Nothing to Fear But Ferrets (29 page)

More important, “What tip this time?” I asked.

“About the reality show ideas Chad came up with,” she said. “The one he was really pushing—and getting buzz about—was about bringing in people for an American Idol kind of show, showcasing talent and awarding the winner a recording contract. Only everyone would have been checked out in advance, and each contender would have had something in his or her past he wasn’t proud of. Something hidden. Of course, it would come out on the show. The point would be to see reactions, and the viewers would vote which loser should win the prize of big bucks.”

“Which they could use to hire a lawyer to defend them from whatever charges were brought for what they were hiding,” I muttered loud enough that everyone could hear it.

I was surprised—or maybe not—to see Charlotte turn stark white against the blackness of her hair and purple-ness of her pantsuit. Her blue eyes were huge. “How did you know?” she rasped. “Were you the one who gave Nor-whatever the tip?”

By this time, the respective cliques about the room had grown silent, everyone listening to this exchange. Some people had risen to gather around. Tilla Thomason, looking even chunkier than usual in a muumuu festooned with enormous yellow flowers, appeared all ears. I wondered that she didn’t already have her cell phone stuck to her ear as she bleated out gossip to everyone she knew, and to many she didn’t.

Lyle Urquard stood right behind Charlotte, not far from me, though I stayed within her line of sight so I could ask her questions. Lyle squirmed as he stared at her—and seemed to glare daggers sharp enough to saw off the arm Yul had stuck around her shoulders.

Interesting, I thought. Our klutzy neighbor seemed to have a crush on reality star Charlotte. I should have realized it before. He always seemed so friendly toward her.

Charlotte was still staring, so I said, “I didn’t give Detective Noralles any tips. Did he bring you in to question you because he thought you were stealing that reality show idea?” And then the truth butted me in the gut. “No, he brought you in because of something in your past you were hiding, right? Because Chad came up with this idea and ran with it since he knew something about you. Was he blackmailing you so you’d work with him to make his reality show career a reality? Or did he just want to humiliate you the way you humiliated him by dumping him in front of millions of viewers?”

The party crowd about us began to chatter. Maybe that was a good thing, since despite what Chad might have wanted, I had no interest in humiliating Charlotte in public, even in front of a small group like this.

Charlotte simply nodded. Yul drew her closer. “Everyone has something in their past they wouldn’t want broadcast everywhere,” he said in an entire, astute, and sensitive sentence. I’d been right about a different look in his eyes tonight.

What was he hiding? Obviously, it had to do with who this man with no recorded past really was.

“What’s yours, Charlotte?” asked Tilla Thomason.

“Yeah, Charlotte,” said Trudi Norman. “What’s your deepest, darkest secret?”

Dave Driscoll tried to shush Trudi. Philipe Pellera asked, “Did that detective know your secret?”

Before I could tell them all to take their big mouths on the road, Charlotte answered. “He did,” she said sadly. “I’m sure he’s just getting his ducks in a row to arrest me for killing Chad.” She sighed and took another swig of vodka. “It won’t be the first time I was arrested.”

“I’m not your lawyer, Charlotte,” I said, “but if Esther was here, I’m sure she’d tell you not to talk about it.”

“We’re all friends here,” she said. Maybe so, but I’m sure the buzz from her drink made everyone seem like better buddies.

“Do you want me to call Esther and have
her
advise you to shut up?” I asked, not liking the edge to my own voice. But I’d handled clients who’d stuck even small feet in their mouths in manners that made their cases go south in seconds.

“No,” she replied. “I guess you’re right. But you know what? I don’t feel like partying anymore.”

Silence sliced the air, and then Yul said, “Time to clear out, everyone. Thanks for coming.”

 
SINCE THIS WAS my house and I hadn’t far to go, I made sure I was last to leave. “You’re okay?” I asked Charlotte.

We stood by the entry, watching the last partygoers go through the gate. Yul was in the kitchen wrapping a lot of leftovers.

She nodded. “I need to get out of here, though,” she said sadly. “Even though we can’t get in while it’s being rebuilt,

Yul’s taking me to the Griffith Park Observatory. I like it up there on its hilltop. Open space, a wonderful view of L.A., and lots and lots of sky.” She sighed. “I have a feeling my life is going to get cramped into just a few feet of jail space soon.”

“Did you kill Chad?” I had to ask—for the zillionth time.

She shook her head. “I can see why Noralles is suspicious, after that tip and because he knows my past. The records are sealed because I was a juvenile, but I was arrested for a hit-and-run when I was sixteen. I’d only just started driving when I turned a corner too fast and hit a mother pushing a stroller in a crosswalk. They were hurt, but thank God they weren’t killed. I was so scared I ran away. But I turned myself in, worked hard as a waitress so I could pay as much as I could toward their hospital bills, and did community service.”

“And Noralles thinks you’d kill Chad over that?”

“It’s not the image I want to portray while starting my reality show career.”

“But it’s not—”

“Ready to go, Charlotte?” Yul had come from the hall toward the kitchen, still wiping his hands on a wet paper towel.

She nodded.

“What about you, Yul?” I blurted out. “You said everyone has something they don’t want people to know about. How about you? Like, what’s your real name?”

His glare could have singed away superglue. “Have you been checking up on me?”

“Where’d your single-syllable replies go?” I countered.

Charlotte swept across the entry and pulled Yul into her arms. “I know about him, Kendra. It’s not what you think. And don’t try to help me by telling the detective it’s Yul. Esther Ickes has referred him to his own attorney, but he didn’t do anything, I swear.”

“And what about you, Yul? Do you swear you have no fatal secrets?”

“Bite me,” he said, and swept Charlotte out of the house.

 
IRRITATED THAT MY tenants, no matter how miffed at me, had left without locking up, I took the time to check the front and back doors. All was fine.

Except, as I headed out, I heard something. A shrill something. A familiar shrill something.

Ferrets?

How could that be? The little critters were incarcerated way out in the Valley.

Even so, I headed for the den. Now,
that
door was locked.

Good thing the key ring I’d put in my little purse contained the keys not only for my apartment door, but also for the ones here. Even when I’d rented the place out, I’d always had aspirations to take it back and live here again. The keys kept my hope alive.

When I opened the door, I found myself rushed by two furry ferrets. They seemed smaller than the five who’d lived here before, and they were loose.

“Yul!” I shouted into the empty hall. “What the hell are you doing? Even if these guys aren’t mini-murderers, they’re still illegal.” I’d have to put him on official written lease-conforming notice as quickly as possible.
Bite me,
he’d said. Maybe he’d been hoping his illicit animal friends would hear and instead bite
me.

No, that wouldn’t happen. I knelt and lifted the friendly little ferrets, who’d already started exploring my feet. Warm and wriggly, they slinked over and around the long sleeves of my silver sweater—and then one actually slipped inside.

“Hey, pervert!” I cried. “You must be the male of this pair.” I managed to pull him out, then placed both ferrets on the floor. This time, they hurried across the room to a crate that was low to the ground and contained a lot of ragged towels. Was that a sock I saw hanging off one end? Could be these critters were little thieves.

That didn’t make them, or their kind, killers.

“You’re awfully cute,” I said as I took one more look before locking the door behind me. “Too bad you’re illegal.”

 
AN HOUR LATER, I lay half-asleep in bed. Could Noralles’s tip actually lead to the killer? A reality show that would unearth the untenable pasts of its contestants. That didn’t mean its creators, or others on its staff, would be exposed.

Or had Chad made it clear he intended it as a vehicle for revenge?

Who knew?

And what was I going to do with this new pair of ferrets? Was Yul a ferret junky, craving the little creatures, unable to survive without some about?

I didn’t think I’d stirred, but suddenly Lexie, who’d been lying sound asleep beside me, rose and stood at attention.

My little black, white, and chestnut Cavalier started growling way deep in her throat, a menacing sound that could have come from a much bigger hound.

“What’s wrong, Lexie?” I asked in a whisper, only garnering a deeper growl from my edgy dog.

My lights were out. I didn’t put them on, though I did don the robe I’d thrown over a bedroom chair.

I looked out a window.

A light was on in the house.

No biggie. Charlotte and Yul could be home.

Only I’d been enough awake that I’d have heard their car pull into the garage underneath my apartment, if it had arrived there.

The light moved. A flashlight?

I intended to find out.

I wouldn’t call the cops, in case there was a perfectly innocent explanation, like maybe my tenants had come in without my noticing and one was now creeping through the rooms with a flashlight so as not to disturb the other, who was already sound asleep.

Right.

Well, just in case, I did call Jeff. Woke him.

Fortunately failed to hear Amanda’s voice.

“Stay put till I get there, Kendra,” he ordered.

“See you in a bit,” I responded without assent.

I wouldn’t take the stressed-out Lexie, despite her being the one to alert me. She’d only alert the prowler, too.

I threw on jeans and a T-shirt. I happened to have a can of Mace in a purse, and I fortunately found it in the dimness of the streetlight that spilled into my front window.

And then, locking Lexie in the back bathroom so her barks couldn’t be heard as well, I started down the stairs.

And stopped and blinked before continuing, carefully, for I’d been struck by a sudden bit of insight.

After all I’d seen and heard that evening, I had a feeling I knew whom I’d find there.

I believed I knew the identity of Chad’s killer.

Chapter Thirty-one

WHAT I DIDN’T know was why the killer was again on the prowl in my house. I’d find out eventually, after I’d maced and trussed the murderer, and waited for Jeff and the posse he was bound to round up.

What I hadn’t anticipated was that the killer anticipated
me.

I’d no sooner sneaked into the kitchen door than I was grabbed from behind. I had my Mace poised to spray, and I turned my hand to aim it over my shoulder. I only got out a useless spritz before my hand was hit by something hard. I shrieked at the sudden pain, and the can tumbled from my damaged fingers to the floor. The clatter on the tile only called my attention even more to my precarious position.

I might not have taken this person seriously before, but I’d have to now. Bad enough I’d been subjected to bruising when my stairway was made slick and slippery, but I was in greater danger at the moment. Life imprisonment without parole or the death sentence, whichever, wouldn’t be worse if the person threatening me was punished for one murder or two.

“Hello, Lyle,” I said sweetly as I turned in the darkness of the room that had so recently been the scene of a party. “How nice of you to drop in.”

He was backlighted by a soft glow through the arched doorway from a light he’d left on in the house. His body was long and lanky from this angle; no sign of his prominent stomach that stood out in profile. I couldn’t see the expression on his face but figured he wasn’t smiling.

I certainly wasn’t.

“I tried to keep you out of this, Kendra.” His voice twisted into a childlike whine that sent tiny ferret feet of horror tiptoeing up my spine.

“I know, Lyle,” I said as evenly as my trembling body could manage. “The phone call, the oil on my stairs . . . And I never knew before that you had a white car, the one you used to follow me. I always associate you with your bicycle.”

“I like bicycling better than driving,” he confirmed.

Could I keep him talking long enough for the cavalry to arrive? Assuming it did. Maybe I was only grasping at straws to believe that Jeff, with whom I’d been quarreling, would appear to save me from my own stupidity. He had warned me to stay in my nice, safe apartment with Lexie. But I had to pretend I was as proficient an investigator as he. And now I was liable to pay.

If so, at least I could go with the knowledge of Lyle’s acts and their motivation. Would I go happy? Not exactly.

“You’re the one who mailed the package to Noralles, aren’t you?” I asked. “The one that contained Chad’s reality show ideas, Charlotte’s and Yul’s schedules, the note from Charlotte that looked like a threat, and the rest.” I inched around so Lyle did, too. This way, I could see him better in the light.

I didn’t like the way his eyes glowed so insanely.

“Of course,” he acknowledged with less of a whine. “That detective questioned me, you know. I was worried at first, but I think the cops questioned everyone in the neighborhood, especially those who came to Charlotte’s parties.”

Too bad he hadn’t arrested Lyle on the spot. Of course, I hadn’t suspected him either. But Noralles was the expert. And despite his having suspected me in another situation, he had definitely struck me as being smart.