Feline Fatale (20 page)

On other visits, she was invited inside to play while I did the cleaning and feeding before I could join in the charming canine games. I noted everything, as always, in my pet-sitting journal after returning to my car.

Eventually, we were back inside the security gate at home. I looked toward the main house, and the lights were low. Apparently neither Russ nor Rachel was there; I wasn’t sure about Beggar.

Lexie and I headed up the stairs to our home-sweet-garage, and as I walked, I called Rachel to see how she was doing with her pet-sitting assignments of the day.

“Hi, Kendra!” she enthused as I reached into my pants pocket and extracted the door key I’d stuck into it. “I’m on my way home. I’ve finished up for today.” She gave me a rundown of all the pets she’d visited and cosseted that day as Lexie and I entered our apartment.

“Sounds good.” I stuck my large purse in the same spot I always did these days—on a shelf at the bottom of the small decorative table in my tiny entry. I waited before saying good-bye, just in case Rachel had something else to tell me—like, she and her dad had located the perfect house to buy and they’d be leaving next week.

I’d been assuming that was coming any moment lately. But she didn’t say it tonight.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I went into the kitchen to feed Lexie her dinner. I wasn’t sure what to do about mine, though it was late enough that I doubted I’d have a date tonight.

Even so, I called the only person in my date book these days.

“Hi, Kendra.” Dante’s warm, deep voice sounded like he was happy to hear from me.

“Hi, yourself. Any chance of us getting together tonight?” Like, was he in the mood for a nice, romantic dinner and some quality time? I didn’t say all that, but figured he could hear it in my purposely throaty tone.

“I’d love it, but I can’t. Unless you can come here, but even then—I’ve another early morning video conference with the East Coast. And right after that, some potential suppliers are coming to my office to pitch some new products that actually sound quite good. And—”

“I get it.”

I had sunk into one of the chairs around my minuscule, round kitchen table. My heart had sunk as well. No Dante tonight.

Was he starting to make excuses?

Not that I expected to see him every night.

And then a fact I hadn’t considered dawned on me. “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” I suddenly reminded him.

“Don’t I know it.” He sounded neither surprised nor happy about it. “A corporate executive’s job is never done, just like a pet-sitter’s. Or a lawyer’s, for that matter.”

“But what about your employees? Don’t they get Saturdays off?”

“You forget—we’re in retail. Doesn’t matter if we’re office types. We need to stay available. My conference call will include a few store managers to get their input, and the sales reps know that to encourage people to buy the products they represent, you meet them at their convenience.”

“Right.” I attempted to interject cheerfulness into my tone. “So, well . . . have fun.” Like,
see ya
.
Whenever
.

“I don’t like this, Kendra,” Dante growled into my ear. “You know, if we were living together, we’d see a lot more of each other, even at our busiest times.”

I couldn’t think of anything frothy and pithy to say, so I stayed quiet. I had too much on my mind already to deal with this issue now.

“No response?” he asked with a sigh. “I figured. Okay, how about this: Can we get together for dinner tomorrow night? You choose the location, near your place or mine. We can spend the night together, too, if you’re all right with that.”

“I’m more than all right with it, Dante,” I told him from deep inside my heart.

I would definitely look forward to it.

 

I DIDN’T EXPECT to speak with anyone else that night. I watched some interesting but unrealistic dramas on TV, then some news—equally interesting and unrealistic.

As I started thinking about bed, my cell phone rang. Had Dante called to say good night?

Nope. The number wasn’t his, but Althea’s. Her boss, Jeff, used to call around the same time when we were together and he was out of town. Was this an attempt to remind me of him?

“Hi, Kendra,” she said when I answered. “How’ve you been? Where’ve you been? Solved your latest murder?”

“How did you know I’m working on one?” I demanded.

I had of course considered asking Althea to assist me soon after Margaret’s murder, but after that I’d begun to depend on Brody. And he had been enlisted by Dante for this duty.

“Just guessing,” she said with a laugh. “But I’ve missed hearing from you. Need any computer research done on this one?”

“Thanks for asking,” I said. “I’ve been trying to approach research from a different angle, but of course no one is as great as you at finding stuff.”

A compliment that might not be entirely true. Dante depended on Brody, and from what I’d learned about him, Brody was probably as thorough online as Althea. That probably meant, even if he wasn’t as fast, that he was an equivalently skilled hacker. Not to mention film star, judge on
Animal Auditions
, and former underground government agent.

My lovely grandmother-age friend Althea couldn’t compete with all of that, but neither did she have to.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I mostly just called to say hi. And to let you know that if you do need any research, I’d be glad to help. Just so you know, Jeff’s out of town for a couple of weeks, so I can’t even charge you a fee of getting together with him.”

“Who’s watching Odin?” I asked without thinking. Odin was Jeff’s wonderful Akita, the reason I’d met Jeff in the first place. They’d been my initial pet-sitting clients when I’d needed a second career after my law license was suspended.

“Oh . . .” I could hear the hesitation in Althea’s voice, although I suspected this was the underlying reason for her call. I had to assume Jeff had enlisted a different pet-sitter. Which might be a good thing. He’d seemed inclined to attempt to win me back, but I’d remained adamantly against the idea for a while, instead acting as if we were friends. “Well, he hired someone else to stay in his home while he’s gone. I don’t think she’s a member of your pet-sitting club, but you’ll have to ask him.”

“That’s fine, as long as whoever it is takes good care of my buddy Odin.”

There was a slight pause in the conversation as I sought something else to say. I assumed Althea did, too.

I hated that. We’d been friends for a while. I might have hurt her feelings by asking for someone else’s help, and she probably thought she’d hurt mine by telling me obliquely that Jeff was finally moving on—at least as far as pet-sitting went.

But I was fine. And I didn’t want to lose her as a friend. And . . .

Hey! There
was
someone I needed information on, whom Brody so far knew nothing about.

“You know, there
is
one person I wanted to ask you to check on for me, Althea.”

“Yes?” She sounded excited.

“The thing is, I only recently realized that even though I’ve been acquainted with her for a while, I don’t know her last name. But knowing you, you’ll figure it out. Could you please give me all you can find about a woman named Kiki? She’s a sometime actress, although I don’t know any roles she might have gotten. Her current job is as an animal caretaker at Doggy Indulgence Day Resort.”

“That’s the place you take Lexie, isn’t it? Your friend Darryl owns it. Can you ask him Kiki’s last name?”

“I don’t want him to know what I’m up to, Althea, or even suspect it. Please just see if, even without her last name, you can find anything at all on Kiki.”

ON SATURDAY MORNING, I brought Lexie along as I accomplished my earliest pet-sitting visits. Then we headed for Burbank. I needed to hand the keys back to Wanda for the condos where I’d pet-sat yesterday on my friend’s behalf, though I thought some of those she’d handed me might be duplicates.

“Thanks, Kendra,” Wanda said, meeting me at the door to her condo unit after buzzing me in. “Hi, Lexie.” She made a fuss over my adorable Cavalier, and I did the same with her Basil. I drew the line at hugging and petting Darryl, though, when he appeared behind them in the entry.

“Have you figured out yet who killed Margaret?” he asked with obvious hope.

Even if I hadn’t already known how hard this all was on him, I’d have guessed it from the bags beneath my buddy’s eyes.

“Still working on it,” I assured him.

“Would you mind coming along with me on a couple of visits, Kendra?” Wanda asked. “Lexie can stay here with Basil.” And with Darryl, which was, I assumed, the main reason she’d invited me—for a discussion out of his earshot.

“Fine,” I said. I couldn’t stay long, since I still had the rest of my own morning pet-sitting visits to do, but I’d hang out as long as possible to lend any moral support I could to my friend. I had some questions for her, too. Like what did Detective Melamed ask her yesterday? Did she happen to mention my call about Paulino Shiler? Had Wanda been finally dismissed from the suspect list?

We walked down the hall, heading, it appeared, toward Lady Cuddles’s unit. “Yesterday was the pits,” Wanda began, slowing her pace.

“I’ll bet,” I responded encouragingly.

The questions she’d been asked this time weren’t much different from the last time—more about why she just happened to go into Margaret’s apartment, where she had discovered her dead body. Why they’d been arguing, since their verbal feud, commonly known around the condos, had been reported by a rash of residents. Where she had been earlier on the night Margaret was killed, which I had subtly inquired about before, too. She’d told me she was doing her regular pet-sitting, at Brigadoon and elsewhere, although the animals couldn’t give her much of an alibi. Presumably that’s what she’d also told the cops, too. Wow, they apparently hoped she’d step all over what she had answered before, so they could leap on that as a sign of her guilt.

But, she confirmed, nothing in her responses had changed.

The detective hadn’t mentioned Paulino’s attempted burglary yesterday. The first Wanda heard about it was when I had called early that morning to let her know I would be at her unit soon.

Wanda was still, apparently, a suspect. The detective had assured Wanda she’d be in touch again soon.

Some action on my part was needed, and I’d been working on ideas for what that should be.

We had just reached the door to the unit containing Lady Cuddles. I backed up a little so I’d be primed to catch the elusive kitty if she happened to get by Wanda, who unlocked the door.

As soon as she pulled it open, though, it wasn’t a zooming Lady Cuddles who greeted us, but a tall guy frowning behind his glasses. He wore khaki shorts and no shirt, strange on this cool January day. “Wanda!” he exclaimed.

At the same time, she squeaked, “Jamiel.” They obviously knew each other. I hoped they’d fill me in soon, though I had more than a hunch who the guy was: Lady Cuddles’s owner, and therefore the resident of this unit, finally home from his trip.

“Sorry we didn’t call you,” Jamiel said. “We took an overnight flight from Honolulu and just got back.” He turned and called behind him, “Trudy, Wanda’s here.” He then looked at me, then, expectantly, to Wanda.

She hastily introduced us. “Kendra helped me take care of Lady Cuddles a couple of times. She’s the one I mentioned to you by e-mail.”

“Great. Good to meet you.” Jamiel waved us into the unit, which I’d visited before. In layout, it resembled the others I’d seen in this building: Wanda’s and James’s and the one previously belonging to Margaret Shiler. It had a small entry leading into the living room, with a hallway to one side. Its furnishings were pleasant but not necessarily plush, with an ornate set of wooden shelves along one wall containing bric-a-brac and a TV. The hardwood floor, partly covered by a rug, was much more decorative than those I’d seen in other Brigadoon units.

Jamiel asked us to sit down. Before we did, a woman entered from behind us, Lady Cuddles snuggled in her arms. Jamiel’s turn to make some introductions.

Trudy Gustin was clearly of Asian ancestry, with thin, dark brows over lovely almond eyes, and facial features that suggested she could easily win beauty contests. She was clad in a slinky silken robe. “Thank you both for taking care of our little one, here. Only . . .”

Uh-oh. Was she about to castigate us for allowing Lady Cuddles to run around the condo complex? Other residents could have filled her in. Or, more likely, Wanda had kept her informed.

“Is something wrong?” Wanda sounded fearful that she had indeed done something to hurt the kitty. She sank onto a chair.

“Not really.” But Trudy’s questioning tone suggested otherwise. “But—well, she’s wearing a different collar and name tag. What happened to the ones she had before?”

Ah! I’d intended to quiz Wanda just a bit about the timing of when Lady Cuddles’s gear had gone missing. Now I didn’t have to bring it up myself.

“Actually,” Wanda said, “I don’t know where they went. She was wearing them on the first days I took care of her, and then . . . well, on one of her runs through the condo she appeared to have lost them.”

“I’m so glad Wanda replaced them so quickly,” I interjected on her behalf, sitting on a chair next to Wanda. “With Lady Cuddles escaping from here as much as she did, I’d hate to think what could have happened if she’d been out without any identification at all.”

“True,” Trudy said thoughtfully, heading gracefully toward the sofa. “I liked her original stuff better, but it won’t hurt to have a backup if I try to replace the original ones.”

“Right,” I said. “And while we’re on the subject . . . Wanda, do you happen to remember when you first noticed that Lady Cuddles’s collar was missing?”

I held my breath. Would she remember—and would it be the timing I was counting on?