Before I stepped onto the porch, I picked up my revolver from the bedside table and held it ready while the metal shutters rose to the top of the French doors and settled into their soffit. I switched on the overhead porch light and looked into every corner to make sure nobody was waiting for me to come out. Nobody was. My assailants from the night before were probably sound asleep, while I, the innocent one, was groggily creeping around with a gun in my hand.
I hit the light switch to plunge the porch back into shadows and closed the French doors. With one hand holding the gun, I started down the stairs, hitting the remote button with the other hand to close the shutters. Being on guard against attack or intruders takes forethought, common sense, and manual dexterity.
The salt air was cool and fresh. The trees glittered with fairy lights made by moonbeams bouncing off dewdrops. The vehicles in the carport shone with early-morning sweat, and seabirds sleeping on the cars assured me that nobody was huddled out of sight in the shadows.
In the Bronco, I slid the .38 under my thigh where I could quickly reach it in one move. Strictly speaking, that was an illegal place, because a Florida license to carry a concealed weapon stipulates that a gun has to be stashed in such a way that it requires two moves to get to it. Like opening a car pocket or a purse and pulling it out.
With my gun illegally ready under my thigh, I drove at a sedate pace down the lane to Midnight Pass Road, looked both ways, and made a careful legal left turn. At Tom Hale’s condo building, security lamps made puddles of light on the parking lot’s dark pavement. I parked in a well-lit visitor’s spot by the front door, dropped my revolver in my pocket, and hustled into the bright lobby. Before I stepped into the elevator, I looked inside to make sure it was empty.
Billy Elliot met me at the door all smiles and wags and knee-kisses, and we trundled down the hall to the elevator. He must have sensed that I was operating with half-charged batteries, because he tempered his speed when we ran the parking-lot track. Greyhounds are considerate like that.
Upstairs, I whispered good-bye to him and left him whirling his tail and grinning.
The run had wakened my blood, so I drove off with more of my synapses firing.
Mostly, they were firing questions about the men who had attacked me. Who were they? What had they been looking for?
Coming so soon after the murder in Cupcake’s house, I was almost certain the incidents were connected but couldn’t imagine how. All morning long, while I felt the weight of the .38 in my pocket, my mind played with the question, but I never came up with an answer.
After I finished my last pet visit, I called Cupcake’s cell phone.
Cupcake said, “We’re waiting for room service to bring breakfast.”
I suppressed a snide comment about people who didn’t have to get up early and walk dogs and clean litter boxes.
He sounded edgy and achingly hollow, like a man who hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours. I hoped the Ritz’s room-service people understood they had to bring large quantities of whatever they were bringing.
I said, “What about your luggage?”
“I called a friend, and he’s driving the skycap’s car to the airport. He’ll get our stuff from baggage claim.”
I heard Jancey’s voice in the background telling him what to say to me.
He said, “Jancey refuses to wear the same clothes she wore all the way from Parma, so she can’t get dressed until our luggage gets here.”
“Have you talked to Sergeant Owens?”
“He said we could go home. The officer heading the investigation will come by later and get a statement from us.”
Dully, I said, “I’m going to the Village Diner and have breakfast. Then I’ll go get Elvis and Lucy and bring them home.”
I figured we’d all feel better after a good breakfast.
When I parked in the diner’s graveled lot, I took the revolver out of my pocket and locked it in the glove box. There are some places where it’s just wrong to take a gun, even if it’s legal. On the way to the diner’s door, I passed a gaggle of men leaning over the opened hood of a sexy red Porsche. One of them, obviously the car’s owner, was punching the air while he talked.
“It just spent a week at the dealer’s! I just picked it up this morning!”
The other men looked sympathetic, all of them rushing to tell their own horror stories about their cars. They didn’t even notice me walk by. Not that men always noticed me, but it was a bit deflating to know that a bunch of men were more interested in a car’s innards than in me. Especially since I knew that not one of them knew what he was looking at when he looked inside the car.
Used to be that men prided themselves on knowing car engines. They’d gather in driveways with beers in hand and pop the hood—once they passed the age of fifteen they always called it “popping the hood”—and they’d all lean over and with their free hands diddle the hoses and wires and dipsticks. They’d pull out a spark plug and examine it like forensic scientists examining blood samples. Then they’d do whatever was needed to get the car engine running like a Swiss watch. Now, men open the hood and peer in and scratch their heads. They say, “Damned if I know what’s wrong. You’ll have to call a mechanic.” Because it’s all computers now, and not a man alive understands the car he drives. Women don’t either, but then we never did.
I opened the diner door and stepped into its homey, steamy smell with a sense of gratitude. The diner’s smells never change. It’s something I can rely on.
Judy zipped out of the kitchen with both arms balancing plates of food. She stopped and looked solemnly at me.
She said, “It’s a bacon day, isn’t it?”
Until she said it, I hadn’t known it, but I nodded in mute gratitude, like somebody who’d been crawling across an arid desert meeting a genie who asked if she’d like a drop of water.
I can’t live without bacon. I try, God knows I try, and I can go weeks without giving in. Then one day I’ll wake up and hear bacon calling my name. That’s the day I go in the Village Diner with the whites of my eyes showing all around, and Judy signals Tanisha to start frying up a rasher of bacon for me. Tanisha knows how I like it—crisp enough to break if you look hard at it, with no disgusting curled fat ends or little swollen white pimples on it. Judy brings it on its own little special plate as befits something of importance, and I’m like that overeager dog on the commercial who loses his cool because he knows he’s getting bacon-flavored kibble. Given a choice between sex with George Clooney or crisp bacon on toasted sourdough bread smeared with real mayo, a slice of ripe tomato, and a frill of lettuce, I’d take the BLT every time. Well, maybe not every time, but definitely some of the times. Once, maybe. Okay, never, but I’d imagine the bacon sandwich all the time I was making love to Clooney.
I waved to Tanisha on the way to the ladies’ room to wash off the affection lavished on me by cats and dogs. Tanisha’s broad face dimpled and she waved back. Next to my brother, Tanisha is the best cook in the world.
Passing the counter where people can watch TV while they eat, I saw Squatty Knox, a high school algebra teacher who has blighted the lives of Siesta Key students since my parents’ time. Squatty earned his unflattering sobriquet because he was, well, squatty. Low to the ground, as Floridians say, which isn’t the same as short. It’s just squatty. When I was in his class listening to him drone on and on, I always tried not to blink because I knew if I blinked I’d never get my eyelids to come up again. I was also afraid I might fall into a coma and tumble out of my chair, which would have caught his attention and made him call on me to solve some algebra problem. I couldn’t have solved an algebra problem if he’d set my feet on fire. I did the best I could to stare straight ahead without blinking, which made my eyeballs so dry that it’s a wonder flies didn’t settle on them.