to know. She said the woman had a greyhound with her. If memory serves, you go running with a greyhound at the Sea Breeze every morning.”

I got a bottle of water from the refrigerator and opened it. Then I relented and got another one out and handed it to Guidry. While he unscrewed the cap on his, I stood on my side of the bar and took a long pull at mine. After he had chugged down half a bottle—he must have been hotter than he looked—I gave him a surly glare.

“Okay, somebody tried to run me down in the Sea Breeze parking lot this morning. They drove a pickup jacked up on huge tires, and the only reason I’m not dead is that I threw myself under it before it hit me.”

“You get plates? See the driver?”

“It was too dark. I didn’t have time. He went out on Midnight Pass Road toward the bridge.”

“Why didn’t you report it?”

“What for, Guidry? I didn’t know who it was, I didn’t have any proof, and it was probably halfway to Myakka City by the time I quit shaking.”

“You shook?”

“Damn right I shook.”

“First time I ever heard you admit you could be scared.”

“The point is, Guidry, the point is that Conrad Ferrelli’s killer thinks I can identify him, and somebody tried to kill me this morning.”

“Could be coincidence.”

“Yeah, like the moon and tides.”

“You have any idea who it could be?”

“I think it’s Denton Ferrelli. He’s a slimy guy. Everybody says he’s a jerk.”

“You want me to arrest Denton Ferrelli because he’s a jerk?”

“I just think you should look into him very carefully.”

Guidry got up from the stool and ambled into the living room area, looking around as if he were at an art gallery. “I expected you to live with a menagerie, but you don’t even have a goldfish.”

“My life works better without anybody depending on me.”

“Any body ?”

“Like a pet, I mean.”

“You don’t have any pictures on your walls either. No plants, not even a pot of ivy. You don’t seem the type to live like an ascetic.”

“What the hell does my apartment have to do with somebody trying to kill me?”

He shrugged. “I’m just trying to figure you out.”

“Somebody’s trying to kill me, Guidry. Figure that out.”

He turned and gave me a long look, his gray eyes momentarily softening before they grew analytical again.

“You know what I think?”

“No, Guidry, what do you think?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Dixie, I respect what you’ve been through, and I respect your feelings. But I think the time comes when grief becomes protective coloration to keep people away.”

Fury rose in my throat. “What do you know about it, Guidry? What do you know about losing somebody?”

“I don’t know about it, Dixie. I probably never will, because I don’t think I have it in me to care so much about somebody that I would feel the kind of loss you feel. But you do. You know what it’s like to love that much. You’ve done it, so you know you can do it again. But as long as you hide behind grief, you’ll never have to. You can stay safely outside it, live in a sterile cave, wrap yourself in pain every night instead of a man’s arms.”