Never Steal a Cockatiel (Leigh Koslow Mystery Series Book 9) (4 page)

Randall was aware that he needed to address the situation. But his preferred solution was to eventually get around to posting a want ad and then cross his fingers and hope that whoever took the job could at least manage to dig themselves out before deciding to marry, move, have a baby, go back to school, or fake their own death. The idea of transporting a vanful of file boxes, loose paper, unsorted mail, and flash drives full of spreadsheet data home to his living room to be picked through, pored over, dissected, and criticized by his anal-retentive wife — with him being
present,
for God’s sake — would make the man’s blood freeze.

But there was nothing Leigh could do about it. Debating with Frances was inadvisable when she was in the best of moods. Challenging her primal need to keep busy post-surgery could be downright dangerous. Besides, Leigh thought selfishly, her mother could have come up with a worse idea. Like deciding again that
this
time, Leigh Eleanor Koslow was
going
to learn to sew.

“That sounds great, Mom!” she answered with enthusiasm. “I know Dad can use the help.”

Traitor.

“I thought you would agree,” Frances said with a smile. “Now go back to the clinic and load up whatever is currently cluttering that surface your father calls a desk. I’d like to get started. No time like the present!”

“You…” Leigh asked uncertainly, “want me to leave you here alone and go back? Right now?”

Frances patted the cell phone at her side. “I’ll be perfectly fine for half an hour or so. Virginia said she’d be home all afternoon and not to hesitate to call her if I needed anything. However, before you leave, I should like to use the restroom. If you’ll just help me up the stairs, I’ll—”

“The stairs?” Leigh interrupted, casting a glance at the relatively narrow staircase that led to the three small bedrooms and full bath on the second floor. Even with Randall helping earlier, Frances hadn’t been able to make it up the half-dozen steps to the front porch. “Mom, that’s ridiculous,” Leigh protested. “You don’t need to go upstairs. You can use the half bath down here.”

Frances drew herself up indignantly, her lips pursed. “You know perfectly well that the powder room is reserved for guests!”

Leigh sighed. Her mother’s feelings about the half bath went deep. The room was not original to the house, but had been added on by the previous owners for the sake of “convenience.” To Frances, however, “sheer laziness” was hardly justification for sacrificing both a kitchen broom closet and what must have been a “perfectly lovely” built-in china cabinet in the dining room. The ill-gotten powder room was thus forbidden to family members, kept pristine at all times, and largely forgotten — except for those still-regular occasions when Frances bemoaned her lack of dish storage space.

“Mom,” Leigh said reasonably. “These are hardly ordinary circumstances.”

“I can make it up the stairs just fine!” Frances insisted.

Leigh received inspiration. “You probably could, but what if
I
were to fall trying to help you? How many sprained ankles can the family handle?”

Frances’s lips curled down into a frown. “I see your point.”

Leigh smiled in triumph.

“I will use the powder room,” Frances announced, reaching for her walker. “But
someone
is going to have to keep it cleaned properly while I am indisposed.”

Leigh’s smile faded. She helped her mother shuffle the short distance to the hall and back, then she reluctantly returned to the van and headed back to the clinic. Randall would not be pleased to see papers from his office being carted out the door, but with luck, she could conduct her mission covertly and get by with leaving him a note.

Coward!

She had successfully sneaked into the basement office and was in the process of scooping neglected piles of mail off the desktop and into a cardboard box when Allison silently materialized at her side.

“What are you doing, Mom?”

Leigh tried hard not to jump again. “Grandma wants to help Grandpa catch up on his office work.”

“Oh,” Allison remarked heavily. The child was nothing if not perceptive. “Listen, Mom,” she said, her tone turning urgent. “There’s something weird going on around here. You know how nervous Mrs. Lippert was about Peaches getting lost? Well, she’s not the only one. I’ve been getting the strangest vibe from people, like everybody’s scared of something. Grandpa says it’s nothing, but…”

Leigh’s curiosity battled with her conscience. Her daughter was undoubtedly right; Leigh had gotten the same feeling when listening to the women talk in the parking lot. It was as if some rumor were circulating — a very troubling rumor. And if whatever it was did involve the animal hospital specifically, Randall needed to know. If Leigh could, she would hang around herself until she got to the bottom of it. But she couldn’t. Her mother needed her. Would it be so wrong to let Allison give it a try?

Yes, of course it would. The last thing the overly inquisitive girl needed was encouragement to spy on people. It would be sending the wrong parental message. Never mind that Allison was incredibly good at it. Never mind that, in a matter of hours, the child could almost certainly acquire more information than Leigh could in an entire day. And all without being detected, or most likely even suspected. Randall frequently had youngsters interested in veterinary medicine hanging around to observe — Allison’s presence was no more notable than that of a fly on the wall.

Besides, the girl was going to do it anyway. Right?

“Well,” Leigh said carefully. “If you do figure it out, be sure to let me know. It could be important to Grandpa.”

Allison beamed. “Will do!” She whirled on a heel and jogged toward the basement steps.

Leigh clenched her jaws and finished filling the box. Had she seriously just given permission — however passively — for her daughter to engage in espionage?

She had.

Bad parent!

She let out a defeated sigh and headed back to her mother’s house with the boxful of stolen mail.

She was
so
going to hell.

Chapter 4

“Really, Bess,” Frances tutted at her older sister with exasperation. “That’s far too large. Why, no one will be able to walk in here!”

Bess shot back a sour look and switched on the air pump, which went to work with a loud hum. “A queen-size mattress is what I have and a queen is what you’ll use,” she said firmly. “There’s plenty of space; it’s not like you’re going to be doing any formal entertaining the next two weeks!”

Frances continued to frown as the giant inflatable bed swelled to fill a quarter of the row house’s living room. The women had piled half the furniture along the wall of the dining room, leaving only the couch, one wingback chair, and the coffee table. If they had left any more, there would be no aisle to walk through.

“This arrangement should be very functional for you, Aunt Frances,” Cara said tactfully. “Everything you’ll need is right along this path, and all your fragile pieces are out of the way.”

“Living rooms are for living, not sleeping,” Frances opined. “This just isn’t proper!”

“And how exactly do you think the three of us are going to haul both your carcasses up and down that staircase every day?” Bess replied with no tact whatsoever. “You want to harness us up like sled dogs so we can pull you on a stretcher?”

Frances’s lips pursed to full protrusion. “I’m not saying it isn’t necessary,” she snapped back. “I’m saying it isn’t proper.”

Bess’s eyes rolled. “Hey, kiddo,” she said to Leigh. “Can you pull that corner over a little?”

Leigh adjusted the mattress to leave walking space between it and the wall.

“Well, the schedule is finished at least through Wednesday night,” Cara announced, looking down at the yellow legal tablet in her hands. “By then we should know exactly when Mom is coming home.”

“Why wouldn’t she come back Wednesday?” Frances asked. “That’s when the symposium ends.”

“She thought she might want to stay an extra day or two, depending on the weather,” Cara explained. “But with Uncle Randall getting hurt, I’m sure she’ll come straight home.”

“Tell your mother to stay as long as she likes,” Bess insisted, checking the mattress for firmness. “Lydie can use the vacation.”

“It’s hardly a vacation,” Frances argued. “It’s an educational opportunity.”

Bess scoffed. “Every ‘symposium’ has a bar somewhere.”

“Not everyone drinks with strangers like an ill-bred hussy!” Frances retorted sharply.

Bess shrugged. “The fun ones do.”

“Ladies!” Cara interjected smoothly. “If there’s no more scheduling to be decided, I need to pick up Lenna and get home to the boys. Leigh, don’t worry about dinner. I’ll make something for the Pack — just send them to the farm.”

Leigh smiled. Bess had brought over a casserole and would be staying the night tonight, so Leigh was officially off-duty as soon as Randall was escorted home. But Warren was hosting a symposium of his own at the University of Pittsburgh this week — some sort of training session on financial management for non-profits — and wouldn’t be home till late every evening. That meant she was responsible for all the cooking in the Harmon household, which meant she’d given the issue no thought whatsoever until the middle of the afternoon. “Thanks, Cuz,” she said genuinely.

“There!” Bess announced, turning off the pump. “It’s perfect. I’ll have it made up in a jiffy. Leigh, go fetch your father. We’re done here.”

Leigh did not need to be excused twice. What sort of evening her father would have being subjected to the sisters’ constant bickering, she shuddered to think. Then again, his ability to tune out uninteresting human interaction was highly developed.

She arrived at the clinic for the third time that day to find her father still working, his schedule having been further slowed by his inability to switch between exam rooms filled with already prepped patients. The mood of the clients still waiting in the lobby was tense as Jeanine pulled Leigh to the side of the reception desk. “I’m working on the rescheduling,” she confided. “He’s off surgery and evenings, but he insisted on seeing appointments between eleven and five, at least. You think that will be okay? Your mother’s called down here twice already, and she keeps telling me the exact opposite of what he says—”

Leigh felt a stab of pity for the senior technician who, despite being an irritating know-it-all who routinely bullied the rest of the staff, lived in abject fear of Frances Koslow.

“That sounds perfect,” Leigh interrupted. “It’s the best my mother could have hoped for, no matter what she says.”

“Really?” Jeanine asked with relief, beads of sweat breaking across her upper lip.

“He worked that much after he had his appendix out, didn’t he?” Leigh reminded. “It’ll be fine.” She felt a sudden sensation of hair brushing along the side of her calf and looked down to see a schnauzer trotting merrily toward the back, dragging his leash behind him on the floor. Instinctively, she stepped on the nylon hand loop.

“Axel!” a woman screamed, jumping up from her chair. She turned and checked beneath it, then looked frantically around the waiting room. “He’s gone! Oh, my God! He’s
gone!”

“No, he isn’t,” Leigh said quickly, reaching down and giving a tug on the leash. “He’s right here.” The escapee promptly reversed direction and trotted out around the desk and into view.

The dog’s owner threw both hands over her heart and sank down onto her chair. “Oh, my,” she said weakly. “How foolish of me. Come here, Axel.”

Leigh watched as the dog returned and was promptly swept up into a bear hug. Another client, sitting on the woman’s far side, had drawn his own cocker spaniel into his lap and was clasping it protectively, his face unnaturally pale.

What the heck?

Leigh left the waiting room and walked back to check on Allison. The girl was still in the same exam room with her grandfather, looking on as he expressed an unhappy shih tzu’s anal glands. Leigh doubled back to the treatment area and parked herself on a stool, and Allison sidled up to her a few seconds later.

“Grandpa says he’ll be another half hour or so,” the girl reported. “He’s sorry he didn’t think to call and warn you he was running late.”

“No problem,” Leigh replied, noting the keen sparkle in her daughter’s dark brown eyes. “You found out something, didn’t you?”

Allison nodded, casting a wary glance behind her.

Leigh noted the irony.

“We shouldn’t talk about it here,” the girl continued. “But… could we maybe walk up to Aunt Mo’s real quick? While Grandpa’s finishing up? Paige will stay in the room with him.”

Leigh felt a pang of anxiety. Allison’s “Aunt Mo” wasn’t a blood relative, but one of Leigh’s best friends from college, who was now a detective with the homicide division of the Allegheny County police force. And although it was unlikely that Allison was concerned about a homicide, at least on this particular day, her determination to talk to Maura Polanski indicated worse trouble than a few idle rumors.

“Sure,” Leigh said nervously. She let her father know where they were going and told him to call her cell when he was ready to leave. Then she and Allison headed out and began their walk up the steep cobblestone street. The Polanski duplex was only a short distance away, and Leigh resisted the urge to pump Allison for information before they got there. The girl seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful, which only made Leigh more anxious, and by the time they reached Maura’s front porch she felt near to exploding.

Luckily, the detective was at home.

“Koslow! Allie!” Maura boomed enthusiastically, swinging open the door. “What brings you by?”

Leigh cracked a grin. It was difficult not to. Although she had never personally feared her loud, large, and looming policewoman friend — at least not that much — Maura had a longstanding reputation for being able to effectively intimidate perpetrators of either gender. To see her now dressed in a tee shirt and shorts, wearing a bright yellow baby carrier covered with green lizards that held her 11-week-old son sticking out from her middle face-forward and drooling, was really just too cute.