Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof (23 page)

Like being hit by lightning, I got the meaning in a flash. Freuland’s need for power made him especially vulnerable to a helpless woman at his feet.

Rolling to the floor, I stretched on my back, put my hands over my face and blubbered that I didn’t want to die.

He came closer, his feet shuffling beside me. When he spoke, his voice oozed satisfaction.

“I see you understand the situation.”

I bobbed my chin up and down and bawled. “Uh-huh, I do.”

“I thought you would. You seem like a smart woman. Too bad you had to stumble onto the money.”

Crying louder, I spread my fingers and looked through them. The overhead fluorescents bathed us both in cold light.

Straddling me, he leaned over with the Glock aimed between my eyes. I opened my mouth wide and howled like a little kid.

At the same time, I jerked a knee to my chest and drove my foot into his big bull balls.

33

A
.9mm Glock going off in an enclosed kitchen makes an extremely loud roar. So does a large man with badly bruised gonads. Dropping his gun, Freuland folded to the floor in a fetal position, and I scrabbled for the Glock.

Panting, I got to my feet. With my knees shaking so violently I had to lean on the counter for support, I covered Freuland with the Glock while I used my free hand to pull out my cell phone. Fingers trembling like a drunk’s, I punched in Guidry’s number. Mercifully, he answered on the first ring.

My voice seemed to have forgotten how to work. All it could do was make choking noises.

He said, “Dixie?”

I gasped, “I’m at Laura’s—”

That’s all I got out before several shrieks like banshee fury sounded in the living room, so loud that Guidry heard them.

Guidry said, “What? What’s happened?”

There was another scream, a curious thunking sound, then a sound like a heavy object hitting the floor with a dull thump. Then utter silence.

Guidry said, “Dixie?”

Freuland lay mewling and puking on the floor, out of commission for two or three minutes at least. But somebody else was in the house, possibly with accomplices outside.

Guidry’s voice rose. “Dixie? Answer me! Dixie!”

In the stillness, his voice was so loud it echoed.

Putting my lips close to the mouthpiece, I whispered, “Somebody’s here.”

Freuland retched and groaned. I pointed the Glock at him while I kept one eye on the bar where Leo’s supplies sat next to the sack containing a million dollars.

At the edge of the bar, a silver glint extended from behind the wall, then withdrew. My first thought was that it was a gun barrel. My second thought was that it was the blade of a knife. Then I realized what the shrieking sound had been—Celeste had stepped on Leo’s tail and they’d both screamed. I didn’t want to think about the implication of the thudding sound hitting the floor. I didn’t want to think about the implication of the tip of that knife blade, either, but the fact was that Celeste was in the house and she was slipping toward me with a knife in her hand.

Once again, I had been duped by one of the sisters. Celeste had made a big show of refusing the key the locksmith had made, and another big show of telling Guidry she was returning to Dallas. And all the time she’d known she could easily knock out a pane of glass and get in the house without the key. She had either expected Freuland to come looking for the money she hadn’t been able to find, or she’d thought she’d give it another search herself. In either case, she had made me a witness to the fact that she didn’t have a key, and she would have known that I would tell Guidry.

Guidry yelled, “Dixie! Talk to me!”

I put the phone on the counter because I needed both hands to hold the Glock. I had to watch Freuland, and I also had to be ready to stop Celeste. The knife blade reappeared, slowly edging forward. Bright, shiny, silver.

Guidry barked, “I’m on my way!”

The silver object went still, and Pete’s voice said, “Dixie?”

I swear I think my ears wiggled a little bit in disbelief.

“Pete?”

With saxophone in hand, Pete stepped behind the bar so I could get a good look at him. His fuzzy eyebrows were lowered like a mastiff’s, and his jaw was clenched in a way I’d never imagined Pete capable of. He didn’t look like a sweet octogenarian clown, he looked like a man who would as soon kill you as smile at you.

With a glance at Freuland groaning on the floor, he said, “Looks like you’ve got him under control.”

I picked up the phone. “It’s okay, it’s Pete. I thought it was Celeste Autrey, but it’s Pete.”

Looking like himself again, Pete said, “Celeste is in the living room.”

For the second time that evening, I was struck speechless. While I gaped at him, he said, “Don’t worry, she’s asleep.”

Oh, shit, it must have been Celeste’s body I heard hitting the floor.

Guidry said, “Talk to me!”

I said, “I’ve got Martin Freuland covered, and I need backup. Freuland came to get his money, and he tried to kill me. But he didn’t kill Laura, Celeste did.” Weakly, I added, “Celeste is here too.”

Guidry said, “I’m two minutes away, and some units are even closer.”

As he said it, a loud rapping sounded at the front door, and a voice yelled, “Sheriff’s Department!”

Pete sidled away and hollered, “Come on in!”

I heard a man say, “Sir, what’s going on here?”

I yelled, “Freuland’s in here!”

A deputy rounded the corner from the living room and in one sweep took in the bullet hole in the cabinet, the Glock in my hand, and Freuland’s agonized writhing.

Still quivering, I handed the gun to him and crossed my arms over my chest.

“This man tried to kill me with this gun. His aim went bad when I kicked him in the balls.”

The deputy winced. “Lieutenant Guidry is on his way.”

In the living room, the other deputy said, “Sir, what’s the story with the woman?”

Pete said, “Wait, I haven’t explained that to Dixie yet.”

He popped back into view behind the bar with his saxophone tucked under one arm and Leo cradled against his chest. Leo looked surprisingly contented.

“Dixie, I didn’t get a chance to tell you what happened with Celeste. I was on the way to my car to put my saxophone in there and I saw her cross the street from the hedge where the jogging trail is. For a minute I thought it was Laura, and then I remembered Laura was dead. That’s who I saw Tuesday morning! She looks like Laura when she’s got on all that jogging stuff. Anyway, she ran in behind the trees so I knew she was coming in here. I don’t trust that woman, and I didn’t like the idea of her coming in on you like that, so I came down to see what she was up to. The front door was open, and she just came in. When I got to the door, I could see her in the living room, and she had a big knife in her hand. She looked like she was planning something bad with that knife, so I snuck up on her real quiet.”

The deputy and I stared at him with big round eyes.

The deputy said, “And then?”

In the living room, Guidry’s voice barked a question, and we all looked toward the sound. He spoke a minute to the living room deputy and then came to stand beside Pete.

I turned to face him in all my snotty, tangled, smeared glory, and gave him a megawatt smile. I felt a little bit like a director of a play announcing the characters and their roles. There in Laura’s kitchen we had a big moaning man in a thousand-dollar suit rolling on the floor and clutching his genitals with both hands. We had two million dollars bundled in neat packages like Hershey’s chocolate bars. We had a long-tailed cat who had exacted feline revenge by tripping his owner’s killer. Last but by no means least, we had an octogenarian who had cold-cocked a killer with his saxophone. And we had me, girl pet sitter, size six, thank you very much, five-foot-three inches tall, who had just felled the big man in the suit.

I said, “Celeste Autrey murdered Laura Halston. She stabbed her to death and then mutilated her face.” I pointed to Freuland. “And he paid her to do it.”

Freuland shuddered and tried to roll to a sitting position. Guidry was instantly beside him, one hand helping him sit up, the other putting a handcuff on one of his wrists. As he cuffed the other wrist, he Mirandaed him, his voice even and deliberate.

In a dramatic show of indignation, Freuland jerked his torso away, but he was still so groggy from my kick that he toppled over and landed with his head pillowed on a bag of money. It seemed a fitting support.

EMTs were suddenly in the house to get Celeste. Still holding Leo in his arms, Pete stepped away from the bar to watch them haul her away, while Guidry motioned the deputies to help Freuland to his feet. Freuland’s face was pasty, with beads of sweat dripping on his silk suit. In minutes, they were all gone except for Pete and me and Guidry and the first deputies who’d arrived.

One of them said what I’d been dreading. “Lieutenant Guidry, we were just getting a statement from this gentleman when you came. He followed the woman into the house and stopped her.”

Guidry said, “Stopped her?”

Pete drew himself as tall as possible and tilted his chin toward Leo.

“This here’s my cat. Name’s Purr-C. He was supposed to be in a carrying case”—here he gave me a stern look—“but I guess he got out. Anyway, I was behind Celeste and she had that knife up, and she was listening to Dixie and that man, and it seemed to me that she didn’t plan anything good for either of them.”

I realized I’d stopped breathing, and forced myself to inhale.

Pete said, “There was a big blasting sound, and a man hollered real loud. I knew he was hurt, but I didn’t know what had happened to Dixie. I started running to see if she was all right, and then Celeste stepped on Purr-C’s tail. Now, I don’t know if you’re familiar with cats, but when a cat’s tail is stepped on it makes a horrible noise, yowling and screeching like nobody’s business, and that must have startled Celeste because she commenced yowling and screeching too, and with all that screeching and her with that knife in her hand, I thought it would be best if I put a stop to it.”

I felt light-headed. Pete had been such a gentle man when I first met him.

The deputy said, “Sir?”

Touching the side of his neck, Pete said, “So I just tapped her with my saxophone.”

Guidry said, “You knocked her
out
?”

“But not hard. See, I was a clown for a long time with Ringling, and you learn a lot of things when you’re a clown. Some little-town bullies think killing a clown would be better sport than killing deer or grizzlies, so clowns have to learn to protect themselves.” With a note of pride, he said, “I know sixty-six places to tap a person and put them to sleep.”

We all went still. I was sure every person in that room believed that tapping a person in some of those sixty-six places would put them to sleep for good.

Pete seemed to know that we knew that, because he rushed to reassure us. “She’ll sleep for about an hour is all, then she’ll wake up yakking like always. If I was you, I’d make sure she’s tied down before she wakes up. That woman is a she-devil for sure. She gets ahold of a knife, she’ll slit your throats and tell God you cut yourself shaving.”

For a moment, nobody spoke. What do you say to an octogenarian who has just used his saxophone to put a murderous woman to sleep?

Guidry recovered first. “Good job, sir.”

To the deputies, he said, “Radio the EMTs to make sure that woman can’t get access to a knife.”

When he turned to me, he had a glint in his eyes that I couldn’t exactly define, but it looked a lot like admiration. Like Pete, I drew myself a little taller.

Strength is where you find it, and Pete and Leo and I had plenty of it.

34

W
hen Guidry first saw me in my new black dress and my new high heels, he quirked an eyebrow. “You clean up good, Dixie. I like that neckline.”

A blush began somewhere south of my navel and traveled upward. Resisting the urge to grab the front of my dress and hoist it higher, I made an inarticulate gurgling sound that intended to be words and failed.

Guidry in evening clothes made me feel like a yokel at her first visit to an art museum. All men look dashing and sophisticated in black dinner jackets, but Guidry looked as if the style had been created for him. His trousers fell in that easy straight way that bespeaks fine fabric and expert cut, the jacket lay on his shoulders in a perfectly fitted caress, and the collar of his crisp white shirt rose like a tribute toward his firm jawline.

I was still in something of a daze from the hectic week. Pete and Purr-C were happily settled in Pete’s house, with Purr-C cozying up to Pete as if he’d been with him forever, and not seeming to remember any of his former names.

As Pete had predicted, Celeste had been unconscious for about an hour and then woke up howling mad in the county jail, where she would be held without bail.

Martin Freuland was also in the county jail, his arrogant personage the source of a hot tug of war between federal, Texas, and Florida lawmen. No matter who got him first, he would face a mountain of charges from the others, and it wasn’t likely that he would be a free man for a long, long time. Maybe never.

Frederick Vaught was still in the county jail too, but since he was only guilty of being weird, he would probably be released. He should have been incarcerated in a mental hospital, but since our society no longer protects the public from the insane, he would be back on the streets. At least until he commits a crime for which he can be locked up.

The Humane Society gala was held in the ballroom at Michael’s on East, an upscale restaurant and convention center tucked behind a shopping center on the Tamiami Trail. There was music, there were beautiful people, there was good food. Before we sat down to eat, there was a mingling hour, with cocktails.

Guidry raised his gaze from my chest and said, “You want a drink? They have cheap white wine, cheap red wine, and something in a punch bowl that I think is supposed to be Sangria.”

“White, please.”

He disappeared into the crowd, leaving me to continue chasing the same question that had been racing through my mind since Thursday night. How could I have liked Laura Halston so much? How could I have felt such a strong connection to her? Not just when I first met her, when she’d been bright and funny and warm and sympathetic, but after I’d learned that she was a liar and a thief. Even then, I’d felt empathy for her.

Millions of people fall under the spell of skilled con artists—that’s why they’re called
artists
—but my attraction to Laura had been more than a rube falling under the influence of a slick charmer. It hadn’t been sexual, that much I knew. I’d enjoyed her beauty, but I hadn’t wanted her in a sexual way. And while it was true that I was nostalgic for woman talk and woman confidences, that wasn’t the whole story, and I knew it.

I caught a glimpse of Guidry threading his way through the crowd with a wineglass in each hand, and in the next moment I had a clear-eyed look at myself. I’d been drawn to Laura Halston for the same reason I was drawn to Guidry. We each had come to it from different places and by different routes, but all three of us were attracted to the edge of danger.

It was a sobering thought, but not nearly so sobering as the knowledge that flirting with danger was an integral part of who I was, and I doubted that I would ever change.

Guidry emerged from the crowd and sauntered toward me, graceful, bright, funny, honorable, a great-kissing cop. I watched his approach with a sense of fascinated inevitability, knowing I was lost but unable to save myself.