Never Tease a Siamese: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (5 page)

"Yeah, I heard you," he answered softly, scratching his fingernails idly on the countertop. "But I'm not saying anything else. I told them I wasn't stealing drugs and I wasn't. They can't prove I was."

"They don't have to prove you were stealing drugs to lock you up," she reasoned. "They've got you on breaking and entering."

"But I didn't break in," he protested mildly.

"Trespassing, then," Leigh said with irritation. "And enough with the technicalities. The point is you're facing charges. Just tell me what you were really doing at the clinic. If you don't, I can't help you."

He started to answer, then paused in thought. "How much time do you think I could get for—for what you said?" he asked innocently.

She stared at him, dumbstruck. "More than you'd want to do, trust me." She couldn't imagine what was motivating the kid to keep mum, but it was clear she would have to motivate him otherwise. "And what about your grandmother? You think she wants to see her only grandson rot in jail? You'd break that poor woman's heart."

The guilty look returned in spades. "I told her not to worry about me," he said miserably. "I told her everything would be fine, and it will. You tell her that, okay?" He rose with a nervous jerk.

Leigh got up also. This kid was
not
going to walk out on her. She might have had men walk out on arguments before, but having one chose a prison cell over the pleasure of her company was downright insulting. "Ricky!" she spat into the phone earnestly. "I know about the cat."

Ricky had just pulled the receiver away from his head when his arm froze. He pulled the phone slowly back to his ear and opened his mouth to speak, but didn't.

"I thought that might get your attention," she said happily, plopping back down in her seat. "Now, can we talk? Please?"

Ricky remained standing, eyeing her with a strange mix of gratitude and resentment. He collected his thoughts, then spoke nervously. "I'm not saying nothing. You tell everybody that."

He slammed the phone in its cradle, whirled around, and made a beeline for the door.

***

Curse. Mutter. Curse. Mutter.

Leigh grumbled her way back to the clinic, stopping for a much-delayed fast-food lunch on the way. It was amazing she hadn't been hungry earlier, but then her appetite had been up and down ever since she had memorized the early symptoms of pregnancy. Naturally, said symptoms had all appeared immediately thereafter, twice. But much to her disappointment, both times were false alarms, and she now did her best to ignore such complaints.

It had started raining again—a brisk April downpour. When she returned to the clinic there were only two cars left in the parking lot, which was good news, since yesterday she'd left her umbrella at Hook, Inc., the fledgling advertising agency at which she was a partner. She parked close and beat a hasty sprint to the back entrance. Her father was in the treatment room, gazing at a series of x-rays with Nikki Loomis at his side.

"Well," Leigh asked, almost breathless from her jog in. "Can you tell what it is?" Her eyes scoured the various x-ray views, trying to put the different shapes together like a three-dimensional puzzle. From side to side the white shape looked like a dagger symbol; from top to bottom it was only a thin line.

"I think it's some sort of key," Randall stated. "What I'm wondering is what it's attached to."

"One of those thin suitcase keys?" Leigh suggested. "Or a briefcase key, maybe?"

"Either way, I can't think of any he could get to," Nikki said with frustration. "He spends a lot of time in Ms. Lilah's room, and I really don't know what all's in there. But I know she keeps it safe."

Leigh's mind seized on several possibilities. "Does Mrs. Murchison have a locked briefcase in her room? Or maybe a jewelry case of some sort?"

"What matters to the cat," Randall interrupted calmly, "is that the object passes without obstructing the bowel." He turned to Nikki. "We'll have to keep a close eye on him the next few days. I won't be back until tomorrow night, but I'll have Dr. McCoy come check on him if you'll leave him here at the clinic."

"No problem," Nikki answered. "But I wish you’d come to the will reading tonight. The lawyer said it was important you be there."

Leigh's eyebrows rose. She didn’t consider herself particularly materialistic, but the words "will reading," when applied to a millionaire, were enough to get any normal person's blood pumping. Particularly when her father seemed to be the only person in Pittsburgh who actually liked the woman.

The veterinarian shook his head. "I'm sure it's just about making arrangements for the cats, and I can call her attorney Monday about that. But I’ve got to get Frances to Hershey ASAP, or I’ll be sleeping on dog-food bags tonight."

Unfortunately, Leigh knew her father was only half joking. After twenty-odd years of planting tulips and pruning shrubs for various city beautification projects, her mother had finally won the coveted Garden Club Community Volunteer of the Year Award, entitling her to a plaque, a ribbon, and a free night’s food and lodgings at the Hershey Hotel. And if Randall didn't deliver her mother to that wondrous institution in plenty of time for a leisurely dinner, he would not only be sleeping on dog food—he would be eating it for breakfast.

She, on the other hand, had nothing whatsoever to do tonight. With her handsome husband still out of town, her Saturday night was looking like a frozen dinner, a few taped episodes of
That '70s Show
, and about five hundred boxes to unpack. All while a bunch of other people were gathering in Lilah Murchison’s eerie old mansion, learning how much money they were in for when—or if—the mistress of the house was ever fished out of Lake Michigan. Might one of
them
be anxious to reacquire Number One Son’s little snack?

"Dad," she began hopefully, "If the lawyer said it was really important, maybe I should go. As your proxy."

The veterinarian didn't look up, but Leigh could feel his eyes swiveling suspiciously in their sockets. She was surprised when he gave the desired answer. "Makes no difference to me. But you should check with the attorney."

His last words were only partly audible. A loud crash of shattering glass assaulted their ears, and she and her father both jumped in response. Nikki Loomis hit the deck. "What the hell was that?" the small woman boomed from the floor.

Randall answered calmly, but his eyes were wide. "I'll check it out." He strode off in the direction of the noise, and both Leigh and Nikki took off on his heels. At the threshold of the waiting room, they all stopped abruptly.

One of the colored glass windows that bordered the street was almost completely gone—its red shards scattered widely across the aged linoleum floor.

"Stay here," Randall ordered. He walked carefully around and through the broken glass to the front door, opened its three separate locks, and disappeared onto the front porch. Leigh stepped forward, her eye on a brown object that had slid under one of the chairs. Skirting the shards on the floor the best she could, she reached the chair and pulled it out.

It was a smooth rock, roughly the size of a grapefruit, and it was covered with printing from a red marker. "What is it?" Nikki asked, hustling over. "What does it say?"

Leigh looked up, her hands shaking slightly. It had been a strange day already; this was over the top.

"Nobody out there," Randall announced bitterly, coming back through the door. His blue scrub suit and sparse hair were completely soaked with rain, and his ordinarily unflappable face was now a pale shade of red, which Leigh knew to mean he was at his maximum anger point. He pounded across the reception area to the desk phone, now crunching glass heedlessly beneath his feet. "Twice in one weekend!" He exclaimed while he dialed, his voice strained.

"What happened?" Nancy had come up from the basement office and stopped at the doorway, her eyes wide. Jared stood behind her, looking equally perplexed.

"It was a rock," Leigh responded. "Somebody threw a rock through the window."

The veterinarian's eyes fixed briefly on the object in his daughter's hands, then his call was answered. "Hello? Yes, this is Dr. Koslow at the animal clinic. We’ve been vandalized again—"

Nikki grabbed Leigh's wrist and took a look at the rock herself. "Jeez," she muttered. "What gives?"

Leigh wished she knew. Ricky Rhodis' little adventure might be explained away harmlessly enough, but hurtling a rock through a window was a prank of a different color; someone could have been hurt.

Was the message intended for her father? As the clinic owner he was the obvious target, but Dr. Koslow wasn't the type of person who liked keeping other people's secrets, much less harboring ones of his own. Belatedly worrying about covering up fingerprints, she leaned down and dropped the rock on top of the chair.

"Is that writing I saw on it?" Randall asked, hanging up the phone and crunching back across the room.

It was no accident that Leigh had dropped the rock print-side down. She faced her father and nodded grimly. "It says, '
If the truth comes out—I'll kill you.'"

Chapter 4

The rain had let up by evening, and as Leigh climbed out of the Cavalier in church dress number one, she was glad. She had no idea what type of apparel one wore to a will-reading, particularly when nobody was completely sure the individual in question was dead. But she figured a nice, blue, hundred-percent cotton number could pass by in most crowds without drawing an eyebrow.

She paused a moment beside her car to ogle the Murchison mansion. By modern suburban standards, its square footage was nothing to brag about. But in terms of aura, the house was huge. It was one of the oldest and stateliest mansions in the distinguished riverside borough of Ben Avon, and that was nothing to sneeze at. A dark, second-empire creation with three stories, a mansard roof, and ghoulish-looking bracketing around the large windows and under the eaves, it evoked images of everything from haunted wine cellars to dusty attics filled with dotty old uncles. Like most houses on the steep, populated river bluff, it had little yard to speak of, but every inch of what it did have was ruthlessly hemmed in by dense, aging shrubbery. The main entrance was not even visible from the road, as the narrow brick walk zigzagged through a series of tall hedgerows. Even the entrance to the quaint two-story garage was concealed; the driveway pulled off from the side road at an acute angle and immediately disappeared behind a line of evergreens.

Lilah Murchison liked her privacy.

Leigh hadn't taken a step before a disturbingly familiar sedan rattled up behind her, rolled two wheels onto the grass, and stopped with a disturbing "whomp." Adith Rhodis popped out instantly. "Honey!" she began in a fluster. "I've been trailing you ever since your driveway. Didn't you see me? I was trying to get your attention. Danged horn's out."

Leigh imagined with horror the older woman swerving all over the road behind her. As preoccupied as her mind was, she hadn't seen a thing. "I'm glad you're okay," she said with relief. "What’s up?"

Adith looked at her disbelievingly. "What's up? That's what I'd like to know! I haven't heard from you all day, and you know I hate those phone machines. Did you talk to your Daddy? What did he say?"

Leigh sighed and dove into an explanation that was complicated, and not necessarily encouraging. Because although her father had backed off his insistence that the break-in was drug related, the rock incident had made him considerably less inclined to welcome Ricky Rhodis back onto the streets.
Not just yet, anyway
, he had said firmly as he scuttled off to Hershey.
Too many unanswered questions.

Which is why she had decided to push her luck by showing up at the Murchison mansion a little early. She finished her explanation to Adith as gently, yet realistically, as possible, and was surprised to see the older woman's eyes light up with optimism. "Told you my boy doesn't do drugs!" she chortled. "Didn't I tell you? Everything will be all right, then. Your daddy will come to his senses soon."

Leigh smiled politely, then looked pointedly at her watch, hoping the older woman would take the hint. She should have known better.

"Albert and Lilah Murchison's house," Adith murmured, looking it over with such reverence that Leigh halfway expected her to genuflect. Instead, she spat into a palm. "Never thought I'd see the day." Rubbing her wetted hands together, she made a futile attempt to tame the white-gray hair that sprang straight out from her head. "Oh my. The girls will
love
this."

Leigh tried not to panic. "Mrs. Rhodis," she began carefully. "You can't go in with me. I'm only here as a proxy for my father."

The older woman waved away the concern as if shooing a gnat. "Oh, honey. Don't you worry about that. We'll just say I'm your aunt."

"But—"

"Now, look, child," Adith continued firmly, adjusting her polyester dress over her ample bosom. "I've lived in these boroughs for seventy-eight years now, and I haven't once been in one of these Ben Avon mansions, much less
the
mansion of
the
Lilah Murchison, who wouldn't let her best friend in on Christmas if she had one, which she never did. Now she's dead and doesn't care and I'm alive and do—and I'm going in that house with you and you aren't going to stop me." She paused, then donned her sweetest little-old-lady smile. "Now. Are you ready, hon?"