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

by Marie Celine

  The guard lifted Tracy to her feet. “Time to go.”

  “Huh?”

  “Have you ever heard of a woman named Kresge?”

  Tracy shrugged as the officer led her away.

  28

  Det. Young took Kitty’s arm and led her back to his office.

  “What about Mrs. Randall?” Kitty asked, crossing her legs with a sigh. “Did Tracy Evan kill her too?”

  “No,” replied Jack. “She was working—waiting tables at a place in the Valley. All kinds of witnesses. It would have been impossible.” He rested his chin on his elbows. “So what did she want to talk to you about, Kitty?”

  Kitty thought a moment. Would it be fair for her to reveal what Tracy had said in private? Was she breaking some sort of trust? She supposed not. After all, Tracy hadn’t asked her to keep any secrets and she certainly hadn’t promised to do so. Kitty repeated much of what Tracy had told her.

  “That’s what she told us.” The detective was spinning a pencil across his desktop.

  “She thinks it’s a setup. Tracy blames Fang Danson, Angela Evan and even Richard Couric and Timothy Toms for her predicament. She blames them for my troubles, too. What is it with Richard and Timothy, anyway? You warned me about them, as well. They’re so sweet. What does everyone have against them?”

  Jack glanced out his open door. The hall was empty. “I really shouldn’t be telling you this.” He leveled a finger at her. “So don’t go repeating it. Technically, it’s only hearsay.”

  “I haven’t heard anything yet.”

  “Richard Couric and Timothy Toms are reported to be major league drug smugglers.”

  Kitty snorted. “You’re joking! Those two guys? That’s silly, Jack. They’re harmless.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. We’ve been keeping an eye on them for a long time. But those guys are slick.”

  Kitty was shaking her head. “I still can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it.” Jack shuffled some papers around on his desk, found a fax he was looking for and scanned it before handing it to Kitty.

  “What’s this?”

  “The police out in Sedona were finally able to track down that spiritualist, Madame Zouzou—what kind of name is that?—she’s speaking at the Crystal Magic of the Skulls Conference at some inn out there. Anyway, according to the report we received, she doesn’t know anything. Some psychic, huh?”

  “Could this Madame Zouzou have murdered Mrs. Randall? That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, that makes sense.”

  Kitty smiled.

  “Except a friend of Mrs. Randall, one Winnie Lawford, gave Madame Zouzou a lift back to her house in Tarzana and Lucille Randall was very much alive at that time.”

  Kitty moaned. “Another dead end.” No pun intended.

  Jack nodded. “She did say something odd though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “According to Madame Zouzou, Mrs. Randall wanted her to try and contact some dead person named Kresge.”

  Kitty drew in a sharp breath. Her skin went clammy. Kresge. That name again.

  “And she wanted to do it before her other guests arrived. Madame Zouzou says Mrs. Randall was quite distraught.” He rolled his eyes. “Of course, she claims the cat was distraught, too.”

  “And did she?”

  “Did she what?”

  Kitty said evenly, “Did Madame Zouzou contact this dead person, Kresge?” She counted her heartbeats as she waited for Jack to respond.

  “Yeah. She says she did, anyway. If you can believe her. She claims he was rocking the table and rattling the walls—spouting all kinds of bad mojo.”

  “Wait a minute.” Kitty stiffened.

  “What?”

  “You just said he.”

  “So?”

  “Kresge is a she.” Kitty explained to Jack how Miss Kresge had been Bruce Churchill’s lover and how they’d once lived in the Wright house. “Churchill committed suicide and his lover went insane.”

  “That may be, but Madame Nutjob definitely said Kresge was a he.”

  “Which means that Bruce Churchill’s lover had been a man!” exclaimed Kitty. Her skin tingled. Maybe they were finally getting somewhere! “And this was years and years ago. Two male lovers. That explains all the secrecy. Homosexuality wasn’t considered socially acceptable back then, not like it is now.”

  Jack was nodding. “Could be. So where is this all leading us?”

  Kitty frowned. Where was it all leading them? Bruce Churchill had a male lover who went mad. Churchill was dead. If Madame Zouzou had contacted Kresge, that meant he was dead as well. So there would be no way to talk to him. Not unless she wanted to go through Madame Zouzou.

  And Kitty wasn’t sure she wanted to go that far. “I can’t help thinking that Kresge is somehow the key to this. What ever happened to him?”

  Jack shuffled some more papers. “They locked him up in a psychiatric hospital in L.A. He died there a few years back. I was just going to head over and follow up on it. Want to come?”

  Kitty shook her head. “No. My head’s pounding. I’ve had all I can stand for one day. I think I’ll go see Velma.” She needed a friend to talk to—someone to unload her burden on. Velma wouldn’t mind. And she was sharp. Maybe she’d find something in all this that Kitty and the police were missing.

  Kitty looked at her watch. “Velma should be home by now.”

  29

  Kitty fell into her car. She was about to dial Velma’s number to let her know she was coming over when she noticed her voicemail icon flashing. She dialed in and got a message from Velma herself.

  “Hi, this is Velma. Uh, I was hoping you were around. I can’t find my watch. I think I might have taken it off at the sink at the house of those two guys, Richard and Timothy, when I went with you on your rounds that day. I like to take it off when I’m doing the dishes and we scrubbed out those dog bowls. . .” Pause. “I don’t know their last names or their phone number, so I’m just going to swing by and see if they have my watch. If I can find the place, that is. Well, guess that’s all. Call me if you get this message. . .”

  Oh, no! Velma was on her way to Richard and Timothy’s house. And according to Jack they were drug dealers, or worse yet, killers!

  The car key rattled in Kitty’s trembling hand. Velma’s message was time-stamped over forty-five minutes ago. It wasn’t far to Richard and Timothy’s, and Velma was probably coming from Culver City.

  Kitty shoved the key in the ignition. She just might make it.

  As the engine grumbled to life, she decided to give Aunt Gloria a call. Maybe she had come up with something by now, too. She punched in her aunt’s home number. “Hello, Aunt Gloria, how are you? It’s me, Kitty.”

  Ignoring the fact that the place was full of police cars, Kitty sped through the parking lot looking for the exit out to the street. Velma didn’t have a cellphone, but she’d call Velma’s house anyway as soon as she got done speaking to her aunt.

  Aunt Gloria’s voice came through faint and crackly. “Kitty, I’m glad you called—” The phone hissed. “I left a message for you on your message machine at home. . .”

  Kitty’s cellphone beeped. The battery was running low and the reception stunk. “What?” She pressed her ear to the receiver.

  “I did some digging around on the Wright house and on the Barbados nut like you asked and—”

  Kitty cursed and banged the phone with the palm of her hand. “I’m sorry. All I’m getting is static!” she shouted. “And my battery is going dead. Aunt Gloria? Can you hear me?” Kitty cursed some more. “I’ll charge up my phone and call you back when I get on the road.”

  She waited for a reply. “Aunt Gloria?” She looked at the display. The connection was lost. Kitty whipped the car phone adapter out of the glovebox and hooked it up.

  A trail of soft, low lights marked the long driveway to Richard and Timothy’s estate. One of the dogs was barking. There was no sign of Velma’s
car.

  Kitty took a slow, deep breath. Had they killed Velma and dumped the car and the body somewhere? The barking dog made her edgy. Overcoming her fear, she approached the side door.

  Quiet Timothy, wearing brown spectacles, chinos and a black turtleneck sweater answered. “Kitty, what a surprise.” He looked past her out to the drive. “You’re alone?”

  The back of Kitty’s neck prickled. ‘Are you alone?’ That was an odd question, wasn’t it?

  “Come inside.”

  “Oh, ah, no, thanks.” No way she was going inside, at night, alone, with no witnesses. Not after all the stories she’d heard. “I mean, I was wondering if my friend, Velma—you remember, she came and helped me feed Us and Them the other day?” Kitty rattled off a description. “Anyway, she said she might come by. She thought she might have left her watch here.”

  “Of course. Well,” he said, letting his hand run down his chest, “we haven’t seen your friend.”

  The dog was barking madly and Kitty turned her head trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.

  “That’s Us,” said Timothy with a faint smile. “Probably sees a raccoon. Always makes him a little crazy. Are you sure you won’t come inside?”

  Kitty said no. “Besides, I-I have a friend waiting for me.”

  Timothy looked at her car. He seemed puzzled.

  “He followed me over in his car. He’s parked down at the street.”

  Timothy nodded. “I see. Well, goodnight then, Kitty. See you tomorrow.”

  “Goodnight, Timothy.” Kitty raced back to her car. Blood was pounding in her ears as she made what she felt was her escape.

  Racing through the hills, she tried Velma’s home number. It rang and rang and rang.

  Where was Velma? Had Timothy’s dog been barking at a raccoon? Or was he barking at Velma? Or howling because Velma had been murdered. That did it, Kitty decided, if Velma wasn’t home and wasn’t at Jack-In-The-Box, she was calling the police.

  Coming up the dark, narrow sidestreet, Kitty noticed that the lights were on at Velma’s cottage out back of the Van de Wetering’s 40's style ranch house, but it didn’t look like the Van de Wetering’s were home. Velma’s car wasn’t on the street but that didn’t mean much. Sometimes she parked in the alley.

  Kitty grabbed her phone—it held about a quarter-charge now—and stuck it in her pocketbook. Her footsteps made little sound on the narrow, snaking path leading to Velma’s tiny cottage in the back yard. The night was cool and she regretted she hadn’t brought a sweater to keep the chill out of her bones.

  The sounds of an old B.A.D. Spike hit rattled the glass; a contemporary of M.C. Hammer, he’d made a splash, then disappeared. Kitty knocked on the door. The sound went off and the door opened a minute later.

  “Hey, girl!” Velma smiled brightly. She still had on her Jack-In-The-Box uniform. She was wearing her watch. “What are you doing here?”

  A flood of relief swept over Kitty like a six-foot ocean wave. After all the terrible things she had been imagining, it was good to see her friend again. Alive and well. “It’s not too late is it? I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Kitty glanced at the glowing computer screen on the corner of Velma’s small desk.

  “No, of course not. Come on in. What’s wrong? You look terrible. Like you’ve just seen a ghost or something.” Velma padded into the small square room and squatted on a pair of large pillows. A large bowl of some sort of tomato-based soup was nestled into the corner, giving off steam.

  Velma didn’t know how near the truth her words seemed. Kitty sat. The scent of food reminded her just how long it had been since she’d eaten.

  Kitty pointed at her friend’s arm. “You found your watch.”

  Velma rubbed her wrist. “Oh, yeah. Stupid me. I’d left it at work. I stopped at Jack-In-The-Box first, just in case, before heading out to see your clients. Glen had me cleaning pots and pans as penance for taking off the other day. Personally, I think he resents the fact that I’m a trained chef and he’s not.”

  Kitty nodded. “Probably.” Her stomach grumbled. Right about now, she’d settle for a sack full of cold Jack-In-The-Box leftovers.

  “I’m just glad I got the watch back. Costs a bundle and it was a birthday present from Granny.”

  Velma must have noticed the look of hunger in her friend’s eyes because she said, “Hungry?”

  Kitty admitted she was. “But I’ll eat later.” She grabbed her stomach. “My stomach is so tied up in knots now, I’d be afraid to eat.”

  Velma carefully lifted her spoon to her lips and sipped. “Talk to me, Kitty. What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know where to even begin,” said Kitty. She then proceeded to spill her guts, filling her bestfriend in on everything that had happened. Everything she had learned.

  “Wow.” Velma laid down her soup spoon and uncrossed her legs. “That’s some tale. Spooks, spirits, poisonings, murders. . .”

  “Tell me about it. Did you know that Mrs. Randall was into stuff like spiritualists?”

  Velma shook her head. “I had no idea. Granny sure never mentioned it. Maybe this Zouzou person killed Mrs. Randall?”

  “No, I already thought of that. It turns out that Madame Zouzou is at some Crystal Magic of the Skulls conference in Sedona. Whatever that is.”

  “Crystal skulls? Oh, sure,” said Velma, “I’ve heard of them.”

  “You have?”

  “Yeah, they’re these skulls carved out of crystal that are supposed to contain supernatural powers or something. Some believers even claim they contain advanced alien knowledge left on Earth thousands of years ago. The trick is in trying to unlock the skulls to release the knowledge.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. There are a couple of people doing seminars who claim they are able to tap into the crystal skulls and communicate with these aliens and pass on their superior knowledge to us mere mortals.”

  Kitty looked dubious. “How do you know so much about crystal skulls?”

  “It’s all true. I read it in a mystery novel. You can learn a lot reading mysteries,” Velma said sagely.

  “I guess you’re right. Anyway, this spiritualist, Madame Zouzou, says that Mrs. Randall asked her to try to contact this dead guy named Kresge before she died.”

  “That’s weird. I wonder why?”

  Kitty sighed. “We may never know.”

  “Tough. But at least you’re in the clear from what you told me about this ex-wife of Rich Evan’s being locked up.”

  “Yes,” Kitty said, with a lack of conviction, “I suppose.”

  “So, how about that soup now?”

  Kitty brightened. Already she felt more relaxed. It was nice to have someone to talk to besides pets all day. “I’d love some.”

  30

  Detective Jack Young pulled into the parking lot of the Hollywood Hills Psychiatric Hospital, a dilapidated three-story stucco building tucked behind a couple of old highrises. Inside was another story. The walls were clean and white. The entrance brightly lit. He went to reception and asked to speak with someone about a former patient, Ken Kresge.