Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

I followed Paco up the stairs and got the door keys from under the gun in my purse.

I said, “Do you want me to unfold the sofa bed?”

“Nah, just give me a pillow.”

I went to find him a pillow and sheet, and when I came back he was in the kitchen looking at the iron bell thing hanging in front of my window.

He said, “Bitchin’ alarm, babe.”

“You’re not going to take off your clothes and walk around my apartment naked, are you?”

“Wouldn’t think of it.”

“Damn.”

“When we catch the guy, maybe you can see him naked.”

I wondered if he had said “when we catch him” on purpose, or if I wasn’t supposed to guess that the SIB was involved in a murder investigation. In either case, I intended to play dumb. Not that I would have to pretend very hard, but I wasn’t quite as dumb as I seemed.

I also wasn’t as obedient as I seemed. While I appreciated that law-enforcement officers were the only ones who could or should be doing the investigating, they weren’t the ones who had faced a homicidal truck bearing down on them like a nightmare from hell. Furthermore, they weren’t the ones who had only recently clawed their way from victimized weakness to a semblance of self-respect. If I slunk away in meek silence, all the gains I’d made in the last year would be lost, and I would once again be at the mercy of forces larger and more powerful than myself.

I would be careful. I would not tread on the law’s toes. But I would not wait for the sheriff’s department to find the person who had killed Conrad and wanted to kill me.

16

Islept hard until four o’clock, when the alarm went off, and woke knowing I’d felt safer with Paco in the living room. I hit the alarm and stumbled down the hall to the bathroom, trying to be quiet so Paco could sleep. But when I had brushed teeth and hair, pulled on clean shorts and a T, and laced up fresh white Keds, Paco was up and at the door waiting for me.

He said, “You have your gun?”

“Sure. Oh, wait, I forgot my keys.”

I did a U-turn back to the closet to retrieve the client keys from the floor safe. I knelt in the corner of my closet and pulled up the loose floor tile. I opened the top of the floor safe and then leaped backward, screaming. I collided with Paco in the closet door, and for a second we did a crazed dance while I tried to get past him and he tried to come in.

Then he looked over my shoulder and yelled, “Holy shit!”

A pygmy rattler had slithered out of the floor safe and was streaking toward us like lightning.

Paco began running, pulling me with him. I didn’t need any help, I was moving fast.

Pygmy rattlers are aggressive and mean, especially when they’ve been confined in a tiny space like my floor safe. Their venom can be lethal, or it can cause you to lose a foot or a hand. The snake was dark gray, about twenty-five inches long, with a thick body, distinctive triangular head, and dark blotches along a reddish brown stripe running down the center of its back. It was pissed, its rattles sounded like a bumblebee.

Paco and I raced for the living room sofa and climbed on it. We watched the floor for the snake, which didn’t appear. My heart was lurching crazily, and I kept remembering the folk myth that snakes always travel in pairs. But this snake hadn’t traveled on its own, it had been placed in my floor safe while Paco and I were eating sushi.

After a while, I sat down on the arm of the couch. “I don’t hear it, do you?”

He sat down on the other arm and listened. “No. What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I guess it means it’s not shaking its tail.”

“But it could be lying in wait.”

“Yeah. What’re you going to do?”

“What do you mean, what am I going to do? I’m not a snake handler!”

“Maybe you could just run in the closet and get my keys so I can go take care of my pets. Then you could call somebody to come get it.”

He gave me a round white-eyed glare.

“If it comes in here, I’ll shoot the son-of-a-bitch, but I’m not going in that closet.”

Paco spent his life infiltrating mobs and gangs ruled by vicious killers. He went into situations that would make the Terminator pee himself, but he seemed about as freaked by the snake as I was.

“Sissy.”

“Shit, Dixie.”

“Michael would get it.”

“Michael’s a fucking fireman. Snakes don’t bother him.”

We sat morosely for a couple of minutes, and then Paco stood up and gave me a desperate look.

“I’m going in there and get your keys, Dixie. But I swear if that snake bites me—”

I gave him a tremulous smile and a perky thumbs-up.

He took long strides, setting his feet down as quietly as he could, and disappeared from view. In a few seconds I heard a metallic jingle and Paco came sprinting back, carrying my key ring.

He climbed back on the couch and said, “You owe me big-time, Dixie.”

“I do.”

He dropped the keys in my open palm. I tried not to think about snake spit on them.

Paco said, “Okay, go walk your dogs. I’ll call somebody to come get the damned snake.”

I stood up on the sofa and gave him a cautious hug, both of us nervously watching the floor. I took my gun out of my pocket, slid off the end of the sofa, and scurried to the French doors, anxiously waiting while the hurricane shutters folded upward.

As I opened the doors, Paco said, “Dixie? You understand what this means, don’t you?”

“I understand, Paco.”

“Okay. I love you, kid.”

I smiled at him. “Me too.”

The sky was taking on the pearly sheen of false dawn, and a sleepy sea was halfheartedly lapping at the shoreline. A few mourning doves were beginning to check their voices to see if they still worked, and some early-waking cranes were stalking along the beach looking for breakfast. I said a silent good morning to the day and clattered down the stairs to my Bronco.

When I got to the end of the long curvy drive and turned north onto Midnight Pass Road, an unmarked car that had been parked on the shoulder pulled behind me. I would have been scared if it hadn’t been such a nondescript car. No self-respecting murderer would drive a car like that. Guidry must have assigned a deputy to follow me. He wasn’t making any effort to be invisible either, so the department wanted me to know I was being guarded. I gave a sentimental gulp until I realized that it wasn’t just for my safety that Guidry wanted me tailed. I was like a little fish around a killer whale. Conrad Ferrelli’s killer was after me. If the cops followed little me, they had a better chance of catching big dangerous him.

At the Sea Breeze, the tail pulled into a space at the far corner of the lot and waited while I ran with Billy Elliot. When I left the Sea Breeze, it left too, staying about half a block behind. It was with me for the rest of the morning, dropping farther back as traffic began to move on Midnight Pass Road, always parking well away from the site I went to. After a while I sort of forgot about it. I followed my usual routine, zigzagging back and forth between the Gulf side and the bay side of Midnight Pass Road, either to a condo on the main thoroughfare or down a short tree-lined lane to a private home.

I was on a lanai pulling my slicker brush through an American shorthair’s gray coat when I realized the full significance of the snake in my safe. The safe had originally been installed to hold valuables like jewelry or money, but since I didn’t have any valuables, I used it as a kind of unlocked fireproof holder of important papers. The person who put the snake in the safe had wanted to let me know he was familiar with my apartment and its secrets.