Lyle Urquard, our local mountain biker, braked beside me, skidded to a stop—and fell, bike and all, onto his side. He wore a helmet, which would have helped had he landed on his head. However, his legs were bare between bright green spandex shorts and the tops of socks extending up wide ankles from blue and white athletic shoes.
Lyle biked at least twice daily. I’d seen him fall before. Scraped, bleeding legs were as much an adornment as his bulging belly beneath his snug shorts. How he didn’t manage to ride off his extra pounds remained a mystery to me, especially considering the admirable effort he made to pedal up our steep slope—on the San Fernando Valley side of the Santa Monica Mountains, a few blocks from Mulholland Drive. I didn’t know what he did during non-biking hours, but I’d heard he was in construction.
“Are you all right, Kendra?” was the first thing he said after several of us, including Tilla, helped untangle him from his bike and set it and him upright. Sweaty hair peeked from beneath his helmet, and he flexed hands clad in gloves that covered his palms but left his fingers free.
“Better than you,” I observed.
His wide grin, lower jaw obscuring upper lip, looked sheepish as he thanked those who’d dived to his assistance. “I’m fine. Really.” He glanced around. “How about your tenants? Are they okay?”
“I don’t think they’re home,” I answered.
“Oh. Well, where’s Ike?”
“Ike who?” I asked, wincing as the words came out like a weak sneeze.
“Ike Janus.” He looked at me as if I should know the name.
I didn’t.
“Isn’t he the guy who moved into the Blaskeys’ old house a few months ago?” Tilla asked. She still panted from her climb, and her plump face shone with perspiration.
“That’s right,” Lyle said. “This is his car.” He pointed short, blunt fingers, extending from his gloves, toward the Hummer that had hit my house.
A FEW MINUTES later, the cops were on their way. Phil Ashler, my retired across-the-street neighbor, had his cell phone with him and had called 911. Was this incident worthy of an emergency call? Too late to worry about it now.
I’d seen as much damage as I could from outside looking in, but I itched to go inside my dream home to see what nightmare the Hummer had created there.
Hey, it was my house. This was an emergency—by police definition or not. I owned the place—my impatient bank and I. These days I didn’t live there, and as the mere landlady, I had no right to roam inside at random. Still, my lease with Charlotte and Yul permitted me entrance without notice in an emergency, and they clearly weren’t here, and—
Okay. I’d talked myself into it.
I asked the crowd of neighbors to watch for the cops.
“Are you going to check out the damage inside?” Tilla asked.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Need any help?” Lyle asked. “I mean, can you get in okay? You’ll need to watch out, in case the structure’s damaged, or there’s something else dangerous that you can’t see.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said.
“I’d be glad to go with you,” Tilla said. Obviously my nosy neighbor couldn’t wait to check out the chaos and report back.
“Thanks anyway.” I led Lexie to our apartment over the garage. I grabbed my extra keys from a kitchen drawer, and we slipped down the steps and around the house to the back door.
It had been weeks since I’d been in my house. The last time, I’d merely stood in the magnificent main entry and nosed around nostalgically. I’d let Yul in after he’d forgotten his keys and needed to hunt for Charlotte’s passport for an impending trip. It had taken him all of two minutes to find it and flee.
I’d been invited to some of their parties but had always found excuses not to attend. It was just too torturous to enter my home now that I didn’t live there.
Entering through the back door, I stood in the kitchen. Lexie barked impatiently and tugged on her leash, as if she’d scented something enticing. “Hold on,” I told her.
One thing I could say about my tenants: They were good housekeepers. The kitchen was as clean as a restaurant rated “A” by the health department. My beige tile counters trimmed in Mexican designs of blue, red, and yellow looked immaculate. So did their matching counterparts on the floor. The textured beige refrigerator door sparkled, as did the stainless sink and faucet.
I had not held a lot of parties myself in the couple of years I’d lived here before—life as a litigator didn’t allow time for much recreational socializing—but my kitchen had always been a gathering place for my occasional guests. I didn’t have time, though, to stand here and nostalgically study my once—and hopefully, someday, future—domain. I had to find what damage the wayward vehicle had wrought on the rest of my house.
From outside, I’d gathered that the Hummer had hit the living room at the far side of the house from where we stood. Or maybe it was the den next to it that I’d used as an office, though I didn’t know what use my tenants made of it.
Lexie continued pulling, and I tugged on her leash, trying to get her to do a facsimile of a heel, which she was not inclined to obey. We headed toward the far side of the kitchen.
And stopped. Rather, I stopped, slamming down my left foot audibly as a signal to my tugging pup to follow my lead, but she didn’t heed. In fact, she acted as if she’d never had any training, the way she strained at her leash to be let loose. Her nails clicked on the kitchen tile as she futilely tried to pull me faster and wound up spinning her paws like tires on rain-slicked cement.
I hadn’t thought anyone home. Now, though, after I opened the door from the kitchen to the rest of the house, my ears were bombarded by a shrill sound, as if a child was crying somewhere.
But Charlotte and Yul didn’t have kids. No one else was authorized to stay here, and even if they’d violated the lease, they wouldn’t leave an infant here alone.
It could be Yul, though. He had a voice I’d term baritone, but the last time I’d come into the house, with him, I’d called out a question and hadn’t been able to make out his shrill reply.
Was he here and hurt?
All the more reason not to let Lexie explore on her own. Hanging on with difficulty, I let her lead me to the source of the sound.
Unsurprisingly, it was from the room whose outer wall had been stoved in by the Hummer—the den.
My roomy, efficient, sorely missed home office.
As I said, I’d no idea what Charlotte and Yul used it for now. If I’d known, I’d have given them written notice to cut it out—a California statutory notice to cure a lease default or quit the premises.
For they were definitely in default under the lease, namely the no-pets-without-permission-and-a-stiff-security-deposit clause.
Plus, I’d believed that showbiz brassy Charlotte—who hugged every person she met as if embracing the entire human race—hated pets. She’d unabashedly avoided my adorable Lexie. And there had to be something really wrong with someone who refused to cuddle Cavaliers.
But Charlotte obviously didn’t have a phobia against all pets. The waist-high luxury wire and carved wood cage that occupied the room wasn’t just for show.
I bent and lifted my Cavalier into my arms as Lexie lunged toward the cage. Fortunately, it was along the inside wall—opposite the heaps of drywall that now littered the floor beneath the wreck of the wall where the Hummer had hit.
The shrill, scared sounds emanated from the enclosure. I couldn’t tell from where I stood what kind of animal made them. Still holding Lexie, I drew closer, bent down, and looked.
The cage’s occupants were long, furry, and masked, and had pointed snouts. Kind of cute. But . . .
Weasels? Did anyone keep weasels as pets?
I didn’t know, but I was aware that some people made pets of a similar-looking little beast. Though not in California. At least not legally.
“You’re ferrets!” I exclaimed to the five chattering, nervous little mammals that scurried around the crate in a parody of a person’s perturbed pacing.
None denied it.
Though I’d never had a pet-sitting client that kept ferrets, I’d heard of people who did. I’d also heard of a movement to legalize the little critters in California. One particularly avid ferret fan had even run for governor on a “free the ferrets” ticket. But then, in California everyone runs for governor, and sometimes the most celebrated wins. And if I recalled the brouhaha correctly, the ferret fanciers, some months back, had succeeded in convincing both houses of the state legislature to agree on an amnesty bill, but our celebrated governator had vetoed it, invoking the need for further environmental evaluation.
So owning ferrets remained a felony. Or at least a misdemeanor—I’d never checked. I might have to now, though, when I gave written notice to my tenants to chuck the ferrets or cancel the lease. I hoped it wouldn’t be the latter, since they paid me a healthy rent—enough that I had a little to spare beyond my mortgage payments.
Sure, I’d be entitled to compensation for their default, but I preferred to continue receiving rent . . . without the illegal aliens now occupying a valued corner of my home.
I stood there attempting to control Lexie, who wanted in the worst way to make the little beasties’ acquaintance up close and personal. I pondered what to do with my battered den wall. I deliberated what this particular lawyer should do with such a gross violation of lease and law right in her own home.
And then a call reverberated through the entire downstairs of the house. “Is anyone in there? This is the police!”
Chapter Two
DAMN! THEY’D WANT to see the damage. What should I do? Expose my tenants’ possession of illicit pets?
They deserved it.
I put Lexie down, leaving the loop of her leash over my arm. As she stood on hind legs and sniffed, I lifted the large but fortunately portable cage from the floor, scaring the four long and furry ferrets all the more. As they skittered futilely to maintain their balance, I hurried them from the room.
The den abutted a hall that also led to the rear of the house and the laundry room. I aimed my awkward and unhappy baggage there, hoping the cops wouldn’t barge in without invitation.
Was there any way to hush a bunch of small, squealing creatures? If so, I didn’t know it. “Just a minute,” I called in a feigned falsetto over the din. “Be right with you.”
I reached the laundry room and deposited the cage on top of the adjacent washer and dryer. I then lifted Lexie, who was fascinated by the ferrets, back into my arms. She squirmed, obviously eager to further her acquaintance with them. Holding her as tightly as I could manage a protesting pup, I fled the utility room, closing the door behind us.
A short while after I’d moved into my beloved home, I’d been so irritated by the gurgles, groans, and belches of my electrical servants that I’d insisted on adding insulation to this utility room to keep the offensive noises inside. Thank heavens. That would hopefully muffle the ferret sounds, too.
Only then did I think about what I’d done and begin to cringe. I’d made myself an abettor, an accessory to breaking whatever law forbade harboring ferrets in California.
Oh, lord. Before, when accused of a laundry list of nasties, I’d been innocent of them all. This time, I was actually committing a crime. Would I ever again see my license to practice law? Not at this rate.
Not if I was caught.
“Hi, police,” I cried out. “I’m coming.”
As I’d figured, they were at the front door, two patrol guys in uniform. I was relieved not to see my suit-sporting nemesis on the L.A.P.D., Detective Ned Noralles, especially since Noralles was a homicide detective. For once, the police were around for something other than my discovery of a body whose untimely demise might be blamed on me.
“Sorry for the delay,” I said. “This whole mess got my stomach churning and—well, no need to be graphic about it, though I wouldn’t be surprised if you heard . . . Never mind.” I daintily lifted a hand to my mouth, no easy trick while still grappling with Lexie. “Would you like to see what that darned Hummer did to my house?”
“Okay,” said the younger of the two cops. His badge identified him as Officer Sallaman. His partner, Officer Elina, looked weathered, jaded, and bored, as if I couldn’t show him anything here that he hadn’t seen a hundred times before.
Both examined the mess that was the residue of my den wall, including rubbled piles of plaster, window glass, and broken sticks and fabric that were once Charlotte and Yul’s furniture. A hint of Hummer fender showed through the hole.
Officer Sallaman made notes, while Officer Elina asked a few perfunctory questions: Who owned the house? Who lived here? Had anyone been home? Was anyone hurt?
I soon accompanied them back outside, Lexie leashed and trotting beside me. A greater crowd had gathered. Most, still, were neighbors.
A couple were reporters.
Damn.
I despised reprehensible reporters. Despite my later redemption, they’d first turned my life into a public free-for-all months ago in the guise of getting a juicy story about a lawyer who’d thrown her own case by handing a strategy memo to the opposing party. And why had she done such a dastardly deed? Because she was peeved at her client or because the opposing party had bribed her, or both.
Or so had gone all the false accusations against me.
But that’s another tale. One I’ve tried my damnedest to put behind me, despite all the gory details I won’t go into now.
That was the main reason, though, that when microphones were thrust before my mouth, I forbore from chewing on them, simply smiling secretively and saying, “No comment.”
No better way to irritate irascible reporters.
Instead, I went over to where a group of neighbors had gathered—Tilla Thomason and her husband, Hal, who obviously enjoyed eating as much as his happily stout spouse; Lyle Urquard, the mad bicyclist; Phil Ashler, the sweet old guy from across the street; and a few I didn’t recognize.