Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons (15 page)

He said, “Who was present when the fire started?”

I said, “I was here. Mr. Stern was here, and Ruby was here. Mr. Stern’s cat suffered smoke inhalation, and the EMTs saved him. Mr. Stern has gone with the EMTs to take the cat to an animal hospital.”

Zack said, “My friend and I heard about the fire on the news and came straight here.”

Owens said, “The baby’s disappearance was on the news?”

“No, just the fire. The house is next door to Myra Kreigle. That makes the fire newsworthy, I guess.”

Owens didn’t ask who Myra Kreigle was. Everybody in Sarasota knew what Myra had done.

To Ruby, he said, “Ma’am, do you know anybody who might have kidnapped your baby?”

She raised her head and spoke clearly. “I think it may have been a cleaning woman who was here yesterday. She cried when she saw Opal, and the other women with her said she’d lost a baby a few months ago. She’s the only person I can think of who would steal Opal.”

I was stunned. Both at the logic of what she’d said, and at the ease with which she’d said it. But I had to admire the brilliance of the lie. The cleaning woman was a perfect suspect. Mothers who’ve recently lost their own babies can become so irrational in their grief that they take somebody else’s baby. For a second, I even considered the possibility that the cleaning woman had actually stolen Opal. But only for a second. As soon as I remembered Tuck’s chilling words to Ruby, I discounted the possibility of anybody other than one of his goons sneaking into the bedroom and snatching Opal from her crib. This wasn’t about stealing a baby, it was about people with more power and money than the entire state making sure that Ruby didn’t testify in Myra’s trial.

Ruby looked at me with pleading eyes. I thought of Paco saying that white-collar criminals would kill as quickly as any other criminal. I thought of Tucker’s plane, and of Ruby saying Tucker had flown a man over the Gulf and shoved his body out to be eaten by sharks. I thought of Tucker’s slimy innuendo when he’d spoken to Ruby, the veiled threat that Opal might meet the same fate unless Ruby cooperated.

I said, “I talked to those cleaning women this morning. They were working at a house next door to one of my clients, but they said Doreen hadn’t shown up for work today. That’s her name, Doreen. She’s obese. If you put out a bulletin to watch for a woman like that with a baby, add obesity to the description. About my height, but easily over two hundred pounds. Depression does that, you know. Puts on pounds. The other women said Doreen’s boyfriend had left her after her baby died.”

Ruby shot me a look of pure gratitude.

Owens grimaced. “He must be a stellar guy. Do either of you know the woman’s last name?”

Ruby said, “You’ll have to ask Granddad.”

“Okay, I need to go inside the house for a minute and speak to the deputies in there. Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle, I’ll need to get more information from you.”

He looked a question at Cupcake, who shrugged his massive shoulders. “I’m just here as Zack’s friend.”

“Your name?”

“Cupcake Trillin.”

“Sorry, I didn’t recognize you.”

I looked hard at Cupcake. Apparently he was somebody I should recognize, but I didn’t.

Owens said, “Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle, would you mind going downtown to the Ringling office and talking there? It’ll be more comfortable than standing out in the yard.”

For a minute there was a discussion of who would ride in which car, since Zack’s car only held two people, with a final decision that Cupcake would ride with Sergeant Owens to the station and wait.

Owens said, “I have to talk to the deputies inside for a minute, and then I’ll lead you folks to the station. Dixie, don’t leave. I want to talk to you, too.”

He meant for me to hang around in the yard until he was ready for me. Former deputies don’t get invited to sit in chairs and drink coffee at the sheriff’s office. We get interviewed in driveways, on sidewalks, and in the drive-through lane at Taco Bell.

I didn’t look forward to being interviewed anywhere. There were too many weird things going on, too many knotted personal relationships, too much sadness.

19

Sergeant Owens went into the house, leaving me and Cupcake to watch Zack guide Ruby across the street and help her into his car.

Cupcake said, “You know what’s going on here?”

Maybe it was because he was so big, or maybe it was his sweet smile, but I trusted Cupcake.

I said, “I know Ruby is supposed to testify in Myra Kreigle’s trial. I know her testimony will send Myra to prison for a long time. I know Myra will go to any lengths to keep that testimony out of court.”

Cupcake exhaled, a sigh that came out like a warm wind. “That’s what I’m thinking too. That old witch had somebody take that baby to shut Ruby up.”

“I think I know who took her. A man named Vern. He grabbed me yesterday and took me to Kantor Tucker. He thought I was Ruby.”

Cupcake studied me. “You do look like Ruby.”

“Ruby and I thought that would be the end of it. We never dreamed they’d get to her through Opal.”

“She should have been with Zack. He’s her husband. He should have been watching over her.”

“Ruby says Zack believes she tricked him. Is that true?”

He sighed again. “I don’t know if that boy knows what he believes anymore. His dad has him all twisted up. He feeds him a lot of crap about how Ruby can’t be trusted and how she’s a two-timing slut, but it’s not true. Ruby’s a good girl. She got in with the wrong people, but she didn’t know what they were until it was too late.”

Sergeant Owens came out the front door, and Cupcake hurried to dig a crumpled card from his pants pocket and hand it to me. “We need to help those kids.”

I didn’t know if he meant Ruby and Zack or the underprivileged kids he and Zack wanted to help.

Sergeant Owens and I watched Cupcake lumber across the yard to the sheriff’s car and crawl into the passenger seat. I sneaked a look at his card but all it said was
Cupcake Trillin,
with a phone number.

Owens said, “You know who that is?”

Without giving me a chance to admit I didn’t, he said, “Inside linebacker for the Bucs. He’s like a granite mountain.”

“Hunh.” Being more or less sports illiterate, I didn’t know what an inside linebacker was, but I tried to look as if I did.

Owens said, “What do you know about Ruby Carlyle?”

“She used to work for Myra Kreigle, and she’s a witness in Myra’s trial.”

“Okay.”

“Ruby’s job was to lure rich men into Myra’s Ponzi scheme. That’s how she met Zack Carlyle. They were married about eighteen months ago. He and some other athletes had started a foundation to help needy kids. Thanks to Ruby’s influence, the foundation invested heavily in Myra Kreigle’s phony REIT. I’m not sure how much Ruby knew of what was really going on, but Myra promised her Zack wouldn’t lose any money. He lost it all, and now he believes Ruby was as guilty as Myra. Thinks she married him for his money.”

Owens raised a bony finger and scratched his cheek a few times, as if he were tabulating suspects.

“Dixie, from what you’ve seen, do you think there’s any chance the mother could be involved in the baby’s disappearance? Maybe she’s trying to get attention from Zack Carlyle, or maybe she’s planning to claim she’s too distraught to testify in the Kreigle trial? Maybe this whole thing is a scam, like Kreigle’s Ponzi deal. Wouldn’t be the first time she’s put on a phony act.”

He sounded like Zack’s father, which made me snap at him. “I haven’t seen anything that would make me think that.”

That was the absolute truth. I had not seen a thing to make me believe Ruby would engineer a fake kidnapping of her baby. But a good actor can fool anybody, including police officers, judges, juries, and me. Ruby was a good actress, good enough to make old rich men feel young and virile in her presence, good enough to cause them to invest millions of dollars in a phony real estate investment trust. She might have fooled me too, but I didn’t believe her love for Opal was faked.

I said, “Yesterday morning a man named Vern Brogher mistook me for Ruby and strong-armed me into his limo. He took me to see a man named Kantor Tucker. He’s the man who put up two million dollars’ bond for Myra Kreigle. He has a place out east of Seventy-five where people have airstrips alongside their driveways. When Tucker saw that I wasn’t Ruby, he sent Vern away. Vern took me to a Friendly’s and put me out. Ruby said Vern was Tucker’s muscle, and that he also worked for Myra. Vern may have taken Ruby’s baby.”

“What about the obese cleaning woman?”

An edge to his voice made me think he was suspicious of the story of the cleaning woman.

I said, “There really is a cleaning woman, and she was truly upset when she saw Opal. And it’s true that the women who work with her say she lost a baby a few weeks ago, and that her boyfriend left her.”

“But you think the kidnapper may be that Vern guy?”

In my memory, I heard Ruby talking about Tuck shoving a man out of his plane over the Gulf. And I heard Tucker’s threatening voice say that Opal could become shark food. Ruby was afraid to accuse Vern because she was afraid Tuck and Myra would kill Opal if she did. I was afraid of that too.

I said, “All I know is that Myra Kreigle’s trial begins Monday, and if Ruby testifies about what Myra did with the money she took from people, Myra may spend the rest of her life in jail. If Ruby thought Vern had kidnapped her baby to keep her quiet, she might decide not to tell what she knows. Myra would get a shorter prison sentence, and the stolen money would still be there waiting when she got out.”

He looked skeptical, and I didn’t blame him. A criminal investigation can’t run on speculation and vague hunches.

“That’s an interesting theory, Dixie. You have anything except intuition to back it up?”

I clenched my jaws on words that begged to be said:
I heard Tucker tell Ruby that Opal might become shark food if Ruby said bad things about her friends.
I had no right to say those words. Like Ruby, I had to choose between telling the truth and saving Opal’s life.

Owens said, “We’ll put out an Amber Alert right away, and we’ll notify public transportation services to be on the lookout for an obese Caucasian woman with a four-month-old baby.”

“That ought to narrow down the field.”

Ignoring the sarcasm, he gave me a half salute and strode off to join Cupcake in the car. Dully, I watched them drive away, watched Zack and Ruby pull in behind to follow them to the sheriff’s office.

Except for a lone deputy car, my Bronco was the only vehicle left. Firefighters were putting equipment back into their trucks and driving away. Across the street, neighbors were retrieving their quilts and pillows from the grass and returning to their own homes.

The fire marshall’s investigating team hadn’t yet arrived, and I knew the deputy inside was mostly biding time until they showed up. I had no reason to stay, but I couldn’t make my feet move. I felt as if I were an impostor in my own body, somebody who looked like me and talked like me but was a total stranger to me. When I’d agreed with Ruby that the cleaning woman might have kidnapped Opal, I had helped implicate an innocent woman in a crime. It didn’t help that I knew she would be found innocent. I had violated every principle I held dear.

But I wanted to save Opal, and I believed Tucker could get away with murdering a baby without ever being called to account for it. He was that powerful, he was that amoral. If he and Myra were accused, he might dispose of Opal just to be rid of the evidence.

The sun was mid-heaven now, way past my breakfast time. But I was too grimy and sad to eat. The only thing I could do was go to my apartment, my quiet refuge away from insanity and greed, away from twisted people who could justify stealing a baby in order to force its mother to lie to a jury.

A car door slammed shut in Myra’s driveway, and I turned to see a black Mercedes back to the street and drive away. Seconds later, a red BMW backed rapidly from Myra’s garage to the street, it turned with squealing brakes, and roared away. Myra and Tucker had both left her house.

I turned and looked at Myra’s house. The young woman I’d seen at the window might be in there alone. Or she might have Opal with her. Vern might have come down the side of the vacant house into Mr. Stern’s side yard, sneaked into Ruby’s bedroom, set the fire, grabbed Opal from her crib, and left the same way he’d come, circling behind Mr. Stern’s walled garden to the back of Myra’s yard and into her house without anybody seeing him. Opal might have been inside the house while Myra and Tucker talked to Ruby at the front door. If that were true, Opal could be inside Myra’s house right that moment, and Myra and Tucker were gone.

The young woman I’d seen at Myra’s window had looked gentle and kind. Defenseless, even. I was an ex-deputy. I had gone to police academy. I was not gentle and kind. If that soft young woman was alone in Myra’s house with Opal, I could go in and easily take the baby away from her.

After I had the baby, I would call Sergeant Owens and he would make sure the baby was put in a safe place. Ruby would be able to tell the truth, and Myra and Tucker would spend the rest of their lives in prison. Most important of all, Ruby and Opal would be safe.

I didn’t see a single flaw in my reasoning. That’s how far gone I was.

20

A modest corridor of lawn separated Mr. Stern’s walled courtyard from Myra Kreigle’s driveway. I circled the end of the wall separating the lots and looked down the side of Myra’s house. Flower beds ran alongside the house’s foundation, and a gravel walk between the beds and the driveway was edged with begonias. The walk led to a side door. That side door beckoned me.

I took the crunching graveled walk to the side door. Anybody watching would have seen me moving at a normal speed, not running like a thief. At the door, my hand tried the doorknob. Myra must have been in too much of a hurry to lock it when she left, because it turned. I pushed the door open and stepped into a spacious laundry room with side-by-side washer and dryer and cupboards above.

I moved into the kitchen where a window above the sink let in midday sunshine. Even gliding through as quickly as I did, I appreciated the way the kitchen managed to look both contemporary and antique. Dark wood floors, granite countertops, glossy dark cabinets that reached to the ceiling, and a pale green stove with French Provincial legs and a hooded top. The stove pretended to be vintage, but was undoubtedly a reproduction that had cost an obscene amount of money. A wide baker’s cabinet stood at an angle in a corner, either a genuine antique or a very good reproduction. I doubted that Myra ever pulled out its work table and kneaded dough or rolled pie crusts on it. It was strictly for show, like everything else in Myra’s life.