Meow is for Murder

by Johnston, Linda O.

  “By ‘that terrible man,’ I assume you’re referring to Leon Lucero?” I asked. At his nod I said, “Wasn’t he your patient?”

  The doctor unexpectedly slumped into a seat. “Yes, more’s the pity. The man was a malingerer. I have too many genuinely ill people to see to spend time with someone like him, and yet with all his complaints I couldn’t simply throw him out. What if there was something wrong with him that I hadn’t yet found? Not that I truly believed there could be. And, well, I’m much too thorough for that really to occur.”

  “So why didn’t you just tell him to get another doctor?” Mitch demanded, as if extracting the words right out of my mouth.

  Dr. Grant’s hairy face turned furious. “The bastard threatened me,” he growled. “Said he’d make sure everyone knew what a lousy doctor I am—that I couldn’t diagnose the heart condition that made his chest hurt and the rest of his body weak. He’d publicize it to all my patients. Make sure the media investigated me. Sue me.” His voice had risen until the last words erupted in an enraged shout.

  I couldn’t help sliding a slightly triumphant gaze toward Mitch, whose pleased nod was nearly imperceptible. Motive? Maybe. But it would absolutely merit further investigation.

  “I understand how frustrating that could be,” I responded mildly.

  “And I know what you’re thinking,” the doctor shot back. “That I was a wimp. The SOB was stalking one of my own employees, but I let his threats overshadow that fact and allowed him to keep coming back. And I knew about that stalking, and how he wouldn’t leave Amanda alone, so maybe that gave me a reason to kill him myself. Well, I didn’t.” He swiveled his glare from me to Mitch and back again, and then turned it to Amanda for good measure.

  She’d been sitting still in her chair nearest the window, simply watching our exchange and letting the putative pros deal with her doctor. Now, she blanched and brayed, “Of course not, Dr. Grant. No one would ever accuse you of that.”

  She looked toward me first for confirmation.

  “We’re just after the truth,” I equivocated. “Investigating the facts. That’s all.”

  “Well, I’ve told you all I know. And I’ve a room full of patients waiting.”

  “Thanks for your time,” I called after him as the last vestige of his white lab coat vanished from the room.

  “Interesting possibilities,” Mitch mused when the three of us were alone once more.

  “If he can use medical instruments, he probably knows his way around a screwdriver,” I asserted in agreement.

  “But he said he didn’t do it,” Amanda dissented. “And I believe him.”

  “But disbelieving him gives us another avenue to explore to absolve you from any murder charge,” I pointed out.

  “Well … he’s not your boss. Go ahead and disbelieve him. Wait here, though. There’s a patient who’s always here at this time every week, and I want you to meet him, too.” A pause that seemed saturated with unspoken meaning, and then she said, “I dated him for a while, after I stopped seeing Leon.” With that, Amanda followed her boss out of our presence.

  She strolled back in only a few minutes later with a guy who appeared to be exactly Amanda’s type: tall and a Chippendale’s candidate—at least he appeared so with his clothes on. Nice clothes, too: a snug black T-shirt tucked into gray slacks, with a casual charcoal sport jacket overtop.

  I sucked my own tongue back into my mouth and smiled a pleasant greeting as Amanda said, “Kennedy McCaffrey, this is Kendra Ballantyne and Mitch Severin.”

  “Glad to meet you,” he said, and held out a hand that, inevitably, provided a firm-gripped shake. His hair was blond, his complexion tanned, notwithstanding the L.A. winter, and his features were film-star gorgeous.

  Perfection!

  And yet … “You’re a regular patient here?” I heard myself blurt out. Well, I hadn’t promised to stay tactful, though the health of this amazing specimen of mankind was likely to be irrelevant in my pursuit of who slew Leon.

  “Unfortunately,” he said, shrugging one massive shoulder as he took a seat. “Long story, but I’m likely to wind up with a heart transplant someday.”

  Wow, looks could be deceiving! If I’d had to guess, I’d never have imagined this man to be anything less than in impeccably perfect health.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Then, sizing him up as I spoke, I said, “Do you have enough strength to wield a screwdriver?”

  I expected him to act as affronted as the previous potential suspect had. Instead, he laughed.

  “Sure. In fact, I’m in the contracting business part time—when I’m not painting or writing screenplays. I take as good care of myself as I can in a body with a failing heart. And I hated that asshole Leon Lucero, if that’s your next question. But did I use a screwdriver on him? Nope. As much as I’d love to see the heat off Amanda, it doesn’t belong on me.”

  “Okay,” I acknowledged, my head suddenly swimming with questions his mini-speech had generated.

  But before I could issue any, Mitch Severin slung one out. “You hated Leon? Why?”

  “For one thing, I like Amanda.” He inched his fingers along the table toward where her hand lay and gave it a squeeze. They shared a smile—one that illuminated the entire room. Two striking people beaming at one another. Electric!

  But then Kennedy returned his attention to Mitch. “Plus, the guy was an outright thief. In my spare time, I like to do creative stuff. No one has ever bought any of my screenplays yet, but my watercolors are becoming kind of popular, at least around here.”

  “Seascapes?” I had to insert.

  “Yes. You’ve seen some?”

  “At Amanda’s,” I acknowledged.

  Again they looked caringly toward one another, but this time only for an instant. Even so, if I’d captured those couple of moments on my cell phone camera, I have had a great time letting Jeff in on where he stood.

  Now, now, I admonished myself. Hadn’t he already promised to prove the veracity of his earlier ousting of Amanda once this was all over? If he followed through, no photos would be necessary—and keeping my end of the ditsy devil’s bargain I’d dived into with Amanda would only act as icing on that very sweet cake.

  “That asshole Leon liked to paint, too. Only what he did was totally unoriginal. He’d study something I’d done, then do one just like it. Only …”

  “Only?” I encouraged.

  Kennedy drew in a deep breath—and his next several minutes were spent in a coughing fit.

  When he’d stopped, his face was white and his fingers were shaking.

  It was terrible to see how awful this man felt—he was genuinely ill. And this interview surely couldn’t be helpful to his health.

  “Only,” he said, this time in a totally raspy tone, “the bastard’s stuff wasn’t bad. Some people considered his style childish, but there was a freshness to it. It was definitely different. But would I kill him for that?”

  His coughing recommenced, and Amanda, obviously alarmed, ran out to hail one of the doctors.

  Mitch stood and appeared nervous.

  I stood, too, and rubbed Kennedy’s back. Help him? I wished I could, but how?

  What I did know was that his last question was intended to be rhetorical. Any answer he’d have given would have to be “no.”

  Even so, I moved poor Kennedy McCaffrey up near the top of my suspect list … even as I wondered whether his ailing heart could have survived the excitement of his slaying someone.

  Chapter Eleven

  AMANDA RETURNED TO the room where Mitch and I sat uneasily exchanging comments and suspicions about the two men she’d introduced us to.

  “Suspect or not, I didn’t get a chance to ask that Kennedy for his card,” Mitch was saying sadly. “I’ve a little improvement project at home that needs to be finished, but I’m too busy. I could use a contractor, and maybe if I was around the guy longer, I could get a confession out of him. Only—”

  “Kennedy will be fine,” Ama
nda said, interrupting from the doorway, then sighed. “I guess I should have known better than to bring him in here for you to harass.”

  Her glare as she resumed her seat was at me, not Mitch, even though the other attorney had acted quite adroit at leveling accusations of his own.

  “No one wanted to harm him, Amanda,” I said. “But in the event he’s Leon’s killer, it’ll be a whole lot better for you if that little fact becomes known now, instead of after you’re in custody.”

  “You’re right,” she agreed. And then, “So, now what will you do?”

  “I’ll check the backgrounds of the guys you brought in here today. Anyone else you’d like for us to meet—like others you dated, or additional doctors who rubbed Leon wrong?”

  “Maybe, but they’re not here now.”

  “Give me their names, and I’ll ask Jeff’s folks to do a background check on them, too. If any seem like likely suspects, then you can arrange for me to meet them. Us,” I amended as I noticed Mitch open his mouth.

  I have to admit that Amanda was gracious enough to utter a thank-you as Mitch and I exited the office into a full waiting room.

  “Please keep me informed about Amanda’s situation,” I said to her attorney as we prepared to part ways at street level.

  “You’ll let me know if you uncover anything potentially useful?” he inquired, holding out his hand for a final shake.

  “Done,” I agreed.

  A SHORT STINT back at the Yurick offices, and then I was off again, traveling west toward my next meeting of the day.

  My nose was going to grow extremely tired of medical office odors—my upcoming conference was at a veterinarian’s, in Tarzana, along Reseda Boulevard.

  Mae Sward met me there, sans Sugar. She wore a businesslike blouse and plain skirt, and appeared ready for bear. “My baby gets so upset even when we just drive by here,” she said. (Wasn’t that what shrinks called transference?) “I don’t want to subject her to That Man’s presence anymore.” I heard the capitalization in her angry tone. “At least I was finally allowed to remove that horrid collar he put on her.”

  The veterinary office was a stand-alone gray building with parking behind, which was where we rallied. Together, we stomped inside.

  Along with an assortment of nervous dogs and their soothing owners, someone I’d met before on a pet-related matter sat in the waiting area: Attorney Gina Udovich. In the prior situation, we’d reached an almost-amicable settlement as to placement of a pooch—an adorable Scottish terrier called Glenfiddich—but the money his deceased owner had left for his care was still in dispute. Litigation over it remained likely.

  Gina rose. As I remembered, she always made the most of her appearance, dressing impeccably in designer duds. Today, she wore a lilac pantsuit with ornate embroidered purple frog closures holding the jacket closed. She was dressed as if she’d headed for court instead of a conference to hopefully stave off future litigation.

  “Kendra, hi. I’d have called to let you know that I was the attorney representing Dr. Venson, but there wasn’t time.”

  “Good to see you, Gina,” I said. I almost meant it. Even though we’d butted heads on the prior matter, the fact that we’d reached at least a partial resolution boded well for possibly resolving this one, too. “This is my client, Mae Sward.”

  Gina’s close-set eyes narrowed assessingly, but all she said was, “How do you do?”

  A young lady with a large lizard on her shoulder and a friendly smile on her face ushered us through the waiting area and into a tiny room. It resembled the one in the human doctors’ office I’d visited that morning, only the table in the center was a raised one of gleaming metal, where pets could be elevated for examinations. Around the room’s edges were several chairs, which the three of us settled into. Mae crossed her arms, conveying her continued anger by her body language.

  Since Gina was apparently new to the situation, I decided to start speaking even before her client came in. “Did Dr. Venson explain what happened, Gina?”

  “Sort of,” she said. “Something about a claim of having injured a dog in his care.”

  “You make it sound like he didn’t do it on purpose!” Mae raged.

  “May I speak to you outside?” I asked Mae, staying supremely calm. I’d warned her ahead of time that casting accusations was unlikely to result in anything constructive.

  “No need,” she huffed, aiming a full-fledged pout at me before switching her stare down to the shiny linoleum floor.

  As I’d assumed, this place smelled somewhat like the other medical location I’d been in, only the antiseptic aroma couldn’t quite mask the scent of animal accidents. I started again to open a discussion with Gina, but just then the door opened.

  A man in a long white lab jacket strolled in. “Hello, ladies,” he said. His smile seemed both rueful and lopsided as he continued, “It seems strange to me not to have an animal in here, too.”

  “You—” Mae began in her accusatory roar, but she quelled it at a cautionary frown from me.

  “Dr. Venson?” I inquired.

  “Tom,” he responded. “You’re Ms. Ballantyne?”

  “Kendra,” I replied in kind.

  “Good to see you, Tom,” Gina said, approaching her client with her hand held out.

  Preliminaries ended, I intended to start right in—diligently representing my client. Only we were minus one seat to allow everyone to start out on an even playing field. “Do you have another chair, Tom?”

  “I’ll stand,” he said. I couldn’t tell for sure from this vantage point, but I guessed he was of average height for a guy, an inch or two below six feet. He had dark hair that pointed to his face in a widow’s peak, deep brown eyes beneath straight, solid brows, and an amiable, if ordinary, face.

  “Well, all right,” I agreed. “Why don’t we begin? We’re here because—”

  “May I speak first?” Tom interrupted. He asked his attorney’s okay by a glance, and Gina nodded. “First, I want to apologize to you, Ms. Sward.”

  Mae’s brown eyebrows lifted haughtily beneath the bangs in their unnatural shade of orange. Her full lips pursed as if it was all she could do to stay silent. My turn to nod at my own client, encouraging her attempt at prudence.

  “There was definitely a terrible misunderstanding about Sugar and her puppies. I know how much you love your dog, but by the time you brought her here, she was having trouble with the delivery.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Mae shrieked. “You acted like it was.”

  “Let my client have his say first,” Gina asserted. “Then you’ll get your turn.”

  “But—”

  “That’s a reasonable way to handle this meeting,” I said in a soft but insistent tone to Mae. “If we interrupt each other, it’ll take a lot longer and we may not accomplish as much.” Although, in the short time since we’d started, I’d all but relinquished any hope of a positive outcome from this day’s endeavors.

  “All right,” Mae agreed irritably.

  “Thank you,” Dr. Venson said, aiming a slight smile toward me. “Ms. Sward, that litter was the third Sugar had delivered in less than two years. Some dogs handle that well, but Sugar didn’t seem to. Maybe she was just exhausted. In any event, she was in pain, and I had to deliver the last puppy by C-section. While I was in there, I noticed trauma to her reproductive organs. I’m not certain whether she could have conceived again anyway, but I made an on-the-spot determination that it was in her best interests to spay her.”

  “You should have asked me.”

  I couldn’t disagree with Mae’s assertion, but I despised this latest interruption after my earlier admonishment. “Let’s let Dr. Venson finish, Mae,” I said, speaking slowly and clearly, like a mother correcting an especially obstreperous child.

  “I am finished,” Tom Venson said. “Except to agree that I wish I’d had time to check with Ms. Sward. But though I consider it important to please my patients’ owners, it’s even more important to me to
make the best medical decisions I can for the animals.”

  Hear, hear, I wanted to say. I’d always been an unqualified advocate for my clients, and yet this time I found myself siding with what the vet at the opposite end of the table had to say. Sort of. It was self-serving stuff, of course, but it made perfect sense to an animal advocate like me.

  Not that I’d admit it to anyone else in this room. Mae was still my client, and I owed her the same superior support that I gave to all I represented.

  After several seconds of silence, I realized that the vet had finished speaking.

  “Do you want to add anything, Gina?” I asked.

  “I think my client has said it all,” she replied.

  “Mae, it’s your turn.”

  Which she turned into a tirade against the vet’s allegedly awful judgment. “Sugar is devastated that she can’t have any more pups,” Mae concluded. “Me, too. And I think you’re full of shit. You’d told me the last time we came in for a checkup and vaccinations that you didn’t think Sugar should have any more puppies for at least a year, and then when you found out she was pregnant again, you hollered at me. Spaying her was your revenge for me not listening to you. You’re just one egotistical, horrible damned vet!”

  NO SURPRISE THAT we didn’t settle the dispute that afternoon. Mae drove away in a huff soon after making her statement. I stayed near the clinic’s back door and spoke with Gina for a short while more.

  We were joined by Dr. Venson.

  He looked me straight in the eye when he said, “She’s not entirely wrong, I’m sad to say. But I was mad, not because she chose to ignore my advice, but because I was concerned that Sugar would suffer for it. And she did. Plus, she was likely to suffer more if she continued to have litters at the same rate in the future.”

  Damn. I liked this guy’s attitude. I liked the sincerity in his gaze. I liked that, even though he wasn’t extremely tall, I had to look up at him. I also liked that, despite the fact he wasn’t extremely handsome, he was a nice-looking guy who really gave a damn about what he did—about the animals in his care.