Turned out that he’d simply needed a cogitation break, and when he returned from an extended and enviable expedition abroad, he’d made his decision to dump the Marden firm and start his own, extending employment offers to some of his retired counsel cronies. That caused the Marden folks to actively assert Borden’s bonkerness, since he had also dared to abscond with his own client base—nearly half the whole firm’s business.
And then he’d hired me, once my law license was restored, with the freedom to practice law as I loved it. I could continue my pet-sitting business, and take on pet advocacy cases of my own—my latest law-practice passion.
In fact, I’d been doing amazingly well with my own form of ADR. Those initials were usually interpreted in the legal profession as “alternate dispute resolution,” but in my case they stood for “animal dispute resolution.”
“I drafted the complaint in the Sherman matter,” I said, stepping forward to hand him the printed copy.
“Good going! Thanks, Kendra. I’ll take a look. I’ve already assured the Shermans they’re in the best of legal hands.” He bobbed his head so his silvery shock of hair glimmered in the light. “Aren’t you late for this afternoon’s pet-sitting?” he said. “You’d better get on your way, with all those precious pets in only your hands for the moment.”
Good old Borden! I slid out of the office with a totally unencumbered conscience. Where else could I have had the cooperation of a firm’s senior partner in such a situation?
I headed first to see to Stromboli. The sweet but energetic shepherd was clearly delighted for the company. I let him romp in his own small Burbank backyard to work off some energy before he took me for a walk. While watching him, I noticed his neighbor, an adorable medium-sized, wirehaired mutt who observed Stromboli’s frolic from his own back porch.
I fed my latest friend Stromboli, walked him once more, and again got a peek at his cute and quiet neighbor.
Then I hied to some other clients’, and finally to Amanda’s.
Again I scanned the street for a sign of Leon or his car. Fortunately, I saw none.
Only … when I got inside the house, I found the refrigerator door open.
Horrified, I hurriedly checked the large appliance. Fortunately, Amanda had apparently, in anticipation of her trip, cleaned it out, since the only stuff inside consisted of things that wouldn’t perish fast—salad dressing, packaged cheeses, and the like.
Most important, Cherise and Carnie were not inside, either.
The two leopardlike cats strolled into the kitchen as I surveyed it—and Carnie carried a mouse. Cherise greeted me with a mew.
“Gee, thanks, ladies,” I said with solemn false gratitude. “By the way, do you happen to know how the refrigerator door got open?” Their water came from the filtered tap on the kitchen sink, and I’d never had to refrigerate their canned food, since between them, and with their daily kibble, each small can was emptied as soon as opened.
I’d had no reason to open the door. I doubted that the felines had done it.
So who, then?
The obvious culprit was the cad who’d no business even being on the property let alone in the house.
Leon.
This time, it didn’t take Jeff’s prodding to get me to call Amanda—after I’d gingerly deposited the gift mouse in its proper receptacle … outside.
Decoration-derived seasickness only added to my queasiness as I strolled down her hallway into her den. I sat at her desk and used her phone. When Amanda answered, I quickly related my concern. “It’s possible the door was somehow opened accidentally,” I admitted, “but I don’t see how.”
“And you’d turned on the security system?” she asked. Her voice sounded as quivery as mine.
“Yes, and it was still set. Does anyone else have a key, or permission to come in?”
“Only Jeff,” she said, “and he’s still here.”
I chose not to react to that. And then I heard a sound from somewhere down the hall. I drew in my breath with a nasty gasp. “There’s someone here,” I managed to say.
“Get out of there, Kendra!”
I only half noticed that this time Amanda had expressed a shred of concern for my welfare. I hung up and prepared to hurry out—when I heard the noise again.
Slowly, my back to the seascape-decorated hallway, I slid in that direction. Foolish? Most likely.
Only I was certainly glad I’d done it a minute later, when I heard the noise again.
This time, I was peering surreptitiously into a bedroom—just as the slightly larger Cherise, observed by her housemate Carnie, leapt up onto a chair and attempted to bat down a pull chain that hung from an antique-looking floor lamp. She thumped back down to the floor without achieving her goal.
My latest scare had been caused by a cat’s cavorting.
Laughing, I called Amanda back and told her.
“Could the cats have accidentally opened the refrigerator door by some kind of game?” she asked.
I returned to the kitchen and looked around. I saw no errant pull chains nearby, but the refrigerator stood next to a window with a curtain askew.
“Maybe,” I told her. “Have they ever leapt like that at any curtains?”
“No, but they’ve never gone after a lamp cord, either. Or brought mice inside the house.”
In any event, I felt relieved—all the more so when Amanda confirmed she’d be home in three days. When I returned outside, I once more looked for Leon’s car. I even peeked into Amanda’s two-car garage, but the only vehicle there was one I recognized from her visits to Jeff’s, a cherry-red Camry.
As I drove my Beamer down the street, though, I thought I saw a shadow duck behind a neighbor’s garbage can. I slowed long enough to watch it some more but saw nothing alarming.
Nothing not alarming, either.
Still, that day ended quietly, and the next two, over the weekend, seemed filled with much of the same.
Finally came the day that Amanda was to return. She called in the late afternoon and said she’d just landed at LAX, as I was preparing to exit the Yurick offices.
“I’m heading to my place soon, Kendra,” she told me. “Were my babies all right this morning when you visited them?”
“They sure were. And no more open refrigerator doors or games with dangling strings.”
“I’m glad. Oh, and Jeff said to be sure to say hi for him. He promised to be back in another week or two.”
Nothing like a reminder of whom she’d been with over the last few days to spoil my otherwise magnificent mood.
I THREW MYSELF into my final pet-sitting program for the evening, refusing to dwell on the Jeff-and-Amanda enigma, or where I fit into that particular puzzle—even with Jeff’s somewhat surprising suggestion lately that I’d helped him pick up the pieces of his life post-Amanda. As if I believed it, especially now.
Once again, when I visited Stromboli at around 7 P.M., his fuzzy canine neighbor sat alone on the porch. This time, I may have been reflecting my own mood in that direction, but the pup appeared a mite morose.
As I left Stromboli’s home, my cell phone rang. The caller ID identified Amanda. We’d already determined that I’d drop by late the next day to hand her back her keys and receive my check.
“Hi, Am—” I started to say, but she interrupted immediately.
“Kendra? Where are you? You’d better get over to my house right away.”
“But wh—”
“Now,” she insisted. Was that hysteria or rage in her voice? Whatever her state of mind, it wasn’t one I especially wanted to visit. “What did you do? You have to take care of this. Now.”
What did I do? my mind echoed equally frantically. Had I inadvertently accomplished something that had harmed Cherise or Carnie? The two leopard-cats had grown on me. I even almost appreciated their mousy gifts.
“I’ll be there soon,” I responded into the phone, and turned the Beamer toward Amanda’s street. I wasn’t at all certain what I’d expected,
but I prayed the felines were fine.
Which they were. But what I’d heard in Amanda’s voice turned out absolutely to be hysteria, a fact I learned ten minutes later when she wrenched open her door and yanked me inside.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as she shrieked at me and sobbed.
“Why did you do this?” she screamed. “How could you?” Her grasp was incredibly potent as she pulled me down her seascaped hall.
She turned on the light in the bedroom where I’d seen the cats toying with the floor lamp.
And there, lying beneath it, lay the bloody, apparently deceased, body of Leon Lucero.
Chapter Five
ONLY THEN, BENEATH the latest illumination, did I notice Amanda had been wearing a long, checkered apron. Standing to one side of the bedroom’s door, she slipped it off and let it slide to the floor.
Her shirt and slacks beneath were soaked in blood.
I gasped, then asked, “Are you hurt, too?”
“No.” She sounded huffy in the midst of her histrionics.
“I didn’t want my neighbors to see this mess on me. I told you I work at a doctors’ office. When I first found Leon, I checked for vital signs and tried to revive him.”
“Was he still alive?”
“No!” She shook her head vehemently, causing strands of blond hair to escape from her updo. Or maybe they’d already been hanging down. Other than her apron, I hadn’t really paid attention to Amanda’s appearance … before.
And now, staring sideways at her was a whole lot better than staring forward toward the corpse that had become her houseguest. Or, more likely, her trespasser with a whole lot of unwanted baggage.
Himself.
“I had to try, though,” she continued. “My doctors would expect it of me. He was one of our patients, after all—even if he kept coming because he was after me.” She choked on her last couple of words and covered her face in her hands.
The bedroom wasn’t especially small, but for the moment it seemed utterly cramped. The lamp I’d noticed before, the one Cherise and Carnie had cavorted around, still stood across the room.
Past the bed.
And the part of the floor at its foot where Leon lay.
Amanda huddled herself against the room’s closest wall—yes, beneath yet another original seascape. Tears rained from her eyes as she aimed them beseechingly at me. Only I hadn’t any idea what they asked.
Time for some inquiries of my own.
“You did call 911, didn’t you?”
“Of course not. I called you. Jeff would be awfully mad if I didn’t give you a chance to come up with a good excuse. Did Leon attack you?”
“Me? Amanda, this is your house. The guy was your stalker. Was he here when you arrived? Did he attack you?” My mind had immediately morphed into “think like a lawyer” mode. Not that I was a criminal counsel. But the guy had been harassing Amanda. If she’d been the instrument of his demise, it was logical that he’d have attacked first. She could assert a perfectly good argument for self-defense. And a homicide caused by self-defense didn’t result in a murder conviction.
“Didn’t you hear me?” She squealed, her back still pressed to the wall. “He was here when I came home. Lying there. Bloody.”
“Okay,” I said, ignoring the questions and the possibly unwanted answers that had started to bloat my brain. First things first. “I’ll call 911 since you didn’t. The longer we wait without doing anything, the worse it’ll look for you.” Amazing. I was considering ways to keep Amanda from being unjustly accused—and I hadn’t even a hint as to whether she was guilty as hell.
Guess it had become second nature to me, since I’d turned into a murder magnet and started helping others who were innocent get off the hook.
Heck. Murder magnet. Was the appellation I’d piled on myself after all I’d gone through in the last months a self-fulfilling prophecy? If so … enough already!
Only, standing here with a trembling suspect across the room and a corpse on the floor wasn’t the time to talk myself out of the mess.
I pulled my cell phone from a pocket in my big purse and pressed in those weighty numbers. I kept my description to the dispatcher minimal—although I mentioned my name, and told her that if Detective Ned Noralles happened to be on duty at the North Hollywood Police Station, which had jurisdiction here, he would recognize it.
And then I flipped the phone shut.
“Are they coming?” Amanda rasped.
“They’ll be here soon, I’m sure.”
“Oh, Kendra.” This time, her tone started off as a whimper and ended as a moan. She buried her face in her hands.
Where was the woman who’d been so brash in her attempts to con me into cat-sitting and wrest back her ex-husband?
Had her brazenness been slain by her own hands, along with Leon?
No, wait. Hands alone couldn’t have elicited such a massive amount of blood from the man. Could they?
I aimed my eyes toward where Amanda’s fingertips were curved over her face. Her nails were long and polished but didn’t look like lethal weapons. Well, that was for the crime-scene team to determine.
Then again, I hadn’t exactly searched for an obvious murder weapon.
I forced my gaze back along the floor, toward where Leon lay crumpled by the bed.
The guy was again wearing a muscle shirt and jeans. Maybe he never wore anything else. From this angle, I could just make out the expression on his face: angelic, compared with the angry grimaces he’d aimed at me during our single ugly encounter.
I felt a flicker of pain and realized I’d just bitten the inside of my lower lip. I loosened my teeth and looked away.
Which was when I spotted the first thing on the floor by Leon.
He’d ended up flat on his back, at least after Amanda allegedly attempted to save him. Way off, beyond one shoulder, lay something small. And furry.
And apparently as dead as he was.
A mouse.
Deposited by Cherise or Carnie? Probably. It was unlikely Leon left it there himself.
That gave credence to Amanda’s explanation for what I’d first considered a kindly cat gift. Her felines left dead rodents near people they didn’t like. I mean, how could they have enjoyed having a guy around who menaced their mistress? They’d probably dropped the mouse near him as a threat of their own.
Which meant that the mice they’d given me also constituted an indication that I was an interloper here, as Amanda had said.
Oh, well. And I’d thought we were getting along reasonably well. At least the mice were only given to me early on during my cat-care visits. Maybe I’d grown on the kitties.
Maybe they’d eventually decided not to threaten the hand that fed them.
I then noted that, closer to Leon’s athletic shoes encasing his large, immobile feet, lay something else.
Something long. And horribly bloody.
The probable murder weapon.
A big, sharp screwdriver.
Did Amanda own a tool kit? Maybe so, especially if she hung those dozens of seascapes on her wall by herself.
Suddenly, the cats zipped from under the bed and hied themselves hurriedly out of the bedroom. Had they been there all along?
I noticed little bloody paw prints as I viewed their exit down the hall.
Which was when the pounding started from the other end. The front door?
A muffled shout announced, “Open up. This is the police.”
Amanda slid to the floor with a sigh.
NED NORALLES WASN’T the first LAPD detective to arrive at the scene. But arrive, he did.
The tall, nice-looking African-American with the less-than-stellar personality had been my would-be nemesis when I’d been accused of murder. Plus, he’d made it his personal mission to point his fingers toward some of my friends being framed in subsequent cases, and attempt to prove they were killers.
“Well, Kendra Ballantyne,” he said, stepping into Amanda’s small living room wher
e the first cops who’d come had exiled us. “What a surprise, seeing you at a homicide site.”
“Well, Ned.” I remained seated on the sofa. “Sarcasm has never become you.” He did, however, look sharp in his black suit, gray shirt, and blue patterned tie.
“Will I have the pleasure of investigating you as a suspect again?”
“Not hardly,” I huffed.
“Then which of your buddies is in trouble this time?” He scanned the room until his eyes lit on Amanda, its only other occupant except for the uniformed officer who stood in the doorway staring stonily. Guarding us.
As if we’d flee. I knew better. And Amanda seemed too shaky even to walk.
She’d taken an unobtrusive seat on one of her loveseats in the conversation area formed by her sofa. Its white pillows contrasted with the couch’s bright red blatancy. It also emphasized the dried blood on Amanda’s outfit. The crime-scene team from the Scientific Investigation Division had arrived only a little while earlier, and the cops hadn’t ordered her to hand over her clothes yet.
“I gather you’d like an introduction.” My droll tone elicited a sardonic smile from Ned.
“You gather right,” he replied.
The epitome of etiquette, I rose from the sofa. “Amanda Hubbard, this is Detective Ned Noralles.”
Amanda hardly reacted. She barely even looked up, and certainly didn’t do the polite thing and offer her hand. Not that Ned was likely to want to shake it anyway. With all that blood about, it was likely to be evidence.
But …
Oops! No wonder the detective’s dark eyebrows shot way the heck up his forehead. My recollection hadn’t veered in that direction before, but Ned had a long history with Jeff Hubbard, who’d once been a cop himself. The two of them had allegedly gotten into a heck of a fistfight once upon a time, one that had resulted in Jeff’s resignation from the LAPD.
On top of that, Jeff had been Ned’s pet suspect in the last murder investigation where he and I had butted heads.
Not that Jeff had done it, of course. And I’d proven it.
Which had caused Ned jokingly to offer me a job.
“Well, hello, Amanda.” His syrupy voice sounded scads too friendly to me. The subtext shouted excitedly in my ear: Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if I could get to your ex through a back door, by proving you’re a murderer, since I couldn’t pin the last killing on him?
Meow is for Murder Page 5
