“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.
3
Like 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.