Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

“Of course I’m staying out of it!”

“Uh-hunh.”

Tanisha rang the bell to signal that my food was ready, and Judy went off to get it. On her way back, she picked up a Herald-Tribune somebody had left on a table and put it down with my food.

“Here, read the paper and get your mind off that dead body.”

She splashed more coffee in my mug and left me to mutter sweet nothings to my biscuit. I didn’t look at the paper until I’d eaten every last morsel and Judy had filled my mug two more times. Then I skimmed the front page, where some old men in Washington had sent a company of young troops off to die for some ill-defined reason, turned to the inside pages where some old men from other countries had sent their young people off to fight for equally ill-defined reasons, and finally got to the comics, which is about the only thing that makes any sense. If I ran the world—and God knows I could do a better job of it than the yahoos doing it now—any leader who sent troops off to fight would have to march at the head of the ranks. That would bring about world peace in about four weeks.

After the comics, I turned the page and started to fold the paper for the next person to read. A photograph stopped me. It was a picture of Conrad Ferrelli and a man I recognized as Ethan Crane, an attorney I’d had some dealings with regarding a cat’s estate. An accompanying article said Ethan Crane headed the board of directors of a new foundation funded by the Ferrelli Charitable Trust. Part of a drive to restore Sarasota’s long association with the circus, the foundation’s purpose was to create a retirement home for people who had dedicated a major portion of their professional lives to the circus.

Crane was quoted as saying, “It will be patterned after the Lillian Booth Actors’ Home, but we’ll begin on a smaller scale.” Those who could pay would be charged according to their income. Those who couldn’t pay would receive the same high standard of housing and assistance. Conrad was quoted too. “Circus people spend their lives giving laughter and cheer to the world. Their last walkabout should be in comfort and dignity.”

I folded the paper around the article so it would tear more cleanly and was ripping it out when Judy came with my check.

“Why’re you vandalizing our communal paper?”

“It’s after eleven. It’s only vandalism if it’s before ten.”

“Uh-hunh. Say, who was that dead body?”

I held up the scrap of paper I’d torn out. “Conrad Ferrelli.”

“That rich guy?”

“That’s the one.”

“So what’re you going to do, put the picture in your dog scrapbook?”

Somebody at the booth in front of me asked her for more coffee, and she turned to pour it while I sat with my lips bunched together and feeling like an idiot. I didn’t have a single good reason for keeping that picture. I wadded it up into a little ball, dropped it in my plate, and covered it with my napkin. I wondered if I had become somebody whose life was so empty that I might start collecting photographs of my rich clients. It was a depressing thought.

Judy stepped back to me. “You reckon the wife killed him?”

“Why do you think that?”

“It’s always the wife that kills rich guys. Or the butler.”

“They don’t have a butler, and Mrs. Ferrelli is a nice woman. But I’m sure the detective will question her.”

“That hunky detective?”

I took out bills and put them on the check. “He’s not hunky.”

She scooped up the money and stuck it in her pocket. “Oh, yeah, he’s hunky all right.”

I slid out of the booth and grabbed my backpack. “I’ve got to go take care of a lovebird. See you later.”

She was busy gathering up my dirty dishes and only grunted good-bye. She knew she’d see me later. I’m dependable like that.

4

When my grandfather was a young man, he traveled through Florida on business and stumbled on Siesta Key. He spent a week here, and before he left he’d bought a piece of land on the edge of the Gulf. My grandmother was flabbergasted that he’d put them in debt for a thousand dollars for land that wouldn’t even grow tomatoes, but he persuaded her to bundle up my two-year-old mother and come see the key for herself. They arrived just as the sun was setting. My grandmother stood on the dazzling white beach and watched openmouthed as a molten gold sun quivered itself into the water while banners of iridescent rose and turquoise and lavender streamed in the sky.

“I’m never leaving here,” she said, and she didn’t.

My mother was probably looking the other way, because she left as soon as she got the chance. My brother and I are like our grandparents. We’re never leaving either.

I live in an apartment above a four-slot carport next to the frame house where Michael and I lived with our grandparents. I moved here after the earth cracked in my world and left me standing beside a jagged fissure that threatened to suck me in. Michael and his partner, Paco, live in the house, and except for a remodeled kitchen, they’ve left it pretty much the way it was. With Michael and Paco to remind me that I am loved, and the continuous roll of the surf to remind me that life never stops, I have survived the last few years. Barely.

A wide covered porch runs the length of my apartment, with a hammock strung in one corner and a table for eating and watching the waves break on the beach. French doors open into a small living room with a sofa and chair. A oneperson breakfast bar separates the living room from a galley kitchen. My bedroom is just big enough for a single bed and a dresser. The bathroom is cramped too, but there’s an alcove in the hall for a washer and dryer, and I have a big walk-in closet. I put a desk in one side of it, and that’s where I take care of my pet-sitting business. The whole place has Mexican tiled floors and oyster-white walls. I wouldn’t call it spartan exactly, but it’s definitely no-frills.

It was nearing noon when I drove home down the twisting tree-lined lane. All the cars were gone from the carport, and only a few foolhardy seagulls wheeled in the blazing sunlight. The undulating sea glinted diamonds, and down on the beach wavelets slapped the white sand and stained it beige. I unlocked the French doors and went inside just long enough to go to the bathroom and wash my face. Then I came back out and dropped my weary self into the hammock in the shady corner of the porch. I’d been up since 4 A.M., and I was bushed. I fell asleep in seconds, rousing once to the sound of Michael and Paco’s laughter downstairs and then falling even deeper asleep knowing they were home. I always instinctively relax when I know they’re home, not even aware until then that I’ve been tense. That’s how dependent I am on them. I hate to admit it, but it’s true.

Michael is thirty-four, two years older than me, and he looks like the golden genie that would pop out of a magic lantern in an Arabian desert. He’s a firefighter, like our father and his father before him, and he is probably the best human being in the world. Paco is also thirty-four, and he looks like the camel driver who would find the magic lantern. Slim, dark, and elusive, Paco is with the Sarasota County Special Investigative Bureau, which means he does stings, drug busts, and other undercover stuff, frequently in disguises so good he could pass right by me and I wouldn’t know him. Both Michael and Paco are so good-looking that women tend to consider hanging themselves when they learn they’re a unit, but they’ve been together twelve years and counting, which makes Paco my other brother. They’re my best friends in all the world. They protect me, they feed me, they keep me sane. Mostly.

I slept until almost two o’clock, and woke up feeling rested, hot, and thirsty. I went inside and got a bottle of water from the refrigerator and drank it as I went down the hall to my office-closet to check phone messages. There were several. You’d think my business would fall off in the summer when all the seasonals leave, but it actually gets busier. Snowbirds usually stay put when they get here, so they don’t need anybody to take care of their pets. Yearrounders, on the other hand, go traveling in the summer and leave their pets at home. I returned the calls, turned down a couple of jobs on the mainland because I work strictly on the key, gave two people my rates, scheduled a job for the following weekend with a pair of Persians, and made arrangements to go meet a couple of Lhasa apsos and get their information.