Fine-Feathered Death (24 page)

I didn’t aim to point fingers toward my amiable and expressive friend Althea. Instead, I asked, “So how are things going with Amanda?”

He glared at me. “I swear to you, Kendra, I didn’t sleep with her. Either that night, or any other time since I’ve met you.”

“There’ve been some enjoyable nights when you haven’t
slept
with me, either,” I riposted in a juvenile attempt at a joke.

“I didn’t make love with her.” His teeth were gritted beside my ear, or so it sounded as he didn’t let me leave his arms. “I didn’t have sex with her. I didn’t—”

Saved by the bell. Or rather, by the tone of his cell phone. A song, one I’d heard often before.

He pulled away and answered it.

I looked him in the eye. He didn’t extract his steady gaze.

“Hi, Althea,” he said. “No, I’m not in custody. I’ve been released, although I may have to cancel that business trip I have scheduled starting tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, it sounds like a trite cop comedy, but I’m not supposed to leave town. Right. I’ll be at the office soon.” He snapped his cell phone shut. “That was Althea,” he said unnecessarily.

“So I gathered.”

“And I’m sure you heard that I’m not leaving town. Will Lexie and you come to my place tonight?”

“I don’t think so. That meeting I mentioned—”

“Won’t last all night. You’ll need to think of a better excuse.” The expression on the face I’d once considered damnably dear became bleak.

“I don’t need an excuse, Jeff,” I reminded him gently.

“No, you don’t.”

“But I’ll be there. For dinner. And then we’ll see.”

As I opened the door as a signal for him to exit, I saw Elaine strutting proudly down the hall, Gigi on her arm. At the same time, Jeff’s cell phone chimed again. The macaw looked at us and spread her wings wide. She let out a huge squawk, then started to sing.

I felt my eyes pop open in astonishment. And recognition. And a certain amount of shock.

The mostly unrecognizable tune she was tearing into?

A hoarse, unrhythmic and inharmonious rendition of the four initial notes of the catchy song on Jeff’s cell phone.

Chapter Twenty-three

MY REACTION MUST have been readily ascertainable, since Elaine said, “Kendra, is something wrong?”

At the same time Jeff inquired, “Are you okay, Kendra?”

“Kendra’s just ducky,” I responded, sticking a stupid smile on my face. “Glad Gigi’s doing so well, Elaine.”

Which she wasn’t. Not then. The macaw seemed eager to lift off from Elaine’s arm. The older woman kept her fastened down by some fingers on her back. Elaine turned and ducked into Ezra’s office, apparently ready to relinquish the bird to her cage.

“See you later, Jeff. Right now, I really need to get ready for my meeting.” The one with the ghoulies and ghosties playing ugly little games in my overimaginative mind. I fluttered my fingers in a wave goodbye, then shut my office door behind me.

I dove for the bookcase, where I’d left not only my favorite law tomes, but also a copy of one of Polly Bright’s parrot books. I looked in the index but wasn’t sure what I wanted to look up. Sounds? Repetition? Emotions?

Eventually I gave up on a rational approach and pulled open pages of the chapter on how members of the parrot family learn to talk.

Ah, there it was—pretty much as Polly had pointed out. Some parrot-types picked up not only people-type words, but also sounds . . . immediately when in an emotional situation.

Like murder.

Only . . . this book suggested that African Grey parrots and Amazons were the ones that repeated stuff precisely as they heard it. Macaws might learn to sing, and certainly could speak words, but they weren’t as apt to duplicate something heard during a disturbing state of affairs.

So why was Gigi using Jeff’s ring tone as her off-key aria? And was her squawking and flapping a reaction to running into the man with that phone?

She’d picked up the phrase “bottles of beer” fast.

Could Gigi, the only witness to both killings, have heard Jeff’s cell phone ring during one or both of the horrible happenings and picked up on the sound? Maybe macaws didn’t usually do that, but murder wasn’t a usual situation.

Jeff had admitted Amanda would lie for him. Maybe she already had. Maybe he hadn’t actually been in her company on either night. Maybe—

Hold on. Did I really believe Jeff was a killer?

He might be a louse as a lover, and absolutely abominable as a prospect for a permanent monogamous relationship, but a killer?

I just couldn’t buy it.

But I also couldn’t buy that this particular birdbrain of a witness could lie.

Worst of all, I’d already wondered if Ned Noralles read the same books and watched the same movies that Darryl did. I might convince myself to slough off the obvious answer regarding Gigi’s new song, but Noralles might not.

He was on his way here. He might want Gigi around, just in case she emitted some avian revelation.

Would Gigi’s terrible tune be used as incontrovertible evidence against Jeff?

 

I WAS STILL musing over all this when that same man slung his dejected body back into my office. “I almost forgot to show you,” he said.

“Show me what?”

“This.” He gestured for me to get up from my desk chair so he could plant his own trim behind in it. He turned to my computer. I didn’t have anything confidential sitting on the screen, so I let him commence kanoodling with my keyboard.

In less than a minute, he logged on to a website, and what looked like a black-and-white video came up on my computer.

“Here you go,” he said.

“
Where
I go?” I replied, then took a position at his shoulder overlooking the view.

And quickly chortled with glee. Until I gasped and growled, “Is that who I think it is, doing what I think he’s doing?”

“Yes, and yes,” Jeff responded, apparently able to interpret my imprecise inquiries. “It’s a video filmclip from the security camera my company installed at your request. I had my employee Buzz set it up as soon as you asked, doing it after dark so no one would see it.”

“Thank Buzz for me,” I said, recalling the tall dude with a shaved head I’d seen at Jeff’s office when I’d visited there. “He did a great job!”

“He sure did, and at a timely moment, too.”

“I’ll second that.”

The film showed Sheldon Siltridge, neighbor to my client Cal Orlando, tossing his own mail into Cal’s yard. Poor old Lester the basset hound must have seen the trespass, as he was intended to. He soon appeared, barreling across the footage, in time for Siltridge to whip a rolled-up newspaper from behind his back and start bopping the pup with it. Lester cowered at first, then got mad and started snapping.

“A sequence just like this must have led to Sheldon’s getting a bite taken out of him by Lester,” I crowed. “The bite he’s suing Cal about, the bastard. Oh, this is great. Willful misconduct, assumption of the risk . . . I’ll need a couple of copies and access to this website so I can send it on to Sheldon’s shyster lawyer, Jerry Ralphson.”

“I thought lawyers avoided calling each other shysters out of professional courtesy,” Jeff said.

“I do it only when the shoe fits damned snugly,” I told him.

“Like now?”

“Like now.” I couldn’t help it. I leaned over his substantial shoulder and gave him one heck of a kiss. Which he gave as good back. And that started me thinking that I just might decide to stay at his place for the night.

Only . . . even if I could ignore Amanda, there was a little matter to be reconciled between Jeff and Gigi. And Jeff’s cell phone.

“May I see your phone?” I asked him.

He gave me an odd look. “Sure, if you tell me why.”

“I just want to see whose numbers you have programmed in.” And listen to its unique, Althea-generated ring tone. And—”

“You’re in it. So is Amanda. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Well . . .” I didn’t want to go into my whole unwinding thought process yet, till I made sure my suspicions weren’t just planted by my unraveling mind. “Yeah, that’s it. Would you please bookmark that site for me on my computer and e-mail me the web address? Right now?”

“Okay.” He spoke slowly, as if he sensed I had something entirely separate in my brain. But he did as I asked . . . even as I slipped over to the side of my desk and lifted the phone receiver.

And called Jeff’s number.

And heard the
Magnum, P.I.
theme song ring tone. Gigi’s version consisted of a repetition of the first four notes, raspy and off-key, and without the catchy rhythm.

“It’s only me,” I said. “Checking to see where you keep your phone. Do all men stick it in their back pockets like that?”

He finished fiddling with my keyboard and stood. His dusty blond brows were knitted into one scorcher of a scowl. “I don’t know what you’re really up to, Kendra, but I know it has something to do with the murders—and whether you think I committed them.” He apparently either hadn’t heard Gigi’s rendition of his cell phone song or hadn’t a clue about the supposed significance. “Obviously you haven’t yet exonerated me, based on what Amanda’s said or otherwise.”

“I thought I had,” I said softly, my eyes staring at the light Berber carpet on my office floor.

“You know what? I think we should skip your visit tonight. I’m feeling a bit sick.”

I glanced up to meet his stony gaze.

“Good idea,” I said. “You ought to rest. I hope you feel better.”

Me, too,
I thought this time as I watched him walk out my office door.

 

NOW I REALLY did have a meeting to prepare for. After Jeff left, my anguish segued into anger, and I made a few phone calls. The first was to my client Cal Orlando, who didn’t know the Internet from a basketball net, but had a brother who successfully surfed all day. I told him where to find the case-finishing film, then called opposition counsel, Jerry Ralphson. I likewise reeled off the web address to him and suggested a time that afternoon for all parties to meet and confer. And if all went as spiffily as I anticipated, settle.

I ordered the others, in the nicest way possible, to come to my home turf, my office, where it’d be even more obvious who ruled. My client and I held all the cards.

At precisely 4 P.M., Cal Orlando arrived with Lester on a leash. I’ve often subscribed to the saying that people choose pups who resembled them, but not so in Cal’s case. Lester, the basset hound, had long, bedraggled ears and wonderfully woeful eyes. Cal was cool—optimistic, upbeat, and obviously fit, the kind of chap who, when not working, spent all his waking hours at a gym. Nothing bedraggled about him, and he smiled often to reveal his straight white teeth. We strategized for a short while in my office, then headed to the bar-turned-conference room.

I wasn’t exactly an electronics whiz, but I’d learned a lot about presentations thanks to my years of courtroom performances. As a result, I ensured that I had everything ready, so when Mignon announced that the other parties were present, I started the show: a life-size projection of the damning video right on a bare wall.

Jerry and his client, the self-proclaimed bite victim Sheldon Siltridge, entered the room just as the video Lester bounded up to that very same Sheldon, the vicious neighbor who’d strewn his own mail on Lester’s turf. In seconds, as the others took seats around the conference table, Sheldon—skinny and scowling and an all-around miserable character—was seen striking Lester with a rolled-up newspaper.

“Hello, gentlemen,” I said, proud that only a hint of satisfaction slipped from my tone. “First, I’d like to refer you to page forty-six of the transcript of Mr. Siltridge’s deposition. There’s a copy at each of your places at the table.”

Jerry Ralphson had a buzz cut and bow tie—both of which might have set him apart before a jury, but neither appeared particularly snazzy here. I watched as his superior and slyly confident gaze stuck on the video on the wall, and then moved uneasily down to the depo. He turned to the page I’d designated, blanched, then bade his client to read what he’d run into.

“I trust you saw the website even before you got here today?” I asked Jerry. He nodded nastily. “And are you now paying attention to the part of the depo in which Mr. Siltridge says he never baited Lester by tossing things into his yard? And that he absolutely never struck the dog, whether with a newspaper or anything else? Of course the stenographer administered the appropriate oath before we began our deposition. Can anyone here say ‘perjury’?”

Jerry Ralphson sat up straight and glared at me, as if I were the one in the wrong. “My client never consented to be photographed, Ms. Ballantyne.”

“These were taken with a security camera aimed only on my client’s own property, Jerry. For his peace of mind and safety, and all that. Don’t bother posturing.”

But my admonishment fell on ears that had elected to stay deaf. “And whatever this film shows,” he continued, “which is unclear, very poor quality, it had to have been taken after the deposition. Long after the dog bite at issue. And after your client gave Mr. Siltridge the idea of acting in such a way. He’d never have done so before, but the bite, and these proceedings, have been hard on him. He—”

“Forget the sob story, Jerry. And stop cluing your client on how to testify. Here’s what we want. Your client drops the suit and pays Mr. Orlando the amount of my fees plus expenses, plus another five thousand dollars for Cal’s pain and suffering, they sign a settlement agreement in which Mr. Siltridge admits no wrongdoing but promises never to enter Mr. Orlando’s property again for any reason—mail, female, or neutral—or to get within fifty feet of Lester, and we’re happy as basset hounds.”

Jerry glanced at Sheldon Siltridge, whose white face seemed stricken. Sheldon only stared back at Jerry.

“A moment alone with my client,” Jerry commanded.