Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs (7 page)

“In his own country he is. Victor Salazar is a big name there.”

It was creepy to see how quickly she trotted out his importance, as if it justified his kidnapping.

I said, “Mo, I know people in the sheriff’s department. Let me—”

“I’m not going to the cops, Dixie. I can’t take that chance. Victor says this happens all the time in South America. That’s why he keeps such a tight watch on me. He always told me if he got kidnapped to just pay up. That’s what I’ll do too. I have to handle this myself.”

I said, “Tell me exactly how this happened. When did you last see Victor, and when did you get the call?”

She opened her bag and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, then saw the look on my face and put them back.

She said, “I saw him about three thirty this afternoon. He left to go meet some old buddies from South America. Venezuela, I think, or maybe Colombia. Could have been Nicaragua. One of those places. He said they’d come here on vacation and they were all getting together for a five-day camping trip, just those guys, catching up on old times, fishing, boating, you know, guy things.”

For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine Victor out in the woods camping. Or fishing. He had seemed more the type to sit in a deck chair on a megayacht and look at the little people through narrow glasses too dark to see his eyes.

I said, “How long after he left for the camping trip did you get the phone call?”

“I don’t know, several hours. The call came after midnight. I was already asleep, but I thought it might be Victor
calling so I answered. When I heard that voice I got so scared I couldn’t breathe.”

“Tell me again what the caller said.”

“It’s still on my machine, I can play it for you, but I played it so many times I have it memorized. It was a man, and he said, ‘Mrs. Salazar, we have your husband. If you want him returned alive, put a million dollars in small bills in a duff el bag and leave it in your gazebo at midnight tomorrow. Do not call the police or tell anybody. We’ll be watching you, and if you talk to anybody, we will kill your husband and feed him to the sharks.’ ”

“And then what?”

She looked confused. “I guess the sharks would swim away.”

“What else did the man say?”

“That’s all. The line went dead then.”

I took a deep breath. It was now after one o’clock. Maureen had got the call, freaked out, replayed it several times, then pulled herself together and come to me.

I said, “What do you know about the men Victor was meeting?”

She shook her head. “Not a thing. Victor never said their names, and they didn’t come to our house.”

“Did he say where he was meeting them? Was he going to leave his car someplace and go with them, or were they going to ride with him? And where exactly were they going to camp?”

I was piling too many questions on her at once, and she waved both hands in front of her face like a besieged child. “I don’t know, Dixie! He just said they were going to hike in the woods and do some fishing.”

“You didn’t ask where he was going?”

“Victor didn’t like to be asked questions about his private business.”

Something about that sentence caused a camera shutter to click in my brain, but I didn’t look at the photo it took. Maureen was an old friend, and my job was to help her, not to analyze every word she spoke.

I said, “When the call came, was there a person you could talk to, or was it all a recording?”

She looked surprised. “I think it was a person.”

I didn’t want to bring up the possibility that Victor had already been killed. But I was pretty sure pros demanded proof the abducted person was still alive before they made any money drops.

I said, “Maureen, this could all be a scam. It happens all the time in other countries. People get a call that their child or spouse has been kidnapped, and they get so scared they give the kidnappers whatever they ask for. Then they find out there hasn’t been any kidnapping at all. This could be a hoax too. We don’t know if the call you got was truly from kidnappers. It could have been from somebody who knew Victor was going to be gone and decided to get an easy million dollars.”

“I think it was real, Dixie.”

“But what if it wasn’t?”

“Then I lose a million dollars and my husband comes home when his camping trip ends. Either way, I get my husband back. I’m not going to nickel and dime when it comes to my husband’s life.”

I suppose that’s why kidnapping wealthy businessmen is so popular in certain circles. To people who don’t mind
losing a million here and there, being kidnapped probably seems no more than an inconvenience.

I said, “If they’re watching you like they said they were, they know you came here.”

She shook her head. “Nobody saw me leave. Nobody followed me.”

Maureen wouldn’t have noticed if a convoy of trucks had followed her, and the entire conversation gave me the same weariness I’d always felt in high school when she showed me the inside of her brain. Even then, talking to her had been like zooming to the moon expecting to find life and instead finding a For Rent sign.

I said, “Mo, not to put too fine a point to it, but I’m not crazy about being involved in something like this. If you’re not willing to go to the sheriff, I can’t help you.”

She raised her head and looked at me with the direct gaze of a child. “If it were
your
husband that had been kidnapped, I’d help you.”

Heat traveled to my face and I looked down at my hands. Remembering how she’d come to me when I was so wild with grief, I felt ashamed.

I said, “Can you lay your hands on a million in cash by tomorrow?”

She shrugged. “Sure.”

She seemed surprised at the question, as if everybody had a million in cash lying around the house.

“Tell me again how they want it delivered.”

“At our gazebo. You know, down on the boat dock? I guess they’ll come get it in a boat. They said to put the money in a duff el bag.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Just go with me. That’s all I ask. Just walk down that path with me to the gazebo. I’ll come here and pick you up and take you back to my house, and then we’ll go together to take the money. Please, Dixie?”

Her hair had flopped over her eyebrows so that her big puppy dog eyes pleaded with me from under a mass of curls. A girlish barrette with a bright red plastic flower on one end had come loose, and the flower dangled like a reject.

She said, “I can’t do it alone. Just the thought of that walk in the dark by myself with that money makes my knees buckle. I’d be so scared I’d faint right there on top of the bag.”

If any other woman had said that, I would have thought she was being overly dramatic. But Maureen had never been capable of handling ordinary things other people take for granted. In the state she was in, she would probably drop the duff el bag in the water or somehow screw the whole thing up.

Every ex–law enforcement bone in my body said we should notify the police and probably the FBI as well. But what if I was wrong? What if notifying the police caused Victor Salazar to be killed? Victor had apparently half expected to be kidnapped for ransom someday, or at least he’d known it was a good possibility, and he’d given Maureen instructions to pay the kidnappers and be done with it. Maybe it was smarter for Maureen to pay up and be quiet.

The bottom line was that it wasn’t my decision to make. It was Maureen’s husband who had been kidnapped, not mine. Maureen was the one to decide how to handle it,
not me. All she wanted from me was to lend her support in doing what she had decided to do.

And over and above everything else was the fact that Maureen had been a good friend to me at the lowest point of my life.

I said, “What do you have to do to get the money?”

She looked puzzled. “It’s already mine. I don’t have to do anything to get it.”

“I mean is it in your house, or at the bank, or where?”

She looked wary. “I’m not supposed to tell. Victor never wanted me to tell about the money.”

The little camera shutter clicked again, but I ignored it again.

I said, “I only ask because I want to be sure you’ll be safe carrying all that money if you have to go to the bank to get it.”

“I don’t have to leave the house to get it.”

Okay, so she and Victor had a home safe stocked with at least a million dollars in cash.

“Is the money you have in small bills like they want, or will you have to have hundred-dollar bills changed?”

She watched my mouth while I talked as if she could memorize what I said more easily if she read my lips.

She said, “The money is in twenties.”

Softly and carefully so I wouldn’t spook her, I said, “Maureen, do you know the combination to your safe?”

She looked proud. “Two-four—”

“Don’t tell me! I just wanted to make sure you knew it. Now, do you have a duff el bag to put the cash in?”

She frowned. “How big do you think it has to be?”

Now it was my turn to frown. How many cubic feet
of space did a million dollars in twenty-dollar bills take up?

I said, “Bigger than a carry-on, but not as big as one of those long things with wheels.”

She nodded. “I bought a hot pink bag like that in Italy. I’ll use that.”

“I guess hot pink is as good as anything.”

Maureen looked thoughtful, and I knew damn well she was imagining what she would wear for the money drop. My guess was that it would be something that matched the hot pink duff el bag.

Somehow that made my promise to help her seem more sensible. Expecting this child-woman to carry out a kidnapper’s instructions by herself was like expecting a kitten to walk a tightrope over the Grand Canyon.

A
t five fifteen the next morning, I stepped through my french doors like a sleepwalker. It had been almost two o’clock when Maureen left, so I’d slept an extra hour and got up fuzzy brained and blurry.

While my metal shutters scrolled down over the doors, I stood at the porch railing and breathed in the clean salty air. The sky was paler than it usually is when I begin my day, with no fading stars in sight, and faint hints of impending pink at the edge of the horizon. The sea was still asleep, dark and glossy and faintly sighing. A few early-rising gulls ambled at the shoreline, and an occasional hesitant cheeping sound came from the trees, but all the other shorebirds and songbirds were still snoozing. Lucky them.

Yawning, I slogged down the stairs to the carport, where my Bronco was parked between Michael’s clean sensible sedan and Paco’s dented truck. Paco’s Harley was gone.

When I got in the Bronco, a great blue heron sleeping on the hood gave me a snarky look, then spread its wide
wings and flapped away. I gave him a snarky look back. He should have been grateful for the extra hour I’d given him. Same thing with the parakeets who exploded in hysterical frenzy from the oaks and pines as I drove down the winding lane toward Midnight Pass Road. I usually try not to wake them, but I felt so grouchy that I didn’t even slow down.

I definitely don’t do well on less than six hours’ sleep.

Morning and afternoon, my first call is always to run with Billy Elliot, a rescued Greyhound whose human is Tom Hale. Some retired Greyhounds are like some retired humans—they’d rather stretch out on the couch than walk around the block, and they wouldn’t run if you begged them. Billy Elliot, however, is like one of those wiry old guys who were track stars in college and still get up every morning and jog two or three miles before breakfast. He has to run or he gets nervous and twitchy, and he wants his runs to be hard and full out. If he had his way, he wouldn’t wear a collar and he wouldn’t have a blond woman attached to the leash trying to keep up with him. He’s polite about it, but I know he considers me a necessary nuisance. I feel that way about some people too, so I don’t take offense.

Tom would have been happy to run with Billy himself, but Tom’s life had taken a nosedive a few years before when he was ambling down an aisle in a home improvement store and a display of wooden doors fell on him and crushed his spine. He’s still a top-notch CPA, and he and I trade services. I go to his place twice a day and run with Billy Elliot, and Tom does my tax returns and handles anything connected to money for me.

Tom and Billy Elliot live in the Sea Breeze condos on the Gulf side of the key. As soon as I used my key and unlocked his door, I smelled fresh coffee. Tom was up and waiting for me in the living room. Tom has big round black eyes and a mop of short black curls. In his striped cotton robe and wire-rimmed round glasses, he looked like a grown-up Harry Potter.

As Billy Elliot bounded to me for his morning smooch, Tom said, “Is something wrong?”

That’s the problem with being the kind of person with a schedule so consistent that people could set their clocks by me. Be an hour late, and people notice.

Avoiding his eyes, I said, “I overslept. Forgot to set my alarm.” My head felt like mice had crawled in and built a furry nest, and my tongue tasted like birdcage carpet.

“Huh.” Somehow he managed to sound like he didn’t believe me but wouldn’t press me for the truth. That made me feel vaguely guilty because Tom only pries when he thinks I need a friend.

I clipped the leash to Billy’s collar and hustled him out the door without saying anything else. On the way to the elevator, Billy Elliot ecstatically whipped his long tail side to side while I clumped along like a malfunctioning robot. Downstairs, we whisked through the lobby and out to the parking lot.

Cars park in an oval around the perimeter of the lot, and there’s a shrubby area in the center. Between the cars and the green stuff, an oval drive makes a perfect racing track for Billy Elliot. As soon as he’d lifted his leg on several bushes and provided poop for me to collect, he tore
off around the track while I ran desperately behind him. Since we were running later than usual, a few other dogs and their humans were on the track too, most of them walking sedately. We passed them all. As we did, Billy Elliot turned his head and grinned hugely at each one.

When we’d made three rounds of the track and I felt little hairline cracks opening in my skull, Billy Elliot allowed me to pull him to a brisk walk back to the lobby.