Never Steal a Cockatiel (Leigh Koslow Mystery Series Book 9) (26 page)

Leigh promised she would take care of the matter, even as she hastened out the back door. Lights had come on inside Lydie’s house. She crossed the short distance and knocked on her aunt’s door. “It’s me, Aunt Lydie,” she called.

The door opened to reveal Lydie offering the same unconditionally loving, uncomplicated smile that had soothed Leigh all her life. Leigh and Cara, naturally, had never thought their mothers looked identical, despite what others said. Leigh could see how both twins would have been attractive girls, with their dark brown eyes, pert noses, and wavy brown hair. They were still attractive, despite the Morton female curse of being shaped like a pear. But they were rarely mistaken for each other anymore, since only Lydie dyed her hair and the pear curse was more pronounced with Frances. For Leigh and Cara, though, the most obvious difference between the women had always been their smiles.

“Hello, dear,” Lydie greeted, ushering her inside. “You look exhausted. Don’t worry, I’ll be over in a jiffy. I just wanted to get my things out of the car.”

“No rush,” Leigh replied. “I only wanted to catch you up on a few things.” As Lydie moved around putting her things away, Leigh explained about Randall’s illness and made the expected gesture of offering to stay over.

“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Lydie said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I never get those things. I’ll be fine.”

Leigh couldn’t help but note that her aunt looked unusually happy. Unusually… relaxed.

“How was your drive?” Leigh asked, not even thinking until that moment that the whole “tooling down the Turnpike” thing was probably just part of the scam. For all she knew, her aunt had been cooling her heels in the Pittsburgh airport all day. She had left three days earlier than Mason as well. Where had she spent all that time?

“Long,” Lydie replied with sincerity. “Too much construction. As usual.”

Leigh frowned. She understood the reasoning behind the deception. Still, it hurt to believe that her aunt could lie to her so easily. “Where were you, really?” Leigh asked softly. “Before and after the cruise with Mason, I mean?”

Lydie stopped what she was doing and whipped her head around toward Leigh. Her face reddened, but she said nothing.

“I figured it out for myself earlier today,” Leigh explained. “Don’t blame Mason. He only confirmed it.”

Lydie still said nothing. Her expression was perfectly stoic.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Leigh continued. “But I really wish you would.” She offered a smile. “I think it’s wonderful. And Cara will, too. We already love the man.”

Lydie’s eyes moistened. Then they sparkled in a way Leigh had rarely seen before. Lydie took her niece’s hand and led her to the living room couch to sit down.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that,” Lydie said quietly. “And I’m sorry for lying to you. But it’s all so terribly complicated.”

“No, it’s not,” Leigh insisted. “Whatever ideas you’ve had over the years about how you didn’t deserve to be happy or he didn’t deserve to be happy or whatever other nonsense you’ve been telling yourself… it’s all just that. Nonsense. Everyone who loves you believes you both deserve to be happy.”

Lydie’s answering smile was brief. Her eyes misted further. “Not everyone.”

Leigh sat forward. “Yes,
everyone.
My mother doesn’t think Mason
will
make you happy. But she’s wrong about that.”

Lydie shook her head slowly. “She might want me to be happy, but she couldn’t care less what happens to him. Even after all this time, she… she hates him, Leigh.” One tiny tear escaped Lydie’s left eye.

Leigh’s stomach churned. Her aunt had never been the crying type. “My mother,” Leigh responded forcefully, “does not hate
him.
She doesn’t even know him. Not anymore. She only hates what he did what to you, because she’s nothing if not loyal. She sees herself as a soldier for your cause, and she’ll defend you to her dying breath. She would defend me, too, although I don’t think she’d enjoy it as much.”

Lydie chuckled. Another tear rolled down her cheek. “Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not being silly,” Leigh argued. “I’m being real. I’m not like my mother; I’m more like Aunt Bess. Mom loves both her and me dearly, but she’ll never stop trying to improve on us, because we’ll never
be
her. We’ll also never be
you.”

Lydie looked at Leigh curiously.

“My mother’s standards of perfection are high,” Leigh explained. “Frances herself is the gold standard for women everywhere, of course. But you’re the next best thing, with Cara coming in a close second. The only thing you ever did that she didn’t approve of was to marry Mason, and in her mind, that ruined your life. She sees his influence as the antithesis of her own. In the black and white world of Frances Koslow, he is an evil that it is her job to vanquish… and she is determined not to fail you.”

Lydie winced. “Good Lord, that’s dramatic.”

Leigh grinned. “You know I’m right.”

“But what can I do?” Lydie shot back. “Other than choose between them?
Again?
That picture you painted doesn’t leave much room for compromise.”

“That isn’t your problem,” Leigh insisted. “She doesn’t get to decide who you love. You make that decision; her job is to deal with it.”

Lydie huffed. “She won’t deal with it. She’s absolutely refused to spend any time with him since he’s come back. She can’t be bothered to get to know the man he is now.”

“So give her a reason to!” Leigh fired back. “Stand up to her. Tell her that Mason is a part of your life now, whether she likes it or not. Then she’ll have no choice but to make the effort!”

Lydie drew in a long, tired breath.

“You do
not
need to choose between them,” Leigh finished gently. “The only choice is my mother’s. She has to decide whether being your sister is more important than being Mason Dublin’s enemy. And we both know what she’s going to pick.”

Lydie looked up with a guarded expression.

“Eventually,”
Leigh added.

Lydie smiled back. “I hope you’re right.”

Leigh stood. “So,” she pressed playfully. “Where
have
you been all day? And all last weekend? You went to quite an effort to pull off this ruse.”

Lydie grinned. “You have no idea. Our daughter is too smart by half and must be part bloodhound. We’ve had more than a few narrow escapes.”

Leigh smirked. The thought of Mason climbing out her aunt’s window and sliding down the drainpipe as Cara walked in the front door calling, “Mom! The kids are here!” was really too funny. But that had probably never happened. Having Frances living next door 24/7 must have scaled back the couple’s options considerably.

“I did go to the historical symposium,” Lydie defended. “For the weekend, anyway. I flew out of Harrisburg to take the cruise, which is why I had to drive back down the Turnpike just now.”

“And the pawnbrokers’ convention?” Leigh asked.

“It’s been happening in Las Vegas all week. But I’m afraid Mason never had any intention of going.”

Lydie’s tone held just enough smugness that Leigh wondered if her aunt didn’t actually enjoy the sneaking around… just a bit. Mason had called Lydie “an adventurer,” and as Leigh studied the twinkle in her aunt’s eye and the pinkish flush to her cheeks, she knew he was telling the truth.

It was disturbing how long one could know a person without really knowing them. Or rather, without seeing them as someone else might.

“Well, take your time coming over,” Leigh offered, moving toward the door. “Relax, unwind.”

Lydie looked like she was trying not to laugh. After a moment, Leigh realized why. Her aunt had never looked more “unwound” in her life.

Chapter 24

It was past dark when Leigh finally made her way out the door of her parents’ house, setting off to drive yet another West View/Avalon loop before heading back up to the North Hills and home. The fact that she could make the drive in her sleep was fortunate, because doing so might be necessary. She yawned as she parked her van across the street from the clinic, hopped out, and made her way toward the basement door.

She didn’t carry keys to the clinic. Since the last break-in a decade ago, no one did, except her father. After-hours visits were always made through the basement door, where a staff key was cleverly hidden in a slot behind an electrical box. Randall didn’t worry that an intruder would find the key, because unless he or she proceeded immediately to the security panel upstairs and punched in the proper code, the police would be arriving shortly. And the code itself was changed on a regular basis by Jeanine, who would write each new creation down on a special card she inserted into the veterinarian’s wallet. The system worked brilliantly as long as Randall remembered to check the card.

Tonight, doing so had been Leigh’s job, and she repeated the numbers in her brain as she jogged down the stairs, unlocked the door, and replaced the key.
8258, 8258
… She slipped inside and locked the door behind her, then headed up the stairs.
8258
…

Leigh didn’t pause to switch on the lights, as she could see well enough by the emergency lighting and was anxious to get to the panel in time. She had made way too many mortified calls to the Avalon PD over the years explaining how a false alarm was the result of her either forgetting the code, tripping on the staircase, or chasing a wayward young twin across the parking lot.

8258.
Leigh reached the security panel and pressed in the code. It took her several seconds to realize that the monitor screen was blank. She frowned and looked at the power light, which generally glowed green.

It was dark.

Leigh swore and looked around her. She saw no evidence of a power failure. The autoclave light was on and the refrigerator was chugging.

Well, that’s just friggin’ fabulous,
she muttered to herself. The last thing Randall needed to worry about tonight was a problem with his security system. The timing was wretched in any event, with the police definitively linking the petnappings to the clinic. If word got out about a security failure on top of that grim note, no one would ever leave a pet overnight again.

Leigh continued to mutter as she flipped on the lights and scouted the treatment room and pharmacy countertops. Her father could have taken the cell phone out of his pocket anywhere, including the bathroom. Surely someone on staff had noticed it after he left? In which case, where would they put it?

She flipped off the lights in the back and turned on those in the reception room. Randall’s cell phone was not on the main desk, or in its drawers, or even in the secret cash compartment under the ledgers. Leigh slammed the last drawer shut again. She felt uneasy, and that annoyed her. It was ridiculous for her to be afraid of being in the clinic alone at night. Her father did it frequently, as had she herself countless times before. So what if the security panel was down? All the doors were locked. And she would be out again in a matter of seconds.

Provided she could find the damn phone.

She raised her head and looked around the waiting room. She opened her mouth to direct a question to the empty yellow chair in the corner, then chuckled at herself. Mrs. Gregg’s chair might as well have her name on it, as often as the woman was in residence. No doubt the lonely widow knew that Randall had gone home sick today. She might actually even know where he left his…

Leigh froze. Her gaze remained fixed on the chair. It was the nearest chair to the reception desk. It was also the closest chair to the door of exam room #1, where Randall had parked himself since his injury.

Was it possible?

Her mind quickly ran through the information their petnapper needed to know — information that
could
have come from watching the clinic from the outside.

Or,
Leigh thought with a sharp pang of anxiety,
it could have come from sitting right there.

Mrs. Gregg? A petnapper? It was inconceivable. Partly because she was too darn sweet. Partly because she had no motive. And partly because her hair was in a bob and her short, roundish body could under no circumstances have been the intruder Leigh saw hanging through her parents’ window.

But did all those “partlies” add up to a whole? Mrs. Gregg could have been the accomplice. The informant. The one who knew which clients were vulnerable and how much each had to spend. The one who knew that Lucky was headed back home again. And that the cockatiel was going to Randall’s house.

It was possible. But was it likely?

Leigh searched her mind for everything she knew about the woman. Mrs. Gregg was somewhere in her fifties. She lived within walking distance of the clinic. She was always spoken of fondly by others, although it was often in a hushed, empathetic tone because her husband had died young of cancer, and their only son had gone to—

Crap!

The memory galvanized her instantly. She moved into the exam room and flipped on the lights. Where
was
that dratted phone? Had her father been in here when he got sick? If so, it was probably still sitting on the counter…

She searched the room with a growing sense of urgency, even as she willed herself to remain calm. She was in no immediate danger. She just needed to find the phone and get back to her father.

The phone wasn’t there. Leigh swore out loud again, then quickly checked the other exam rooms. The clinic always felt eerie when it was quiet, and tonight it seemed deathly so. The two cats in their cages in the recovery room had taken no notice of her as she passed by, nor did whatever rabbit, ferret, or guinea pig was sleeping in its nest box in the kennel on the floor. Dogs usually barked when someone came in at night, but at the moment there were none to oblige.

Leigh headed back down the stairs. If someone else found Randall’s phone, perhaps they would put it on his desk in the basement. She moved quickly down the steps, around the corner, and past the row of extra-large dog runs that led back to her father’s office. A relic from the bygone days when the clinic had doubled as a boarding facility, the runs had more space than most sick pets needed and were now used mainly for storage. The last run held old newspapers for the cage bottoms, and Leigh noticed as she passed it that Jared’s usually ordered stacks were jumbled. Blaming Ethan and Mathias, she made a mental note to question them later. But she didn’t stop walking. She wanted to find the blasted phone and get out of here.