Downton Tabby (22 page)

Maybe not.

There was still a killer out there, and the police seemed no closer to finding out who had murdered Jake.

I dressed for the day in white jeans and a bright coral top by Maranda, one of the California designers I loved. I had only one appointment. A client with whom I’d been working for a couple of months. Lonnie’s mixed breed, Turk, had been having problems since she’d lost her other dog. Animals grieve just like we do, and Turk was lost without Coco, his longtime companion. As a result he’d been depressed and not eating.

After finishing up with Lonnie and Turk, I stopped by the Koffee Klatch to grab a latte before heading to the office.

Verdi was at the desk. A bit of normal in my life was a good thing.

“I’m sorry. If I’d known you were going to be here I would have brought you something.”

“That’s okay. I brought my own.” She held up her own Koffee Klatch cup. “I thought I’d better have plenty of caffeine in case we were in for another parade of people.”

I laughed. “You may need more than caffeine.”

“Anything new on the murder?” She glanced toward the closed door of Jake and Cash’s office.

I brought her up to speed on the events of yesterday, the call from Cash, and what Malone had shared in his visit last night.

My phone rang. I now dreaded those numbers I didn’t recognize. Where prior to Jake’s murder a call usually meant a new client, lately that sure hadn’t been the case.

“Hello, this is Caro.”

“Caro, it’s Heidi,” she whispered. “I’m scared.”

“Of what, Heidi?” I pressed the phone against my ear trying to hear her. “Are you okay?”

“Come, please. It might be nothing, but I’m really scared.” She hiccupped. “My address is forty-five-fifty Blue Bell, Apartment two B. Hurry.” The call abruptly disconnected.

I grabbed my keys. “Verdi, call Malone. I’m going to Heidi’s apartment. Here’s the address.” I scribbled it down and ran to my car.

This time of day, the traffic can be bad on PCH so I took back streets to get to Heidi’s apartment. It was a small walk-up, and I climbed two flights of outside stairs as fast as I could.

As I made the turn at the top toward 2B, I felt a terrible sense of dread. I could see the brightly painted yellow door was partly open.

“Heidi?” I called. I touched the bottom with my foot, carefully pushing it slightly open and prayed that Malone was on his way. The door opened a little more, and I tried to peer inside.

“Heidi?” I called again, louder this time. “Hon, are you in there?”

With a wail of sirens, a Laguna Beach blue and white skidded to a stop in front of the building.

“Thank God.” I stood aside.

Malone’s silver Camaro pulled up right behind the police car.

The officers rushed past me, kicked the door fully open, and went in guns drawn.

They were back outside by the time Malone had reached the top of the stairs.

“Nothing,” one of the uniformed officers reported. “The place has been torn up, but there’s no one there.”

“The young lady?” Malone asked.

The officer shook his head. “She’s gone.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

I SAT ON THE STEPS and related my story to Malone while the two uniformed officers went door to door asking neighbors if they’d heard anything.

“She said she was afraid,” I repeated. “If she was afraid, why didn’t she call 911, or call you directly? She had your number.”

“I don’t know.”

“What if she’s dead?” I looked up at Malone. “What if I could have saved her if I’d gotten here sooner?”

“We don’t know that she’s dead.” He turned to talk to the two officers who had returned. It sounded like the problem was that no one was home in the other apartments and very few in the surrounding homes. Most people were at work this time of day.

“Let’s get crime scene in here.” Malone punched some numbers into his cell. “Rope off this area.” He gestured toward the stairs and apartment.

“I’ll have someone drive you home.” Malone reached a hand down to help me up.

“I’m okay to drive.” I was shaky, but I could drive.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded.

“We haven’t picked up Brody yet, but we’re still watching his place, and he has to come home sometime.”

“This has to have something to do with him, doesn’t it?”

“Let’s just say I have a lot of questions for him.”

I should have gotten more information from her. I couldn’t get past the idea that I’d talked to her on the phone just minutes ago and now she was gone.

I CANCELED MY appointments for the rest of the day and went home. Freda from next door stopped over with a gift from Alaska, a little bottle of Alaskan Birch Syrup, to thank me for watering her plants while she was gone. She’d also caught up on her Laguna Beach news and had lots of questions for me about the murder.

I understood her curiosity, but I was so upset by Heidi’s disappearance that I didn’t think I was up to re-telling all the details. I gave her a brief overview of the day I’d found Jake and that Cash had gone missing.

Freda politely moved to other topics, and we talked about her trip and other things. She inquired about April Mae, my neighbor on the other side, and when she was expected back. It was soothing to talk about “normal” things for a while. I’d almost forgotten what normal felt like. An hour had passed before I realized it.

My doorbell interrupted us, and not wanting any surprises, I peered out the window. Detective Malone’s car was parked in my driveway.

I opened the door and invited him in.

“Ms. Lamont.” He stepped inside.

“This is my neighbor, Mrs. Bauer.” Freda had followed me to the door. “She just returned from Alaska.”

“Nice to meet you.” He nodded.

“Nice to meet you, detective. I’ll be on my way.” Freda slipped around Malone. “Thanks again for taking care of my plants while I was gone. I’ll be happy to return the favor if you ever need it.”

As soon as Freda left, Malone got right to the point.

“We picked up Brody, Heidi’s brother, an hour ago.” The detective had been busy. “He admitted to being in the house the day you were there.”

“Did he say why?’

“It has to do with the lawsuit. He took a hard drive with the source code for the WoofWalker app. He claims whatever it was he took can help him prove he had a hand in the development.”

“So that’s why he killed Jake?” I tried to put it together in my head. “I’d think Jake would be more valuable alive.”

“I can’t tie Brody to Jake’s murder yet, but I can hold him on the breaking and entering.” Malone paced. “So he’s locked up at least until he can make bail on that charge.”

“What about Heidi?” I asked.

“He says he knows nothing about Heidi’s disappearance.”

“Does he know who she might be afraid of?”

Malone shook his head.

I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I felt a little safer knowing Brody was behind bars for the time being. But the truth was he hadn’t seemed all that menacing when he’d been in the house. If you want to talk about menacing, my money had been on Zellwen. But he’d come up with an air-tight alibi.

“Caro, until we figure out what’s happened to Heidi Sussman, I need you to stay as far from anyone involved in this investigation as you possibly can. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“Go about your business as usual. If anyone calls you—Cash, Heidi, that annoying reporter—anyone wanting to talk about the case, call me immediately.”

“I will.” I was perfectly willing to stay away from anyone involved. You weren’t going to find me driving by Jake and Cash’s house again and drawing the ire of Mr. Anger Management. I hoped Cash’s next phone call would be to Malone and not me. And Heidi, well, I hoped someone heard from her.

“And, anytime you’re home.” He jiggled the doorknob. “Lock up.”

“Got it.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

I LOCKED UP LIKE Malone recommended. I have to tell you, Heidi’s disappearance had really shaken me. Like Jake’s murder, broad daylight and yet no one had seen anything.

I felt terrible I’d been too late to keep Heidi from being kidnapped, and I felt helpless that there was nothing I could do to at this point to help find her. In truth, there was really nothing I could do to help figure out who had killed Jake or to find out where Cash was. I could only take care of Toria and hope Cash would come back soon and help sort everything out now that he knew about Jake.

I couldn’t bear to be doing nothing. I looked at my list. No more clients for the day. I’d crossed off almost every item. Almost. There were two tasks left undone. One was to call my cousin, Melinda. This sure as heck was not the day for making that phone call. I needed a clear head and calm emotions. However, I didn’t look forward to the other task either.

Don Furry from the ARL had called me and asked for a favor. It seems Cheeky, the basset hound that Wayne (Mr. Cutting Hedge) had planned to adopt, had belatedly been claimed by his owners.

It is really unusual for that to happen after a dog or cat has been at the shelter long enough to be available for adoption, but the couple who owned him had left him in the care of a family member, who had let him get out and then had not been able to find him. The nephew had looked around the neighborhood but hadn’t thought to contact City Animal Control or the Laguna Beach Animal Shelter.

Wayne would be very disappointed, but I was sure we could find another dog for him. He hadn’t been interested in the Labrador that Chelley had talked to him about because he had had his heart set on a basset hound. I knew there was a basset hound rescue group in San Diego. Maybe if I got in in touch with them, we could see if we could find a good match for Wayne through them.

Don had asked if I would be willing to let the poor guy know. He couldn’t leave because they were short-handed and had tried to call but didn’t want to just leave Wayne a message with the news. Don feared Wayne might not take it well, and I had to agree, especially after what he’d told me about losing his wife. It was probably best to deliver the news in person. Maybe, if he gave me an opening, I might be able to slip in some grief-counseling information.

I called and talked to the basset hound rescue group and jotted down some information about their process. It sounded like it might be a good solution to help Wayne get a dog that would be what he was looking for, and maybe knowing this wasn’t a dead end would help him handle the bad news.

I grabbed my cell phone and my bag and tucked the note where I’d written the info about the San Diego rescue group in my purse.

Just as I was about to leave, my phone rang.

It was Detective Malone.

“Caro, I need your help.” I guess we were back to first names.

“Wait a minute. Can you repeat that?” I smiled. I wasn’t letting him off the hook that easy. “There seems to be something wrong with my phone. I thought I heard you say you needed my help.”

“Point taken.” I could picture his tightened jaw. “Listen, I’ve heard from Cash.”

“Oh, thank God.” I couldn’t quite explain my relief, but I truly felt Cash making contact was good news. Now, there would at least be some answers.

“He says he and Jake had some files they kept on their office computer about threats they’d received.”

“Threats?”

“Apparently they received threats on a regular basis, but didn’t take them seriously.”

“That should help figure out if Jake’s murderer is someone who had something against them, right? Like Brody Patton?”

“Graham Cash is on his way back to Laguna Beach and will go through them in person with us, but in the meantime with Heidi missing, he said we should go ahead and take a look.”

“Great. Maybe something there will lead you to Heidi.”

“Yeah, except Cash was paranoid about the password to the computer. Wouldn’t give it to me over the phone. Said it was an extremely simple encryption letter-number replacement formula. The love of his life and then her name spelled out in numbers. He said if we needed help to call you.”

“How long did you try before you called me?”

“Not long.”

I’d bet longer than they should have.

“We used H-E-I-D-I 8-5-9-4-9 and it was a no go. We’ve tried Sussman with the same formula and we still can’t get in.” I could hear the frustration in his voice.

“You’re using the wrong starting place.” I smiled, knowing what Cash had used. “The love of his life is spelled T-O-R-I-A.”

“The cat?” I could hear him mutter the letters.

“Yes.”

“Try T-O-R-I-A,” he called to whoever was there with him. There was a pause. “And then, 20-15-18-9-1.” I figured it was probably Joann, the technician who’d reviewed the videos with me.

“Got it.” I could hear a female voice answer. “We’re in.”

“Thanks, Caro.” Malone’s relief was evident.

You’re wel—” But I was talking to air; he was gone.

“You’re welcome,” I said to the disconnected phone.

Hell’s bells!
This was an exciting development. They were so close. Cash had made contact. They had access to new information that could help.

“I knew your daddy wasn’t a killer,” I told Toria who’d come to see what the excitement was about. Or, if you really want to know the truth, she could have come to see if I was baking more cat treats.

I still didn’t know where Cash had been, but I had every confidence now that he was in touch with Malone the whole hot mess would be sorted out. And soon.

My stomach lurched. I only hoped whatever Malone and crew found on Cash’s computer, or whatever information he could help them with, would be in time to save Heidi from the same fate as Jake.

I reached down to stroke Toria’s soft fur. “You’ll be going home soon,” I told her. She leaned in and purred as if she knew what I’d said.

“We can’t do anything,” I told her. “We just have to be patient and wait.”

Toria gave a sharp meow that said she didn’t like the idea of waiting any better than I did.

Surely Malone would at least do me the courtesy of letting me know if they were able to find Heidi.