He cut a bite of omelet, looked up, and caught me eyeing his bacon. He put his fork down and used his fingers to transfer half the bacon to my plate.
I said, “Oh, I never eat bacon.”
“Menteuse.”
I felt a little gotcha! smirk because I’d caught him being Italian, but I was distracted by the fried fat odor that makes all my little pleasure receptors fall on their backs and writhe in ecstasy.
“What did you just call me?”
“Liar. You eat bacon all the time, you just don’t order it.”
I nibbled at a slice of bacon while I considered that in one day I’d been called a cunt and a liar. But on Guidry’s lips the word hadn’t come out as an assault the way Gabe’s had. It had been more like a silky caress.
Nevertheless, that’s what irritated me about Guidry—he kept saying things that were true. This was just the first time he’d done it in a foreign language.
“That’s an Italian word, right?”
“French.”
Aha! He was probably one of those Europeans he’d mentioned who speak English without an accent.
“Where did you come from, Guidry?”
He grinned as if he’d expected the question. “New Orleans. Born and bred.”
“You’re not Italian?”
“Actually, that’s one of the few things I’m not.”
“You have a first name?”
“I do, but most people call me Guidry.”
“Hunh.”
Before I could follow that line, he said, “I was with the New Orleans Police Department for several years. Decided I’d like a place with a little less excitement.”
I ate some more bacon. “So has Siesta Key been less exciting?”
“It was until I met a cantankerous pet-sitter. It’s been pretty exciting since then.”
My heart did a stupid little leap, and a slice of tomato fell off my fork back onto my salad plate. I wouldn’t have touched that sentence with a forty-foot pole.
I said, “I went to Mardi Gras once. I loved the jazz places.”
“You like jazz?”
“Just old bluesy jazz. I have this fantasy where I’m in a crowded nightclub and a famous jazz band is onstage. The leader of the band steps to the microphone and says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the best jazz singer in the world is in the audience tonight.’ Then a big spotlight shines on me, and the audience gives me a standing ovation. I go up on the stage and sing like Billie Holiday or Peggy Lee, one of those. It just knocks everybody out.”
He was grinning. “I didn’t know you sang.”
“Can’t sing a lick. When Michael and I used to go to church with our grandparents, I’d throw the whole congregation off when we sang hymns.”
He laughed. “It’s a nice fantasy anyway.”
“You have a fantasy, Guidry?”
“Yeah, I’d like to live on an island, just white sand and palm trees and tropical birds, plenty of fish to eat, a thatched hut with sea breezes wafting through, a beloved woman with me.”
“Wafting?”
“You know, slowly blowing.”
“Isn’t that pretty much how you live?”
He took a bite of omelet and chewed it thoughtfully.
“My hut isn’t thatched, and sometimes the breeze doesn’t waft. Not to mention the lack of a woman.”
My heart did that jiggle-dance thing again, and I changed the subject.
I said, “I think the killer used darts, and I think I know who he is.”
“You’ve told me.”
“I’m not talking about Denton Ferrelli. His name is Gabe Marks. He drives a pickup raised up on tall tires, and he makes a living capturing poisonous snakes and alligators. He paralyzes the alligators with a drug that he shoots into them with a dart gun.”
“How do you know all this?”
“He’s Priscilla’s boyfriend. Priscilla works for Josephine Metzger making clown costumes. She lives in Pete Madeira’s garage apartment. Pete’s the—”
“The clown who told you about the monkey with the broken legs.”
I was surprised he remembered.
“Pete also told me that Leo Brossi owned some casino boats, and that Denton Ferrelli’s trust gave him the money to buy them. Pete thinks Brossi had a man killed who was giving his boats competition. That all ties in with what Ethan Crane said about Denton getting the land here to use for a casino boat dock. The land Conrad took for the circus retirement home.”
Guidry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I don’t know how you do it. People look up and see you coming, and some reflex action makes them start spilling everything they know. Christ, they should use you for national espionage.”
It’s true. I can be standing in line at the supermarket or the bank or the post office and people will inevitably start telling me the most intimate details of their lives. It’s as if they’ve been waiting for me to show up so they can unload all their secrets. I don’t know why that happens. I don’t invite it. I don’t even want to know other people’s secrets. It’s just something I’m stuck with, like skin that burns easily.
I said, “Gabe Marks does some kind of work for Leo Brossi. That’s where Priscilla met him, at the call center Brossi owns.”
“All-Call.”
Once again, I was surprised.
Guidry saw it on my face and lowered his eyebrows. “You’re not the only one getting information, Dixie.”
“They’re all connected, Guidry—Denton Ferrelli, Leo Brossi, Gabe Marks.”
“Leo Brossi and Denton Ferrelli are an odd combination. Denton Ferrelli is a champagne criminal, smooth, college-educated, well-connected. His contacts are lobbyists and politicians and mob bosses. He’s kept his hands clean, always had somebody else do his dirty work. Leo Brossi came up through the streets, served time for pimping, drug dealing, extortion.”
“He’s the one who does Denton’s dirty work?”
“More like Denton is the silent partner, so Leo takes the hit. He’s the one indicted, the one fined, the one with a record. It adds to his gangster charisma, and Denton undoubtedly greases his palm liberally to keep him quiet. With Denton’s political connections, he’s able to keep Leo’s fines and sentences to a minimum, so it’s a good deal for both of them.”
My fork was suddenly too heavy to hold. “I think it’s pretty clear what happened. Conrad pulled the plug on Denton’s casino boat, and he was getting ready to look deeper into Denton’s other schemes, so Denton got Brossi’s snake-catching boy Gabe to kill him. He used one of the darts he uses to capture alligators. Then they had to kill Stevie, because she was going to take Conrad’s place heading the trusts. And Gabe’s trying to kill me because he thinks I saw him driving Conrad’s car.”
I hadn’t really known all that until I’d started saying it, and then it had all come together. What I didn’t say was that Gabe now had another reason for wanting to kill me. I had humiliated him in front of Priscilla, and Gabe wasn’t the kind of man to let humiliation go unpunished, especially humiliation from a woman. Inside my flesh, my bones suddenly felt thin and brittle. I reached for my coffee cup, but my hand was shaking so much that I changed my mind and put it in my lap.
Guidry’s eyes were bleak. I knew what he was thinking. Denton Ferrelli had important business and political friends ready to vouch for his character and his whereabouts when Conrad and Stevie were killed. Furthermore, not a scintilla of evidence had come to light that put Denton Ferrelli or Gabe Marks at either murder scene. Everything that pointed to Denton as the one who had planned the murders, if not the one who had done the actual killing, was based on conjecture, not on actual evidence. The only person who could implicate him would be Gabe Marks, and there wasn’t a chance in hell he would do that because it would put him in the electric chair. Without hard evidence, neither Denton Ferrelli nor Gabe Marks would ever be indicted.