Jaz had the courage to agree to give honest testimony in court about the murder she’d seen. But immaturity had made her tell the truth to somebody about where she was, and now she had been found and possibly killed.
As if she were testing my own level of maturity, Cora said, “What’s going on with you and that nice detective you’re in love with?”
I swallowed a sip of tea wrong and for a moment sounded like a drowning person. “I’m not in love with him!”
She gave me one of those serene smiles unique to wise old women, the kind that makes their eyes almost disappear into fine wrinkles but still allows the flare in their eyes to pin you down like a laser beam.
She said, “I don’t know why you keep saying that. It’s plain as day you’re in love with him.”
My heart had started thumping like I’d been caught at something illicit. I said, “I don’t want to be in love with him. I don’t want to be in love with any man.”
“None of us do, hon, but it usually don’t make any difference what we want. We fall in love anyway.”
I always forget that Cora was once a young woman. But of course she was, and of course there had been men in her life.
She smoothed butter on a bit of chocolate bread, then used the bread like a lecturer holding a pointer. “Just make sure you’re not thinking you’re in love when it’s really pity you feel. Women do that all the time. Loving is the easiest thing in the world for a woman. A woman could go out and flag down ten men on the highway and there’d be two or three in the bunch she could love. Soon as a woman gets to know a man, finds out how he had a bad time in school, or had an old man that was mean to him, she falls in love. Especially if he’s good-looking and smiles at her and talks halfway smart. But half the time it’s not love, it’s pity. Women always want to make up to a man for all the bad things the world has done to him, and they think that’s love. Next thing you know they’re marrying him, and that’s like bringing home a dog that foams at the mouth just because you feel sorry for it. I don’t care how much you think you can fix him, the wrong man will turn on you quick as a mad dog.”
I said, “I don’t feel sorry for Guidry.”
“Well, that’s good. But you’ve got to be sure that other stuff is right too. You know, the part in bed. People don’t like to talk about it, but women need a lot more lovemaking than men do. Men talk about it more, but women want to do it more. And if you’re with a man that don’t like to do it much, or isn’t any good at doing it, you’ll get fat and cranky. Don’t get mixed up with a cold man.”
Oddly, I felt myself blushing. Not that talk about sex embarrassed me, but it made me remember what sex had been like with Todd. He had showed me a survey one time in which people who’d been happily married twenty, thirty, sixty years had sheepishly admitted to fantastic sex. They felt a bit freakish about it because they knew the lust part of love was supposed to die and be replaced with warm companionship, but their mutual lusts had never died. Todd had said, “I guess that means we’ll still be chasing each other around when we’re a hundred.”
I thought about Judy saying that if I ever went to bed with Guidry, I’d probably kill him. But what if I was a firecracker ready to explode and Guidry turned out to have no sizzle?
Cora was watching me with an expectant look, so I must have been lost in thought longer than I realized.
I said, “If I ever fall in love again, I want it to bloom slowly, not explode like Fourth of July fireworks.” I liked the sound of that. I thought it sounded wise and mature.
Cora didn’t look impressed. “If love wants to bloom slowly, that’s what it’ll do. If it wants to bust out like firecrackers, it’ll do that too. Why don’t you just let it take care of itself?”
Why did everybody persist in telling me to quit trying to control everything? Good grief, you’d think I was some kind of control freak. I wished I could control them so they’d quit saying I controlled.
I couldn’t think of any honest response, so I told her it was time to make my afternoon rounds. Before I left, I gathered up our tea things and tidied up the kitchen. I left the carton of soup sweating in the middle of the countertop so Cora wouldn’t forget it, then kissed the top of her feathery head.
She said, “You’re a good girl, Dixie, and I’m going to pray that missing girl’s all right.”
24
Before I left the Bayfront campus, my cellphone rang with the special ring reserved for Michael, Paco, or Guidry. With my heart rate up, I pulled to a stop and answered. It was Guidry.
He said, “Where are you?”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and glared at it. “Why do you want to know?”
“Sorry. What I meant to say was that I would appreciate knowing where you are . . . because I would like a moment of your time . . . if you would be so kind as to give it to me.”
“I’m just leaving Bayfront Village, and I’m headed to the Sea Breeze condos on Midnight Pass to run with Billy Elliot.”
“With who?”
“Whom. Billy Elliot. He’s a Greyhound. We run in the parking lot.”
“I’d like you to listen to something. It’ll just take a minute. I’ll meet you in the Sea Breeze lot.”
At least he was being polite.
Even with lighter out-of-season traffic, it took me fifteen minutes to thread my way from Bayfront to Siesta Drive and the north bridge to the key, then to Midnight Pass Road and Tom’s condo building. Guidry’s Blazer was parked by the front door in a guest spot. When I parked beside him, he got out of his car and got into mine.
Guidry had developed new lines around his mouth in the last few days. Even in his fine linen jacket and perfectly cut slacks, he looked tired and drawn. I had to clench my hand into a fist because it wanted to reach over and trace the lines around his lips.
Reaching in a jacket pocket, he pulled out a small tape player and set it on the dash.
He said, “Mrs. Salazar kept the message she got from the kidnappers. I’d appreciate it if you’d listen to the call.”
It was a reasonable request. I had known Maureen a long time, and Maureen had asked me to deliver her ransom money. It made sense that Guidry would think I might recognize the kidnapper’s voice. I didn’t think it was likely, but it was worth a shot.
Guidry hit the Play button, and a muffled man’s voice said a word I didn’t understand, followed by, “Salazar, we have your husband.”
The voice went on to say all the things Maureen had told me the kidnapper said, but I wasn’t listening.
Guidry said, “Anything about that voice you recognize?”
I felt icy cold. I said, “Play the beginning again.”
He rewound the tape and started it again. Again the muffled voice, again the odd first word that sounded like “momissus.” Was he saying, “No, Mrs. Salazar . . .” or perhaps trying for rapster chic with “Yo, Mrs. Salazar . . .”?
I raised my hand to stop the sound. “Play it again. Just the beginning.”
It only took a few minutes to rewind and replay that opening, but it seemed like a lifetime. When I’d heard it again, I motioned Guidry to turn it off.
Guidry’s gray eyes were steady on me.
For a moment I couldn’t speak, but I had been raised by a grandmother who taught me to tell the truth.
I said, “There at the beginning, where it sounds like he’s stuttering before he says ‘Mrs. Salazar’?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s not stuttering. He first says, ‘Mo,’ and then he corrects himself and says, ‘Mrs. Salazar.’ Only Maureen’s close friends call her Mo.”
“You know who it is.” It wasn’t a question.