by Edie Claire
"It was true!" he protested. "The cat was his like when he was a kid, you know, and she'd always hated it but wouldn't let him have it 'cause she hated Rochelle and 'cause Rochelle had dogs an'at. She was trying to poison it. But Dean knew that it was coming into the clinic, and so he figured out a way I could steal it out from there easier than from her house. I was just supposed to hide until everybody left, then put the cat in a box and run out with it." His eyes turned defensive. "I never did take anything from that place. Was just gonna take the cat, and it was Dean's."
"I see," Leigh said mildly, trying her best not to sound judgmental. The kid might not be brain-surgeon material, but he didn't seem to mean any harm. On the other hand, he wasn't telling her the whole truth either. "What about the bag of cat litter on the floor?" she asked casually. "I don't see why you should have to clean out the cage. Was that Dean's idea, too?"
He blinked at her uncomprehendingly. "Well, sure. He was going to take the cat to another clinic and get it checked out. You know—for poison. He told me to make sure I got all the poop too, 'cause it might need tested. They had to have proof of what the old lady was doing so they could press charges."
Leigh looked critically into Ricky's large brown eyes. Though spirited, they were remarkably ingenuous. He really believed what he was saying. "So why didn't you explain everything to the police when you got caught?" she asked sensibly, though she already knew the answer.
"He did it for me!" Adith broke in defensively. "Dean and Rochelle told him they were coming into major money real soon, and that he could have ten percent of it if he only kept his mouth shut, no matter what happened. He didn't really think he could be put away for stealing drugs he didn't steal, and he was willing to wait it out if it meant he'd have a fortune in the end. He was going to use part of the money to help Bud and me fix up this house." She sniffled ostentatiously. "Isn't that about the sweetest thing you ever heard?"
Leigh glanced back at Ricky, who looked thoroughly embarrassed but not at all guilty, and a wave of uneasiness swept over her. Any kid who believed an heir to millions would fork over ten percent to a gopher he found at the Ponderosa could never come up with a cover story as convincing as the poisoning yarn. No, that little gem must have come from Dean and Rochelle themselves, which meant somebody had a little more brainpower than she was comfortable thinking about. There was something else wrong with the picture that Ricky had painted too, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
She stood up. "Thanks for being so honest, Ricky," she said genuinely. "I'll explain things to my dad."
"He's going to apologize to Dr. Koslow in person, aren't you, hon?" Adith said firmly.
Ricky nodded stiffly, his face still down.
Mrs. Rhodis was right, Leigh thought to herself, he's not a bad kid.
"Sorry to run," she said as she headed for the door. "But I need to get to the clinic ASAP."
Adith sprung up behind her, narrowly avoiding tripping over her own poodle. "Have you got any more ideas on that mystery baby?" she asked, eyes sparkling. "The girls and I are stumped. We just can't figure a time she could have hid a pregnancy. Not as thin as she was. Unless it was when she ran off with that first husband. She was a little chubbier back when she married him, but still, they weren't out of town for more than a few months before he was killed in that accident…"
Leigh held up a hand. "I really don't think there is a mystery baby," she confessed. "Both Nikki and Peggy Linney think Lilah Murchison contrived the whole thing just to rattle Dean's cage, and given what Ricky just told us about him I can’t say I blame her."
Adith's eyes widened. "When did you talk to Peggy Linney? At the will reading?"
"No, I went to see her yesterday afternoon," Leigh answered, disturbed by the look on the older woman's face. "Why?"
"I thought you might have already heard," Adith answered, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "They found her dead in her bed this morning."
Chapter 8
"I can't believe she's dead," Leigh repeated for the fourth time.
"Could you get a pulse for me?" Randall Koslow asked through his surgeon's mask.
Leigh slid her hand underneath the blue paper drape and felt for the inside of the cat's back leg. "About one fifty," she said, glancing at the wall clock. "And strong." She hadn't been able to stop thinking about Peggy Linney, even for a moment, since she had heard the news a half hour before. And while feeling startled at the sudden death of someone she had just visited might be expected, the sick feeling that had settled deep in her stomach seemed out of proportion.
"Mrs. Rhodis said she died in her sleep," she mumbled.
Randall did not look up from his task. "It happens," he commented soberly. "Check his color, would you?"
She pulled back the part of the drape that covered the cat's head, and drew in a breath. At first she had thought her dad was doing a simple spay—but now that she thought about it, he rarely did anything but emergencies this late in the day. And the abdominal incision he was working through was unusually long.
"This is Number One Son!" she exclaimed. "He did get obstructed. Is he going to be okay?"
Randall didn't answer, and she realized he was waiting for information from her. She touched the Siamese's gums with a fingertip, pressing until the area went white. When she pulled back, the gums quickly turned pink again. "CRT's good," she answered, then lightly touched the corner of the cat's eye. He blinked. "Palpebral's fine. Have you found the metal piece?"
She watched as her father's gloved fingers gingerly handled a solid mass of twisted intestine. "Adhesions?" she asked.
Randall nodded, his head still down. "The blockage doesn't seem to be in the worst of it, though. I think I can get it."
Leigh was silent as her father concentrated. They would soon find out what it was that Dean and Rochelle had wanted back so badly. Or, what it was they didn't want Lilah Murchison to see. Her thoughts returned automatically to Peggy Linney.
It couldn't be a coincidence.
She made herself face the thought. Could Peggy Linney have been murdered? Her legs were starting to shake slightly beneath the surgery table. She checked the cat's color again, then pulled over a stool and sat down.
Perhaps someone else knew that Peggy Linney was an eyewitness to Dean's birth. Perhaps they wanted to silence her. Had they been watching Leigh as she visited? Was it her visit that made someone see the old woman as a threat? If she had never gone to see Peggy, would—
"Here it is," her father announced, holding up a gnarled mass of green cloth with a hemostat. Leigh held out a paper towel, and Randall dropped both the instrument and the mass onto the middle of it. She sat down with the soggy paper towels in her lap and probed the tangled threads with the tips of the hemostat. In a few moments, she had managed a semireconstruction. "It is a little key," she announced. "On some type of cloth key chain. Woven threads of different colors, maybe— I’ll have to wash it up."
Randall merely grunted as he bent studiously over his patient, sewing carefully. "I'm just glad it didn't perforate."
"Does it mean anything to you?" she asked hopefully. "I mean, did any bells go off when you saw it?"
He didn’t answer, which she took as a rather disappointing no. She stared hard at the tiny key, which was paper thin and shaped like a footnote symbol. She had similar keys that opened luggage padlocks, but this one was a little more ornate, with a three-dimensional design at its base.
Perhaps Rochelle had simply been attempting to steal something of Ms. Murchison's, she reasoned hopefully. Rochelle had found the key and opened whatever it was, but when she cast the key aside, there was Number One Son, licking his lips. When the thief realized what had happened, she would have had to try and hide it from her mother-in-law, particularly if Dean was on thin ice as far as his inheritance was concerned.
Mrs. Rhodis's troublesome words came back to Leigh in a flash. Ricky had told his grandmother that Dean and Rochelle claimed to be "coming into
major money real soon." Why should they think that? And why, she realized suddenly, feeling foolish for not wondering before, would a woman in her sixties expect her much older, frailer housekeeper to outlive her?
"Help me rinse and reglove, would you?" Randall asked, the stitching on the bowel completed. Pushing her new and disturbing thoughts to the side, Leigh rose and helped him prepare a new sterile field. They had just finished when the A-team checked in.
"Doc? I haven’t heard you call. Are you ready for—" Jeanine eyed her substitute with the merest hint of jealousy, but quickly replaced it with a knowing smirk. "Oh. Hello, Leigh. I didn’t realize it was you in here. How are you feeling?"
"Fine," she returned tersely, trying—a little—to disguise her current animosity. It was too early to even take a pregnancy test, but ever since Leigh’s slip at the x-ray table, the snooty tech had insisted on eyeing her like they shared some colossal secret. God forbid the woman should run into Warren in the next few days—she’d probably tell him everything herself.
"So, how’s the patient, Doc?" the tech said loudly, leaning over the surgery table as if to inspect Randall’s work. "Oh, yes. Adhesions. I told Nikki Loomis last time not to let that cat get near anything cloth, ever. Cat's lucky to be alive. What did he eat this time?"
Randall continued sewing. He respected Jeanine’s work as a tech, but that didn’t mean he listened to everything she said. "It’s a key," Leigh answered, holding out the paper towel. She couldn’t think of anything to link Jeanine to the Murchisons, but she resolved to try. If the key didn’t mean anything to her father, it had to mean something to somebody else at the clinic. And if anyone else was to be incriminated, it was only fair that the most obnoxious went first. "Look familiar?" she asked, pushing the smelly mess closer to Jeanine and watching her expression.
The tech reached out a bony hand and pulled the towel closer still, her nose practically touching the mass of threads. "Cloth key chain," she said with authority. "That’ll get 'em. Not to speak ill of the dead or anything, but that woman should have known better by now. I say—if you can’t keep the cat safe, then maybe you shouldn’t have it at all."
Leigh swallowed the unkind retort brewing in the back of her mind. Jeanine clearly had no idea what lengths Lilah Murchison had actually gone to to protect Number One Son. Which also meant it was very unlikely she’d ever set foot in the mansion.
"Did you ever meet Mrs. Murchison?" Leigh asked in her most innocent voice.
A look of annoyance flashed across the technician’s face. "She never came in the clinic, or I would have given her a piece of my mind. I offered to do her vaccinations for her at the house one time, but she only wanted Dr. Koslow." She glanced up at Randall, who was otherwise absorbed, then tossed her head in his direction as she threw Leigh an arching eyebrow. "And I mean wanted him," she mouthed silently.
Not sure whether to laugh or be nauseous, Leigh changed the subject. "Did you hear that Peggy Linney died?"
Jeanine’s face was perfectly blank. "Who?"
"Oh," Leigh backpedaled. "I thought you might know Mrs. Murchison’s old housekeeper, but I guess she never came in the clinic either."
Jeanine shrugged, and Leigh reluctantly crossed her name off the suspect list. The tech lived in Moon Township anyway; she wouldn’t be familiar with the Avalon-Bellevue-Ben Avon set unless they had pets.
"If the inquisition is over," Randall broke in suddenly, his gloved hands in the air, "could I get some help here? I need a status check."
Leigh started to step over, but Jeanine was at the table in a flash. The tech stood by until the stitching was completed, all the while prattling to Dr. Koslow about how his newest associate insisted on using a ridiculously expensive suture material on spays, and why it was Nancy’s fault for ordering the stuff in the first place. Leigh was about to consider strangulation with the same when Jeanine mercifully remembered something else she had to do.
"By the way," Randall began as she turned to leave. "Did those new recirculating blankets come in yet?"
Jeanine shook her head. "Not unless they're in one of the packages that just came. But I'll check."
She was off like a shot, and Leigh pulled out a towel to cover Number One Son, whose bare abdomen was wet and sticky-orange from the disinfectant scrub. She stayed by the cat while Randall tidied up, her mind once again deep in thought. Since Dean Murchison was clearly behind the catnapping, which was more than likely tied up with the belief that his mother’s death was imminent, then he was almost certainly behind the rock-throwing as well. In which case, she thought with relief, Peggy Linney's death must have been a coincidence. Because the elderly woman had offered no threat whatsoever to Dean’s inheritance; in fact, she had appeared to be one of his biggest fans.
"I'll tell you what I think, Dad," she said with optimism, and more to herself than to him. "I can’t believe that the plane crash was anything but an accident, but I do think that Mrs. Murchison had some reason to believe she was going to die soon. Maybe she had just been diagnosed with cancer, or heart disease. In any event, I think she was miffed at Dean when she wrote that crazy will, and I think she let on something about it to him. That’s why he and Rochelle were desperate to keep her from finding out they’d been snooping in her house. They wanted to get back in her good graces before she really did die. Of course, I still don’t know why they were snooping. Maybe they were in a tight spot and planned to steal money or jewelry. Maybe they’d done it before."
"Makes sense," Randall responded, much to her surprise.
"The only thing I still don’t get is why Dean is afraid that someone at the clinic can mess things up for him. You say you don’t know anything, neither Nikki nor Peggy Linney believe that Mrs. Murchison ever had another child, and besides Jared being Nikki’s brother, I can’t find a link between the Murchisons and anyone else at the clinic."
Her father's raised eyebrows indicated that she had lost him. "You still think that rock had something to do with Lilah Murchison’s death?"
Leigh took a deep breath. Her father’s ability to focus might make him a brilliant scientist, but the flipside—blindness to the obvious—could be a real hindrance. "Maura seemed to think it was a possibility," she said reasonably, "Because whether or not the mystery heir is real, and whether or not Dean is Lilah Murchison's biological son, he might think someone here knows something that could cause him trouble."
Randall humphed. It was as good as a concession.
"So who here would know about Mrs. Murchison's private life?" She questioned eagerly, lowering her voice. "I’ve ruled out Jeanine already. And as for Jared, even if he did know anything, I don’t think anyone would threaten him with a written note."
Randall thought for a moment. "Marcia and Michelle are both Avalon girls. Nancy lives in an apartment in Bellevue and Nora lives in the Rocks, but I don’t know where they grew up. You can eliminate Paula and Kari; Paula grew up near Philadelphia and Kari’s family just moved in from out West." He shook his head. "I’d forget the rest. The part-timers are all too young to know anything about the seventies."
Leigh considered hopefully. Marcia, Michelle, Nancy, and Nora. One of them had to know something that Dean and Rochelle Murchison wanted kept quiet.
Jeanine reappeared at the doorway, a small rectangular box in hand.
"There weren't any packages from VetCount," she explained regretfully, setting the box down on the extra surgery table and slitting the tape with her fingernails. "But this one lost its label, so we'll check it out."
"They should be in by now," Randall grumbled, adjusting the towels carefully over the unconscious cat. "I ordered them weeks ago."
With a cry that startled them both, Jeanine suddenly recoiled. "Oh no, not again!" She screeched.
Randall and Leigh both charged the box, but Leigh got there first. Nestled in amongst a slew of Styrofoam peanuts, dirt, and grass was a cheap, hard-plastic baby doll, its blue eyes and frizzy yellow hair caked with mud. Wrapped around its middle
was a piece of plain paper bearing a message in handwritten, red-block letters.
Let the past stay buried, or everyone there will be.
Chapter 9
"Where did it come from?" Randall asked tensely, examining the loose cardboard flaps. The box was addressed to the clinic on a plain white, computer-generated label. Otherwise it was blank. "It didn’t come with the rest of the mail; there’s not even a postmark."
"I didn’t bring it in," Jeanine said quickly. "Nora got the mail."
"What’s all the yelling about?" asked the chubby brunette in the doorway. "And what did I do?"
Leigh looked at the amiable thirty-something technician, the clinic’s best cat holder and would-be stand-up comedian. Leigh had always liked Nora. She was smart, even-tempered, and didn’t care for Jeanine.
"Was this box with the rest of the mail this morning?" Jeanine snapped.
Nora’s brow wrinkled, and she stepped closer. As her gaze rested on the box’s contents, her pupils widened, but only slightly. "Let the past stay buried, or everyone there will be?" she read curiously. "Damn. And I wanted my ashes scattered over Graceland."
"Did it come with the mail or not?" Jeanine hissed.
Nora shrugged. "I don’t know. I don’t think so. I took in three or four boxes and dumped them in the office. I wasn’t really paying attention."
The doorframe was suddenly filled with two more bodies. Marcia and Michelle appeared with jackets on and purses in hand, evidently on their way out for the day. "What’s going on?" Marcia asked, stepping forward.
Leigh cringed in anticipation of the forthcoming blast, and she noticed that her father did also. Marcia and Michelle were nice enough, but they weren’t the brightest bulbs in the factory and were drama queens besides. Lifelong friends who did everything together, they giggled at every puppy, gushed over every spay, and blubbered like banshees during euthanasias.
Their screams nearly brought down the ceiling.