Never Tease a Siamese: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (11 page)

Leigh held up a hand. "I really don't think there is a mystery baby," she confessed. "Both Nikki and Peggy Linney think Lilah Murchison contrived the whole thing just to rattle Dean's cage, and given what Ricky just told us about him I can’t say I blame her."

Adith's eyes widened. "When did you talk to Peggy Linney? At the will reading?"

"No, I went to see her yesterday afternoon," Leigh answered, disturbed by the look on the older woman's face. "Why?"

"I thought you might have already heard," Adith answered, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "They found her dead in her bed this morning."

Chapter 8

"I can't believe she's dead," Leigh repeated for the fourth time.

"Could you get a pulse for me?" Randall Koslow asked through his surgeon's
mask.

Leigh slid her hand underneath the blue paper drape and felt for the inside of the cat's back leg. "About one fifty," she said, glancing at the wall clock. "And strong." She hadn't been able to stop thinking about Peggy Linney, even for a moment, since she had heard the news a half hour before. And while feeling startled at the sudden death of someone she had just visited might be expected, the sick feeling that had settled deep in her stomach seemed out of proportion.

"Mrs. Rhodis said she died in her sleep," she mumbled.

Randall did not look up from his task. "It happens," he commented soberly. "Check his color, would you?"

She pulled back the part of the drape that covered the cat's head, and drew in a breath. At first she had thought her dad was doing a simple spay—but now that she thought about it, he rarely did anything but emergencies this late in the day. And the abdominal incision he was working through was unusually long.

"This is Number One Son!" she exclaimed. "He did get obstructed. Is he going to be okay?"

Randall didn't answer, and she realized he was waiting for information from her. She touched the Siamese's gums with a fingertip, pressing until the area went white. When she pulled back, the gums quickly turned pink again. "CRT's good," she answered, then lightly touched the corner of the cat's eye. He blinked. "Palpebral's fine. Have you found the metal piece?"

She watched as her father's gloved fingers gingerly handled a solid mass of twisted intestine. "Adhesions?" she asked.

Randall nodded, his head still down. "The blockage doesn't seem to be in the worst of it, though. I think I can get it."

Leigh was silent as her father concentrated. They would soon find out what it was that Dean and Rochelle had wanted back so badly. Or, what it was they
didn't
want Lilah Murchison to see. Her thoughts returned automatically to Peggy Linney.

It couldn't be a coincidence.

She made herself face the thought. Could Peggy Linney have been murdered? Her legs were starting to shake slightly beneath the surgery table. She checked the cat's color again, then pulled over a stool and sat down.

Perhaps someone else knew that Peggy Linney was an eyewitness to Dean's birth. Perhaps they wanted to silence her. Had they been watching Leigh as she visited? Was it her visit that made someone see the old woman as a threat? If she had never gone to see Peggy, would—

"Here it is," her father announced, holding up a gnarled mass of green cloth with a hemostat. Leigh held out a paper towel, and Randall dropped both the instrument and the mass onto the middle of it. She sat down with the soggy paper towels in her lap and probed the tangled threads with the tips of the hemostat. In a few moments, she had managed a semireconstruction. "It
is
a little key," she announced. "On some type of cloth key chain. Woven threads of different colors, maybe— I’ll have to wash it up."

Randall merely grunted as he bent studiously over his patient, sewing carefully. "I'm just glad it didn't perforate."

"Does it mean anything to you?" she asked hopefully. "I mean, did any bells go off when you saw it?"

He didn’t answer, which she took as a rather disappointing
no
. She stared hard at the tiny key, which was paper thin and shaped like a footnote symbol. She had similar keys that opened luggage padlocks, but this one was a little more ornate, with a three-dimensional design at its base.

Perhaps Rochelle had simply been attempting to steal something of Ms. Murchison's, she reasoned hopefully. Rochelle had found the key and opened whatever it was, but when she cast the key aside, there was Number One Son, licking his lips. When the thief realized what had happened, she would have had to try and hide it from her mother-in-law, particularly if Dean was on thin ice as far as his inheritance was concerned.

Mrs. Rhodis's troublesome words came back to Leigh in a flash. Ricky had told his grandmother that Dean and Rochelle claimed to be "coming into major money
real soon.
" Why should they think that? And why, she realized suddenly, feeling foolish for not wondering before, would a woman in her sixties expect her much older, frailer housekeeper to outlive her?

"Help me rinse and reglove, would you?" Randall asked, the stitching on the bowel completed. Pushing her new and disturbing thoughts to the side, Leigh rose and helped him prepare a new sterile field. They had just finished when the A-team checked in.

"Doc? I haven’t heard you call. Are you ready for—" Jeanine eyed her substitute with the merest hint of jealousy, but quickly replaced it with a knowing smirk. "Oh. Hello, Leigh. I didn’t realize it was you in here. How are you feeling?"

"Fine," she returned tersely, trying—a little—to disguise her current animosity. It was too early to even take a pregnancy test, but ever since Leigh’s slip at the x-ray table, the snooty tech had insisted on eyeing her like they shared some colossal secret. God forbid the woman should run into Warren in the next few days—she’d probably tell him everything herself.

"So, how’s the patient, Doc?" the tech said loudly, leaning over the surgery table as if to inspect Randall’s work. "Oh, yes. Adhesions. I
told
Nikki Loomis last time not to let that cat get near anything cloth,
ever
. Cat's lucky to be alive. What did he eat this time?"

Randall continued sewing. He respected Jeanine’s work as a tech, but that didn’t mean he listened to everything she said. "It’s a key," Leigh answered, holding out the paper towel. She couldn’t think of anything to link Jeanine to the Murchisons, but she resolved to try. If the key didn’t mean anything to her father, it had to mean something to somebody else at the clinic. And if anyone else was to be incriminated, it was only fair that the most obnoxious went first. "Look familiar?" she asked, pushing the smelly mess closer to Jeanine and watching her expression.

The tech reached out a bony hand and pulled the towel closer still, her nose practically touching the mass of threads. "Cloth key chain," she said with authority. "That’ll get 'em. Not to speak ill of the dead or anything, but that woman should have known better by now. I say—if you can’t keep the cat safe, then maybe you shouldn’t have it at all."

Leigh swallowed the unkind retort brewing in the back of her mind. Jeanine clearly had no idea what lengths Lilah Murchison had actually gone to to protect Number One Son. Which also meant it was very unlikely she’d ever set foot in the mansion.

"Did you ever meet Mrs. Murchison?" Leigh asked in her most innocent voice.

A look of annoyance flashed across the technician’s face. "She never came in the clinic, or I would have given her a piece of my mind. I offered to do her vaccinations for her at the house one time, but she only wanted Dr. Koslow." She glanced up at Randall, who was otherwise absorbed, then tossed her head in his direction as she threw Leigh an arching eyebrow. "And I mean
wanted
him," she mouthed silently.

Not sure whether to laugh or be nauseous, Leigh changed the subject. "Did you hear that Peggy Linney died?"

Jeanine’s face was perfectly blank. "Who?"

"Oh," Leigh backpedaled. "I thought you might know Mrs. Murchison’s old housekeeper, but I guess she never came in the clinic either."

Jeanine shrugged, and Leigh reluctantly crossed her name off the suspect list. The tech lived in Moon Township anyway; she wouldn’t be familiar with the Avalon-Bellevue-Ben Avon set unless they had pets.

"If the inquisition is over," Randall broke in suddenly, his gloved hands in the air, "could I get some help here? I need a status check."

Leigh started to step over, but Jeanine was at the table in a flash. The tech stood by until the stitching was completed, all the while prattling to Dr. Koslow about how his newest associate insisted on using a ridiculously expensive suture material on spays, and why it was Nancy’s fault for ordering the stuff in the first place. Leigh was about to consider strangulation with the same when Jeanine mercifully remembered something else she had to do.

"By the way," Randall began as she turned to leave. "Did those new recirculating blankets come in yet?"

Jeanine shook her head. "Not unless they're in one of the packages that just came. But I'll check."

She was off like a shot, and Leigh pulled out a towel to cover Number One Son, whose bare abdomen was wet and sticky-orange from the disinfectant scrub. She stayed by the cat while Randall tidied up, her mind once again deep in thought. Since Dean Murchison was clearly behind the catnapping, which was more than likely tied up with the belief that his mother’s death was imminent, then he was almost certainly behind the rock-throwing as well. In which case, she thought with relief, Peggy Linney's death must have been a coincidence. Because the elderly woman had offered no threat whatsoever to Dean’s inheritance; in fact, she had appeared to be one of his biggest fans.

"I'll tell you what I think, Dad," she said with optimism, and more to herself than to him. "I can’t believe that the plane crash was anything but an accident, but I do think that Mrs. Murchison had some reason to believe she was going to die soon. Maybe she had just been diagnosed with cancer, or heart disease. In any event, I think she was miffed at Dean when she wrote that crazy will, and I think she let on something about it to him. That’s why he and Rochelle were desperate to keep her from finding out they’d been snooping in her house. They wanted to get back in her good graces before she really did die. Of course, I still don’t know why they were snooping. Maybe they were in a tight spot and planned to steal money or jewelry. Maybe they’d done it before."

"Makes sense," Randall responded, much to her surprise.

"The only thing I still don’t get is why Dean is afraid that someone at the clinic can mess things up for him. You say you don’t know anything, neither Nikki nor Peggy Linney believe that Mrs. Murchison ever had another child, and besides Jared being Nikki’s brother, I can’t find a link between the Murchisons and anyone else at the clinic."

Her father's raised eyebrows indicated that she had lost him. "You still think that rock had something to do with Lilah Murchison’s death?"

Leigh took a deep breath. Her father’s ability to focus might make him a brilliant scientist, but the flipside—blindness to the obvious—could be a real hindrance. "Maura seemed to think it was a possibility," she said reasonably,  "Because whether or not the mystery heir is real, and whether or not Dean is Lilah Murchison's biological son, he might
think
someone here knows something that could cause him trouble."

Randall humphed. It was as good as a concession.

"So who here would know about Mrs. Murchison's private life?" She questioned eagerly, lowering her voice. "I’ve ruled out Jeanine already. And as for Jared, even if he did know anything, I don’t think anyone would threaten him with a written note."

Randall thought for a moment. "Marcia and Michelle are both Avalon girls. Nancy lives in an apartment in Bellevue and Nora lives in the Rocks, but I don’t know where they grew up. You can eliminate Paula and Kari; Paula grew up near Philadelphia and Kari’s family just moved in from out West." He shook his head. "I’d forget the rest. The part-timers are all too young to know anything about the seventies."

Leigh considered hopefully. Marcia, Michelle, Nancy, and Nora. One of them had to know something that Dean and Rochelle Murchison wanted kept quiet.

Jeanine reappeared at the doorway, a small rectangular box in hand.

"There weren't any packages from VetCount," she explained regretfully, setting the box down on the extra surgery table and slitting the tape with her fingernails. "But this one lost its label, so we'll check it out."

"They should be in by now," Randall grumbled, adjusting the towels carefully over the unconscious cat. "I ordered them weeks ago."

With a cry that startled them both, Jeanine suddenly recoiled. "Oh no, not again!" She screeched.

Randall and Leigh both charged the box, but Leigh got there first. Nestled in amongst a slew of Styrofoam peanuts, dirt, and grass was a cheap, hard-plastic baby doll, its blue eyes and frizzy yellow hair caked with mud. Wrapped around its middle was a piece of plain paper bearing a message in handwritten, red-block letters.

Let the past stay buried, or everyone there will be.