It was Sunday, but my pet clients were unlikely to sympathize with their sitter’s sensual proclivities, let alone the idea that at least some lawyers forbore from working—much—on what was supposed to be the last day of the week.
So, after I rose, I left Lexie in Jeff’s and Odin’s company once more and prepared to visit my charges.
“If you wind up at your office, would you do me a favor?” Jeff asked before I departed.
“How did you guess I’d be going there?” I queried querulously. Was I becoming that much a creature of habit?
Maybe so.
“Well, stick it on your list for the next time you’re there, but could you check to see if I left my navy sports jacket in your office? I can’t find it, and I seem to recall taking it off yesterday when I was there.”
He’d probably doffed it to free his fists in case he and Ned Noralles engaged in a free-for-all.
“Sure,” I told him. “I’ll look for it.”
I spent the middle of the day in the Yurick offices—with only Gigi as company. Of sorts. At least, for the moment, she wasn’t shrieking. I considered shoving her huge cage back to Ezra’s office so she’d have more privacy, but decided against it. She seemed somewhat at home now in the kitchen.
“Gorgeous girl,” I prompted her after making myself half a pot of coffee. She didn’t respond. “Bottles of beer,” I sang. Still no attempt at a tune.
I did some online research on whether hounds could inherit and, with Jeff’s okay, spoke with his techy guru Althea over the phone. She promised to have dirt on everyone I named sometime the next day.
Eventually, it was time to do the day’s second pet-sitting. Since I’d resumed my legal career, I’d had to give up my midday mutt-walking clients, since most were weekday customers. I stopped in briefly to pick up some stuff at my place and saw that no one, including Beggar, was at home in the main house. Did that mean Russ was bonding with daughter Rachel—or that he’d driven her to LAX to send her home?
Eventually, the Beamer headed its well-constructed metal nose back toward Jeff’s. No Thai tonight. He and I went out, to a local diner, where we stared at each other over overdone fried chicken and tough pot roast.
That night was much like the prior one: fun. Once again we overslept, so to speak, the next morning.
“After I do my pet-sitting,” I told Jeff over coffee and a buttered English muffin at his kitchen table, “I’ll be at my office most of the day. I have legal matters to work on.” Which included my dog bite case, the VORPO affair, and my new doggy-as-heir dilemma. “And I need to get the skinny from Althea about the suspects on my list. But this afternoon, I think I’ll go see a lawyer about a former client.”
SO THERE I was in Century City on this dreary Monday afternoon. The law firm of Jambison & Jetts was in a high-rise on the Avenue of the Stars, so I parked in the lot for the Shoppingtown at Century City and strolled over.
I hadn’t warned Jonathon Jetts I was coming. I figured that, even if he wasn’t there, he wasn’t the only person I wanted to see.
I got off the elevator and pushed open the door marked with the firm name. Behind it was a tall, forbidding desk. Behind the desk sat a tall and forbidding receptionist. Her dark hair was pulled straight back from her frosty face, and her eyes peered haughtily over a nose sufficiently pug for a prig of a person.
“May I help you?” she intoned as if by deigning to ask she was doing me a humongous favor.
I could help you, I thought. Or rather Mignon could. Maybe a few lessons from our friendly greeter would help earn this place the return of some clients.
I doubted that donning a friendly demeanor would get me through the door. Instead, I straightened my shoulders and intoned with a litigator’s hauteur, “I am Kendra Ballantyne, here to see Jonathon Jetts.”
“Mr. Jetts is with a client right now.” She sounded pleased to put a roadblock in my path. “Do you have an appointment?” Was this how she’d been trained to take care of the front desk? She’d not last an instant in any firm where I had something to say about it.
“I’m early,” I equivocated. “If he’s not available immediately, I’d like to see Bella Quevedo.” Had she taken Jonathon Jetts’s last name when they’d wed? Uncertain, but unwilling to allow a little detail like that to deter me, I blustered on, “You may tell her I’m with the lawfirm of Yurick & Associates, and I’m here to discuss some clients that Ezra Cossner brought to us to handle.”
This got a reaction from the repugnant receptionist. Her eyes widened and her lips curled. “I’ll let Ms. Quevedo-Jetts know you are here,” she said. Barely removing her gaze from me, as if she thought I’d purloin one of the potted plants if she looked away, she lifted a phone and punched in an extension. She murmured something too low for me to hear, then paused while someone on the other end replied.
“Ms. Quevedo-Jetts will be out in a moment,” she eventually said. Her tone had lightened up by light-years. Had she been cautioned to treat me civilly?
A minute later, a lovely Latina who appeared to be in her early fifties came through the door. She was short but strode with self-confidence, her mid-calf skirt swishing about her legs. Her black hair, smooth around her face, was ornamented with a streak of white along one side. The shallow brackets about her mouth gave an impression that she smiled often—unlike her firm’s drip of a dour receptionist.
“Ms. Ballantyne?” the attorney said in a tone denoting welcome.
“I’m Kendra, Ms. Quevedo-Jetts,” I said with a smile.
“Then I’m Bella. Please come with me.”
I wondered what this woman could have seen in a cranky codger like Ezra Cossner—or even in the chunky character she’d married, Jonathon Jetts.
Even more, I wondered whether she might have come to dislike something about Ezra enough to have ended his life.
And how I’d finesse the question without giving away that its answer was the real quest that had led me here. Or maybe I’d simply shed any subtlety.
I’d soon see.
Chapter Thirteen
OKAY, SO I’D gotten used to the informal aura pervading the Yurick office suite. I liked it. A lot.
As a result, my nose nearly lifted as snobbishly in the air as the receptionist’s as I followed Bella. She led me down one hall and around a close-by corner. The hushed inner sanctum of the Jambison offices seemed even snootier than the reception area, and each wall harbored a piece of artwork that appeared authentic. Assuming I’d know authentic from fine faux.
I spotted a Picasso and a couple of Mirós. Prints? Perhaps. But if so, why the ornate frames, or the security cameras trained on them from the corners of the room?
I made mental note of the logos on the cameras so I could discuss their pedigrees with Jeff.
No one in this uppercrust firm seemed relegated to something as shameful as an open-air cubicle. Everyone apparently had an office, including support staff. Ponderous and private closed doors lined the long hallway on either side.
All this told me a lot. For one thing, Century City rent wasn’t cheap, though L.A.’s downtown was this year’s winner in the perpetual prestige challenge between the two locales. And even that gorgon of a greeter probably took home a hefty salary. This firm’s overhead was probably out of sight.
But its presence reeked. The scent sliming the air suggested that no one enforced L.A.’s ubiquitous smoking ban here—a result of working in a high-stress occupation in an even higher-stressed law firm.
I wasn’t here to ogle the environment, though. I needed to instigate a conversation. “Your offices are very nice,” I exaggerated to Bella.
“Thank you,” she said. “Here we are.”
She flung open one of those forbidding doors, revealing a sizable office lined with lots of wooden file cabinets and filled with sleek modern furniture: a large desk, naturally, faced by two tall chairs. Then there was the prim sitting area containing a white overstuffed sofa and matching seats that sat there and stared at one an
other.
Bella beckoned me to her side and sat gracefully on one of the chairs across from the couch.
I’d prescripted my opening line: a request for info about T.O., once her firm’s client and now mine. But Bella spoke first. “So you knew Ezra?” she said with a sad sigh.
“Yes, though not for long. But he’d asked me to help him on some of the legal matters he brought to my firm.” And away from yours, suggested my unspoken gibe. But prodding this seemingly kind and grieving person no longer seemed as appealing.
“You’re representing T.O. in that difficult situation out in the Valley?”
“That’s right,” I agreed.
“And what about—” She rattled off a large list of companies, many I’d heard of, though I didn’t realize Ezra had usurped their legal work and towed them along to the Yurick firm.
“Some,” I acknowledged. “I haven’t looked through the files, but a paralegal is indexing them for us. She’s organizing the T.O. materials first, since it’s the most pressing issue.”
“Corrie Montez?” Bella asked.
“That’s right. Ezra brought her with him, too, didn’t he?”
“Ezra took a lot from us,” Bella agreed, appearing not at all pleased about it.
“You knew him personally,” I prompted.
The crinkles edging her dark eyes crumpled further as she glared at me. “Did Corrie tell you that?”
Revealing my initial source as her prize parrot trainer did not seem politic, so I ignored the question. I intended to quiz Corrie more anyway. “I gathered that you and he were an item for a while, but that you chose another partner here over Ezra.”
She rose as the office door opened. I half expected to see her law partner-husband, Jonathon, stalk in to stand at her side. Instead, a young woman trod in bearing a tray with two steaming coffee mugs. She set them on the low, round table between us and hurriedly left after casting me an uncertain smile.
I wondered what the buzz was about me around this office. I hadn’t hidden my name, but neither had I broadcast my background or reasons for being here. And only one of them was likely to be discernable to this circle of snooty strangers: my need to learn what I could about Ezra’s clients.
No one would know what else was on my mind: scouting suspects in Ezra’s murder.
Bella hadn’t bothered to ask if I wanted a refreshment, but I was happy enough to indulge. The brew was strong, not necessarily a good thing. I didn’t need a caffeine high to keep on my toes. My nerves were on edge already.
Inside, I stewed a bit about the bad timing of having this stuff brought in. I’d hoped to delve more into Bella’s background with Ezra. Now I’d have to introduce the topic again.
But the next interruption that occurred seconds later saved me from that situation. This time, Jonathon Jetts burst in. The burly brute of a height-challenged lawyer stood in the doorway for only a second, scowling. “What are you doing here, Ms. Ballantyne?” he barked.
“Hello, Mr. Jetts,” I said sweetly as I stood and offered my hand. As angry as he looked, I hoped he wouldn’t use it as a lever to tug my arm out of its socket. “I was hoping to get background information on some of the cases Ezra brought to the Yurick firm. We’re going through his files, of course, but any additional insight would be greatly appreciated.”
“No need to tell you anything,” he snarled, though he shook my proffered hand professionally. “All those clients will come back to us now.”
My smile broadened. “If I didn’t know better,” I said, “I’d think that gave you a motive to kill Ezra. Another motive,” I added tellingly, taking a quick, hard look at his wife’s now-pasty face. “Although I’m not sure whether you were both in on it. What about it, Bella?”
“I think you’d better leave,” she said. Or at least that’s how I interpreted the garbled words that came out as she ran to grab her husband’s flailing fists. He’d moved away after our handshake, but now took several strides back toward me, and it was all I could do not to recoil.
“Of course,” I said with contrived cheerfulness. “If necessary, I’ll ask our new clients to insist that you talk to us about their cases. Oh, by the way—care to explain the allegations you made against Ezra when you met with him in our offices? Something about his advising clients to act illegally.”
“No,” Jetts growled.
“Then I’ll have to assume it was an exaggeration, that he acted like any good lawyer and advised his clients to approach legal limitations, if practical, without breaching them.”
Jetts didn’t deny it.
I couldn’t help adding as I stood at the door, “Wish we’d had more time, Bella. I’ll look forward to chatting again. I knew Ezra long enough to understand why you dumped him, but why you took up with this guy instead”—I gestured toward Jonathon—“is infinitely beyond my understanding. Maybe next time you can introduce me to Pinocchio. I’d love to meet your parrot.”
And then I was alone in the big, pretentious hall, hearing an ear-battering argument from the office I’d just evacuated. Not very nice, for near-newlyweds.
Mentally, I conducted a twisted tally. I could hang Jonathon Jetts and his wife, Bella Quevedo-Jetts, high on my handy suspect list.
But I hadn’t obtained a shred of evidence and had only useful, yet unreliable, instinct to prove that one or both were involved in Ezra’s murder.
CENTURY CITY IS on the left side of L.A., if you’re studying a local map. Not near the ocean, and decidedly east of nearby Westwood. Which was where I headed now.
To Jeff’s office.
Would he be there? Not if my demanding druthers came true.
I found a metered space on Westwood Boulevard and walked some blocks to the four-story structure that housed Jeff’s private investigation agency. The elevator to the third floor was slow—or maybe my impatience was immediate.
His office sat beside the elevator lobby. The plaque by the closed door proclaimed: HUBBARD SECURITY, LLC, followed by, JEFF HUBBARD, LICENSED PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR.
I opened the door and ambled in. No receptionist greeted me. In the waiting room, a couple of straight-backed chairs settled around a table containing a phone and magazines. The place reminded me of the end of an airline terminal, with spokes radiating from a central source. Several doors opened onto this room, and each gaped wide.
I wondered which was Jeff’s.
I also wondered why, after knowing the guy several months and being close to him for much of the time, I’d never before ventured here. Had I subconsciously considered it his personal sanctuary?
If so, I’d probably have beelined here long before this.
“Who’s there?” called a female voice that was definitely familiar. I’d heard the direct, no-nonsense tone numerous times over the phone.
It was Althea, Jeff’s indispensable techy guru, the middle-aged maven whose Internet research skills—legitimate and more than slightly shady—were incredible. And invaluable.
“Hi, Althea. It’s Kendra Ballantyne.” I headed toward the voice’s source, walking the long way around the offices.
I figured out which was Jeff’s. It was the largest. It contained crates labeled with names and logos of security equipment suppliers that even I recognized. And it just happened to have his name on the door.
Fortunately, he wasn’t there.
The next office was occupied by a young guy with hair shaved close to his head. His mouth spouted invectives into a phone. “You swore yesterday we’d have everything today. Damn it, that’s not good enough. We promised to install the rest of the system tomorrow. You effing well better get it to us fast.” Obviously a security honcho, though maybe he engaged in investigations, too. The plaque next to his door proclaimed he was Buzz Dulear.
A woman walked out of the next door down and stood watching me, with arms crossed and a suspicious stare. “You’re Kendra Ballantyne?” Her tone tendered disbelief. She was pretty in a Playboy kind of way—curvaceous in her jeans and U.C.L.A. T-sh
irt, with blond hair that barely skimmed her shoulders.
This was the woman Jeff spoke of glowingly as his middle-aged computer geek, his aging techy wonder—mousy single mother of five grown kids, who was now in her fifties?
“You’re Althea?” I sounded equally incredulous.
“The way Jeff described you, I knew you were one pretty lady, and smart, too,” she said, still studying me. “He thinks so highly of you I expected a cross between Cameron Diaz, Hillary Clinton, and Maria Shriver. Oh, and also, since you manage pets, I threw in that pretty, outspoken wife of the Crocodile Hunter.”
I shrugged as I smiled. “Well, here I am in reality.”
“The reality’s pretty good,” Althea countered as I squirmed under her unyielding assessment. “A little self-conscious,” she continued. “Attractive enough without being a bombshell. Blue eyes—a little chilly, but I’ll bet they warm up now and then. And nice hair.”
That, at least, was a lie. My unhighlighted mop was mousy.
She’d stopped speaking. Payback time. “And you’re supposed to be some frumpy middle-aged marvel, not flip-pin’ gorgeous!”
“Well preserved,” Althea admitted with an unabashed grin. “I am fifty-four. And one of my kids is about to make me a grandma.”
The guy Buzz, who’d exited his office, grinned gleefully at us. I hadn’t realized when he was seated that he was a tall dude, a few inches over six feet. “Care to assess me?” he asked.
“No,” Althea and I responded in unison.
“Come into my office,” she said to me. “We’ll talk.”
“Jeff’s in big trouble,” said Buzz.
IN MERE MINUTES, we were old friends.
We were old friends, from a few months back. I’d commenced holding helpful conversations with her when Jeff assigned her to reward me with research on anyone I needed dope on, back when I was accused of murder. We’d chatted often over the phone.
Her office was piled with paper, surprising since its inevitable pièce de résistance consisted of a state-of-the-art computer. It was connected to all means of ultramodern electronic gadgetry, including a printer that appeared as if it could talk. It probably did talk.
Fine-Feathered Death Page 11
