“I’ll say,” Piper agreed. “He kept insisting that he’d leave me alone only when he was sure I couldn’t teach him any more. Then he latched on to one of my female students, which initially was a relief to me, but when I changed my mind and began to help her, he started stalking both of us.”
Amanda was clearly listening, one of her miniature snide smiles marring her face. She’d obviously known Piper’s sex, having spoken with him, but she hadn’t let me in on this little tidbit. She let me rattle on, during our premeeting meeting, about how we’d handle our little drama with this latest suspect. And how we’d deal with several possible scenarios, depending upon how she reacted.
Even though we were working so closely together, Amanda still enjoyed humiliating me whenever she could get her digs in. I’d be so glad when all this was over and her claws were no longer embedded beneath my skin.
“Was this going on recently?” I asked. “Was he stalking you and your student at the same time he was harassing Amanda?”
“No. He stopped suddenly. I didn’t dare ask why—but he did show up for one of my classes a few months ago. I tried to be kind, yet not too friendly. I nearly lost it when he stayed after class, since I thought he would start it all over again. But instead he just thanked me for teaching him so much and said he had some new friends, art lovers, that he was seeing a lot of. I breathed a sigh of relief for myself and my student, even though I figured he was after new game.”
“Me,” Amanda said angrily.
“That’s what I gather,” Piper acknowledged.
Which was when Cherise and Carnie entered the room. This wasn’t exactly the optimum time, but Amanda quickly requested Piper’s assistance in the kitchen after he’d greeted the cats.
Fortunately, the felines remained in the room with me, so I was able to stage our usual scenario.
Piper clearly wasn’t pleased to be allegedly threatened by some nasty cats, but he didn’t act especially suspicious, or nervous, either.
I reserved him mentally where I’d stuck him earlier, near the top of my list.
But as I left Amanda’s after Piper’s departure, I realized that my head spun with the new information that this male victim had imparted.
And I thought I finally knew what had actually happened to Leon.
Now, all I had to do was prove it.
Chapter Twenty-six
OKAY, DESPITE THE way the rya rug added some pizzazz, I was getting decidedly bored with the stark Nordic décor in Amanda’s living room. And the slight scent of the herbal tea she seemed to favor over coffee. And the even slighter smell of kitty-in-the-house, although the litter box was in a corner of the kitchen.
But I soon wouldn’t have to hang out there to catch a killer.
I knew who it was … or at least, I believed I did.
Now I had to do something about it, to save Amanda’s neck. And maybe my relationship with Jeff.
At this moment, on this Tuesday evening, I had a case to lay out and some convincing to do.
“We could have come to your office to explain it all, Mitch,” I mentioned to Amanda’s attorney, who sat at the opposite end of the red-upholstered sofa from his fidgety client. I’d not given Mitch many of the particulars but said that we’d been inviting suspects over and using a super-special technique to give them a grilling, and that we now had a really great theory now about whodunit.
“Sure, but you said you set your trap here,” Mitch said. He’d casualed down before coming here from his law digs, still wearing shiny slacks that I assumed came from a suit but no tie, and the neck of his white cotton shirt was undone. His hair, or lack thereof, appeared casual, too, but I suspected he had a heck of a time attempting to tame the few frizzies that were left. “I wanted a demonstration of what you did, and how it showed what really happened to Leon. If there’s enough evidence, I’ll try to get the charges against Amanda dropped right away.”
I sat in my now-usual chair, a loveseat across from Amanda’s coffee table. Since this meeting was scheduled for evening, I’d had a chance to change clothes into something more casual, too, and chose a loose, flaw-hiding large white sweater over comfy, snug and warm workout leggings. “I wouldn’t count on any evidence that could be admitted in court,” I cautioned him.
“Oh, but I’d love for those charges to be dropped,” Amanda asserted, stretching out long legs encased in gray sweatpants over fluffy blue-striped socks. On top, her matching gray jacket hung open to reveal a similarly coordinated blue-striped knit shirt to complete her ensemble. Not exactly what I’d have suggested she don to discuss case resolution with her lawyer, but this was, after all, her home.
“That’s what we’re working on,” I agreed. “And even if nothing’s actually admissible, it could be enough to at least interest the cops to do more digging into our suspect’s background and whereabouts on the night Leon was killed.”
“Then you haven’t turned anything over to the authorities yet?” Mitch asked. Although he’d mastered the art of near-expressionlessness, his sparse brows lifted enough to suggest he was incensed.
“Not yet,” I admitted.
“But this time I was the one to call that awful Detective Noralles,” Amanda added. “I told him we needed to see him. Which was when I called you.”
“You should have spoken to me first.” All aplomb evaporated, Mitch Severin stood and seemed to steam right before our eyes. “If you want me to continue to represent you, Amanda, you need to confer with me at all stages. I’ve told you that before, and you’ve ignored it. You shouldn’t have started doing whatever you’re doing to trap the killer without my input. You most certainly knew better, Kendra. Are you trying to get yourself in another ethics mess?”
“Not hardly,” I said stonily. I’d never directly discussed said ethics mess with Mitch, but knew the entire community of California attorneys could have read about it in various legal publications when it was going on—since all punishments of ethical problems were made public by the State Bar.
“You know that I have to consider my client’s best interests above all,” Mitch intoned. “If you’ve done something stupid, I have to ensure it doesn’t reflect badly on her.”
A scathing retort rushed to my lips, but I swallowed it before I really did something stupid. “I understand,” I said in a sham of meekness.
“Tell me about this trap you laid.” He resumed his seat almost haughtily, as if deigning to remain as a result of my abject—but absolutely imaginary—plea.
“It was pretty amazing,” Amanda gushed. “It involved Cherise and Carnie. Sort of.”
Mitch’s face contorted even more, and he leaned forward in his chair. “You tried to trap a killer with house cats?”
“They’re Bengal cats,” Amanda corrected. “They look just like little leopards.”
“Does that matter?” Mitch shook his head as if he couldn’t believe the idiocy piled onto stupidity around this place. Which again nearly got me going.
“Not really,” I said. “What does matter is what Corina Carey put in her Times article and on her TV show.”
“Yes, I saw them,” he said. “As you know.” And sounded damned irritated about it, even now.
“Here’s what we did,” I said. Standing to show the room’s significant locations, I gave the rundown of how we’d gotten suspects off guard by convincing many to come here and consider joining a stalker victim support group. And then get menaced by a mouse allegedly left by a resident cat.
“Fascinating,” Mitch finally said, his tone sounding a whole lot less than enthralled. “And did someone actually get so rattled by a defrosted mouse that he—or she—confessed?”
“Well, no,” I admitted, sitting once more. “But I started to put two and two together after I found out that one of Leon’s stalking victims had a name I assumed was female, but he happened to be extremely male. That got me to thinking about how Leon must have been an indiscriminate stalker. And in that instance, he’d given up on the guy victim in favo
r of another girl—until that very same guy stepped in and tried to protect the new female target. Leon resumed stalking the guy again in retaliation.”
Something seemed to twitch in the corner of Mitch’s stony eyes. Was he stifling a bored yawn at all my tale-telling and speculation? But what he said was, “And this is significant because … ?”
“I’m going to state a hypothetical.” I turned to Amanda and said, “It’s an attorney thing. We like to talk in suppositions and scenarios and pretend they’re our imagination—only it’s no huge surprise that we really believe in them.” Then I said to Mitch, “Suppose one of Leon’s lady victims went after a temporary restraining order.”
“You’ve told me they all did.” Mitch’s tone sounded even more indifferent.
“Right. Well, let’s take just one of them. Leon was probably damned tired of having courts tell him whom he could and couldn’t stalk. And who got the courts to order him around? His victim’s attorney. That made him mad. Mad enough to retaliate by stalking the lady’s legal counsel.”
Mitch didn’t sport a California tan, but what little color there was in his cheeks seemed to drain immediately away, like water and whatever down a toilet. “Why didn’t he stalk all the lawyers involved?”
“Ask him,” I suggested flippantly and futilely, considering Leon’s demise. “Maybe he only just thought of it. Maybe he had a particular hatred for a single victim’s lawyer. That’s something we’ll never know. But in this hypothetical scenario, the lawyer freaked. Didn’t try to obtain his own TRO, since he knew Leon ignored them. He’d done his homework and knew lots about all the other TROs and the stalking victims who’d obtained them—not that he let his client or anyone else in on what he’d learned. He’d found out that reasoning with the maybe-insane Leon didn’t do anyone much good. So, this lawyer did something Leon would understand—he threatened the stalker right back.”
I paused to pray for a reaction, but Mitch had his courtroom stone-face chiseled back on. “Go on,” he said apathetically.
“Well, first this lawyer told Leon he’d do something bad to him if he ever got near either the lawyer or his client again. Leon thumbed his nose by sneaking past the security system at his client’s home—who, by the way, was out of town and had a sitter minding her pet cats—and making sure everyone knew he’d been there. Left the refrigerator door open. And that only made the attorney angrier.”
Again I paused. This time, Mitch stood and rolled his shoulders as if he’d stayed in one spot too long. “I ought to go,” he said. “I really thought you’d found the killer, Kendra, but you just have some wild speculation that not only wouldn’t be admissible in court, but I doubt any cop would do more than kick you out on your butt. I’m disappointed.”
“The screwdriver murder weapon is a clue, Mitch.” I inserted myself in front of him so he couldn’t take a step without walking into me. “Run of the mill, the kind you can buy at any hardware store, but this particular one happened to be yours, didn’t it? Which suggests premeditation. Not a good thing in a murder case—at least not for the defense—as any lawyer knows. There was a second one, too, left as a warning for me. A while back, you considered asking contractor Kennedy McCaffrey for help on a do-it-yourself project you’d started, which suggests you own basic tools, even if you couldn’t finish your project.”
Mitch wasn’t a whole lot taller than me, but he drew himself up to his full height and stared down his haughty nose. “You know, Kendra, you’re becoming too much of a nuisance. Even though you’ll never be able to prove this drivel, I can’t allow you to ruin my reputation by even suggesting it. I, for one, don’t want to be reproved and ridiculed the way you were, in every legal publication in the state.”
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 h
adn’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.”
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