Nothing to Fear But Ferrets (16 page)

We still hadn’t rung the doorbell, and once again I opened the gate to allow an invited someone inside. I grinned at all buff six feet of Jeff as he covered me with equally hungry eyes. “Later,” I said, feeling my insides turn mushy. “Let’s see Charlotte first.”

A uniformed officer who looked familiar opened the front door after our ring. “Yes?” His name badge identified him as Elina, and I recognized him as the older and less enthusiastic of the cops who’d come to my door when the Hummer had bashed an entry of its own.

Esther took over, identifying herself. “Ms. LaVerne is my client. I understand she’s currently being interrogated.” A couple of leaps to conclusions, but what the heck? It got us inside, even Jeff and me when she introduced him as an investigator she’d hired and me as her assistant. She didn’t say assistant what. I could have been along to answer her phone.

She asked to see Charlotte but told me to take her wherever by way of the infamous den that had been stoved in by the Hummer, haphazardly and temporarily mended, and finally inspected by the insurance company—the same den that had formerly been occupied by the ferrets, and the scene of Chad Chatsworth’s last stand.

Ignoring Officer Elina’s protests, I pushed open the door. We peered in one by one, then I led my entourage down the hall toward where I heard voices. Sure enough, the living room, in all its ugly black-and-white furnished nonglory, was occupied by Charlotte and Detective Noralles. Yul was nowhere to be seen, which gave credence to the assumption that Charlotte was being officially interrogated. Another potential witness wouldn’t be permitted to hear, because that might lead to meshing of their stories.

Noralles stood as we appeared in the doorway. He didn’t look happy. I wondered if he ever smiled, except snidely. Maybe a real one would make his good-looking face crack.

Charlotte, on the other hand, gave a huge grin and threw herself toward me, engulfing me immediately in one of her hugs. “Thank heaven you’re here, Kendra,” she shrilled.

When she stepped back, I introduced her to Esther. “And you remember my private investigator friend Jeff Hubbard, don’t you?”

“I sure do.” Our presence must have eased Charlotte enough that she assumed her usual enthusiastic sex-pot persona, eyeing Jeff with a feline smile. Even with her hair held back in its normal black braid, her body covered with a loose tunic and slacks, she was one sexy reality show star. But when she caught my gaze, she must have remembered herself, for she had the grace to flush and look at the floor.

“I thought you said you were her lawyer,” Officer Elina said irritably to Esther.

“I am,” she said amiably.

“Then how come you’re just being introduced?”

“Never mind, young man,” Esther said. “Now, if you two nice policemen would just give us some private attorney-client time with Ms. LaVerne . . .” She obviously remembered Detective Noralles from when she’d been around during his interrogations of me. He remembered her, too, judging from his glower.

But he had little choice. Charlotte had requested to see her lawyer, and Esther was it. Privilege could attach even with Jeff and me here, as long as we were consultants hired by an attorney on behalf of her client.

Noralles split, heading for the kitchen. That must have been where Yul was sequestered, for he shot from that end of the house as fast as if he’d been ejected from a damaged fighter plane’s cockpit.

“You okay?” Yul demanded of Charlotte.

“Yes,” she said, grabbing his arm. Then, “No,” she said, nearly sinking to the colorful Pakistani area rug. Yul helped her over to one of the ugly sofas and sat beside her. I let Esther sit on an overstuffed white chair near her new client, and Jeff and I grabbed others facing them.

“The detective said he received an envelope, sent anonymously,” Charlotte finally continued in a subdued voice.

“We’ll want to see it,” Jeff said, his eyes on Esther, whose silvery hair shimmied as she nodded.

“I did see it, kind of,” Charlotte said. “Its postmark was from the post office near the studios where
Turn Up the Heat
was filmed, and where I was pitching other ideas. It contained things no one should have had besides me . . . and the detective seems to think the stuff in it shows that I had a motive to kill Chad.”

“What things?” Jeff demanded before Esther or I could.

“Papers.” Charlotte heaved a sad sigh, and Yul took her hand. I might not like the guy much, but at least he was there for Charlotte. “I’d had some letterhead printed for our new reality show production company,” she continued. “I used a few sheets for brainstorming—and they were in the package. One showed me as chief executive and listed some of our initial ideas—you need a lot so network execs can choose those they think’ll work best. On another, I’d jotted down the most important rule from
Turn Up the Heat,
as a reminder: If I took up with Chad again, or there was even the appearance of our getting together, it would all be over. Then there was the schedule we put together, Yul’s and mine, to figure out when Yul could meet with Chad without me present.”

Esther leaned forward in her overstuffed white chair. “Why would he want to do that?” she asked her new client, though her eyes were on Yul.

“We’d heard Chad put together his own list of reality show ideas,” Charlotte responded. “He wanted me involved since we were both reality show stars now, so he figured together we’d be dynamite. Too bad he didn’t think of that before and dump Trudi when . . . Well, as it was, I had no intention of discussing ideas with him—his or mine. Too risky. I could lose everything. But Yul could talk to him, in case something he’d thought of was so wonderful that it convinced me to change my mind and give everything up for it.”

I couldn’t help a half-smile of skepticism.

She obviously caught it, for she continued, “Yeah, it wouldn’t happen that way, but if there was something really good, I wanted to know about it. That way, if I couldn’t work with Chad, maybe I could find a way to use his idea in a way that wasn’t really stealing.”

“Of course,” I agreed, making no attempt to tame the irony in my tone.

She gave a small laugh. “I was so miffed with the guy I might not have cared if it
was
stealing, as long as I could get away with it.”

“I figured,” I said.

“Was there anything else in that package?” Jeff asked, his businesslike tone tugging us back to the essence of our discussion.

“I don’t know if Detective Noralles showed me everything, but he let me read a photocopy of a note I’d written to Chad.”

“You wrote to him?” Esther exclaimed.

“It wasn’t the same as seeing him,” Charlotte said defensively. “And I only wrote it to try to prove to the
Turn Up the Heat
producers that I wanted nothing to do with him. That’s why I kept a photocopy. See, he’d shown up a couple of times and tried to talk to me directly. I warned him in the note to stay away or I’d have Yul make sure he did.”

“I’ll bet Noralles chose to interpret it as a death threat,” Jeff said.

Charlotte nodded brusquely. “You know all that ‘motive, means, and opportunity’ stuff?”

I knew it well. The motive part was what kept me from being arrested when my pet-sitting clients started popping up dead.

“Well, Detective Noralles thinks he’s got it figured out. Motive: Chad lied to me about his girlfriend and also tried to spoil my winnings. Opportunity: The schedule showed times I’d be home but Yul wouldn’t. Of course, neither of us was around when Chad was killed, but Noralles is ignoring that. He seems to think I agreed that Chad could come here, where I had access to the knife that actually killed him—that’s the means.”

A blade? That must have been what Noralles knew when he questioned Charlotte before. It made more sense than ferret fangs for severing a carotid artery.

“Not that they found the knife yet—or the detective wouldn’t have asked me where I stashed it,” Charlotte said. “Anyway, then I supposedly sprinkled Chad with ferret food to get them nibbling and to try to hide what I’d done. That’s what the L.A. County Coroner apparently figures happened to him—stabbed first, ferret supper later.”

“Did the detective give any more details about the autospy?” Jeff questioned. “Like, did the victim have bruises or other wounds besides the bites and stabs?”

“He didn’t tell me,” Charlotte said. “But I have the impression he’s ready to arrest me.”

“We’ll see about that,” Esther promised.

“But all this brings one big question to my mind,” I said. “
You
wouldn’t have mailed him those potentially incriminating papers. How would anyone else have gotten them?”

Charlotte shrugged.

“Could be the killer grabbed them when he was in the house the night he killed Chad,” Jeff said.

“And mailed them to Noralles to make sure the detective’s suspicions stayed on Charlotte,” I agreed. “But shouldn’t that make him even more suspicious that Charlotte’s innocent?”

“Let’s ask him,” Esther said, and she went to get Noralles.

His response? “Sure, we’ve considered that the murderer may have sent that evidence to frame Ms. LaVerne,” he said with a shrewd smile. “But Ms. LaVerne could have mailed it herself to try to make us think someone else was trying to frame her.” He hurled a few more halfhearted questions at Charlotte with all of us around—obviously no longer an official interrogation. When finished, he agreed to send Esther copies of the envelope and its contents, then said snidely to Charlotte, “I assume your new responsibilities won’t take you out of town anytime soon, Ms. LaVerne. I’m sure we’ll see each other again very soon.”

“Then we will, too, Detective,” Esther said smoothly.

Chapter Eighteen

LEXIE AND I followed Jeff home. To
his
home, though I could make it mine if I accepted his unanticipated invitation.

Heck, it was mine when he traveled. And sometimes when he was home, when we hung out there together.

What was I going to do?

Act cool, of course, and collected, and stay that way all evening, while we both puttered about in his kitchen feeding the dogs, then ourselves. I even cooked that night, dipping into what little domesticity I had.

“Good chicken,” Jeff said when we’d sat down at his round wooden table. I’d fixed a dish of my own creation, kind of—a combo of cacciatore and rigatoni, cooked with onion and zucchini and baked with provolone. It combined a bunch of flavors I particularly liked, and apparently it pleased Jeff ’s palate as well. Which made me feel relieved. And perversely, irritated.

If I moved in here, would domesticity dominate my need for independence?

Unfair, I chided myself. Playing chef tonight had been my idea. Jeff might appreciate it, but he certainly didn’t expect it.

Another item to factor into my decision: Would I feel an unwanted but typically female urge to get at the man of the house’s heart via his stomach? Unnecessarily, of course, since I’d already proven we were compatible while exercising much more interesting parts of his anatomy.

“Can I pick your brain?” I asked him—which wasn’t the body part I’d been pondering. “About the Chad Chatsworth murder, I mean.”

“Sure.” He paused with his fork poised to spear more food and regarded me with interested blue eyes.

I gave a thumbnail recap of all I’d researched so far on Borden Yurick’s computer, plus my queries of Charlotte, Yul, and the attendees at last night’s strange soiree. “I don’t know, of course, if all possible suspects were present, but that, apparently, was Charlotte’s plan. Though whether she hoped someone would have so much fun that he’d stand up and proclaim his guilt, I couldn’t tell you.”

“Or she,” Jeff said.

“Or she,” I agreed. “In any event, it didn’t happen.”

“Sounds as if you’re doing a good job of trying to help Charlotte. But you really don’t think she’s guilty?”

“You do?” I know my tone rose as if I was the one affronted. Or maybe his questioning me simply gave me an excuse for indignation. Which in turn would give me an excuse to thank him for his invitation and head back to my place.

He disarmed me with his sage, sexy smile. “I haven’t formed an opinion yet, Kendra. I know why you have, though. Since you see Charlotte in the same situation as you were before, you’ll do anything to make sure she’s not railroaded.” True. He’d heard me, same as Darryl had. “The thing is, you knew for sure you weren’t guilty. Can you say the same about her?”

“Sure!” I exclaimed in staunch support of my poor tenant. “I think,” I finished with a sigh. “I have to admit, if only to you, that Noralles’s means, motive, and opportunity may have been met. But maybe someone else had them all, too. There is that anonymously sent package, after all.”

“Someone else like your friend Yul? I assume the guy is at least smart enough to mail an envelope.”

“Not
my
friend. Charlotte’s.” Once again Jeff had jumped right into the meat of what was on my mind. And I didn’t mean chicken. “But he wouldn’t have mailed that envelope, since its contents implicate her.”

“So what about
his
reasons to kill Chad?” Jeff asked.

“That’s easy. As her kept man—er, rather, assistant at her fledgling production company—he’d have all the same reasons she did to keep Chad away . . . permanently. Maybe after hearing his show ideas. Chad’s presence could wreak havoc on all that nice money Charlotte was raking in. And Yul had another reason—Charlotte herself. She’s his meal ticket. And most likely a lot more, if the way he looks at her now and then isn’t just his wannabe actor skills kicking in. Chad was a good-looking guy, a charmer”—as I’d seen in my extremely brief acquaintance with him—“which might also have twisted Yul’s testosterone. Sure, it could be him . . . but there are bigger and better reasons to doubt it was Yul.”

“Let me guess,” Jeff said, a grin easing the hard planes of his good-looking P.I. features. “One has to be the ferrets. They were Yul’s, weren’t they?”