But by the time I prepared to give Stromboli his exit hug and treat, there Meph was once again, seeming solitary and sad at the end of his leash.
Still . . . maybe I’d gotten through to Maribelle, since he apparently hadn’t been exiled all day. If so, I decided to give her a pat on the back. I went next door and rang the bell. I heard some sound as the peephole was used, and then the door opened. The middle-aged Maribelle today wore dark slacks, dark shirt and a tentative smile. “Yes—Kendra, isn’t it?”
“Exactly. I just wanted to tell you how glad I was not to see Meph hanging outside when I first got here. And—”
I saw tears slosh down her cheeks from brown eyes that today appeared more morose than suspicious. “You were right. I shouldn’t have taken it out on him, only—” She stopped. “Never mind. But thanks.” She started to shut the door.
Okay, I’m the nosy sort. At least where animals are involved. “If you’d like to talk, I’d like to listen,” I said.
“Really?” She sounded startled.
“Really,” I said, “although I can’t stay long.” Which gave us both an out if our conversation collapsed into crap.
Showing me into her sparsely furnished and somewhat shabby home, she led me into a kitchen where cabinets had once been painted white. She let Meph in to join us. The wire-haired honey was so excited he couldn’t sit still. Instead, he boomeranged from slobbering on Maribelle, then me, then back again.
Meantime, Maribelle fed me hot tea, and I fed her sympathy.
“I never meant to take it out on Meph, you know,” she said when she was finished telling me how she’d been widowed eighteen months earlier, left with a sizable mortgage when her husband had been the main breadwinner. “Our kids are grown and live clear across the country, and I didn’t want to bother them. And I was . . . well, angry that Opie—that was my husband—died. Meph had been mainly his dog, so I guess I was taking it out on him. I didn’t mean to, but I’ve been working extra long hours as a hairstylist at one of those discount salons to try to hold on here. Opie didn’t carry life insurance, and we lived well while he was alive. I’m too young to collect his pension or Social Security, and I don’t want to sell this place if I can possibly hold on, so . . . well, I’m sorry, Meph.” She leaned down from where she sat to stroke the wagging-all-over pup. “I guess if I could find him a better home, I would.”
I succumbed to shock. Toss out her sole housemate? “Wouldn’t that leave you lonely?”
“Maybe, but if he’d be better off . . .”
“Well, think about it,” I said. “Here.” I gave her my card—the pet-sitter sort—and said, “If you want to talk more, give me a call. Anytime. And I really appreciate how you’re handling Meph now.”
“I guess he is, too,” she said with a somber smile, then saw me to the door.
AFTER A SAD story like that, I had to give Lexie a whole lot of extra hugs when I retrieved her from Darryl’s. We headed home.
For the first time in weeks, we wouldn’t see Odin. I told Lexie. Did she understand? Who knew? But she didn’t seem to, since when we got to our upstairs digs, she sat at the door for a short while as if in anticipation of my usual collection of evening gear and taking off.
“Not tonight,” I told her, hearing some sadness in my own voice, too. But I needed a break to think. Especially after the sizzling-hot sex Jeff and I had shared last night. It kept me from cogitating clearly over my future, and where Jeff might or might not be within it. I fed Lexie, then considered my own dinner. I peeked into the fridge and freezer. Not much there, after I’d spent so little time here lately. Well, okay. I’d take a sojourn to the nearest supermarket, and—
“It’s My Life” reverberated through my apartment. I grabbed for my purse to retrieve my cell phone.
And saw the caller ID. Jeff.
I straightened my shoulders in preparation for an invitation, followed by an argument.
Only . . . Jeff said the one thing to get me to head to his place, at least for a while, that I simply couldn’t resist.
“I’ve picked up takeout Thai, Kendra. Our favorites—Mee Krob and Pad Thai. Some sticky rice for the dogs, too. Come on over.”
And so we did.
WE’D BARELY BEGUN to bite into our Thai delights when the dogs began barking. They barreled out of Jeff’s kitchen and toward the front of the house. That’s when the doorbell rang.
“Who’s that?” I asked Jeff.
“You got me,” he responded as he hurried from the room to find out.
Hustling along the hardwood floor of the hall behind him, I caught up in a jiffy—just in time for Amanda to stride haughtily inside.
The good thing about that was that she apparently had ceded Jeff’s key back to him.
The bad thing was that she was
here.
And clearly unhappy.
Me, too.
She didn’t allow me the opportunity to say something profound and pointed.
“You two are supposed to be helping me,” she shouted. “Instead, everyone in the world is going to know I’m a murder suspect. You have to do something. Fast.”
“Calm down, will you?” Jeff chided, grabbing her shoulder clad in a soft, white sweater.
“I will not.” She slid her fiery gaze up his arm and into his face. He flushed and rapidly released her.
Far be it for me to suddenly step in as the voice of reason, but that’s what I did. “Please tell us what’s happened, Amanda.” For I could only assume from her impulsive anger and erratic behavior that something new had triggered it.
She glanced at her watch, then grimaced. “Tell you? I’ll
show
you.” She stalked down the step into Jeff’s sunken living room and made herself at home, sinking onto his sofa and aiming the remote toward his big-screen TV.
In a moment, the set was on, and she changed the channel.
Suddenly, the room was filled with a familiar too-glib voice, and the picture showed someone I never wanted to talk to again: Corina Carey.
“Tell me, Detective Noralles,” the abhorrent reporter was saying, “are you looking into any suspects in the murder of Leon Lucero besides his alleged stalking victim, Amanda Hubbard?”
I stood petrified by shock as Corina shoved the microphone away. The camera followed it to the equally familiar face of my own personal police nemesis, Ned Noralles. “I cannot comment on that at this time,” he said.
“Of course you can’t, Detective,” Corina responded in soft sarcasm as she drew the microphone back toward her own mouth. “But we will. This reporter has been conducting an investigation of her own, and I can say at this time that there are no other contenders for prime suspect as good as Ms. Hubbard. If it was her, was it self-defense or something else? Stay tuned, and we’ll let you know what we’ve found out.”
Chapter Sixteen
OKAY, SO CORINA’S words turned out to be more enticement than a herald of a show of substance. In fact, despite acres of innuendoes that she’d developed a slew of suspects yet Amanda remained best, her show mostly castigated the cops who refused to confirm that the cutting-edge reporter was on the right track.
Afterward, I turned to Amanda. By then, I’d somehow sunk onto the couch beside her, and Jeff was at her other side, as if somehow we’d tacitly agreed to flank her as fortification against what we viewed. The dogs lay protectively on the floor by our feet. Amanda’s sweater drooped over her stooped shoulders, and her blond hair strung limply around her sad face. Even so, she managed to look sorrowfully lovely.
Since I’d anticipated facing my ambivalence about Jeff again that evening, I’d come in loose jeans and a sweatshirt. Really sexy stuff.
Sigh.
“How did you know that was going to be on?” I asked Amanda once the blare of the follow-up commercials was muted.
“There’ve been teasers about it for hours,” she said, her big gray eyes filled with tears. “‘Death of a stalker. Who did it and why?’ ‘Who was Leon Lucero, and did he deserve to die?’ ‘Did the victim suddenly become the stalker?’ That kind of stuff. I could have screamed!”
“You did scream,” Jeff countered dryly. “The instant you walked in my door.” He’d dressed down similarly to me. Was he equally ambivalent? But even if his loose brown T-shirt and tight, threadbare jeans made a statement of indecision, he still managed to look yummy in them.
“What did you expect?” Amanda shot back snidely. “If you’d done your best private eye and security stuff in the first place, maybe Leon wouldn’t have kept on stalking me. Then I wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“Shove a sock in it, Amanda,” I snapped. “Jeff did help you find the resources you needed—like a lawyer to get the TRO, and another P.I. to work with you, and—”
“And you?” she said, standing to stare down at me. “You signed a contract promising to help me clear myself in Leon’s murder, and I’m still the main suspect. Even if the police have other people in mind, that TV show will make sure no one else in the world will believe someone else could have killed him.”
“I’m still working on my side of the bargain,” I said, also rising to face the frosty female. “But here you are at Jeff’s. And—”
“I only promised to stay away if you got me off the hook in Leon’s murder,” she spat.
“I want you to stay away anyhow,” Jeff said. He was on his feet by now, too, and at his six-foot altitude he seemed a lot more authoritative than either of us ladies. Odin, his Akita, stood at his side, as if seconding everything his master said.
Lexie sat beside me, looking a slight bit scared, obviously rendered uncertain by the vicious vibes circulating around the humans in this room.
“And if I don’t?” Amanda demanded.
“Maybe I can help the cops show you
did
do it,” he shot back.
She gasped and paled and looked so shocked that I considered illuminating a lightbulb from the hands she raised to ward off his awful words.
Good thing? He apparently seemed serious about averting further contact with Amanda.
Bad thing? Well, heck. Murder magnet that I am, I abhor seeing others accused of killings they didn’t commit. And despite how I despised Amanda, I still doubted she was guilty.
Even though Leon had been found dead in her house. And she’d been his main stalker subject at the time. And—
Okay, if I kept that up, I might convince myself she
had
done it.
Would that be such a bad thing?
At that precise second, I was too confused to say.
But I was determined to dig out the truth, whatever it was. And not because of our farce of a contract. I’d do it for
me
. To meet and beat the formidable challenge. Yet I wanted Amanda to stay out of my way.
Endeavoring to sound utterly reasonable, I sublimated my ongoing irritation and said, “I understand how upset that Corina Carey and her tabloidlike reporting can make anyone. I’ll make allowances for that, Amanda. I’ll even delve deeper into your case tomorrow and talk to some of the people I didn’t reach before. But enough’s enough. Get out of our faces right now, or forget any further assistance from either of us.”
I tossed a glance toward Jeff, who nodded his assent.
“Thanks, Kendra.” Her tone tingled with ice. “Give me a call about whatever you find, and if I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.” She stormed out without even looking again at Jeff, slamming the front door behind her.
Which should have made me feel great.
But it wasn’t just the fact that she’d narrowly missed catching poor Lexie’s muzzle in the door that instead made me steam. Maybe, like my pup, I was traumatized by the negative atmosphere in this abode.
Jeff, after staying silent for several seconds, said, “I already knew she could be a bitch. That’s why we got divorced in the first place. But blaming me—us—for not figuring out how to get her out of her own mess . . .”
“You said it,” I agreed. I suddenly felt exhausted. “Come on, Lexie. Let’s go home.”
Jeff stood in front of me, his large hands clasped on my shaking shoulders. “Please stay, Kendra.” His amazing blue eyes stared down into mine, sapping my resolve.
But after all the argument and emotion of the last hour, I needed space. Time to think. And perhaps a good solitary session of sipping something strong.
“I’m planning a big day of investigating on Amanda’s behalf tomorrow,” I told him. “I don’t want to be distracted by exhaustion from staying up too much tonight.” I did stretch up on my tiptoes and give him one hot and sexy kiss good night. Then I headed to the kitchen, retrieved Lexie’s leash, and left.
GOOD THING WE’D slept at home, I informed myself the next morning after the conversation Lexie and I had with Rachel and Beggar.
My pet-sitting assistant, full of excitement, notified me that her next long days required for her movie shoot would start in less than a week.
“Can you believe it, Kendra?” the waiflike late-teen trumpeted. “I have to visit the filming location in Canada and stay there for a few weeks, while the first scenes I’ll be in are shot. There’ll be more later, too. I don’t understand how they schedule things, but maybe I’ll learn on the job.”