“One more thing. When I left, the next-door neighbor was outside. Tall and thin, I didn’t catch his name, but he sure wasn’t very friendly.”
“No, he’s a kook. He claimed Cash’s cat was vicious and got into his yard and bit him.”
“I can’t imagine Toria doing that.”
So the unfriendly neighbor I’d talked to was also the person who had accused Toria of bad behavior.
“No, neither could Cash. He hardly ever lets the cat out of the house. Maybe out on the patio but that’s all. The weirdo set up video surveillance to catch Toria supposedly in his yard and brought a video over to show Cash. There was a cat in it, but it was impossible to see whether it was Toria or not.”
“Okay, thanks Heidi.” I looked around for her car. “Do you need a lift?”
“No, I’m walking.” She shifted the deli bag to her other hand. “Just grabbing some lunch.”
“Where do you work?” I looked around. The area was full of shops of all kinds.
“Just down the street at Flirts.” She pointed. “It’s a small shop, but we have a lot of cute things.”
“Well, enjoy your lunch, and Heidi . . .” I touched her arm.
She paused; impatience washed across her face.
“If you need to talk to someone, just call me. Okay?”
“Okay.” She nodded and scurried across the intersection.
An odd exchange.
She’d seemed hurried, but that could just be that she had limited time for lunch. What was most peculiar to me, though, was that while Heidi had asked a lot of questions about my being in Jake and Cash’s house, she’d asked nothing about whether I’d heard anything more about Cash’s disappearance.
MALONE CALLED and arranged to meet me at Cash and Jake’s house. I had one client house call and then I’d meet the detective there and show him the location of the secret room. I’d been to this client’s house before, so I knew where I was going. As I cruised up the tree-lined residential street, my mind was still on the conversation I’d just had with Cash’s girlfriend.
I shook my head. I needed to rope in my thoughts and concentrate on the upcoming appointment. This particular dog was an interesting case. In my mind I called it “The Case of the Terrible Teacup” because it always made me smile just a little that the tiny teacup poodle was terrorizing both her owner and the neighborhood. But in truth, it wasn’t funny at all because if the dog bit again she could be slated for doggie detention and her owner could find herself in hot water and even potential legal troubles.
Audra Collins had adopted Nina as a puppy, and the little poodle still looked like a puppy though she was three years old. She was a chocolate teacup and one of the cutest things I had ever seen. She actually looked like a child’s toy she was so tiny and delicate.
When Audra lost her job working for a financial company, the two became best buddies and constant companions. I knew Nina had helped Audra get through a really difficult time.
Audra had taken some online courses to brush up on her skills and recently landed a great job working as an accountant for a local investment group. That’s when the trouble started.
When Nina first started misbehaving, Audra would come home to trash all over the house. (Kind of reminds you of Betty’s big-dog problems doesn’t it?) Nina then moved to tearing up pillows and furniture to where Audra had thought her first few paychecks were going to have to be used to replace her furniture.
But then the situation got worse. Nina became aggressive and had actually nipped at Audra and a neighbor who was outside in his yard.
It was a tough case. Nina had gotten used to Audra being home and hanging out with her, but now Audra needed to help Nina cope with the day-long absences. I had suggested that Audra give Nina some things to do during the times she was gone.
Also I thought Audra could try leaving for shorter periods of time. Because she felt so guilty about leaving her loyal fur-friend who’d gotten her through a terrible time, she was only leaving the toy poodle when she went to work, which signaled to Nina that when Audra left, it was going to be for a long time. I thought if Audra would leave to run some errands and come back in less time, the more frequent coming and going might help Nina to realize that she was not being left behind forever.
My last visit, Audra had agreed to try these tactics, and for this visit I’d planned to check in and see how successful the strategy had been.
I pulled up front and parked. Audra’s house was a low bungalow in the village section of Laguna Beach and had a small front porch which had been decorated with colorfully painted chairs and flower pots. I knocked, and as I did I felt a presence beside me.
Audra opened the door just as I turned to face my ex-husband. Where had he come from?
“Caro.” Audra’s dark-brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her freshly scrubbed face was dotted with freckles. “Please come in.” When we’d first met, the girl was shy as a crocus, but this new position seemed to be bringing her out of her shell.
Geoff stepped forward and took her hand. “Hello, I’m Geoffrey Carlisle, and I’m observing Carolina’s expertise today. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.” Audra blushed at the attention. “Please join us.”
This was Geoffrey at his best. Charming and attentive.
I couldn’t blame Audra for being captivated. I’d once been young and naïve and had fallen for Geoffrey Carlisle’s crock of charisma.
It was also typical Geoffrey in that he’d done something totally inappropriate by inserting himself into my client house call, and had done it in such a way that I couldn’t put him in his place without coming across like I was the rude one.
“Where is Nina?” I asked as we settled on the couch. A new couch if I wasn’t mistaken.
“She’s napping in her doggie bed.” Audra smiled. “Can you believe it?”
“Well, I was about to ask about progress, but I think the fact she isn’t on high alert tells me what I need to know.”
Audra opened the door to a side room, and Nina yipped and scurried out. She sniffed Geoff, sniffed me, and then ran to her owner.
“We’ve just returned from a long walk. Well, long for her anyway,” Audra laughed. “So she’s tired. I’ve been walking her a little every day, as you suggested, which has been good for her and for me.”
“That’s great.” I reached over and scratched Nina behind her tiny ears.
Geoff sat quietly observing and listening.
What was the man up to? If he thought taking an interest in what I was doing would win me back, he couldn’t be more wrong.
“I’ve also tried your suggestion of having some noise in the house while I’m gone, such as setting the television timer so the TV is on for a while after I leave, and that seems to help.”
“She’s beautiful.” Geoff smiled at Audra.
Phony. He didn’t care for small dogs and when we’d been married had insisted the only dog worth having, if you had to have one, was a big dog. Preferably pure bred.
“Nina started having problems when I went back to work.” Audra directed her remarks to Geoff. “She began destroying the house, barking all day, and even became a bit aggressive.”
Nina looked at us with dark, innocent eyes as if we must be talking about some other dog. “I would never . . . ,” her expression seemed to say.
“What about your neighbor?” I asked. “Any further problems there?”
“No, in fact he stopped over last night and not a yip out of her.”
“So the therapy for her separation anxiety appears to have been successful.” Geoff propped his chin on his knuckles in a pose I’d seen many times before. “You’ve done a wonderful job, Audra, in working with her.”
“Thank you.” She tucked her hair behind one ear and blushed.
Alrighty then. I needed to get him out of there.
“It sounds like you just need to keep doing what you’re doing and, please, feel free to give me a call if you run i
nto any problems.” I stood.
“I appreciate it, Caro. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to not have to worry every day when I come home about what Nina has done this time.” She reached over and stroked the little pup’s nose.
Geoff slowly rose to his feet. He shook hands with Audra and gave a slight bow. “Thank you so much, Audra, for letting me sit in on Carolina’s visit. I hope it wasn’t a problem.”
“Oh, not at all.” She smiled up at him.
We said good-bye and walked to my car. I waited until we were out of earshot.
“What in the Sam Hill do you think you’re doing, Geoff?” I saw a bit of a flicker in his deep-blue eyes, but he didn’t respond immediately. That was new.
He took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead as if dealing with a difficult thought. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting, Carolina?”
“Am I?” I bit out.
Unbelievable. He was unbelievable.
“Is it really so awful to want to learn about what you do?”
“If you don’t understand what’s wrong with showing up uninvited on a business call, then I sure as-shootin’ don’t know how to explain it to you, Geoff.” I stared him down.
“I apologize, my dear.” He held up his hands like he was warding off physical blows instead of verbal ones. “I did not know I needed an invitation.”
I opened the passenger side door and threw my things in the seat.
“May I come along on your next call?”
“No, you may not.” I got in my car before I was tempted to smack him upside the head just to punctuate my sentence.
Thanks to Geoff and his mistaken notion that it was okay to tag along on my house call, I had less than ten minutes to get to Jake and Cash’s house to meet Malone. I started the car and looked around, but Geoff was gone.
WHEN I PULLED into the driveway I was again struck by the whimsical nature of the place. Two geeky guys, one adorable cat, and a magical house with a secret room.
Malone’s gun-metal-grey Camaro glided into the drive and parked beside me. Precise, powerful, and straightforward like the man behind the wheel.
I got out and waited while Malone finished a cell-phone call and then joined me in front of the house.
My head whipped around when a smaller car also pulled in and parked. It was a white Toyota Prius with a Channel 5 News logo on the side, and I suddenly knew who had joined us. I just didn’t know how he’d known we were going to be here. Maybe he had a mole at the police station. Or maybe he was the psychic instead of Suzanne.
Reporter Callum MacAvoy got out on the passenger side, and the driver, who apparently doubled as cameraman, followed and then began assembling his camera equipment. In a matter of minutes a tripod was setup and MacAvoy had his TV face on.
“Here we are at the site of Laguna Beach’s most recent murder with the detective investigating and the woman who discovered the body.”
Malone ignored him and jogged with purpose up the stairs to the front entrance. I followed his lead.
“Ms. Lamont, what are you and the detective doing here? Revisiting the crime scene?” He shoved his wireless microphone toward me and followed me up the steps.
I slipped through the door that Malone held open. MacAvoy attempted to follow, and Malone blocked his access with a muscular arm across the entrance.
“This is still a crime scene.” His tone had the ring of authority but didn’t deter Mr. TV.
“What are you looking for, Detective?”
Malone didn’t answer but instead closed the door in the reporter’s face.
“That’s okay,” MacAvoy yelled through the door. “We’ll wait right here.”
“How do you think he found out we were going to be here?” I shook my head.
“I don’t know. I didn’t share my plans with him.” Malone’s laser blue gaze pinned me.
“You can’t think I had anything to do with it.” I knew Malone was often frustrated with me and my need to help, but I thought he also knew me well enough to know I didn’t seek attention.
“Didn’t say you did.” He turned away. “But someone had to have leaked it.” His body language said there’d be hell to pay when he figured out who.
He looked up the staircase. “This secret room is up there?”
“That’s right.” I led the way up the stairs and to the turret office.
Stepping into the room, I stopped. There was no gaping wall. No secret room. The open space was now closed up, and you would never know there was anything behind it.
“The opening was right there.” I pointed to the wall.
Malone felt along the molding and ran his hands along the floorboard.
“Something here has to open it.” I picked up the papers Toria had scattered and stacked them on the desk. There was a wooden inbox, and I dropped the papers in it and straightened the box. As I did, it revealed a button the same color as the ebony desk. It blended in so you might not see it immediately, and the box had been strategically placed to cover it.
“Maybe this.” I pointed it out to Malone.
“Push it.” He nodded.
The panel slid open just as I remembered.
But all that was behind the door was a wall of empty shelves.
All of the equipment, all of the blinking lights. Gone.
I was speechless.
Malone looked at me, his face serious. “I assume this is not what it looked like earlier today.”
I shook my head. I was glad he didn’t think I’d lost my mind. I was beginning to doubt my sanity. He seemed to take my word that there truly had been a secret room full of equipment.
“No, there were . . .” I waved my hand toward where all the electronics had been. “And all the boxes were blinking. They kind of looked like some kind of computers, but you know, not like my computer at home.”
“Well, it appears someone didn’t want us to find whatever was here.”
“Who do you think?”
“The obvious answer is Graham Cash.”
“Why would he steal stuff from his own home?”
“I don’t know. Could be it’s something he needs wherever he is. Could be it’s something that would incriminate him.” He examined the opening, running his hands over the mechanism. Then stepped into the room and stared at the shelves.
“It could be the guy that was here earlier who was hiding in there. I wish I’d been able to get a license number for his car.”
“We’ve asked around to see if anyone in the neighborhood saw him or has seen the car before.” Malone wandered the circular room, inventorying everything with his eyes.
“I talked to the guy next door.” I pointed out the window at the house. “He was outside when I left but he claimed he didn’t see the guy.”
“Claimed?” He continued his visual cataloging.
“I don’t know how he could have missed him.”
“Maybe he was busy or not paying attention or doesn’t want to get involved. You’d be surprised how uncooperative eyewitnesses are.”
“Heidi, Cash’s girlfriend, says the guy had claimed Toria was vicious.”
“Toria is the cat?”
“Yes, she’s named after Queen Victoria, and I’ve not seen anything to make me think she’d be aggressive.”
“Hmmm.” His tone said he wasn’t all that interested in how Cash had named his cat or my assessment of Toria’s temperament.
“I wonder what that guy was doing here,” I mused.
“I’d just as soon you didn’t wonder anything.” Malone turned to look at me.
“I know. I know.”
“And if you hear from Cash again, see if you can find out where he is before he hangs up. And make sure he knows he must call me.”
“I feel bad about that, but he really didn’t give me a chance to ask anything.”
Malone paced the small space. “I’ll get our crime-scene techs up here to see if there are fingerprints or anything else that would tell us who has been here
, but I’m not very hopeful.”
I stared at the empty shelves. Whoever it was had been pretty thorough. “What are we going to do about the persistent press outside?”
“We’re going to go out, get in our cars, and drive away.”
We made our way back downstairs. Malone phoned in his request for a CSI tech, and I stared out at the patio. The pool area hadn’t really been cleaned up. The energy drink I’d knocked over still lay on its side. I remembered the chill of the liquid as it spilled onto my already soaked jeans. I shivered.
When I closed my eyes, I could still see Jake’s face when I’d finally been able to turn him over. How on earth did people manage to go on living in a house when there had been a violent crime? I wondered who would clean up the place with Jake dead and Cash missing. Were there relatives? Neither of them had talked that much about their personal lives.
I knew Malone was convinced Cash was involved, if not actually Jake’s killer, but I hoped and prayed he wasn’t.
Granted, it looked darn suspicious that he’d disappeared at the same time. But though he’d sounded furtive on the phone, he hadn’t sounded like someone on the run. Whatever that sounded like.
Besides if it were him, what was the motive? The two were successful partners and from what I could tell had always seemed to get along.
And besides, if Cash were on the run, he would have taken his cat. The man was truly attached to his cat.
Detective Malone, or Detective Hottie as Betty liked to call him, finished up his call and glanced my way.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He walked to the entry and peered out. “Still there. All right, we’re going to out. You go first and I’ll follow a little slower. He’ll go for me and you should be able to get in your car and drive away. Ready?”
“Ready.” I nodded.
Malone opened the door, and I stepped through. The reporter pounced right away. I made a beeline for my car as Malone had instructed. Malone lagged behind, and I could see the dilemma on Mr. TV’s face.
He turned toward Malone. “Detective, what did you find?” Obviously an official comment would carry more air-time clout.
“No comment,” I could hear Malone answer.
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