by Edie Claire
NEVER TEASE A SIAMESE
Copyright © 2002 by Edie Claire
Originally published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.
Digital edition for Kindle published in 2010 by the author.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Dedication
For the people of the North Boros—past and present. (Note to longtime Avaloners: Pay close attention, and you might solve the mystery before anyone else!)
Prologue
Bertha McClintock let out an exasperated groan as she sank her stout, sixty-three-year-old body into the generously padded, oversized plane seat she had lined up below her. "Thank God we're not flying commercial," she drawled, every syllable laden with practiced superiority. "If Richard's company didn't own its own jet, I don't know how I could stand it."
The slim, artificially blond woman of equal age who had slipped into the seat next to her offered a Mona Lisa smile and a nod. But Lilah Murchison only appeared to be listening. She had long since mastered the art of tuning out her old school chum—their historic biannual visits could not be conducted otherwise. And Bertha, as her most stimulating rival in the I'm-a-richer-widow-than-you-are game, had to be maintained. There simply wasn't anything, besides a good, down-and-dirty cat show, that gave Lilah more pleasure. Not to mention the fact that with Bertha came unlimited charter flights and free lodgings in New York City, perks like nectar to Lilah's miserly tastes.
Still, Lilah did have her limits. Just a few moments before in the limousine, she had come dangerously close to smashing her hostess's skull with a bottle of Merlot.
Bertha groaned again. "At least maybe we’ll have a quiet flight this time. I can’t believe that cat of yours is actually keeping her yap shut. What did you do? Give her some catnip or something? I used to give my Napoleon infant antihistamines—he slept like a lamb."
Lilah smirked, remembering the night she'd been up until 2:00 AM with Bertha and her late Pug in a smallish Las Vegas hotel suite, poking the raucous snorers alternately with a hairbrush until they rolled onto their stomachs.
"Did you say something, dear?" Bertha asked loudly.
Lilah didn't respond. She gazed worriedly into the cat carrier she had just placed at her feet and bent down to open it. "There, there, Mrs. Wiggs," she whispered softly, lifting out the gaunt Siamese and cradling it in her arms. The aging queen didn’t seem herself today. "What's wrong? You always like to fly."
Bertha humphed. "She didn't like flying to San Juan."
Lilah's eyes narrowed. "We were flying over the ocean. You know cats don't like water. Besides, she's twenty-one years old. She's entitled to a few idiosyncrasies."
Bertha humphed again, one of her better ones. Bertha wasn’t good at much, but she could humph with the best of them. She shifted her large frame restlessly in the seat. "Well, I certainly wish we'd get going. Where is that pilot? I've about had it with him. Always running late. The co-pilot is much more reliable, even if he is a foreigner. I shall have to speak with Richard."
Lilah held the unusually languid Siamese to her chest and watched as tiny beads of water began rolling furiously across the small plane window. She wished, for the hundredth time in the last thirty-six hours, that the unbelievably tedious Mr. Richard would make haste over the River Styx. Living husbands were such a trial, particularly when one had to hear about them. "There's a storm," she said quietly. "Mrs. Wiggs never has liked storms."
Bertha waved off the elements with a brush of her pudgy, jewel-laden hand. "I've flown in worse. We'll be above it all soon enough, provided that wretched pilot ever shows up."
Ignoring her hostess once more, Lilah stroked the slender Siamese, and noted that her coat wasn’t slipping over her prominent bones quite as smoothly as it should. She pulled up a tiny lip to reveal dry, very pale pink gums.
A crack of thunder shook the air outside the plane, and Lilah’s heart gave a thump.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
***
Three hundred miles to the west, a flash of lightning briefly illuminated a young woman rummaging through an antique jewelry box. Her eyes gleamed through two coats of glittery blue mascara as she brushed a strand of perm-it-yourself fried hair behind a multi-pierced ear. "Aha!" she chortled, waving a shiny object under the nose of the handsome male Siamese who watched her from the dresser top.
"This has to be it!" She twirled the object around her finger for a moment, then let it slip to the polished mahogany surface below as something else stole her attention. "Could these be real?" she whispered, snatching a pair of tear-drop emerald earrings from their satin-lined compartment. Hastily, she removed the Dale Earnhart statuettes from her own lobes and replaced them with the green stones.
Her thin lips smiled into the mirror. "Hello, dahling. Yes, it is wonderful, isn't it? Dean has finally come into his own, you know. Well, the old bat did deserve to die, didn't she?" Chuckling at her own wit, she removed the earrings and tried on another pair. She had made it halfway through the box when a loud whisper from her husband drifted up the stairwell.
"Rochelle, honey? There’s no more time!"
Rochelle looked around the dresser top, and her heart stopped in horror.
Chapter 1
"Yoo-hoo!" The frazzled voice drifted into the kitchen of Leigh Koslow's still-not-totally-moved-into suburban house, accompanied by a panicked rapping on the living room window. "Leigh, honey? You in there? Please, please be home!"
Leigh, who was sitting at her kitchen table wearing nothing but an oversized sleep shirt, paused with her coffee cup en route to her mouth and listened thoughtfully. Mao Tse, her imperial black Persian, noted the interruption with just the briefest flick of one ear, her full attention being required by the sparrow that was popping around on the other side of the sliding glass patio doors. The voice was familiar, but Leigh had a hard time believing she was hearing it.
She rose from the table and took a quick jog up the stairs to grab a bath robe. Hoping her husband hadn't packed his best one for his latest weekend political junket, she dove into their walk-in closet and looked around with uncertainty. Culture shock still had its grip on her—they might have been terribly cramped in the apartment, but at least she had known where her stuff was.
Most of it, anyway.
Not even bothering with the mangled heaps of clothing that lay strewn on her own side of the closet, she turned immediately to Warren's rack, where his second-best robe hung neatly in place. Making a mental note to ask her husband why he would need his best robe in a motel room, she threw on the remaining one. The rapping from below intensified, and she quickly sailed back down the stairs to see if her suspicions were correct.
They were. The ancient, boat-sized sedan, parked half-on and half-off her rain-soaked driveway, was clearly visible through the dining room window. As was its frantic, polyester-clad driver, who stood pressed against the glass like a fly.
She rushed to open the door. "Mrs. Rhodis?" she asked in amazement, stepping back as the wet septuagenarian plowed past her. "What on earth are you doing here? Is everything okay?"
"Oh, honey!" the older woman said dramatically, her eyes brimming with tears. "Nothing's all right!"
Leigh looked at her friend with concern. Though Adith Rhodis was certainly not beyond a little melodrama here and there, her distress
at the moment appeared genuine. Leigh took the older woman by the arm and led her to the kitchen, since it was the only room that had something to sit on besides unpacked boxes. Mao Tse, who ordinarily could be counted on to greet visitors with a hiss, favored the older woman with no more than a sneer before returning to her sparrow-intimidating vigil.
"Coffee?"
Adith waved the offer away with an age-spotted hand, then smoothed her damp house dress tidily over her knees. "You must think I've lost my marbles," she began, "coming all the way out here like this. I would have been here sooner if I'd known where you lived."
Leigh winced slightly, afraid to think how many times Adith might have stopped to ask for directions. Though the older woman was perfectly able to navigate in her own Pittsburgh neighborhood of Avalon, the quagmire of McCandless suburbs just a few miles north might as well have been a foreign country. But it was pointless to ask why she hadn't called first, just as it was pointless to ask why she'd rapped on the windows instead of using the doorbell. Adith Rhodis had her own way of doing things.
"I hate to bother you, honey, but I didn't know where else to turn."
Leigh took a sip of coffee and nodded encouragement.
Adith sighed. "It's my Ricky. He's in trouble. Bad trouble."
"Ricky?" Leigh's brow furrowed. The laconic husband, Bud, she knew about. And she'd certainly heard enough about Pansy, the Rhodis' allegedly psychic apricot poodle. But Ricky was a new one.
"My grandson," Adith explained. "Jimmy's boy." She shook her head worriedly and licked her lips. "He's a good boy, Leigh. A darling boy. Now, my Jimmy—I'll be honest with you. He's no good. Never has been. I'd all but given up on him ever marrying and settling down, but finally he did. The marriage didn’t last, of course, but I did get me a grandchild. And my Ricky, he's different. He's got a heart of gold, and he's never been in trouble a day in his life."
Leigh was pretty sure she knew what words were coming next.
"Until now."
She smiled at the older woman sympathetically, wondering how she herself fit into the picture. But Adith Rhodis was not easily rushed.
"He admits he shouldn't have been where he was," Adith continued. "But he wasn't there for what the police say he was. And he won't tell me why he was there, probably because it's some sort of secret kid shenanigan, you know? But I've got to find out, or somebody has, because he might go to college someday, and he could too, and he could make something of himself, but he can't if this all goes on—" she broke off, her voice cracking. Then, just as suddenly, she collected herself and looked up at her hostess with fiery eyes. "And I just can't believe your daddy won't listen to me!"
Leigh's eyebrows rose. The light was dawning. Her father, Randall Koslow, owned the Koslow Animal Clinic in Avalon, and had long since been sainted by Adith for his unfaltering care of her paranormal poodle dynasty. Apparently, the halo had tarnished.
"Your grandson is in trouble with my father?"
"Terrible trouble," Adith said, chin lowered. "And you're the only one who can help him. Dr. Koslow's had him arrested for breaking into the clinic. They're saying he was stealing drugs!"
Leigh took in a breath. This was bad. As much as she would like to take Adith's word on her grandson's character, her father's judgment was a bit less biased. Might the teen be pulling the wool over his kindly granny's eyes?
"I know what you're thinking, and it ain't true!" Adith barked, defensive sparks flying from her own perpetually adolescent eyes. "My Ricky don't do drugs! And he certainly wouldn't steal any from your daddy!"
Leigh fingered the edges of her coffee cup hesitantly. The quest was almost certainly hopeless, not to mention the fact that she had been looking forward to an uncharacteristically domestic day of unpacking boxes, and that if she had to eat one more soggy bagel before finding the toaster, she would scream. But Adith Rhodis had been a lot of help to her and her cousin Cara during their brief stint as her next-door neighbors. And had Leigh ever showed up on her doorstep in the middle of a Saturday morning distraught over a family crisis, she had no doubt the older woman would drop everything to be of assistance.
She smiled with resignation. "I'll be happy to talk to my father for you," she offered. "But I can’t make any promises. You know how stubborn he can be."
Adith Rhodis grinned, displaying a full complement of crooked, tea-stained teeth. "Not as stubborn as you, I'll wager."
Leigh grinned back.
***
For a Saturday morning, the Koslow Animal Clinic wasn't terribly busy. The tiny parking lot was full to capacity as always, but Leigh had managed to find on-street parking only half a block away, which was a real coup. Planning to steal a word with her father over his theoretical lunch hour, she trooped down the steep, wet cobblestone street to the clinic, catching a glimpse of the muddy Ohio River as it churned far below at the base of the bluff. It was turning into a gorgeous spring day, but she couldn't shake a dull sense of foreboding. She had hoped that Adith Rhodis could further enlighten her as to her grandson's "good, non-drug" motives for breaking into the building, but the older woman didn't seem to have a clue herself, aside from the enigmatic "he said he was returning something that belonged to somebody else."
Randall Koslow, DVM, was a wise and tolerant soul in general, but he didn't take kindly to trespassers, and he had even less sympathy for drug traffickers, whatever their pedigree. Leigh knew well that if her father was convinced Ricky Rhodis had broken the law, he'd insist on the boy paying the price—for his own good, of course. And no tearful grandmother's pleas were likely to sway his opinion.
Unfortunately, neither were hers, unless she could find another angle.
She opted to use the clinic's front door, it being closer than her usual back entrance, and was delighted to see the reception area temporarily client-free. Nancy Johnson, her father's office manager and right hand, threw her a wave and a smile. Though Leigh hadn't actually worked at the clinic since she was a teenager, she still dropped by often, and the staff knew her well.
"Your dad's got two more waiting on him in the exam rooms, then he'll have a minute," Nancy said pleasantly. Her attractive, cocoa-brown face was still smiling, but Leigh detected an unusual tightness to it, perhaps relating to the last night's events. Though being burglarized was never enjoyable, her father was at least used to it. The clinic had been broken into four other times that she could remember—not counting the myriad of less ambitious assaults on the outdoor trash bin.
She smiled back encouragingly. Nancy was in her mid twenties and had only been working for Leigh's father for a few years, but he already couldn’t imagine life without her. Randall, who had both a generous spirit and a tendency to live in the present, was so poor with finances that if not for Leigh’s budget-conscious mother, the business would probably be eligible for nonprofit status. But within a year of Nancy’s rolling up her sleeves, the books had improved so much she looked like a reverse embezzler.
Leigh walked to the desk and leaned casually against the counter while the incurable workaholic pounded away at her keyboard. As business manager, Nancy wasn’t even supposed to be at the clinic on Saturdays. But whenever the regular receptionist had car trouble—which seemed to happen exclusively on mornings after Pittsburgh Penguin games—Nancy would arrive with a smile on her face, ready to give flea lectures over the headset, run credit card authorizations, and make change simultaneously.
"I heard there was a little bit of trouble here last night," Leigh began conversationally. Multitasking Nancy, she realized, could be the perfect source of unbiased information regarding one Ricky Rhodis.
Nancy paused a moment from her keyboard and cast her dark eyes downward, her face now openly stressed. "Yes. I feel really bad about it."
"It wasn't your fault, I'm sure," Leigh said with empathy. The workaholism monkey had never cared for her back, but an overactive conscience she could relate to.
The younger woman shook her head uncertainly. "The boy came in late yester
day afternoon and sat down, and when I asked him if I could help him, he said he was waiting for somebody. We were very busy right up until closing time, and when he disappeared I didn't think anything about it."
"Why should you? He could have left with any of the clients."
"That's what I figured. But the police say he must have sneaked past me and hid somewhere. After we locked up he came out and tripped off the motion detectors. The police were here within minutes; they caught him red-handed."
Leigh considered. There were worse plans. It would be tough to break through the clinic's newest security system from the outside, but if one was already inside there were plenty of places to hide. Going out later would spring the alarms, of course, but then the burglar would have a head start. Thank goodness for the motion detectors—even if they did annoy the Avalon police by going off every time a clever cat lifted its cage latch with a paw and decided to take a stroll.
"Did he take anything?"
Nancy shook her head. "Not that we know of. There was forty dollars in the petty-cash box—untouched. The police think he intended to steal drugs and syringes, but didn't get the chance."
Her voice held only the slightest hint of skepticism, but Leigh seized on it immediately. "And what do you think?"
Nancy looked surprised. "Oh, I don't know," she said guiltily. "I'm sure your father's right about him wanting the ketamine or the Valium. He just seemed like such a nice kid." She paused for a few seconds, nibbling unconsciously on the end of an already well-chewed pen. "He's been here before, you know."
"He has?"
She nodded. "I didn't recognize him yesterday, but I looked up his records this morning. He brought in a stray cat one time—a tom with a cat-bite abscess. He paid to have it fixed up and neutered and then gave it to a neighbor. Said he couldn't keep it himself. He was only fifteen then." She replaced the mangled pen behind an ear. "It's sad how drugs can mess up a teen, isn't it?"
