Fine-Feathered Death (13 page)

I’d hunted in here before and would swear the room was catless. But wherever they’d been, Abra and Cadabra now lolled on opposite sides of Harold’s desktop. They both barely opened their eyes as I entered, as if my fear for their well-being was of no concern to them whatsoever.

Which was probably the case. But I was so happy to see them that I picked up Cadabra first and hugged him, then did the same with an affronted Abra.

“Don’t do that to me again,” I pleaded.

Both cats closed their eyes.

And me? I checked their food, water, and litter again before I left. After all, they were still my charges, even if my attention filled them with ennui.

 

AS ALWAYS, I left my own home as my final stop, to take care of Beggar for my temporary tenant, Russ Preesinger. Unless his wayward daughter had decided to see to the Irish setter herself.

Which, it turned out, she had. Not only that, Russ himself had come home to deal with the situation of Rachel’s presence in California. I learned that when I knocked on the door of my main house and Russ responded. He looked really harried.

He waved me outside, where he tugged the door shut and proceeded to vent his frustrations to me.

“Rachel wants to stay here, with me,” he said with what sounded like utter frustration. Russ’s red hair was as dark a shade as his Irish setter’s. He was of moderate height, muscular build, and masculine looks that undoubtedly made a lot of female heads turn. He’d certainly caught my attention when my tenant Charlotte LaVerne had introduced us.

Of course, I considered myself in a kind of committed relationship—then. Maybe. Jeff and I were trying to deal with Amanda back in his life. That wasn’t long after we’d decided just to let whatever happened between him and me happen.

Besides, Russ hadn’t handed me any indication he’d found me appealing. He probably hadn’t, if the description Rachel had given of the kind of woman her dad liked was correct: a skinny, show-biz-type blonde. The guy struck me as less shallow, but hey, what did I know? I’d developed a distinctive knack for getting myself attracted to the wrong guy, commencing with the senior partner of my old law firm, up to and including Jeff.

In any event, like Jeff, Russ traveled a lot. He had only recently moved here from Arizona—where his daughter, Rachel, had fled from—because he’d left his job promoting industry for the City of Phoenix to join a local company as a Hollywood location scout.

I knew all this because it had been on his application to sublease my house. But there’d been no place on the form for him to fill in info on his former marriage and wayward daughter.

“How do you feel about her wanting to stay here?” I asked, realizing my question sounded as if it had come from a shrink. I wasn’t sure myself whether I’d like having that difficult young adult occupy my house, especially when her dad was on the road.

Russ surprised me by laughing. He had a pleasant laugh that sounded as if it emanated from deep down in his diaphragm.

“Can you guess why she said she came?” he asked.

I suspected his question was essentially rhetorical. Sure enough, he gave me no time to respond before he continued, “She’s nineteen, and she’s made it clear she doesn’t need a custodian—just a meal ticket. Mostly, she wants me to introduce her to movie people since she wants to become a star. In fact, she seems damned sure that’s the main reason I moved here to Hollywood—to help with her intended career. Not that she’d ever expressed an interest in acting before.”

“How do you feel about her becoming an actress?” I asked, unsure what else to say—and again sounding like a shrink.

“At least it would have the potential of giving a direction to her life.” He expelled air in a huge sigh. “But I’m just getting started in this business myself. I don’t have contacts to get her into the industry, even if I wanted to. And then I’m traveling so much I can’t be around to keep an eye on her—which I suspect is another reason she decided to come here. I know she’s not getting along well with her mother, so I hate to send her back without a job or direction. But keeping her here . . .”

“Is a temporary solution,” I supplied. “Put her on probation. Lay down some rules and say she can stay only if she sticks to them.”

He peered at me peculiarly. “I had the impression you’d never been married and don’t have kids,” he said.

“That’s right,” I acknowledged.

“Then how do you know so much about how to handle them?”

My turn to laugh. “I was a kid once myself,” I said lightly. I didn’t intend to go into my own background, though—how my parents had divorced a couple of decades ago, and my dad was now happily remarried with a new, young family in Chicago. My mom was happily unmarried and a lawyer in D.C. My brother and I were as close as two very different people could be. He’d become a wealthy hotel mogul in Dallas.

I guess I saw a little of myself in Rachel Preesinger, though I hated admitting that even to me. The difference was that I doubted, when I was her age, that either of my parents would have been even marginally pleased to see me show up on their doorsteps.

Enough nasty nostalgia for one night. “Good luck with your decision,” I told Russ, bent to pat Beggar, who’d joined us outside, then headed for my apartment over the garage, where Lexie waited.

I checked my answering machine.

Jeff hadn’t called.

I sought out my cell phone display.

Nothing.

I sighed. It wasn’t that I missed him exactly. But I was miserably curious about what happened at my office after I’d left Jeff and Noralles together. Not alone, of course, but Noralles had hinted he had a whole lot more questions for Jeff about Ezra’s murder. No surprise, if he genuinely considered Jeff a real suspect.

As impossible as that was . . .

Oops. Somehow my fingers had slipped and my cell phone was dialing Jeff from its recall list of last numbers dialed. Might as well make the best of it.

“Hello,” said a familiar voice in an unfamiliar tone. Shaky.

“Jeff, are you all right?” I demanded immediately.

“Not really,” he said softly. “Why didn’t you tell me how hellish it is to be considered a murder suspect?”

This wasn’t a good time to tell him I had. He and I had just been getting to know each other back then, and I’d relied on him to help investigate who actually could have committed the killings I was accused of. With his travel schedule, though, I’d managed most of the legwork myself. But we’d talked often on the phone, and seen a lot of each other when he was in town.

And though I’d tried to put on a brave front, I’d never tried to hide my misery at being Noralles’s main target.

Well . . . I hadn’t tried too hard. In fact, I guess I’d attempted to put on a big, brave front, daring diva that I am.

I wasn’t used to Jeff not being Mr. Macho. Which worried me a lot.

“Hey,” I said. “Lexie just told me how much she misses Odin. Would he and you mind a little company tonight?”

“No,” he said, sounding a teensy bit more cheerful. Which boosted my ego about a hundred notches. “Come on over. And while you’re at it, could you stop for some dinner? Make it Thai.”

Chapter Twelve

THE INITIAL PART of our evening together almost seemed like the edgy, exciting early days of our semirelationship, when we’d occasionally let our attraction overrule our common sense.

Had it been only a few months ago when pad thai and mee krob had seemed like the sexiest of aphrodisiacs? Heck, they still did—especially considering the way Jeff’s blue eyes bored into mine with a heated expression that had nothing to do with the spiciness of our Thai food.

By the time we’d finished, I felt ready to grab Jeff’s hand, hurry down the hall, and leap into bed with him.

Lexie and Odin reminded me of realities, though. Of course, both begged for leftovers before we left the table. And after we’d stood and started to bus our dishes, they determinedly herded us toward Jeff’s back door for their evening outing.

We leashed them up and both put on water-resistant jackets with hoods. Once again, the January weather was less than Southern California perfect, and we were pelted with rain.

Which doused the fire that had ignited inside me at the dinner table. At least for now.

We walked along the sidewalks of the pleasant residential Sherman Oaks street. Illumination from houses and streetlights sparkled in the myriad of lakelike puddles along the avenue’s shallow curbs. I’d always suspected that city engineers had scrimped when it came to installing adequate storm drain systems. Sure, L.A.’s rainy seasons tended to be short, but often strong storms turned streets into rivers.

At least the sky wept slowly tonight.

I told Jeff my Rachel tale, and he scolded me for forgetting to lock the house and gate when I left—especially after all that had happened previously in my ferret situation. He promised, though, to review my security situation again soon.

“Okay,” I said next. “Spill it. And I don’t mean empty the rain from your shoes. Tell me what went on at my office after I left this afternoon.”

“Things were probably just as you’d assume, with Ned Noralles looking at me as his primary murder suspect.” Jeff’s disgusted sigh resounded beneath his rain hood. “I can’t remember ever seeing the ass so happy before.”

Jeff had known Noralles for ages, and the gallons of bad blood between them when they’d both been beginner cops with the L.A.P.D. obviously hadn’t, even now, begun to evaporate. Jeff had told me the story before. The end of the tale had been when they’d resorted to raw and macho physicality. Ned Noralles had considered himself a lean, mean, fighting machine, but Jeff had nevertheless decked him. That incident led to Jeff’s resignation from the department and the instigation of his new career as a private investigator. He’d claimed it had been worth it.

In the years since, they’d apparently tangled now and then even before my foray into the nightmare of being a murder suspect. Jeff had been ever so eager to help me trounce his former nemesis Noralles.

And now, it seemed, Ned Noralles was enjoying his revenge for all past problems between them. He’d hinted to Jeff that he had first volunteered as second-chair, out-of-jurisdiction detective on this case simply because I was connected with the crime scene, and had felt as if he’d struck gold when he found supposedly legitimate reason to look at Jeff as chief suspect.

“He claims that my bad temper is enough to constitute motive,” Jeff grumbled now as he yanked on pokey Odin’s leash to get his Akita strolling. “A lot of people heard my arguments with Ezra. As to opportunity, there was a crowd around your offices that night after the VORPO meeting. Doors probably weren’t locked. Anyone could have come back. Even an activist or two from Vancino could have followed us there. But Ned seems sure that the one to return was me.”

“Pretty flimsy,” I fumed. “But in my admittedly limited experience, Ned loves to seek the easiest answer. He’ll bird-dog it relentlessly till someone else pops probative evidence implicating a genuine suspect smack in his face. In your situation, he has the added benefit that his false but simple solution reaps revenge on you.”

“Amen.” Jeff’s response resounded like a heartfelt growl.

I carelessly kicked at a few wet leaves on the sidewalk in front of me. It wasn’t as if Los Angeles had a genuine fall season, but leaves from some of its trees briefly changed colors, died, and dropped to the ground over the rainy season’s several months. Lexie stopped to sniff the end of a hedge, suggesting to me that a male dog had recently left his scent. She squatted on the spot, as if to show him she had equally territorial instincts, even in a territory that wasn’t her home.

“So how else does Ned think he has you?” I asked Jeff. “I heard the alleged murder weapon was found on the floor—an unregistered gun.” That’s what I’d reaped from the law firm grapevine, no thanks to notification by Noralles.

“That’s what I gathered,” Jeff agreed.

“Your fingerprints aren’t on it, of course. Nor anyone else’s to clear you?”

“Nope.” Jeff stopped walking, and the expression he turned on me seemed sharp in the shadows of the streetlight. “You know if you weren’t so pissy about my helping Amanda with her problem, we’d have been together that night. We could have supplied each other with verifiable alibis.”

“Each other?” My voice was as shrill as Gigi’s. “Are you suggesting that I should be considered a suspect in this one, too? That might make it easier on you, sure, but—”

I didn’t finish. And not by choice . . . exactly. Jeff shut me up with a kiss.

One I didn’t want to end.

When it did—it had to, after all, since we stood there along a residential street with the dogs straining at their leashes—Jeff stepped back and shrugged with what I took to be contrition. “I’m sorry, Kendra,” he said softly.

“For the kiss?” I teased while realizing what he really meant.

“No, for not dealing with this whole thing very well. And for not understanding what you were going through when Ned was on
your
case.”

“Tell you what,” I told him. “Let’s go back to your place, and I’ll show you my suspect list. Maybe we can divide up which one of us speaks to whom. But we’ll need to share notes and impressions.”

“So you’re going to play detective again and solve another murder?” There was a snap to his tone and a glint in his eye, neither especially appealing to me.

I stood up to my full five-five, glared right back into his baby blues, and said, “As a matter of fact, Mr. Hubbard, I am. I intend to clear you of this crime, whether you want me to or not.”

I anticipated an argument. Instead, I received a deep, genuine-sounding laugh. And another kiss.

“Something tells me it’s time to head home,” Jeff soon said hoarsely, still staring down at me—but smiling now.

This time, even the dogs agreed.