Fine-Feathered Death (7 page)

“This bird will undoubtedly get even more upset in wholly unfamiliar surroundings,” Polly assured Noralles. “I know she was present at a murder scene, but in the interest of keeping her as healthy as possible, she must stay in a soothing environment. Like this kitchen.”

“I’ll allow it for now,” Noralles said irritably, but the way he hazarded a reluctant glance at Gigi, I suspect he was relieved he had an expert’s directive to allow him not to deal much with the emotional bird. “But I’ll still have to clear it with Animal Services.”

Of course, Noralles used the sudden quiet to remember that he hadn’t finished interrogating me. I told him all I knew about Ezra, his friends, acquaintances, and enemies—that latter including, after last night, the entire community of Vancino.

Eventually, Ned released the Yurick gang. He insisted that we stay out of the building for the rest of the day while the Scientific Investigation Division dudes concluded their scrutiny, but said he’d try to have everything but Ezra’s office cleared for use again tomorrow.

I figured that Lexie and I would head for home-sweet-garage—our apartment on the grounds of the big, beautiful house I now leased to Beggar’s owner.

But there was somewhere else I wanted to stop first.

 

KNOWING THAT BOTH Lexie and I could use a little TLC—Tenderness, Loyalty, and Canines—I aimed my Beamer for the Doggy Indulgence Day Resort, a day-care facility on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City owned by my dearest friend in the world, Darryl Nestler.

Thin, lanky Darryl was at the front desk of the domain over which he reigned as alpha male, despite his beta-sweet demeanor.

As I walked in the door, Darryl gave me one of his big, open grins. As usual, he wore one of his signature Henley-style green shirts with the Doggy Indulgence logo on the pocket. “Kendra! Lexie! I’m glad you’re here.”

As I headed into his outstretched arms and accepted a well-needed hug, I saw the sideways glance and eye roll from one of his canine caretakers: Kiki, a blond bombshell and starlet wannabe.

“Glad to see you, too, Kiki,” I said. “Lexie sure is.” I’d let my Cavalier off her leash, and she leaped on the reception counter, as if asking permission to peel off to one of the resort’s multiple play areas for pets—including a corner containing all sorts of doggy toys, and another with lots of people furniture to veg out on.

“Come on, Lexie.” Kiki walked with my Cavalier over the shiny, spotless pine floor toward the area where employees were engaged in endless games with ecstatic doggy charges.

“Believe it or not, she’s one of my best employees,” Darryl said.

“I believe it,” I acknowledged. “She might be awful to owners, but she’s great with the dogs. Have time for a chat?”

“About the latest murder?”

“You heard?”

“It’s on the news—a lawyer at your new firm. Soon as I was assured it wasn’t you, I wondered how you were involved.”

I sighed. “Yes, I do seem to be a murder magnet these days. Wish I could figure out a way to demagnetize myself.”

“Come into my office,” Darryl said. “I want to hear everything.”

I tailed him into his domain with its cluttered desk, and dumped my dejected self into the plush chair facing it. I gave Darryl a rundown of all that had happened starting from yesterday, omitting complications that could be considered attorney-client privileged.

As I finished talking about how Gigi finally quieted down, this time thanks to the advice of macaw maven Polly Bright, Darryl said, “Do you read mystery novels? Or watch detective shows on TV?”

I blinked. “Who has time?”

“Well, something struck me as you were talking. If your life was fiction that had taken these turns, know what?”

“What?” I was decidedly peeved and sounded it, since I knew Darryl was building up the drama. But heck, he was my friend. If he wanted to have some fun with my frazzled psyche, why not?

“If this was a novel, and a parrot was in the room where a murder was committed, all you’d have to do is to keep asking the bird some questions. In mysteries with parrots, they always reveal the clue that gives the killer away.”

Chapter Six

I WASN’T SURE whether Darryl was pulling my leg. On the other hand, he hadn’t said that birds of the parrot persuasion truly provided solutions to murders they’d witnessed, only that certain creative mystery authors asserted they did.

Might actual avians similarly repeat sounds, even words, they overheard in excessively emotional circumstances? As absurd as it sounded, it was an avenue I couldn’t omit exploring.

The hour was too late to leave Lexie in the excellent paws of Doggy Indulgence, so she and I headed off to my pet-sitting visits. I made sure to lavish ample attention on each of my charges. It wasn’t their fault that my mind churned around traumatic topics like Ezra’s untimely, ugly death, the dissatisfied client whose work I’d at least temporarily take over—and whether macaws might in actuality be able to disclose the identities of murderers.

As soon as I’d seen to my last canine customer, I aimed my auto back toward my office. “I hope that’s okay with you,” I said to Lexie. “But I really need to see Gigi as soon as I can.” Lexie wagged her tail and woofed her approval, so I felt guiltless as I drove westward.

It was nearly eight at night, so I figured no office staff would be around. But since we’d been promised access to the office building tomorrow, crime-scene investigators could still be there en masse. I doubted Noralles would still be around, nattering all night about how all nuances of the investigation should go. But without his otherwise unwelcome presence, I couldn’t be positive I’d be permitted inside.

I’d elicited parrot-care instructions and a cache of food from Polly before she’d pranced out of there, so I’d known what to feed the then-placid Gigi before I’d left. But I was still concerned about her. Blame the pet-sitter part of me.

I wasn’t surprised, when I arrived at the Yurick offices, to see lights on inside the onetime restaurant building. Or cars in the parking lot, too. Two.

No black-and-white cop cars, though, or L.A.P.D. Scientific Investigation Division vehicles. Nor were vans carrying media vipers still around. Thank heavens. Reporters of all meddling types had appeared soon after I had this morning. They’d hung about all day, trying to get someone to give them the scoop on the slaying inside the law office. I’d listened to some of the results on the radio while in my car. Lots of hype and innuendo—of course. But there’d been no hints of any eyewitnesses at all, let alone one with wings.

Somehow, I couldn’t buy that I’d get Gigi to testify about what she’d seen. In any event, the lights inside and cars in the lot proclaimed that others were present. The vehicles were familiar, so I doubted they were unmarked wheels of investigators. Plus, the entryways were unencumbered by crime-scene tape or dire keep-out caveats. Maybe the structure had already been released back into the law firm’s hands.

But who was here? Someone else concerned about Gigi? Or had some of the firm’s senior citizen attorneys grown guilty about being behind in billable hours?

Turned out to be kind of a combination of the two—and the second involved a paralegal, not a lawyer.

After assuring Lexie I wouldn’t be long and as always enlisting her unsurpassed skill in guarding our car, I headed inside. When I rambled behind the reception area toward the kitchen, my ears were once again bombarded by a blast of screeching emanating from that direction, so loud that I nearly missed hearing the soft, soothing sounds in the background.

The former, not unexpectedly, originated from Gigi. The quieter voice belonged to Elaine Aames. She stood outside Gigi’s cage, talking to the macaw, her shoulders hunched beneath the bird’s brow beating. “What are we going to do with you, gorgeous girl?” she said. Gigi didn’t slow her squawking as she hopped from one claw to the other. “You’ll need a new home now,” Elaine continued, “and I’d love to offer it to you, but I can’t unless you calm down.” Even that amazing invitation didn’t quiet Gigi. Elaine raised her voice. “Please, girl. You’ve got to—” Elaine shook her head in apparent disgust, and mid-shake she spotted me. “Hi, Kendra,” she called. “What are you doing here?”

I motioned her out into the hall, where, after I closed the door, Gigi’s screeches were somewhat muted. “I was worried about Gigi. I wanted to make sure she was okay for the night.”

“She’d be a lot better if she simmered down, but she’s safe and away from the worst of the excitement, at least.”

“Maybe,” I acknowledged. “And how are you doing?”

The older attorney seemed to have aged a lot more since Ezra’s departure. She was still well dressed in a white blouse and navy blue skirt, but both were rumpled, and her suit jacket was somewhere else. The exaggerated wrinkles wedged around her eyes and mouth looked like anything but laugh lines tonight. Her silver hair, usually with seldom a strand out of place, had wilted as if water-soaked.

I figured that Detective Ned Noralles or an equally insistent crony had put the poor older lawyer through the wringer with one of their nastier inquisitions. I might not have looked as wilted after something similar, but I was around half Elaine’s age. Or maybe I
had
looked as bad and had deluded myself otherwise.

“I was worried about Gigi, too,” Elaine said. “And myself, if I can be candid.” She sighed as I nodded my encouragement to her openness—while wondering what I was letting myself in for. “I spent most of the day at the West Valley Police Station, answering questions about my relationship with Ezra, my argument with him over the house, how I found him dead . . . But I figure you know how that goes. Borden told me over the phone how you were unjustly accused of murder a few months ago, and once he mentioned it, I remembered hearing about it in the news.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Fortunately, the truth came out. Of course, I had help. I hope you had a good criminal attorney with you.” I was wondering whether Elaine was yet another suspect to whom I’d need to refer my good friend Esther Ickes, who’d helped me not only through my State Bar proceedings and bankruptcy, but also when I was suspected of murder. I’d suggested her to my tenants, too, when they were unjustly accused of aiding and abetting fatal ferrets.

Elaine assured me she’d had someone with her from her former firm—an attorney I’d never heard of, but she was satisfied with the young guy’s representation and counseling concerning cops.

“Anyway, after I checked with Borden and he said most of the building had been released by the police, I came to pick up my briefcase and other things I’d left earlier,” Elaine said. “And of course, to look in on Gigi. She was quiet, but when I put my hand on her cage, she immediately tried to bite my fingers. Then she started screaming again.”

Hmmm. If Darryl’s suggestion was sound, might that mean Gigi had seen Elaine bump off Ezra? But the bird started shrieking so often, and for no obvious reason, I couldn’t use that as a clue to suppose the worst of Elaine.

“I talked to Polly Bright,” Elaine continued. “She promised to stay on call and help us get Gigi through this terrible situation. She mentioned she had been here earlier today. I asked her to stop by again tomorrow, if she could.”

After my discussion with Darryl, I itched to ask Elaine, who’d spent at least part of this evening in Gigi’s company, if the bird had said anything at all that smacked of significance—like whom she’d seen slay Ezra . . . again assuming it wasn’t Elaine herself.

In the interest of discretion, though, I said, “I heard you tell Gigi you might want to adopt her.”

“For Ezra’s sake,” Elaine said, nodding as she winced once more at Gigi’s continued shouts from behind the kitchen door. “I might have fought with the guy, but I really cared for him.” She lifted her thin, wrinkled hands as if to stave off anticipated amazement. “Yes, I know he was abrasive and even nasty at times, but inside he was really quite sweet—once you got to know him.” Tears suddenly flooded her eyes. “And now you never will.”

I was slightly surprised when I grew similarly misty. But heck, I had seen another side of Ezra Cossner now and then. Maybe he
would
have grown on me even more had he lived.

“Anyway,” Elaine sniffed, “Ezra hasn’t much family left, and he was mostly estranged from the remaining ones.” Big surprise. “I don’t know whether he made arrangements for Gigi after his death—even if he didn’t anticipate it happening so soon, macaws can live a long time—but I’d love to adopt Gigi if I could get her to be more friendly with me. If I can’t even touch her cage, though, let alone move her outside it to a perch, I don’t think it would work for either of us. And those noises . . .”

As if on cue, Gigi’s screams seemed to intensify. Was she about to make some huge revelation about what she’d seen? I nearly yanked open the door. But then she started into a medley of “Gigi, gorgeous girl, gorgeous girl,” combined with wolf whistles. I sighed. If that was some kind of clue, I, for one, didn’t get it.

“Hi,” said a voice from around the reception area, loud enough to be heard over Gigi’s continued chorus. “I didn’t know you were here, Kendra. Is everything okay?” I turned away to see Corrie Montez standing there. She was clad in a sweater and jeans and a slew of file folders. Well, maybe the folders weren’t part of her outfit, but in the few times I’d seen the youthful paralegal since she’d joined the firm along with Ezra a few days ago, she’d always seemed to be clad in a bunch.

Corrie had short black hair, huge brown eyes, a largeish nose, and a small, ever-lipsticked red mouth. Ezra had stolen her from his former firm—another reason for them to be peeved with him.

I thought about Jonathon Jetts, the partner who’d shown up here yesterday and assailed Ezra for waltzing away with his former firm’s clients. Coming here with Corrie could have provided icing on the ill-willed cake. Could Jetts have been mad enough to murder Ezra?