Meow is for Murder (31 page)

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Authors: Linda O. Johnston

BOOK: Meow is for Murder
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He pulled a small pistol from his pants pocket.
Amanda gasped, right on cue.
Actually, so did I, though I’d anticipated this Leon-driven lunatic would pull
something
. . .
“I can come up with hypothetical scenarios, too,” he snarled, aiming his weapon at my left breast, of which I was particularly fond, not that I disliked the matching right one. “Like, what would happen if a lady lawyer with an axe to grind against her lover’s ex-wife cooks up an elaborate scheme to get rid of the ex by murdering someone and setting it up to appear that the ex did it? She dreams up an even more twisted scenario, pretending to look for the real killer. Only the ex figures out what’s really going on and accuses the crazy lawyer of setting her up. The ex schedules a meeting with the cops, and the lady lawyer freaks. She’s been accused of murder before, but convinced the cops of her innocence then. But she’s not so sure of herself this time. She leaves threats against herself and her dog. Then she gets herself an unregistered gun from an untraceable source, and shoots the ex—right in the same home where she committed the murder in the first place. But in an agony of remorse, she turns the same gun on herself.”
I saw from the corner of my eye that Amanda had used the opportunity of Mitch’s squirrelly speech to start sidling toward the door.
Unfortunately, Mitch saw it, too, and turned only slightly sideways—enough to get the gun to menace us both equally.
I wished I knew how skilled he was with it. Could he shoot us both before the one not hit at first could leap onto him? Would Amanda even try, if I happened to be unlucky number one?
“Get back here, Amanda,” he ordered, “or I’ll start making my little story come true.”
Fortunately, that was enough of a diversion for me to put into motion the next step in my own scenario of this evening. I yanked a gun of my own from the shoulder holster hidden beneath my loose sweater. Well, not my own, exactly. It, and the bulletproof vest beneath, were on loan from the LAPD. Detective Ned Noralles, to be precise.
Noralles suddenly stood cockily in the doorway to Amanda’s living room. So did his cohorts, Detective Howard Wherlon and the new guy, Detective Elliot Tidus. All three had their weapons drawn and aimed right at attorney Mitch Severin.
That was my cue to step gingerly back.
“You okay, Kendra?” Ned inquired politely as he and the others started their familiar procedure to take Mitch into custody. Heck, we now had a course of conduct started for this, too, along with initial murder interrogations.
“Kendra? Are you all right?”
Was there an echo in this room? No, this time it was Jeff Hubbard’s inquiry as he rushed in and took me tightly into his arms. I hugged back, letting my beleaguered body begin to shake, now that the worst was over.
Only then did I hazard a glance at Amanda, who watched us with an expression on her beautiful face that suggested she had spent the evening sucking lemons, not solving a murder.
I enjoyed rubbing it in, of course. But there was more to be done just then. Like, “Did you get it all recorded, Ned?” I asked.
“
I
sure did,” said Detective Tidus, once again in a garish plaid sports jacket. He obviously enjoyed being noticed. And being given credit for whatever he did while on duty.
When Ned Noralles scowled at him, I basked in this young guy’s ballsiness even more.
Then there were Ned’s cranky over-his-shoulder congratulations for having solved yet another of his cases. I’d met his challenge. I’d won!
I loved it.
I listened for the ever-popular refrain, “You have the right to remain silent,” and the rest of the inevitable Miranda warnings as Mitch was cuffed and taken into custody. He’d seemed at first like a reasonable attorney who championed his clients rights—but he’d put his own interests ahead of Amanda’s.
Too bad. He was another of those attorneys the media would love to shriek about, who gave the profession its less-than-stellar reputation.
Which reminded me. I owed Corina Carey.
I’d call her in awhile.
But before any of us could exit this very eventful living room, two small forms stalked in.
I hadn’t seen Cherise and Carnie earlier this evening, and I kind of assumed that, for our purposes tonight, Amanda hadn’t wanted them around and had locked them in somewhere.
Instead, I had to assume they’d been out casing the neighborhood.
The one in front—Cherise—had a dead mouse in her mouth. There was a gash in its side and its tail hung limp.
The felines came to a full stop right in front of the person both cats undoubtedly recognized as an intruder on at least one fateful night—the one where Leon had been eliminated.
Damned if they didn’t deposit the ruptured rodent right at Mitch Severin’s soon-to-be-permanently-shackled feet.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“ISN’T THAT A real, live ethics violation?” Darryl inquired early the next morning.
I’d brought Lexie into the Doggy Indulgence Day Resort before my pet-sitting rounds. After all, she needed a little more indulgence than I’d been able to engage in lately. I’d been busy a lot—including well into late last night, while I graciously allowed Detective Elliot Tidus to interview me about how I’d happened upon Mitch Severin as a more likely suspect in Leon Lucero’s murder than Amanda Hubbard.
Now, we were in Darryl’s untidy office, standing side by side at the picture window looking out over his doggy domain. Canines cavorted everywhere, egged on by the energetic staff.
Lexie, playing tug of war with a good-natured gold miniature poodle, was obviously having a blast.
“I’d say Mitch was guilty of an ethics violation about as big as they come,” I replied to Darryl, whose lanky length stood right beside me. Of course, he was in one of his normal green knit shirts with the Doggy Indulgence logo on the pocket. “Talk about having a conflict of interests. It’d be a whole lot better for him if his client were tried, convicted, and fried for the little felony that he’d actually committed. But that’s just my opinion, of course. Never mind all the evidence the cops are collecting, now that they have a different suspect to go after. Like everyone else, Mitch is innocent until found guilty.”
Darryl peered down at me over his wire-rims. “Never mind his confession to you and all his guilty behavior, like threatening to kill you and frame your client for another murder?”
“A good criminal attorney will bring up how this so-called confession was his attempt to get his own client to ’fess up, all the better for him to figure how to defend her ass. Or he was trying to get me to admit
my
guilt. Or it was coerced without Mitch’s being read his Miranda rights, so every bit of evidence collected afterward is tainted and inadmissible, the ‘fruit of the poisonous tree,’ so to speak. Don’t you just love legalese?”
“Obviously you do,” Darryl said dryly.
“How can you tell?”
“Was Mitch the one who threatened Lexie and you?”
“He sure was. He got a bit nervous that his prime patsy, Amanda, had another attorney championing her defense. He was hoping to scare me so far out of the picture that I’d sail into one of Amanda’s seascapes, taking my poor, threatened pup along, too. He’d apparently been following me closely enough to scare Lexie in the supermarket parking lot and leave me a note. I’ll never forgive him for that. He also kept an eye on Amanda’s house and scratched my car with a screwdriver as an added warning.”
“Do you suppose he’ll hire Quentin Rush to represent him now?” Darryl inquired. I, of course, had informed him about Mitch’s claimed cocounsel.
“Assuming he even knows him,” I said with a sigh. “Quentin’s involvement could have been as fictional as Mitch’s ethics, a ploy to ensure he could control Amanda’s case. Too bad, though. I was hoping to meet the guy.”
“In any event, you done good, kid,” Darryl said and gave me a great big bear hug.
I left there soon afterward, leaving Lexie still playing gleefully, and went first to Alexander the pit bull’s place, where I cavorted with him before walking and feeding him.
Sitting in my Beamer on Alexander’s hilly street, I called Rachel’s cell phone to see if she, too, was on schedule. “Sure am, Kendra,” she said. “But next week . . .”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m getting together over the weekend with Wanda Villareal and her Cavalier, Basil. We’re going to exchange Cavalier stories and make plans for her to provide backup sitting when you’re unavailable.”
“Good deal,” Rachel said. But I heard something sorrowful in her tone.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“I’d just hate for you to get so much help that you won’t need me anymore when I
am
available.”
“I’ll always have need of your services,” I told her. “Someone as enthusiastic as you should be great at selling pet-sitting services for Critter TLC, not just performing them.”
“Hey. Yeah! That’s great!”
And even though I’d been irritated before when I’d heard of Rachel’s bet, I heard myself pridefully putting in, “By the way, that bet you made on me, that I’d solve the murder that Amanda was accused of—”
“You did it?” she shouted in my ear. “I knew it! Wait till I tell the others.”
“They’ll hear about it soon enough, I’ll bet.”
But she’d already hung up.
So, I’d set her back to her rounds with a story to lay on her friends later. Or now, while on the road, I suspected, since she had her cell phone in her hand.
Speaking of learning what happened, my next call was to return several messages that Corina Carey had left. “You promised me an exclusive,” she said.
“Sure thing,” I agreed. For speed’s sake, she interviewed me over the phone.
“And I’ll want to do an in-depth interview in person,” she persisted. “Later today.”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “I promise.”
Grumbling, she agreed.
Then I headed to Stromboli’s—not to tend him, but to see his owner, Dana Moroni, who’d gotten back into town late last night. She wanted her keys back, and I wanted her check, a pretty fair exchange.
“Thanks so much, Kendra.” She looked as if she’d already been up romping with her dog this morning, since her short brunette hair was mussed and she still wore a sweatshirt despite having the heat on in her house. Stromboli, panting slightly, came over and insisted that I pet him before I slid out the door.
Then I saw Maribelle Openheim walking down the street with the little wiry fellow Meph on a leash.
“Hi, Kendra,” she called.
I joined her in front of her house, where I stooped to stroke a tail-wagging Meph. “How are Baird and you getting along?”
“We’re not,” Maribelle said, a surprising smile crinkling the wrinkles at the edges of her eyes. Despite the slight breeze, her highlighted hair wasn’t a smidgen windblown, nor did it appear over-sprayed and stiff. Well, hey, a hairdresser surely had her secrets.
I hoped one of them wasn’t the reason for her unexpected comment.
“Dare I ask what happened?” I dared to ask.
Her expression turned wry. “That Judge Baird Roehmann’s really a charmer, isn’t he? I was taken with him. Started thinking future and everything . . . until I called him one evening when I needed an answer about some plans we were making for over the weekend. There was a whole lot of background noise. He’d said he was going to a bar function, and I assumed it was the lawyers’ kind of bar, not a saloon. Even so . . . well, when he came back to my place later to say good night, there was alcohol on his breath. Not that it particularly mattered, except I wound up walking Meph alone while Baird spent some time in the bathroom. I happened to glance into his car when we passed it, and that’s when I saw—well, you’ll never guess.”
I
could
guess, but I didn’t tell her that. “What was it?”
“A piece of ladies’ underwear. Well, not really a
lady’s
, in the real sense of the word. It was
so
skimpy—well, probably someone a whole lot younger and skinnier than me wore it,” she finished.
So, Judge Roamin’ Hands had done it again.
“Naturally, I told him to leave. Would you believe he had the nerve to ask if I’d let him adopt Meph?” Her eyes rolled but, amazingly, she was smiling again.
“I’d believe you told him no,” I replied.
“Exactly. But you know what? I really thank you for introducing us, Kendra. Before, I was still terribly depressed over losing my husband. Now, though, I’m convinced I have a life left—without someone as fickle as Baird. And I still have Meph to share it with.” She knelt and hugged her sweet terrier, who wriggled in happy response.
So, I was smiling when I finally headed for my law office. There, I decided it was time for some self-back patting, so I asked Mignon to assemble everyone present, including Borden, associates, partners, and paralegals into our bar-boardroom.

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