His office sat beside the elevator lobby. The plaque by the closed door proclaimed: HUBBARD SECURITY, LLC, followed by, JEFF HUBBARD, LICENSED PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR.
I opened the door and ambled in. No receptionist greeted me. In the waiting room, a couple of straight-backed chairs settled around a table containing a phone and magazines. The place reminded me of the end of an airline terminal, with spokes radiating from a central source. Several doors opened onto this room, and each gaped wide.
I wondered which was Jeff’s.
I also wondered why, after knowing the guy several months and being close to him for much of the time, I’d never before ventured here. Had I subconsciously considered it his personal sanctuary?
If so, I’d probably have beelined here long before this.
“Who’s there?” called a female voice that was definitely familiar. I’d heard the direct, no-nonsense tone numerous times over the phone.
It was Althea, Jeff’s indispensable techy guru, the middle-aged maven whose Internet research skills—legitimate and more than slightly shady—were incredible. And invaluable.
“Hi, Althea. It’s Kendra Ballantyne.” I headed toward the voice’s source, walking the long way around the offices.
I figured out which was Jeff’s. It was the largest. It contained crates labeled with names and logos of security equipment suppliers that even I recognized. And it just happened to have his name on the door.
Fortunately, he wasn’t there.
The next office was occupied by a young guy with hair shaved close to his head. His mouth spouted invectives into a phone. “You swore yesterday we’d have everything today. Damn it, that’s not good enough. We promised to install the rest of the system tomorrow. You effing well better get it to us fast.” Obviously a security honcho, though maybe he engaged in investigations, too. The plaque next to his door proclaimed he was Buzz Dulear.
A woman walked out of the next door down and stood watching me, with arms crossed and a suspicious stare. “You’re Kendra Ballantyne?” Her tone tendered disbelief. She was pretty in a
Playboy
kind of way—curvaceous in her jeans and U.C.L.A. T-shirt, with blond hair that barely skimmed her shoulders.
This was the woman Jeff spoke of glowingly as his middle-aged computer geek, his aging techy wonder—mousy single mother of five grown kids, who was now in her fifties?
“You’re Althea?” I sounded equally incredulous.
“The way Jeff described you, I knew you were one pretty lady, and smart, too,” she said, still studying me. “He thinks so highly of you I expected a cross between Cameron Diaz, Hillary Clinton, and Maria Shriver. Oh, and also, since you manage pets, I threw in that pretty, outspoken wife of the Crocodile Hunter.”
I shrugged as I smiled. “Well, here I am in reality.”
“The reality’s pretty good,” Althea countered as I squirmed under her unyielding assessment. “A little self-conscious,” she continued. “Attractive enough without being a bombshell. Blue eyes—a little chilly, but I’ll bet they warm up now and then. And nice hair.”
That, at least, was a lie. My unhighlighted mop was mousy.
She’d stopped speaking. Payback time. “And you’re supposed to be some frumpy middle-aged marvel, not flip-pin’ gorgeous!”
“Well preserved,” Althea admitted with an unabashed grin. “I
am
fifty-four. And one of my kids is about to make me a grandma.”
The guy Buzz, who’d exited his office, grinned gleefully at us. I hadn’t realized when he was seated that he was a tall dude, a few inches over six feet. “Care to assess me?” he asked.
“No,” Althea and I responded in unison.
“Come into my office,” she said to me. “We’ll talk.”
“Jeff’s in
big
trouble,” said Buzz.
IN MERE MINUTES, we were old friends.
We
were
old friends, from a few months back. I’d commenced holding helpful conversations with her when Jeff assigned her to reward me with research on anyone I needed dope on, back when I was accused of murder. We’d chatted often over the phone.
Her office was piled with paper, surprising since its inevitable pièce de résistance consisted of a state-of-the-art computer. It was connected to all means of ultramodern electronic gadgetry, including a printer that appeared as if it could talk. It probably
did
talk.
She’d known Jeff for a lot longer than I had, so after I’d removed a stack of paper from her single extra chair, I regarded her earnestly over her desk and asked, “Do you think Jeff could have killed Ezra Cossner?”
She snorted. She might be beautiful, but she obviously eschewed airs, unlike the snobs at the law firm I’d just left. “What do you think, Kendra? You’ve known him for a while.”
“Ned Noralles has known him longer and considers him a suspect.”
“Ned Noralles considered
you
a suspect a few months back, and we all know how that turned out.”
I laughed. “Got it. So neither of us believes Jeff’s a killer.”
“I didn’t say that,” Althea riposted.
Which stopped me cold. “You
do
think he’s a killer?”
“I didn’t say that either.” But she’d sounded serious. “I just don’t see him killing Ezra Cossner in cold blood. And as far as I know, he hasn’t killed anyone lately.”
“He did as a cop?”
“Could be. Now, I’ve got printouts of info on everyone you said could be a suspect in Ezra’s murder. Anyone else whose past you want me to pry into?”
A quick change of subject. It made me curious, but she obviously wouldn’t fill me in further.
Jeff had already shown me the fruits of Althea’s search on Ned Noralles. He’d had an interesting background that included minor transgressions as a teen, but nothing we could turn against him to twist him away from Jeff as a suspect.
“Yes, there is,” I responded to Althea. I hadn’t previously inserted Bella Quevedo-Jetts onto the part of my suspect list I’d imparted to Althea. I explained the lady’s prior relationship to Ezra. “You know,” I finished, “it wouldn’t hurt to add the other attorneys at the Jambison firm to your search. It’s not large, maybe ten lawyers. Any one could have resented Ezra’s alleged client conversion.”
“Okay. Oh, and I’ll add Borden Yurick, too, and not just Elaine Aames from your current firm. Jeff told me to hold off on him, but Borden obviously had a history with Ezra or he wouldn’t have hired him.”
“Bordon couldn’t kill anyone,” I contradicted indignantly. “But it won’t hurt to rule him out.” My tone had deflated. “I can’t think why he might have had it in for Ezra, so motive would be a mystery to me, but Ezra obviously had a talent for rubbing everyone the wrong way.”
“Okay.” Althea had been making notes, and now she looked up again. “What about anyone else Ezra might have known?”
“I only met him last week. I’ve no way of knowing about other acquaintances who despised him, but I can’t help assuming there were many. He’d at least been greeted by others around our firm—attorneys, secretaries, our receptionist. And I’ve spoken with his parrot psychologist, though he was introduced to her only after he got Gigi, a few weeks ago. But the people I’m asking you to check are those I’m aware he was openly feuding with, and I’ll feed you more names as I find out about them.”
“Fine. Anything else?”
“Well . . . yes.” The main reason I’d come here hadn’t yet been broached, mostly because I’d obscured it from myself. “What can you tell me about Jeff’s ex, Amanda?”
Althea’s brown eyes grew agog. “You think she’s a suspect?”
“No, but . . .” I stopped. “I didn’t think so,” I said slowly, “but with Jeff in the hot seat, if she resented him and thought the murder would be pinned on him . . .”
“Far-fetched, but worth exploring,” Althea agreed. “What you were asking, though, was more about what made their relationship go south—and then come north again?”
“Exactly.”
“Gossiping about one’s boss isn’t good form,” she replied primly.
“Neither is researching the dirtiest little secrets of total strangers, and even resorting to hacking to do it,” I retorted.
She grinned. “Who’s hacking?” she asked innocently.
I laughed, and she responded by regaling me with the tale of how Jeff and Amanda met four years ago, when Jeff’s security and investigation business finally started to take off. Amanda, in commercial real estate, met Jeff when her employer hired him to add a security system to a moderate-sized office building. Something clicked between them, and they were married a few months later.
Whatever it was had unclicked soon thereafter, though Jeff tried to keep things together for a year before giving up. But like the proverbial cobbler whose own kids go unshod, it was only at the end that Jeff considered checking Amanda’s credit rating and love life. There
was
no credit rating—not any longer. She was way overextended, which definitely cast a pall on Jeff’s finances.
And there was a love life that was unrestricted to Jeff.
He divorced her. End of story.
Only it wasn’t. She was back.
I had to ask. “I know she’s got him convinced she’s being stalked.”
“She
is
being stalked. I’ve checked. After Jeff and she broke up, she went wild on the dating scene. Hooked up with some real losers—and that one, Leon, has a record of abuse, stalking, you name it, short of murder. I can understand why the bitch sought out the best source to help her—her beloved ex, Jeff.”
“Oh,” I sad softly. “Then maybe I’ve read things wrong.”
“No, you haven’t. Amanda is genuinely and justifiably afraid for her life. But she’s also using Leon to weasel her way back into Jeff’s good graces. She probably realized she blew the best part of her life and wants it back.”
“And him?” I had to ask. “What does he want?”
“He’s a man, honey.” Althea’s beautiful full lips sucked in sympathetically. “He thinks with body parts beyond his brain. I love the guy like a brother more than a boss, but there are times I’d like to kick those brains right out his butt.”
“Then—”
“Then if you want him, Kendra, you’ll have to work at it. Good luck. Oh, and I’ll have the skinny on these additional murder suspects for you tomorrow.”
Chapter Fourteen
THOUGH—OR BECAUSE—Althea assured me that Jeff was expected back any minute, I said my farewells to Buzz and her, then buzzed back to my office.
A mistake, maybe. Gigi was at her loudest all over again. “Did something upset her?” I asked Mignon the moment I walked in.
“Sure,” Mignon replied with a pained expression beneath the sharp crimson nails on the hands she’d slapped over her ears. “But no one knows what it is.”
I resisted the urge to place my own, less dangerously tipped hands atop my own rebelling noise receptacles, and strode straight for the kitchen.
Elaine stood there looking frustrated and forlorn. “I don’t know what to do with her,” she shouted. “I’ve tried all the techniques Polly Bright suggested.”
I knew the parrot professional had proposed that we distract Gigi often—as I’d inadvertently but instinctively assayed before. “I’ve got an idea,” I called back. “Wait here.”
I headed out to make sure the path was clear and the prospective perch prepared. I also enlisted Borden, who’d secluded himself behind his shut office door.
Together, the three of us awkwardly propelled Gigi’s cage down the hall and into Ezra’s office. Maybe one person could have accomplished it less clumsily. But the kitchen clearly failed to provide a suitably soothing environment now. Hopefully, someplace slightly more familiar would do the trick. Of course, this particular place also held miserable memories for the confused macaw. But perhaps drastic measures trumped none.
To my amazement, my ploy succeeded—after, of course, an initial five minutes of screeches and flaps. Or maybe it was simply the act of accomplishing the unforeseen—relocating her. But suddenly Gigi grew so quiet that my ears started ringing.
“Great idea!” Borden told me. I hardly heard his soft words for the imaginary sounds in my head.
“Good thinking,” echoed Elaine, her grin huge. It faded fast, though. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to adopt her,” she said with a sigh. “I may not be creative enough to come up with things to surprise her, and so far I’m still in my condo. No more house hunting, at least for now.”
“Aren’t macaws supposed to be tame enough to perch on their owners’ shoulders?” I asked.
Elaine shrugged her own. “You’re the pet expert. But I’ll ask Polly one of these days.”
I watched while Elaine and Borden exited the office, leaving me standing there with the alert bird.
“What are we going to do with you?” I remarked rhetorically. I really liked this gorgeous girl, despite the quantity of personality quirks she exhibited. I wished I could come up with a way to keep her content.
Gigi’s response to my query was to make a sound I hadn’t heard from her before. It was songlike. Oh, yeah. I’d been informed that birds of the parrot class knew how to croon. Though this sound seemed vaguely familiar, I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
Oh, well. I had a few loose legal ends to work on before this day ended, so I couldn’t stay here playing “Name That Tune.”
“Glad you’re feeling better, Gigi,” I said. “I’ll let Elaine know it’s okay to feed you dinner whenever she’s ready.”
As if she understood what I’d said, Gigi stopped singing and started swaying on her perch, squawking quietly but rhythmically.
“I know she’s fed you regularly,” I told the macaw. “So don’t try to convince me you’re about to keel over from hunger.”
She stopped swaying and squawking, and I used that opportunity to make my exit.
AFTER REVIEWING FILES and planning follow-up legal efforts, I headed off for my delightful pet-sitting duties of the evening.
I fortunately found Abra and Cadabra without any effort. Apparently their practical joke the other day had been enough. Both cats condescended to turn up in Harold Reddingam’s kitchen, the tips of their tails curved in regal question marks—like, why hadn’t I arrived earlier to feed them faster, as was their due?