by Nic Saint
Chapter 4
They arrived at the beach house the Kenspeckles had rented for the summer. It was located along a strip of waterfront that was home to some of most expensive beachfront properties in Hampton Cove. This was where the other half lived. Each time she drove past the million-dollar McMansions she was impressed with the kind of lifestyle the rich and famous could afford. It was so far outside her own experience she felt like Alice in Wonderland.
The house the Kenspeckles had selected belonged to real estate mogul Merl Berkenstein. One of several top-tier properties the local estate agent had on offer. Merl had expensive tastes, which was probably why his offerings were so popular. When Chase's pickup slowed to a stop in front of the gate, she saw the black wrought-iron contraption was topped with gilded spikes and adorned with a lion's head captured in full roar. The Berkenstein logo.
Merl’s business partner had a major stake in one of Hollywood’s premier talent agencies, which was how he managed to entice so many A-listers to rent his properties. The ones that enjoyed staying here often ended up buying. They joined such luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Alec Baldwin and Jerry Seinfeld.
“Nice place,” she said as the gate slowly swung open.
“Yeah, it’s a great little pad.”
“It’s weirdly comforting that tragedy strikes even the best homes.”
He glanced over. “Was that sarcasm, Poole?”
“I don’t do sarcasm. Just an honest observation.”
“I could have sworn that was sarcasm.”
“Nope. Not sarcasm. Not me.”
Chase sped along the caramel-colored gravel drive and she looked around at the perfectly manicured grounds. The lawn was as smooth as a baby’s bottom, the shrubs sculptured to resemble Greek gods, and a smattering of angel and cherub statues dotted the landscape. Cherubs were a mainstay at Merl Berkenstein’s properties. Maybe the man had a cherub fixation. Maybe his mother had given him a cherub pacifier and then taken it away.
The drive took a turn and the house loomed up before them. It was invisible from the road, which wasn’t Merl’s habit. He usually didn’t like his houses to play peekaboo. He liked them to be visible from afar. To shock and awe with their sheer opulence and grandeur. To inspire envy. This one was designed to provide a measure of privacy, something she didn’t associate with the Kenspeckles. When you make a business out of showing off every inch of skin and milking every emotional outburst to an eager audience it’s hard to imagine there’s anything left to hide from the public eye. Perhaps even the Kenspeckles drew the line somewhere, though it was hard to know where.
The house was one of those Jekyll & Hyde places: the front was completely different from the back. For some reason the architect had kept the facade intact but torn down the rest of the house. The front was classic Victorian. Large vaulted windows offered a look at the gardens, and a wraparound verandah with lime and pink columns prettied up the view. There was even a small tower with a gilded weather vane perched on top.
“Nice.”
“Yeah, it’s not bad,” said Chase, parking his car in the circular driveway.
“Security is probably tight?”
“Pretty tight. The Kenspeckles brought along their personal security detail, then hired more muscle in town. They’re not fooling around.”
“And still they couldn’t keep out the bad guys.”
They exited the pickup and Odelia let the cats out. She gave Max a wink and watched the foursome traipse off. She had walked up to the front door before Chase stopped her with a wolf whistle. She turned to look and frowned at the circular sign he was making with his fingers. Obediently, she spun around. Chase laughed. "Not exactly what I meant, Poole. The front door is just that: a front. The actual entrance is around back."
Her cheeks reddened. “Why didn’t you just say so?”
“I thought I did.”
She jogged after him. “I figured you wanted to admire… the view.”
He cut his eyes to her Daisy Dukes. “I’m not complaining.”
She gave a silent groan. She knew she shouldn’t have picked this outfit. She wasn’t used to displaying so much skin. “Just thought I’d blend in.”
A grin spread across Chase’s features. “You stick out like a sore thumb, Poole. But in a good way.”
What did that even mean? “Glad you approve.”
At least she wasn’t wearing a halter top. Her modest boobage was safely tucked away. Which was just as well. She wasn’t wearing enough denim to cover her entire butt. Chase might get an eye twitch trying to take it all in.
Then again, he wasn’t exactly a conservative dresser either. His tight buns were shrink-wrapped inside a pair of faded jeans and his muscular torso stretched a white cotton T-shirt to within an inch of its life. Classic but effective. If you’ve got it, you better show it. And Chase definitely got it. His dark hair curled down to his shoulders, accentuating chiseled features, a square jaw and chocolate eyes. The man was one mean man machine.
The only concession to whimsy was a cowlick that refused to stay put, dangling provocatively across his brow. Ever since she met the guy she’d been tempted to tame that cowlick. So far she’d been able to tamp down the urge. But if he kept checking out her butt like that, all bets were off.
They followed the gravel footpath that led round the house and she watched the structure morph from Victorian to twenty-first-century modernism. Unlike the facade, the rest of the house was all steel and glass. The second floor cantilevered over the first floor like a glass box, and the third floor jutted even further out, creating a futuristic effect. Pretty cool and just as outlandish as the family who now rented the place for the summer.
There was a flurry of police activity, and Chase moved inside with a sense of purpose that reminded her of Moses parting the Red Sea. She followed in his wake, glancing at the pool area that stretched out behind the house. The moment she stepped inside the dining room, the touristy fun stopped.
Right there, in the center of the dining room table, like some Roger Corman movie prop, sat the head of Shana Kenspeckle. The reality star’s eyes were closed, an apple was stuck between her bleached teeth, and a note was glued to her forehead.
Odelia gasped at the sight. She’d seen Shana’s face so many times, on TV and in the magazines, that to see it without its body was surreal. It was almost as if the woman had stuck her head through a hole in the table for some magic act. Any second now she could open her eyes, smile that enigmatic smile of hers and shout, ‘Just kidding!’
But judging from the funereal atmosphere, and the grim-faced expressions of the uniformed officers stalking about, this wasn’t a scene from some horror movie. This was reality. And then it struck her: whoever had killed Shana Kenspeckle hadn’t just wanted to get her out of the way. They’d wanted to humiliate and debase her. Whoever the killer was had hated her.
Staring at the head was a short, paunchy man with hair like Doc Brown in Back to the Future. She recognized him as Abe Cornwall, the county coroner. In spite of his funky appearance he was a dedicated professional.
“So what have we got?” Chase asked.
“A dead body, a head and a weird note,” Abe grumbled.
“Weird note?”
“One of the uniforms is Lebanese-American. She said it’s the worst Arabic she’s ever seen. As if the killer entered a few random lines into Google Translate and decided to call it a day.”
“So it’s not terrorists?”
“Unless Al Kida is a terrorist, I doubt it.”
Chase stared at the note. “Gotcha.”
Abe was right. Whoever had written this note had wanted to make it look like Al Qaida was behind the murder, but had managed to botch the claim.
“What about time of death?” asked Chase.
“Judging from lividity and body temperature I’d say she died between three and four last night.”
“Body temperature?” Odelia asked. “Where’s the body?”
“In the bedr
oom.”
“Cause of death?” Chase asked, cool as a cucumber. As a former NYPD detective he’d probably witnessed his share of gruesome crime scenes.
“My best guess is that she was drugged in her sleep, most likely with a chloroform-type substance, and then killed by decapitation with a meat cleaver or a similar tool. I’ll have to check the lungs to be sure about the chloroform.”
“She wasn’t killed before they chopped off her head?” Chase asked.
Abe shook his head slowly. “Nope.”
“Pretty gruesome,” said Chase.
“Yep.”
She followed the coroner and Chase down the corridor that led from the dining room to a suite of bedrooms. Like the rest of the house, the corridor was all-white: white hardwood floor, white stucco walls and white ceiling. Small prints of sailing boats were the only decoration. They passed several officers, who nodded a greeting, then shook their heads in warning. Uh-oh.
She walked into the bedroom. The body was still where the killer had left it, though someone had removed the bed sheets. The moment Odelia caught sight of Shana, she thought she was going to be sick. The woman’s famous curves were clad in a red chiffon nightgown, and judging from her position she’d been fast asleep when the killer had struck. She was lying on her side, her double-D chest facing them, and if it wasn’t for the fact that her head was missing, she could simply have been fast asleep.
“This is just too horrible,” she muttered, her stomach acting up.
“Maybe you should step outside for a minute,” Chase said.
He was right. She might be a hard-nosed reporter, but she suddenly felt as sick as when she’d had to dissect that frog in high school. She quickly walked out, leaving Chase and Abe to discuss the finer points of the murder. She’d get the details later. Right now she needed fresh air. Lots of fresh air.
She passed through the dining room, turning her head away from Shana’s head, and stepped out onto the deck. Placing her hands on her knees, she took in big gulps of air, trying to convince her stomach to hold down her breakfast. It would be bad form to chuck up in the Kenspeckle pool.
She glanced up when two beige ankle boots appeared in her field of vision. They belonged to Shayonne Kenspeckle, one of Shana’s older sisters.
“I’m… I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said between swallows.
Shayonne nodded and darted a disapproving glance at her Crazy Cat Lady shirt and her Daisy Dukes. “Thank you. Who are you?”
“Odelia Poole. Special consultant to the Hampton Cove PD.”
Shayonne gave her a cursory handshake, barely touching her skin. She was the spitting image of her sister, only with slightly coarser features, and instead of straight hair her dark hair was curly, with blonde highlights. She was dressed in a Dior top that announced she was the ‘Sexiest Woman Alive,’ a pair of cropped jeans, and designer sunglasses pushed up into her ‘do.
“I was the one who found… the head,” Shayonne said, closing her eyes and pressing long purple fingernails against her forehead, her lips trembling.
“I’m so sorry.”
She opened her eyes. “Do you think they’ll come for me next?”
“Who will?”
“Al Qaida. Isn’t it obvious? We’re being targeted by these terrorists.”
“Oh, you mean the note. That was just a ruse, Mrs. Kenspeckle.”
The woman stared at Odelia. “A ruse? What do you mean?”
“The killer tried to make it look like terrorists were involved, but they’re not.”
“They’re not?”
“No. We’ll have the note translated, but it looks like it’s a fake.”
Shayonne clasped a hand to her ample bosom and breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God. I thought we were under attack. That I would be next.”
“Well, you are under attack, but not from Mr. Albert Kida.”
She wondered what the procedure was. Probably Chase wanted to interview Shayonne, but if she got a head start she was sure he wouldn’t mind. They were a team. From the corner of her eye she saw Max and the others slink into view and disappear into the house. Which reminded her…
“Do you have any animals, Mrs. Kenspeckle? Dogs, cats… cockatoos?”
The last murder case she’d been involved in, the victim had owned a cockatoo, which had made Max’s work very difficult. Cats and birds don’t get along really well, and the bird had refused to divulge a single clue to him.
“Well, Shana has a French Bulldog,” said Shayonne.
“Oh, that’s right.” She remembered now. Even though she’d told Max she wasn’t a fan of the Kenspeckles, that didn’t mean she hadn’t caught a few episodes over the years. Perhaps even more than a few. “Kane, right?”
Shayonne nodded. Just then, the bulldog came waddling out. The moment he caught sight of Odelia, he started barking.
Arf, arf, arf.
“That’s all right, Kane,” said Shayonne. “Miss…”
“Poole. Odelia Poole.”
Arf, arf, arf.
“Miss Poole is here to catch the bad person who killed Mommy.”
Arf, arf, arf.
Shayonne swept Kane up in her arms and the dog stared at Odelia, his body trembling with hostility, a long slab of pink dangling from his mouth, his face puckered into a perpetual scowl. She didn’t think Max would get a lot out of this Frenchie. Like cats and birds, cats and dogs don’t get along.
“He’s been barking up a storm all morning,” said Shayonne, snuggling the bulldog and giving him a peck on his ugly little face. “You miss Mommy, don’t you? Don’t you, Kane? Mh?” And then she burst into tears. “Oh, God! She’s really gone, isn’t she? Gone for good! And to think the last words I said to Shana were that I hated her and that I wished she would just die!”
Odelia stared at the woman. “But… why?”
“Because she was sleeping with my husband, that’s why!”
Chapter 5
We’d been sneaking all over the house but so far not a sign of a feline inhabitant. The only animal we’d met was some horrible dog who couldn’t keep his trap shut. Just our luck: a murder had taken place and the only animal in the house was a stupid French Bulldog. I should have known going in that a family as peripatetic as the Kenspeckles would prefer canines to felines. And I was just about to give up when I caught sight of a rust-colored, scrawny cat, casually licking her paws while seated on a pool lounge chair.
Clarice, Hampton Cove’s resident feral menace, looked right at home.
“Look, you guys,” I said. “It’s Clarice.”
“Not again,” Dooley cried, quickly covering his nose.
The last time we met Clarice, Dooley’s nose had suffered because of the blood oath Clarice had made us swear in exchange of some information.
“Oh, no,” said Brutus, for once agreeing with Dooley. “I’m not going anywhere near that monster.”
“She’s actually very nice once you get to know her,” I told him.
That wasn’t exactly true. Clarice wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Quentin Tarantino movie. But for once I had Brutus at a disadvantage.
“Are you sure about this?” asked Harriet. “Last time Brutus got hurt.”
“Last time Brutus fainted like a kitten,” Dooley muttered.
“I didn’t faint,” Brutus countered vehemently. “I… I simply pretended to faint. I was trying to create a diversion so you could escape with your lives.”
“Oh, that was so brave of you, Brutus,” Harriet gushed.
“Looked to me like you fainted at the sight of blood,” I said.
“Puh-lease,” he scoffed. “Me? Fainting at the sight of blood? As if!”
“Look, Clarice is perfectly harmless,” I said. “She’s just… eccentric.”
“Lady Gaga is eccentric, that cat is just… wacko,” Dooley said.
“Wacko or not, we need her,” I said, and stalked off in her direction.
I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing, but if
we were going to find out who killed Shana, we could leave no stone unturned, even the wacko ones.
“Hey there, Clarice,” I said as pleasantly as I could.
She gave me a cursory glance, but kept on licking her paw.
“What a great day, huh?” I said nervously. “Sun is shining, sky’s blue…”
Still no response. I took a hesitant seat at the foot of the lounger. Clarice is a fount of information. She doesn’t owe allegiance to anyone and roams Hampton Cove day and night, looking for food. She’s familiar with every nook and cranny, and knows where all the bodies are buried since she’s the one who buried them. Critter bodies, that is. She doesn’t kill humans. I think.
“We, um, we’re trying to figure out who killed Shana Kenspeckle,” I continued. “You wouldn’t happen to have seen something, would you?”
The others had joined us, but were keeping a safe distance. Dooley was still covering his nose, just to make sure Clarice didn’t slice and dice it again. But Clarice simply ignored us, and kept on grooming herself. The pool was right next to the lounger, and the sun was reflected off the crystal clear water. It also reflected off Clarice’s claw and I gulped when I saw she was watching me intently. I was suddenly reminded of Azrael, the Smurfs’ mortal enemy.
I quickly looked away, and saw that the house was still a beehive of activity, with cops everywhere, doing whatever it was they were doing. Odelia was chatting with one of the Kenspeckle sisters, who was holding that nasty little mutt in her arms. For once the dog wasn’t yapping furiously.
“That dog should be put down,” Clarice suddenly said.
I was glad she finally spoke. I was even gladder it wasn't me she wanted to be put down. "I couldn't agree more. That dog is completely useless."
“He’s been barking up a storm all morning, annoying the heck out of me.”
“That’s what he does. Yap, yap, yap. That dog has no off switch.”
Great. We were bonding over our shared dislike of the canine species.
“That masked killer should have taken his head instead of the woman’s.”
I stared at her. “You saw the killer?”