Just as I was congratulating myself on being smarter than Kurtz, a little doubt crept into my mind. The wine could be a deliberate ploy. Kurtz might want people to concentrate on his wine so they wouldn’t notice something more important.
The smart-ass voice in my head said, Which would be what?
I didn’t have an answer, but I wasn’t sure anymore that I was so smart.
I said, “And the stolen car?”
“My employer provided the car. I don’t know if they knew it was stolen.”
“Your heart isn’t in this job, is it?”
“It’s just that I feel the same way Ken does about what happened at the lab.”
“But you took a job for the FBI.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Seems pretty simple to me. You’re pissed at Ken Kurtz because you think he abandoned you to die, so you’re working to help the FBI arrest him for industrial espionage. But for old times’ sake, you’re giving him advance warning so he can run away or hide the research or somehow save himself before the Feds with the big guns move in. That about it?”
“What he’s doing is wrong, but I understand why he’s doing it.”
I leaned back against the booth seat and let a moment of silence pass.
“Jessica, this isn’t just about Ken Kurtz and his research. A man was murdered. Whoever killed the guard may have been there to kill Kurtz. You said yourself that the rivalry between BiZogen and ZIGI was cutthroat. With or without the FBI’s involvement, BiZogen is probably out to kill him.”
“If they get his research back, they won’t kill him.”
“Because they’re such warm, fuzzy people.”
“No, because Ken is such a brilliant researcher. They’d rather hire him back than kill him.”
I said, “Kurtz seems certain that Gilda will return, but he didn’t say why. He claims the packages she took from the refrigerator were vials of antidote for whatever it is that has turned him blue and given him nerve damage. But anybody in as bad shape as he is would be more concerned about losing his antidote, so I don’t believe him. Do you have any idea what was in those vials, or why he’s so sure she’ll be back?”
“If they’re lovers—”
I banged the table with my fist. “Forget the lover crap! Come on, you’re a researcher too. What would have been stored in the refrigerator in wrapped packages? It must be something that has to be replaced. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so sure Gilda was coming back.”
She shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“What are you going to do, Jessica? Seems to me you’ve pretty much blown your cover and lost all your effectiveness as an FBI agent. Why don’t you just go whole hog and quit? Go see Kurtz. You love him, he loves you, you’re both brilliant scientists—maybe you can figure out a way to give the research back to BiZogen and keep Ken out of prison.”
“I could end up in prison myself if I tip him off that he’s under investigation.”
“If you tip him off? Hell, you’ve done everything but hire the Goodyear blimp to fly over his house blinking a sign. It’s too late to get skittish, you’ve already crossed the line.”
I stood up and tossed money on the table.
“If I’m arrested for Ramón Gutierrez’s murder, I will sing like a prize Roller Canary about a certain FBI agent who was working both sides of the street. So keep that in your wee fake-Irish head while you think about what you’re going to do.”
TWENTY-FIVE
I went home after talking to Jessica. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I mean, what can you do to follow up something like that? The Bronco sort of guided itself down Midnight Pass Road and onto the meandering drive to the carport. I got out and went up the stairs to my porch, where a cat’s cardboard travel case sat on my glass-top table, with faint mewing sounds coming from it.
Even before I peered through an air hole, I knew what was inside. The calico kitten was crouched in a bunny pose with her ears flattened and her eyes wide with anxiety. A note had been taped to the case, written in round girlish script on paper torn from a child’s school tablet.
Dixie,
I know you wanted the kitten so it is yours.
Your friend, Paloma.
I groaned. I didn’t want a kitten! I had merely been concerned about the kitten, not covetous about it. I opened the carrying case and lifted the kitten out. She really was cute.
“It’s okay, kitty, don’t be scared.”
Some stroking and soft talk make the kitten retract her little trimmed claws, and a bowl of cool water in the kitchen and more smoochy talk made her hunched shoulders relax. Then, knowing I would really need to pee if I’d been confined in a box and carried to a strange place, I carried her down to the big sandbox by the sea. She seemed to believe me when I told her the waves and seagulls wouldn’t hurt her. After she made a silver-dollar-sized puddle, I took her back upstairs, explaining as I went that while I thought she was the smartest and cutest kitten I’d ever seen in my life, I couldn’t keep her.
I said, “It’s just not in my life plan right now to have a pet.”
She licked my thumb with her little sandpapery tongue and purred.
I lay down in the hammock with the kitten on my stomach. She sat up with her front legs straight and looked around. A seagull flew by with a loud squawking sound and she raised one hairy eyebrow and made a little firping sound that made me laugh.
I said, “You know, I don’t even know your name.”
She made some more firping sounds.
I said, “You sound like Ella Fitzgerald when she does that skatting thing. If you were my kitty, I’d name you Ella Fitzgerald.”
She yawned and curled into a contented ball and fell asleep. I lay there with both hands cupped around the calico kitten and told myself I should get up and call Guidry and tell him what I’d learned. But the kitten was sleeping so peacefully I didn’t want to disturb her.
Besides, Jessica Ballantyne’s predicament was so stupid and so human that I wanted to give her more time. While my fingers lay warm in the kitten’s fur, I thought about all the significant world events that have been instigated or foiled or screwed up by love. Napoleon and Josephine. Abelard and Héloïse. King Edward and Wallis Simpson. Princess Diana and Prince Charles and Camilla. Funny how those supposedly stiff Europeans are the ones willing to give up all they have for love, while supposedly less repressed Americans—think Bill Clinton with Monica, Gary Hart with Donna Rice, Wilbur Mills with Fanne Foxe—give up all they have for sex. Not even grown-up sex either, but immature, trivial, banal sex.
Ken Kurtz wasn’t a national leader, but he had developed something of international significance, something worth the FBI’s interest, something that had caused a man’s murder. Jessica Ballantyne had been a respected scientist, a woman who had been tapped by the United States government first as a researcher and then as an undercover investigator. These two people had awesome intellects, and yet both of them were acting like high school kids blowing their SATs because love was turning their brains to mush. Maybe it was all that time they’d spent in Europe and Southeast Asia. If they’d stayed in the United States, they might be focused on sex instead of love.
And what about me? What was I focused on?
I was thirty-two years old, a healthy, normal woman with a healthy body and healthy desires, and cuddling this kitten was the closest thing I’d come to real intimacy with another living being in over three years. Ethan Crane was the answer to any woman’s best sex dream, but was that the way I wanted to go? When I decided to live again and love again, was it so I could go to a man’s house and have sex?