Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

Thunder cracked overhead, and I gave Mame a quick kiss and left her. I told myself she was safe and dry. The Powells had been adamant that I was not to have anybody stay with her in their house, but I didn’t feel good about leaving her. I didn’t feel good at all.

I felt even worse when I swung around the circle to check on Reggie and a deputy on guard duty told me Denton Ferrelli had taken him away.

The wind was up by now, bending saplings and whipping palm fronds like flapping flags. Through the thick trees and foliage, it sounded much worse than it was, like a hurricane gale. Ominous thunder was rumbling all around too, so that standing listening to the deputy I felt as if I were in a dark cave with a bass drum’s endless echoes bouncing off the walls.

Angry, I said, “You let Denton Ferrelli take Reggie?”

“He’s the next of kin, ma’am. Who are you?”

I didn’t answer, just got back in the Bronco and headed home. I was nobody. I had no right to Reggie, and Denton Ferrelli did. But the truth was that Reggie going off with Denton Ferrelli was almost surely Reggie going off to his death. I didn’t know how I could save him, but I knew I had to try.

When I got home, a rain-colored car was parked beside the carport, and a man in a white short-sleeved dress shirt and dark polyester pants was standing beside it talking to Paco. When I drove up they both looked around with almost stealthy expressions. Paco backed away with a dismissive wave, and the man opened his car door and got in. His shoes were dull dark leather with thick rubber soles. He wore white socks. Somebody should tell those federal guys that white socks are a dead giveaway.

He made a sharp U-turn and headed down the lane toward Midnight Pass Road, and I sprinted through quickening rain to my stairs, pushing the remote to raise the shutters as I ran. Inside my dark apartment, I switched on lights and hurried to the bathroom to clean up before dinner. By the time I was out of the shower and dressed in threadbare old jeans and a stretchy T, the rain was coming down hard and fast.

My answering machine was blinking, so I stabbed the PLAY button and skipped through the messages. I stopped when I heard Pete’s voice and let it play to the end.

“Dixie, Priscilla and I talked on the way to the airport, and I learned something … maybe it’s … she said Gabe spent Sunday night with her, and he had a little kitten with him … she thought he’d brought it to her, but when he left Monday morning he took it with him … she said he left a little before five, but I saw him leaving in his truck about seven that morning … I don’t know where he’d been between the time he left her and the time I saw him, but I thought it might be something you should know … may not be relevant.”

I stood looking at the machine while pictures flashed like a montage in my head. The box of free kittens I’d seen Monday morning on Midnight Pass Road could have been put out Sunday evening. Maybe the box of kittens had activated Denton’s need to inflict emotional pain. Gabe could have walked to Secret Cove from Priscilla’s apartment, killed Conrad, and driven Reggie to Crescent Beach. From there, it would have been an easy walk back to Priscilla’s for his truck. But Denton Ferrelli had to have been present when Conrad was killed. Denton had to have been the one who got Conrad to stop his car and step into the woods where the kitten lay.

I backed away from the answering machine as if it were a ticking bomb. I’d had about all I could take for the day. I couldn’t absorb anything else. On the porch, I lowered the shutters and pulled a yellow slicker over my head before I ran down the steps and across the deck. A golden light glowed through the kitchen’s bay window, and I could see Michael and Paco moving around inside. That was my beacon, my safe harbor.

23

Iopened the back door and slipped into the kitchen, hurrying to shut the door behind me and trying to shed the slicker without making a puddle on the floor. The kitchen was steamy from an oversized stainless-steel soup pot on the stove. The pot sent out such a tantalizing aroma that my stomach forgot it had eaten in the last four hours. Let’s face it—my stomach is like a female cat. Let a female cat be mounted by a horny tom and she automatically goes into heat. Let my nose get a whiff of spicy food, and my stomach automatically feels lust.

Two glasses of red wine were already at places set for Michael and me on the wide butcher-block island, and a glass of iced tea waited for Paco. Michael was at the stove stirring whatever was in the pot, and Paco was transferring leafy salad from a big wooden bowl to three small ones.

Michael waggled a long wooden spoon at me. “We’ve got gumbo.”

“New Orleans gumbo?”

“You know any other kind?”

“Can I do something?”

“You can put rice in these bowls.”

I spooned rice from a steamer into three wide bowls stacked by the stovetop. Michael ladled dark gumbo onto the rice and set the bowls on plates. Paco hauled out two crusty loaves of French bread from the wall oven, wrapped them in a clean towel, and tossed them on the butcher block. We all took our seats. By tacit agreement, we would enjoy dinner before we talked about anything that might spoil our pleasure.

The gumbo was in a roux so dark it was almost black, redolent with spice and shrimp and crab and oysters, flavors so exquisitely married that I had to be strict with myself not to make orgasmic whimpers. Nobody in the world can make gumbo like Michael. Well, maybe some New Orleans chef in a little café hidden in a narrow alley known only to the privileged cognoscenti does, but I don’t know him. Guidry might know him, Guidry, who was from New Orleans … Guidry, who was not Italian but something else … Guidry, who was secretive about his first name … Guidry, who had called me a liar in French and told me I needed to finish the howl I’d started three years ago.

Paco cleared his throat and I jerked my mind away from Guidry. My bowl was empty and Michael and Paco were looking at me as if they’d been trying to get my attention for a good while.

Michael said, “I’ve been talking to some people with offshore racers, guys who know who’s who on the water. They say Denton Ferrelli has a really sweet Donzi Thirty-eight ZR that can easily do ninety miles an hour. He docks it at the Longboat Key Moorings next to the Harborside Golf Club.”

“I know. He takes it out for a run in the bay every morning.”

“That’s what I mean. Even watching out for manatees, he could kill his brother in Secret Cove and be back at the Moorings in under twenty minutes. Fifteen maybe.”

I hadn’t realized he could have moved so quickly. If what Michael said was true, Denton could have left Siesta Key as late as six-thirty and still have arrived at the Longboat Key Moorings before seven. From there, all he had to do was stroll next door to the first tee.

I said, “If he did, nobody saw him dock at Siesta Key. It probably wasn’t Denton who actually killed Conrad. The killer used a dart gun filled with a drug used to capture big alligators. A thug named Gabe Marks makes his living capturing poisonous snakes and alligators, and he uses the same drug. He’s the one who tried to run me down with his truck. I met him today, and I think he could kill somebody without batting an eye.”

They were both looking at me with identical expressions of dread.

Michael said, “You don’t think Ferrelli had anything to do with it?”

I thought of the red-lipstick smile slashed on Conrad’s face. Of the mutilated kitten for Conrad to see just before he died. Of the photograph of herself as a man for Stevie to see. Only Denton would have got malicious satisfaction from those acts of psychological sadism.