Authors: Linda O. Johnston

Meow is for Murder (6 page)

BOOK: Meow is for Murder

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“Sure,” I said.

“She called around to some of my longtime clients till she learned where I’d be traveling this time. In any event, she’s booked her own room, and I just sent her off to bed.”

“Good idea,” I agreed. But my bad old brain snapped imaginary digital photos of him sneaking there in the middle of the night.

“Kendra.” He drew out my name as if he was exasperated. He probably
was
exasperated. “We resolved this weeks ago. It’s you I care about now. Amanda simply doesn’t take no for an answer. And you know she claims she didn’t trust the other P.I. I sent her to, even though he’s an old pal.”

“I understand, Jeff. And I can also comprehend why Amanda doesn’t want to let go.” Hot damn! Didn’t I sound reasonable?

If only it weren’t mostly an act.

Well, hell. I’d known forever what a loser I was in selecting men for meaningful relationships. I’d nearly convinced myself that Jeff was different, especially after he’d asserted—or at least implied—to Amanda that he was ousting her from his existence once and for all. He’d done this before my very eyes.

My very gullible eyes.

“Anyway, don’t worry about it,” I added airily. “When you and she are both home, let’s all talk about the best way to ensure Leon is out of her life for good.”

Too bad I didn’t know how prophetic those words would prove to be.

Chapter Four

DID I FRET and fume over the following few days, waiting for Amanda and Jeff to hurry home?

Hardly.

The next morning, I handled my pet-sitting rounds efficiently, as always—enjoying every moment of romping with my mostly canine charges and ensuring they knew they’d had some intense human attention.

Heck, once I’d gotten my law license unsuspended a few months back, I’d considered whether to give up pet-sitting and concentrate on attorneying, including pet advocacy. But the truth was, I found visiting others’ babies a treat, not just a business. So here I still was, happily juggling both vocations.

Right now, though, I spied around a lot for the white sedan that had previously kept me stuck in the driveway—just in case. Fortunately, it wasn’t anywhere near Amanda’s.

“You haven’t seen that creep Leon, have you?” I asked Cherise and Carnie as they strutted into the kitchen to see me—blessedly without any rodent present this time.

If they’d any suspicion that Leon had been lurking, they didn’t deign to inform me.

I’d left Lexie locked in the car, but not for long, with Leon’s possible neighborhood presence and the threat he’d made to Amanda’s cats—which he could expand to canines. Feeling guilty for leaving her alone at all, I decided to treat her to a nice, safe day at my good friend Darryl’s Doggy Indulgence Day Resort.

Which might not have been a good thing, since Darryl’s immediate and gleeful appearance from behind the entrance desk suggested he’d been hoping to see me.

The resort was essentially one huge room with several areas to please the most finicky pup, plus Darryl’s office and a highly active kitchen.

I let Lexie off her leash, and she bounded to the doggy play portion—an area filled with an assortment of canines plus balls, flyable disks, and lots of other delightful doggy toys. Kiki, another movie star hopeful and my least favorite of Darryl’s staff, was leading a game of “find it and fetch” with some fuzzy rag bones.

Darryl, standing beside me, said, “I have an emergency pet-sitting referral for you, Kendra. Can you take it on for me?”

Tall, thin, and spectacularly softhearted, Darryl appeared almost studious in his wire-rimmed spectacles, yet a perpetual twinkle lit his huge, puppy-dog eyes. He’d been my buddy from when I’d been a well-paid litigator in the large law firm—and had handed me my new career as a pet-sitter to assist me in paying my bills when my law license was temporarily suspended.

Did I have time to take on a new client? Not really, especially since Rachel’s audition had extended into several days. But for Darryl—

“Sure,” I assured him.

He immediately swept me into the area that contained human furniture and introduced me to Stromboli, a shepherd mix, who was there with his owner, Dana Maroni. Dana was a petite human female who looked too little to handle rowdy and rambunctious Stromboli. Even so, a soft “Sit” from the slender brunette, who was clad in a long-sleeved shirt and short black skirt, immediately brought the big dog to his haunches—even in the midst of a half dozen other pups who didn’t elect to obey.

“I’m so glad to meet you, Kendra.” Dana held out a slender hand. Her grasp was as firm as any attorney’s. “Darryl said he was going to call you, so it’s really serendipitous that you came in. My dad’s ill up in Seattle, so I’m leaving town this morning unexpectedly and I simply can’t bring Stromboli.”

Said dog looked up lovingly at his mistress.

“He seems like a sweetheart,” I said.

“He is,” Dana assured me, and we went into the details of where Stromboli and she lived, and how I should care for her big canine baby while she cared for her ailing dad. I retrieved from the Beamer a standard contract for my pet-sitting company, Critter TLC, LLC, and she eagerly signed it.

“I’ll take Stromboli home now,” she told me. “You’ll visit him this evening, take him for a walk, and feed him?”

“Sure will,” I assured her. “Twice a day till you call and tell me you’re back. Or my assistant will, if that’s okay.”

“If you trust your assistant, that’s fine with me.”

A minute later, Darryl walked me to the door. “Once again, you’re a lifesaver, Kendra,” he said. “I owe you.”

I stood on tiptoe and slipped him a kiss on his long, smooth cheek. “Enough, Nestler,” I rejoined with pseudo crabbiness. “Or I’ll have to start singing my own chorus of who owes whom.”

“With your voice? Talk about off-key. No, forget it, Kendra. Especially if you expect me to say ‘whom.’”

I laughed and left, heading for my law office. Our suite sat in a long, low building that senior partner Borden Yurick had bought, a one-time restaurant in the Encino area of the San Fernando Valley.

Inside, I returned the effervescent greeting of Mignon, the young and exuberant receptionist. Then, head down, I headed for my office, where I quickly got to work. At lunchtime, I ducked out once more to go walk Widget, then hustled back to the office to end my law day by finishing the complaint I’d started drafting for Borden’s clients, the Shermans.

As with many of Borden’s closest friends, including most of our firm’s attorneys, the Shermans were active senior citizens. Their case? They were resolved to recoup rent overpaid at a brand-new Santa Barbara vacation resort where the amenities were highly overstated.

The place was promoted as a dream retreat, a delightful assortment of rooms that had access to golf, tennis, and the beach, with gourmet meals included.

But the couple had brought back pictures proving the inn was miles inland from the beach, and the closest amenity, if you could call it that, was a public park full of noisy kids. Oh, and yes, it had tennis of the table kind, plus golf of the miniature version. Meals? Sure, if one didn’t mind grabbing fast food at the nearest Mickey D’s—vouchers included. And the clients’ complaints had thus far fallen on decidedly deaf ears and e-mail-immune eyes.

Before I sent the Shermans my draft complaint for comment and consent, I brought it to Borden. They were, after all, his clients. And the main condition for my junior partnership in his firm, with the right to have fun practicing law as I pleased, was that I also helped him with the cases he brought in.

Our sweet senior partner’s office was the largest, and farthest from the door, of the building. Its walls were covered in attractive oak paneling, and one held a bevy of bookshelves filled with—what else?—law books. His desk looked like a lawyerly antique, but his other furnishings, mostly a mishmash of chairs, were so oddly assorted that I’d concluded they’d been bought with the restaurant building.

Sitting behind his desk, he looked up behind his big bifocals as I rapped on his door. “Hi, Kendra,” he greeted in his high pitched but hearty voice. As usual, the lanky elder lawyer wore one of the floral inside-out-appearing Hawaiian-style shirts he favored. This one was beige, covered with big and pointed bird-of-paradise blossoms.

Borden had been a senior partner at Marden, Sergement, & Yurick, the high-powered L.A. firm where I’d worked before the ugly, and untrue, accusations about ethics violations had resulted in my resignation. About the same time, rumors had been rampant that Borden had had a mental breakdown.

Turned out that he’d simply needed a cogitation break, and when he returned from an extended and enviable expedition abroad, he’d made his decision to dump the Marden firm and start his own, extending employment offers to some of his retired counsel cronies. That caused the Marden folks to actively assert Borden’s bonkerness, since he had also dared to abscond with his own client base—nearly half the whole firm’s business.

And then he’d hired me, once my law license was restored, with the freedom to practice law as I loved it. I could continue my pet-sitting business, and take on pet advocacy cases of my own—my latest law-practice passion.

In fact, I’d been doing amazingly well with my own form of ADR. Those initials were usually interpreted in the legal profession as “alternate dispute resolution,” but in my case they stood for “animal dispute resolution.”

“I drafted the complaint in the Sherman matter,” I said, stepping forward to hand him the printed copy.

“Good going! Thanks, Kendra. I’ll take a look. I’ve already assured the Shermans they’re in the best of legal hands.” He bobbed his head so his silvery shock of hair glimmered in the light. “Aren’t you late for this afternoon’s pet-sitting?” he said. “You’d better get on your way, with all those precious pets in only your hands for the moment.”

Good old Borden! I slid out of the office with a totally unencumbered conscience. Where else could I have had the cooperation of a firm’s senior partner in such a situation?

I headed first to see to Stromboli. The sweet but energetic shepherd was clearly delighted for the company. I let him romp in his own small Burbank backyard to work off some energy before he took me for a walk. While watching him, I noticed his neighbor, an adorable medium-sized, wirehaired mutt who observed Stromboli’s frolic from his own back porch.

I fed my latest friend Stromboli, walked him once more, and again got a peek at his cute and quiet neighbor.

Then I hied to some other clients’, and finally to Amanda’s.

Again I scanned the street for a sign of Leon or his car. Fortunately, I saw none.

Only . . . when I got inside the house, I found the refrigerator door open.

Horrified, I hurriedly checked the large appliance. Fortunately, Amanda had apparently, in anticipation of her trip, cleaned it out, since the only stuff inside consisted of things that wouldn’t perish fast—salad dressing, packaged cheeses, and the like.

Most important, Cherise and Carnie were not inside, either.

The two leopardlike cats strolled into the kitchen as I surveyed it—and Carnie carried a mouse. Cherise greeted me with a mew.

“Gee, thanks, ladies,” I said with solemn false gratitude. “By the way, do you happen to know how the refrigerator door got open?” Their water came from the filtered tap on the kitchen sink, and I’d never had to refrigerate their canned food, since between them, and with their daily kibble, each small can was emptied as soon as opened.

I’d had no reason to open the door. I doubted that the felines had done it.

So who, then?

The obvious culprit was the cad who’d no business even being on the property let alone in the house.

Leon.

This time, it didn’t take Jeff’s prodding to get me to call Amanda—after I’d gingerly deposited the gift mouse in its proper receptacle . . . outside.

Decoration-derived seasickness only added to my queasiness as I strolled down her hallway into her den. I sat at her desk and used her phone. When Amanda answered, I quickly related my concern. “It’s possible the door was somehow opened accidentally,” I admitted, “but I don’t see how.”

“And you’d turned on the security system?” she asked. Her voice sounded as quivery as mine.

“Yes, and it was still set. Does anyone else have a key, or permission to come in?”

“Only Jeff,” she said, “and he’s still here.”

I chose not to react to that. And then I heard a sound from somewhere down the hall. I drew in my breath with a nasty gasp. “There’s someone here,” I managed to say.

“Get out of there, Kendra!”

I only half noticed that this time Amanda had expressed a shred of concern for my welfare. I hung up and prepared to hurry out—when I heard the noise again.

Slowly, my back to the seascape-decorated hallway, I slid in that direction. Foolish? Most likely.

Only I was certainly glad I’d done it a minute later, when I heard the noise again.

BOOK: Meow is for Murder

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