Hef looked proud too.
I picked up a french fry with my fingers and waved it in the air to cool it.
I said, “Harry, I’m wondering if Mo is really that broken up about Victor being kidnapped. I mean, the kidnappers told her they’d kill him if she told anybody, and she’s gone on TV and told it. Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”
“It was my understanding,” he said—and he began to squint at me with red-rimmed eyes—“that she was going to leave him.”
I tossed the cooled fry to Hef, and he caught it like a pro.
“Leave him as in get a divorce?”
He nodded with the exaggerated care of somebody not wanting to give away too much. “That’s what she said.”
“When?”
His squint got squintier. “When did she tell me, or when was she leaving?”
“Both.”
A pelican flapped to the railing by Harry’s side, and he turned and studied the bird as if it might have a message for him.
“She told me that right from the beginning. She was always gonna leave him. She never said exactly when, though. One year it would be after Christmas because they were going skiing for Christmas, and for several years it was going to be after August because they always went someplace special in August. And a bunch of years it was going to be after her birthday because she always got a new diamond on her birthday.”
The pelican tucked its head back on its curved neck and went to sleep. Hef looked at the bird and cocked his ears. He probably wished he could fold his neck like that. I know I do.
For a while I concentrated on the grouper and fries, with an occasional bite to Hef. Harry leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. Below us, the sea made slushing sounds as it began to rock itself to sleep.
I gave my last fry to Hef, drained the last of the beer, and tossed my crumpled napkin into the basket.
“Harry, did you ever feel like Mo was just stringing you along?”
His eyes opened and met mine, and for an instant the soft waning light made him look like the golden hunk he’d been in high school.
“Hell, Dixie, she’s been stringing me along since the first day I met her. She holds up a razor, and I lick syrup off the edge.”
I said, “And you’ve been seeing her ever since she married, haven’t you?”
He glowered at me under sun-bleached eyebrows. “Like I said, Dixie, I’m not good enough for Mo. I haven’t seen her in two or three years.”
I sat for a moment looking into his eyes, knowing that he was lying, but also knowing that I had all I was going to get from him. I decided not to call him on it.
“Okay, Harry.”
“Your brother okay?”
“Yeah, Michael’s good.”
“He’s a good fisherman, that boy.”
I swung my legs over the edge of the bench and stood up. “Thanks, Harry. You take care.”
I leaned over the table and ruffled the top of Hef’s head while Harry touched two fingers to the bill of his cap in a sardonic salute. “See you around, Dixie.”
On the way out, I gave the waitress enough for Harry’s dinner too. I figured I owed him that much.
The problem with sticking your nose into things that really aren’t your business is that you’re liable to find yourself face-to-face with a monster, and it’s not somebody else’s monster, it’s your monster and you have to deal with it. I’d known Harry Henry practically my whole life, and I knew all his mannerisms. I knew how his eyes danced to the side and his lips got a little almost curve at one corner when he told a whopper. And I knew damn well that Harry had lied when he said it had been two or three years since he’d seen Maureen. I was sorry I’d gone to see him. I was sorry I’d talked to him. I was sorry I hadn’t minded my own business and stayed out of it.
Nevertheless, I had talked to him, and he had lied to me. All the way home, I thought about what that lie meant. From everything else he’d said, I figured it was a pretty good bet that he and Maureen had been up to their beautiful necks in an affair all during Maureen’s marriage. That didn’t surprise me. And while my personal philosophy is that married people who don’t love each other enough to be loyal should end the marriage instead of being liars and sneaks, Maureen’s adultery wasn’t any of my business. So why did I feel as if there was something worse than adultery going on between Maureen and Harry?
Even worse, why, if I was honest with myself, did I have a terrible hunch that a sweet, goofy guy like Harry was somehow involved in Victor’s kidnapping?
20
I woke the next morning with Ella cuddled warm against my back. I left her in bed while I splashed my face with water and brushed my teeth. As I streaked down the hall to my closet-office for shorts and T and Keds, I saw that Ella was sitting up and yawning. Four A.M. is way too early for a cat.
She followed me to the front door, and I stopped a moment to kiss her head and tell her goodbye. I said, “Michael will be home at eight and get you.”
It was probably my imagination, but her eyes seemed to light up at the sound of Michael’s name. Lots of females have that reaction.
Outside, the sky was dark and dense as dryer lint. Along the shoreline, coquinas and mole crabs fed on the surf’s salty broth of nutrients as gulls gobbled down the feeding mollusks. Nature is efficient. Going down the stairs, I trailed dew-moistened fingertips along the rail. In the carport, a snowy egret who was balanced on one knobby-kneed leg atop the roof of Paco’s truck twisted his head full circle to watch me pass. A brown pelican on my Bronco unfolded himself, spread his wings to their full six-and-a-half-foot span, and flapped away.
I made it to Midnight Pass Road without waking the parakeets in the trees, and turned north. Tom Hale’s condo is only a short hop away, so I was at his door in five minutes. Tom was still asleep, but Billy Elliot was waiting for me with a big happy grin. We had the parking lot entirely to ourselves for our run, and when I took him upstairs Billy’s tail was wagging in pure happiness. I read somewhere that you can tell how satisfied a dog is by the direction its tail goes when it wags. If it circles to the right, the dog is happy. To the left, not so much. Billy’s tail was definitely doing clockwise circles.
There was still no sound in Tom’s apartment, but as I unsnapped Billy’s leash I noticed a filmy pink scarf tossed on the sofa. It had been a long time since Tom had allowed a female guest to sleep over, and I was glad to see that he’d quit sulking over the loss of the last girlfriend. Especially since she hadn’t been nearly good enough for him and Billy Elliot.
I made a circle of my thumb and forefinger and whispered, “Awright!” to Billy. He waved his tail to the right.
I had two new clients that morning, a husky male Shorthair named T-Quartz and his house mate, a snow-white Persian named Princess. T-Quartz was stolid and watchful, not ready yet to commit himself, but Princess threw caution to the winds and immediately made me her new best friend. I wondered if their names had affected their personalities. I wasn’t familiar with their house yet, so I spent a bit longer with them and got to Max and Ruthie’s house later than usual.
Ruthie and I were now so slick at our pill-pushing routine that it had become performance art. We could probably have sold tickets and drawn a crowd. Max beamed while we showed how smooth we were, and then he took Ruthie in his arms and told her she was absolutely the smartest cat in the entire world.
I left them basking in mutual adoration and zipped to Big Bubba’s house. As I turned into his driveway, a dark sedan passed in the street behind me. The car slowed almost to a stop, and in the rearview mirror I saw the driver’s head turn toward me. It was just a glimpse, but he looked like Jaz’s stepfather. I put the Bronco in reverse to get a better look at him, but the car sped away.
I didn’t like the idea of Jaz’s stepfather seeing me in Reba’s driveway. If he had something to do with gangs sent out to burglarize houses, I didn’t want him to catch on that Reba was away.