Never Sorry: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (10 page)

"Will do."

Maura hung up the phone with a new weight on her shoulders. This was going to get worse before it got better.

She had to do something.

***

If the worst thing about having your own business was lack of a paycheck, the best thing was setting your own schedule. After giving the X-M Mold Remover account one more miserable shot, Leigh gave up and decided to take a couple hours off to clear her aching head. She took a brisk walk to her favorite coffee shop and invested in a cup of espresso and the morning paper.

Surprisingly, Pittsburgh's intrepid reporters seemed to know even less about Carmen's murder than she did. As a potential suspect, she had gotten off relatively easy—the media seemed to have missed the "running away from the crime scene" tidbit, and mentioned her merely as the employee who found the body. Her name still hadn't surfaced, thank goodness.

Leo Martin had managed to contribute his typical inept plug—noting merely that the murder had occurred after regular zoo hours. Lisa Moran, who was probably the nearest thing to another tiger keeper that the reporter could find, was more forthcoming. When asked if she was concerned for her own safety in the zoo, Lisa was quoted as saying: "No, not at all. I think it was just a personal thing. If I thought there was some psycho on the loose, I wouldn't be here."

Leigh's eyebrows rose. Lisa seemed awfully sure of herself. She almost made it seem as though the murder was justified. What exactly did she know about Carmen's sins?

When the last drop of her espresso had been drained, Leigh downed a handful of mints from the counter and set off again. It was time to cock an ear to the zoo grapevine and find out what had been going on with Carmen. Maybe it mattered to the murder investigation. Maybe it just mattered to how she felt about Tanner. Either way, she had to know.

Chapter 8

After changing hastily into her uniform, Leigh drove to Riverview Park and entered the zoo through the main gates. She didn't know if the employee gate would still be manned, given that the morning staff should have already arrived, and the "secret" entrance was no longer an option. She couldn't help but imagine what was left of Carmen's body being dragged under the fence, and it was an image her peace of mind could do without.

Fighting an urge to head straight for the hospital, she instead went looking for Lisa Moran. It wasn't easy to get her feet walking in the direction where Lisa was most likely to be. The tiger exhibit had been temporarily closed to the public, but the tigers and Carmen's other big cats still had to eat. Mercifully, Leigh found Lisa taking a smoke break on a tree stump just outside the leopard enclosure. Breathing a sigh of relief, she approached.

Lisa acknowledged her visitor with a smile and a nod, then began  examining her fingernails with fervor. "Chipped again," she moaned. "I really should wear work gloves."

Leigh's mind drifted back to a long forgotten ritual: the state-of-Carmen's-nails address. "See, Leigh," the teenaged Carmen would begin as soon as she had taken her seat in homeroom. "This one's tearing now, and I had got it all the way out to here." She would demonstrate the loss, giving the history of each nail in stunning detail. She wasn't asking Leigh's advice, just keeping her informed. As a courtesy.

"Did Carmen wear work gloves?" Leigh asked suddenly.

Lisa looked up from her own hands, assuming a puzzled expression. "I don't know. A lot of women here do. Why?"

"No reason," Leigh muttered, embarrassed.

Lisa studied her. "You're worried, aren't you?" she asked sympathetically. "I heard that you have some kind of history with her. But don't flatter yourself. You're only one in a long line of suspects, as far as I can tell. Carmen had plenty of enemies."

"She did?" Leigh asked innocently.

Lisa wasn't buying. "Yeah, right. Did you know her or not?" She leaned toward Leigh conspiratorially. "I gave that detective a notebook full when he talked to me. I hear everything around here, you know, as a floater."

Leigh could imagine.

"Carmen had only one real friend here—and that was Kristin. And I happen to know that even they didn't part on the best of terms."

Leigh searched her memory bank for mention of a keeper named Kristin. None came to mind. "Kristin who?"

"Kristin Yates," Lisa answered. "They used to work the big cats together before Kristin took over the bears. She and Carmen went way back."

A sinister image suddenly bored its way into Leigh's mind, giving her a chill.
Kristin Yates
. The frightening, horse-faced delinquent whose reign of intimidation had oppressed North Hills girls throughout the early eighties. Kristin had the kind of cold gray eyes and haughty air that made for good adolescent horror fiction. She could play the evil ringleader who slipped the heroine a faux chocolate laxative, locked her in the bathroom, and stole her clothes. Preferably on prom night.

"Kristin Yates worked here?" Leigh said stupidly.

"Yeah, like forever," Lisa answered, watching her. Then Lisa's face lit up. "They went to high school together, didn't they? So you must have known them both."

Leigh nodded. "Vaguely."

"Kristin was all right," Lisa said charitably. "She was easy to work with. At least she stayed out of everybody's business."

Leigh's eyebrows rose. The Kristin Lisa was describing was a far cry from the one she remembered. But then, people change. Most people, anyway. "Where is Kristin now?"

"She left a couple weeks ago," Lisa chatted merrily, looking at her nails again. "She got a job offer at the zoo in D.C. She's been wanting to move there for a long time, because she's really into Pandas. She's starting off with hoof stock, but she figures at least she's got her foot in the door."

Leigh couldn't imagine the Kristin she knew caring about much besides where her next Marlboro was coming from. In any event, she was glad Kristin was out of the picture. "I wonder if she knows about Carmen yet."

Lisa shrugged. "I guess she'll find out the next time she calls anyone back here. I'd call her in D.C. if I knew her number. But like I said, she and Carmen didn't part happy."

"What happened?"

A cloud passed over Lisa's face, and she took a long drag on her cigarette. "Let's just say it was man trouble," she said flippantly, watching Leigh's eyes. She stood up. "Gotta get back to work. See you around."

"Wait!" Leigh called after her. "Are you saying Carmen was serious about somebody?" A ray of hope had emerged. She had assumed Carmen was a love-em-and-leave-em kind of girl, but if she had a significant other, the accursed "love triangle" theory wouldn't hold water, no matter how Leigh felt about Tanner.

Lisa's eyes looked at her with something between pity and disgust. "That depends," she answered cryptically, "on who you ask."

***

Leigh trudged up the hill to the hospital more frustrated than ever. Why did Lisa always have to clam up just when she was getting interesting? She had done it before, on Tuesday. Lisa had been chattering on about staff romances, and she had started to say something about Carmen, but Tanner had walked in and interrupted, and Leigh had forgotten the whole thing.

She opened the hospital door aggressively enough to bang it against the wall, startling a tall, stooped man standing just inside the doorway.

"I'm sorry," Leigh apologized quickly, recognizing Leo Martin, her boss's boss. "I'm not sure how it got away from me."

Leo scowled at her without any pretense of politeness. His appearance was forbidding enough even when he was in a good mood—thanks to his Ichabod Crane stature and cigar-stained teeth. How this man could be expected to put on a good PR face for the zoo was beyond Leigh, but since the zoo was her employer and not her client, she didn't waste time worrying about it.

"There'll be no more of this after-hours nonsense," he said to her sternly, poking a finger in her face. "And I don't want you or anyone else talking to reporters. Got that?"

Leigh bristled. Boss's boss or no, she didn't appreciate being talked to like a petulant child. Especially when this wasn't even her real job.

"Excuse me," she said, as sweetly as she could manage, "Have we met? I'm Leigh Koslow, an advertising copywriter. I'm here helping out Mike in my spare time."

Some of the creases in Leo Martin's scowl flattened. He looked at her as if studying a stinging insect—patronizing, but cautious. "Leo Martin," he said gruffly, "Director."

He cast a scathing glance at Tanner. "Fill her in," he barked. Then he was gone.

After the door banged closed, Tanner burst out laughing. "What are you doing here so early?" he asked, gathering Leigh up in his arms. "You're a hoot, you know that?"

Leigh wasn't sure if being a "hoot" was desirable, but all indications were positive. Tanner kissed her soundly. "Leo needs somebody to shake him up once in a while. I remember once, Carmen—"

He broke off the sentence abruptly, the merriment draining quickly from his eyes. He let Leigh go and stepped back.

"It's okay," Leigh said softly. "You can talk about her. In fact, that's why I'm here." She didn't want him to talk about Carmen at all, certainly not fondly. But there were secrets lurking in that gorgeous head of his that she had to know. She dragged him to the couch in the lounge and sat him down.

"Look, Mike," she began. "I know nobody wants to speak ill of the dead, and I know you considered Carmen a friend, but let's get real here. I knew Carmen, too. She was a sociopath. Or a psychopath, or an antisocial personality—whatever the jargon is nowadays. The point is, she had no conscience, and she used people. Most everybody in the zoo hated her for some reason. You know all about that. And if you have any theories on who killed her, I'd really like to know about them."

"Carmen wasn't a psychopath," Tanner defended uncertainly. "She was just…" he broke off and sighed miserably. "I don't like talking about it. It's the police's job to find killers, not ours." He stood up suddenly, then added, "I still can't believe somebody would do this to her."

The words struck a chord in Leigh's brain. He had used them before—the night it happened, and they had struck her then, too, but now she knew why. "I can't believe
somebody
would do
this
to her." Not "I can't believe this happened," or "I can't believe she's dead." It was as if he wasn't surprised she was dead, wasn't surprised somebody wanted her dead, but the way it happened—that he couldn't grasp.

Leigh stood up beside him and tried again, the words running out of her mouth before she could censor them. "What is it you know? Are you trying to protect someone in the zoo?"

Tanner looked at her incredulously. "Of course not!  How could you think I would do that? This person's sick, for God's sake!"

"I'm sorry," Leigh apologized quickly, cursing her impetuousness. "I didn't mean that you'd condone anyone hurting Carmen, I just thought that maybe you had some suspicions about somebody, maybe even an accident—"

"Look, Leigh," Tanner broke in tiredly. "You're starting to sound like Frank. If it'll make you feel better, I'll tell you what I told him. I don't think anyone at the zoo could actually kill Carmen like that, no matter how much they hated her. There's a much more likely explanation."

Leigh waited. He sighed and began. "Carmen had money problems. Serious money problems. She was into illegal gambling. Dogs, horses, daily number, football, you name it. When she won, she spent it all within twenty-four hours. When she lost, she borrowed. I think she finally borrowed a little too much."

"You mean loan sharks?"

"Probably something like that," Tanner nodded. "Maybe a little more personal. Carmen ran with a rough crowd when she wasn't here. She was so fascinating, so alluring. She could attract any man she wanted—well, you know."

Leigh nodded grudgingly. She knew what Carmen was capable of at age thirteen; she shuddered to think what maturity might have added to her repertoire. She also shuddered to think
who
she might have added to her repertoire.

"Her death was so violent, so out of the blue," Tanner continued. "I'm certain it was a professional job. What bugs me is that Frank doesn't seem to be buying that. And he's got to know I'm telling the truth about the gambling. There'd be evidence of that."

Leigh considered. A professional job certainly sounded plausible to her. And from a purely selfish standpoint, it was a convenient solution: neat, faceless, no risk of further harm to anyone else. She could buy it. Couldn't she?

The memory of the shutting door that had interrupted her first tryst with Tanner shoved its way back into her mind. Had someone come to get a bone saw? Surely no professional hit man would do that. How would they know where to look? Why would they risk getting caught? And if the whole thing was premeditated, wouldn't they have come prepared?

She shook the thoughts out of her head. No door had slammed—the noise had been one of the cockatoos. Maybe Carmen herself had taken the bone saw to the tiger shed, to saw—well, to saw something—and it just happened to be there when it was needed.