by Edie Claire
"Look, Leigh," Tanner broke in tiredly. "You're starting to sound like Frank. If it'll make you feel better, I'll tell you what I told him. I don't think anyone at the zoo could actually kill Carmen like that, no matter how much they hated her. There's a much more likely explanation."
Leigh waited. He sighed and began. "Carmen had money problems. Serious money problems. She was into illegal gambling. Dogs, horses, daily number, football, you name it. When she won, she spent it all within twenty-four hours. When she lost, she borrowed. I think she finally borrowed a little too much."
"You mean loan sharks?"
"Probably something like that," Tanner nodded. "Maybe a little more personal. Carmen ran with a rough crowd when she wasn't here. She was so fascinating, so alluring. She could attract any man she wanted—well, you know."
Leigh nodded grudgingly. She knew what Carmen was capable of at age thirteen; she shuddered to think what maturity might have added to her repertoire. She also shuddered to think who she might have added to her repertoire.
"Her death was so violent, so out of the blue," Tanner continued. "I'm certain it was a professional job. What bugs me is that Frank doesn't seem to be buying that. And he's got to know I'm telling the truth about the gambling. There'd be evidence of that."
Leigh considered. A professional job certainly sounded plausible to her. And from a purely selfish standpoint, it was a convenient solution: neat, faceless, no risk of further harm to anyone else. She could buy it. Couldn't she?
The memory of the shutting door that had interrupted her first tryst with Tanner shoved its way back into her mind. Had someone come to get a bone saw? Surely no professional hit man would do that. How would they know where to look? Why would they risk getting caught? And if the whole thing was premeditated, wouldn't they have come prepared?
She shook the thoughts out of her head. No door had slammed—the noise had been one of the cockatoos. Maybe Carmen herself had taken the bone saw to the tiger shed, to saw—well, to saw something—and it just happened to be there when it was needed.
She looked into Tanner's liquid, Robert Redford eyes. Why couldn't romance work out right for her? Just once?
She took his hand in hers and pulled him back down to sit on the couch again. "I think you're right," she said firmly. "I think it was a professional job."
Tanner smiled at her warmly and leaned towards her, but the sound of the front door opening intervened.
Damn.
Light footsteps trekked down the short hall. "MIKE! Where are you?"
An old memory snapped into sharp focus. Leigh would know that nasally, high-pitched whine of a voice anywhere. Her first reaction was to hide under something, but she bravely suppressed it. This beast would have to be faced.
The footsteps stopped at the lounge doorway, and Leigh looked up boldly at the woman who stood there. She was five feet two, counting her retro wedge heels, and barely one-hundred pounds, but psychologically, she packed a wallop. She stared at them—but mainly Leigh—with a trademark sneer/smile. The look in her eyes was hard to determine, given that her oversized plastic glasses were tinted a bizarre pinkish-red color. Her short, bleach-blond hair was swept up with a yellow gauze bandana, clashing in acceptable retro style with her tight-fitting striped shirt.
"Well, well," she whined, "what have we here? Miss Koslow, how you've grown! Physically, at least. But I see you still want the same thing you always did, eh?"
Leigh forced herself to look squarely at Tanner's ex-wife. Part of her wanted to run, another part wanted to grab a wedge heel and start bludgeoning. Luckily, neither of those ideas won out. Her rational mind took charge, reminding her that she was now a thirty-year-old woman, not a sixteen-year-old girl, and that the woman in front of her was now firmly on the wrong side of thirty-five.
"Stacey," Leigh cooed sweetly. "So nice to see you again. It has been a long time, hasn't it? And you're right, time certainly does age people!"
The sneer/smile dissolved into a clenched jaw, and the pinkish-red lenses turned slowly toward Tanner. "Hello, dear."
"What the hell do you want?" Tanner said rudely, standing. "If you're after the clothes on my back, forget it. They're zoo issue."
Stacey Tanner stood unfazed. "Actually, you can keep those. I'm here for the cash."
"What cash?" Tanner bellowed.
Stacey didn't answer immediately, but wedged her petite derriere onto the couch next to Leigh. "The insurance money. I know you don't have it yet, but you will. There's no doubt it was a homicide. Why Little Miss Mafia should make you her beneficiary is beyond me, but I'm no longer interested in the sordid details of your sex life."
"Shut up!" Tanner snapped.
Leigh rose. The atmosphere in the tiny lounge had deteriorated to trailer-park level—she didn't want to be there when it sunk down to talk show. "I'll just be outside," she announced. She shut the door behind her and went into the treatment room next door. It hardly mattered—she could still hear every word.
"How the hell do you know about Carmen's life insurance policy?" Tanner fumed.
"I work at Eastern Central Trust now, remember? Records Administration is a grind, but in this case it was terribly convenient. Considering that you would never in a million years admit you were coming into money—even though you know perfectly well that fifty percent of it is mine."
There was silence for a moment, and Leigh could picture Tanner struggling for control. "I've paid what I owe," he growled. "And as for Carmen's money, I'm not getting a dime of it. Nor, I'm so sorry to say, are you."
"And why not?" Stacey screeched.
"Because first crack goes to Carmen's creditors—and there's a long, hungry line of them."
Another moment of silence. "Surely there'll be some—"
"Nada."
"There has to be something!" Stacey screeched again. "I need that money!"
"Oh?" Tanner said derisively, "What for? Your own creditors getting testy?"
Leigh heard a scuffling noise, then the rattle of metal hitting metal. Trash can on vending machine?
"Calm down, Stacey." Tanner said gravely.
"I am calm!" she barked. "How about the cabin? Have you sold it yet? I'm still waiting."
"I told you it's going slow."
"And no wonder! One lousy 'For Sale By Owner' sign tacked up in the middle of the winter! You promised to get a realtor working on it. Do I have to call my lawyer again?"
"Forget the damn lawyer! I'll sell it next spring. That's when the market's best anyway."
"I want my share now," Stacey threatened. "You have a month. If it's not on the market, my lawyer will be calling. And I suppose that antique rifle is still sitting in the cabin?"
"And what if it is?" Tanner snarled.
"Sell it! I want that money, I need that money, and I deserve that money. Now."
"Get out." From the tone of Tanner's voice, it wasn't a suggestion.
"With pleasure!" Stacey retorted, opening the door. She slammed it behind her and left.
A dull thump issued from behind the closed lounge door. Fist on couch?
Leigh waited for Tanner to come out. She had no intention of going in. After a few long minutes, he opened the door and looked for her.
"Still here, eh? I'm sorry you had to hear that."
Leigh shrugged. "No big deal." She knew this was the part where she was supposed to be noble and insist that the argument was none of her business. But she'd never been good at that sort of thing.
"So, you're Carmen's beneficiary. Does Frank know that?"
Tanner nodded, his face grim. "Oh, yeah. He was all over me about that. But it doesn't matter. He knows that I know Carmen was in debt—it's not like I could have been expecting anything. Even if I was—all she had was the standard city-issue employee life. It's not like she was leaving a fortune."
"But why—" Leigh faltered. Did she really want to know? She watched him as he absently ran a tanned hand through his tousled, sandy-blond bangs. Oh, yes. She wanted to know.
/> "Why did Carmen choose you?" she asked flatly.
As usual, Tanner didn't miss a beat. "I have no idea. I didn't know anything about it until Frank threw it in my face yesterday. I suppose because she didn't have any family, and she knew I was having my own money problems."
Leigh considered. In high school, Carmen's only family had been an alcoholic mother with a bad liver, so her being alone now was no surprise. Nor were Tanner's monetary problems. Zoo vets, especially those employed by smaller, low-budget parks, did not make nearly as much as the average practice owner. It was true that Stacey had supported Tanner all through college and vet school, and if she had made a claim to half of his future earnings…
Don't need lawyers, he had said. All I do is tell the truth.
It was easy to see how he'd gotten fleeced.
"I'm sorry," Leigh said, suddenly remorseful. "This has been harder on you than it has on me, and here I am bugging you with questions."
He smiled at her warmly, then took her hand and led her back to the couch. "You've got nothing to be sorry for. It's not your fault I married the first girl I ever dated. Now, I know better." He spoke in a whisper, tracing her cheek with his finger. "Where exactly were we?"
She had just started to demonstrate when a rapping at the hospital door intervened. "Come on in," Tanner yelled testily. "Door's open."
They waited in frustration as two pairs of footsteps squeaked toward them on the ancient linoleum floor. When the visitors arrived at the lounge doorway, Leigh wasn't surprised. Some people had a flair for dramatic entrances. And bad timing.
"Afternoon," Detective Frank began amicably. "Leigh Koslow, you are under arrest."
Chapter 9
The hours that followed marked a new low in Leigh's life. Being arrested as a teenager was far from fun, but being arrested as a responsible adult was worse. First off, and of little consequence in the grand scheme of things, was that Frank had caught her and Tanner alone. Again. He had also interrupted them. Again. That Frank should arrest her in front of Tanner, then proceed to parade her out of the zoo in handcuffs, was supremely humiliating. The detective didn't even have the decency to exit with her through the nearer employee lot—nothing but the main entrance would do. The only positive notes were that most of the keepers were busy behind the scenes and that no representatives of the press were visible. Her picture was snapped in passing, however, by an awestruck pubescent photographer who seemed to prefer women in chains to giraffes and elephants. She would deal with him later.
Leigh said nothing as Frank chatted idly, letting his uniformed assistant drive the patrol car. She went through procedure at the Central Detectives Bureau in a semi-conscious haze of mortification and annoyance. The routine was grimly familiar—and interminable. She had left an emergency message with Katharine Bower's assistant; now there was nothing else to do but sit on the hard metal chair in which her current escort had placed her, and wait for something else to happen.
The whole thing seemed so surreal, she was almost able to pretend it was a charade. By rights, she should have been petrified. This wasn't possession of marijuana—it was murder. But in those moments when she did allow herself to think, she was certain her arrest was just a terrible mistake. They did have some circumstantial evidence against her. But they couldn't possibly have enough, because she hadn't done anything wrong. She refused to think in any terms other than that this was a misunderstanding—one that would be cleared up shortly. Very shortly.
"You'll be arraigned at the coroner's office," Frank said casually, appearing out of thin air beside her. "From there, it's the county jail." Leigh tilted her head up at him, trying hard to look bored. She should be charitable, she knew—the evidence did make her look bad, and Frank didn't know her well enough to know what a colossal mistake he was making. But she wasn't feeling charitable. In fact, she was beginning to think she really was capable of murder.
"We'd like to ask you a few more questions before you go. Do you mind?"
Leigh lowered her head and considered. She hadn't said a word to him so far, and she had no intention of doing so without her lawyer. But neither the coroner's office nor the county jail was an enticing prospect, whereas jerking Frank's chain was. She nodded in consent and rose.
Frank led her back to the interrogation table, where she sat in stony silence. Determined to meet his gaze—even as she completely ignored his first three questions—she pondered how to improve his appearance. A nose ring, perhaps? Purple sideburns? She decided on a metal stud in one eyebrow, with a matching one on the lower lip.
"Ms. Koslow," the detective said with growing exasperation, "would you care to explain what you're smiling about?" His complexion was slightly more pink today, and he hadn't coughed all afternoon. Leigh wondered if the euphoria of a false arrest was good for his immune system. It was certainly wasn't helping hers. "I'm beginning to think you don't want to cooperate after all," he said tightly, the anger in his voice now unmistakable.
Leigh shrugged.
Frank rose, his face reddening. He slammed out the glass door, gesticulated with another plainclothesman in the hall, and walked away. The second man opened the door quietly and sat down across from Leigh.
"Hi. I'm Detective Stefanou. Would you like a drink of water or something?"
She shook her head and surveyed the newcomer. He was short, solid, and dark, possibly of Greek extraction. His words were kind, but his eyes gave no clue to his thoughts.
"You'll have to excuse Frank. He's had a rotten week, you know?" The detective leaned back casually in his chair. "I guess he hasn't been listening to you too well."
Leigh smiled. It was straight out of a TV cop show—in her case, Cagney and Lacey. "I don't mean to be rude," she said sincerely, having nothing against this particular man, "but you're wasting your time if you think I'm going to fall for the good cop/bad cop thing. I'm not talking about the case because my lawyer isn't here, and as you know, that's the smart thing for me to do. But you're a good actor. Did you ever do community theater?"
Stephanou's eyes widened for a second, then he laughed heartily. "High school—Albert Peterson, Bye Bye Birdie. Want to hear 'Put on a Happy Face?'"
Leigh laughed with him. "I'll pass. Perhaps under more pleasant circumstances." She caught Frank's pale visage peeking around the corner of the hall, and she smiled wider. "So it's Frank's time of the month, eh? Is he ever in a good mood?"
Carlisle studied her thoughtfully. "He's happy when he gets his man."
Leigh smirked. "Well, no wonder he's down."
The detective spoke softly. "You saying you're innocent?"
Leigh smiled sadly and shook her head. "You're good, detective, but as I told you, I'm no idiot. If you want to talk about the weather, fine. But until my lawyer—" Catching some movement outside, she stopped and smiled. Warren's "shark among women" had arrived.
Attorney Katharine Bower blew into the room like a small hurricane, angry and building up steam. "My client will not answer any questions until we've had a chance to review the evidence," she said authoritatively, glaring openly at Frank as he followed her through the door.
Frank's dark eyes shot daggers back at her. "Your client hasn't said beans," he said with a pained smile. "If I didn't know better, I'd say she was stalling to avoid transport."
"Then she's damn smart," Katharine snapped, still looking only at Frank. "But in this case, we'll have to hurry up the process. She's got a bail hearing in"—she glanced at her watch—"exactly three hours. So juice up the paddy wagon."
Leigh's heart jumped, warmth quickly radiating through her chest. She was going to get out on bail. Today! She beamed at her attorney with the kind of visual worship she usually reserved for confectioneries.
"How the hell'd you do that?" Frank exploded.
Katharine shrugged. The lawyer and detective continued to spar with frightening glances and frosty words, but Leigh paid little attention. What mattered was when she got out, not how.
She endured he
r tour of Pittsburgh's criminal accommodations with a mixture of hope and creativity: the hope that she would never be back, and the creativity of pretending she was never really there. Imagining she was an undercover reporter proved helpful—by the time she was piled into a van for final transport to the courthouse, her piece on the treatment of local prisoners was already half written in her head. She even had a marketing strategy for selling it to the Post.
But her optimism couldn't last forever. It was not until after the hearing had begun that she realized bail might require money. She considered the sum total of her assets, and hoped that the judge was having an extraordinarily good day. She was already indebted to Warren for Katharine's bill, which could be enormous if this nonsense carried on. Her parents would do what they could—but they certainly weren't wealthy. How bad would it be?
Leigh waited anxiously as the prosecutor impressed on the judge the heinousness of the crime, requesting that bail be denied. She was certain for several horrifying minutes that this logic would prevail, but she had underestimated Katharine Bower. The attorney quickly took charge of the proceedings, convincing the judge that choir-girl Leigh, active member of the Greenstone United Methodist Church, was no threat to anyone, much less a flight risk. Katharine was so persuasive that Leigh found herself hoping for a bail with four digits. She was to be disappointed.
When the judge announced the final figure, Leigh's heart fell into her shoes. She didn't know exactly how bail bonding worked, but even ten percent of that awful number was more than she could make in a year. Her parents couldn't quickly pull together that kind of money, either.
She was going back to jail.
Katharine noticed the horror in her client's eyes, but instead of sympathy, she offered reproach. "You should be smiling," she chastised. "Do you have any idea what kind of odds we just beat?"
Leigh laughed sadly. "Half a million dollars? What good does that do me?"
Katharine softened. "Relax, will you? The money's being taken care of. I assumed you knew."
The blank look on Leigh's face urged Katharine to continue.
