Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Praise for the Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter Mysteries
Fine-Feathered Death
“Exciting . . . Linda O. Johnston is a creative storyteller who not only writes a fascinating mystery but also creates a deep character study.”
—Books ’n’ Bytes
“A fast-paced who-done-it . . . Kendra is a fun character, and her supporting friends and assorted critters make an enjoyable read.”
—Fresh Fiction
Nothing to Fear but Ferrets
“Linda O. Johnston has a definite talent for infusing humor in just the right places . . . Pet lovers and amateur-sleuth fans will find this series deserving of an award as well as a place on the bestseller lists.”
—Midwest Book Review
Sit, Stay, Slay
“Very funny and exciting . . . worthy of an award nomination . . . The romance in this novel adds spice to a very clever crime thriller.”
—The Best Reviews
“A brilliantly entertaining new puppy caper, a doggie-filled who-done-it . . . Johnston’s novel is a real pedigree!”
—Dorothy Cannell
“Pet-sitter sleuth Kendra Ballantyne is up to her snake-draped neck in peril in Linda O. Johnston’s hilarious debut mystery, Sit, Stay, Slay. Witty, wry, and highly entertaining.”
—Carolyn Hart
Berkley Prime Crime Books by Linda O. Johnston
SIT, STAY, SLAY
NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FERRETS
FINE-FEATHERED DEATH
MEOW IS FOR MURDER
THE FRIGHT OF THE IGUANA
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
THE FRIGHT OF THE IGUANA
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / October 2007
Copyright © 2007 by Linda O. Johnston.
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eISBN : 978-1-101-09632-1
BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME
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Linda wants to thank her dad, Steve Osgood, for the way he always promotes Kendra’s books to his friends and acquaintances. Plus, she wants to thank Bruce Baker—a truly wonderful, caring, and giving man. Bruce is a pioneer in augmentative communication systems—using computer-generated symbols to help human beings communicate when they’re unable to speak. For all we know, his company, Semantic Compaction Systems, may even be the first to figure out a way to translate Barklish into English and back again.
Oh, yes, and of course Linda has to get in her mention of her husband, Fred—another pretty good guy.
And Kendra? Well, she’s too busy being a murder magnet to take the time to thank all her friends and far-off relations.
—Kendra Ballantyne/Linda O. Johnston
Chapter One
MY CLIENTS CAN be incorrigible teases. The pet ones, not the law ones.
Which was why I wasn’t freaked at first when I entered the home of Edmund and Hillary Dorgan—yes, that Edmund Dorgan and his delightful wife—and wasn’t immediately met by their sweet, crumply, beige, and beautiful Shar-pei.
“Zibble,” I called to the invisible dog, hearing my voice echo not only in the arched and open entry, but also along vast and plentiful hallways on this floor and above. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
The good thing was that this was a gorgeous, huge, Tudor revival-style mansion hidden in the hills overlooking Sherman Oaks.
The bad thing was that this was a gorgeous, huge . . . well, you get it. There were dozens, maybe hundreds, of places a persnickety middle-size pooch could hide.
And right now, Zibble wasn’t zipping to my side.
Why did I want him to? I’m Kendra Ballantyne, pet-sitter extraordinaire, and I was there to care for the pup in the Dorgans’ absence.
I’m also a litigating attorney extra-extraordinaire. Yes, thanks to a temporary loss of my law license a while back, I do both, though seldom at the same time. Now, it was early A.M.—seven o’clock to be exact—and I had a meeting at my law office, Yurick & Associates, in forty-five minutes. That gave me about a quarter of an hour here before I had to hie my still-slender, thank heavens, bod down the hill to our Encino offices, on Ventura Boulevard. And hie was the operative word. If I hit any traffic, I was toast.
“Come on, Zibble,” I called again. No response. “Okay, then, I’ll feed Saurus first, and you’ll just have to wa
it your turn to walk and have breakfast. Cross your legs.”
Saurus was the other pet of the house. Rather, the estate. The young green and brown iguana dwelled in a custom-made cage outside, where he could soak in the sun—when there was any, this early in April—climb on thick, plentiful branches, hide in his artificial cave, or poop in his small swimming pool. He’d been named, Edmund had informed me, because of his resemblance to a mini-dinosaur. Not especially unusual for an iguana, of course. I’d recently taken on a couple as sometime-clients, although Saurus was my only current iguana charge.
I hustled along the shining parquet floor toward the rear of the house, beneath beautifully polished exposed rafters and beyond the wide wooden stairway with matching oak railings that led upstairs. I passed through the superbly equipped, sparkling clean kitchen into which I could have fit the entirety of my current apartment abode and out the rear door into the exquisitely landscaped backyard.
Question: Why didn’t Edmund Dorgan, one of Hollywood’s highest profile, highest sought, multi-millionaire film producers, and his family, not have an entire house staff holding down the fort and caring for their pets?
Answer: Usually, they did. However, Edmund was not only rich and famous, but he was also generous. He’d taken the whole human lot of his household on holiday with him for a month to the south of France. Oh, the staff would work there, too, in the villa he had rented. But they would also get time off to cavort and gambol. And even gamble in not-faraway Monte Carlo.
I’d wondered for a while whether I could moonlight as a sous-maid for some short period of time, just long enough to rate a spot on that oh-so-alluring safari. But what would all my dual kinds of clients do then? Let alone my own adorable pet—my sweet, loving, and smart tricolor Cavalier King Charles spaniel Lexie.
We had options, of course. I just happened to have met a whole new slew of comrades in my pet-sitter profession, and—
I’d finished my brisk walk along the meandering backyard path and stopped short at the cage’s location. The cage was still there, but I didn’t see the iguana.
“Come on out of your cave, Saurus,” I called. Did I smell bad today? Was that why these specific clients were shunning me—assuming iguanas actually gave a damn about odor? The three dogs and two cats I’d visited earlier had all been happy to see me, especially when I’d walked and fed them, as I’d intended to do with Zibble. Saurus’s care was considerably different.
When he didn’t immediately shamble into sight, I bent down to peer into the area of his cage that had been constructed as an iguana hideaway. I saw neither nose nor tail near the exit. In fact, I saw nothing inside resembling a reptile.
Only emptiness.
“Saurus!” I shouted. Of course the cave was shrouded in shadows, but still, shouldn’t there be a sign of occupancy like a larger shape taking up space?
I carefully unlatched the cage door and maneuvered myself so I could reach inside the cave. Saurus had been handled and socialized since Edmund had acquired him, or so the producer had told me. That meant he was unlikely to attack my hand, as some iguanas were reputed to do.
But not only didn’t Saurus bite or slap me with his tail; he didn’t exist inside the empty space where my hand groped fruitlessly.
Frightened, I snatched back my fingers and re-latched the cage door—what, was I worried the lizard would sneak back in?
Where was he? And where was Zibble?
I quickly circled the cage, hoping beyond hope that I had somehow overlooked the three-foot-long iguana. Or that the Shar-pei would prance up with the other pet gently in his jaws.
Only then did I notice the piece of paper pinned to the wooden frame beneath a pane of glass.
“What the—” I began, reaching for the sheet. I stopped short.
On the paper was a computer-generated note, contrived to resemble a clichéd story from the past. The words and letters look pasted unevenly on the page from magazines and newspapers, most in unmatched fonts.
No matter that the aesthetics stank. It was the contents that really unnerved me:
SO WHAT IF pet-napping wasn’t exactly murder?
It took the LAPD almost an hour to arrive. And then, the officers who appeared weren’t my old adversary—er, buddy—Homicide Detective Ned Noralles.
Yes, I’d called the cops—Noralles, at least, since I knew him. I couldn’t twiddle my thumbs until the next ransom note arrived. I’d other avenues, too, of course, and I intended to exhaust them all, ASAP, the better to get my charges home safe, sound, and soon.
I’d requested discretion from Noralles, after explaining the situation briefly, including that I was forbidden from calling in law enforcement. He’d promised to help. But before I began shrieking after answering the Dorgan door, I realized that he hadn’t actually promised to come.
The two cops I’d buzzed through the security gate and now admitted into the house were also detectives, but not any I’d met over the multiple murder investigations I had been involved in over the last many months.
Did I happen to mention that I’m a murder magnet? That’s a whole other story. One I didn’t intend to get into now.
Nor did I want to think of another note I’d received some weeks ago—stuck in my car window while I was investigating a murder. It had threatened Lexie, but all had been resolved without harming a hair on her cute canine head—thank heavens.
I checked their badges before admitting these cops. One, a tall, bony female, was Detective Mabel Madero. The other, an even taller, heavier male, was Detective Domenic Flagsmith.
“Where’s Detective Noralles?” I asked as I ushered them into the vaulted, beamed entryway.
“On another case.” Detective Madero stared at me down a long nose, as if asking how I dared to ask for as august a personage as a homicide detective at something as paltry as a pet-napping. Or maybe I simply read all that into her sneer.
“But I wasn’t supposed to call the police at all,” I said. “Can I trust you to keep this quiet?”
“First, let’s see whether a crime was committed,” said Detective Flagsmith. “Then we’ll see if anyone else needs to know.” His tone was neutral, and so was the look in his silvery blue eyes through his black-rimmed glasses.
“I explained to Ned,” I started to retort, then iced my simmering temper. “Okay. Come with me.” I motioned for them to follow me through the first floor toward the door to the backyard. “First, I’ll show you the note. Hopefully, it’ll convince you to keep your investigation low key—like, conducted so no one besides us knows there even is an investigation. The next thing you need to know is that two pets belong in this house. One’s Zibble, the Shar-pei.”
“That’s a dog?” muttered Mabel the grouch.
“Yeah,” replied her partner. “Funny-looking things.”
“Adorable,” I contradicted crossly as we walked. “So ugly they’re cute. And cuddly. And Zibble’s much too wonderful for this to happen to him. Or to Saurus, for that matter. He’s the other missing pet—an amazing iguana. The way he watches you, almost smiling with that long reptile mouth, looking full of ancient dinosaur wisdom—”
Well, maybe I was carrying this a bit far. Dinosaur wisdom? Way too whimsical. I’d always heard that the size of dinosaur brains was much too puny for their mighty, massive bodies.
I finished, “Anyway, neither animal deserved to be snatched.”
Flagsmith regarded me with coplike seen-it-all tolerance. “Ms. Ballantyne, isn’t it? You’re the pet-sitter, not the owner?” We’d stopped at the kitchen door, and he eyed me from head to toe. He wasn’t coming on to me, but I knew what he saw: A rather ordinary face, with shoulder-length, neatly styled but dowdy, un-highlighted, brown hair. All okay for a person who parlayed her time into taking care of others’ animals.
But below my neck, I wore a nice beige Jacquard jacket over a white blouse and deeper brown cotton skirt. Lawyerly wear, sure, but sorta overdone for a pet-sitter.
I was now late for my me
eting. I’d called my boss and law partner Borden Yurick while waiting for the cops to come, and he was gracious enough to be cosseting my clients.
As I led the detectives through the kitchen, I briefly briefed them on my dual, compatible yet conflicting careers. Not that it really was any of their business.
“That’s right,” I acknowledged. “I’m an attorney, too. But I was here as the pet-sitter, and I really like my animal charges. Just ask Ned Noralles.” I preceded them through the gorgeous garden to Saurus’s empty nest.
I pointed out the ransom note immediately.
“You didn’t stick this here?” asked the utterly irritable female detective.
“Not hardly,” I huffed.
“Did you touch anything?” inquired her much nicer male counterpart.
I described how I’d hunted for Saurus and dug fruitlessly into his cave, in case he had somehow hidden there. “Otherwise, I don’t think so,” I said. “By the way, did Ned Noralles tell you whose home this is?”
“He just gave us the address,” said Detective Madero, still scowling down her nose.
“Does the name Edmund Dorgan ring any bells?”
Eyes widened on both detectives.
“My ears are definitely ringing,” said Detective Flagsmith.
“Let’s call in a crime scene team fast,” added his female associate.
“A small, discreet crime scene team,” I insisted.
Why the heck hadn’t I listened to instructions and kept the cops out of this?
STUCK IN AN area of the house that was out of the way, I decided to phone Ned again. What had he been thinking, calling in these apparently inept detectives? They hadn’t even done their homework and determined whose home this was. Ned could have at least let them in on that—unless that was his supposed concession to discretion.
The Fright of the Iguana Page 1
