The Cat Sitter's Whiskers (27 page)

I looked out at the Gulf. There was a huge white cruise ship making its way south, probably to Key West, and I imagined everyone on board lolling around by the pool half naked with nothing but the sun and the sea to distract them from their daiquiris and margaritas and lobster rolls. I thought about swimming out to them, but instead I went inside.

Tom was at his desk, scrolling through a list of articles on his computer.

“Dixie, I think you better look at this. As soon as you said…” He clicked a couple of keys and a picture appeared, and then he pointed at the screen like he was shooting it with an imaginary gun.

It was a beautiful painting of a wizened old woman, with glowing cheekbones and a strong jaw, her gray hair blowing around her tanned face like a wispy halo of ghosts, her blue eyes wise and knowing. There were ghostly ears of corn floating in the air all around her.

With a note of triumph in his voice, he said, “That's Pachamama.”

I leaned forward. “Wow. She looks awesome.”

“She is. That's one way she's depicted, but she can also look like this…”

He clicked a couple of keys and another picture appeared—a small female figure carved out of white stone, bald and big-eared, with soft rounded shoulders and big voluminous breasts.

I said, “Yeah, Tom. I know. You printed that out for me already.”

He cast me a sidelong glance and raised one eyebrow. “Okay, except Pachamama is still worshipped today in a number of cultures with all kinds of rituals and ceremonial prayers, and guess what's often sprinkled around her as a devotional offering…”

I said, “No…”

He said, “Yes.”

My eyes must have grown ten times bigger. “Cornmeal?”

He nodded.

I leaned forward to get a closer look, and a shudder trickled down my body. The figurine's face was crudely carved, with very little detail—just two half-moons for eyes, mounded cheeks, and thin Mona Lisa lips—but the overall effect was stunning. It was a combination of raw, terrible power … tempered with peaceful, unadulterated bliss.

“Her devotees use cornmeal as an offering, like a gift, or a show of respect. Usually they'll light a couple of candles and say a prayer, and then they sprinkle it on the ground, like in a garden.”

I was speechless. Tom looked at me and said, “You heard me say candles, right?”

I nodded. He closed the picture and opened another article, the title of which was
Pachamama and Modern Culture.

He said, “Pachamama's actually a very interesting lady. It seems no matter what happens to her, she never gives up. She just keeps on going like the force of nature she is. And believe it or not, the people who worship her today? They're mostly Catholic. They believe Pachamama is actually the Virgin Mary, only hiding her face … behind a disguise.”

I felt my jaw slide forward as my eyeballs tried to jump out of their sockets. I said, “You mean, like she's wearing a mask?”

He looked up at me. “That's exactly what I mean.”

It felt like time had slowed to a crawl. I said, “Tom, these people, the ones that worship Pachamama, where do they live?”

He said, “Mostly in the Andes.”

I nodded, fairly certain I already knew the answer to my next question.

“And Tom … where is Peru?”

*   *   *

I was standing next to the Bronco, just around the corner from the Sea Breeze's front entrance, with my cell phone pressed up against my ear. I was still out of breath. I don't think poor Billy Elliot ever had a shorter, more disappointing walk in his entire life, and I'm sure as we were riding back up in the elevator he wondered what the hell he was paying me for, but I promised I'd make it up to him next time with an extra-long walk.

My head was swimming. Those lit candles on the coffee table, the yellow powder sprinkled in the garden, the mask, the statue, Daniela's cross … and then I remembered Mr. Paxton saying he'd been out of town on a buying trip in the Andes. There were just too many coincidences. That sculpture I'd seen … it had to be real.

It just
had
to.

After the phone rang about six times, there was a quick beep on the line so I perked up, and then, miraculously, I heard the familiar sound of Mrs. Keller's voice.

“Hello, this is Linda Keller. Thanks for calling, but Buster and I are indisposed this week. Please leave a message and we'll get back to you just as soon as we can.”

I took a deep breath, thinking when she heard what I had to say she might never speak to me again. After the beep, I said, “Mrs. Keller, it's Dixie. Listen, I may have some bad news. Could you please call me right away? Everything's totally fine with Barney Feldman. He's doing great and Lizette has been a big help too, but…”

I hesitated. I didn't want to say anything that might get Mrs. Keller in trouble with her husband, but he'd have to find out sooner or later and I didn't think I had a choice.

“Mrs. Keller, I know about the urn of cornmeal you bought. I'm really sorry, but I had to open that box—it's a long story, but I needed to know what was inside it. The thing is … did you also buy an ancient figurine? Because I think somebody may have attacked me with it in your house, and now I think it's gone. I'm calling the police now, but I need you to call me as soon as you get this.”

I hung up and dialed the sheriff's office. It probably would have been smarter and faster to just dial 911, but I knew it would've been next to impossible to explain the whole thing to an emergency operator. I needed to speak to Deputy Morgan directly.

As it was ringing, I heard a soft crunching, which at first I thought was static on the line, but then I realized it wasn't coming from the phone at all. It was behind me. There was someone walking by, and just as their shadow passed, I heard a loud
crack!
—like the sound of a baseball bat hitting a long ball right out of the park.

And then everything went dark.

 

32

I woke up to a pulsing red blur in the corner of my eyes, fading in and out to the rhythm of my heart. My head throbbed, and my whole body felt like mush, as if it had taken a spin in a blender set to pulverize. I heard a voice in my head whisper,
You're dead …
but somehow, in my loopy state of mind, the fact that my ears were ringing seemed proof enough that the voice was wrong.

I could smell bleach and something else, like fresh dirt or clay. I took a few deep breaths to slow my heart down a little, and then the ringing in my ears subsided enough that I could hear muffled voices coming from somewhere nearby. There were men, at least two of them, arguing, and then I heard a woman's voice.

She said, “And then what? Leave her here?”

I had no idea where “here” was. All I knew was that it was dark and really, really cramped. I was enclosed in some kind of box. My knees were folded up against my chest with my shoulders scrunched up around my ears, and my hands were lying limply on top of my knees. All around me were faint circles of light, like blurry stars coming out at dusk. At first I thought I was just seeing things, but then I reached up with one finger and carefully touched one of the stars. It was a hole, about the size of a penny, and the sides of whatever I was locked in were rigid, not cardboard, but metal or hard plastic.

Of course, my first instinct was to scream like a banshee, but I figured whoever it was that had put me here wouldn't be too happy if I started making a bunch of noise, so I kept quiet. I figured as long as they thought I was unconscious—or dead—I had an advantage. It wasn't much, but it was something.

My arms and legs were stone-cold, and as I wiggled my fingers and toes to try to get the blood flowing again, pain shot through my body. I didn't mind, though. It was just further proof that I was in fact alive.

As slowly as possible, I maneuvered my left shoulder out of the way so I could lean my face closer to one of the holes. It wasn't easy, but by pushing my shoulder down and craning my neck to one side I was able to get a view to what was beyond my little cell.

About ten feet away was a cinder-block wall, lined floor-to-ceiling with stacks of dusty cardboard boxes and old cans of paint. I moved my eye to another hole and saw a rolling bucket with a mop sticking out of it, and next to that was a big black duffel bag, about six feet long. In the middle of the wall right in front of me was a wide metal door with a frosted square window in the middle, which I realized was where the light was coming from. I could see the silhouette of someone pacing back and forth beyond it.

Just then the wide metal door swung open and I froze.

Two men walked in. I couldn't see much above their waists, but one was wide and bowlegged, with black loafers and faded jeans pulled halfway over his belly, held up with a braided black belt. The other was taller and thin, in a dark pin-striped suit. He stepped up and knocked the front of my enclosure with the tip of his shoe two times. I smelled something acrid, like kerosene or motor oil.

He said, “Hey…”

I held perfectly still, praying with all my might for the loud pounding of my heart to stop.

He knocked again, this time louder. “Hey!”

It might have been the blood churning past my eardrums or perhaps a fan in the other room, but in the few moments that followed I thought I could hear the steady thrum of passing cars in the distance.

The voice said, “Okay. She's still out.”

“Now what?”

“Now we search the Kellers' house.” The man's voice was low and growly, with a slight British accent. “But first things first.”

There was a pause, and then I heard a light tapping just over my head.

“Our little cat sitter here. I think perhaps she's hiding something. If Paxton was telling the truth and really didn't know where that statue is, it might be worth our while to search Miss Hemingway's home.”

The bowlegged man said, “But Mr. Fiori, what if she don't live alone?”

“You'll think of something. The more important problem is we have no idea where she lives.”

A woman's voice said, “Yes, we do.”

It came from the other room, and then I heard the tapping of heels on the floor. The whole time the two men had been talking, I'd had my eyes shut and my jaw slack just in case one of them happened to squat down and look through one of the holes, but now I squinted one eye open and peered out.

The woman was slim, in a dark skirt and high-heeled boots, and as she walked up to the taller man I heard a rustle of paper. “Her address is on Levi's newspaper delivery list. Right here—Dixie Hemingway, Midnight Pass Road.”

“Brilliant. That bloody list is worth something after all. You stay here and wait. If she wakes up, try to convince her to tell you where it is. And if we find it, we'll call you.”

The woman said, “Mr. Fiori, then what?”

There was a brief silence. “We'll load her in the van with Paxton and dump them both in the bay tonight. That's the only way out of this mess. And if we still haven't found that statue, we'll have to schedule a little homecoming party for the Kellers.”

The two men walked out, leaving the woman standing next to me in silence, and then I heard a door slam shut. The woman just stood there, not moving, but in a few seconds there was the sound of an engine starting and then a car rolled by outside.

The woman hurried into the other room. Now I had a clear view of her through the open doorway. I wasn't sure at first, but I thought I recognized the long dark hair tied back in a ponytail. Then she turned toward me and I saw her black horn-rimmed glasses …

It was Daniela. I was sure of it. She was wearing the same kind of elegant clothing she'd worn in the elevator at Tom Hale's and the Paxton gallery: a long-sleeved silk blouse with a narrow skirt and knee-high boots. She knelt down and pulled a pair of jeans, black sneakers, and a T-shirt out of a bag—the same leather bag she'd had at the gallery—and then pulled off her boots one by one and stepped out of her skirt.

Even at this distance, I could see long red lines running up and down her legs, almost as if a manic child had attacked her with a felt-tipped marker. She pulled on the jeans and then took her blouse off, and there were the same angry red lines on her forearms. I can't say exactly how long it took me to add it all up, but by the time she'd changed her clothes completely, something clicked.

Barney Feldman …

Just then, as if to confirm what I was thinking, she reached into her bag and pulled out something about the size of a softball, wrapped in a dark red cloth, like velvet, and tied with what looked like a braided rope of long straplike leaves. I already knew what it was, but still, when she gently pulled the rope away and unfolded the cloth, my eyes opened wide as saucers.

It was Pachamama.

And not just any Pachamama. She was made of white stone, her head as smooth as an egg, her plump legs folded one over the other, her exaggerated bosom completely out of proportion with her tiny feet, which were painted a bright crimson red …

I had to hold my hands over my mouth to stop whatever noise my throat was trying to make, and the pressure made my ears pop. It felt like they'd both been loaded with tiny firecrackers, and my eyes filled with water from the pain of it.

Daniela gazed at Pachamama with such calm that I was reminded of a young mother looking into the eyes of a newborn child. She whispered something that sounded like a prayer, holding it out in front of her with both hands as if offering it up to the sky. After a moment, she folded it back together and secreted it back down in her bag. Before she zipped it closed, she crossed herself, and then hoisted it over her shoulder.

She walked back into the room, and then I heard the sound of a number being dialed on a cell phone. After a pause, she said, “It's me. Fiori left to search the cat sitter's place.”