Never Con a Corgi (6 page)

Two small faces stared at their father across the kitchen table, their expressions wide eyed. Leigh marveled at her husband's clever and calculated phrasing. Nearly two decades as a successful politician had definitely taught the man how to spin. Somehow, he'd managed to describe her role in the fiasco without ever mentioning the word "body," nor had he been specific about exactly where it had been found—a point which they both feared could affect the children's enjoyment of their Aunt Bess's glorious woods. Thank goodness they knew nothing of their mother's historical proclivity in such matters... all
that
had happened before they were born.

The children remained silent. Allison's nose twitched.

Leigh's eyes met her husband's.
So far, so good. Thank you.
"So," she announced, "are you guys okay? Do you have any questions?"

"Yeah," Ethan said immediately, his gaze fixed on his mother with something like awe. "How many bodies have you found now? Like... six?"

Allison leaned over the table toward her. "Were his eyes open or shut?"

Leigh gulped. She threw a desperate glance at Warren, but he was struggling—curse him—to fight a grin. She turned to Ethan, "Why... What makes you think I've found other... I mean,
others?"

Her son sat back with a snort. "Who doesn't know? You're like... legend. But we understand if you don't want to talk about it."

Allison nodded sagely. "If it grosses you out, Mom, it's okay. Some people aren't comfortable with dead things."

Leigh found herself speechless. Warren, who was doing a really bad job of trying to look serious, stepped in again. "You guys are right; Mom doesn't like talking about it. But I'm glad you're taking it so well." He cleared his throat. "Now... back to whatever you were doing."

The children rose from the table.

"But," Warren continued, "don't talk to your cousins about this yet—your Aunt Cara and Uncle Gil need to be the ones to do that. Okay?"

The two looked at each other, then nodded. "We especially can't tell Lenna," Allison whispered to her brother as they turned and walked toward the back door. "You know how sensitive she is."

The door slammed shut behind them. Leigh rose, still stunned, and Warren wrapped his arms around her with a chuckle. "They'll be fine," he said good-naturedly. "They come from strong stock, you know."

Leigh looked up at her husband appreciatively. When they had first met, at eighteen, he had been tall, gawky, and a hopeless nerd obsessed with space movies. He was still tall, and he was still obsessed with space movies, but the gawky teen had been replaced by a confident, attractive man who still made her heart flutter after twelve years of marriage. Too bad it had taken twelve years of friendship first for her to realize what she'd been missing.

She was still determined to make up for that.

"Oh," Warren said heavily. Leigh heard the crunching of gravel that announced a car on the drive and looked up to follow his line of sight out the window.

"Oh, no," she added gravely.

"I really do have to get back downtown for that appointment," he said briskly, looking at his watch and reaching for his briefcase. "I rescheduled it once, but—"

"Chicken,"
Leigh accused.

He grinned. "Not that I don't love your mother, Leigh. But if she's here for what I think she's here for—"

"She can't know yet!" Leigh protested. "Maura wouldn't tell her."

"No," he countered, kissing her quickly in passing as he made haste toward the garage door, "but your Aunt Bess would."

Leigh swore.

With deft timing, Warren managed to reach his car and start up the engine just as Frances Koslow's intent rapping sounded at the front door.

Leigh took a centering breath and opened it.

"Oh, poo," the woman on her porch exclaimed. "I just missed Warren, didn't I?"

Leigh surveyed her mother, who had clearly left home in a hurry. Never in Frances's sixty-some-odd years had she been known to leave her residence without a complete matched outfit (currently in fashion or not), a fully equipped bag (roughly the size of a newborn elephant), and a generous coating of lipstick (usually orange, occasionally pink, but never,
ever
red). And yet here she was— lips bare, polyester top and cotton slacks both alarming shades of olive. Thank God she at least had her handbag.

"He had to get back downtown," Leigh explained unnecessarily. In her mother's eyes, Warren could do no wrong under any circumstances.

It was Leigh that was the problem.

Frances shifted her gaze to her daughter and twisted her lips with disapproval. "He didn't have to make a special trip home, did he?"

Leigh considered her response. "Why would he?"

Frances' lips pursed further as she swept past her daughter and inside. "You know perfectly well why. Are the children around?"

"They're playing outside with their cousins," Leigh answered mechanically. "Did you know you forgot your lipstick?"

Frances gave a distressed little jump, then plopped down on Leigh's couch, dug out a gold hand mirror and orange tube, corrected the oversight, and stood up again.

Leigh felt better. "So, why did you come by?" she asked as politely as possible.

Frances scowled. "To make sure this fiasco goes no further, of course."

Leigh's brow furrowed. "Further than..."

Frances sighed. "If you must go around tripping over bodies, there's nothing I or anyone else can do to stop you. But really, dear... to involve your Aunt Bess? And poor,
poor
Gil?"

Leigh found herself, once again, speechless.

"Bess said she'd been trying to call you, but you weren't picking up," Frances accused.

Leigh cast a glance at her phone, which she had indeed been ignoring while she and Warren were talking to the children.

"Maura and her friend, the other detective, were very polite in their questioning, I'm sure," Frances continued. "But you know how Bess always plows into such situations head first—Lord only knows what she told them. She was raving on and on to me about how she caught the whole thing on tape, and how
you
knew but didn't tell her, and some nonsense about how some cat had made it all possible—always with those cats!—and then she suggested I come out and see how you and Cara were doing, because she was going to be busy running interference at the church all day."

Leigh's eyebrows rose. Her aunt might have said most of that, but no way had she sicced Frances' ministrations of support on Cara and herself. Bess might be dotty, but she was never cruel.

"Now," Frances began with a flourish, settling herself on the couch once more. "What we—" Her eyes narrowed. "These cushions could use a vacuuming, dear. And I daresay a little upholstery cleaner on these stains wouldn't hurt, either. Now, as I was saying, we'll need to plan what to do about this. Perhaps a family conference—"

"No!"
Leigh interrupted, a bit more vehemently than intended.

Frances proffered the dreaded chin-down, eyebrows-up maneuver.

"I mean," Leigh backtracked, "it's too soon for that. Maura warned me not to go around telling anybody in the family what happened; she wanted to interview Bess and Gil first. That's why I couldn't say anything to Aunt Bess when I—"

"Well, the principals all know now," Frances interrupted. "Maura is interviewing Gil and his lawyer even as we speak."

"How did you—"

"Cara told her mother, of course. Your Aunt Lydie and I have already discussed this situation thoroughly. Clearly, what we need to do is—"

"Mom," Leigh interrupted again.
"We
don't need to do anything. I am not a suspect. Aunt Bess is not a suspect. It looks bad for Gil at the moment, but he does have an alibi—we just need to verify it."

"Aha!" Frances pointed a finger. "Yes,
we
do. Lydie and I already have a plan for that. We could use your cooperation. And as for your not being a suspect this time..." her eyes narrowed again. "What, dare I ask, is
your
alibi?"

Leigh bristled. Her mother wasn't actually accusing her of murder, merely of doing something stupid. Like being alone without proper documentation on the night a murder was being committed. "For your information," Leigh said proudly, "I was here with Warren and the kids. And Detective Maura Polanski.
And
her husband, Lieutenant Gerald Frank of the Allegheny County Police Department."

A smile played on Frances's lips. Then, much to Leigh's horror, her eyes began to water. "Oh sweetheart," Frances said heavily. "That's wonderful. I've been so worried, you know."

"Yes, mom," she returned with a sigh. "I know."

Frances recovered quickly. "So," she announced with a little bounce on the couch, "now we need to establish Gil's alibi."

"Cara said he was walking in North Park."

"Exactly!" Frances agreed. "Which is why we need runners and dog walkers."

Leigh's brow furrowed.

"Consistency, dear. Always look for consistency. People with dogs tend to walk the same time, same route each day. Same with serious runners. The walkers, the children, the bikers"—she waved a dismissive hand—"they're all over the place. We need to find the regulars. And we need to find them tonight."

Leigh blinked. In no family crisis had her mother ever been short of her trademark overreactive, occasionally hysterical plans of action—most of which involved the entire extended Morton family and the expenditure of vast amounts of unwelcome and generally futile effort.

But this idea actually made sense.

Wow.

"So we'll go to the park tonight and ask people if any of them remember seeing Gil last night?"

Frances smiled smugly. "Precisely. If we're lucky, Gil will remember someone he saw, and we'll have a specific target. It was right around dusk, so most of the people still out were probably regulars. We'll meet at the boathouse at 8:15. Lydie will have his route and any leads ready."

"Sounds good," Leigh agreed.

"And, dear?"

"Yes?"

"I can see dust on those dining room curtains from here."

Chapter 7

Diana Saxton clicked her long, perfectly French-tipped nails on the smooth glass top of Brandon Lyle's designer desk. Her nose ran. Her mascara was streaked to her chin. She wanted to go crawl into a hole and die. She also wanted to smash something.

She was determined that she would do neither.

She would remain calm, no matter how incredibly tempting it might be to pick up the framed portrait of Brandon and his smiling bride and hurl it through the twelfth floor window and out into the traffic of Grant Street.

No matter if Courtney Lyle's odious words still rang in her ears like swirling acid. The woman was a viper. A leech. A devil.

I'm so sorry to be the one to break this to you, sweetie cakes,
the witch had sniveled into her phone.
But your sugar daddy's bit the dust. Gone. Cold. Dead. And you know what you are, you husband-stealing, gold-digging, silicone-implanted little wench? I'll tell you what you are. You're FIRED!!!

Diana withdrew another tissue from the box she'd been carrying around the eerily empty office for the last two hours. She blew.

"He never loved you, you know that?" she muttered, staring daggers at the airbrushed woman in the photograph. "It was
me
he wanted. He would have divorced you in a heartbeat if his finances hadn't—"

Her words choked on a sob.
Close.
She'd been so damned close.

And now she had nothing.

Again
.

She couldn't stand it. Couldn’t bear for everything that had seemed so promising to go so suddenly, terribly wrong. But the blubbering and the sniveling had to stop, regardless. Her situation was precarious; she needed to focus.

She would not be in Brandon's will, she knew that. And even if she was, he'd have nothing left. The business had bled him out like a stuck pig.

Her stomach gave a lurch.

She grabbed another tissue.

Brandon had been right; it was Gil's fault. His good buddy Gil, who had pretended to help him, then dumped him in his hour of need. Mr. Hollywood-Handsome Gil March had walked away from Brandon—with a fat consulting fee in his pocket—and never once looked back. He was a fraud. A hack. A self-righteous, ungrateful, overstuffed prig.

God, how she hated him.

For more reasons than one. But this time, he would not walk away unscathed.

She'd made sure of that.

A ding sounded from the outer office; the door was opening. Diana wiped hastily at her cheeks, tucked the tissue box back under her arm, and walked through the open doorway and back into the reception area.

"Can I help you?" she asked, her voice rough as gravel.

The man and woman—at least, Diana thought it was a woman—surveyed her studiously.
Cops
, she decided immediately. Neither wore a uniform, of course, but the man had that quiet air of authority one usually associated with detectives, while the woman—good God, what a woman; she was huge!—looked like she could take down three drug dealers with one blow. They had come to tell her about Brandon. And to search his office for clues, no doubt.

With a discreet flash of their badges, the detectives solemnly introduced themselves.

"I already know about Brandon," Diana said simply, sniffling. "His wife called a couple hours ago." She moved to her own desk chair and dropped down with a plop. "I've been in a kind of daze, you know?"

The detectives nodded, then exchanged a glance and a gesture. The woman seemed to be in charge, but it was the man, a Detective Peterson, who did the talking. He began as expected with stiff condolences, then moved quickly to the heart of the matter.

"Could you tell me the last time you saw Brandon Lyle, Ms. Saxton?"

Diana sniffled, then reached for another tissue. She really should have planned these answers out already; the truth was hardly neat and tidy. On the other hand, when it came to her relationship with Brandon, why should she lie? To spare his poor, dear little wife the embarrassment?