by Marie Celine
“Oh, brother.”
His eyes lit up. “Beef stew. I love beef stew. Ever have Dinty Moore’s?” He picked up the menu. “I wonder if they’ve got that here.”
Kitty watched the detective as he read the menu. Though she’d only had a slice of toast and a glass of milk for breakfast, she had little appetite. “Tell me what happened to Mrs. Randall, Jack,” she said softly.
He lowered his menu and looked into her eyes. “There isn’t a whole lot to tell yet. Her husband came home early this morning and found her dead on the floor of the study.”
“He was gone all night? Isn’t that odd? Could he have killed her himself?” Henry Randall was such a serene and soft-spoken man generally. She really couldn’t imagine him strangling his wife. But one never knew. The mere thought sent shivers up her spine.
“No, he’s in the clear. He was out of town on business and caught the redeye back. Tons of witnesses can place him in Spokane. He’s opening up a new store there.”
This was good news. “And there are no clues?”
He shook his head. “And no witnesses.”
“What about Gil?”
“Who?”
“The houseman.”
“Oh, him. He was off for the evening.”
“That’s right,” replied Kitty. “I remember Mrs. Randall telling me that.”
“When did you see her last?”
“Yesterday evening when I took Mr. Cookie his dinner.”
“How’s the cat doing?”
“Much better.” And now Mrs. Randall was dead. “I don’t know if this will be of any help, but Mrs. Randall was holding a séance last night at her home.”
Young chuckled. “A séance? Like with crystal balls and incense?”
“I guess.”
“So she had guests. Do you have any names?”
“No.” Kitty shook her head. “Wait. The clairvoyant or spiritualist or whatever—Mrs. Randall told me her name.” Kitty closed her eyes and thought. “Madame Zouzou.” She opened her eyes. “Yes, that was it.”
Young twisted his lower lip. “Hmmm, the police will want to have a word with her. Not that it’s likely that Lucille Randall got strangled by a ghost. . .”
This was the opening Kitty had hoped for. “Actually. . .”
“Don’t tell me you believe in ghosts?” He was smirking.
“Of course not.” Kitty snatched up her menu and studied her choices. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
His answer came quickly and firmly. “No. I did have a great-aunt once who used to tell ghost stories. Some of them were real wild. This was back in the Ozarks where I grew up. But she’s gone now.”
“What happened to her?”
“She burned down her farm house one day because she was sure it was haunted. They locked her up after that in an assisted care facility and one day she died.”
“I’ve heard that the Wright house is haunted.” Kitty ordered the artichoke pizza. Young ordered the same.
“What’s the Wright house?”
“That’s the house Mr. Evan owned. It’s known as the Wright house.”
“Why’s that?”
Kitty explained as best she could.
“And you think that all of this—” He waved his fork around in the air. “—Everything weird that’s been going on is related to this vortex of evil or something?”
“You said it yourself, Jack. Weird things have been happening. What if it is somehow related to some sort of odd and malevolent supernatural manifestation?”
The detective laughed. To Kitty it sounded like false bravado. Maybe he was only trying to frighten off any ghosts that might be listening in.
“Come on,” he chided. “This is nutty. Rich Evan was poisoned. Lucille Randall was strangled. They were murdered by flesh and blood people, human beings,” he said with emphasis. “Not by spooks.”
“But—”
“Besides,” he went on, “Mrs. Randall was not murdered in the Wright house. She was killed in her own home. Are you forgetting that?”
Kitty shook her head no.
“And all we have to do is find the motives behind their murders. Find the motives, find the killers. It’s that simple, Kitty. Trust me.”
“If it’s so simple, why haven’t the police found the motive behind even Mr. Evan’s murder yet?”
Young snapped off the end of a pizza slice and chewed hard. “Money, sex, jealousy, insanity maybe,” he rattled off. “Those are your typical motives. All we’ve got to do is figure out which applies.”
“Okay, let’s take money, for instance. I heard Mr. Evan had no children.”
“That appears to be the case.”
“So how about family?”
Young shook his head and polished off his lunch, washing it down with ice water. He dabbed his lips with a paper napkin. “You gonna finish that?” he asked, eying a roll on the edge of her plate.
She pushed it his way. She watched him shovel it into his mouth.
He gobbled it up and wiped his mouth once again. “Sorry,” he apologized, “I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
Kitty rolled her eyes. This guy was too much trouble. “I was asking if Rich Evan had any family.”
“Right. Nope.”
“None?”
“Not a soul. Rich Evan was an orphan. Born in England, raised by a couple who’d adopted him at birth.”
“So there’s them—the couple who’d adopted him. Even though Mr. Evan was still legally married to Angela Evan, wouldn’t they also be entitled to a share of his estate?” And Rich Evan had to be worth millions.
Young was shaking his head again. “Both dead. Rich Evan had no other next-of-kin.”
“So everything goes to Angela Evan. . .”
“Maybe. But it’s all pretty messy legal-wise. Rich and Angela had been separated for a year and were in the process of getting a divorce.”
“She says they were hoping to reconcile.”
“That’s not what Rich Evan’s divorce attorney says. He also says Rich and Angela had a prenup.”
Kitty nodded. “That makes sense. I heard he’d made the same arrangement with his prior wife, Tracy. She got something like a million dollars for each year they stayed married.”
Young whistled. “Not a bad deal. I think I could put up with just about anyone for a year and a million dollar payoff.”
“There must be some other suspects. . .”
“Besides you, you mean?” He grinned. “Sorry, only joking. There are all sorts of suspects. Ex-wives, business associates, like Fang Danson. Drug dealers. The world is full of suspects. Then again, maybe he only accidently ate the dog’s food.”
“Still, someone had to put the poison in Benny’s breakfast. Maybe it was the housekeeper. She certainly had the most access.”
“What’s her motive? He wouldn’t give her a raise? And was Consuelo out to kill him or warn him by killing his dog?”
“It could have been either. She didn’t seem overly fond of her employer. Mr. Evan had promised to help Consuelo’s brother and father come into the country, so she claims. And it seems he reneged on this. So she goes nuts and kills him or intended to kill Benny to hurt him like she believes he has hurt her—”
Young shrugged. “We’ll check it out. It seems to me you know too much.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means stop snooping around and leave the police work to the police.”
“If I do that, I just might end up in jail.”
“I won’t kid you, Kitty. The D.A. would love to pin a murder case on you. But there are some loose ends. Like the fact that you have no apparent motive. And this Barbados nut appears not to be so easy to come by as well. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to kill Rich Evan or his dog. Either way, we’re checking every lead out.”
“Fang Danson claims Mr. Evan called him on the morning of his death and Mr. Evan boasted he had gotten
lucky with someone the night he died.”
“Good for him.”
She ignored this TMR—typical male response. “Have you tried to track the woman down? She could be an important witness.”
“You are kidding, right? What’s the D.A. going to do? Take out an ad in the L.A. Times.” He held up his hands. “Anyone having slept with Rich Evan before he died, please contact your local law enforcement agency.” The detective laughed. “Imagine how many calls we’d get?”
“It’s better than doing nothing.”
“No,” he said firmly, “you do like I said. Keep out of this. Take care of your pets. Cook your heart out. We’ll get to the bottom of things.” He checked over the bill and laid some money on the table. “How about a movie?”
“I can’t.” Kitty glanced at her watch. “I have to prep for next week’s meals.”
“Oh, sure. I understand.” He stayed close to her all the way to her car.
“Thank you for lunch, Jack,” Kitty said. She looked pointedly at the detective’s hand, which clung to her door like it had nowhere else to go. “Is there something else?”
His feet pawed the sidewalk. “You never did say where you went last night—after you left Mrs. Randall’s, that is.”
Kitty’s jaw dropped. She tried counting to ten, but it did no good. The pressure inside her only grew.
She grabbed the door and pulled it out of his grip. It slammed against her knee. She’d probably given herself a humdinger of a bruise. Be limping for the next three days. “I went to see a friend. Her name is Velma Humphries. She works at a Jack-In-The-Box in Culver City.” She spat out the intersection and tossed in Velma’s home phone number for good measure.
“Then we went to a pet store in West L.A.” She was purple with rage—as mad at herself for being taken in by his charm and boyish good looks as she was at him for being such a conniving jerk.
“I bought a bird. For a client. Then we went to dinner on the boardwalk. Me, Velma and the bird.” She spat out its name before he could ask for it. “You want to know what I ate?” She wasn’t waiting for an answer. “Then I went home. To sleep. Alone.”
Kitty fired up the car and sped off. He could have given her a traffic ticket for that. That and the expired parking meter. Yet he whistled all the way to his Jeep, a smile on his face.
Oh, sure. She was high strung and high maintenance. But all God’s creatures were as special as they were unique.
And Libby liked her. And Lib’s intuition was keen when it came to judging people. If Lib had been human herself, she’d have made a hell of a cop.
22
“Consuelo?”
The kitchen door was ajar and Kitty pushed it open with her toe. Images of Rich Evan lying face down in Benny’s dog food jumped into her mind and she chased them away.
Mrs. Randall had warned Kitty. In fact, the last time Kitty had spoken with Mrs. Randall, the woman had made her promise not to step foot in the Wright house again. And she was about to do just that now. She had to. Rich Evan had died here and there must be some clue to his death to be found. And despite what Jack Young said, she was going to find it.
She glanced over her shoulder looking for the neighbor, Florence Goodman, but there was no sight of her. A big black Mercedes sat in the Goodman drive though. So someone was probably home.
But where was Consuelo? The kitchen was quiet and empty. “Consuelo?” whispered Kitty. This was too creepy. One by one, she pulled open the kitchen cabinets looking for Barbados nut, not that she even knew what it would look like if she stumbled on it. She checked the spice rack hoping to find a jar clearly labeled, but no luck.
She slowly walked into the media room. It was deserted. Down the hall she saw the draperies flapping. Someone had left one of the sliding doors open.
Was Consuelo on the deck? Kitty checked. The deck was unoccupied. A couple of bathers braved the cold Pacific, nothing more.
Kitty went to Mr. Evan’s room. The master suite was in the far corner of the ground floor with an ocean view. The door was open. The room was empty as a mausoleum. The massive platform bed was unmade. The curtains were closed and the ocean was hidden.
On impulse, Kitty went to the night table on the rumpled side of the bed and pulled open the top drawer. A box of tissue, a platinum lighter and other paraphernalia filled the drawer halfway. A black leather address book tossed amongst a clutter of CDs, a third of them Beach Boys recordings, and magazines caught her eye.
The phone rang and she jumped. Kitty stuffed the address book in her purse and held her breath. After several more rings, the call stopped. Kitty wondered if the caller had given up or whether a machine had picked up the phone. Or was someone in the house with her? And had they answered the phone?
A lodestone of evil, Mrs. Goodman had said. One blew his brains out, another was poisoned, one spontaneously combusted. . .
Kitty found herself running from the room. She stopped near the front door. A faint smell seemed to drift down from upstairs. What was it?
She crept to the stairway and inhaled. Sandalwood? Slowly she climbed the steps as if pulled there by an invisible string.
A door at the top of the stairway was ajar mere inches. The brass doorknob was frigid as an ice block and the door opened with a creak.
The room was darkly shaded and lit only by a half-dozen candles atop the dresser on the wall to Kitty’s right. Images of skeletons lined the walls. More images, some carved of wood, some made of mosaics of bright shiny tiles, filled the small bedroom. The incense came from a brazier atop a small blackened altar. Gray smoke slowly wafted upward. A replica of Christ on the cross hung directly across the room. A single bed was on the wall opposite the dresser and mirror. Its bedspread was blood red with black pillows. The walls and ceiling were maroon.
A red-framed picture hung over the bed. It depicted a wedding couple. The man was in a gray suit with a red bow-tie and black sombrero. The woman wore a traditional white gown and clutched a bouquet of roses. Both had grinning skeleton heads.
Behind the door, a brightly painted life-size skull was crawling with equally bright acrylic caterpillars and lizards. It made Kitty’s skin crawl and she backed up. She had to get out of this room.
A sharp, hard claw came down on Kitty’s shoulder. She screamed and spun.
“What are you doing in here?”
Kitty gasped. “Consuelo!”
Consuelo’s hands were on her hips and she thrust her chest forward. “What are you doing here?” she demanded again. “Have you come to spy on me?”
“N–no.” Kitty shook head firmly. “It’s nothing like that. Really.”
Consuelo’s jaw worked back and forth like she was grinding corn into meal.
“I was in the neighborhood and only wanted to check in on you.”
Consuelo’s eyes were flat and narrow.
“I’m on my way to Angela Evan’s house.”