Never Steal a Cockatiel (Leigh Koslow Mystery Series Book 9) (23 page)

Leigh perked an eyebrow. When Allison started asking weird questions Leigh didn’t understand, trouble generally followed. “Fruit. Why?”

“What kind of fruit?” Allison persisted.

Leigh considered. “Mango, I think. Why?”

“Just wondering. Can you put Aunt Mo back on?”

Leigh’s teeth gritted. “Not until you tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I’ll explain it all when you get home,” Allison assured, “but I really need to talk to Aunt Mo again.”

Leigh debated.

“Mo-om!” Allison begged. “I’m sitting here at the house, and I’m not going anywhere, and I’m perfectly safe, and so is Ethan. We’re not stupid. But if Aunt Mo can use some help, shouldn’t I at least be able to
talk
to her?”

Leigh blew out a breath and handed the phone back to Maura. She hated it when her kids played the logic card.

Maura listened a moment, her brow furrowing. “Is that right? Well, that is interesting.”

Leigh tapped her foot nervously. Maura’s end of the conversation was mostly silence.

“It’s possible. You know that for a fact? I see. Okay. No, probably not. The news about Zeus’s recapture will be all over town by nightfall — too many people involved to have a prayer of keeping it quiet. Okay, you see if you can confirm that. Call me if you do. Right. Thanks, Allie.”

Maura hung up and pocketed her phone. Baby Eddie looked at Leigh and made a gurgling sound.

“Lydie come home yet?” Maura asked, changing the subject with infuriating nonchalance.

Crap!
Leigh thought miserably. She was supposed to relieve Bess ages ago. It was a wonder her aunt hadn’t sent a stream of obscene texts already. “Not yet,” she answered. “I’ve got to get back over there.”

Maura played with Eddie’s feet again. He looked back up at his mother and made a sound suspiciously like a giggle. “Tell your mom I owe her a housecleaning sometime this weekend,” Maura offered.

“Oh, you do
not
want to do that,” Leigh warned.

“Why not?” Maura insisted. “She certainly helped me out enough times when I was on bedrest. My house hasn’t been as clean before or since.”

“There
is
nothing to clean in my parents’ house,” Leigh explained. “A certain minimal amount of dirt has to accumulate before it becomes visible to the naked eye. My mother never lets that happen. The dust is all in her mind.”

Maura chuckled. “Well, that should make things easier for me. Gerry’s off Saturday; I’ll give her a call.”

Leigh shook her head. “Your funeral.” She held her friend’s eyes a moment.

Maura sighed. “Koslow, will you stop worrying about nothing? Allison’s a smart girl, she’s very observant, and she has good ideas. You know I’d never encourage her in anything that was dangerous, any more than I would little Eddie, here. But she’d be a lot happier if you stopped actively
discouraging
her.”

“I don’t want her to go into police work,” Leigh said flatly.

“She’s not signing up for the academy,” Maura argued. “She’s only trying to use her brain on an otherwise dull summer day. She has great instincts, you know.”

Leigh frowned. “I have good instincts. About… you know… crime stuff.”

Maura’s eyes flickered with amusement. “I didn’t know this was a competition, Koslow.”

Leigh’s face flared with heat. She opened her mouth to fire back the perfect snappy retort, but the perfect snappy retort eluded her.

She shut her mouth and started back down the street.

Chapter 21

Leigh was just pulling up at her mother’s house when her cell phone rang.

“Hey there, kid,” said a tired-sounding voice. “Can we talk?”

“Oh, we are most definitely going to talk,” Leigh replied, getting out of the van and shutting the door behind her. “Where are you, Mason?”

“The airport,” he answered. “Where are you?”

“My parents’ house. I’ll be here all day. Can you come over?”

He hesitated.

“My mother will not bite you,” Leigh said irritably. Her head was still whirling with the events of the morning, and the week, and every time she thought of him spending that time gambling merrily away on the high seas, her jaws clenched. Now her teeth were sore.

“You sure about that?” Mason asked skeptically.

“Just get over here,” Leigh ordered. “I’ll meet you out front if you like.”

A beat passed. “Okay, kid,” he agreed. “I guess I owe you that much.”

You think?

Leigh hung up before she could say anything she would regret later. She knew that Mason had nothing to do with the petnappings, much less the murders, even if he did consider Kyle a friend. But she wasn’t above resenting the mess he’d gotten her — and by extension the Pack — into. A mess that surely could have been straightened out earlier if he hadn’t been so out of touch.

Leigh thought with trepidation of poor Lenna, who was at this very moment probably lying in bed cuddling the three-legged cat she had fallen in love with. But had Peep been stolen from her real owner, too? There was no question that Kyle had been up to his neck in the petnapping operation. What was strange was how little his demise had seemed to affect it.

Leigh stomped up to her mother’s door. She dreaded the earful she was about to get from Bess, and she had come prepared with a credible-sounding explanation. She was surprised, upon entering, to discover that it wouldn’t be necessary.

Bess was still passed out on the couch, snoring. Her Pekingese mix lay sprawled across her stomach. The dog was snoring, too.

“Pathetic, aren’t they?” Frances called from the kitchen table, which was now completely covered with paperwork. “I told her she was drinking too much. And she stayed up too late besides. Watching some ridiculous movie on that device she calls a phone up until the wee hours of the morning… I mean,
really.
On a Thursday night! At her age!”

Leigh chose not to comment. “Have you talked to Aunt Lydie?”

“She’s guessing she’ll get here between seven and eight this evening,” Frances reported. “Depending on the Turnpike traffic.”

“I see,” Leigh replied, stressing over the prospect of providing another dinner. She couldn’t possibly ask Bess to cook again, and Warren deserved a quiet evening at home. Perhaps she could guilt-trip Mason into bringing something?

She smiled. Now
that
would be justice.

Frances began muttering something about “utterly ridiculous credit extension,” and Leigh removed herself to the living room so that she could keep an eye out for Mason through the front window. When his banged-up old Corolla pulled to the curb, she called to her mother. “I’m going to sit outside for a bit. If you need anything, just yell.”

Frances harrumphed. “You’d hear me before Bess would, I’d wager.”

Leigh cast a glance at her still-prone aunt, whose only response to the women’s voices was to snort, turn sideways, and pull the little dog against her chest. Leigh made sure the front window was open, then walked outside and closed the door behind her.

She met Mason on the sidewalk and they leaned against the side of the Corolla. He was dressed in clothes equally dapper to those she had seen him leave in, except that this outfit was rumpled. He seemed haggard, as well.

“You don’t look so good,” Leigh noted, thinking she sounded about as tactful as Morgan.

“I’ve been better,” Mason said sadly. “They told me about Kyle this morning.”

Leigh felt a strong twinge of guilt. It hadn’t occurred to her that Mason would be upset about the murder, but of course it should have. “I’m sorry,” she commiserated.

Mason nodded. “He was a good kid. A mess at the end, but a good kid.”

Leigh puzzled over the statement. “You do know that the cockatiel in his apartment was stolen from a man in Bellevue? Kidnapped for ransom?”

Mason shook his head. “Kyle wouldn’t have anything to do with something like that.”

“Oh no?”

“No,” Mason repeated. “I know he was desperate for money, but Kyle just wasn’t wired for a life of crime. He was a computer geek, for God’s sake!”

“Seriously?” Leigh asked with surprise.

Mason nodded. “He started playing online poker when he was a teenager, and he was amazingly good at it — a natural talent. But just when he started to make some real money, the industry got shut down. He turned his hand to live play, but at first he was terrible. Learning to read other people, being up close and personal with your opponents — it’s a whole different game. But he and I traded some secrets, and we both got better. He just never got quite good enough.”

“And he got into debt,” Leigh declared.

“He was an idiot with money,” Mason explained. “Always risking too much, never seeing the consequences if he lost. He was all about statistics and calculations, but he never really seemed to grasp that just because the odds are with you doesn’t mean you’re
going
to win, eventually or otherwise. Improbable stuff happens. And it kept happening to him.”

Leigh sighed. “So he borrowed money from the wrong people, and then he got scared.”

Mason nodded solemnly. “They were just messing with him. They might have roughed him up a bit, but they wouldn’t have killed him — all they wanted was their money back. But he was terrified. And convinced that he could win it all back with one really good, high-stakes game. So he went illegal, despite my warnings,” Mason’s face crinkled with pain. “And that did kill him.”

“I’m sorry,” Leigh repeated, feeling more like a heel by the second.

“I tried to help him,” he continued. “I made good on his rent a couple times, but I’ve been down this road before — you can bail water all day and night, but you can’t keep a man’s boat from sinking if he keeps poking holes in it.”

Leigh studied Mason’s face. It was obvious that he really did care about Kyle. Which made her wonder how objective Mason could be about his friend’s character, now that Kyle was dead.

“Did he have a girlfriend?” she asked tentatively.

Mason chuckled sadly. “Um, no. Kyle was a little shy around women. You could say he had some ‘social anxieties.’”

Leigh frowned. This conversation wasn’t tying things up nearly as neatly as she’d been hoping. In fact, it wasn’t helping at all.

“If Kyle wasn’t involved in the petnappings,” she insisted, “why would he have a stolen cockatiel in his apartment?”

Mason shrugged. “Maybe he was keeping it for a friend. He liked animals.”

“Keeping it for a friend?” Leigh repeated skeptically. “How would you word that request, exactly? ‘Hey bro, I’ve decided to kidnap pets for ransom, but I ran out of space. Could you keep this one for me until its loving owner pays up?’”

Mason’s expression was patient. “How about, ‘Hey, Kyle — I’m getting paid to watch my buddy’s bird, but my girlfriend’s allergic. Can you keep him over at your place for a couple days? I’ll pay you what he’s paying me.’”

Leigh’s lips pursed. Mason was right. Bad as it looked, a guy like Kyle
could
have gotten the bird from just about any acquaintance and still been clueless as to its origins. It was possible.

But not likely.

“One way or the other,” Leigh maintained, “there must be some link between Kyle and the petnappings. Maybe you can help the police find it.”

Mason frowned. “And why would I do that? Kyle was a good kid, and now he’s dead. I’m sure his family has enough to deal with without the cops trying to label him as an extortionist, too.”

“The suspicion is already there,” Leigh argued. “Finding the real petnapper could help clear Kyle’s name. In addition to stopping all the anguish!”

“All right, all right,” Mason conceded quickly. “They’re already lining up to harass me, you know. I’ve got three phone messages to return, and I haven’t even been home yet.”

He stood up as if to leave, and Leigh realized how many questions she still wanted to be answered.

“What about the cat?” she inquired. “Lenna is hopelessly in love with her. What if Peep is stolen, too?”

“She isn’t,” Mason said flatly. “Kyle got her from a rescue place when she was just a kitten. She’d gotten her leg caught in an illegal trap. I told you he was crazy about her. I guess… well, I’ll have to see if anyone in his family wants her. They may already be attached.”

Leigh didn’t want to think about Lenna’s having to give up the tortie. Never mind that it would have been inevitable if Kyle had returned as planned.

“Well, I’d better get going and answer these calls before a black and white shows up at my apartment,” Mason said grimly, straightening.

“That reminds me,” Leigh interjected, straightening also. “Why
did
you move to Bellevue? And why keep it a secret?”

Mason’s eyes flickered with an unexpected light. For a moment, he looked like the cat who ate the canary. He turned away from her. “That’s a long story that’s going to have to wait a few days. I need to get home.”

Leigh hadn’t asked him nearly as much as she wanted to. She still wanted to know why he had lied to his daughter about where he was going this week. But before she could reason out a non-accusatory way of asking the question, her phone rang in her pocket. She recognized the tone, and it proved serendipitous. “Wait a minute,” she told Mason. “It’s Cara.”

“Hey Cuz,” Leigh greeted.

“Hey,” Cara said roughly, her voice hoarse. “Mom says she’ll be there to relieve you by eight.”

“I got the same message from my mom,” Leigh responded. “Thanks. You better?”

“Much,” the voice rasped. “It really does seem to be a twenty-four hour thing. But, Leigh…”

A pregnant pause followed.

“Yes?”

“There was something weird,” Cara continued uncertainly, “about Mom’s message. She left it early this morning, but I couldn’t figure out why it bothered me until a little while ago, and then I listened to it again. It was the noise in the background. I swear I heard seagulls.”

“Seagulls?” Leigh repeated. “In Hershey?”

Mason gestured to her that he needed to leave. She gestured again for him to wait.

“That’s what I thought,” Cara replied. “She said they might go visit some of Cynthia’s family nearby, but I wouldn’t call the coast ‘nearby.’ Neither is Lake Erie. Where else could she drive from the middle of the state to find seagulls?”