Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

“I think he was there, but I think it was Gabe who drove Conrad’s car away.”

Paco said, “Denton Ferrelli is a big player. The Feds have been trying to nail him for money laundering for years, but he always manages to wiggle loose.”

I said, “Is that why the guy in the white socks was here?”

He shifted uneasily on his stool. “That was for something else.”

I looked straight at Paco. “Denton Ferrelli and Leo Brossi are connected at the butt, and they’re probably involved with the Mafia. I’ve been told that Brossi’s call center may be a cover for an identity-theft operation.”

Only somebody who knew him well would have noticed the way Paco’s lips got firmer at the corners. Very carefully, he said, “Every investigation has to focus on one crime and one crime only, Dixie.”

Michael stood up and began gathering the plates. “There’s another baguette in the oven, and I have chocolate butter.”

Paco and I went silent and big-eyed. Hell, offer me hot French bread with chocolate butter to smear on it, and I forget all about the possibility that I might be murdered. Michael tossed the hot loaf on the butcher block for us to pull apart with our fingers. He set out a bowl of soft butter mixed with dark melted chocolate. He poured cups of black coffee laced with cinnamon. A west wind howled through the old oaks outside, and rain drummed against the windows and on the roof. But we were inside, safe and dry, and we had bread and chocolate and coffee.

I rinsed our dishes and put them in the dishwasher while Michael transferred leftover gumbo to the freezer containers to take to the firehouse. Paco went upstairs and dressed in his All-Call khakis and dark shirt. He and I left at the same time, charging through the driving rain in two different directions. As I went inside my French doors and lowered the storm shutters, Paco’s headlights swung out of the carport.

I hung my wet slicker over the showerhead to drip into the tub. Rain clattered on the roof and porch in an unrelenting din. I put on a Patsy Cline CD, but it was a tinny sound compared to the storm, and it didn’t calm my twitchy nerves. I tried some mellow jazz, but that didn’t work either. I went into my office-closet and entered my visits for the day in my record book. I wrote up a couple of invoices. I went to the kitchen window and looked through the heart-shaped iron thing at the tossing treetops.

I went in the bathroom and cleaned the sink and toilet and polished the water faucets until they were shiny. I spritzed the mirror over the bathroom sink with Windex and wiped away the mist. My face appeared in the arc made by my paper towel, my eyes looking back at me with a quizzical challenge. Who are you trying to kid?

I looked away and concentrated on cleaning the glass, but I finally had to look at myself again. I couldn’t deny the truth any longer, not even to myself. I was attracted to Lieutenant Guidry. The shock of it was like a blast of arctic air. It was not only damn bad timing, what with a killer after me and all, but I hadn’t expected to ever want another man after Todd. And certainly not another cop. But there it was, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

Feeling trapped by the storm shutters, the driving rain, and my own thoughts, I wandered aimlessly through the apartment. I clicked the TV on and clicked it off. I picked up a book and read a few pages, then put it down. I went in the bedroom where Christy’s Tickle Me Elmo was propped against the pillow on my bed, the only toy of hers that I had kept. I sat on the side of the bed and stroked Elmo’s red fur, hearing Christy’s laughter bubbling, that sound of pure joy that made everybody within earshot smile. On my bedside table, Christy and Todd smiled at me from a photograph taken shortly before they were killed. Christy sat in Todd’s lap, both his arms encircling her like a ring of safety. I picked the photo up and ran my fingertips over the glass.

Christy would be six years old now. She would be excited about starting first grade, and we would be shopping for number-two yellow pencils, crayons, scissors, and Elmer’s glue. We would be debating which backpack to buy, whether it should have cartoon characters on it or be more plain and grown-up. We would be getting school clothes ready and making sure her vaccinations were current.

Todd would be thirty-five. Maybe he would have decided to work toward making lieutenant with the sheriff’s department, maybe he would have been happy to stay a sergeant. I was now the age Todd was when he died. He will stay thirty-two while I grow older. He and Christy are like astronauts who stop aging when they leave earth’s gravity. Perhaps death is actually a different kind of space travel, leaving behind one’s body sleeve and moving into another space-time dimension in which there is no such thing as age or death. Or maybe they have moved into another dimension in which they continue to grow and have different lives. Who knows what happens after death? All I knew was that they weren’t in my world any longer and never would be.

I put the photograph down and picked up Tickle Me Elmo. I hugged him tight to my chest and kissed the red fur on his head. I carried him down the hall and put him inside a clean pillowcase and laid him on the top shelf of my linen closet. Then I closed the door.

The air was charged, continuously vibrating with massive air quakes. The wind had picked up, moaning and shrieking with primeval urgency. It was the kind of storm that floods canals and swimming pools, topples ornamental trees, and spawns tornadoes. I raised the metal shutters and peered through the French doors. The sky was purple as a bad bruise. Down on the shore, rolls of dark bulimic swells were vomiting strings of seaweed.

I opened the doors and stepped outside. The wind was so strong that horizontal rain slammed under the porch overhang and drenched me. I leaned over the railing and let the wind whip my hair around my face, let it offer my mind escape from its jail. After a while I went downstairs and slogged through wet sand and quivering thunder to the shore. Bracing against the howling wind, I faced the sea and raised my arms, spread-eagled to take the rain’s hardest force.

Then I looked directly into the great maw of churning sea and raging wind and gave it back my own sound: my fury and hatred, my despair and hopelessness, the rage and heartbreak trapped inside since Todd and Christy died. Howled it from my toes and guts and lungs and heart. Howled like women have howled since the beginning of time and maybe before, sending a woman’s demand to the ends of the universe to bring it into balance.

I don’t know how long I stood raging into that dark storm, but long enough. When I was empty, I felt a door closing with a gentle click somewhere in my brain, while another door opened. Part of me wanted to put them back the way they’d been, another part of me knew that would be an act of cowardice. My husband and my child were dead, my capacity for love was not. Staying in the safe darkness of memory and yearning is easy. Going forward to the light of possibility takes courage.

As I trudged back through the downpour, I saw Michael’s silhouette in his bedroom window and knew he had been keeping watch.

I left my sodden clothes in a heap on the porch floor and went inside and took a long warm shower. Then I crawled into bed and slept deeply and dreamlessly for the first time in three years.

24

The sky was pale and washed clear when I backed out of the carport next morning, and the air had a clean salty taste. A few early cranes were gathering goodies washed in on the tide, and songbirds were beginning to practice scales. If it hadn’t been for the sure and certain knowledge that a killer was out to get me, I would have felt downright contented.