Where Kitty was right at that most difficult moment was entering Interstate 5 in San Diego. Where she was heading was back home. What she needed were two hands free to grip the steering wheel. What she didn’t need was a call on her cell phone. Now of all times. This of all people.
“How did you get this number?” she shouted into the phone, ignoring his question. A trucker shot past her and the Volvo shook. There was a giggle at the other end of the line.
“A little bird told me,” Det. Young said. “And you haven’t answered my first question.”
“A little bird? How did you know about the bird?”
“What bird? Where are you?”
“San Diego. Now is there a reason for this call or are you simply trying to get me killed trying to merge with seventy-mile-an-hour traffic while shooting the breeze with you?”
“Boy, you’re pretty snappy today. And on your day off,” Young said. “Not getting enough sleep?”
“How do you know this is my day off?”
“So what are you doing in San Diego?”
Kitty stared at the phone then practically stuck it in her mouth as she settled into the slow lane. “What? Are you afraid I may be making a break for the Mexican border, detective? Pet chef escapes justice in Tijuana?”
“Are you done?” He waited and since she said nothing he pushed ahead. “Actually, the reason I was calling was to invite you on our second date. But it might not work out now. I mean, if you’re all the way down in—”
Her scream pierced his ear. “Excuse me?! Second date? When exactly was our first date?”
“Hey, what do you mean? I mean, that really hurts. I went with you to visit your sick client. If that doesn’t qualify as a first date, I don’t know what does. I mean, I did that totally for you—how thoughtful and modern can a guy get?”
“My sick . . ?” Kitty’s head was throbbing. If only she had an aspirin. She ground her fist into her temple, it was the next best thing. “You mean Mr. Cookie?”
“Yeah, that’s the guy.”
There was silence at her end.
“So? What do you think? What time will you get back? We can meet at your apartment, or better still, I know a great little place at the edge of Beverly Hills.” He named a place on Little Santa Monica Boulevard that was popular with the locals. It was also one of the cheapest. “You could meet me there.” Young looked at his watch. “In two hours?”
Kitty had to unclench her jawbones to manage an answer. If she had been any angrier, it would have taken the Jaws of Life to unlock them.
Oh, she’d meet him there all right. And she’d give Jack Young a piece of her mind that he would never forget.
She had to park a block away and even then had to squeeze into a parking space foreshortened by the cars sticking out in front and in back. Not to mention that parallel parking was not one of her best talents. She ignored the parking meter and headed to Augy’s Restaurant.
Kitty blundered past a server balancing a loaded tray. “Excuse me,” she uttered. She spotted her quarry seated at a small table near the window. The detective was wearing his brown suit again and apparently no one had told the man to stop wearing black loafers with brown clothes. To make matters worse, he’d chosen white socks. He was reading the newspaper and didn’t see her coming.
“You have a lot of nerve!” she began loudly. “First that nonsense the other day telling me how you are going to marry me and calling me up and talking like we’re going to have a second date.” Her face was purplish and her cheeks bulged. “When you know very well we’ve never had a first date.” She was shaking her head and her body followed along as she bounded on the soles of her feet. “Like I would ever go out with you—”
“Hi, Kitty. Great to see you again, too.” He looked up and he was smiling.
“There is absolutely nothing funny about this. And I want you to know that I find your behavior despicable.” She ignored the stares of the other patrons and the ugly glare of the staff.
Det. Young slowly laid down the sports section, rummaged around in the thick pile of paper on the table, dug up the front page and held it up. “Seen the paper today?”
“Are you out of your mind?” She was clearly flabbergasted. Her eyes glanced at the paper. “Haven’t you even heard anything that—” What the? “—I—” Mrs. Randall? Dead? It couldn’t be! “—said?”
Kitty’s shoulders slumped. She looked at the detective for answers.
He rose and pulled out the chair opposite his. “Have a seat.” He pushed her up to the table. “I’ll order us some drinks. How about a Mimosa? I hear it’s the specialty here.”
Kitty merely nodded. The drinks arrived. She raised her glass and sipped slowly. It seemed to carry a subtle hint of cranberry in addition to the orange juice. She’d scanned the front page that Det. Young had laid before her. He watched her in silence.
Finally, she looked up at him. “Is this what this was all about? The phone call? The second date?”
He looked back at her as if she was speaking Martian.
“It was all a trick, wasn’t it? You only wanted to question me about Mrs. Randall’s death.” She pushed back her chair. “Do you think I killed her, too?”
The manager rushed over. “Is everything all right?” He looked about nervously.
“Yes, fine.” Det. Young assured the manager it was nothing and he left.
Kitty fumed. “You’re sick, you know that?”
“Are you done?”
She glared.
“Fine. Then you can listen for a change. I asked you here because I really did want to see you again.”
“Sure, so you can lock me up. Tell me, will they give you a shiny medal for your shirt?”
“I thought you were going to let me talk?”
Kitty drummed the table with her fingers.
“I wanted to see you—” He appeared to fumble for the word. “Socially. The rest is mere coincidence. I read about Lucille Randall’s death in the paper just like you did.”
Kitty felt herself softening. “You mean, you only found about it now yourself?”
“Well, no. I read about it this morning. I put in a call to the Beverly Hills Police Department and inspected the scene.”
“So this is an interrogation.”
He swirled his drink. “I guess it was stupid. I thought I could kill two birds with one stone as they say. See you again, socially, and ask you about Lucille Randall’s murder.”
Kitty laughed out loud. “I don’t believe you.” She was shaking her head. “So this is like a combination date and third degree interrogation? Clever. And charming. You must be quite popular with the ladies, detective.”
“It’s Jack, remember?” He tugged at his skinny brown tie. “And I’ve done just fine, thank you.”
“I’ll bet.” Kitty folded her arms. “Are we done here?”
“Look,” he leaned across the table, “I’m sorry. It was a dumb idea.” He cleared his throat. “I really am sorry. How about if we order some lunch and start over?”
Kitty winced. This did not sound like such a good idea.
“Please?” He picked up the newspaper and tossed it on the floor. “We don’t even have to talk about the investigation or police business or anything.”
“So what do we do? Sit and stare at one another? This isn’t going to work. We have nothing in common and absolutely nothing to talk about.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Young smiled. “I know. We can talk about pets. Let’s take dog food, for instance. I’ve been buying Libby the Alpo. But Walmart’s got an unbeatable price on Ole Roy.”
“Would you like it if you belonged to someone and they fed you solely out of cans?”
The detective shrugged. “I don’t think I’d mind. Sure, why not? Plenty of good food comes in cans.”
“Name two.”
Young scratched an ear. “Spaghetti, soup.”
“Oh, brother.”
His eyes lit up. “Beef stew. I love beef stew. Ever have Dinty Moore’s?” He picked up the menu. “I wonder if they’ve got that here.”
Kitty watched the detective as he read the menu. Though she’d only had a slice of toast and a glass of milk for breakfast, she had little appetite. “Tell me what happened to Mrs. Randall, Jack,” she said softly.
He lowered his menu and looked into her eyes. “There isn’t a whole lot to tell yet. Her husband came home early this morning and found her dead on the floor of the study.”
“He was gone all night? Isn’t that odd? Could he have killed her himself?” Henry Randall was such a serene and soft-spoken man generally. She really couldn’t imagine him strangling his wife. But one never knew. The mere thought sent shivers up her spine.
“No, he’s in the clear. He was out of town on business and caught the redeye back. Tons of witnesses can place him in Spokane. He’s opening up a new store there.”
This was good news. “And there are no clues?”
He shook his head. “And no witnesses.”
“What about Gil?”
“Who?”
“The houseman.”
“Oh, him. He was off for the evening.”
“That’s right,” replied Kitty. “I remember Mrs. Randall telling me that.”
“When did you see her last?”
“Yesterday evening when I took Mr. Cookie his dinner.”
“How’s the cat doing?”
“Much better.” And now Mrs. Randall was dead. “I don’t know if this will be of any help, but Mrs. Randall was holding a séance last night at her home.”
Young chuckled. “A séance? Like with crystal balls and incense?”
“I guess.”
“So she had guests. Do you have any names?”
“No.” Kitty shook her head. “Wait. The clairvoyant or spiritualist or whatever—Mrs. Randall told me her name.” Kitty closed her eyes and thought. “Madame Zouzou.” She opened her eyes. “Yes, that was it.”
Young twisted his lower lip. “Hmmm, the police will want to have a word with her. Not that it’s likely that Lucille Randall got strangled by a ghost. . .”
This was the opening Kitty had hoped for. “Actually. . .”
“Don’t tell me you believe in ghosts?” He was smirking.
“Of course not.” Kitty snatched up her menu and studied her choices. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
His answer came quickly and firmly. “No. I did have a great-aunt once who used to tell ghost stories. Some of them were real wild. This was back in the Ozarks where I grew up. But she’s gone now.”
“What happened to her?”
“She burned down her farm house one day because she was sure it was haunted. They locked her up after that in an assisted care facility and one day she died.”
“I’ve heard that the Wright house is haunted.” Kitty ordered the artichoke pizza. Young ordered the same.
“What’s the Wright house?”
“That’s the house Mr. Evan owned. It’s known as the Wright house.”
“Why’s that?”
Kitty explained as best she could.
“And you think that all of this—” He waved his fork around in the air. “—Everything weird that’s been going on is related to this vortex of evil or something?”
“You said it yourself, Jack. Weird things have been happening. What if it is somehow related to some sort of odd and malevolent supernatural manifestation?”
The detective laughed. To Kitty it sounded like false bravado. Maybe he was only trying to frighten off any ghosts that might be listening in.
“Come on,” he chided. “This is nutty. Rich Evan was poisoned. Lucille Randall was strangled. They were murdered by flesh and blood people, human beings,” he said with emphasis. “Not by spooks.”
“But—”
“Besides,” he went on, “Mrs. Randall was not murdered in the Wright house. She was killed in her own home. Are you forgetting that?”
Kitty shook her head no.
“And all we have to do is find the motives behind their murders. Find the motives, find the killers. It’s that simple, Kitty. Trust me.”
“If it’s so simple, why haven’t the police found the motive behind even Mr. Evan’s murder yet?”
Young snapped off the end of a pizza slice and chewed hard. “Money, sex, jealousy, insanity maybe,” he rattled off. “Those are your typical motives. All we’ve got to do is figure out which applies.”
“Okay, let’s take money, for instance. I heard Mr. Evan had no children.”
“That appears to be the case.”
“So how about family?”
Young shook his head and polished off his lunch, washing it down with ice water. He dabbed his lips with a paper napkin. “You gonna finish that?” he asked, eying a roll on the edge of her plate.
She pushed it his way. She watched him shovel it into his mouth.
He gobbled it up and wiped his mouth once again. “Sorry,” he apologized, “I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
Kitty rolled her eyes. This guy was too much trouble. “I was asking if Rich Evan had any family.”
“Right. Nope.”
“None?”
“Not a soul. Rich Evan was an orphan. Born in England, raised by a couple who’d adopted him at birth.”
“So there’s them—the couple who’d adopted him. Even though Mr. Evan was still legally married to Angela Evan, wouldn’t they also be entitled to a share of his estate?” And Rich Evan had to be worth millions.
Young was shaking his head again. “Both dead. Rich Evan had no other next-of-kin.”
“So everything goes to Angela Evan. . .”
“Maybe. But it’s all pretty messy legal-wise. Rich and Angela had been separated for a year and were in the process of getting a divorce.”
“She says they were hoping to reconcile.”
“That’s not what Rich Evan’s divorce attorney says. He also says Rich and Angela had a prenup.”
Kitty nodded. “That makes sense. I heard he’d made the same arrangement with his prior wife, Tracy. She got something like a million dollars for each year they stayed married.”
Young whistled. “Not a bad deal. I think I could put up with just about anyone for a year and a million dollar payoff.”
“There must be some other suspects. . .”
“Besides you, you mean?” He grinned. “Sorry, only joking. There are all sorts of suspects. Ex-wives, business associates, like Fang Danson. Drug dealers. The world is full of suspects. Then again, maybe he only accidently ate the dog’s food.”
“Still, someone had to put the poison in Benny’s breakfast. Maybe it was the housekeeper. She certainly had the most access.”
“What’s her motive? He wouldn’t give her a raise? And was Consuelo out to kill him or warn him by killing his dog?”
“It could have been either. She didn’t seem overly fond of her employer. Mr. Evan had promised to help Consuelo’s brother and father come into the country, so she claims. And it seems he reneged on this. So she goes nuts and kills him or intended to kill Benny to hurt him like she believes he has hurt her—”
Young shrugged. “We’ll check it out. It seems to me you know too much.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means stop snooping around and leave the police work to the police.”
“If I do that, I just might end up in jail.”
“I won’t kid you, Kitty. The D.A. would love to pin a murder case on you. But there are some loose ends. Like the fact that you have no apparent motive. And this Barbados nut appears not to be so easy to come by as well. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to kill Rich Evan or his dog. Either way, we’re checking every lead out.”
“Fang Danson claims Mr. Evan called him on the morning of his death and Mr. Evan boasted he had gotten lucky with someone the night he died.”
“Good for him.”
She ignored this TMR—typical male response. “Have you tried to track the woman down? She could be an important witness.”
“You are kidding, right? What’s the D.A. going to do? Take out an ad in the L.A. Times.” He held up his hands. “Anyone having slept with Rich Evan before he died, please contact your local law enforcement agency.” The detective laughed. “Imagine how many calls we’d get?”
“It’s better than doing nothing.”
“No,” he said firmly, “you do like I said. Keep out of this. Take care of your pets. Cook your heart out. We’ll get to the bottom of things.” He checked over the bill and laid some money on the table. “How about a movie?”
“I can’t.” Kitty glanced at her watch. “I have to prep for next week’s meals.”
“Oh, sure. I understand.” He stayed close to her all the way to her car.
“Thank you for lunch, Jack,” Kitty said. She looked pointedly at the detective’s hand, which clung to her door like it had nowhere else to go. “Is there something else?”
His feet pawed the sidewalk. “You never did say where you went last night—after you left Mrs. Randall’s, that is.”
Kitty’s jaw dropped. She tried counting to ten, but it did no good. The pressure inside her only grew.
She grabbed the door and pulled it out of his grip. It slammed against her knee. She’d probably given herself a humdinger of a bruise. Be limping for the next three days. “I went to see a friend. Her name is Velma Humphries. She works at a Jack-In-The-Box in Culver City.” She spat out the intersection and tossed in Velma’s home phone number for good measure.
“Then we went to a pet store in West L.A.” She was purple with rage—as mad at herself for being taken in by his charm and boyish good looks as she was at him for being such a conniving jerk.
“I bought a bird. For a client. Then we went to dinner on the boardwalk. Me, Velma and the bird.” She spat out its name before he could ask for it. “You want to know what I ate?” She wasn’t waiting for an answer. “Then I went home. To sleep. Alone.”
Kitty fired up the car and sped off. He could have given her a traffic ticket for that. That and the expired parking meter. Yet he whistled all the way to his Jeep, a smile on his face.
Oh, sure. She was high strung and high maintenance. But all God’s creatures were as special as they were unique.
And Libby liked her. And Lib’s intuition was keen when it came to judging people. If Lib had been human herself, she’d have made a hell of a cop.