Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

Well, that was just too fucking great. Impeccable Guidry had been there while I slept. While I’d been laid out all scraped and sweaty and cat-hairy, he’d stood in his sophisticated linen and watched me drool while I slept. And he had the picture showing me going bonkers in front of the entire world.

I pulled myself through the water and climbed out of the pool. “You say my shower is clean?”

“Spotless. They poured stuff down the drain that would kill anything. The new remote for your storm door is on the table.”

I squished across the deck, water pouring off my clothes and sloshing out of my Keds, and got the remote. As I crossed to the stairs to my apartment, I could feel Michael watching me from the pool, no doubt wondering if I was going to crack up in the shower.

20

The remote control sent my storm shutters folding into a slim line that disappeared in the cornice above the French doors. I wondered why I’d never had them set up so I could close them from the outside before. Inside, my apartment was so clean and shiny it amazed the eyes. It also had the peculiar ozone odor left by crime-scene cleanup.

I went into my fumigated and sterilized bathroom and took a long shower, then padded wearily down the hall wrapped in a towel. In my office-closet, where my shorts and Ts had all been washed, dried, folded, and stacked on the shelves with military precision, the message light was blinking on the answering machine.

One call was from clients who had planned to return tomorrow but had changed their plans and were staying over the weekend. I took their number to call and confirm. One was a hard-voiced man wanting to know my rates and grinching that I didn’t have a Web site with my rates posted. I didn’t take his number. I don’t want a Web site. I don’t even want a computer. I can’t type worth shit, and I’m so technologically retarded that I forget to charge my cell phone. I sure as heck wouldn’t be able to handle a Web site.

The third was Birdlegs Stephenson. “Dixie, I asked around about that truck and I have a name for you to check out. But you didn’t hear it from me, okay? Two different people said look into a guy named Gabe Marks. Has a little place in the country near the Myakka River. From what they said, he’s one mean sumbitch, not somebody you should tangle with by yourself. Like I said, if you talk to the cops about him, you didn’t get his name from me.”

I sat with my pen poised over my notepad staring at the machine. I’d never heard of anybody named Gabe Marks. Whoever he was, Gabe Marks had no reason to want me dead. Unless somebody had hired him to kill me.

Feeling heavy and sad, I called the people who were extending their vacation and talked to their voice mail; nobody talks directly anymore, we communicate through machines. I said I’d got their message and not to worry about their Airedale. I made my voice strong and cheerful, because that’s part of my job, seeming on top of things. It’s like being a parent, even when you don’t know what the heck you’re doing, your job is to act like you do so the people depending on you won’t freak out.

I stood up and unwound the towel and pulled on clean underwear. Michael was right. I did need new underwear. As I was stepping into clean shorts, the phone rang again. I let the answering machine click on while I pulled on a sleeveless T.

A thin voice spoke. “Um—uh, Dixie? This is Priscilla.”

I leaped to snag the phone and answered so loudly it scared her.

She said, “Oooh! I didn’t think you were there.”

“Priscilla, do you have something to tell me?”

“Well—um, Pete talked to me, and Josephine too. And they think I should—”

Her voice cracked, and I realized she was crying.

“Are you at Josephine’s?”

“I’m at home.”

“Tell me where you live.”

She gave me an address about a mile from Josephine’s, and I told her I’d be there in ten minutes. I laced up clean white Keds, dropped the gun in my pocket, and grabbed the door remote and my backpack. Outside the French doors, I lowered the shutters and looked over at the house. Michael had left the pool and was probably upstairs in the shower. Paco was probably asleep, resting up for his undercover night job. With my storm shutters closed, they might think I was still inside my apartment. I could nip over to Priscilla’s and be back before they even knew I was gone, thus sparing them the concern they might feel about me leaving.

What a load of horse manure.

The truth was that if I told them I was leaving to get the name of the person who had tried to kill me with a truck and a rattlesnake, they would hog-tie me and call Guidry. But I had promised Pete I would let Priscilla tell me personally. He had kept his promise and persuaded her to talk to me, and I would keep my promise and keep the police out of it.

I didn’t exactly sneak away, but I went down the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible, and eased the Bronco out of the carport. It wasn’t yet time for my afternoon rounds, so nobody was at the end of the drive to tail me.

Pete’s house turned out to be a moss-green stucco bungalow almost hidden by old trees and hibiscus. Built before central air-conditioning, the house had a couple of window units humming and dripping on the side by the detached one-car garage. The apartment above the garage looked as if it had been built at the same time as the house, not added on later. A wide picture window overlooked the driveway, the glass covered by white pleated drapes. As I parked in the driveway, the drapes separated just enough for somebody to peek out and then fell back in place. I got out of the Bronco and walked around the corner of the garage, noting neatly trimmed flower beds running along the perimeter of the house. Somebody had spent time encouraging shrimp plants and green and white caladium to flourish. I wondered if gardening was another of Pete’s skills.

The stairway to Priscilla’s apartment was steep and narrow, with a wooden railing on the outside that seemed to have been recently stabilized and freshly painted. In the outside corner of the covered landing, an enormous staghorn fern in a moss-filled wire container hung from the ceiling. Priscilla opened the door before I knocked. She wore frayed cutoff jeans and a tiny ribbed T molded to her bony rib cage. Her pink hair was sleep-flattened on one side, and the bruises on her arms had turned a sickish blue. Her face was so ashen that her diamond nose stud and the gold rings rimming her ears seemed cruel impalings. She seemed agitated and flapped her hands to hurry me inside. As soon as she could, she slammed the door closed, turned a dead bolt, and slid a night latch closed.

Her apartment was one big room, with a tiny kitchenette by the front window and two doors at the back that I assumed led to a closet and a bathroom. The baby was asleep in a wooden crib in the corner, her knees tucked under her tummy and her rump raised in the air. A single bed against the wall had firm bolsters on its long side to make it double as a sofa. In front of it, a dented military trunk sat as a coffee table. The lid was open, and Priscilla hurried to it and started digging into it like a spaniel after a buried bone, pulling out articles of clothing and throwing them in a black plastic garbage bag next to the trunk.

She was obviously getting ready to run. Under any other circumstance I would have gone all mushy with regret and sympathy and concern. Now I just wanted the girl to get on with it and tell me what she knew.

I leaned against the wall. “What is it you have to tell me, Priscilla?”

In a strangled rush, she said, “I wasn’t sure it was him … I didn’t think he would do that … he’s not like that, not really … he’s good to the baby and lots of times he’s real sweet … but when Pete told me about the snakes, I knew it was him … he’ll kill me if he finds out I told!”