Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons by Blaize Clement Page A

beautiful people who traveled the world, went to all the classy parties, had their photos in the society pages. Myra had smiled, beguiled, sucked the fat right off their sucker bones, and left them gasping for air like stranded fish. When they went down, they took with them all the little people who had cleaned their houses, landscaped their lawns, taught their children, and sold them goods.
    Tom continued to tap keys on his computer and peer at his screen. Some people can multitask like that. Personally, I have difficulty talking and walking at the same time. His fingers raised from the keyboard and he leaned toward the screen to read something he’d pulled up. He wrinkled his lips like he’d bit into moldy cheese, and closed his laptop.
    “It’ll take a decade before our economy gets back to normal. Myra Kreigle should be in jail now, and if that Tucker guy hadn’t put up a two-million-dollar bond for her, she would be.”
    The short hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
    “Kantor Tucker?”
    “That’s the one. Everybody else thought she was a flight risk, but Tucker is a close friend and put up the money. He can’t protect her forever, though. State investigators have a solid case against her. Several counts of securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering fraud. Unless something happens to make the case fall through, she’ll serve several years in a white-collar-crime prison.”
    I finished off the glass of water and filled it again. “Some guys kidnapped me this morning and took me to Kantor Tucker.”
    Now I had Tom’s complete attention. “Somebody kidnapped you?”
    “They grabbed me outside the Village Diner and drove me east of Seventy-five where Tucker has a place. Big spread with a landing strip and a hangar beside his house. The guys who took me to him thought I was somebody else. When they found out I wasn’t who they thought I was, they took me to a Friendly’s and put me out. I called Guidry and he came and got me. I reported it. I don’t want the publicity, and I can’t prove they did it, but Guidry made me report it.”
    “Good God, Dixie.”
    “I know. I looked at mug shots at the sheriff’s office but I didn’t see the driver of the limo. His name is Vern.”
    “That’s all you’ve got? The guy’s first name?”
    “They put tape on my mouth, and I saved the tape. It may have latent prints on it. I gave it to the investigators.”
    “Is that why your mouth is puffy?”
    “Is it still puffy?”
    “I thought maybe you and Guidry had been playing rough kissy-face.”
    I took another drink of water. “Some of my lip skin stayed on the tape when I ripped it off.”
    His hand rose to his own lips as if he needed to confirm they were in one piece. “Who did they think you were?”
    I shrugged. “They didn’t say anybody’s name.” Strictly speaking, that was true.
    “Do you think grabbing you had something to do with Myra Kreigle?”
    “Not really. Probably just a coincidence that the limo was in front of her house when I left the house next door.”
    I tried to sound convincing, but Tom knows me well enough to know when I’m not being totally honest.
    I got busy emptying my water glass and putting it in the dishwasher. When I left, Tom and Billy Elliot watched me leave with identical wrinkled brows. Billy Elliot was probably pondering how long it would be before he and I ran again. Tom was probably wondering what Myra Kreigle had to do with me being kidnapped.
    So was I.

8
    Myra Kreigle and her kind weren’t the first real estate swindlers in Sarasota’s history. As Sarasota became fashionable during the 1920s, the town was flooded with land speculators who sent property values skyrocketing. Fortune hunters razed orange groves for subdivisions, but left without completing them. People bought property in the morning and sold it for a profit that same afternoon. But in September of 1926, a destructive hurricane ended the real estate boom. The Great