Nothing to Fear But Ferrets Read online

  With this chic crowd, that was a definite deterrent.

  Were the ferrets again in that room? If so, since Charlotte was entertaining, they were hopefully confined. But had they been struck ugly? Though I’d dickered with Darryl about them, they’d struck me as fairly cute, even if their presence was anathema in this state.

  On Tilla’s other side, Lyle Urquard sat speaking with someone else, his back toward us. I hardly recognized my athletic neighbor without his bicycle and helmet. Or his usual Spandex, for tonight he wore an ordinary white shirt and gray slacks that bulged in front where his belly lay beneath. His sandy brown hair didn’t look the least bit sweaty, either.

  Ike Janus wasn’t there or I’d have told my take-charge bakery-owner neighbor that I hadn’t heard from his insurance adjuster that day.

  As I sipped Chablis, I held the plastic glass with my left hand. Tilla had control of my right arm, screeching softly into my ear with pleasure each time someone connected with Charlotte’s show sashayed in.

  “Oh, heavens, that’s Philipe Pellera,” Tilla shrilled as a tall, slender guy with dark hair and darker features shimmied into the room, his shiny black trousers tighter than his neon red shirt. I recognized him myself from my occasional forays into music video TV stations. His singing voice was sensational, his gyrations the stuff of sensual legends. He was the latest Latin singing sensation, and with the way he humped his hips, his music videos should have been rated NC-17. Those bumps and grinds were dangerous.

  I also remembered having seen a box of client files with Pellera’s name on them in Jeff Hubbard’s house, at a time I felt ethically encumbered from sneaking a peek. Now, seeing that sex symbol in piquant person, my curiosity was piqued even more—why had he needed an expert P.I.’s services?

  Pellera took a seat on the couch, surrounded by sycophants who made room for him.

  Before I’d recovered from my vision of Latin sensuality, Tilla gushed again. “That’s Sven Broman.” She pointed to a tall blond Viking in a tan sportcoat. “He was the next-to-last guy, the one Charlotte dumped for Chad Chatsworth. Chad was the winner, if you could call him that, since at the end of the final show, Charlotte took the money and gave Chad the boot.”

  Oh, really? Was that the Chad I’d met?

  Earlier, most others who lived on our street had rolled their eyes as Tilla gossiped away, except for Lyle, and even he stayed occupied elsewhere. I’d gathered from some of their comments that they’d attended previous parties of Charlotte’s where Tilla had identified reality show celebrities to the oblivious and uncaring, ad nauseum. None wanted to hear it anymore, even Tilla’s husband, Hal. Especially Tilla’s husband, Hal, who stood in a corner speaking with Phil Ashler.

  Having assiduously avoided Charlotte’s soirees before, I was a new body for Tilla to bombard with info I found less than fascinating. I’d been considering a courteous way to slip out of her grasp. Till now. Tilla had just hit on some stuff that snagged my interest. “How much money did she get?” I asked.

  “A million,” she replied, eyes huge in her drink-pinkened pudgy face. “And that’s not all. Part of the prize was that she’d help with the producer’s next reality show. Brainstorm it, pick candidates, even get paid for it. I mean, what woman could resist that?”

  “Right,” I agreed. Okay, she’d succeeded in snaring my attention. For one thing, I now knew which kind of reality show Charlotte had been on.

  Tilla pushed her big moist lips closer to my ear. I stiffened as she said, “That Yul is one gorgeous guy, isn’t he? I mean, Charlotte didn’t do bad, dumping Chad and winding up with all this and Yul, too.” She gestured with her empty glass around the glitz-and glamour-filled room.

  “Maybe she’s also got Chad,” I said.

  “No way!” Tilla sounded scandalized. “To prevent someone in Charlotte’s position from getting it all—the guy and the money—it’s a condition of her keeping the prize that she never see Chad again.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “Then why … ? Never mind.” I stifled a yawn. Chad’s visit wasn’t my business, and Tilla’s dose of reality programming was now enough to last me a lifetime. “You know, I’m a little tired. I think I’ll head to my place.”

  “Well … Okay.” Tilla stood when I did, blinking as she scanned the room for my replacement. The obvious one would be Lyle, but he was slipping out the door, followed by Hal and Phil.

  I guessed where they all headed: the kitchen, which served as the makeshift bar. I joined them, hoping to find my host and hostess to make my farewells. They weren’t there.

  That gave me a good excuse to meander about my house, hunting for them. And if I happened to spot something not being taken care of well, well … I already had to put them on notice to get rid of the ferrets. Adding more to it would be no trouble.

  And maybe I’d see that Chad again, too. I was curious why he was there.

  I went upstairs to case the bedrooms. Everything looked fine—except that the tasteless decorating had expanded to the second floor.

  I headed back downstairs and along the hall between the living room and kitchen.

  As I reached the door decorated with police-type tape and dire warnings, I heard voices. Startled, I stood still. So did the few other guests who traversed the hall with me.

  “Someone’s getting ugly,” commented a pretty starlet-sort who kept going.

  “Not me,” said the blond Viking whom Tilla had ID’d as the reality also-ran Sven Broman. He followed the star.

  My neighbors, just returning from the kitchen, glanced toward the closed door. Before any of us said anything snappy, the door banged open. Charlotte burst through it backward, but she continued staring into the room.

  “Get out, Chad,” she screamed. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing by coming here, but I want you gone.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Get your lapdog away from me,” shouted a male voice from inside the den. Lapdog? At least he wasn’t howling about ferrets.

  “I’ll get away when you’re out of here!” I recognized that voice, too, though the bellow and the high number of words in one sentence were unusual. Yul.

  The Chad I’d strode in with erupted from the room. He plowed through the interested crowd in the crowded hall—me among them—with no sign of recognition on his furious face. “This isn’t over, Charlotte. Like it or not, you’ll see me again.” He shouldered his way into the kitchen, and I heard the outside door slam.

  Charlotte’s usually perky face was pasty, and her white-toothed grin was as false as her measurements probably were. “We have something else to celebrate now, everyone,” she said a lot too brightly. “Chad’s gone.”

  I didn’t know until a few days later how prophetic those words would be.

  I WAS EXHAUSTED that night, so sleepy that I dropped off fast despite the din still pealing from next door.

  The following morning, though, I woke up early and took Lexie for her walk. Though a couple years old, she was full of puppy energy, and I figured she was primed for more attention than a few fast minutes. I took her along on my rounds. It was Saturday, after all. A lighter day than the norm, since some of my professional pet care involved dog walking on days my human clients were at work. Unfortunately, Jeff was on a stakeout for one of his human clients that weekend, so we weren’t getting together.

  Same thing on Sunday—Lexie assisting me, Jeff unavailable, me studying for the ethics exam in my spare time. I also researched ferrets on the Internet. Interesting creatures. A lot of websites suggested people adored them as pets. Their problem, though, was that if they escaped into the wild, they allegedly enjoyed endangered bird species as lunch. Hence, their illegality in California. Why not other states? Good question.

  The following day was Monday. Lexie and I had had such an enjoyable weekend, I asked her after our own early walk, “Do you want to come with me again today?”

  Her black-and-white long-haired tail wagged eloquently as she stood on her hind legs and leaned h
er furry white paws on my shins. I knew that if she could speak English, her response would be a resounding, “Yes!” So, obeying as if she were the alpha of our pack, I hustled her downstairs and into my Beamer as I prepared to head off.

  My Beamer was a leftover from my days as a successful litigator. I’d treated myself to it from the bonus I’d received after winning my first case for Marden, Sergement and Yurick, the law firm where I’d worked. The case that my mentor and then-lover Bill Sergement, whom I not-so-fondly referred to as “Drill Sergeant,” had all but turned his back on as a big loser. Though we hadn’t been lovers for a long time before I left the firm, Bill had turned his back on me when I’d been accused of handing a confidential memo to the other side in a more recent important case.

  As I mentioned before, my usual penchant was to choose lovers of the loser persuasion.

  In any event, despite some later unanticipated repercussions, the good part of that case almost ten years ago had been my winning my first courtroom combat, followed by the acquisition of the car that had stayed by my side despite my recent bankruptcy. And after its theft and wreck a few months ago, I’d had it restored to near-perfection.

  Now, Lexie and I made my pet-sitting rounds of the day. I even dropped her with Darryl when I got to his neighborhood, so she could spend a few hours fraternizing with friends of the canine kind.

  And then we headed back to our own digs.

  As soon as we exited the Beamer, Lexie started acting excited. Though leashed, she leapt around similarly to the way she had a couple of days ago when the Hummer had hit the house, barking and tugging and behaving in general as if something significant was on her mind.

  And a Cavalier with something on her mind was a dog to be heeded.

  “What is it, Lexie?” I asked, half expecting to hear another rumbling engine of a runaway vehicle on our street.

  But other than distant traffic, the drone of an aircraft overhead, and a few birds, I heard nothing.

  Lexie tugged me toward the back door of the big house.

  “Just a sec,” I said. I pulled her toward the garage, and peeked in a window. Neither Charlotte’s nor Yul’s car was there.

  I headed for the front door, Lexie leading me, and rang the bell. Waited for a while, but no one answered.

  Lexie’s nose, in the air, kept sniffing noisily till she stood up on hind legs and scratched at the door.

  “Lexie, off!” I commanded, not wanting her little doggy nails to chink gouges into my cherished oak front door.

  They didn’t have time to, for that same door swung open with no one behind it. I hadn’t noticed that it was ajar.

  “That’s weird,” I told my canine, who had tautened her leash as she lunged inside.

  Lexie barked, straining on her nylon leash so strongly that I decided to let her lead while I followed. She headed through the entry, past the living room, and down the hall toward the closed-off den. The KEEP OUT tape now dangled down from one side. The door was shut, and Lexie lit into this one, too, with her burrowing paws. It didn’t open for her.

  It did for me, once I turned the knob.

  And stopped with a gasp.

  The ferrets were loose from their cage, and the long little varmints scrambled to stay out of the growling Lexie’s way.

  The stench was sickening. And in the middle of the room, Friday night’s uninvited guest, the hunky, genial, and temperamental Chad Chatsworth, lay on his stomach, head turned toward the side. His clothes were in shreds, and so was he. Blood was spattered everywhere. Was he dead?

  “Chad?” I whispered, crouching on the floor to find out.

  I didn’t sense a shred of a pulse.

  But I did see a lot of what looked like small dog food chunks scattered all over Chad and the floor—and a bunch of blood puddled around Chad’s throat.

  It was 911 time. Déjà vu all over again, for Chad’s wasn’t the first body I’d stumbled upon in the last several months. But I was certain that the culprit in those cases was incarcerated.

  And it appeared, since Charlotte and Yul weren’t home, that the culprits in this case might have escaped from their wire prison before committing this direst of crimes.

  Had Chad been their lunch?

  Chapter Six

  I CALLED 911 and Jeff, in that order. I had a feeling I might need my own private private investigator. Unfortunately, I got Jeff ’s voice mail, so I left a veiled message. I didn’t exactly want to blurt out over one unsecure cell phone to another that I’d just discovered a dead body—in my own house this time.

  After blocking the barking Lexie in the kitchen, I tried, briefly, to coax the ferrets back into their cage—carefully keeping far from their teeth, as poor Chad apparently hadn’t.

  It was like trying to talk water into meandering up a mountainside. “Not bloody likely,” the small, furry fellows screeched at me from beneath den furniture that was already partly mangled from the Hummer incident. Or at least I assumed that was what they were saying. It didn’t help me to stay calm and convincing to see them speckled with Chad’s blood.

  Nor to have Chad’s obviously deceased cadaver lying on the floor not far from me. And by doing anything at all about the ferrets, I was contaminating a crime scene, so I quickly decided to leave them alone.

  I supposed that if I’d spoken ferret, or they understood English, I’d have explained the legal system to them. No matter how bad things looked, they were entitled to a good defense.

  Weren’t they?

  I was reminded of a short story I’d read in my youth, “Sredni Vashtar,” by Saki, the pseudonym of H. H. Munro. In it, a young boy had hated his guardian and supposedly sicced his surreptitious pet ferret on her, killing her.

  I felt just terrible for Chad. No matter what the beef among Charlotte, Yul, and him, he’d seemed nice to me—not to mention alive.

  I soon heard a rapping from the direction of the open front door. “Police,” someone shouted. I headed that direction to greet them. It was a couple of patrol officers—a male and female this time—who’d followed the usual protocol of answering a call about a potential crime. When I showed them the body, they agreed a crime had been committed and called for backup.

  Why wasn’t I surprised, a while later, to see that the head of the detective detail at my front door was my old nemesis Detective Ned Noralles?

  Maybe it was because he was a top-rung homicide detective, and this was definitely the kind of case that rang his chimes.

  The hell of it was, despite my complete exoneration last time, Noralles didn’t look surprised to see me, either. “Hello, Ms. Ballantyne. I received a call about a possible homicide here. Would you know anything about that?”

  “I’d know about the homicide, Detective,” I told him. “But not how the victim got that way.”

  “Of course,” he said in a voice as smooth as his brown tweed suit. Detective Noralles was one good-looking African-American. He was also one good, determined homicide detective who clearly refused to let any case grow cold. He’d certainly kept the heat on me before, when he’d tried hard to prove I’d killed two of my favorite pet-sitting clients. He’d seemed a good sport afterward, when I’d not only proven my innocence but handed him a real, live, guilty suspect.

  Maybe I would this time, too. Or rather, I’d let him go scrounge on the floor for the ferrets.

  As I showed him and the two other detectives with him down the hall to the area already under scrutiny by the patrol cops, he said, “Care to tell me what you’re doing in this house? Does it belong to another of your endangered pet-sitting customers?”

  “No,” I retorted. “It belongs to me.”

  That shut him up long enough for me to lead him to the discombobulated den.

  “Hey, Detective,” said the female cop from the patrol pair who’d first taken charge of the site. “Looks like the victim might have been chewed to death.”

  “Chewed? By what?”

  “These little critters.” Apparently the cops wer
e cagier than I’d been, for they’d managed to round up the ferrets and deposit them back in their cage. I wasn’t permitted to put a toe into the room, so I peered in from outside the door.

  “What are they?” Noralles asked me.

  “Ferrets,” I responded with a sigh. His dark brown eyes glittered much too cheerfully, so I beat him to the punch-line. “Yes, I know they’re illegal to keep as pets in California. They’re not mine. They’re my tenants’, and I’ve already put them on verbal notice to get rid of them.”

  I’d hoped they’d have time to do it in an orderly manner, find the ferrets a good out-of-state home. I had nothing personal against ferrets, and I’d take a lot of animals over people as friends any day.

  But now …

  “You’re the pet expert,” Noralles said. “Care to tell me whether ferrets are outlawed because they’re considered dangerous?”

  “To endangered species,” I said.

  “Not people?”

  “I don’t think so.” No website had suggested “Sredni Vashtar” was a true story, and I didn’t mention it.

  Noralles glanced back into the room, where police took photos and placed little numbers down to show the spots where they’d removed and bagged potential evidence. “Looks like these weasels may have been dangerous, although … Is the victim one of your tenants?”

  “No.” I decided to revert to what I’d learned as a litigator: When you answer a question, never volunteer information. It only leads to more questions.

  “Do you know the victim?” His tone was a touch more severe, as if he’d figured what I was up to.

  “Not really.”

  “Then do you know who he is?” exploded Noralles, with no attempt now to keep his cool.

  “Yes.”

  “Ms. Ballantyne,” he said through gritted teeth, “since this is your house, do you know of somewhere in it where we can go to talk? No, let me rephrase that.” He obviously knew that my answer would have been a single-syllable affirmative. “Let’s go somewhere where we can discuss this situation.”