Never Steal a Cockatiel (Leigh Koslow Mystery Series Book 9) (27 page)

Mrs. Gregg’s son,
she pondered, switching on her father’s office light. She could remember the woman mentioning him just a few days ago, when Maura was in the waiting room.
My Jonathan,
the widow had said fondly.
He always cried when strangers talked to him.
Somehow, when Mrs. Gregg said those words, Leigh had thought of a shy little toddler.

Aha!
Leigh pounced on the phone on her father’s desk with glee. It was sitting right in the middle of the newly cleared workspace, and she berated herself for not checking his office first. Her father might not be able to get down here himself on crutches, but it was still a logical place for someone on the staff to put his belongings.

She pocketed the phone, flipped off the light, and turned to leave. Then she heard the sound of a key turning in a lock.

She stopped her breath. The sound was coming from the far side of the basement. From the same door she had come through.

She heard the pop of a metal door opening. Then the swish of rubber weather-stripping sliding along the concrete floor.

Footsteps.

Leigh released her breath as quietly as possible. There was no reason to panic. Whoever had walked in obviously knew where the key was hidden and was probably supposed to be here. They would be heading up the stairs any second to punch in the code, and once they were overhead, Leigh would hasten herself out. That way she would be covered on the extremely small off-chance that said person
wasn’t
supposed to be here.

The footsteps moved slowly. They stopped now and then. Whoever had entered seemed in no rush to get up the stairs.

Did they know that the security system was down?

Leigh shivered at the thought, but could not rule it out. The petnapper did seem to know everything else about the clinic… and its clients.

Thanks to dear, sweet Mrs. Greg,
Leigh thought to herself miserably.
That poor, lonely woman whose only son had gone to jail…

The beam of a moving flashlight reflected off the ceiling outside Randall’s office.

…for beating his girlfriend to death with a shovel.

Chapter 25

Leigh remained still. The irony was great, given how frequently the chorus of barking in the basement could break an eardrum, that it was now so quiet she feared to move.

She tried to come up with a nonthreatening explanation.

Maybe Jeanine or Dr. Stallions had noticed a problem with the system when they locked up. They had called the company and a friendly technician had just arrived.

Nice try.
No way would anyone on staff do such a thing without notifying Randall, or at least asking Frances to do so. But no one from the clinic had called all afternoon.

The narrow beam continued moving, and Leigh’s heart began to pound. Strike two. Anyone with authorization to be here, including a technician, would have no reason to use a penlight. They would simply flip the wall switch.

Jonathan Gregg.

Leigh had never met him. She would not remember who he was now had his conviction not been front-page news at the time. Everyone at the clinic had felt terribly for his mother, who had seemed both heartbroken and bewildered.
Maybe if his father were still alive,
the gossipmongers had theorized.
But she couldn’t control him. Poor Mrs. Gregg. Poor, poor woman.

The light moved away again. Leigh began to relax, then heard the sound of a cage door clanging.

She tensed all over again. This was no burglar out for drugs or cash. The intruder was looking for something in particular. Something he expected to find in a cage?

Leigh conjured a mental picture of Mrs. Gregg. Short, frumpy, sweet-natured. She had seemed as happy as anyone when Skippy rallied the community to catch the petnapper. Could her warm smile and slightly dim manner be an act? Was she desperate to help a son paroled — or possibly escaped — from prison? Was he giving her any choice?

The footsteps came closer again. Leigh’s breath shuddered. From what reflections she could see, the flashlight beam seemed to be drifting over the empty dog runs.

What animal was he looking for? Leigh hadn’t noticed any patients in the basement earlier. The surgeries had all gone home now; the sick animals were kept upstairs.

Was he looking for an animal at all?

Leigh struggled to control her breathing. It sounded like she was wheezing.

Wait.
Was that her breathing? Or was that tinny, muffled, TV-volume-down-all-the-way sound coming from
him?

A creak sounded at the bottom of the stairs, and Leigh’s taut shoulders slumped with relief. She was only imagining things. The intruder wasn’t closer; he was farther away. He was climbing the steps now.

And as soon as he was up them, she would be free. She would run for the door and call the cops the second she was safe. She didn’t need to understand what was happening; she only needed to get the hell outside.

If only he wouldn’t notice her on the way up. When he reached the halfway point, he would technically be able to see her, but she consoled herself with the fact that she was in darkness. The dim glow of the emergency lights only lit up the steps and the exit route. She would be able to see him as he came up the stairs, but he shouldn’t be able to see her.

Unless, of course, he decided to shine his light right at her.

Don’t breathe!

The figure moved into view. Leigh willed her heart to stop thumping so loudly. It disobeyed her.

Step. Step.

She saw his face first. And she really wished she hadn’t. His hood was down, and the strange light made his skin glow a yellowish orange. His dark hair was long and pulled into a band at the base of his neck. His lower lip was swollen and the whole right side of his jaw looked puffy. His chin and neck bore multiple scratches. His left nostril was an amorphous blob of swollen tissue and dried blood.

Leigh choked back a cry of horror.
Don’t shine the light here, don’t shine the light here…

The figure passed. The footsteps stopped; the doorknob at the top of the steps squeaked slightly. Leigh swore she could hear the man breathe again.

The door swung open. Footsteps moved on into the treatment room. Leigh allowed herself one good drag of oxygen. Surely he would head straight for the kennels now. She prepared to make her move.

As soon as his footsteps moved from the doorway overhead she tiptoed the first few feet out of the office and into the corridor between the staircase and the dog runs.

She heard a noise and stopped again. Another door had just swung open.

The basement door that she was headed for.

One of Maura Polanski’s favorite curse words echoed inside her head.

Leigh looked to her right and left. It was hopeless. Scarface, whoever he was, was most definitely not supposed to be here. But the person who’d just entered wasn’t either. And this one didn’t even have a penlight. The basement door had popped open as quietly as it was possible to pop it, and the few footsteps that followed had gone nowhere. Criminal Number Two, as far as Leigh could tell, was doing nothing but standing quietly by the door.

She could not run out of the basement. She could not run up the stairs. She could not make the slightest sound, and she could not stay where she was. If the silent doorman decided to move, he would spot her as soon as he rounded the corner. She could backtrack into her father’s office, but if anyone bothered to search it they were bound to find her, because there was absolutely nowhere inside of it to hide.

Could she hide anywhere else? An idea formed in her mind just as the sounds started up again. The ceiling creaked as the man upstairs walked, and the footsteps across the basement began to move as well. Leigh didn’t bother thinking through the rest of her plan. She used the cover of other sounds to pivot and slip through the door of the paper run.

A rough hand grabbed her and covered her mouth; another coiled around her waist.

She decided it was okay to panic now.

“Don’t scream!” a male voice hissed in her ear, just as she freed a hand to poke at the nearest eyeball. “We’re the police! It’s a sting!”

Holy hell.
Leigh’s muscles sagged with relief.

“Can I let go of you?”

Leigh nodded emphatically, and the man’s arms gradually loosened.

“Just hold still and be quiet.”

Leigh wanted to protest that she wasn’t an idiot, but since there was some evidence to the contrary, she kept her mouth shut.

The door at the top of the steps creaked. Footsteps started down. The policeman tried to muscle his way in front of Leigh, but their movements made a rustling noise. Leigh winced as the figure on the stairs stopped suddenly.

He had heard them.

Crap.

The tinny, muffled sound came again, and now that Leigh stood mere inches away she realized the policeman was wearing an earpiece. It was clearly not a great one, but the Avalon PD was no SWAT team, either. “He’s got it,” she heard the voice squeak. “Move in!”

The overhead lights switched on. The officer beside her hustled out of the run in a flash. Leigh stood still and watched as the figure on the steps hesitated a moment, then started up, only to be confronted by another policeman at the top of the steps. “Put your hands up!”

Scarface was carrying a kennel in one hand. He made a feint as if he would jump off the staircase and run, but his cause was clearly lost. There were policemen at the top and bottom of the stairs and another by the basement door. “Put your hands up!” all three shouted.

Scarface swore. He dropped the kennel and kicked it viciously the rest of the way down the steps. The officer at the bottom sidestepped the missile and charged just as the other at the top descended. Scarface offered no further resistance as the two cuffed him and hustled him down to solid ground.

“We got him,” the officer by the door reported into his radio.

“Got her too,” another one reported from the other end.

Leigh crept out of her hiding place.
Her, too?
The officers began to frisk their suspect, and Leigh moved down the corridor on shaky legs. The carrier Scarface had kicked had bounced down the stairs, struck the door of the staff bathroom and careened toward her. The policemen seemed wholly unconcerned with it. But Leigh was not.

“Whatcha doing wandering around a vet clinic, boy?” the police chief questioned their captive. Leigh realized he must have been the man stationed upstairs; most likely hiding somewhere in the kennel room. The carrier Scarface had picked up was the one Leigh had seen sitting out in the floor, holding some kind of sleeping small mammal.

No sound came from the carrier now. No evidence of movement.

“Well?” the police chief repeated.

The accused said nothing. In full light, the injuries to his face looked even more gruesome than in the dark. He also looked considerably younger than Leigh had assumed.

“What happened to you?” the chief continued. “Did you get in a fight with a pair of scissors?”

“It was a beak,” Leigh blurted, unable to restrain herself. The policeman seemed to have forgotten she was there. She was only a foot away from the dropkicked carrier now, and still she could hear nothing from within. She felt a certain amount of empathy for the boy with the ravaged face; his torn nostril would leave a scar for sure, and though the rest of his injuries would heal, they would be painful in the process. But her empathy only went so far.

“The beak of a cockatoo,” she repeated as all four men stared at her. “And its claws. Most likely also a puncture or two from the teeth of a friendly mutt named Lucky.”

“Friendly?!” the boy protested, evidently forgetting his plan to stay quiet. He followed up with a string of rather unimaginative four letter words. “That dog’s psycho!”

“We’re bringing her down,” a voice over the radio informed.

Leigh cast a nervous glance down at the carrier. Through the slats on its sides she could see a tuft of soft brown fur. It was motionless. “You’re the psycho, Jonathan,” she hissed.

“Who the hell is Jonathan?” he snapped back.

Footsteps pounded down the staircase outside.

Leigh squatted by the carrier, opened the door, and braced herself to look in. Wood shavings had scattered everywhere. The dome-shaped plastic house in which the animal had been sleeping was upended in the rear of the kennel. The mass of fur was lying on its side in the front. Leigh put in a hand and gently felt it.

It was cold and stiff.

It was also completely synthetic. Leigh’s heart skipped a beat as she pulled out a stuffed rabbit with large plastic eyes that somehow looked vaguely familiar.

“Aw, man!” the boy roared, staring at the object in her hands with disgust. He followed up with a few more vulgarities just as a fourth policeman walked through the door, guiding in front of him a cuffed accomplice. Her face was partly obscured; wisps of her bountiful, flyaway hair were stuck in the tears that streamed down her cheeks.

It was Kirsten.

Chapter 26

The fourth policeman was followed down the steps by a very self-satisfied looking Maura Polanski. She shot a look at Leigh that was part castigation, part amusement, then threw both hands up in the air. “I knew it would be you,” she said with a smirk, walking over. “They told me an unidentified female had jumped out of a van and sashayed right into the clinic, and I told myself, ‘Of course that’s her. Who else would knowingly barge into a sting operation?’”

Leigh’s face flushed. “
Knowingly?
What am I, psychic? I just came to get my dad’s phone!”

Maura blinked at her a moment. “Your dad didn’t tell you?”

Leigh groaned. “My dad has been either throwing up or unconscious the entire afternoon!”

“Oh,” Maura said with surprise. “
Oh,”
she repeated heavily. “Sorry about that. Both the chief and I talked to him, and you were right there with him at the time, so we assumed… I mean, the doc sounded pretty good to me. I had no idea he was that bad off.”