Nothing to Fear But Ferrets (6 page)

I soon heard a rapping from the direction of the open front door. “Police,” someone shouted. I headed that direction to greet them. It was a couple of patrol officers—a male and female this time—who’d followed the usual protocol of answering a call about a potential crime. When I showed them the body, they agreed a crime had been committed and called for backup.

Why wasn’t I surprised, a while later, to see that the head of the detective detail at my front door was my old nemesis Detective Ned Noralles?

Maybe it was because he was a top-rung homicide detective, and this was definitely the kind of case that rang his chimes.

The hell of it was, despite my complete exoneration last time, Noralles didn’t look surprised to see me, either. “Hello, Ms. Ballantyne. I received a call about a possible homicide here. Would you know anything about that?”

“I’d know about the homicide, Detective,” I told him. “But not how the victim got that way.”

“Of course,” he said in a voice as smooth as his brown tweed suit. Detective Noralles was one good-looking African-American. He was also one good, determined homicide detective who clearly refused to let any case grow cold. He’d certainly kept the heat on me before, when he’d tried hard to prove I’d killed two of my favorite pet-sitting clients. He’d seemed a good sport afterward, when I’d not only proven my innocence but handed him a real, live, guilty suspect.

Maybe I would this time, too. Or rather, I’d let him go scrounge on the floor for the ferrets.

As I showed him and the two other detectives with him down the hall to the area already under scrutiny by the patrol cops, he said, “Care to tell me what you’re doing in this house? Does it belong to another of your endangered pet-sitting customers?”

“No,” I retorted. “It belongs to me.”

That shut him up long enough for me to lead him to the discombobulated den.

“Hey, Detective,” said the female cop from the patrol pair who’d first taken charge of the site. “Looks like the victim might have been chewed to death.”

“Chewed? By what?”

“These little critters.” Apparently the cops were cagier than I’d been, for they’d managed to round up the ferrets and deposit them back in their cage. I wasn’t permitted to put a toe into the room, so I peered in from outside the door.

“What are they?” Noralles asked me.

“Ferrets,” I responded with a sigh. His dark brown eyes glittered much too cheerfully, so I beat him to the punch-line. “Yes, I know they’re illegal to keep as pets in California. They’re not mine. They’re my tenants’, and I’ve already put them on verbal notice to get rid of them.”

I’d hoped they’d have time to do it in an orderly manner, find the ferrets a good out-of-state home. I had nothing personal against ferrets, and I’d take a lot of animals over people as friends any day.

But now . . .

“You’re the pet expert,” Noralles said. “Care to tell me whether ferrets are outlawed because they’re considered dangerous?”

“To endangered species,” I said.

“Not people?”

“I don’t think so.” No website had suggested “Sredni Vashtar” was a true story, and I didn’t mention it.

Noralles glanced back into the room, where police took photos and placed little numbers down to show the spots where they’d removed and bagged potential evidence. “Looks like
these
weasels may have been dangerous, although . . . Is the victim one of your tenants?”

“No.” I decided to revert to what I’d learned as a litigator: When you answer a question, never volunteer information. It only leads to more questions.

“Do you know the victim?” His tone was a touch more severe, as if he’d figured what I was up to.

“Not really.”

“Then do you know who he is?” exploded Noralles, with no attempt now to keep his cool.

“Yes.”

“Ms. Ballantyne,” he said through gritted teeth, “since this is your house, do you know of somewhere in it where we can go to talk? No, let me rephrase that.” He obviously knew that my answer would have been a single-syllable affirmative. “Let’s go somewhere where we can discuss this situation.”

“All right,” I agreed with resignation.

I led him into the kitchen, where Lexie greeted me with enthusiasm, though she eyed Noralles suspiciously. Did she remember him from our last ugly encounters? Who knew what went through her sharp canine mind?

I started to sit on one of Charlotte’s kitchen chairs till Noralles nixed it. “This room needs to be examined for evidence,” he said, “in case you killed him here.”

I glared, and he had the gall to grin.

“Let’s go outside,” he said, all serious again.

In my backyard, enough landscaping hugged the wrought iron surrounding my estate to provide privacy.

Over the fence around the swimming pool hovered the top floor of the garage—my apartment and home. Since the Hummer had hit the house wall nearest the street, its effects weren’t in evidence here.

Turning, I’d the ill fortune to find Noralles still behind me. Without asking his okay, I strolled to the fence near the pool and leaned on it.

I commanded Lexie to lie at my feet, which she did for five seconds before popping up again. I lifted her into my arms, which was good for a few moments of canine calm.

Noralles stood beside me. “Now, we can do this in a game of twenty-plus questions, or you can just tell me what you know. Which will it be?”

I preferred the former, but it would take extra time and piss him off even more. Besides, even with a suspended law license, I was an officer of the court. That meant I had to cooperate with the law, like it or not.

I therefore latched on to Noralles’s latter suggestion and told him, “I believe the victim is a man named Chad Chatsworth.”

“But you don’t know him, even though he’s now dead in your house?”

“Not really, though I met him here on Friday night.” I told Noralles that I still I rented out the large house on my property owing to economic necessity. I described the Hummer accident, and how I’d found the ferrets. Then I told him about the party. “Chad and I happened to walk in at the same time. Later, one of the neighbors who watched the show my tenant Charlotte starred in said that Chad Chatsworth was the guy she dumped in favor of money and future TV projects.”

“And Chatsworth was a guest at the party?”

“I think he crashed it. The neighbor also told me that one of the rules that allows Charlotte to keep her prize is that she can’t have contact with her dumpee.”

“You came in with him?”

“Kind of. I saw him first on the front walk. He introduced himself as Chad. No one greeted us at the door, so he just walked in. Me, too. I lost track of him and later heard Charlotte and her boyfriend, Yul, ask him to leave.”

Okay, so I spoke euphemistically. But I’d been the subject of a couple of Noralles’s murder investigations. I wasn’t about to sic him on my tenants just because they’d had a falling-out with the victim.

Of course, that victim was found dead in the house they rented, after he’d been told never to darken its doorstep again.

But Charlotte a killer? Yul?

Ferrets?

What if Charlotte actually had been having a relationship with the guy who’d won her heart on that reality show—and tried to keep it from the world so she could keep her financial winnings, too? Did he threaten to out their relationship and jeopardize her juicy prize?

Did Yul find out about said relationship and get peeved enough to pull a Sredni Vashtar on Chad?

Or did the freed ferrets do it on their own?

If so, who’d freed them? Chad? And then he’d lain down on the floor so they could chew him to death? I didn’t think so.

Could it have been an accident—Chad tripping, falling in a way that scattered both ferrets and their food while hitting his head and falling unconscious?

Then the ferrets, while scarfing up their spilled food, scarfed up some of Chad’s flesh, too?

Seemed pretty far-fetched.

Before Noralles could bombard me with more questions than I’d asked myself, a woman wearing latex gloves slipped out through the kitchen door. Lexie squirmed in my arms, but I held her there. “I’d like to go over a few things with you where we found the victim, Detective. It looks as if he was attacked by those ferrets—all over, but most severely at his neck. His carotid artery was severed, and he died from loss of blood.”

“Have you called L.A. Animal Services?”

“Yes, and a couple of their officers are here now.”

I followed Noralles back inside the house, Lexie still wriggling under my arm. I watched as a guy and a girl in blue shirts and light pants who’d collected the ferret cage maneuvered out the den door as Noralles stood back to let them pass.

“What’s going to happen to them?” I asked, holding the fascinated Lexie all the tighter.

“We’ll hold them pending the outcome of the investigation into this incident,” the woman said, stopping just outside the door and effectively blocking Noralles from entering the den. Though she was slighter than her male counterpart, she seemed to be having an easier time holding up her end of the cage.

“If it turns out that the ferrets were guilty only of chewing a corpse and not committing the murder, what will happen to them?”

“We’ll call a ferret rescue group to come get them,” the guy said, panting a little. His shirt showed a damp stain at the armpits.

I hated to ask, since I figured the answer was obvious, but said, “And what happens if the conclusion is that they killed the victim?” I didn’t meet Noralles’s eyes, though I knew they were watching me.

“Then they’ll be humanely euthanized,” the lady said, and the two continued toting the cage from the house.

Humanely euthanized. Sounded like an oxymoron to me. Ferret capital punishment.

“But why would he have let them chew his neck like that?” The words burst out before I could contain them.

“I’m wondering that, too, Ms. Ballantyne,” Noralles said, entering into the conversation, then exiting as he eased past the animal control people and disappeared through the door.

I heaved a sigh as I watched out the front door while the animal control truck took off. A coroner’s truck still sat behind the vacated space and in front of my wrought-iron fence.

The killings before had involved me because my pet-sitting clients had been the victims.

This killing involved me, too, since it took place on property I owned and loved. Plus, I’d met Chad . . . sort of.

My tenants might be involved, although I hated to imagine that. But one way or another, their ferrets were at best witnesses, at worst small murderers.

The investigator on the scene had implied that Chad was chewed to death. But I had too many questions just to bite into that as the answer. It sounded as if Noralles did, too.

One thing I knew for sure. After all I’d already gone through, I wasn’t about to let anyone get framed for something she didn’t do.

Not even those weaselly little ferrets.

Chapter Seven

IF A LITTLE thing like a Hummer hitting a house brought out the neighbors in force, imagine what an assemblage of law enforcement vehicles, including a coroner’s van, did.

As Noralles finally left Lexie and me standing alone outside, the same group who’d gawked at the damage to my home descended. My pup and I headed outside the fence toward the street, to prevent them from sticking their noses closer to the crime scene.

Phil Ashler, the retired guy from across the street, appeared as if the excitement had interrupted his dinner, for he clutched half a submarine sandwich in one hand and a water bottle in the other. Thin enough to fit nearly anywhere, he insinuated himself at the forefront of the crowd. Lexie sniffed the air, obviously enthralled by the scent of his snack, but I held her tight at my side to prevent her angling for handouts.

“What happened, Kendra?” demanded Tilla Thomason, usurping my other side. I winced, recalling her gossipy tirade at Charlotte’s last party. Though Tilla’s face was a plump frown of concern, a potential new scandal brought a gleam to her watery brown eyes.

Not about to ignite a conflagration that would undoubtedly consume the neighborhood anyway, I simply said, “There’s been an accident. Someone got hurt inside the house.”

“I’ll say,” said Tilla’s husband, Hal. Daylight revealed even more that though he was not as overweight as his wife, his girth straining his white knit shirt suggested he was a proud participant in the culinary largesse that added to her mass. Hal stared at the gurney being wheeled out of the house. On it was a closed body bag, and every eye in the area joined his in watching as it was loaded into the coroner’s vehicle.

When I turned back, I saw Hal eyeing Tilla expectantly. Dutifully, she began barraging me with questions. “Accident? Are you sure? It looks as if someone died. Who was it? How did it happen?”

“Sorry,” I said. “As you can see, this is a police investigation. I can’t talk about it.”

She screwed her features up to prepare a protest, but I was saved from it by the screech of bicycle brakes as Lyle Urquard stopped abruptly, sliding to a stop at the curb so fast that his cycle slipped. So did he. I grimaced in empathetic pain as the already bloody sides of his legs slid along the pavement. Again. This time not even his helmet had helped, for his cheeks were scraped, too.

All we needed was Ike Janus and his Hummer to make our little horde complete. Or maybe that wasn’t irony oozing from my thoughts, for the guy had seemed the take-charge sort. Maybe he could have taken charge of this horrible situation, dispersed the crowd, and gotten the cops to hurry.

Sure. Like he’d gotten his incommunicado insurance adjuster to hurry. He’d sworn he was on top of it when I’d called to remind him, but still no one had contacted me.

Right then, I needed air. I needed privacy. I needed for the whole horrible situation not to have happened.