I felt even worse when I swung around the circle to check on Reggie and a deputy on guard duty told me Denton Ferrelli had taken him away.
The wind was up by now, bending saplings and whipping palm fronds like flapping flags. Through the thick trees and foliage, it sounded much worse than it was, like a hurricane gale. Ominous thunder was rumbling all around too, so that standing listening to the deputy I felt as if I were in a dark cave with a bass drum’s endless echoes bouncing off the walls.
Angry, I said, “You let Denton Ferrelli take Reggie?”
“He’s the next of kin, ma’am. Who are you?”
I didn’t answer, just got back in the Bronco and headed home. I was nobody. I had no right to Reggie, and Denton Ferrelli did. But the truth was that Reggie going off with Denton Ferrelli was almost surely Reggie going off to his death. I didn’t know how I could save him, but I knew I had to try.
When I got home, a rain-colored car was parked beside the carport, and a man in a white short-sleeved dress shirt and dark polyester pants was standing beside it talking to Paco. When I drove up they both looked around with almost stealthy expressions. Paco backed away with a dismissive wave, and the man opened his car door and got in. His shoes were dull dark leather with thick rubber soles. He wore white socks. Somebody should tell those federal guys that white socks are a dead giveaway.
He made a sharp U-turn and headed down the lane toward Midnight Pass Road, and I sprinted through quickening
rain to my stairs, pushing the remote to raise the shutters as I ran. Inside my dark apartment, I switched on lights and hurried to the bathroom to clean up before dinner. By the time I was out of the shower and dressed in threadbare old jeans and a stretchy T, the rain was coming down hard and fast.
My answering machine was blinking, so I stabbed the PLAY button and skipped through the messages. I stopped when I heard Pete’s voice and let it play to the end.
“Dixie, Priscilla and I talked on the way to the airport, and I learned something … maybe it’s … she said Gabe spent Sunday night with her, and he had a little kitten with him … she thought he’d brought it to her, but when he left Monday morning he took it with him … she said he left a little before five, but I saw him leaving in his truck about seven that morning … I don’t know where he’d been between the time he left her and the time I saw him, but I thought it might be something you should know … may not be relevant.”
I stood looking at the machine while pictures flashed like a montage in my head. The box of free kittens I’d seen Monday morning on Midnight Pass Road could have been put out Sunday evening. Maybe the box of kittens had activated Denton’s need to inflict emotional pain. Gabe could have walked to Secret Cove from Priscilla’s apartment, killed Conrad, and driven Reggie to Crescent Beach. From there, it would have been an easy walk back to Priscilla’s for his truck. But Denton Ferrelli had to have been present when Conrad was killed. Denton had to have been the one who got Conrad to stop his car and step into the woods where the kitten lay.
I backed away from the answering machine as if it were a ticking bomb. I’d had about all I could take for the day. I couldn’t absorb anything else. On the porch, I lowered the shutters and pulled a yellow slicker over my head before I ran down the steps and across the deck. A golden light glowed through the kitchen’s bay window, and I could see Michael and Paco moving around inside. That was my beacon, my safe harbor.
I
opened the back door and slipped into the kitchen, hurrying to shut the door behind me and trying to shed the slicker without making a puddle on the floor. The kitchen was steamy from an oversized stainless-steel soup pot on the stove. The pot sent out such a tantalizing aroma that my stomach forgot it had eaten in the last four hours. Let’s face it—my stomach is like a female cat. Let a female cat be mounted by a horny tom and she automatically goes into heat. Let my nose get a whiff of spicy food, and my stomach automatically feels lust.
Two glasses of red wine were already at places set for Michael and me on the wide butcher-block island, and a glass of iced tea waited for Paco. Michael was at the stove stirring whatever was in the pot, and Paco was transferring leafy salad from a big wooden bowl to three small ones.
Michael waggled a long wooden spoon at me. “We’ve got gumbo.”
“New Orleans gumbo?”
“You know any other kind?”
“Can I do something?”
“You can put rice in these bowls.”
I spooned rice from a steamer into three wide bowls stacked by the stovetop. Michael ladled dark gumbo onto the rice and set the bowls on plates. Paco hauled out two crusty loaves of French bread from the wall oven, wrapped them in a clean towel, and tossed them on the butcher
block. We all took our seats. By tacit agreement, we would enjoy dinner before we talked about anything that might spoil our pleasure.
The gumbo was in a roux so dark it was almost black, redolent with spice and shrimp and crab and oysters, flavors so exquisitely married that I had to be strict with myself not to make orgasmic whimpers. Nobody in the world can make gumbo like Michael. Well, maybe some New Orleans chef in a little café hidden in a narrow alley known only to the privileged cognoscenti does, but I don’t know him. Guidry might know him, Guidry, who was from New Orleans … Guidry, who was not Italian but something else … Guidry, who was secretive about his first name … Guidry, who had called me a liar in French and told me I needed to finish the howl I’d started three years ago.
Paco cleared his throat and I jerked my mind away from Guidry. My bowl was empty and Michael and Paco were looking at me as if they’d been trying to get my attention for a good while.
Michael said, “I’ve been talking to some people with offshore racers, guys who know who’s who on the water. They say Denton Ferrelli has a really sweet Donzi Thirty-eight ZR that can easily do ninety miles an hour. He docks it at the Longboat Key Moorings next to the Harborside Golf Club.”
“I know. He takes it out for a run in the bay every morning.”
“That’s what I mean. Even watching out for manatees, he could kill his brother in Secret Cove and be back at the Moorings in under twenty minutes. Fifteen maybe.”
I hadn’t realized he could have moved so quickly. If what Michael said was true, Denton could have left Siesta Key as late as six-thirty and still have arrived at the Longboat Key Moorings before seven. From there, all he had to do was stroll next door to the first tee.
I said, “If he did, nobody saw him dock at Siesta Key. It probably wasn’t Denton who actually killed Conrad. The killer used a dart gun filled with a drug used to capture big
alligators. A thug named Gabe Marks makes his living capturing poisonous snakes and alligators, and he uses the same drug. He’s the one who tried to run me down with his truck. I met him today, and I think he could kill somebody without batting an eye.”
They were both looking at me with identical expressions of dread.
Michael said, “You don’t think Ferrelli had anything to do with it?”
I thought of the red-lipstick smile slashed on Conrad’s face. Of the mutilated kitten for Conrad to see just before he died. Of the photograph of herself as a man for Stevie to see. Only Denton would have got malicious satisfaction from those acts of psychological sadism.
“I think he was there, but I think it was Gabe who drove Conrad’s car away.”
Paco said, “Denton Ferrelli is a big player. The Feds have been trying to nail him for money laundering for years, but he always manages to wiggle loose.”
I said, “Is that why the guy in the white socks was here?”
He shifted uneasily on his stool. “That was for something else.”
I looked straight at Paco. “Denton Ferrelli and Leo Brossi are connected at the butt, and they’re probably involved with the Mafia. I’ve been told that Brossi’s call center may be a cover for an identity-theft operation.”
Only somebody who knew him well would have noticed the way Paco’s lips got firmer at the corners. Very carefully, he said, “Every investigation has to focus on one crime and one crime only, Dixie.”
Michael stood up and began gathering the plates. “There’s another baguette in the oven, and I have chocolate butter.”
Paco and I went silent and big-eyed. Hell, offer me hot French bread with chocolate butter to smear on it, and I forget all about the possibility that I might be murdered. Michael tossed the hot loaf on the butcher block for us to pull apart with our fingers. He set out a bowl of soft butter mixed with dark melted chocolate. He poured cups of
black coffee laced with cinnamon. A west wind howled through the old oaks outside, and rain drummed against the windows and on the roof. But we were inside, safe and dry, and we had bread and chocolate and coffee.
I rinsed our dishes and put them in the dishwasher while Michael transferred leftover gumbo to the freezer containers to take to the firehouse. Paco went upstairs and dressed in his All-Call khakis and dark shirt. He and I left at the same time, charging through the driving rain in two different directions. As I went inside my French doors and lowered the storm shutters, Paco’s headlights swung out of the carport.
I hung my wet slicker over the showerhead to drip into the tub. Rain clattered on the roof and porch in an unrelenting din. I put on a Patsy Cline CD, but it was a tinny sound compared to the storm, and it didn’t calm my twitchy nerves. I tried some mellow jazz, but that didn’t work either. I went into my office-closet and entered my visits for the day in my record book. I wrote up a couple of invoices. I went to the kitchen window and looked through the heart-shaped iron thing at the tossing treetops.
I went in the bathroom and cleaned the sink and toilet and polished the water faucets until they were shiny. I spritzed the mirror over the bathroom sink with Windex and wiped away the mist. My face appeared in the arc made by my paper towel, my eyes looking back at me with a quizzical challenge.
Who are you trying to kid?
I looked away and concentrated on cleaning the glass, but I finally had to look at myself again. I couldn’t deny the truth any longer, not even to myself. I was attracted to Lieutenant Guidry. The shock of it was like a blast of arctic air. It was not only damn bad timing, what with a killer after me and all, but I hadn’t expected to ever want another man after Todd. And certainly not another cop. But there it was, and I didn’t know what to do about it.
Feeling trapped by the storm shutters, the driving rain, and my own thoughts, I wandered aimlessly through the apartment. I clicked the TV on and clicked it off. I picked up a book and read a few pages, then put it down.
I went in the bedroom where Christy’s Tickle Me Elmo was propped against the pillow on my bed, the only toy of hers that I had kept. I sat on the side of the bed and stroked Elmo’s red fur, hearing Christy’s laughter bubbling, that sound of pure joy that made everybody within earshot smile. On my bedside table, Christy and Todd smiled at me from a photograph taken shortly before they were killed. Christy sat in Todd’s lap, both his arms encircling her like a ring of safety. I picked the photo up and ran my fingertips over the glass.
Christy would be six years old now. She would be excited about starting first grade, and we would be shopping for number-two yellow pencils, crayons, scissors, and Elmer’s glue. We would be debating which backpack to buy, whether it should have cartoon characters on it or be more plain and grown-up. We would be getting school clothes ready and making sure her vaccinations were current.
Todd would be thirty-five. Maybe he would have decided to work toward making lieutenant with the sheriff’s department, maybe he would have been happy to stay a sergeant. I was now the age Todd was when he died. He will stay thirty-two while I grow older. He and Christy are like astronauts who stop aging when they leave earth’s gravity. Perhaps death is actually a different kind of space travel, leaving behind one’s body sleeve and moving into another space-time dimension in which there is no such thing as age or death. Or maybe they have moved into another dimension in which they continue to grow and have different lives. Who knows what happens after death? All I knew was that they weren’t in my world any longer and never would be.
I put the photograph down and picked up Tickle Me Elmo. I hugged him tight to my chest and kissed the red fur on his head. I carried him down the hall and put him inside a clean pillowcase and laid him on the top shelf of my linen closet. Then I closed the door.
The air was charged, continuously vibrating with massive air quakes. The wind had picked up, moaning and
shrieking with primeval urgency. It was the kind of storm that floods canals and swimming pools, topples ornamental trees, and spawns tornadoes. I raised the metal shutters and peered through the French doors. The sky was purple as a bad bruise. Down on the shore, rolls of dark bulimic swells were vomiting strings of seaweed.
I opened the doors and stepped outside. The wind was so strong that horizontal rain slammed under the porch overhang and drenched me. I leaned over the railing and let the wind whip my hair around my face, let it offer my mind escape from its jail. After a while I went downstairs and slogged through wet sand and quivering thunder to the shore. Bracing against the howling wind, I faced the sea and raised my arms, spread-eagled to take the rain’s hardest force.
Then I looked directly into the great maw of churning sea and raging wind and gave it back my own sound: my fury and hatred, my despair and hopelessness, the rage and heartbreak trapped inside since Todd and Christy died. Howled it from my toes and guts and lungs and heart. Howled like women have howled since the beginning of time and maybe before, sending a woman’s demand to the ends of the universe to bring it into balance.
I don’t know how long I stood raging into that dark storm, but long enough. When I was empty, I felt a door closing with a gentle click somewhere in my brain, while another door opened. Part of me wanted to put them back the way they’d been, another part of me knew that would be an act of cowardice. My husband and my child were dead, my capacity for love was not. Staying in the safe darkness of memory and yearning is easy. Going forward to the light of possibility takes courage.
As I trudged back through the downpour, I saw Michael’s silhouette in his bedroom window and knew he had been keeping watch.
I left my sodden clothes in a heap on the porch floor and went inside and took a long warm shower. Then I crawled into bed and slept deeply and dreamlessly for the first time in three years.