Never Tease a Siamese: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (25 page)

"Was Rochelle there?" Leigh asked quickly.

"No."

"When Rochelle was in the house on Friday and stole this key—did she have time to get in the box, too?"

Nikki was thoughtful for a moment. "You mean, could she have actually
found
the real will and then taken it?"

"No," Leigh answered slowly. "I can’t believe Ms. Murchison would let this box sit idle for twenty years and then hide a new will in it. Nor does it make any sense that Rochelle would have stolen twenty years' worth of wills instead of just the top one. But if she did, she would have had to replace everything in this cabinet just perfectly afterwards."

Nikki scooted forward and looked at the disheveled piles of linens she had created in her search. "No way," she decided. "She wasn’t out of my sight anywhere near long enough to pull that."

Leigh smiled to herself. "Then Number One Son probably swallowed the key before she got a chance."

After a moment’s pause, Nikki’s face reddened, and she rose with a jerk. "What difference does that make?" she asked angrily. "You’d think Ms. Lilah would have left some clue in this stupid box about who her real kid was, wouldn’t you?"

Leigh blinked. "I thought you didn’t believe she had another child."

Nikki rolled her eyes. "I didn’t. But now I wish she did. I’d love to wave the proof right under Dean’s snotty little nose and watch him walk away without a dime. Better yet—get locked up for murder, too."

Leigh didn’t respond, but began neatly compiling the scattered papers and photographs, not one of which featured a human. It was no use trying to convince Nikki that Dean wasn’t responsible for the threats, even though she was more sure than ever that his shocked reaction to the news of another heir at the will reading had been genuine. She also seriously doubted that he had killed his mother, but no way was she arguing with Nikki about that.

"Would you mind if I take these papers to Detective Polanski?" she asked hesitantly, rising with the box in hand. "She’s a good friend of mine, and she’s on Jared’s side, I promise."

"Whatever," Nikki answered shortly. "They’re not doing me any good." She looked past Leigh to the mounds of linens behind her. "You forgot something."

Leigh turned around and noted a yellowed paper corner sticking up from behind a fold of sheet. She pulled it out.

"An empty envelope," Nikki announced with a snort. "Now that’s worth keeping."

Leigh held the envelope up to the chandelier in the hall. "It’s not empty," she corrected. Without giving herself time to think better of it, she opened the back flap, which pulled up without tearing. It appeared the envelope had never been sealed; rather, the glue had simply stuck a bit with age.

So Lilah could open it and look inside it once in a while
, she thought to herself. She wondered again, briefly, where on earth Warren was. Why hadn’t he followed her upstairs, and why wasn’t he stopping her from opening this envelope now? It certainly seemed like the sort of thing he should do.

Oops.
Too late
. She peered down into the yellowed recesses of the envelope, and her breath caught. It was hair, just as she had suspected when looking at it in the light. But she had feared it was only cat hair.

It wasn’t. The soft strands of wavy, dark hair were most definitely human.

"What is it?" Nikki asked, leaning forward. Her eyes widened, as Leigh was sure her own just had. "Get out!" she exclaimed. "You think this could be her real kid’s hair?"

Leigh smiled to herself. "Maybe."

Nikki’s army cut was too short to judge natural curl, but the color was a perfect match, and it was all Leigh could do to resist holding the swatch up against the other woman’s head. One thing she knew for certain. If Nikki Loomis was indeed Lilah’s biological child, she had been kept completely in the dark about it. Because if she did know, she would not have wasted a second pulling the inheritance out from under Dean.

But how on earth had Lilah expected her to find out? There was no letter left with the will; no letter in the memento chest. Could she have left something else that Nikki hadn’t found yet?

"I suppose even if it is, it doesn’t help much," Nikki said with discouragement, referring to the hair in the envelope. "Baby hair looks different anyway."

Leigh’s brow furrowed. Her pregnancy guides didn’t cover newborn hair, and her knowledge of babies in general was sketchy. Her cousin Cara’s baby had been born with gorgeous strawberry-blond hair and still had gorgeous strawberry-blond hair. But then, her cousin never did anything by the book.

"Oh?" she asked encouragingly.

"Sure," Nikki answered. "Newborn hair usually falls out, and when it comes back in, it can be a different color. You know how blond Jared is? Well, Wanda said when he was born, his hair was jet black."

Leigh seized the opportunity. "Wanda?"

"My mother," Nikki said offhandedly. "We always called her Wanda."

Leigh took the plunge. "She was related to Mrs. Murchison somehow, wasn’t she?"

Surprisingly, Nikki rolled her eyes again. "They were distant cousins or something. Who cares?"

Hearing what were probably Warren’s footsteps coming up the stairs, Leigh started talking quickly. "Oh, I just wondered if you knew Mrs. Murchison before—I mean, before you got this job…"

It was a risky maneuver, and Leigh acknowledged that she was only half sorry Warren was on his way. Predictably, Nikki’s face took on a tomato-like hue, and her fists clenched tight. "You want to know how I got this job?" she said severely. "You and everybody else in the nosey little burgh? Well,
yes
, my mother had something to do with it.
Are you happy now
?
!
"

Leigh attempted an apology, but got cut off.

"For your information, my mother, who did practically nothing else for me and Jared her whole miserable life, found out when I was just eighteen that she was dying of ovarian cancer. She was worried about what would happen to us, as she damned well should have been! So she went on her knees to her rich, nasty relative and begged her to give me and Jared any kind of job that would set us up anywhere but in that god-awful apartment with Bill and Red. And if you think Ms. Lilah did it just because she felt sorry for her, you didn’t know Ms. Lilah!

"She interviewed me like I’d come straight off the street
.
She wasn’t even
half
serious about the whole thing! So I told her
exactly
where she could cram this stupid job of hers, and she smiled that evil smile of hers and told me I was hired! Of course, once she saw how much Jared and I liked her cats—and how good he was at cleaning things—she changed her tune pronto.

"So,"
she finished, her voice still rising, "while we may have
got
these jobs because of Wanda’s deathbed guilt attack, you’d better believe we’ve kept them by
working our stinking butts off!
"

Leigh swallowed. Such a tirade was, she had learned through long association with Maura Polanski, best left uncommented on. Warren, who had at least an equal amount of experience with irate females, had stopped a few paces short of Nikki down the hall, and was waiting politely until she stopped screaming.

When Nikki noticed him, she took a breath. "And where have
you
been?" she asked suspiciously.

He offered a disarming smile. "I heard Jared calling for you after you had gone up the stairs."

Nikki’s eyes sparked with alarm, and she started to move down the hall. "Is he all right?"

Warren stopped her with an extended arm. "He’s fine now. He wanted to clean out the litter boxes on the first floor, but he was a little nervous about coming up from the basement. So I carried them down for him."

Nikki’s flushed face developed a bit of a glow. She smiled back. "Thanks."

Leigh threw her husband—who would not touch Mao Tse’s litter box with a ten-foot pole—a warm glance. He could be so sweet. It was one of the benefits of marrying a reformed geek.

His eyes moved to the box in Leigh’s arms. "So," he began, "what have you two been up to?"

His tone was pleasant enough, but the look he gave Leigh indicated that the ice under her feet was thinning.

"Nothing," Nikki said brusquely. "Can’t find squat to put Dean away. But you’d better believe I won’t give up."

The doorbell rang, and Nikki let out an anguished groan. "Whoever the hell it is, tell them to go away!" she ranted as she started down the stairs.

Warren turned quickly to Leigh. "
Did
you—"

"No!" she said defensively, clutching the chest a bit closer. "I didn’t say a word. But I did get this box open, and it might have something in it that Maura will find useful."

He appeared only minimally appeased. "Let’s get out of here before you do something else I’ll regret. My credibility with Mo as your keeper is falling lower and lower—"

"
You damned well better let me in!
"

Leigh and Warren both headed toward the sound of the shriek, whose source Leigh could easily guess. From the top of the stairs they could see Nikki in the foyer, standing her ground with her hands on her hips. Framed in the doorway was a frothing Rochelle, complete with neon-green midriff shirt, hot-red bike shorts, and three-inch heels. The security guard stood to one side of the door, looking from one woman to the other uncertainly.

"You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here," Nikki responded coolly.

"
I’ve
got nerve!" Rochelle shrieked again, her heavy shoes clunking on the tiles as she stepped forward. Leigh felt shivers up her arms as two Siamese leapt up the stairs and brushed by her leg; others scattered radially in all directions. She started to move forward, but Warren’s arms quickly grabbed hers.

"Stay out of it!" he ordered. "The guard’s there."

"
I’ve
got nerve!" Rochelle continued mercilessly. "Am
I
the one who’s trying to bilk poor Dean out of all his money? Am
I
the one who was so upset when they found out his mother wasn’t really dead, they killed her anyway? Well? Am I?
Am I
?"

Nikki’s eyes narrowed. "Probably."

Rochelle let out a short, piercing scream, but stayed where she was— which might have had something to do with the fact that the security guard had pulled out both his cell phone and his night stick. "You and that idiot brother of yours are
not
going to get away with it," she continued, her tone deepening. "We don’t care if you are Lilah’s daughter. We’ll fight you every step of the way. And if we lose anyhow, we’ll slit both your throats.
Got it!
"

"That’s enough!" the security guard interrupted in a thin, nasally voice. He struggled to dial his cell phone. "You’ll have to leave now, Miss."

Nikki had remained still as a statue, except for the heavy breaths that visibly wracked her thin chest. "
What
did you say?" she asked, her voice deadly calm.

"Oh, come off it," Rochelle snapped, taking a small step backward in deference to the nightstick. "Who else could the woman’s real kid be?
You’re
the one Lilah paid a fortune to sit around and do nothing all day.
You’re
the one she set up to live in this huge old house forever.
You’re
the one whose brother gets to hang out over the garage for free. She gave you everything, you witch—and it wasn’t because you’re so damn good at rubbing her corns!"

For a moment, Nikki didn’t speak. The security guard put an arm in front of Rochelle to push her back out the door, but before he had touched her, Nikki waved him away. She took a step closer to Rochelle, biceps bulging. "I don’t know where you came up with that crock of bull, you moron, but you’re dead wrong. I’m not Lilah Murchison’s missing brat. But somebody else out there is, and now that you’ve killed Ms. Lilah—that person’s way to the money is free and clear.
Stupid move
, wench."

The security guard was looking distinctly uncomfortable. Perhaps union unrest was more his forte—but two pint-sized females on the verge of a cat fight appeared not to be his idea of a good time. He stepped in between the two women and began backing up towards the door, pushing a resisting Rochelle one step at a time.

"I didn’t kill her, and you know it!" Rochelle hissed over the guard’s shoulder. "You can’t protect that
retard
forever!"

Leigh winced.

Nikki sprung.

The next few moments involved flying fur—literally—as Nikki vaulted over the guard’s shoulder and landed soundly on a screeching Rochelle. All three fell to the tile floor in a heap, scattering tufts of cat hair in every direction.

"
Nobody…calls…my…brother…that!
" Nikki bellowed between breaths. She struggled to a sitting position on top of Rochelle’s prone middle, pinning her victim's arms with one hand and jerking her head by the hair with the other.