Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

I said, “What would it take to nail Denton Ferrelli for murdering Conrad and Stevie? Or for hiring Gabe Marks to do it?”

“A confession. A detailed account of how they did it. Details we could corroborate.”

“What if you caught one of them trying to kill somebody else?”

Guidry narrowed his gray eyes in a suspicious look. “Then we’d arrest him for attempted murder.”

“What if the somebody else was wired? What if the somebody else cleverly got a detailed account of how Conrad and Stevie were killed? And what if you rushed in and saved the somebody else before he actually killed her?”

Michael slapped the refrigerator door and glared at me.

Guidry said, “The somebody else would have to be pretty stupid to set herself up like that.”

I pushed my coffee mug away and rested my forearms on the butcher block. Everything suddenly seemed crystal clear to me. I just had to explain it so they understood it. Especially so Michael understood.

“If Gabe Marks isn’t locked up, and soon, he will kill me. Even if he is locked up, Denton will find somebody to kill me. Or he may do it himself. Denton is a psychopathic monster who enjoys hurting people. Gabe is a dumb thug who enjoys hurting people. Separately or together, they are determined to kill me, and they will. Even if I ran away, Denton has the contacts and the power to track me. He thinks I’m a danger to him, and he’s determined to shut me up.”

Michael turned away and stood motionless with his hands braced on the countertop, every hard line of his body saying he knew what I was saying was true and that he could not bear it.

I said, “Look, I’m not the shrinking violet you think I am. I know how to handle a gun, I know how to handle myself in a fight. So why not use me? Why not let Denton get to me? You have a whole fucking SWAT team that could swarm him the minute it sounded like things were getting too hairy. It would work, Guidry. It may be the only way to keep me alive.”

Michael said, “No! Goddamn it, no!”

Paco said, “I don’t like it either, Michael, but she’s right. It may be the only way.”

Guidry said, “I never thought you were a shrinking violet.”

“Well, okay, how about it?”

He looked at Michael. “Michael would have to be okay with it.”

Michael said, “Then it’s never happening. Never.”

He lasered us all with a look of sheer despair, and I got up and put my arms around him. Michael has taken care of me since the first time our mother left us when he was four and I was two. He kept me safe then, and for the rest of his life he’s felt that was his sacred duty. I could feel his strong heart pounding under his shirt, and I knew he was feeling utter anguish at not being able to protect me now.

I said, “I have to do this by myself, hon. It’s the only way. And I won’t be alone. Guidry and his guys will be close by. It will make it a whole lot easier if you have faith in me, if you believe I can do it.”

“Shit, Dixie.”

“I know.”

He gave a gigantic sigh and squeezed me close. “Guidry, you son-of-a-bitch, if anything happens to her—”

Guidry got up and rapped his knuckles a couple of times on the butcher block, like a ritual to ward off bad luck.

“I’ll get the stuff you’ll need. I’ll be back later.”

He went out the door without closing it behind him. I watched him cross the deck to his car and back out. The world looked different now, because I had moved to a new place in it.

Good or bad, I had taken a step in a new direction, and there was no going back.

26

Iwent up to my apartment, but I was too keyed up to nap. I took a long shower. I dressed in clean shorts and sleeveless top. I put on clean white Keds. I switched on the TV and saw Leo Brossi leaving the police station with his attorney while reporters yelled questions at him. His nose was taped and one eye was swollen almost shut. A newscaster said Brossi claimed he’d banged into a cabinet door the day before, but the newscaster didn’t sound as if he believed the story. I felt a little better about punching Brossi.

I entered pet visits in my client notebook. I made invoices. I returned all the calls that had to be returned. I went to the kitchen and looked out the window through the belled iron heart. I went back to the office-closet and looked up Denton Ferrelli’s address in the phone book and wrote it down. That made me feel efficient, as if I’d confirmed an important detail.

I still had several hours before I made my afternoon rounds, and I felt like somebody all dressed up with no place to go. I finally couldn’t stand it anymore and went downstairs and pulled the Bronco out of the carport. I wanted to see where my enemy lived. One of them, anyway.

Until a few years ago, a drawbridge connected the mainland to Bird Key, Lido Key, Casey Key, St. Armand’s Key, and Longboat Key. But people who moved here to escape the fast pace of big cities objected to the slow pace of waiting for the bridge to open, so now we have a span of soaring concrete. Who knows, one day the people who came here to escape concrete wastelands may grow impatient with the water around the keys and demand the waterways be paved over.

I passed the exit to Bird Key, which has the feeling of a tropical gated community, and Lido Key, home of Mote Marine Laboratory and Pelican Man’s Bird Sanctuary, both places where dedicated volunteers work to rescue injured wildlife. On St. Armand’s Key, I slowed for pedestrians around the fashion circle, then turned onto John Ringling Parkway. The New Pass Bridge spilled me onto Gulf of Mexico Drive and Longboat Key, where buildings that look like public libraries are really the homes of multimillionaires. Longboat Key has a gulfside beach where sea oats wave in the breeze, but it isn’t open to the public like Siesta’s Crescent Beach. To enjoy the sand on Longboat Key, you have to buy a house or a condo. Otherwise, the Longboat Key Police Department will arrest you for trespassing. At least the people who named the streets had a sense of humor—boat lovers can live on Sloop, Ketch, Schooner, Yawl, or Outrigger. Golfers live on Birdie, Wedge, Chipping, or Putter.

At Harbourside Drive, I turned to skirt the bay, scanning the sleek boats slipped at the Longboat Key Moorings. One of those boats belonged to Denton Ferrelli. The Longboat Key Golf Club has two courses, one harborside, and one inland. The clubhouse of the harborside course was less than a hundred feet away from the dock. I imagined Denton coming into that dock after killing his brother. Perhaps the lipstick he’d used to draw the leering grin on Conrad’s face had been tossed into the sea. I imagined him mooring his boat and ambling over to play golf with his friends.

Back on Gulf of Mexico Drive, I began watching for Denton’s street. It was one of the older streets edging the bay, where normal people used to live in normal houses. Now those normal houses are being bought up and bulldozed to make room for megamansions in which two or three people count their money or plan where their money will go when they die or whatever really rich people do when they’re alone. Denton’s three-story gray stucco edifice squatted at the end of the street like a leering gargoyle. A black iron gate spanned a driveway that curved to a garage somewhere behind the house. I could see open air at the back, but tall stucco walls ran along both sides of the lot. Only boats and fish would be looking at them, but Denton and Marian Ferrelli were taking no chance of being seen inside their house.

I drove past the end wall and over the curb to park beside the wall where I thought I would be out of view. The builders had spared an ancient banyan tree there, in a thick green copse of palmetto fronds and potato vines. From the car window, I could see the third-story roof and the side of a second-story deck that was probably above the garage. Part of the deck was covered with a blue canvas awning, and the rest was caged with ribbing that rose to the third-story roof. Too hot now, but probably a pleasant place to sit early in the morning and late in the afternoon and watch sailboats and dolphins on the bay. I got out of the Bronco and eased the door shut, then walked between the stucco wall and the rooting banyan branches toward the back of the lot.