Never Tease a Siamese: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (3 page)

She couldn't. Not aside from garden-variety insanity, which, prevalent as it was among the clinic's clientele, would be a tough line to sell her father. Her attention turned to the double-wide cage next door, which housed two silent Siamese. This she knew immediately to be unusual, since although the breed had many virtues, silence was not among them. Neither was healthy gums, which probably explained the silence.

Both lay sleeping soundly, their limbs splayed straight out in the distinctive position of those recovering from anesthesia. "You said the Siamese were here for  dentals?" she asked Jared, who had moved on to mop the vacant greyhound run.

He looked up briefly, then answered while he worked the mop wringer. "The Siamese got dentals, Leigh Koslow."

Leigh took another look at the cats, both of which were handsome seal points with bright, slick fur and angular lines. Her eyes drank in the cage card with a flicker of alarm.
Murchison
.

Lilah Murchison
. The tiniest of shivers traveled down her spine, and she shrugged quickly to arrest it. She was thirty-one years old now, not six and a half. And it was clear to her rational, adult self that the incident that had given her years of nightmares was no more than a little girl’s imagination gone amuck.

But still.

She had been an energetic child with a healthy amount of curiosity, and the gigantic ladies’ purse that sat unattended in exam room two had proved more temptation than she could take. It was a foot wide easily, both sides covered with sequined renditions of sapphire-eyed, seal-point Siamese. She had run her fingers over the shiny designs, then popped open the top for a quick peek inside. Wallet, keys, makeup mirror—she sifted through each component, bringing it out into the light. She thought the squishy object in the plastic bag was probably a half-eaten sandwich. It was only after she held it inches from her face that she realized it was a mauled, bloody, and notably headless mouse.

She didn’t scream then. She had simply frozen in horror. It was when two sets of extraordinarily long red fingernails clamped down on her shoulders and a husky woman’s voice said "boo," that she had become slightly hysterical. She had whirled around to see a grown woman in a leopard-spotted minidress and thigh-high boots laughing at her hysterically, and that had been all she could take.

It wasn’t the sort of story one confessed to a parent. She had, after all, been snooping in someone else’s purse, which everyone knew could result in jail time. But the assessment of the first-graders at West View Elementary had been unanimous. This leopard woman clearly ate kittens for breakfast and mice for  snacks.

After days of tortured nightmares, she had finally worked up the nerve to warn her father that Mrs. Murchison was raising cats for food. For unfathomable reasons, however, he had found this amusing, and the issue was never spoken of again. At least not until Leigh was twelve and learned that Lilah Murchison was so paranoid about rabies and parasites that she insisted every creature her pets dragged home be thoroughly tested for both.

Leigh’s adult fingers clenched the cage bars involuntarily as she remembered. Lilah Murchison might not have been a devil woman, then or now, but nor was she Mother Goose. Twenty-five years later, she and her prize-winning Siamese were still clients of the clinic, and she was a very wealthy widow. She was also rumored to be a black one.

Leigh straightened. Could Ricky Rhodis have intended to steal one of her Siamese from the clinic? If so, who did he plan to "return" it to?

"Leigh?" came a masculine voice from the stairs. She turned to see her father's gray, bespectacled head leaning down just below ceiling level. "Nancy told me you were here. Come on up."

She let go of the cat cage and took a deep, apprehensive breath. Randall was fair, but consummately practical, and her credibility with him was—well, somewhat limited.

Adith Rhodis was going to owe her.

Chapter 2

"Preposterous." Randall Koslow removed the latest in a long line of cheap dark-plastic glasses, which, when observed in concert with his rail-thin frame and studious nature, made him look startlingly like the father of Dennis the Menace. He rubbed his eyes wearily and took another bite of his turkey on white—hold the mayo. "I feel very sorry for Mrs. Rhodis, but she's going to have to face facts. Better the boy get help now."

Leigh studied her father's determined face and wished she could think up another line of reasoning for why Ricky Rhodis should be let off the hook. Unfortunately, she couldn't. "You don't think it's even a
remote
possibility that Ricky might have intended to snatch one of Mrs. Murchison's Siamese?" she tried again. "Maybe for a rival breeder? Or wait—I’ve got it. The wife of her latest lover is out for revenge."

Randall lowered his eyebrows in a frown. In stark contrast to the women in his family, he was strictly a no-nonsense individual, and his daughter's attempts at levity were not scoring points.

"Okay, okay," Leigh relented. "That's a little much, I grant you. I'm just trying to establish reasonable doubt here."

He smiled patiently, then let out a small sigh. "The female cat was a grand champion in her time, but she's well beyond breeding age, much less showing age. As for the male, you couldn't give him away. He's a medical nightmare. In fact—"

"Dr. Koslow?"

An individual the size of a fifth grader poked her head into the exam room where Randall and Leigh had paused for his stand-up lunch break. "Sorry to interrupt," she apologized brusquely, moving toward them.

Leigh stared at the stranger with undisguised curiosity. Any other female cursed with such a small frame would seem elfish, but this one's army-short hair, intense gray eyes, and unaccountable swagger somehow pulled off machismo. Her bulging muscles didn’t hurt, either. "I need to talk to you," the woman ordered, holding Randall's gaze in a deadlock. "It's about Mrs. Murchison."

Leigh’s eyes widened. Leopard-woman was a popular topic today.

Randall took one look at his visitor’s face, stuffed the remainder of his sandwich into the trash bin, and pointed to a chair. "Have a seat," he answered. "This is my daughter, Leigh. Leigh, this is Nikki Loomis, Jared's sister. She works for Lilah Murchison. Her personal assistant now, I believe."

The two women nodded in greeting, though Nikki's nod was more of a sharp bob, and Leigh found herself fighting an urge to salute. She knew it wasn't charitable of her to besmirch the character of the unknown Mrs. Loomis, but she had an awfully hard time believing there was any shared gene pool between this woman and the gentle giant downstairs. She was further amazed that the clinic’s own kennel worker had a sister who worked for Lilah Murchison. Nobody worked for Lilah Murchison. Getting on her staff was like applying for the secret service.

"Don't know how to say this," Nikki began with a clipped, militant tone. "But you may have heard on the news—a private plane went down yesterday over Lake Michigan."

Randall shook his head.

"Well, one did. And I got a call last night saying Mrs. Murchison was on it."

Leigh’s stomach flip-flopped. News of plane crashes always did that to her, whether she knew anyone involved or not. And while she couldn’t claim to have known Lilah Murchison well, she nevertheless felt a strong need for denial. Gorgeous, savvy, arguably evil women like Lilah did
not
die without warning. They merely disappeared for a while and came back with different husbands.

The veterinarian cleared his throat. "You're certain?"

Nikki's head moved sharply from side to side. "Can't be, not yet. But she did call from New York yesterday morning. Said that she and her friend, Bertha McClintock, were going to take the McClintock company jet to Minneapolis." She paused briefly. "They were going to the Mall of America."

No one spoke for a moment, and Leigh let out a breath. Lilah Murchison—dead? She generally tried not to obsess over local gossip, but the yarns implanted during her formative years still held a certain power over her. And the web of this spider was large indeed.

Lilah Murchison’s life was nothing short of legend—providing fifty years’ worth of titillating conversation everywhere from happy hour at the Chuckwagon to luncheon with the North Boros Women's Club. Born to one of the poorest families in the working-class borough of Avalon, Lilah had spent the last thirty years in one of the finest old-money mansions in Ben Avon, the upscale community just down the river. And in getting there she hadn't just burned her bridges, she had pulverized them. Her path to wealth had been paved with the trampled torsos of virtually everyone she had grown up with—not to mention the bodies of three dead husbands—and her crimes against humanity and decency were known the length of the Ohio's north bank. Kitten-eater or no, Lilah Murchison was one creepy dame.

Unless, of course, one took the opinion of Randall Koslow. "I’m very sorry to hear that," he said sincerely. "She was a good client and a fine woman. My sympathies to her son."

Nikki Loomis's eyes narrowed somewhat, their gray depths flashing. Leigh knew very little about Lilah’s son, but she was guessing there were things to know. "Dean will get over it," the personal assistant snapped. "But there's nothing we can do now except wait. Bits of the plane have been found, but it went down in some pretty deep water, and they say they may never find the bodies."

Aha.
Leigh tried to stop herself from spinning bizarre alternative scenarios in her head, but she knew resistance was pointless. Her brain minded her commands about as well as Mao Tse did. "Was there a passenger list?" she inquired innocently—or so she hoped.

Nikki turned on her with a frown, absently flexing an unnaturally thick bicep. "Not that I heard of. But two employees at the airport say they saw a thin, blond woman in her sixties get on with Mrs. McClintock. And one mentioned that she was hauling a cat carrier." She turned back to Randall. "You know Ms. Lilah never went anywhere without Mrs. Wiggs."

The veterinarian nodded soberly. "True. She was devoted to all her pets." He paused thoughtfully. "Speaking of which—do you have any idea if she made arrangements for them?"

"No, and her estate's going to be a real mess because of the wait for a death certificate. But her son’s been bugging the lawyer about reading her will, and it looks like the guy’s agreed because Ms. Lilah’s got so much stuff that has to be dealt with. Of course," she added heavily, "nothing's going to be changing hands until she's declared legally dead."

"Who will be taking care of the cats, then?" Randall asked.

"Me, unless the will says otherwise. I live in the house and watch them all the time anyway, so it makes sense. But Dean could make trouble. He tried to kick me out just this morning." She sniffed derisively. "The wuss."

Having suspicions about who might have actually kicked whom, Leigh made a mental note to avoid annoying Jared’s sister.

"Do you need a place to live?" Randall asked with concern. "Or is your mother’s house—"

"I’m
not
living with my doofus brothers!" She answered sharply. Then she moderated her tone. "Thanks for asking, Doc, but we’ll be fine."

Leigh’s mental notes had a tendency to get lost. "Jared has a brother, too?"

Nikki Loomis whirled around on Leigh like a viper. "Jared is
not
a doofus," the little bodybuilder said icily, fists clenched. "Next to Bill and Red, he’s a goddamned Einstein!"

Leigh took a quick step back, trying to figure out where her comment had gone wrong. "I didn’t mean to imply—" Then she stopped backpedaling and smiled. Actually, she was glad to see that Jared had a bodyguard. "Take it easy," she said agreeably. "You’re talking to one of his biggest fans here. I just didn’t know he had any siblings."

Nikki’s fists relaxed.

"Jared has been living in Mrs. Murchison’s garage apartment for a while now," Randall explained. "He does her kennel cleaning in exchange."

Leigh looked from her father to Nikki and back again, gritting her teeth. Jared worked for Mrs. Murchison, too? Her father never told her anything.

"I was concerned that he and Nikki have someplace to go if necessary," Randall continued evenly. Then he turned back to Nikki. "You’ll let me know if you need help?"

She looked uncomfortable, but nodded. "So, anyway. Are the cats ready to go? Did Number One Son need any teeth pulled?"

Leigh startled at the segue. First, because Nikki seemed to be taking the sudden death of her employer quite in stride, and two, because Number One Son was an odd thing to name a cat when one already had the human version.

Randall shook his head. "No, they just got a cleaning. But I'd give them a couple more hours to get back on their feet."

Nancy Johnson popped her head in from the waiting room. "Dr. Koslow? I.J. Kloo's on line one. He says it's an emergency."

The veterinarian exited abruptly, leaving Leigh to stare awkwardly at Nikki, who stared unabashedly back at her. Luckily, Leigh soon remembered her temporarily derailed mission to save Ricky Rhodis' questionable hide. "I hope you don't mind my asking," she began tentatively, watching the other’s woman’s fists for signs of renewed tightening. "But as your brother might already have told you, someone tried to steal something from the clinic last night. Call me crazy, but I have this feeling that they wanted one of the Siamese. Do you have any idea why anyone might?"