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Authors: Linda O. Johnston

BOOK: Meow is for Murder
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“Very good work. I’d like to meet this artist.”
“I’ll introduce you,” Amanda said. And then she ensconced us in the living room, once again at the opposite side of the stark sofa from her guest.
Who, finally, looked at me. “I gather, Kendra, that you didn’t know that Leon was a stalker of opportunity, not sex. And, before you ask, I’m not gay. The guy just latched on to people he liked, for whatever reason, and most were female. With me, he liked the fact that I teach art at the community college he attended, and he became my constant companion, whether I wanted him there or not.”
“Interesting,” I asserted. His sex elevated Piper a few notches on my list. The screwdriver stab wounds had been deep, indicating someone strong. Like workout queen Nellie Zahn, sure, but I’d already decided I didn’t like her as a suspect. But this guy, artist or not, seemed to have muscles. He’d doffed his bomber jacket and lain it beside him on the back of the sofa. Beneath was a white knit shirt, short sleeves, that didn’t quite cover his biceps.
Only, he’d done such a minute assessment of the hallway paintings that I had to surmise he hadn’t seen them before. Sure, Leon could have left Amanda’s refrigerator door open as a warning, which meant the killer didn’t need to have entered this home before doing the dastardly deed. But someone like this art critic would surely have noticed the seascapes on his stroll down the hall to stab Leon, right?
“I’ve done some research into stalkers,” I said, “and most of the time they seem to be domestic situations, not near-strangers. Where the stalker does it in a serial manner, they usually choose a type of victim to prey on. I guess Leon was unique.”
“I’ll say,” Piper agreed. “He kept insisting that he’d leave me alone only when he was sure I couldn’t teach him any more. Then he latched on to one of my female students, which initially was a relief to me, but when I changed my mind and began to help her, he started stalking both of us.”
Amanda was clearly listening, one of her miniature snide smiles marring her face. She’d obviously known Piper’s sex, having spoken with him, but she hadn’t let me in on this little tidbit. She let me rattle on, during our premeeting meeting, about how we’d handle our little drama with this latest suspect. And how we’d deal with several possible scenarios, depending upon how
she
reacted.
Even though we were working so closely together, Amanda still enjoyed humiliating me whenever she could get her digs in. I’d be so glad when all this was over and her claws were no longer embedded beneath my skin.
“Was this going on recently?” I asked. “Was he stalking you and your student at the same time he was harassing Amanda?”
“No. He stopped suddenly. I didn’t dare ask why—but he did show up for one of my classes a few months ago. I tried to be kind, yet not too friendly. I nearly lost it when he stayed after class, since I thought he would start it all over again. But instead he just thanked me for teaching him so much and said he had some new friends, art lovers, that he was seeing a lot of. I breathed a sigh of relief for myself and my student, even though I figured he was after new game.”
“Me,” Amanda said angrily.
“That’s what I gather,” Piper acknowledged.
Which was when Cherise and Carnie entered the room. This wasn’t exactly the optimum time, but Amanda quickly requested Piper’s assistance in the kitchen after he’d greeted the cats.
Fortunately, the felines remained in the room with me, so I was able to stage our usual scenario.
Piper clearly wasn’t pleased to be allegedly threatened by some nasty cats, but he didn’t act especially suspicious, or nervous, either.
I reserved him mentally where I’d stuck him earlier, near the top of my list.
But as I left Amanda’s after Piper’s departure, I realized that my head spun with the new information that this male victim had imparted.
And I thought I finally knew what had actually happened to Leon.
Now, all I had to do was prove it.
Chapter Twenty-six
OKAY, DESPITE THE way the rya rug added some pizzazz, I was getting decidedly bored with the stark Nordic décor in Amanda’s living room. And the slight scent of the herbal tea she seemed to favor over coffee. And the even slighter smell of kitty-in-the-house, although the litter box was in a corner of the kitchen.
But I soon wouldn’t have to hang out there to catch a killer.
I knew who it was . . . or at least, I believed I did.
Now I had to do something about it, to save Amanda’s neck. And maybe my relationship with Jeff.
At this moment, on this Tuesday evening, I had a case to lay out and some convincing to do.
“We could have come to your office to explain it all, Mitch,” I mentioned to Amanda’s attorney, who sat at the opposite end of the red-upholstered sofa from his fidgety client. I’d not given Mitch many of the particulars but said that we’d been inviting suspects over and using a super-special technique to give them a grilling, and that we now had a really great theory now about whodunit.
“Sure, but you said you set your trap here,” Mitch said. He’d casualed down before coming here from his law digs, still wearing shiny slacks that I assumed came from a suit but no tie, and the neck of his white cotton shirt was undone. His hair, or lack thereof, appeared casual, too, but I suspected he had a heck of a time attempting to tame the few frizzies that were left. “I wanted a demonstration of what you did, and how it showed what really happened to Leon. If there’s enough evidence, I’ll try to get the charges against Amanda dropped right away.”
I sat in my now-usual chair, a loveseat across from Amanda’s coffee table. Since this meeting was scheduled for evening, I’d had a chance to change clothes into something more casual, too, and chose a loose, flaw-hiding large white sweater over comfy, snug and warm workout leggings. “I wouldn’t count on any evidence that could be admitted in court,” I cautioned him.
“Oh, but I’d love for those charges to be dropped,” Amanda asserted, stretching out long legs encased in gray sweatpants over fluffy blue-striped socks. On top, her matching gray jacket hung open to reveal a similarly coordinated blue-striped knit shirt to complete her ensemble. Not exactly what I’d have suggested she don to discuss case resolution with her lawyer, but this was, after all, her home.
“That’s what we’re working on,” I agreed. “And even if nothing’s actually admissible, it could be enough to at least interest the cops to do more digging into our suspect’s background and whereabouts on the night Leon was killed.”
“Then you haven’t turned anything over to the authorities yet?” Mitch asked. Although he’d mastered the art of near-expressionlessness, his sparse brows lifted enough to suggest he was incensed.
“Not yet,” I admitted.
“But this time I was the one to call that awful Detective Noralles,” Amanda added. “I told him we needed to see him. Which was when I called you.”
“You should have spoken to me first.” All aplomb evaporated, Mitch Severin stood and seemed to steam right before our eyes. “If you want me to continue to represent you, Amanda, you need to confer with me at all stages. I’ve told you that before, and you’ve ignored it. You shouldn’t have started doing whatever you’re doing to trap the killer without my input. You most certainly knew better, Kendra. Are you trying to get yourself in another ethics mess?”
“Not hardly,” I said stonily. I’d never directly discussed said ethics mess with Mitch, but knew the entire community of California attorneys could have read about it in various legal publications when it was going on—since all punishments of ethical problems were made public by the State Bar.
“You know that I have to consider my client’s best interests above all,” Mitch intoned. “If you’ve done something stupid, I have to ensure it doesn’t reflect badly on her.”
A scathing retort rushed to my lips, but I swallowed it before I
really
did something stupid. “I understand,” I said in a sham of meekness.
“Tell me about this trap you laid.” He resumed his seat almost haughtily, as if deigning to remain as a result of my abject—but absolutely imaginary—plea.
“It was pretty amazing,” Amanda gushed. “It involved Cherise and Carnie. Sort of.”
Mitch’s face contorted even more, and he leaned forward in his chair. “You tried to trap a killer with house cats?”
“They’re Bengal cats,” Amanda corrected. “They look just like little leopards.”
“Does that matter?” Mitch shook his head as if he couldn’t believe the idiocy piled onto stupidity around this place. Which again nearly got me going.
“Not really,” I said. “What does matter is what Corina Carey put in her
Times
article and on her TV show.”
“Yes, I saw them,” he said. “As you know.” And sounded damned irritated about it, even now.
“Here’s what we did,” I said. Standing to show the room’s significant locations, I gave the rundown of how we’d gotten suspects off guard by convincing many to come here and consider joining a stalker victim support group. And then get menaced by a mouse allegedly left by a resident cat.
“Fascinating,” Mitch finally said, his tone sounding a whole lot less than enthralled. “And did someone actually get so rattled by a defrosted mouse that he—or she—confessed?”
“Well, no,” I admitted, sitting once more. “But I started to put two and two together after I found out that one of Leon’s stalking victims had a name I assumed was female, but he happened to be extremely male. That got me to thinking about how Leon must have been an indiscriminate stalker. And in that instance, he’d given up on the guy victim in favor of another girl—until that very same guy stepped in and tried to protect the new female target. Leon resumed stalking the guy again in retaliation.”
Something seemed to twitch in the corner of Mitch’s stony eyes. Was he stifling a bored yawn at all my tale-telling and speculation? But what he said was, “And this is significant because . . . ?”
“I’m going to state a hypothetical.” I turned to Amanda and said, “It’s an attorney thing. We like to talk in suppositions and scenarios and pretend they’re our imagination—only it’s no huge surprise that we really believe in them.” Then I said to Mitch, “Suppose one of Leon’s lady victims went after a temporary restraining order.”
“You’ve told me they all did.” Mitch’s tone sounded even more indifferent.
“Right. Well, let’s take just one of them. Leon was probably damned tired of having courts tell him whom he could and couldn’t stalk. And who got the courts to order him around? His victim’s attorney. That made him mad. Mad enough to retaliate by stalking the lady’s legal counsel.”
Mitch didn’t sport a California tan, but what little color there was in his cheeks seemed to drain immediately away, like water and whatever down a toilet. “Why didn’t he stalk all the lawyers involved?”
“Ask him,” I suggested flippantly and futilely, considering Leon’s demise. “Maybe he only just thought of it. Maybe he had a particular hatred for a single victim’s lawyer. That’s something we’ll never know. But in this hypothetical scenario, the lawyer freaked. Didn’t try to obtain his own TRO, since he knew Leon ignored them. He’d done his homework and knew lots about all the other TROs and the stalking victims who’d obtained them—not that he let his client or anyone else in on what he’d learned. He’d found out that reasoning with the maybe-insane Leon didn’t do anyone much good. So, this lawyer did something Leon would understand—he threatened the stalker right back.”
I paused to pray for a reaction, but Mitch had his courtroom stone-face chiseled back on. “Go on,” he said apathetically.
“Well, first this lawyer told Leon he’d do something bad to him if he ever got near either the lawyer or his client again. Leon thumbed his nose by sneaking past the security system at his client’s home—who, by the way, was out of town and had a sitter minding her pet cats—and making sure everyone knew he’d been there. Left the refrigerator door open. And that only made the attorney angrier.”
Again I paused. This time, Mitch stood and rolled his shoulders as if he’d stayed in one spot too long. “I ought to go,” he said. “I really thought you’d found the killer, Kendra, but you just have some wild speculation that not only wouldn’t be admissible in court, but I doubt any cop would do more than kick you out on your butt. I’m disappointed.”
“The screwdriver murder weapon is a clue, Mitch.” I inserted myself in front of him so he couldn’t take a step without walking into me. “Run of the mill, the kind you can buy at any hardware store, but this particular one happened to be yours, didn’t it? Which suggests premeditation. Not a good thing in a murder case—at least not for the defense—as any lawyer knows. There was a second one, too, left as a warning for me. A while back, you considered asking contractor Kennedy McCaffrey for help on a do-it-yourself project you’d started, which suggests you own basic tools, even if you couldn’t finish your project.”
Mitch wasn’t a whole lot taller than me, but he drew himself up to his full height and stared down his haughty nose. “You know, Kendra, you’re becoming too much of a nuisance. Even though you’ll never be able to prove this drivel, I can’t allow you to ruin my reputation by even suggesting it. I, for one, don’t want to be reproved and ridiculed the way you were, in every legal publication in the state.”

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