Authors: Linda O. Johnston

Meow is for Murder (10 page)

BOOK: Meow is for Murder

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“It’s a chick flick about a mother and three daughters,” she explained as she pulled away, “and I play their next door neighbor who’s the same age as the oldest. Daughter, that is, not the mother. I’m on camera four times, and I have at least a couple of lines, too. I’m so excited!”

“Justifiably.”

How could I do anything but feel happy for someone so young and optimistic? Was I ever there? At her age, I’d been intensely immersed in undergraduate studies, since I’d planned all along on law school. But surely I’d been as certain as she that every nuance of my fondest dreams would come true and my life would be spectacular.

Well, hell. Most of the time it was. Or had been. And these days it was absolutely getting back on track—even if my caboose was headed in a way different direction than I’d initially anticipated.

“So when does shooting start?” I asked.

“Soon. Not right away, so I’ll still be able to do some pet-sitting. But for when I can’t, here’s some help—I hope.” She reached into her tote bag and extracted what appeared to be a tabloid news-simulator . . . er, newspaper.

Instinctively, I yanked my hands away, causing a gleam of indignation to appear on Rachel’s gamin face.

“It’s for you,” she insisted. “Look.” She yanked the pages open and scanned down some columns until she spied what she was searching for. “Here.” She pointed to something in a calendar section.

I looked at the top of the page first. This wasn’t a tabloid but a throwaway sheet from a neighborhood on L.A.’s west side.

And the entry to which Rachel was pointing?

It was a notice of the supposed second meeting of a group calling itself the Pet-Sitters Club of SoCal, claiming it was a new professional organization. The group would get together this Wednesday evening.

A professional pet-sitters’ group? Hey, what an intriguing idea!

Rachel must have read the interest on my face. “See? If you go there, maybe you’ll meet others who can help you out when I can’t.”

“Rachel, you’re the greatest.” And this time, I was the initiator of a huge hug.

Causing a jealous jump from my currently ignored canine. Both Rachel and I bent to rectify that sorry situation.

“I’ll walk Widget tomorrow,” Rachel said. “Any other pets you’d like me to check on?”

“Sure,” I said. “Come up to our place, and we’ll work out who goes where.”

AND SO LEXIE and I got an even later start on our late-day pet-sitting service, which didn’t much matter since Rachel took over two of the visits.

Adorable assistant!

Especially since she’d given me a hint on how to recruit her replacement—if necessary.

I’d kept the Stromboli assignment to myself. I really liked Dana Maroni’s well-trained shepherd mix. And my insatiable curiosity and canine-loving led me to want to check on his apparently lonely next door neighbor.

Sure enough, Stromboli seemed excited to see me. Or at least his supper. With Lexie waiting patiently—I hoped—for me in the Beamer, Stromboli and I took a nice, exercise-energizing walk through his flat residential neighborhood.

I peered through a back window into the neighbor’s yard before and after our evening stroll. Sure enough, that middle-sized wire-haired pup was there both times. Alone. Tethered to something near his back door.

Didn’t the people who lived there ever let him in? Or even, if he was a dedicated outside dog, didn’t they show him some occasional appreciation in that large, lonely yard?

I’d have to ask Dana on her return, scheduled for later in the week.

Meanwhile . . . well, okay, I admit it. I’m a big softy, especially when it comes to apparently abandoned dogs. After settling Stromboli back in his abode, I went into his backyard and looked at the neighbor’s dog.

He looked back at me, ears down and dejected.

“Can you come here?” I asked him.

He appeared to perk up a whole lot at the attention, and he did extend his lead far enough to reach the yard-dividing fence.

I looked around, in case his owners were around and interested enough to chastise me for calling him.

No movement at all from that house.

So I reached into my pocket and gave the pup a biscuit. Bad form for a professional pet-sitter? You bet! How would I know if this particular pup had a major biscuit allergy?

I doubted he did, and this was a fairly vanilla kind of doggy cracker.

The dog obviously appreciated it. I noticed, close up, just how skinny he was, too.

Was someone starving him, not only for attention, but for food, too?

I’d have to find out. If I called Animal Control, though, they might remove him and then not be able to find him a suitably loving home.

And what if I was wrong, and all was right with this neighboring dog?

For now, I’d just wait and see what happened as I continued to visit Stromboli.

FINALLY IT WAS time for Lexie and me to head to Odin’s place. Jeff’s place, too, although we went there for the lonesome pup that night, and not his mind-taxing master.

The adorable Akita was delighted to see us, and we three engaged in a fast-paced tramp beneath the streetlights in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood, both to settle the pups’ evening evacuation urges and to exercise my beleaguered brain into exhaustion.

The last part didn’t work too well.

Even so, I took my shower and prepared for bed. Good thing I’d brought along a folder full of cases downloaded from the Yurick firm’s online legal service. Since elder law was the firm’s focus, I was determined to learn all I could about how courts viewed senior citizens. I’ve recognized, after long experience, that case law isn’t the most stimulating of reading material, unless one concentrates on the human aspect of who did what to whom. Even then, clerks assigned to appellate judges tend to be detailed and dry in their writing—and they’re the ones who do at least the initial drafting of published decisions.

As anticipated, my eyelids started sinking after only a few minutes of studying the pages.

I’d nearly fallen asleep, canine companions snoring on the floor beneath the bed, when my cell phone sang.

I stared at it, charging at its place on the bedside stand, for a few seconds. This was the time that Jeff usually called to make some sexy insinuations before we both dropped off to sleep, but our last conversation had surely snuffed out any sizzling embers between us, at least for now.

But as I glanced at the caller ID, I saw that it indeed was the owner of the home and the bed in which I reposed.

“Hi, Jeff,” I said in a soft yet neutral tone. I didn’t need further verbal abuse to disabuse me of the idea of sleeping that night. I wanted my rest.

“Hi, Kendra. Are you in bed yet?” His soft, suggestive tone didn’t even hint that he recalled our earlier fiasco of a conversation. Did I want to play this game now, when my mind, apparently unlike his, was hung up on our dismal dialogue?

“Yes, I am.” My tone stayed businesslike, avoiding any semblance of sensuality.

“Good. Me, too. I’m sleeping in the nude tonight, and I plan to dream of you. And, Kendra? I’m coming home early so we can talk. See you the day after tomorrow.”

Chapter Eight

“HEY, BORDEN,” I said second thing the next morning, popping my head into my senior partner’s office. “Have a minute?”

“Always for you, Kendra,” he replied. “Almost. Unless I’ve got to talk to a client. Or another attorney at the firm. Or—”

I laughed. “Okay, I know where I rate. But I caught you between crises, so I’m sneaking in.” Which I did. I slid into my current favorite of the diversely styled chairs facing his attractive old desk—complete with rococo carved back and arms, and blue embroidered upholstery.

Borden’s Hawaiian aloha shirt du jour was muted aqua covered in a print of large pineapples.

“How was your pet-sitting this morning?” he asked as soon as I was seated.

“Just fine,” I responded. It had been the first thing I’d accomplished that day after Lexie, Odin, and I completed our morning routine. My rounds had been abbreviated since I still had Rachel’s assistance for now. I’d left Lexie with Odin, since I had one more night to care for Jeff’s Akita. And tomorrow, when he came home, where would my Cavalier and I sleep?

At our own digs, I felt certain.

Almost
, my mind echoed Borden’s earlier word.

“I didn’t get back to you yesterday on the complaint you drafted for the Shermans.” His senior citizen clients with the big beef with the small and shoddy Santa Barbara resort. “I think it’s fine. Okay if I ask them to come in this afternoon to go over it?”

“Sure,” I said. “Oh, and I wanted to tell you about another possible pet law matter. Darryl referred me to someone else, Mae Sward, who said her Pomeranian was spayed by her vet without her permission. I’ll need more info before saying yes or no, since the neutering was done in the aftermath of the poor little dog’s birthing some pups. Mae said the vet’s motive was an ulterior one, and he didn’t spay strictly to preserve the mama’s health.”

“Sounds potentially interesting. Any chargeable fees?” Borden knew full well that many of my animal dispute resolution cases were less than lucrative, and not because I could dispose of them by spending minimal time.

“Unknown so far, but I wouldn’t count on redoing the office décor on our receipts.”

“What redecorating are you talking about? Don’t you like our ambiance?” I was sure his apparent affront was a put-on. At least I hoped so. No way did I want to injure this kind and generous man’s very deep feelings.

“Couldn’t love it more, Borden. That’s why I don’t want to earn the firm too much bread, or one of the other attorneys might want to apply some of the dough toward alternate decoration of our former restaurant digs.”

“Who’d want to do that?”

“You tell me.”

“No one,” he insisted.

“I agree,” I agreed.

We smiled at one another.

“Troublemaker,” he accused.

“If the shoe fits . . .” I stared down at the black leather loafers on my feet, which fit just right. I’d dressed down just a little, since it wasn’t a court day, in nice charcoal slacks and a silky blue blouse.

“Okay, then,” he said. “Go to it, kid. I love your form of ADR. I’ll be eager to hear how this one turns out.”

I grinned all the way down the hall toward my office, turned the corner and headed down the next hall.

“Hi, Kendra,” said Geraldine Glass, heading the opposite way from me with a cup of coffee in her hand. One of Borden’s former law school buddies who’d joined the firm as a partner, she was as senior a citizen as he was. Her curly brown hair was decorated by her reading glasses snugged up on her head today and acting like a headband.

“Morning,” I responded, inhaling the rich caffeine as we passed one another. The next person I noted was the firm’s receptionist, perky young Mignon who sat at a big desk at the entry where the hostess had once greeted diners at this former restaurant.

“Hi, Kendra,” she said, a lot less perkiness than usual in her singsong tone. Even her auburn curls seemed a smidgen droopy.

“Everything okay?” I asked immediately, stopping beside her chair.

“Absolutely,” she sang, somewhat off-key. Her eyes met mine and her head tilted sideways in what appeared to be a signal.

I looked in the direction she’d indicated, toward the room that was once a bar and was now the firm’s main conference room.

My breathing suddenly stopped, then started again. Fast.

“Hello, Amanda,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

WE SAT IN my office, as Amanda requested. A good call, I thought. If we got into a heated exchange, I’d no desire to allow all my coworkers their daily dose of fun by eavesdropping. Not to mention ammunition to ambush me with if ever they needed blackmail material.

“This is very nice,” Amanda said, looking around my cluttered but comfortable environment, with its lived-in law office look. My desk was Early Litigation style, with lots of stacks of papers on top. My chairs were ergonomic, upholstered in blue, and my rug was rugged Berber.

I was unsure how to react. Amanda acted humble, not haughty or hysterical. She wore a tailored skirt and blouse that bordered on conservative, instead of underscoring how attractive she was.

What did she want, inserting herself so moderately into my milieu? I sure as hell didn’t trust her.

And how had her latest contact been with Jeff? In between his two phone calls to me yesterday, shading from insults to almost apology, had she somehow determined to dump him?

Well, sitting at my desk, waiting till she got good and ready to speak her piece, wasn’t exactly my style.

“Why are you here, Amanda?” I echoed my earlier startled greeting.

BOOK: Meow is for Murder

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