Never Tease a Siamese: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (17 page)

Leigh soothed the qualm of conscience she always got when lying to decent people (Dean and Rochelle notwithstanding) by reminding herself of the beauty of vague pronouns. Peggy Linney had not said squat about Sheridan, but Maura had, and Maura was female.

The next moves would be a bit trickier. "She seemed healthy enough when I saw her. I just wondered if she had seemed all right to you."

Sheridan’s brow creased a bit. "I noticed nothing out of the ordinary in regards to her appearance, Ms. Koslow. If you’re wondering about the nature of my business with her, however, I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss it."

Yikes. This would be harder than she thought. She supposed that if she could fool the man into thinking that Peggy Linney had already told her the reason for the visit, she might be able to bluff him into offering more. But if her blind guess missed its mark, he would know she was lying. And that would definitely put the kibosh on questions two and three.

"I’m not asking out of idle curiosity, Mr. Sheridan," she responded as sweetly as possible. "Are you aware of the threats that have been made against my father’s staff?"

As she delivered a brief summary, she tried to judge from his expression how much of the story he already knew. It was a difficult task. Evidently, Impassiveness 201 was a class Sheridan had aced at law school.

"So you see," she concluded. "I think it’s important that you share the identity of Mrs. Murchison’s biological heir with the Avalon PD. It could be very important to their investigation."

Sheridan frowned. "I’m sure that if that’s true, the police department would have contacted me personally. In any event, I would have to tell them the same thing I’m going to tell you. I have no idea who Mrs. Murchison’s primary beneficiary is."

Leigh gnashed her teeth as inconspicuously as possible. This was not going well. "Oh?" she responded.

"I believe I made that clear at the will reading," Sheridan offered peevishly. He then launched into a statement he appeared to have long-since memorized. "The identity of the beneficiary was intentionally concealed by Mrs. Murchison. At such time as that individual provides 'sufficient and compelling’ proof of his or her identity, then I am, in the presence of certain named witnesses, to open a sealed document which is currently being maintained under lock and key. It is my understanding that that document will settle the matter. If, however, sufficient proof of a biological heir is not presented within five years of the date the will is probated, the document is to be destroyed."

The lawyer then leaned back, drumming his fingers impatiently on the desk top. "Any more questions?"

Leigh’s smile was now openly saccharin. She had a hard time liking people who charged by the hour to cop an attitude. "Just two. What happens if Mrs. Murchison’s body is never recovered?"

"Then her beneficiaries could either wait seven years for a certificate of death to be issued, or take the matter to court," Sheridan answered. "Either way, the process will not be rapid."

"I see. And what if Lilah Murchison got off that plane before it ever left the gate, and was now back in town sneaking around and spying on the fallout?"

Sheridan’s colossally bored eyes suddenly piqued with interest. "You have evidence of that?"

Obviously not
. She considered telling him the truth, but decided against it. No one unfamiliar with Jared’s gifts could be expected to take his story seriously. "Enough to take to the police," she hedged. She
would
take it to a county detective—tonight, hopefully. "We have reason to believe she’s been back at the mansion, as recently as last night."

The lawyer looked at her another moment, then shrugged. "It would certainly make my job easier." He rose to dismiss them, and his mouth curled into something that was probably as close to a smile as his face ever got. "If the old girl does turn up," he said as he shook Randall’s hand, "You tell her I’m raising my fees."

Chapter 13

Leigh paused on the sidewalk along California Avenue to covet another
homeowner’s stand of Dutch tulips. There had been tulips at her house, too—until Bambi’s evil twin had chomped them all off at ground level. Pittsburgh’s spoiled suburban deer had the size of ponies, the appetites of goats, and the unmitigated gall of cockroaches. Once they mastered crossing roads and avoiding the color orange after Thanksgiving, the state would be theirs.

A footstep crunched behind her, and she looked over her shoulder expecting to see a more hurried pedestrian she could politely let pass. But there was no one in sight.

Unconcerned, she began once more walking toward the clinic. It was only eight blocks or so from the attorney’s office to her car, and she felt she needed the exercise, and the time to think.

Sheridan had offered precious little new information, but at least she did have a better handle on the situation with the will. Mrs. Murchison had gone to great lengths to do one of two things: offer a real biological child the opportunity to choose between anonymity and riches, or drive Dean to distraction. Either way, Lilah had led her adopted son to believe she would die soon—probably in an effort to control him. Could she possibly see surviving a fatal plane crash as a fortuitous opportunity to test the true devotion of her nearest and dearest?

If so, she had undoubtedly been disappointed. And when would the game end? The woman couldn’t go sneaking in and out of her house forever. Even if the entrances were well-concealed with shrubbery, Nikki lived in the house too, and despite her dedication to the job Leigh doubted the forthright personal assistant would comply indefinitely with such nonsense.

Another footstep crunched, and this time Leigh saw a flash of olive-green dodge behind a brick garden wall.

Don’t panic
. A kid is just toying with your mind, she told herself.
A kid in army fatigues.

She took a deep breath and continued. It was broad daylight on a late April afternoon. She could see at least three other people out within a few hundred yards or so. What could happen?

She kept walking at a normal pace, and though she didn’t hear any more footsteps, the little hairs on the back of her neck seemed quite certain she was still being followed. Creepy, yes, she assured herself. But not dangerous.

At the turn-off to the clinic, she decided to try a little maneuver of her own. As soon as she was no longer visible around the corner, she hustled in between two parked cars and crouched low. If somebody was following her, they were about to make a mistake.

She had only to wait a few seconds before her pursuer slinked hesitantly out from behind a tree trunk and looked down the street in confusion.

Leigh sighed out loud. She should have known. There were only three things in the world that shade of green. Militia gear, bathroom fixtures in trailers, and a thirty-year old polyester skort set worn by Adith Rhodis.

"I’m here!" she shouted, standing up. "Where did you think I was going?"

The septuagenarian looked appropriately sheepish. "Oh….um, hi, honey! Where’re you headed?"

Leigh approached her with a stern expression. "If that’s all you wanted to know, why didn’t you just ask me? I could know karate, you know."

Adith smirked. "But you don’t, do you?"

"That’s beside the point. Why are you following me?"

The older woman shuffled her feet. "I wanted to know where you were going."

Leigh waited.

"Oh, all right!" Adith spluttered. Her teenaged eyes brimmed with defiance, but after a few seconds, she had morphed into the picture of innocence. "I’ve been calling your place all day. I even left one of those messages, and you haven’t answered it."

"I have a job."

"I called there, too. They said you were out and they didn’t expect you till tomorrow, so finally I went down to the clinic to ask your daddy where you were and they told me you’d both gone to see the lawyer fellow."

Adith took a breath, and Leigh cut in. "What was so important you had to track me down right away? Did something happen?"

"That’s what I want to ask you!" Adith said with frustration. "You’re supposed to keep me updated. The girls are getting restless, you know."

Leigh’s eyebrows rose. She didn’t know who "the girls" were, but if the rest of them were as relentless as Adith, she was in trouble. In Avalon, the street value on Lilah Murchison’s dirt was higher than heroin.

"I followed you to the lawyer’s," Adith continued with defiance, a hand planted on each hip. "And when your daddy drove off without you I figured maybe you found out who the real heir was and you were going to pay them a visit. So I figured, since you don’t seem to want to tell me anything, I’d just follow you and see for myself." She straightened her spine and smoothed out the skort. "So sue me."

Leigh couldn’t help but smile. "I haven’t been avoiding you on purpose," she said apologetically. "It’s just been a very busy day. At lunch, I—"

"Uh huh," Adith said impatiently, grabbing her by the arm and steering her down the street. "Just get to the good stuff, okay, honey? Time’s wasting."

***

Gray clouds muscled their way across the river, the ominous tone of the thunder that rumbled down from them being surpassed only by the grumbling of Leigh’s own stomach. She had been dishing a judiciously edited script of her adventures to Adith in the parking lot of the Koslow Animal Clinic for a full half hour, and both her watch and her blood sugar told her it was time to head home to Warren’s promised Mexican tamale bake.

She had to choose her words carefully; as much as she could use Adith’s local insight into the whole situation with Peggy’s family, she didn’t want Dean’s true parentage to get out that way. Little as she thought of the man, it hardly seemed fair for "the girls" to know before he did. So she had edited out the whole interlude with Becky; choosing to make what she had learned about the baby switch sound like pure conjecture.

"So anyway," she summarized, "If Lilah Murchison wasn’t actually on that plane, the whole inheritance issue is moot. But I do believe that Lilah gave birth to a stillborn in 1977, and that Peggy Linney helped her quickly locate an adoptable baby. I guess Lilah felt she needed a baby to keep her marriage intact, and that that pregnancy would be her last chance."

Adith’s prunelike face twisted into a coarse frown. "Well, that may be, but it doesn’t tell us if there's still a missing millionaire out there, does it? And it doesn’t tell you who’s threatening your daddy’s people, either."

Leigh’s stomach groaned, expressing her mind’s thoughts. "No, I guess it doesn’t."

Adith continued frowning. "I don’t buy it," she said finally.

"Buy what?"

"The stillborn thing."

Leigh stared at her. "Why not?"

"Too convenient."

Leigh exhaled. She was entirely too weak from hunger to draw inferences. "What do you mean exactly?"

Adith’s mouth screwed up tight as she thought. "Lilah claims to have another baby out there. But the girls don’t see how she could have had one any time after she came straggling back to town without her first husband. Some people get fatter as they age; Lilah got skinnier. I don’t know if she went anorexic after the car crash that killed him or what, but she lost weight. And ever since then she’s been too skinny to cover up a goose egg—much less a baby. So she either had the baby way, way back"—she leaned closer for effect—"or the baby she had twenty-five years ago
wasn’t
stillborn."

Leigh blinked. "Why switch them at all, then?" Adith
tsk tsked
and stretched a bony hand out to pat Leigh’s shoulder. "Honey, honey. I know you think women now are liberated and all that, but Albert was of the old school. I’ll bet you anything that old coot had his heart set on a son."

A weight settled in Leigh’s midsection. "Give up her own baby girl and raise a stranger’s child…just to make her husband happy?" Her hand moved reflexively to her waistline again, and this time she didn’t bother to pull it back. The mere thought of trading off one baby for another made her nauseous. A lot of things made her nauseous. "I can’t believe that," she said weakly.

Adith patted her again. "You didn’t know Lilah Murchison, honey," she said softly. "I did."

***

The tamales sat steaming on Leigh’s plate, melted cheese and hot sauce running in tempting rivulets down either side.

She couldn’t begin to touch them.

Warren watched her worriedly. "I didn’t think you’d ever meet a tamale you didn’t like. Should I take this personally?"

"No," she said sadly, "I’m sorry. They look wonderful. It’s just…I don’t feel all that well."

Her husband’s eyes widened just a bit before he turned his face away.

Leigh watched him with a sigh.
Oh, no. Now he would think…

"I had some old leftovers at the clinic earlier," she said quickly. After their two previous pregnancy disappointments, they had an unspoken agreement to leave the topic unspoken. And since she knew her waffling appetite problems stemmed purely from her head, she was loathe to raise false hopes.