Nothing to Fear But Ferrets Read online

  “Probably not,” I admitted as Charlotte and Yul formed a phalanx around their former guest. “But I promised Charlotte I’d try to help her learn what really happened.”

  She wore a different dressing gown from the one I’d seen her in the other day. Instead of peach with matching mules, this one was nearly diaphanous white, which again put me in mind of whether I’d missed one heck of an orgy.

  And then I recalled another, larger part of what had kept me from sleeping in the first place—Jeff. Good thing I’d hung out at my own place after all. Participation in an orgy with the nearest beautiful people would only have complicated my consideration of his offer even further. And after all, I hadn’t even been invited to that part of the party.

  “I do not want Charlotte or Yul to take any blame,” Philipe said. “Or the ferrets, for that matter.” I looked at him sharply, for his words and tone suggested he wouldn’t want them to take the blame for him. Or was that simply my interpretation of his nonnative English? He turned to look at his friends. “But that new deal Chad was working on, Charlotte, that he wished for you to join him in—it could have made you a lot more money than your staying away from him to keep your reality show winnings, right?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said frostily, looking down her perfect nose at Philipe. Which was hard to do, since he had her by at least half a foot. “I didn’t let him tell me about it.”

  “He told me,” Yul said. “Too speculative.” Wow, a big word for him. “Possibilities, yes. But no guarantees his deal would be better than Charlotte’s for another reality show. Who knew?”

  “Who indeed?” I queried. “And you described his ideas to Charlotte, I trust?”

  “Of course he did,” she replied.

  “And they were … ?” I prompted, curious.

  “Private,” Charlotte responded.

  Oh, well. “So who do you think killed Chad if it wasn’t Charlotte or Yul setting up the ferrets?” I asked, turning back to Philipe.

  He put his long, elegant fingers up to ward off any insinuations on my part. “Not me, of course,” he said.

  “Of course. But you knew him?”

  “Yes. He had approached me with his ideas, too.” His dark eyebrows rose. “They had possibilities—several different ones, of course, to let the producers choose, but all, he said, would lead to a different kind of reality show. And all would star me.”

  “Not Chad himself?”

  “I would draw a bigger audience, because I am more famous,” he said with a glorious smile. “Or at least I was, until he was killed in so interesting a manner.”

  Surely that wasn’t envy I heard. “What will happen to his ideas now?” I asked.

  He shrugged sexy shoulders in an expressive gesture that would make his fans swoon. “I don’t know. He fired me from his ideas before they got this far.”

  Ah-ha! He did have a motive for murder—maybe.

  “Did he get another singer involved?”

  “Sure did,” Yul cut in. “The guy was a bastard.”

  I didn’t deign to ask if he meant figuratively or literally. Philipe was working his way around Lexie and her leash, and I was fast losing my opportunity.

  “Are you still having security problems?” I blurted out.

  That stopped him. “What do you mean?”

  “I happen to know you hired a private investigator who specializes in security matters. Is everything all right?” Of course, I was taking a stab without having all the facts—just the sight of Pellera’s name on a file box at Jeff ’s that I hadn’t dared to peek into. Could have meant anything. Still …

  “Everything is fine,” Pellera retorted in a tone that contradicted his comment. “I will see you soon, Charlotte and Yul.” With that, he managed to disentangle himself and dash away—nearly into the path of bicyclist Lyle Urquard.

  Of course Lyle’s wheels slipped out from under him, and he slid on the street. Lexie and I dashed toward him, just in time to keep him from totally dumping off his cycle.

  When he was steadied, he slid off and thanked me, then hurried to the still-open front gate. “Hi,” he called to Charlotte and Yul. “Thanks again for inviting me to the party last night. I had a great time.” He reached Charlotte and said with a huge, jaw-stretching smile, “When’s the next one?”

  “Soon,” she replied, though she looked more glum than glad about it. “If we’re not arrested first. Thanks for trying, Kendra, but I think Lexie and you are barking up a lot of wrong trees.” She slid the corner of her mouth up as if in appreciation at her own lame jab at a joke, then said, “I’ll let you know about the next party, Lyle, if there is one. Come on, Yul. I want to get dressed.”

  And I needed to get my pet-sitting day started. I warned Charlotte that a contractor was coming to look at the Hummer damage. Amazingly, Ike Janus’s insurance company had finally returned a call and told me to expect an adjuster, since they needed an estimate.

  And then, with a few amenities hurled at Lyle, I bundled Lexie into the Beamer and we were off.

  FORTUNATELY, ONLY A few manageable messes awaited me despite my lateness. I left Lexie locked in the Beamer at each house, since combining her with my charges always took more time. Because it was November, with rain threatening even this early in the season, I didn’t have to find shade for her. As far as I could tell, the Los Angeles basin was all shade, thanks to the layer of low-level clouds shrouding it. The air was comfortably cool.

  As I cleaned, fed, walked, and chatted with my charges, I also kept my mind on my three most major dilemmas of the day—which I’d also stuck, in order, on one of my inevitable lists. Though I left the list in the car with Lexie, I’d updated it on my way while stopped at traffic lights, so its contents remained fresh in my memory.

  Could I solve Chad Chatsworth’s murder? My queries last night and this morning had seemed lame. Just because Charlotte was in an odd mood and had invited everyone she figured might be a suspect didn’t mean that all possible killers had made her guest list. But it had included everyone I could think of, too—each inserted on my jotted agenda for investigation.

  Except, of course, the ferrets. I didn’t know them by name, assuming they had names. I’d have to check with Yul.

  Which would also slip me an opening to talk to him further about his ferrets. I didn’t know all that Noralles did about Chad’s death, but how much could the little critters possibly have contributed to the act? I’d ask when I found Yul separate from Charlotte—a rare occurrence.

  “Okay,” I told Lexie as I slid into the Beamer and started the engine. “We’re making progress. Halfway through our visits, I think. Maybe we’ll have time to stop at Darryl’s later.” I slid us out of our parking space and onto the quiet residential street toward our next stop. My mind continued to maneuver around its issues du jour.

  My Jeff situation would continue this evening, since he was in town and so was I. I could no longer use studying as an excuse to keep clear of him, even if I wanted to. Which I didn’t. I had to face him and the quandary he’d stuck me in. I wouldn’t necessarily need to hand him an answer yet. But I did have to hang out with him with the question dangling in my mind, to see how I reacted. How he did, too. He could have changed his mind by now. It had been days since he’d blurted out his proposition. Maybe he’d already decided it was a blunder.

  As if he’d make it that easy for me.

  There was nothing I could do now about my ethics exam, so it hadn’t made it to the big three on my list. No, it had been jostled off by Jon Arlen and his digging dog, Jonesy.

  Buried treasure. Wow, what an exciting legal issue!

  Too bad I wasn’t, at this moment, a practicing attorney.

  On the other hand, nothing said one had to have an active law license to leap into some legal research—one of my favorite practices. I loved to perform research and craft clever arguments, argue them in court, and outclass the opposition. I only hoped my brain and tongue weren’t atrophied from disuse.


  Now that I wasn’t with the Marden firm any longer, my subscription to online legal research services was as dead as my former livelihood. I needed access to Lexis or West-law to extract legal precedent about real property law and buried treasure—better access than I could get on my own at this moment.

  It was Saturday. If I gained an entrée to the Marden offices, I was unlikely to meet up with anyone I wanted to avoid. “I’ll call Avvie,” I told Lexie as I pulled up to the next house—Py the python’s place. He wouldn’t mind my being another couple minutes late. He’d already ingested his mouse of the week. I was just stopping to say hi and make sure his habitat remained at comfortable temperatures for a being as cold-blooded as he.

  I used my cell to call Avvie’s home. I owed her a visit anyway, to meet her pig that I’d play with when she left town.

  “Oh, hi, Kendra,” she said.

  I confirmed that she’d be in town till next Tuesday, though I suggested I stop over earlier to learn my porcine duties.

  “Absolutely, but not today,” she told me. “I’m buried in the case that Bill and I will be doing depos on when we’re out of town. Tomorrow afternoon? I’ll introduce you then.”

  “Fine,” I said, then asked, “Are you heading for the office today?” I crossed my fingers, for that would be a fine opening for me to join her and log on to the legal websites.

  “No, I’m working at home.”

  I decided to dump my problem on her anyway—in general, since I had no intention of even hinting about my specific treasure-bound legal issue. I explained I’d found a nonlegal way to help a friend of Darryl’s out of a dilemma, and since then others had asked for my assistance. “There’s a problem that contains legal issues. I won’t advise the guy, of course, but I’d like to learn the law myself so I can steer him to the right attorney if he needs it. That means I have to get in some computer research time. Is there any way you can get me hooked up—preferably today?” I could pay by the search for an online legal research service, but I’d fare better financially by using a law firm’s rate.

  A pause as she pondered. Was she thinking of a way to let me down easily since she needed my pet-sitting services? But no, when Avvie finally spoke, she had a solution.

  “I’d bring you into the office today if I could, but I can’t. But I visited Borden Yurick’s new place yesterday to discuss a couple of matters that he’s taking over.”

  She didn’t sound happy about it, but she’d already explained that the former Marden partner had had the temerity—obviously because his brain was mush after his mental breakdown—not only to leave his former firm but to take his clients with him.

  “He’s leasing a suite in Encino. You’re in the Valley, aren’t you? I’ll give you his number. You can ask if he’ll let you use his online service. In fact, maybe you can work out using one of his offices and other facilities in exchange for doing work for him when you have your license back. At least that way he’ll have someone competent looking over his shoulder.”

  Hmmm. Avvie might have something there. The exchange, not the competency. I wasn’t about to brand Borden without checking his mental state for myself. Though as to the rest … “Isn’t he soured on everyone from the old firm?” I asked. “He might not even want to see me, since I’m not handing over files or information.”

  “He specifically asked about you when I was there,” Avvie said. “It won’t hurt to approach him.”

  Assuming he was even in on a Saturday. On the other hand, since he was just opening a new office, maybe he’d be about. I got his phone number from Avvie, thanked her, and set up a time to pop in at her place the next afternoon to meet Pansy.

  And then I called Borden.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I WAS DELIGHTED with Borden’s new digs.

  Whereas the Marden offices were the stuff of stuffy big-firm lawyers, Borden’s was a former single-story restaurant in a trendy area of Encino, on Ventura Boulevard. Its nearly empty parking lot was as shady as the rest of L.A. that day, plus a large picture window overlooked it from the building. It seemed safe enough to leave Lexie in the Beamer, though she obviously wasn’t in love with the idea. In fact, if she’d spoken English, I suspected she’d have told me off in no uncertain terms for leaving her in the car so much that day.

  As it was, she simply ignored my command to stay, and I had to scramble from the car carefully so as not to let her loose. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’ll try not to be too long.” Which might be hard if Borden was kind enough to let me sponge off his online research service. There was a lot I wanted to look up.

  But it all didn’t need to be done today. I’d just have to gauge how amenable Borden might be to seeing more of me.

  In the meantime, Lexie announced her displeasure at being left alone by barking after me as I followed the path from parking lot to entrance. I sighed, wishing I could reason with her, but I fully forgave her temper. I’d make it up to her later, with a nice long walk, just her and me.

  And maybe her best friend, Odin, and my biggest conundrum, Jeff … ?

  On the street side, no big sign designated the eatery’s name, but a simple plaque near the door stated, OFFICES OF BORDEN YURICK, ATTORNEY AT LAW. Opening the portal, I popped in.

  I gathered that the office’s reception area was once where the restaurant’s hostess had awaited patrons. It was part of a larger open room, with a door to the right that had led to the bar—the drinking kind, not a lawyers’ group. From here I saw a long counter of wood but no booze behind it. No aroma of spilled liquor or cooking food, either. A hint of cologne, though, wafted from behind the reception desk, where a perky young person sat up straight and smiled at me. “Can I help you?” she sang.

  “My name is Kendra—”

  “Ballantyne!” she cut me off with a squeal. “Bordon said you were coming. It’s so nice to meet you.” She shot around her desk and stuck out a hand tipped in red nails that looked razor sharp. The auburn curls surrounding her face didn’t stop bouncing until she did.

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling foolishly at a loss. “What’s your name?”

  “Mignon. As in filet.” She giggled, rolling dark-lined blue eyes as if this was a joke as old as she was—which couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. “It means ‘dainty’ in French, which is kind of silly, don’t you think?”

  I had to agree, for though she wasn’t exactly overweight, certain parts of her were curvy enough beneath her frilly white shirt and pencil skirt to bring to mind someone not dainty but zaftig, a term I heard sometimes from Yiddish-speaking cronies. Meaning “built.”

  “Anyway, it’s so great to meet you,” she said again. “I mean, I saw you in the news when you were all over it because of those murders you supposedly committed, and then you proved who really did it! And today Borden said you were coming and that you used to work with him and—”

  “Down, Mignon,” commanded a soft voice from somewhere behind her. I looked over her shoulder to see Borden Yurick coming toward us from what had once been the dining room. I’d been used to seeing him in suit coat or sweater, and always with a tie. Now, he was clad in one of those soft-looking Hawaiian shirts where the material is turned inside out, and beneath it he wore white pants. All he needed was a lei around his scrawny neck to complete the effect. “Kendra. Welcome.”

  I’d pondered how to approach an aging man who’d recently had a mental breakdown. Supposedly. I hadn’t really been able to learn whether that was solely a fabrication of his former Marden partners to explain his defection. I figured I’d treat him as I always had—professionally polite.

  Which was soon squeezed out of me when he threw his arms around me and constricted me in a heartier hug than anything Charlotte—or even Py the python—had ever tried on me.

  “Good to see you, my dear,” he said, stepping back. His smile was as sweet and lopsided as ever, and was his third most prominent feature, after old-fashioned large-framed bifocals beneath a huge shock of silvery hair. “Come
into my office. Mignon, please get us some coffee, would you?”

  “Right away, Borden,” she chirped.

  He preceded me through the former dining room, which was now refitted with an assortment of empty cubicles on the inside, with offices framed in as-yet unfinished wood toward the walls. I heard noises from inside a couple and figured they were occupied.

  “I’m still remodeling,” Borden remarked unnecessarily. His office was at the end, and its walls were well established, lined with oak paneling. His desk was an antique, his client chairs an eclectic assortment probably bought with the restaurant building. “Take your pick,” he told me as he took his own place behind his desk. “So what have you been up to?” he asked. “Besides what I read in the papers.”

  “Depending on which papers you read,” I told him, “you probably have a pretty good idea.” He hadn’t asked why when I’d asked to see him in our phone call earlier, so I decided to lead into it. “You haven’t been around the Marden offices for a while, so you might not have known when I was accused of turning over a strategy memo to the other side in some litigation. That led to the suspension of my law license. I took up pet-sitting to earn some money while figuring out what to do next, and really liked it. I’m still doing it, though I just took the MPRE yesterday, the last step in getting my license reinstated.”

  “And you’re not going to mention all those murder victims you keep stumbling over?”

  “No,” I said. “Sounds as if you heard about them anyhow.”

  He laughed. “At least my problems weren’t made public,” he said. “And no, before you ask, I didn’t really have a mental breakdown. It was something my esteemed colleagues made up to explain why I was cruising around the South Pacific when there were so many clients clamoring for my attention at home.” He held up a thin, bony hand. “Oh, I worried about them, all right, when I thought about who was going to be taking care of their legal matters in my absence. Bill Sergement.” He grimaced. “Royal Marden.” His grimace grew uglier as he shuddered. And then he grinned again. “I was burned out. I needed some time to get my head on straight. Isn’t that the current phrase?”