Never Tease a Siamese: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (30 page)

She looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was listening, but it was too hard to tell. The treatment room was centrally located, and when the clinic was this empty—sound traveled. "I think it will answer several of our questions," she hinted. "I’m on my way now to see Mrs. Murchison’s lawyer, then I’ll meet you at my house." She checked her watch and gave the time. "If you can’t come by, at least call me there, okay?"

After leaving a last brief note on Warren’s voice mail, considerately informing him that she would be late for dinner, she hung up the phone and headed for the Cavalier.
Just wait for me
, she repeated with a grumble. She had been feeling pretty good about wrapping up the whole mystery-heir debacle, but the lawyer’s poor attitude risked spoiling her mood.

And the rain wasn’t helping either. Though she usually enjoyed a good spring thunderstorm, this was one of the uglier, windier ones, and there were places would she rather spend it than sitting in her car in the middle of North Park.

The park was a popular North Hills getaway, replete with paved walking trails, ball fields, playgrounds, picnic pavilions, and the ubiquitous "superdeer." But it was no place to weather a storm, and from the moment Leigh arrived at the designated grove, she wondered if she were wasting her time. Would the persnickety lawyer even show up? It seemed unlikely. Not if it meant getting his suit wet.

She had just put her hand on the ignition to leave when a gold Town Car appeared through the downpour and pulled into the small graveled lot beside her. She waited a moment, wondering if the driver would make a run for cover under the empty pavilion, but the Town Car’s engine remained running. After thirty seconds or so, the horn beeped.

Leigh’s jaws clenched. So.
She
was supposed to run out in the rain and come to
his
car, was she?

Her good humor now thoroughly wrecked, she sprinted out of the Cavalier, looked through the window of the ostentatious Town Car to make sure that it was, in fact, Sheridan’s, then opened the passenger door and slid in. She smiled evilly as her limbs dripped water on the upholstery.

"You have five minutes, Ms. Koslow," Sheridan said expressionlessly. "What exactly is your question?"

She was in no mood to prolong the interview. "I need to know if Mrs. Murchison’s will made any provisions under which the heir could refuse the inheritance and still remain anonymous."

Sheridan looked at her as if she had a screw loose. "Well, of course," he answered irritably. "The heir has the option of not coming forward. That was spelled out quite clearly—"

"No," Leigh interrupted, growing more annoyed. "I mean, can they go through this verification process as the heir, then refuse the money?"

The lawyer’s bushy eyebrows conjoined over the bridge of his nose. "Why on earth would anyone want to do that? If they don’t want the money, and they don’t want anyone to know who they are, there is no need for them to do anything."

A loud crack of thunder erupted from the sky. Leigh took a deep breath, stifling her fantasy of shaking the stuffy attorney by his collar. "As you must be aware," she began steadily, "a series of threats has been delivered to my father’s clinic—targeted at this individual and threatening retaliation if they come forward. What the heir wishes to do is refuse the money legally to get out from under the extortion, while still preserving his or her anonymity."

At long last, Sheridan seemed slightly intrigued. He reached up a hand and fingered his thin beard thoughtfully. "And may I ask, Ms. Koslow, what makes you so certain this individual is in fact the heir in question?"

"Mrs. Murchison told them herself before she died," she answered simply.

He offered a patronizing smile. "Indeed?"

"Why would they lie?" she argued. "I already told you, they don’t
want the money."

The lawyer fingered his beard again. "I’m afraid I would have to doubt that as well, Ms. Koslow. Did it ever occur to you that this individual might just be using you to help them garner information?"

Leigh’s face grew warm. She hoped it did not look red as well. She would hate for him to mistake her fire-hot wrath for embarrassment. "Did it ever occur to
you
that I might have uncovered proof myself that this individual is indeed Mrs. Murchison’s biological child?" she said slowly, struggling to keep her voice down.

He glared at her. "No."

"Well, I have!" she raged, giving up. "Lilah gave birth to another baby when everyone thought she was pregnant with Dean. I have confirmation on that!" She was thinking of Becky, Dean’s biological mother, but she had no intention of telling Sheridan that. If he was so damn smart, he could gather his own information.

He was silent for a moment, looking at her, and she imagined that his estimation of her had suddenly sprung up a notch. Finally, he spoke. "Your information is correct, Ms. Koslow, but only to a point. Mrs. Murchison did adopt Dean immediately after a legitimate pregnancy."

Leigh waited.

"But the infant she herself gave birth to was stillborn."

The words that had been on their way out of her mouth caught fast.
Stillborn?
Not possible. Even if that was what Becky had always believed. Where was Sheridan getting his information? "You said at the will reading," she began, flustered, "that Mrs. Murchison didn’t tell you any of the details about Dean’s birth."

The lawyer had the nerve to shrug. "I lied, Ms. Koslow. If you remember the tenor of that occasion, you should be able to see why. You should also be able to see that you’ve been royally had. Whoever has told you that they are the legitimate heir, I assure you, if they are basing that claim on the fact that they are the same age as Dean Murchison, they are lying."

Rain pounded hard on the Town Car, and Leigh’s wet limbs felt cold. Nancy couldn’t be lying—she couldn’t. She hadn’t wanted to admit being the heir in the first place. And what about that shock of baby hair? It all made perfect sense. Could it be possible that Mrs. Murchison had somehow double-crossed Nancy, too?

Leigh looked hard at Sheridan.

"You know who the real heir is, don’t you?" she accused. "Lilah Murchison told you. You’ve known all along."

To her surprise, he shook his head. "That isn’t true. She went to great lengths
not
to tell me."

"Then how do you know that the heir isn’t twenty-five years old?" Leigh asked skeptically.

"Because she told me that the other child was born prior to her third marriage," the lawyer responded, his tone growing wearied again. He checked his watch. "Your time is up, Ms. Koslow. I trust you will not be imposing further on my good nature."

Leigh took a deep breath and counted to five again. She had accepted a lot of curve balls since all this craziness started, but this was one projectile she couldn’t quite handle. Either Lilah Murchison had lied to her own lawyer, or Sheridan—for whatever reason—was bluffing. She chose to believe the latter.

"I trust you are not so stupid as to believe everything Mrs. Murchison told
you
," she said carefully, plotting her strategy as she went. "If she was hoping to humiliate her true heir by refusing to acknowledge them, she should have covered her bases a bit better."

She cleared her throat, checking to make sure she had Sheridan’s attention. She did.

"For instance, she should have told Peggy Linney to keep her mouth shut about the baby switch. That poor old woman was only too willing to tell me everything."

She watched Sheridan’s eyes carefully for signs of panic, but what she saw was closer to hostility.

"Rubbish, Ms. Koslow," he responded flippantly. "Peggy Linney never admitted anything of the kind. You know full well that she insisted she had delivered Dean from Mrs. Murchison herself." He looked at the watch once again. "Now, I have been more than patient with your ramblings, but I really must insist you leave. Don’t you have a dinner to prepare, or something?"

A dinner?
Enough was enough. This man was toast.

"I’ll prepare my dinner right here if you don’t lose the attitude and start listening to me!" she railed, eyes blazing. "I’ve
seen
proof, don’t you understand? Lilah Murchison’s proof, from her own memento box. I have a hair swatch from the baby she gave away, and it matches this individual perfectly. I have a will, dated 1982, leaving a large sum of money to the woman Lilah paid to raise this individual. And I have—"

"Damnation!" Sheridan cried, a hand flying up to cover his right eye. "These accursed contacts. Where are my glasses…" He leaned over and began rummaging around under the passenger seat, bumping Leigh’s ankles with a roving hand. "Move your feet, blast you!"

Leigh shifted her legs automatically to one side, wishing Lilah Murchison could have chosen a more normal human being for her legal work. Sheridan’s attitude was unfathomable; he had to be lying about not knowing who the heir was. Of course he knew. Why
wouldn’t
Lilah tell him? He just didn’t want Leigh to know.

Which, obviously, she did. The evidence she had just given was real, even if Peggy Linney’s confession had not been. But somehow, Sheridan the smug had known that.

Lightning flashed outside, and with it a spike of fear shot through her stomach region. How
had
he known what Peggy Linney had or had not told her? He had also visited Peggy on the last day of her life, but he had arrived before Leigh, not after. Yet the way he had just spoken, it was almost as if—

"There!" he said proudly, sitting up straight. There were no glasses either on his face or in his hand.

Almost as if he had been there.

The spike of fear repeated itself, and Leigh looked down sharply to see why she had just felt such a strange sensation on her ankle.

It didn’t take long to figure out.

He had handcuffed her foot to the car.

Chapter 23

"What the hell are you doing?!" Leigh screamed, jerking her foot up wildly. She fingered the cuffs, but they were latched tight. One ring to her left ankle, the other to the
spring under her seat. "Are you crazy?"

Sheridan’s face was scarlet, and his eyes had lost all traces of equanimity. "
I
am not the crazy one," he shouted back at her. "
I
am not the one who cannot leave well enough alone.
I
am not the one who can take months of careful planning and destroy it with a few days of nosing around in other people’s business!"

Leigh stopped pulling at the cuffs. That was pointless. So was opening the car door. For one thing, only half her body would make it out. For another, it was still pouring rain, and not a soul was around to either see or hear half a body sticking out of a Town Car.

She faced the rattled lawyer, and the wheels in her brain began to turn. "You were there, weren’t you?" she said calmly, even though her heart was striking her sternum like a mallet. "You were still at Peggy Linney’s apartment when I visited her."

The lawyer didn’t answer.

"She knew you were there," Leigh continued. "That’s why she wouldn’t tell me anything."

He still said nothing.

"If she was cooperating with you, why did you have to kill her?"

"Will you
shut up
!" he ranted, little veins popping out on his ruddy forehead and neck. "I’m trying to think!"

Leigh stared at him. He was guilty. Guilty of something major. And what she had just so brilliantly succeeded in doing was convincing him that she knew enough to be a threat.

Fabulous.

She decided to backtrack, and quickly. "Look," she placated, keeping her voice as agreeable as possible for one whose leg was shackled, "you don’t have to freak out about this. So you and Peggy had words. She got stressed; she had a stroke, a heart attack, whatever. She was going to die anyway. It doesn’t matter to me."

The lawyer turned his head toward her slowly. "Well, aren’t we bright," he drawled sarcastically.

Stay cool
. "Excuse me?"

"It’s a nice strategy, Ms. Koslow, but it’s too late to play dumb. We both know that
you
know that Nancy Johnson is the legitimate heir."

Leigh shuddered a little. This was bad. "Nancy Johnson? No…I was thinking about Nikki Loomis—"

"Enough!" he snapped forcefully. "It insults us both." He paused a moment, great beads of sweat breaking out around his receding hairline. "How could I have predicted that Mrs. Murchison would leave copies of old wills lying around? She never even asked for a copy of the latest one, convenient as that was…"

He mumbled the last words, then glared at her again. "Miss Johnson has been far too scared to talk. You must have cornered her with some evidence she couldn’t refute. So, she swore you to secrecy. That’s why she sent you to me—she didn’t want to confess herself even to an attorney unless she could be certain her name wouldn’t get out."

Leigh said nothing, and Sheridan’s thin lips curved up slightly. "I judged her well. Some people respond to personal threats; with others, the self-sacrificing types, you have to threaten people they care about. It was unfortunate that Miss Johnson didn’t have family to threaten, but I figured that in her case, even the guilt of causing a co-worker’s death would be too much."