Dishing Up Death, Gourmet Pet Chef Mystery Series, Book 1

by Marie Celine

  “Saffron, I knew it.” The aging rocker was pleased with himself. All that coke snorting hadn’t ruined his nose. How remarkable. He grabbed a fork from the drawer and dug in. The dish had a decidedly nutty flavor, though he couldn’t place the variety.

  Rich Evan yawned. Damn he was tired. And his throat felt sore. He hoped he wasn’t coming down with something.

  He helped himself to another delicious bite. He shrugged off his bodily complaints as the toll one must pay for another all too late night. It was a bit difficult to breathe though. Perhaps he’d catch a nap after he finished eating.

  As Kitty dashed up the sidewalk, Mrs. Randall pulled open the door. Mr. Cookie, a sleek Siamese with cunning eyes lay stretched out in her arms.

  “It’s about time,” Mrs. Randall said.

  Kitty caught her breath and gave the cat a friendly swipe along the head. “Good afternoon, Mr. Cookie. What’s going on? Not hungry today?”

  “He hasn’t touched his breakfast.”

  “I don’t understand, I made him a breakfast steak and egg burrito. That’s one of his favorites.”

  “Well,” sniffed Mrs. Randall, of the Randall department store chain, “he hasn’t touched a thing, I can assure you. If you don’t believe me, see for yourself.”

  She swept the main door open and Kitty hurried inside. The Randall residence was one of Beverly Hills’ most imposing with a veritable museum’s worth of antique collectibles filling the halls and lining the walls.

  Even the automobiles, and there were a great many in the garage, were antiques. Mr. Randall himself drove an old Mercedes to the office every morning which was so lovingly looked after by his full-time auto mechanic that it appeared factory fresh.

  In the dining room, Kitty carefully lifted Mr. Cookie’s silver tray from the marble floor. The food looked all right. She sniffed. “It smells fine.”

  She picked up the burrito. “It’s cold. Perhaps if I warm it up?”

  Mrs. Randall very nearly sneered. “Perhaps.” Mrs. Randall closely followed Kitty to the kitchen.

  Kitty had started to slip the steak and egg burrito into the microwave but, fortunately, caught herself in the nick of time. Mr. Cookie didn’t like microwaved food. That would have been a huge faux pas and she couldn’t afford to lose Mrs. Randall. Mr. Cookie was a twice a day customer. Breakfast and dinner.

  She carefully warmed the burrito up in a cast iron pan over the humongous gas stove. To tempt Mr. Cookie further, she opened up the burrito, adding some freshly grated Romano cheese to the mixture. She took a pinch in her fingers and rolled it over her tongue. “This ought to do the trick.”

  “It had better, Miss Karlyle,” Mrs. Randall said haughtily, still carrying the fidgety feline. “It had very well better.”

  Kitty held her breath as Mrs. Randall set the cat down on the small wooden table in the kitchen. This was where the help ate. Kitty placed the burrito back on Mr. Cookie’s Wedgewood plate on Mr. Cookie’s silver tray and ever so gently scooted the tray under his nose.

  Mr. Cookie looked at Mrs. Randall, who looked most concerned. He looked next at Kitty. Kitty wordlessly screamed for him to eat. He sat back on his haunches, licked his whiskers, sniffed the air.

  And ate.

  Kitty sighed. Success! “Well, all’s well that ends well. Right Mrs. Randall?” She smiled at the old woman. The old woman wasn’t smiling back. That wasn’t the way this was supposed to work.

  Mrs. Randall’s steely voice rang out. “At what hour will you be back to prepare Mr. Cookie’s dinner, Miss Karlyle?”

  “Six o’clock. Same as always, Mrs. Randall, ma’am.” Kitty found herself fawning. She couldn’t help it with Mrs. Randall. The woman had some sort of spell on her.

  “Right, see that you are punctual. Mr. Cookie likes to dine on time. If he gets off his schedule it does terrible things to his digestion.” She rubbed Mr. Cookie’s tummy as he chowed down, delicately picking away at his breakfast burrito. “Doesn’t it, Mr. Cookie?”

  Mr. Cookie glanced up at Mrs. Randall, licked his lips and returned to his meal. When Mrs. Randall turned, Kitty was gone. “Well, I never—”

  Kitty raced to her car, an old Volvo station wagon—so old it might have been a prototype—and hurried on her way. She still had one more trip to make back up in Sherman Oaks and that was to Ira and Iris Rabinowitz’s house. She glanced at the backseat, hoping that Goldie’s own dishes weren’t getting cold. Being strict practitioners of their faith, the Rabinowitz’s insisted that Goldie be on a traditional Jewish diet, and kosher only, of course.

  After taking care of the Rabinowitz’s dog, Kitty still had to drive back to her own apartment in L.A.’s Melrose district and prepare dinner for Mr. Cookie, Benny, and two other pets under her care. What with Mrs. Randall’s emergency, her schedule was going to be tight—tighter than usual.

  Kitty was in her element now, quietly and efficiently preparing meals for her clients’ pets. The day’s troubles forgotten, she loaded up her various meals in warming trays and filled the station wagon. This took three trips.

  The sun was headed over the Pacific now, giving the sky that red glow that always made Kitty smile. She’d go to Mr. Evan’s house first, as always, then work her way back into the city.

  She pulled into the mansion’s drive, the sound of the ocean carried through. There was a chill in the air here. The beach was always so much cooler than the valley. To this day, this always took her by surprise.

  Climbing out of the Volvo, Kitty rubbed her arms, wishing she’d brought a sweater along. Carefully removing Benny’s meal from the back of the vehicle, she made her way around to the side entrance, just off the kitchen. Out on the beach, she spotted a couple holding hands. Must be nice, she thought.

  She heard a bark at the door and opened it. Benny came tumbling out, all paws and tongue. “Well, hungry now, are we, Benny?” She scratched his nose. “What’s that?” She cupped her hand around her ear. “What’s for dinner, you ask?”

  Kitty rose, and said teasingly, “Well, we’ll just have to see now, won’t we?” She pushed open the door with her foot, balanced the warming tray in her hands. She could barely see in front of her nose. “Mr. Evan?”

  There was no reply. “Mr. Evan, it’s me, Kitty. I’ve got Benny’s dinner.” She shrugged. Kitty was used to eccentric clients. And living in Los Angeles, everyone knew that went with the turf. Rich Evan was as eccentric as they came.

  Once she’d come to bring dinner and discovered the rocker in the media room standing on his head naked listening to Beach Boys music, zoinked out of his brains. Another time, she’d found him naked on the kitchen floor with four young girls, including one mother and daughter, being boinked out of his mind.

  That had been something. Kitty still got red in the face just thinking about it. “Looks like it’s just us, Benny.” She maneuvered through the narrow doorway.

  “Careful,” she said as Benny zigzagged between her feet. “Let’s not have an accident.”

  Benny barked madly.

  “Okay, okay, hold your horses, pup.” Steering out of the corners of her eyes, she reached the island counter and set down the dinner tray. Benny’s barking was beginning to give her a headache.

  “Okay, okay.” Kitty unzippered the insulated bag and pulled out the tray. She turned. “Here you g—”

  Rich Evan lay face down at the kitchen table, his pale face nestled in a bowl of Benny Had A Little Lamb.

  2

  “WHAT DID YOU DO?”

  Kitty turned. Benny was still yapping at her heels. A woman was screaming at her. She looked frightened. Wait, despite the distorted face and gaping mouth, Kitty recognized the howling woman. It was Consuelo, Mr. Evan’s housekeeper.

  Kitty was frightened, too. Did she look as awful as Consuelo? Because Consuelo was looking like Bela Legosi was about to take a bite out of her tender exposed neck.

  Consuelo yelled at Benny to be quiet. When Benny wouldn’t obey, she chased him from the kitchen and shut
him in the laundry room. His muffled roar continued.

  “You are the pet food señora.” Her shaky finger pointed accusingly at Kitty. “What’s happened? What did you do to Señor Evan?”

  Kitty stood over Rich Evan’s body. He didn’t look good. In fact, he looked quite dead. Kitty had seen dead before and this looked like dead. Of course, the only dead she had seen before had been pets. And those had been goldfish.

  Though Rich Evan wasn’t floating belly-up in a two-quart fish bowl, he looked unquestionably dead.

  She looked at Mr. Evan’s pasty face and limp, dangling arms. And there was that turtle once, a red-eared slider. His neck drooped when she’d discovered him dead. Rich Evan’s neck drooped like that now.

  And in Benny’s breakfast to boot.

  “I didn’t do anything. I walked in only a minute ago and found him like this.” Kitty’s voice had an appeal to it that she hadn’t intended. It was just that the housekeeper was even now picking up the telephone and calling the police. “Geez, Consuelo, do you think I murdered the poor guy or something?”

  “Help!” cried Consuelo into the telephone. “Come quickly, please. It’s my employer, Mr. Evan, and he is dead!” She gave the address and dropped the phone.

  “We don’t know that he’s dead.” Kitty held her breath and knelt closer to the body. One eye was half-open. Ugh. “Maybe he’s only passed out.”

  “Don’t touch anything!” shouted Consuelo.

  “It’s probably an overdose.” Rich Evan liked to party hard and everyone in town knew this. The rocker was a frequent tabloid target. Kitty took one placating step in Consuelo’s direction.

  The housekeeper was fast. In one quick movement, she’d managed to cross the kitchen floor, wrest an ugly looking butcher’s knife from the block on the counter and now was waving the dangerous looking blade in the direction of Kitty’s nose.

  Kitty sighed and waited for the police to arrive. She wondered how she’d look without a nose. Because the way that nervous housekeeper was waving that knife around, Kitty Karlyle wouldn’t be stopping to smell the roses much longer. She regretted not having sniffed them earlier. There’d even been some rose bushes along the wall between Mr. Evan’s garage and the house. Oh well.

  Shouldn’t one of the local community colleges offer a course on Smell The Roses 101? People would be much better prepared for the eventual snipping off of their noses or loss of their lives.

  The sound of sirens echoing between the canyons of the mansions routed Kitty from a reverie she knew bordered on insanity.

  The door burst open and an officer of the law burst in. His hand was wrapped tightly around the grip of a gun.

  Kitty had a feeling Mrs. Randall was not going to take this well. Mr. Cookie’s dinner was looking like it might arrive late, if at all. One client had just dropped dead and another was about to fire her. Kitty quickly calculated just how short she was going to come up on the month’s rent. It wasn’t pretty.

  “Oh well,” she muttered between tight lips, “that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

  Consuelo was pointing the butcher knife at her. The deputy was looking at her. “What did you say, miss?”

  Kitty’s mouth formed an O. No words came forth. She tried again, taking a deep, relaxing breath before she began. “My name is Katherine Karlyle. I work for Mr. Evan.” She nodded towards the body. “He was like that when I came in.”

  Consuelo started up a stream of Spanish that stopped only when the deputy laid his hands on her. The good thing was, from Kitty’s perspective, that he’d taken her knife away and dropped it on the kitchen counter well out of the quick-triggered housekeeper’s reach.

  “You want to repeat that in English, miss?”

  Consuelo aimed her finger in Kitty’s direction this time. Her fingernails looked sharp but nowhere near as deadly as that steel blade. “She said she murdered Mr. Evan!”

  Kitty’s neck snapped. “I did not!” She turned to the deputy who by this time had company. Three officers were now looking at her like she was some sort of a criminal. “I didn’t,” she protested. “I only asked Consuelo if she thought I murdered him.”

  The third and youngest looking deputy, who would have been cute in any other circumstance, stepped towards Kitty and read her her rights.

  “This can’t be happening.” Kitty shook her head.

  “You understand your rights, miss?”

  “Yes, of course I do. But I didn’t do anything.” She cast a nervous look at the middle officer, the oldest looking of the trio, as he examined Rich Evan.

  “Dead all right,” declared the officer.

  It seemed to Kitty that there had been a touch of excitement in his voice. Maybe this was his first case involving a dead body.

  Consuelo gasped and made the sign of the cross.

  “Are you sure?” Kitty laid a hand on her chest. Had that squeak come from her?

  He nodded. And he looked serious. Dead serious.

  Like a scene from a bad movie, the room filled with crime scene investigators and street cops. Kitty had never seen so many guns in one place. Throw in a couple of bazookas and these guys could conquer Catalina Island.

  A man in a blue suit took Consuelo aside. Another fellow in a brown suit with black loafers asked Kitty to step into the media room. Maybe he was looking for a fashion consultant. If so, Kitty had some suggestions for him.

  He asked her to sit and she chose an ottoman next to the black leather Sharper Image massage chair. Kitty had tried that chair once at Rich Evan’s insistence. She had to admit it had felt good, but in an unnerving sort of way.

  The chair had seemed to be getting way too personal with her. The half-alive thing had gotten all the way to second base before she had leapt out of the seat to the sounds of Rich Evan’s hysterical, baritone laughter.

  These days she preferred the ottoman. Though the way her sex life was going, maybe a massage chair wasn’t a bad idea.

  The brown suited man extended a lightly browned hand. “Detective Jack Young. And you are?”

  Kitty shook his hand. His palm was warm. “Katherine Karlyle.”

  Det. Young pulled a narrow notebook from his inside jacket pocket and scribbled. “Are you the cook?”

  He was looking at Kitty’s outfit. Her hand rubbed her collar. She had on white slacks, low-heeled white sandals and a white chef’s coat. Kitty felt it was important to look professional when serving her clients. “That’s right.” She squirmed. “Though I prefer the term ‘chef.’”

  Det. Young shook his head and sighed. “Fine. So, you’re Rich Evan’s chef—”

  “No.”

  “No? No what?”

  Kitty stood. “No, I am not Mr. Evan’s chef.”

  “But you just said—”

  “Oh, I understand.”

  “I’m glad someone does.”

  “Don’t you get it? You asked me if I was the cook and I said that I was and that I really preferred chef, because I did attend culinary school and prefer to be called a chef and—”

  Det. Young cut her off. “If you don’t mind, Ms. Karlyle, I have a dead body chilling in the next room and don’t have a lot of spare time right now.” He looked at her crossly. “What is your point?”

  “My point, detective, is that I am not Mr. Evan’s chef.”

  Det. Young squeezed his temples, leaving red blotches where his fingers had tried to access his skull. “You’re not?”