Meow is for Murder (2 page)
Read Meow is for Murder Online
Authors: Linda O. Johnston
Then there were her legs, long and lean beneath straight-legged jeans. Beneath her too-tight T-shirt, her apparently flawless boobs seemed to offer themselves to any male grip around.
Do I sound catty? Well, meow. Translation: maybe so. I had admitted, even to myself, that I had a spot of jealousy inside. For good reason.
I wasn’t a total loser in the looks department, but I knew my blue eyes, plain nose, and no-longer-highlighted brown hair weren’t the stuff that inspired even a mediocre modeling career. Not that I was aware just what Amanda did to earn a living these days, though she’d been in real-estate sales once. Maybe she still was—assuming she did anything. But the point was that her looks could have earned her a career under lights. Mine were okay for pet-sitting and court appearances, but were absolutely ordinary.
“Hello, Kendra,” she said, glaring at Lexie in my arms. “I didn’t say you could bring your dog.” The scornful way she said “dog” did anything but endear her to me.
“You didn’t say I couldn’t, either.” Even if she had, it wouldn’t necessarily have made a difference. Take orders from Amanda Hubbard? I’d rather catch a cute and squealing field mouse in my bare hands and feed it, kicking and screaming, to my ball python client, Pythagoras.
“My cats aren’t dog friendly.” She waved her hand, with its long, red nails, toward the two mini-leopards who hadn’t shifted an inch on the porch.
“Not particularly people friendly, either,” I remarked.
“That,” Amanda said, with a grin so snide that it almost uglified her face, “depends on the person.” But then, as if she’d thrown a switch behind her own expression to lighten it, she tossed her shoulders in a shrug and sent a smile my way that seemed almost genuine. “Anyway, I’d love for you to come in, but Cherise and Carnie won’t be pleased if your dog visits, too.”
Not that her cats should have had any say in what I chose to do, but I didn’t want my sweet Lexie subjected to Cherise and Carnie any further. “I’ll put Lexie in my car.” I sent a final glower in the pusses’ direction before turning my back and heading down the walkway away from Amanda’s house.
Lexie trembled in my arms, whether from fear or from eagerness to square off against the felines I didn’t know. “It’s okay, girl,” I said as we reached my almost-ten-year-old silver BMW, parked on the street nearby. “I didn’t intend to stay more than a few minutes anyway. You’re an excellent excuse for me to hear what Amanda wants, then depart pronto. I can’t leave you alone in an empty car for long, can I?”
She looked at me with her huge brown eyes and licked my chin, as if to say she understood. Maybe she did, in her Cavalier way.
I’d parked the Beamer beneath a eucalyptus tree. That, combined with the air’s early February coolness, kept my car from getting too warm inside. Even so, I slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition enough to use the controls to roll the windows down a crack, to allow airflow.
“See you soon,” I told Lexie as I left. “I promise.” Poor pup. I had to push her back inside when she tried to slip out the driver’s door behind me.
Then, resolutely, I started back up the walk toward where Amanda Hubbard waited.
I’d come there only out of curiosity arising from her unanticipated invitation.
What did she really want with me?
AMANDA WAS STILL standing inside the front door as I strode back from the street. I felt her eyes, as chilly a silver as a northern sea in an ice storm, staring every step of my way. I readied my own internal offenses for our upcoming catfight.
“Come in, Kendra,” she said as I reached the porch. Once again, she seemed to stick a smile on her face just for me. And didn’t I feel honored by it?
“Thanks,” I said with an equally false friendly expression.
I followed her from a small tiled entryway down an airy hall, well lit by two small crystal chandeliers with a skylight in between. The illumination emphasized the artwork lining the walls: watercolors and oil paintings of seascapes. Lovely stuff. Their similar styles were punctuated by several different artists’ signatures in the pictures’ corners.
Not that I was enough of an art aficionado to know for certain, but I guessed the paintings were originals and likely worth some big bucks if sold at auction, whether live or on eBay.
I found myself slowing to stare. And admire.
Amanda had to have a hefty income these days to afford all this. Either that, or she’d really taken her ex-husband, Jeff Hubbard—my lover for the last few luscious months—for an expensive ride during their divorce, and expended it on artwork.
Seeing Amanda stopped in a doorway, I halted, too.
“Patience,” she commanded me.
“Pardon?” I asked in confusion. I thought I’d been acting with utter etiquette so far—not an easy task since I despised my hostess’s guts.
“All of the artwork is by the patients at the doctors’ office where I work,” she said.
Oh . . .
that
kind of patients. Not that I felt fully enlightened. “I didn’t realize you worked in a doctors’ office,” I said. “Weren’t you in real estate?”
that
kind of patients. Not that I felt fully enlightened. “I didn’t realize you worked in a doctors’ office,” I said. “Weren’t you in real estate?”
“Sure, when I met Jeff. I did okay with it, but I found it boring. He understood. While we were together he told me to go back to school, the sweet man. Now, I’m a medical assistant. I work for a group of doctors who specialize in heart problems.”
Which didn’t exactly explain how Jeff and she had failed in their own affair of the heart. But I didn’t want to inquire about that, so instead I asked, “How does the practice happen to have such talented artists as patients?”
“One of my doctors is well-known for his interest in acquiring paintings from up-and-coming artists. If they or their families need heart care, they flock to him. And they show their appreciation for their excellent treatment and care by selling their stuff to the doctors and staff like me at reduced prices.”
“Very nice,” I said.
“And before you ask, yes, Leon Lucero is one of the artists and patients. Once Jeff and I broke up, I decided to enjoy life. Date a lot of men and see what happened. Well, I was stupid enough to go out with Leon, and he decided he owned me.”
I hadn’t asked about Leon. But the conversation would have turned to Amanda’s stalker sometime during this get-together, so the seeming non sequitur didn’t surprise me.
As if blaming me for Leon’s latching on to her, she turned her back and marched through the nearest door. I followed, to find myself in a small but attractive living room also decorated with several seascapes on the walls.
I had to assume Amanda loved the water. Otherwise, talented newcomers or not, I doubted she could live among such wet-looking surroundings for long without screaming.
“So what’s up with Leon’s latest failure to comply with your temporary restraining order?” I asked sans preamble. That was, indirectly, the reason I was here.
See, several months ago, Amanda had used Leon as her excuse to reenter Jeff’s life, begging him for help to convince her unwanted admirer to stay away from her. Jeff had upgraded her home security system and assisted in obtaining a temporary restraining order against Leon.
As if a dedicated stalker ever obeyed a flimsy piece of paper, no matter how massive the weight of courts and law enforcement might be behind it.
“It’s a long story,” Amanda said with a sibilant sigh, motioning me toward a sleek Scandinavian sofa of bright red cushions on a polished pine frame. I sat obediently—the only act of obedience I intended during this uncomfortable meeting—while she lowered herself as gracefully as a model might onto a matching loveseat.
Almost as if she’d called them, her cats, who hadn’t made an appearance since my entrance into the house, padded single file from the hallway and, as gracefully as their mistress, leapt up onto her loveseat and took their places at the opposite sides of its backrest. Interesting how they apparently stuck together. Another couple of my cat clients did the same, but most of the felines I’d seen stayed solitary, even in households with multiple cat members.
“Hi, darlings,” Amanda crooned. Both purred in response, which made me smile despite my irritation at their treatment of Lexie. “They’re Bengal cats. Aren’t they beautiful? Cherise is the larger one.”
Although her inquiry was rhetorical, I nevertheless agreed. Bengal cats? I knew cats sometimes came in breeds as dogs did, but I’d met few in my pet-sitting situations.
Still stroking the kitties, Amanda went on to explain her earlier answer. “My TRO forbids Leon from getting within a hundred feet of my house, or within thirty feet of my person. But it’s my doctors’ office where he shows up most, and the TRO doesn’t cover that.”
“Really? Why not ask your lawyer to get the TRO amended?”
She shook her head, and her blond hair bobbed prettily—darn her. “I don’t dare. My doctors would be horrified.”
“But surely your employers are even more horrified about having a stalker around harassing one of their staff.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “Leon is claiming lots of cardiac issues—chest pains, palpitations, you name it. Anything to supposedly justify visits to my office. My doctors give him a clean bill of health, but for fear of liability if something’s wrong that they haven’t found, they let him make further appointments. I try to take those days off, but he always manages to postpone or need further tests . . . In fact, Leon’s the main reason I asked you here.”
Leon was her excuse to summon me? Yeah, right. Well, whatever her real reason, it was about time that she bared her claws. And that I unsheathed mine.
Still . . . “You need to stop using your stalker as an excuse to keep in contact with Jeff,” I asserted pointedly, abandoning all pretext of politeness, at least for this significant moment.
Leon might be the lead-in, but I was sure Amanda had asked me here to engage in a showdown at the Not-So-Okay Corral, a final fight over the currently out-of-town subject of our rivalry. No sense skirting the subject any longer. The litigator in me was ready to take my ten paces and draw.
Amanda just blinked, as if amazed at my effrontery—especially after our somewhat civil conversation. “Tea?” She gestured to a blue ceramic pot and matching cups I’d barely noticed on the low-slung pine table between us. Her skills at subject-changing were stupefying.
“Please,” I responded. Drinking would supply me with a superior use of my hands than keeping them balled into fists. Or aiming an imaginary six-shooter.
Amanda started speaking again a minute later as I sipped apple-spiced tea. “I hadn’t exactly planned things that way, of course, but I admit that, initially, there was some good in Leon’s terrifying me.”
“So my suspicions that you hired Leon to stalk you aren’t true?”
“I never thought of it,” she said with a sigh. “And if I had, I’d have hired someone I could control rather than that scary son of a bitch who won’t leave me alone.”
“I guess,” I admitted.
Damn. The woman was sounding . . . well, human. I liked it better when she showed fangs as fiercely as any wild feline. That way, I could insult her back with impunity.
“Anyway”—I glanced at my watch—“I don’t like leaving Lexie in the car. And I need to leave soon anyway. Oh, and by the way, I know you’ve already blown off the other P.I. Jeff referred you to, to help you deal with Leon.”
A few weeks back, Jeff had called us both to his home and essentially handed Amanda her walking papers. Made his choice—me over her—perfectly clear.
That was when he’d given Amanda the name of another investigator to call.
“He wasn’t nearly as helpful as Jeff.” She shook her head briskly, just as she’d shaken off the advice.
“As if you gave him a chance.”
“How would you know?”
“He told Jeff,” I replied.
“And Jeff told you?”
I nodded, although, in fact, I was telling a bit of a fib. I’d obtained the info from Jeff’s security company’s best computer geek, Althea, with whom I’d become buddies. Apparently that P.I. pal of Jeff’s had called to vent about the bitch client Jeff had sent his way and Althea’s ears had born the brunt of it.
Bengal cats by her side notwithstanding, I’d no intention of further pussyfooting around. “Why don’t you just tell me why you asked me here?” I said.
Stop with the niceness that I don’t trust any more than I would if a genuine leopard offered to lick my hand
. Was she about to insist that
I
slide out of Jeff’s life forevermore so she could slither back in unimpeded, never mind what the man in question wanted?
Stop with the niceness that I don’t trust any more than I would if a genuine leopard offered to lick my hand
. Was she about to insist that
I
slide out of Jeff’s life forevermore so she could slither back in unimpeded, never mind what the man in question wanted?
“I need your help.” She sounded as if that admission almost made her upchuck.
My turn to blink. If she thought I would step in and help her get Jeff back, she was certifiably insane. And what other assistance could she imagine I’d give? Did she need legal help?
I didn’t represent people I resented.
“Like I said, it’s all about Leon,” she continued, her gray eyes downcast and sad. What, no more snide smiles? I almost preferred them to her semblance of genuine emotion. “The guy won’t give up. I’ve even had to change my unlisted phone number again. I won’t ask your legal advice since I already have a lawyer.” And a good thing, too. “But the truth is, I’m scared.”
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