Okay. This might be a bad move, but I was miffed enough to do it anyway.
I called Dante’s cell.
He answered so fast I wondered if he’d expected my call. Well, hell, how could he? I hadn’t decided until an instant ago.
“Hi, Kendra.” He sounded happy to hear from me.
Which nearly made me mess up on my resolve to stick it to him. Nearly, but not quite.
“Hi,” I said sexily. “Lexie and I are here alone, Dante. We miss you. And, by the way—Ned Noralles said hi.”
“Sure he did.” Dante’s tone resounded with ironic skepticism.
“He’d gotten some interesting information from his colleagues in the San Bernardino sheriff’s department,” I continued. “Shared some with me, but I had to promise to keep it confidential.” Scrunching my head toward my shoulder to keep my phone at my ear, I reached down to my bare feet and crossed one toe over the other. Wasn’t crossing toes similar to crossing fingers—to hide a lie?
Hmm. My toes’ nail polish needed a little retouching. Something to think about.
“Anything that would help get them off my case?” Dante inquired, sounding quite casual. Of course, he hadn’t gotten so rich and powerful by acting all emotional, so I figured his offhand tone was assumed.
“Gee, I’m not sure. I guess it depends on when you really first met Jon Doe, and under what circumstances. Anyway, I’m really tired. Got to take Lexie out for her last evening constitutional, and then we’ll head to bed. Good night, Dante.”
I hoped that the steaming I thought I heard from the other end, before I hung up, wasn’t just my imagination.
Chapter Fourteen
I DIDN’T SLEEP well that night. Surprise!
Keeping my cell phone charging on the table beside my bed, I half expected Dante to ring me back and demand details. But then again, that rich-and-powerful attitude most likely made him feel above all things trivial, like being a potential murder suspect. Or information possibly leading to that conclusion.
Or even a potential girlfriend playing petty games with his psyche.
Okay, I admit it. I considered calling him back to apologize. To figuratively grovel at his feet for having hinted at things I wanted to know, rather than had any actual knowledge about.
But my phone didn’t ring, and I made no calls.
Morning eventually arrived. I bounded out of bed and grabbed pen and paper.
I’m a listophile. A listoholic. My pet-sitting journals are full of lists of items I need to follow up on about my clients. My computer at the law office has multiple lists regarding upcoming issues about each case.
Right now, I jotted down a list of everything I knew about Jon Doe. And a separate list of things I needed to find out.
Guess which was longer.
At the end of the second one, I wrote at the bottom of the page—“Do I really want to do this?”
I mean, after all, in all my past adventures I’d known that my friend or acquaintance who’d been accused actually wanted, and needed, my assistance.
This time, the main suspects appeared to be Dante and Brody. And both seemed inclined to encourage me to butt out. Well, Dante at least. And Brody had barely spoken to me about the situation.
All this aroused my curiosity all the more.
Lexie had been utterly patient, but I saw my adorable pup prancing on the floor beside my bed.
Time to take her out and start my day.
STILL NO CALL from Dante a while later, after I’d checked in with Rachel, confirmed who was caring for which kitties and pups this morning—no exotic pets currently spiced up our agenda—then finished up my own AM pet-sitting.
I’d dropped Lexie off at Doggy Indulgence as atonement for ignoring her.
Right now, I sat at my cluttered desk at Yurick & Associates. My mind was on my research about conservatorship issues for my new client Alice Corcorian, and I’d brought up some interesting Web sites on my computer. In California, conservatorship required some degree of incapacity. To the contrary, I’d gathered that Alice had all her wits about her. The fact she’d found a young stud to marry? More power to her!
My desk phone rang. “Kendra Ballantyne,” I answered.
And was immediately treated to one of life’s interesting coincidences. “Hi, Kendra. This is Ellis Corcorian. How have you been?”
“Fine, Ellis,” I said, going along with his politeness. “And you? And how are things at Marden & Sergement?” The firm had been Marden, Sergement & Yurick in the days I’d been an associate there, before Borden had formed his own firm.
“Everything here is going well,” he said. “But I think you know why I’m calling.”
“I take it your mother let you know that this firm is representing her.” My voice assumed its professional tone. “Are you representing yourself, or have you hired another lawyer to help you with this matter?”
“Just me, for now. Did Mother tell you why I’m seeking a conservatorship?”
“Why, yes. She even brought that nice young fellow, Roberto Guildon, to meet me.”
“He’s a third of her age!” Ellis exploded. I pulled the phone away from my ear and rubbed it. My ear, I mean.
“That doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.” I reached over to scroll down the computer page I’d been reading. “Basically, a conservatorship can be awarded only if the potential conservatee is too incapacitated to take care of herself. Your mother seemed entirely alive and capable to me.”
“It’s res ipsa loquitur!” he shouted, as if his loudness would somehow convince me. It didn’t. Nor did his use of the Latin legal term that meant “the thing speaks for itself.” “Just the fact that someone her age would fall for a young gigolo and not see through his wanting to get to her money is enough to show her incapacity.”
That confirmed my suspicion that Ellis was in it to ensure his mother’s money was there for him when she eventually passed away. But, hell, it was her money. And she and I hadn’t yet discussed any estate planning she had done.
“I don’t think so, Ellis,” I said sweetly. “But I’ll talk the situation over with my client. Maybe we can all meet soon and reach some kind of resolution that will save you both time and money. Okay?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll talk to her, and maybe if you’re there, we’ll be able to discuss this without yelling at each other.” I doubted that, considering the tone Ellis had maintained in this conversation, but why not try?
“I’ll call Alice, then get back to you with some possible times. Talk to you soon, Ellis. And say hi to the gang at the firm for me.”
And be sure to tell them all how happy I am with my life without them. But maybe they already knew that. I’d stayed in touch with one of them, Avvie Milton—although I had to assume Avvie might have left the firm by now. She’d had an affair with Bill Sergement. Who hadn’t? The thing was, he and I had come to a mutual parting of the ways long ago. Avvie and he hadn’t, and then he’d gone back to his wife. Last I’d heard, Avvie was finally ready to move on.
Hey, what a perfect opportunity to find out how she was doing … and maybe get some insight into Ellis Corcorian, too! But when I called her number, I got voice mail.
I left a message, hoping to hear back from Avvie soon.
I GOT SOME times okayed by Alice Corcorian for a meeting sometime in the next few weeks. And back at my desk after lunch, I called another client: Lauren Vancouver, the head of HotRescues.
“Good to hear from you, Kendra,” she said. “I was going to call you. I got an e-mail from Efram Kiley, the guy who supposedly owned Quincy before I rescued and re-homed him. He’s probably just blowing smoke, but he insisted that I give his dog, Killer—that’s what he called Quincy—back to him within a week or pay him a million dollars for his pain and suffering, or he’d make sure I regretted it. He’s made claims before, but none with a time limit like this one.”
“Have you responded?” I inquired, sitting forward in my seat. Were legal services suddenly requir
ed immediately?
“I did as you said, and told him I’d referred the situation to my lawyer and couldn’t discuss it with him.”
“Excellent!” Ah, a client who actually listened to legal advice. “Now, how about if I come back to HotRescues—maybe this afternoon—and we can strategize a bit?” And I can subtly ask you some questions on everything you know about Dante DeFrancisco, including his history.
“Sorry, but I have a women’s club coming to look over our facilities and pets available for adoption. I’m hoping to place a few of our animals today, and that’ll take up all my time. And I’d rather wait till I get Efram’s answer, to give us a better idea how to respond. If he’s got his own lawyer involved, he’s clearly serious, and we’ll need for you to jump in. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, keeping the disappointment inside myself and out of my voice.
“But thanks for calling to check on the situation,” Lauren finished.
So … no chance to extract Dante info from Lauren. I looked on the computer for my list of stuff to do today at my law job. Nothing leaped out at me as requiring immediate attention. A good thing? Sure, but it didn’t inspire me to dig into researching another brief or drafting a court pleading.
What did inspire me? Curiosity. I really wanted to figure out who’d killed Jon Doe, and why. Fast. Someone other than Dante. Or Brody. No matter what their connection, or not, had been to the guy in some prior life.
Talk about curiosity …
Anyway, I had some time to kill and wanted to get busy. I hadn’t the skills of hacker Althea, but I was still pretty adept with the Internet.
I brought up another list I’d made—the one with everyone I’d recalled who had been at HotWildlife the day Jon Doe was killed: Dante. Brody. Me. Megan Zurich. The volunteers: Krissy Kollings and Anthony Pfalzer. The prior visitor who turned volunteer: Irwin Overland. Warren Beell, the hot-headed guy who’d brought the mama wolf there in the first place. And a few hundred visitors whose names I didn’t know.
At least I’d gotten the last names of the few people with whom I was acquainted.
I could Google every name I had and see if anything exciting turned up—like whether Warren Beell blogged about how much he hated wolves.
Okay, I admit I spent an hour on the attempt. I didn’t bother with Dante and Brody, but I found quite a bit about Megan and her championing of wildlife.
Krissy had been quoted in an article for a local college newspaper about how she didn’t like the way some upperclassmen harassed incoming students and did what she could to stand up for them, even getting in their faces.
Anthony, a player on his high school football team, had gotten a few exciting scholarship offers. That was on a Web site for his school, and his reputation on the football field sounded a lot ornerier than he was at the sanctuary.
Irwin was apparently an accountant who commuted to a big CPA firm in L.A. I found nothing that indicated anything about his personality, but recalled the minor dispute he’d mentioned with Jon Doe.
And Warren worked for a car dealership and would be glad to assist any visitors to their lot to find the perfect deal. He apparently had an affinity for wild animals, since I found several articles quoting him regarding rescues. And he had come to HotWildlife one day spoiling for a fight after being all but accused by Megan of stealing back mama wolf.
Any genuine suspects in this ragtag group? I doubted it.
I did learn addresses and phone numbers for nearly all of them. But none of the sites I found stated that any of them had a grudge against Jon Doe, nor that one of them had stabbed him.
Gee, what a surprise.
What else could I do from inside my cozy law office? Not solve the murder, apparently. But that didn’t keep me from continuing to work on it.
I called Sergeant Frank Hura after bringing the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner’s Department Web site up on my computer. I looked at his photo as I spoke with him.
“Hi,” I said, attempting to sound utterly ingenuous. “I was there the other day when you were questioning Dante again, and heard you talked to Brody another time, too. Do you need anything else from me?” Not that I hoped to suddenly head his suspect list, but if I was there being interrogated, I could ask a few additional questions.
“I know about you, Kendra.” He sounded as if he smiled. “You’ve solved murders in the past for Ned. Or against Ned. I think my department had better handle this one ourselves.”
“Then you won’t even tell me who your major suspects are, and why?” I hoped I sounded flirtatious.
“I think you can guess the who. And the why I can’t reveal till we’re ready to make an arrest.”
“I’m assuming you mean Dante or Brody,” I guessed. “But, Frank, why on earth would someone of their stature pick on some little wildlife sanctuary handyman?”
“As I’m sure you know, Kendra, things aren’t always what they seem.” He sounded like he enjoyed taunting me a bit.
I pretended to be confused. “You can’t mean that Dante isn’t Dante DeFrancisco of HotPets. Or that Brody isn’t Brody Avilla of film and Animal Auditions fame. So—oh, I get it. Jon Doe isn’t Jon Doe? Or he didn’t work at HotWildlife? Or he wasn’t a handyman?”
“Well, he did work at HotWildlife, Kendra. And he did use that name there.”
“Then he wasn’t Jon Doe? Do you know who he really is, Frank?” I asked excitedly, dropping any semblance of stupidity. Lack of knowledge, though—now that I could easily admit. “And if you do, how did you learn it?”
“We have a good idea,” he responded vaguely. His image on my computer screen seemed to smile snidely at me, but I resisted slapping it away. “And how we learned what we did was by using general law enforcement resources.”
But the guy’s fingerprints apparently weren’t in AFIS, I wanted to shout at him. So what resources did you use?
Well, hell. I didn’t have to reveal my resources, either. But I could offer a guess. “So did the fact that Jon Doe’s fingerprints weren’t in the system suggest to you that he’d been an utter angel before, or was there some foul-up somewhere that kept his prints out?”
The imagined smile on my screen turned sour as seconds passed before Frank answered. “You’re too smart for your own good, Kendra. But if you dig too deeply into this as a civilian, you’re liable to wind up in big trouble. Stop your snooping now.”
Chapter Fifteen
OKAY, SO I’D come across yet another irritable cop. There’d been times that Detective Ned Noralles of the LAPD had warned me off even more strongly. And that was generally without intriguing me with hints of stuff I absolutely intended to learn.
But for the moment, I said a meek goodbye as if I was buckling under, then hung up.
And stared at the phone while envisioning tossing epithets Frank’s way.
Should I call Ned to tell him about this awful conversation? I decided to do so, but got his voice mail. I left an oblique message that suggested I’d done something he might not approve of, and asked him to call me back.
So what, then, should I do with the rest of my afternoon?
Call Dante, dared a little voice inside me.
Like hell, I told it back.
Instead, I attempted to concentrate on some further research into elder law conservatorships for the benefit of Alice Corcorian. Despite my good intentions, my mind kept wandering.
Who was Jon Doe? And why had he died?
“Damn!” I exclaimed softly to myself, as if that would get my mind back in gear. Not!
My office phone rang just then. Great! My sanity was suddenly saved by the bell.
“Hi, Kendra, it’s Avvie,” said the voice on the other end. “I just interviewed for a job in Calabasas and am on my way through the Valley, back toward town. Can you break away for a cup of coffee with me?”
Could I? Absolutely! “Just tell me where and when,” I said.
AVVIE MILTON HAD been a new associate at the law firm of Marden, Sergement &
Yurick when we first met. These days, we had much more in common—having both been screwed by senior partner Bill Sergement at different times.
She was also the proud owner of Pansy, a potbellied pig whom I’d pet-sat now and then. Pansy had also trained with some of the piggy cast of Animal Auditions , although she hadn’t been an official contestant. She was so smart that she’d likely have outshined all the others—or so Avvie had maintained.
Now, Avvie and I sat at a small, round table inside one of the large coffee shop franchises. I’d decided I needed to sweeten my day, so I’d ordered a café mocha. Avvie had gotten one of the concoctions of coffee, frothy milk, and who knew what else?
“So tell me, how are things going with Dante?” she asked, taking a sip of her hot brew.
Avvie looked utterly professional in a navy suit and white blouse. Her hair was short and highlighted, her hazel eyes somewhat shadowed. I knew it had taken a lot out of her to finally realize that Bill Sergement was an utter louse and had only been using her for fun. Not that I’d kept that opinion to myself even as the affair was going on.
“Okay, though we’re taking things slowly.” I took my own sip in punctuation.
“Really? I thought he was all hot and heavy over you.”
I shrugged slightly in my own, less dressy suit jacket. “We’ll see. Now, tell me about the job you just interviewed for.”
Avvie was also a litigator. She’d taken on a lot of civil suits at the Marden firm, mostly for the defense. She’d excelled at it, as I had. That’s one reason we’d become buddies.
“It’s a small boutique firm, but they take on a lot of interesting cases,” she said. Her eyes began glowing, so I knew she was way interested in the position. “They sought me out, in fact, because of my success in the Crader case.”
I’d heard of it, of course. A wealthy local businessman had been accused of breaking into the home of a lovely film star he’d just met, blindfolding her, and sexually assaulting her. There hadn’t been enough evidence to convict on criminal charges, but the star had sued for civil damages.
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