Never Tease a Siamese: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (21 page)

"My phone rang a lot?" Leigh asked, grabbing a handful of hot kernels. "That’s odd." Business at Hook was pretty decent, given that the firm was less than two years old. But it was their account manager and would-be motivational speaker Jeff Hulsey who got the calls. The only people who ever called her directly were relatives and clients who didn’t like her ideas. Clients who liked her ideas called Jeff Hulsey.

She looked curiously at the illuminated voice-mail light on her phone.

"Been ringing all morning too," Alice added, tilting up the popcorn bag to direct a stream of kernels directly into her mouth.

Leigh smiled at her coworker. Alice was impatient, brusque, and lived on high-fat food. There was nothing better than working with someone who shared all your own vices—only worse.

"One of them had to be your mom," Alice announced, flicking greasy white crumbs off her desktop.

Leigh’s eyebrows rose. "How do you know?"

"Something about the ring," the other woman said thoughtfully, leaning back in her chair. "It conveyed a certain 'motherly’ tone."

"You mean guilt-inducing angst?"

Alice tapped her nose. "Bingo."

Leigh groaned. It was inevitable that news of Lilah’s murder would spread quickly in the North Boros, regardless of whether or not it got top billing in the Pittsburgh news. Her and Warren’s names would probably not make the cut for the latter, but locally, no minutiae would go unspoken. Hence, hiding the details from her mother was not an option. But oh, how she wished that it were. Because this time, it would not be Leigh’s own role in discovering the body that would get Frances going. It would be the fact that she had dragged the world’s most sainted son-in-law along with her.

As if she didn’t feel bad enough about that already.

Leigh dialed into her voice mail with a heavy heart. To her surprise, only one of her many theoretical callers had actually left a message. Not to her surprise, that caller was Frances.
Leigh, dear, aren’t you supposed to be at work by 8:30? It’s 9:30 in the morning now, and I’m calling to let you know that your father needs your help at the clinic right away. It’s important. I’ll meet you down there
. There was a pause, as if Frances were readying to hang up, then a shuffling noise as she retrieved the phone.
Oh! And bring your lunch
.
Something light, I hope.

Leigh replaced her own phone without taking a breath. Frances was on
her
way to the clinic? Frances was demanding her daughter play hooky from a paying job? This could not be good.

When she could breathe again, she rose and headed for the door.

"Hey!" Alice demanded. "Where’re you going? Is something wrong?"

"The clinic," Leigh answered numbly. "And definitely."

***

The Koslow Animal Clinic’s tiny parking lot was full as usual, but Leigh quickly found on-street parking a block up. She noticed as she walked in that the number of cars parked there seemed small—terribly small, in fact, for a Wednesday morning, when the full staff usually ran a dual appointment and surgery schedule.

The staff
. Leigh eyes widened as she looked over her shoulder and noted the lack of familiar cars. Where was Nora’s beat-up VW van? Jeanine’s annoying little Geo? The only cars she recognized were her dad’s wagon and her mother’s Taurus.

Her steps quickened.
And Maura Polanski’s Escort
. She arrived at the back door at a jog.

"Thank goodness!" Nancy exclaimed, grabbing her immediately by the arm as she entered the treatment room. "Can you get these stitches out? The doctors are both busy and the client has been waiting and waiting…" She struggled to put the wriggling young beagle in her arms down on the exam table.

"Where is everybody?" Leigh asked, plucking a pair of suture scissors from the instrument rack.

Nancy exhaled in frustration. "They walked out."

Leigh’s eyes widened. "What do you mean, walked out?" She showed Nancy how to get a firm grip on the squiggling dog, then snipped out the spay sutures.

"They just went home." Nancy paused painfully. "We got another threat this morning, by regular mail. At the same time, everybody found out that Lilah Murchison had been murdered, and they all got really scared."

"Everybody?"

"No, not everybody. Nora’s really sick I think; she didn’t even come in. But the others came and left. Paula, Kari, Marcia and Michelle—even Jeanine. We’re missing Jared, too, but not because of the threat. I think he’s being questioned by the police again."

Leigh’s stomach did a painful flip-flop. Jared, being questioned again? He must be a wreck. And
another
threat? Wasn’t enough enough?

"I’m working the desk, and your mother is helping your father in the surgery," Nancy continued, holding the slaphappy Beagle at arms' length to keep it from licking her face. "But Dr. McCoy has a full schedule, and we’ve got nobody to help in the rooms. We really need you, Leigh, if you can spare the time. I don’t know what else we can do."

Nancy disappeared around the corner toward the reception area, and with like speed, Maura appeared through the door to the surgery. "Koslow," she said cheerfully. "You come to help out?"

She nodded. "A new threat?"

Maura reached into a shirt pocket and pulled out a sealed plastic bag. Leigh grabbed a corner and tilted it up to the light. Inside was an ordinary postcard, the kind one could buy in any local drugstore. It showed a man relaxing in a folding chair in the middle of a roadway, his fishing line cast in the depths of a large rain-filled pothole. The caption read "Springtime in Pittsburgh." On the reverse was the address of the clinic and four words in plain block letters.
ANYONE TALKS—EVERYONE DIES.

"Mailed yesterday," Maura elaborated. "Looks like our threatener is still feeling threatened."

Leigh let go of the bag. "Nancy said Jared is being questioned again. What’s that all about?"

The detective shrugged. "I need to talk to Hollandsworth again; see where he's at. But I have a feeling both these cases will be wrapped up pretty soon."

"Have you talked to Nikki?" Leigh asked eagerly.

"Not yet. I’ve got another case going to hell this morning." She threw Leigh a stern look. "But I’ll get to it. What I said earlier still goes. You keep your mouth
shut
. Got it?"

Leigh nodded. It must not have been a convincing enough nod, however, because Maura responded to it with a distinctly evil eye. "What?" Leigh defended. How could one lie with a nod?

"You know what." The detective began walking toward the door.

"Wait," Leigh called. "Did you tell your mother anything about a baby? When you were talking about Lilah Murchison?"

Maura stopped and turned. "No. Why?"

Leigh explained.

"Interesting," the detective commented, her eyes flickering. "Very interesting."

"Maura, I really don’t think—"

"Gotta go, Koslow."

With a brisk wave, the detective was gone.

"Leigh? You back here?" Dr. McCoy, her father’s associate, poked her head around the corner. With all these well-timed entrances and exits, Leigh was beginning to feel like she had walked into a stage play. "I need to draw blood in room two. Can you come?"

"Sure," she answered mechanically, following the veterinarian. At this point she wished she were in the middle of a stage play. At least then there would be an intermission.

***

"Just squirt this in her mouth three times a day," Leigh explained, holding out a bottle of pink liquid to a woman with a black and white cat. "Get it as far back in her mouth as you can, otherwise she’ll just spit it out."

And she’ll probably spit it out anyway
, Leigh thought to herself. It was the fourth batch of medicine she had doled out, in addition to the ten veins she had held off, the three heartworm and two feline leukemia tests she had run, the dozen or so vaccines she had drawn up, and the hundred or so toenails she had trimmed. She was beginning to remember why she had gone into advertising. It was easier on the feet.

Thankfully, Dr. McCoy was now with the last patient of the morning, and after ascertaining that the vet would not need any help with the ear recheck, Leigh retired to the basement bathroom for a few minutes of solitude. It was on her exit that she realized from whom the loud caterwauling she had been listening to all morning had come.

"Number One Son!" she exclaimed, rubbing the Siamese’s elongated nose through the bars of his cage. "You’re looking awfully chipper for having had major surgery just—" She thought a moment. It had been less than forty-eight hours since her father had performed that surgery. Only the day before yesterday. It seemed more like a week.

The key
. The memory washed over her with the same stupefying clarity with which one realizes, in the classic nightmare, that they have arrived at school wearing only their underwear. How could she have forgotten about the key? Dean and Rochelle Murchison had been so desperate to retrieve it that they had hired Ricky Rhodis to steal the cat from the clinic. But right after Randall had recovered it, the package with the doll had arrived and everything had turned to chaos. Leigh’s plan had been to show the key to everyone in the clinic, to watch and see if anyone’s eyes lit up…

She had gotten sidetracked. But the game wasn’t over. She left Number One Son’s cage and walked quickly to the basement supply closet. It was highly irregular of her, and she would probably still get in trouble with her father over it, but she hadn’t left the key in the surgery as she should have. Instead, she had pocketed and stashed it. She knew that her father would simply give it back to Nikki, and since Nikki claimed to have no idea what lock the key fit, Leigh knew that route would be a dead end. No—she had had other plans. She had been certain, once upon a time, that the key held the secret they were all being threatened over.

Did it still? She moved a small stool to the rear of the closet, stepped on it,  and stood on tiptoe. An ancient plastic flower pot was crammed into the back corner of the highest shelf, and she could just reach the bottom rim with her outstretched fingers.

She pulled the pot down into her arms and smiled. There was the key all right—just as smelly and disgusting as ever. She carried it, pot and all, to the sink in the kennel room and began to rinse. After a little dishwashing liquid, the stench of the attached cloth was almost tolerable.

If Dean and Rochelle were so anxious to get this back, she thought to herself as she cleaned, why did they give up so easily? There hadn’t been any more break-ins at the clinic. Nor did Dean or Rochelle simply present themselves at the door saying that they had dropped their key in Lilah’s living room. As long as Ricky Rhodis kept his mouth shut, there would have been no reason they couldn’t—as far as they knew, no one had yet connected them to Ricky, or Ricky to the cat. And Ricky’s silence was assured with the promise of inheritance money. At least until…

Until the will was read.

The wheels in Leigh’s overcrowded brain began to turn again. When Dean and Rochelle contracted Ricky Rhodis’s services, the plane had not yet crashed. Since the plane crash was due to pilot error and the pilot had gone down with the plane, she would be hard pressed to assume it was anything but a horrible accident. Therefore, it stood to reason that Dean and Rochelle, whether they thought Lilah had a long life ahead of her or not, at least expected her to return from New York and pick up Number One Son.

And they did NOT want her to know about the key.

Leigh tried drying the object with some of the cheap, brown paper towels her father insisted on buying, which were only slightly more absorbent than the stainless steel exam tables. She finally gave up and used a cloth towel.

Once Lilah was believed dead, Leigh's theory continued, the key had not mattered so much anymore.

She leaned against the sink and twirled the tiny key in her palms. The timeline here was important. Nikki said that Dean had had a falling out with his mother shortly before she left town. He and Rochelle then came over to the mansion when Nikki was there alone—presumably either to get the key or to bring the key and use it to open something in the house. But they got careless, and Number One Son had been right at their heels.

They needed the key back, and/or they needed to keep Lilah from realizing it had been out where the cat could get it. Did Dean know yet that he was out of the will? Had Lilah been taunting him about it? Or did he only know that he was on shaky ground with her and feared that if she knew about the key, it might be the last straw?

Leigh clutched the metal tightly. Her money was on the last one. Once Lilah was presumed dead, keeping the key from her was no longer an issue. Maybe what they were trying to do with the key was no longer an issue either. Because after Saturday night, they had known exactly where they stood.

Because by then, they had heard the will
. A smile spread slowly across her face. She would bet her mother’s best feather duster on it. This key had something to do with Lilah Murchison’s last testament. It probably fit a locked briefcase or some sort of chest that contained her important papers. Dean and Rochelle had wanted a peek—to find out for sure if they were in or out. But they couldn’t let Lilah know they had been snooping, because they still had to mind their p’s and q’s.