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
When 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.