“Hell, Dixie, I don’t know.”
“Hetty Soames wants to be Jaz’s foster mother if they find her alive.”
“Hunh.”
“Michael, do you have any idea where Paco is?”
He stood up and began gathering dishes to take inside. He said, “Paco and I have an understanding. He doesn’t tell me how to put out fires, and I don’t tell him how to catch criminals. Paco is wherever he is. When he’s finished doing whatever he’s doing, he’ll be home. End of discussion.”
I carried Ella inside and helped Michael tidy up the kitchen. Then I kissed them both good night and went up to my apartment and fell into bed.
In my dreams, I entered a restaurant looking for the perfect stranger. I didn’t have any notions of what that might be, just let my inner guide direct me. In the bar area, none of the line of people perched on stools met whatever criteria my guide had set, so I crossed over to the other side and looked at the diners sitting at tables. Nothing moved me toward any of them.
Just as I was beginning to think I’d got my dream message all wrong, a man came through double doors from a glass-walled kitchen. He wore a chef’s tall hat and an immaculate white apron, and he carried a live stone crab in one hand. He stopped when he saw me, and for a second the only motion was the crab’s waving claws. Diners fell silent watching us watch each other, and the waiters drew to attention against the walls.
I moved toward him, slowly and deliberately. He waited, the crab held shoulder high and beady-eyed. The room was silent as white.
I reached him and took the crab from his grip, holding it out to the side to escape its grasping claws.
The man said, “Good. I’ve been waiting for you to figure that out.”
I woke up with a start and lay staring into the darkness. I didn’t have a clue what the dream meant, but it wasn’t any more confusing than my waking life.
26
The breeze was brisk and smelled of rain when I went out the next morning, and the curdled sky was not so tall. A few agitated gulls flapped above the waves, and on the beach a clawing surf tried to escape the pulsing sea. I stood on my porch a moment to inhale the salty day, then thumped down the stairs to the carport. Seabirds slept on every car, no doubt thinking themselves smart to get a pregame seat before the clouds burst.
At Tom Hale’s dark apartment, I slipped in quickly and hustled Billy Elliot out with a minimum of smooching. At least between Billy and me. A faint scent of perfume in the air made me think Tom had an overnight guest again, so there may have been other smooching.
In the parking lot, security lamps cast wide pools of light on the oval track where Billy and I ran, but the sky was too overcast to let any dawning light through. We both looked up frequently. Billy probably hoped he’d get to sprint through a warm shower, I hoped the rain would hold off until Billy and I had finished our run. Besides Ruthie and Big Bubba, my other clients for the day were seven cats—including two pairs—and a ferret. I would inevitably end up trailing cat hair. I hoped it wouldn’t be stuck to wet clothes.
After Billy and I had made it around the last loop, and he had raised his leg one more time to announce to all the subsequent dogs on the track that he was still the number one honcho, we skipped back into the lobby. A jelly-bottomed woman in skin-tight lycra leggings popped out of the elevator before we got to it. She had slept-on hair and a bright-eyed Yorkie on a leash. The Yorkie was the size of a Hostess Sno Ball and was dancing with excitement. The woman looked as if she hadn’t been awake more than two minutes.
Billy Elliot looked down at the Yorkie with keen interest.
As the woman opened the lobby door to go out, she said, “I’ve gotta house break this puppy.”
She sounded as if she thought she needed to explain why she was going out before sunup looking like an un-made bed and leading a dog. Obviously a first-time dog owner.
As we got in the elevator, Billy Elliot looked over his shoulder for one last glimpse of the Yorkie—as if he wished he had one for himself. Whether we have two legs or four, I suppose we all want a companion of our own kind.
Back in Tom’s apartment, the kitchen light was on and I could smell coffee brewing. I looked toward the kitchen but didn’t see Tom, so I hugged Billy Elliot goodbye and slipped out. This time I was almost sure Tom had company. I’m not sure what it is, but people make impressions on the air so that even if you can’t see them, you know they’re there. I just hoped this woman was better than Tom’s last girlfriend. Not that it was any of my business, but Tom deserves the best.
The sky remained overcast and rain threatening for the rest of the morning. At every stop, I expected raindrops. I made a record fast stop to give Ruthie her next-to-last pill, and goosed the Bronco toward Big Bubba’s.
It still hadn’t rained when I got to his house. I hurried up the stairs, removed his night cover, and opened his cage door. I gave him an anxious once-over to make sure he hadn’t gone bird nuts from boredom, but all his feathers were intact and shiny. He cocked his head and regarded me with the same scrutiny I was giving him, except I used both eyes.
He said, “Did you miss me?” Not angrily, just conversationally.
I said, “For breakfast this morning, may I suggest our best imported banana? It’s served with toasted Cheerios and prime sunflower seeds on a bed of organic millet.”
He said, “Get that man!” Then he laughed like a demented Santa Claus.
In the kitchen, I got his banana and some sliced apple. When I went back to the sunroom, he was sitting atop his cage looking toward the lanai. With no sun, the lanai probably didn’t look very appealing to him.
I said, “It’s cloudy today, with a ninety percent chance of rain. Temperatures will be in the high eighties. There are no major traffic problems.”
He said, “Hello! Hello! Hello!”
I considered trying to persuade him to play on his exercise wheel, but I knew he’d rather watch dew evaporate. I unlocked the lanai slider and opened it so he could go out in the humid air.
I said, “While you’re at the gym, I’ll clean your house and put out your breakfast. Would you care for a news update?”
He waddled across the slider track to the lanai while I switched on the TV to a drug commercial featuring several lovely women wearing bedsheets tastefully pulled above their bosoms. A soothing female voice-over listed the consequences of taking the drug being advertised—blood clots, strokes, heart attacks, death—while the women in the sheets smiled benignly, bizarrely separate from the doublespeak.
The ad was replaced by local news people who were still covering kidnapping and murder.
An earnest woman with close-set eyes said, “Mrs. Salazar has not returned calls, and there have been no reported breaks in the case. A spokesperson for the Sarasota Sheriff’s Department said the homicide investigation is ongoing.”
The newswoman didn’t say anything about Harry Henry being the person who’d made the ransom call to Maureen. I didn’t know what that meant, but I was oddly pleased, as if it might all have been a misunderstanding, a case of mistaken identity that had been cleared up.
I’m too smart to fall for drug company propaganda, but gullible as a goose when it comes to old friends.
I changed the station to PBS so Big Bubba wouldn’t get brainwashed by commercials, and left to go to Hetty’s house. The sky was the color of mold, and the air had stilled. Trees and flowers were motionless. Even songbirds seemed to be holding their breath waiting for the clouds to let go.
With rain looking more probable every minute, I pulled as far as I could into Hetty’s driveway so I wouldn’t have so far to sprint when I left. When I rang the bell, Hetty and Ben let me in so quickly I thought they might have been watching for me. Lamps were lit in the shadowy house. By tacit agreement, we didn’t move away from the front door, but stood in the foyer.