Never Tease a Siamese: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (9 page)

"For heaven's sake, dear!" Frances crooned, her eyes wide as she hurried up the walkway. "Whatever are you doing here? Is Warren all right?"

Leigh forced a smile. Frances Koslow's lifelong fear of her daughter's accidental and/or foolish demise was topped only by her concern for her sainted son-in-law.

"Warren's fine, Mom," she assured. "He'll be back from Philly tomorrow night. I just need to talk to Dad."

Frances eyed her daughter skeptically, then turned her penetrating gaze back on her husband. "What's going on? Is something up at the clinic?"

"Everything's fine, dear," Randall said mechanically, making his way into the house with a suitcase in each hand and another one under his arm. "Number One Son doesn't need surgery again, does he?" he asked Leigh quietly as he passed her.

"No," she answered. "I mean, not as far as I know. I haven't heard."

Randall nodded and disappeared into the house.

"Exactly what do you need to talk to your father about?" Frances questioned, carrying two shopping bags into the kitchen and depositing them on the table. "And why don't you try parting your hair on the other side for a change?"

Leigh chose to ignore the second question. As for the first, her father had obviously not found his mention in the will of a millionaire to be sufficiently interesting to tell his wife about. Typical. "It has to do with Lilah Murchison," she admitted.

"Your father told me about the plane crash," Frances said heavily. "Tragic. But what does that have to do with you?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Leigh caught her father escaping into the basement. She couldn't really blame him for avoiding her. The taciturn veterinarian had, after all, just completed a four-hour car ride with her mother. But talk he would, and now, or the impending explosion of her brain would realize Frances’s every fear.

"Later, Mom," she answered over her shoulder, taking off toward the basement door. She caught up with Randall at his tiny workshop, where he was busily engaged at screwing something into something else. "Dad," she began almost breathlessly, "you've got to hear what happened last night."

She first related his role in the will, and was gratified to find him pleasantly surprised about the money earmarked for feline causes. He was less enthused about the Siamese guardian role, though it did not seem to surprise him. What did surprise him was what wasn't supposed to.

"How could you think I would know something like
that
?" he asked her in amazement. "In thirty years I never said a word to that woman about anything besides her cats. Why would I?"

She looked back at him in confusion. "But you have to know
something
about the heir, Dad. Maybe you just don't realize it. Why else would someone be threatening you to keep quiet?"

Randall finished whatever he was doing with the screwdriver and started sanding instead. "I don't believe anyone is," he said calmly. "It was just a prank."

Leigh launched into a quick explanation of everything she had learned about Mrs. Murchison's son and his likely role in the foiled kidnapping of the Siamese, but it did not make much of an impression. "I assure you that whatever is going on with the woman's heirs," he said finally, "it has nothing to do with me." He took a breath and put down the sandpaper for a moment. "But I do believe now that Ricky Rhodis was probably after Mrs. Murchison's cat, and it sounds like there's a good chance he was doing it for her son. So, no harm done. His grandmother can deal with the moral issue; as for the criminal charges, I'll drop them first thing tomorrow."

He cleared his throat, and turned to face her. "Now. No offense, but—."

"I know, I know," Leigh interrupted. "Introvert attack. I'm gone. But you should know that I'm going to run all this by Maura, and see if she thinks you're in any real danger from that rock thrower." She paused. "You'll listen to her opinion, won't you?"

Randall offered a perfunctory wave as he took out his electric sander and flipped it on to high speed.

She took the hint.

***

Leigh knew perfectly well that, with boxes still piled to the ceiling in her toasterless new house, she had absolutely no business going to visit an old woman she barely knew in a shabby boarding house in Avalon’s neighboring borough of Bellevue. But here she was. Her father might be determined not to take recent events seriously, but someone had to.

Randall wouldn't lie to her about not knowing the identity of Lilah's Murchison's heir, she was certain about that. But it was not improbable that he had information he didn’t know he had. She knew her father's work habits well enough to know that Lilah could have confessed serial murder to him, and if he was in the middle of administering ear mite medication, he wouldn't remember a word of it. Furthermore, three decades of living with her mother had given the man a nearly infallible female chatter detector, and when the alarm went on, his brain shut off.

But she was determined to get some questions answered or bust, and first on her list was whether Dean Murchison, or his equally charming wife, was indeed responsible for the threat on the rock. She wanted to think so, primarily because she suspected that the duo's bark was worse than its bite, but it bothered her that the rock had been thrown before the will reading. Had Dean and Rochelle had an inside scoop? If so, they had done a darn good job of acting surprised in front of the lawyer.

She knocked on the flimsy wooden rim of the boarding house's screen door, but in looking through it, realized no one was likely to answer. The door opened into a bare corridor, off of which came a staircase and four other doors, each marked with a number on a cheap square decal. She entered tentatively, having no idea which room belonged to Peggy Linney, the woman Lilah's will had identified as her "most devoted" housekeeper. She was lucky the woman's name and address were even listed in the phone book. But given Mrs. Linney's age, it seemed a good bet that she might have worked in the mansion around the time  Dean was born. And given the woman's comment of the night before, Leigh couldn't shake the feeling that this was one employee Ms. Lilah had kept in the loop.

Things had happened pretty fast after the lawyer had dropped the mystery-heir bombshell, but Leigh did remember that it was the otherwise-somnolent Peggy Linney who had been the first to speak. "I don't believe it," the elderly woman had said softly. And they were reasonable words to say. But the phrase had hit Leigh, even at the time, as having an unexpected tone. One that implied it wasn't Dean's parentage she questioned—so much as the fact that Lilah was admitting it.

Maybe Leigh had been the only one to pick up on that, and maybe she hadn't. But she was certain it had not been her imagination.

She cast her eyes around the inside of the front door, but there were no mailboxes or buzzers to help her identify the right room. Having no better idea, she stepped up to door number one, ready to knock. But before her knuckles had struck the thin wood, an elderly man with a brace of salt-and-pepper schnauzers began descending the stairs.

Leigh stepped over with a smile. "Hello," she greeted. "I'm looking for Peggy Linney. Could you tell me which apartment is hers, please?"

The man threw her a long, critical glance, leaving his schnauzers ample leeway to sniff her shoes. The dogs must have had little interest in cats, because once their examination was complete they dismissed her entirely and pulled hard for the front door. "Number two," the man said gruffly as the leashes pitched him forward.

Leigh knocked on the door at the end of the hallway, and a gravelly voice answered immediately. "Who is it?"

She cleared her throat. "It's Leigh Koslow, Dr. Koslow's daughter from the vet clinic. I was at Mrs. Murchison's will reading last night; I wondered if I could talk to you for a minute."

"About what?" The grating voice didn't miss a beat.

"About my father," Leigh said, thinking quickly. "I'm afraid he might be in danger, and I think you might be able to help me figure out why." There was no response for moment, and she bit her lip anxiously. The poor woman had no good reason to talk to her, and Leigh knew it. Still, her gut instincts said that the best way to get the truth out of Peggy Linney would be to tell it herself.

After a long pause and some shuffling noises, she heard a latch click, and the door swung slowly open. The woman who had fallen asleep at the will reading stood with one hand on the door knob and the other on a tattered walker. She surveyed her visitor critically from head to toe, her nose squinched up slightly as though smelling something unpleasant.

"Come on in," she said gruffly.

Chapter 7