Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs (3 page)

I may have made a small shriek, I’m not sure. I’m strong and I know how to defend myself, but there were three of them and only one of me.

They looked to be around senior high school age, and they were almost comical in their studied scariness. Eyelids at half-mast, lips twisted in identical pouty sneers, hair so messy it might have hidden spiders. They would have looked even scarier if their baggy jeans hadn’t been belted so low that their underwear ballooned around their hips.

One of them, the tallest, oldest, and meanest-looking, said, “We’re looking for Jaz.”

Somehow I wasn’t surprised at the coincidence of hearing the name of the girl from the vet’s office. People with strong personalities seem to turn up all over the place, either in person or in reference, and Jaz certainly had a strong personality. I also wasn’t surprised that she knew these young men. She had the combination of innocent tenderness and hard-shelled toughness that would make her fall for street-gang swagger.

I swallowed a large lump that had formed in my throat, and tried to think of something within reach that I could use as a weapon.

I said, “I don’t know anybody named Jaz.”

Three pairs of grudge-filled eyes stared at me. For a moment, nobody said anything, and I almost thought they might leave.

Then the big one that I had decided was their leader said, “Don’t fuck with us, lady.”

I took a half step backward, and in a high voice that I hoped sounded like a clueless dimwit, I said, “Is Jaz somebody you know from school?”

One of the boys tittered, and the big one scowled at him. “We ask the questions, you answer. Understand? Now get Jaz out here.”

The middle boy, whose jeans hung so low the crotch dangled between his knees, said, “We won’t hurt her, ma’am.”

The big one said, “Shut up, Paulie.”

I traced an X across my chest with my finger. “I swear to God, I have never met anybody named Jaz. These houses all look alike, you probably just got the wrong address.”

The director in my brain said,
That’s good. Don’t act like this is a break-in, act like it’s a normal drop-in by friends. If they rush you, grab a jar of birdseed and bash it on one of their heads
.

Big Bubba took that moment to decide he was being ignored. “Helloooo,” he hollered, “did you miss me?”

The most sullen of the three stretched his arm forward with a switchblade knife making a silver extension of his hand.

The boy called Paulie said, “C’mon, don’t do that.”

I took another half step backward. With my heart pounding like a jackhammer, I flashed all my teeth and tried to sound perky.

“He’s an African Grey. He sounds like he knows what he’s saying, but he’s just imitating sounds he’s heard.”

The boy with the knife said, “You got that bird in Africa?”

I said, “He’s
from
Africa, but I didn’t go there and get him.”

As if he’d had a sudden epiphany, Paulie, the middle boy, shuffled to the table where Big Bubba’s food was arranged. He had to hold his pants up with one hand to keep them from falling. He picked up a glass jar of sunflower seeds and studied it. Probably one of the few things he’d ever studied.

He said, “This is for birds, ain’t it? I always knew this stuff was for birds. Man, my sister eats this stuff!”

The one with the knife said, “I seen a show one time where people from Africa were squeezed in the bottom of a ship, all chained together. Man, that was bad.”

The tall one looked as if he’d like to bang their heads together. He said, “That bird wasn’t on no slave ship, stupid.”

Paulie set the jar of seed back on the table. The jar now had gummy-looking smudges on it, which made me want to snatch the paper towels from the trash and make the kid clean it.

I took another half step backward and wished I had pepper spray with me.

Big Bubba hollered, “Get that man! Get that man!”

I said, “He watches a lot of football games.”

“Hello,” yelled Big Bubba. “Hello! Hello! Did you miss me? Touchdown!”

The boy with the knife clicked it closed and jutted his jaws forward. “I’d like to have me a bird like that.”

The big one said, “Dickhead! How you gone travel with a bird that talks? You need any more attention than you already got?”

I guess that’s why he was the leader, he was the one who thought ahead. He gave me a long look, most likely wondering how long it would take me to dial the police if they left me conscious.

To the dickhead, I said, “You might like a parakeet. They talk too. But if you get one, be sure it’s a male because female parakeets don’t talk. Not like in the human world, huh?”

Three sets of vacant eyes swung toward me. I smiled. Broadly. Inviting them to share my humor. Only Paulie smiled back. I’d forgotten that criminals are too stupid to have a sense of humor.

In a woman’s high treble, Big Bubba crooned, “I’ll be loving yoooo . . . alwaaaaays.” He sounded like he meant it.

Maybe it was because I was doing an Academy Award job of acting like a dithery blonde. Or maybe it was because Big Bubba was making them nervous. Or maybe they were just apprentice thugs who could still lose their cool.

Whatever the reason, the tall one said, “We’re outta here.”

Within seconds, all three had melted out the door and disappeared.

I waited, straining to hear my Bronco’s motor turning over from a hood’s hot-wire, but the only sound was my own heartbeat.

Dry mouthed, I took out my phone and dialed 911.

Deputy Jesse Morgan was at Big Bubba’s house in less than five minutes, crisp and manly in his dark green uniform, his belt bristling with all the items that law enforcement
officers keep handy. Morgan is a sworn deputy, and the fact that he answered the call meant the sheriff’s office took the incident seriously.

Morgan and I knew each other from some other unpleasant incidents. When I opened the door he didn’t speak my name, just tilted his firm chin a fraction in greeting. Maybe he thought saying my name would bring him bad luck.

“You called about a break-in?”

From his cage in the sunroom, Big Bubba shouted, “Hold it! Hold it! Hold it!”

I said, “That’s a parrot.”

Morgan held his pen poised above his notebook and waited.

I said, “It was three boys, Caucasian, late teens, all in baggy pants with their underwear showing. They just walked in on me.”

“Just now?”

“Five or ten minutes ago. I called as soon as they left. One of them had an automatic knife.”

“They threaten you?”

“Not exactly. He just flicked the knife open to let me know he had it.”

Saying the word
flicked
made me tense a little bit, sort of preparing myself to tell the part I dreaded.

“They said they were looking for a girl named Jaz. They seemed to think she lived here.”

He looked up from his notepad. “You spell that J-A-Z-Z, like the music?”

“I guess so. I don’t really know.”

“You know this girl?”

“No, but I saw her this morning at Dr. Layton’s office. I was there getting Big Bubba—he’s the parrot—and this girl was there with a man. She seemed like a good kid. They had a rabbit the man had run over, but Dr. Layton couldn’t save him.”

“The rabbit.”

“Yeah. The man claimed he was Jaz’s stepfather. Only he called her Rosemary.”

He raised an eyebrow and studied me for a moment. “Sounds like you didn’t believe him.”

I wasn’t going there. “How would I know? I never saw them before.”

“Except at the vet’s.”

“Except there.”

His face didn’t give away a hint of whatever he was thinking.

He said, “You’re taking care of this parrot?”

“Yeah, for Reba Chandler. I come here twice a day. I had to leave him at the vet’s overnight, but he’s okay. He’s been having a little reaction to the red tide.”

“Who hasn’t? You have any idea why they came here looking for Jax?”

“
Jaz
. It’s
Jaz
. I guess they just got the houses mixed up. She seemed like a nice kid.”

I knew I was repeating myself, but for some reason I didn’t want Morgan to think badly of Jaz just because some thugs were asking about her.

He said, “Jaz doesn’t know Miss Chandler?”

I gave him the look you give people who’ve asked a really dumb question, and then I realized it wasn’t such a dumb question after all. The fact that
I
didn’t know Jaz
didn’t mean Reba Chandler didn’t know her. Maybe she did. If Jaz lived in the neighborhood, it would be like Reba to befriend her. Except I didn’t believe she lived in the neighborhood.

I said, “Maybe I haven’t made it clear those guys were scary.”

“Anything more specific that might identify them?”

“One of them was named Paulie.”

I clapped my hand to my forehead like somebody remembering they could have had a V8. “Oh, I forgot! The one named Paulie picked up a jar of birdseed. It would have prints on it.”

Morgan stopped writing and followed me to the sunroom. He and Big Bubba gave each other the once-over while I scurried to the kitchen to get one of Reba’s canvas grocery bags. Back in the sunroom, Morgan covered the jar’s metal lid with a paper towel and carefully transferred the jar to the bag. Paulie’s latent prints would be lifted from the jar and run through IAFIS for a match. If the kid had ever been arrested by city, county, state, or federal law enforcement officers, his prints would be in the Interstate Identification Index of IAFIS.

I said, “Another thing, one of them said something about traveling.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said, ‘Dickhead, how you gone travel with a bird that talks?’ See, one of the guys said he’d like to have a bird like Big Bubba, and this one, I think he was the leader, said, ‘How you gone travel with a bird that talks?’ ”

Morgan picked up the canvas bag by its handles. “You know how to get in touch with Miss Chandler?”

I shook my head. “She’s in the south of France on a boat that stops at four-star restaurants.”

Reba had left me the number of the cruise line that I could call in an emergency, but I wasn’t about to disturb her vacation just because some teenage hoods had come in her house while I was there.

Morgan looked as if he knew I could call Reba if I had to, but he didn’t press it. As he went out the front door, he said, “We’ll keep a closer watch on the area.”

I nodded, knowing full well that all the trees and shrubbery on the street did a good job of hiding a lot of innocent behavior. It would hide criminal behavior too.

I gave Big Bubba some sliced banana in case he’d got upset listening to me and Deputy Morgan. Then I turned on his TV and went back down the steps to the Bronco. As I drove down the lane, I saw a pale form through the fronds of an areca palm. I stopped and looked, and for a heartbeat I thought I saw Jaz’s face watching me. If it was her, she was instantly swallowed up by green trees and hanging vines.

I thought for a minute, then drove a few lanes over to Hetty Soames’s house. If Jaz was mixed up with those young toughs who’d come into Reba’s house, Hetty needed to know about it before she got involved with the girl.

L
ike Reba’s house, Hetty’s was hidden behind trees and foliage, but it wasn’t wooden or built tall on stilts. Instead, it was pale pink stucco and sat low under oaks and pines. I followed a side path to the lanai, where Hetty and Ben were playing fetch-the-ball. Racing back and forth with puppy glee, Ben thought he was just having fun, but Hetty was gently training him to return to the same spot each time he brought the ball to her. In a few weeks, he would know to touch her leg with the ball and wait for her to take it.

Hetty’s cat, Winston, sat in a cane chair calmly grooming his white socks. A gray mixed shorthair with a white ruff and Cleopatra eyes, Winston surveyed the world and all its inhabitants with the patient tolerance of the Dalai Lama. Winston could have worn a saffron toga and still keep his dignity.

Pups raised to be service dogs are introduced to just about every situation under the sun. In addition to the regular places that all dogs go, service dogs in training go
to church, to movies, and to restaurants. They learn to live serenely with other pets and children. They learn to keep their cool no matter what happens, so that when they are eventually teamed with a person who needs them to be their eyes or ears, they’re unflappable. Ben hadn’t learned that yet. When he saw me, he forgot all about the ball game and charged over to check me out.

Hetty followed him and knelt beside him to keep him from jumping on me.

She said, “I’ll bet I know why you’re here. You’re concerned about Jaz, aren’t you?”

I said, “I’ve just been at Reba Chandler’s house, and some young toughs came in looking for her.”

With one hand on Ben’s neck, Hetty looked sharply at me. “Did they hurt you?”

“No, but they were scary. I called nine-one-one and a deputy came and got the information. He said they would keep extra watch on this area, but I wanted you to know about it.”

Leading Ben, Hetty went back to her chair. “You think those boys are friends of hers?”

I nudged Winston to one side of his chair and sat down beside him. I scratched the spot between his shoulders, the acnestis that animals can’t scratch by themselves, and he looked up at me and smiled.

I said, “They asked for her by name, so she must know them. And another thing: When I was leaving Reba’s house, I think I saw Jaz hiding in the shrubbery.”

Hetty nodded, her eyes clouded with worry. “She lives nearby.”

“You got her address?”

“No, but she said she was close enough to walk here. She’s coming tomorrow morning.”

Winston stretched his head back so I could scratch his neck. He did it with great poise. I wish I were more like Winston.

Hetty said, “Jaz seems like such a sensitive girl. Why would she be friends with boys like that?”

“Sensitive girls can be dumb as anybody else.”

“I wouldn’t call it dumb. She’s just young.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Even under the best of circumstances, adolescence is a god-awful age—too young to have learned from experience but old enough to act on impulsive decisions. No kid is truly immune to taking a wrong turn, and only the lucky ones who go wrong get a helping hand. From the look of her, I didn’t think Jaz had had an easy life, and I doubted she’d had many helping hands.