Never Steal a Cockatiel (Leigh Koslow Mystery Series Book 9) Read online

  “Your mother wouldn’t lie to my mother, would she?” Leigh asked incredulously.

  Cara’s eyes widened. “You know… I don’t know.”

  They stared at each other a moment. The Morton twins had been figuratively joined at the hip their entire lives. They had always lived in West View, first in the same house, then in row houses side by side. One always seemed to know everything the other one knew. There was never any visible discord. Bess and Frances might bicker, but Lydie had always been the peacemaker. Her tolerance for Frances’s nonsense seemed boundless. The idea that she would withhold any significant information from her twin seemed preposterous.

  Cara shook her head. “No. Your mother must be a better liar than you think. And why not? The whole family had both of us convinced of a total lie about my father for decades!”

  “Good point,” Leigh conceded.

  Cara frowned. “Speaking of my father, I still don’t understand why he didn’t tell me about the apartment in Bellevue. I tried to call him this afternoon, but he wouldn’t pick up. He did send me an email late this morning, but…” Her voice drifted off.

  “What?” Leigh asked after a moment’s silence.

  “I think he’s avoiding me,” Cara said unhappily. “I mean, why shouldn’t he answer his phone? Or at least text to say he’s busy? He may be in Vegas, but it’s supposed to be a professional conference. You really think all those pawnbrokers are paying such rapt attention to the workshops that they’re not even texting?”

  Leigh mulled over the thought uncomfortably. She had no idea what Mason was doing, but she was sure he wasn’t at any pawnbrokers’ convention. And he knew that she knew. Why would he keep his own daughter in the dark and not Leigh?

  Her teeth gnashed. One thing she had learned over the years about the enigmatic Mason Dublin, besides the fact that he was light years smarter than he liked to pretend, was that he didn’t do anything without a reason. He loved his daughter and grandkids more than anything in the world, and if he was fudging on his whereabouts this week, he must believe that Cara was better off not knowing. Still — the fact that he didn’t care if Leigh knew was perplexing. He had no reason to believe that she would keep his confidence if she thought Cara’s wellbeing was at stake. So what was the man playing at?

  “He’s had that apartment in Bellevue for two weeks now,” Cara continued. “I did a little digging and found out he’s put the house in Jennerstown up for rent. He must be planning on living in Pittsburgh indefinitely. He’s got a full-time manager at the pawn shop now, so he can certainly do that. But why wouldn’t he tell us?” Her eyes flashed with hurt. “He’s never been secretive like this before. Not with me, anyway.”

  “I don’t know, Cara,” Leigh soothed. “But there must be a reason. You know he’d never intentionally hurt you. He’s spent the last decade twisting himself into a pretzel trying to be the father you always wanted.”

  Cara smiled sadly. “I know that. You’re right, there must be a reason. As much as it ticks me off that he’s hiding things from me, I suppose I should assume his motives are good.”

  “Absolutely,” Leigh encouraged. Until proven otherwise, she refrained from adding.

  “Mom!” Matthias’s newly deeper voice rasped as he and Ethan burst into the kitchen. “Grandpa Randall wants to pay me to do some work at the clinic this week. Can I?”

  “Me too, Mom!” Ethan said excitedly. “Can I? He wants us to start tomorrow.”

  “Doing what?” Leigh and Cara asked simultaneously — and somewhat skeptically. The boys were both good workers, but their rambunctious presence within the tight confines of the animal clinic had been problematic in the past.

  “Helping Jared move stuff,” Matthias answered, referring to the clinic’s longtime janitor and kennel cleaner. “He can’t lift anything heavy since he hurt his back, and Grandpa hired somebody to help him but they haven’t been showing up and now they quit. Jared’s flipping out because he’s overdue with some cleaning rotation thing he’s always done and he’s afraid of getting mice. We’re supposed to move all the food bags and the freezer and stuff so he can get behind them to clean.”

  “It’ll only take a couple of days,” Ethan added. “But with Grandpa on crutches he may need us to help with other stuff, too, like moving the big dogs after surgery. He says the clinic is short on strong arms.”

  The boys beamed, and Cara and Leigh exchanged a guarded look. As proud as they were of their bright and amiable sons, they knew that Randall must have reached a point of desperation to invite the two back into the clinic after the havoc they had wreaked in their elementary days. The chain link on one of the larger runs in the basement was still bowed and bent from where they used to lock each other inside and race to see who could escape faster.

  “Please, Mom?” Ethan cajoled. “He wouldn’t have asked us if he didn’t think we could handle it.”

  Leigh considered. With Jared and her father both out of commission, there really wasn’t anyone at the clinic to do the heavy lifting. The current staff was both all female and unusually weak in the athletic department. But Matthias was almost fourteen, and Ethan, while more than two years younger, was nearly as brawny as his cousin.

  Cara’s eyes signaled her approval.

  “All right,” Leigh agreed. “But you have to promise to mind Jared. You know he’ll tell me if you give him any trouble.”

  Both boys’ eyes rolled. “We won’t, Mom,” Ethan replied.

  “Is dinner ready?” Matthias asked hopefully, eyeing the already-set table.

  “Five minutes,” Cara replied.

  The boys promptly disappeared again.

  Cara excused herself to go to the bathroom, and Leigh had not been alone in the kitchen for thirty seconds before the landline rang. She saw her aunt’s name on the caller ID and picked up immediately.

  “Aunt Lydie!” she said happily. “It’s Leigh. Cara will be back in a minute. How’s Pennsylvania history? Any breaking news?”

  Lydie chuckled. “You’d be surprised. Listen, don’t bother Cara. I just got off the phone with your mother and Bess; I’m so sorry about your father’s accident.”

  “We all are,” Leigh agreed.

  “I’ll call in a couple days to let you know exactly when I’ll get back,” Lydie continued. “I just wanted to let Cara know not to worry if I don’t answer her right away. Half of this place is below ground level, and the reception is terrible. But she can leave me messages and I’ll check in periodically.”

  “Will do.”

  “Thanks, dear. Bye-bye, now!”

  “Wait, I—” Leigh broke off. Her aunt had hung up already. Leigh set the phone down, puzzled. Lydie had never been the chatty type, but she wasn’t one to rush off, either. Leigh was about to brave asking whether Lydie knew anything about her ex-husband’s recent move to Pittsburgh, but she needed a little more time to work up to it.

  Talking to Lydie about Mason wasn’t easy. Although the exes had always been civil with one another and had managed to stay in communication while Cara was growing up, their relationship since his return had been rocky. Although they tried to fake being comfortable around each other at family functions, even now, four decades after the divorce, the tension between them was palpable. As loving and mild-mannered as Lydie was, the humiliation she had endured at her young husband’s hands had clearly exceeded her capacity to forgive and forget, because the deeper Mason weaved his way back into the family, the more his presence seemed to irritate her.

  Lydie would hardly be pleased to know that he was now living in Pittsburgh. In fact, Leigh thought suddenly, dread of her reaction could very well be the reason Mason had kept the move a secret in the first place.

  In retrospect, Leigh was glad she hadn’t broached the topic. There had never been a surer way to wipe the smile off her aunt’s face than to mention the name Mason Dublin, and just now Lydie had seemed to be in an unusually good mood. In fact, though her words had been both sympathetic and businesslike, her
tone had been downright chipper. At times, practically breathless.

  Leigh’s brow furrowed. Her aunt didn’t get away much. And she really did enjoy studying history.

  But come on.

  Cara returned to the kitchen, and Leigh delivered the message.

  “How did she sound?” Cara asked offhandedly, putting on mitts to take her homemade pizzas out of the oven.

  “Like she was having a good time,” Leigh said carefully.

  But not by herself.

  Chapter 6

  “I feel awful, Mom,” Allison said the next morning, her voice close to tears. “I did everything Grandpa said!”

  “I know you did, honey,” Leigh said sympathetically. She studied the cockatiel with chagrin. Overnight, it had plucked a dime-sized patch of feathers off the center of its chest, leaving a naked circle of bumpy pink skin showing.

  “He didn’t have any signs of feather picking before,” Allison bemoaned. “He looked perfect!”

  “It’s probably a stress reaction,” Leigh suggested. “But we’ll take him down and have your Grandpa check him out, just to be sure.”

  Allison tried to get the bird to hop onto her finger, but it merely fidgeted on its perch and sidled away from her. She frowned. “I think he misses his owner. We should get in touch with them and let them know. Maybe they’d want to come get him.”

  Leigh’s stomach soured. If only. She could ask Mason to try and contact the mysterious Kyle, but if she remembered their predawn conversation correctly, Kyle wasn’t the bird’s real owner either. Still, it was worth a try. The cockatiel wasn’t eating right, it looked unhappy, and without some intervention it would almost certainly keep picking at itself.

  “Poor thing,” Allison said miserably.

  “Mom!” Ethan called from the living room. “There was a shooting in Ben Avon last night!”

  A shooting? Ben Avon was directly adjacent to Avalon.

  Leigh hurried out of Allison’s room to the television. Ethan was rewinding the DVR. “I just caught the end of it,” he explained. “Here’s where it starts.”

  He punched a button on the remote, and the local news segment began.

  “We’re here in the normally peaceful neighborhood of Ben Avon,” a reporter said, standing on the edge of a small park Leigh recognized, “where residents were shocked just after midnight to be awakened by the sound of a gunshot.”

  The camera panned around to show the front of a small stone cottage barely visible behind a curtain of dense bushes and trailing vines. “Police say that a Ben Avon resident was sitting on her back porch when she spied a man running and then heard him attempt to enter the fence surrounding her property. The woman claims she fired a warning shot into the ground with a shotgun in order to frighten away the intruder. Ohio Township police received multiple calls from concerned citizens who heard the noise. Shortly afterwards, a thirty-two-year-old man who also resides in Ben Avon called police from his home to report a shot being fired at very close range while he was jogging. The man said he frequently runs in the area and prefers to exercise at night because of the cooler weather. He claims he was jogging between houses as a shortcut to the nearby country club when he accidentally ran into some sort of fence. He then heard a shot fired and believed he was being targeted.”

  The camera cut to a picture of a short, stocky woman standing in her front doorway while the reporter stuck a microphone in her face. Her dyed-auburn hair was cut short in an androgynous pixie cut, and her pinched and weathered face was tight with displeasure.

  “Oh, no,” Leigh murmured.

  “Skippy!” Allison exclaimed.

  “An intruder came onto my property without my permission and I scared him away,” the woman said unapologetically, her gray eyes blazing. “It’s my right to protect my property, and I’ll do it again if I have to. Nobody messes with my birds. Nobody. You got that?”

  She pointed a crooked finger at the camera, then withdrew inside and shut the door.

  The camera switched to another shot of the reporter at the park. “Police say that according to local ordinances, it’s illegal to discharge any firearm within the borough, although an exception is made in the case of protecting persons or property. The jogger, who was apparently wearing running gear and a reflective jacket, was unavailable for comment.”

  “Like, can’t you get arrested for shooting at somebody like that?” Ethan asked.

  “Whether any crime was committed here is still under investigation,” the reporter continued. “In the meantime, night runners beware. Back to you, Dave!”

  Ethan stopped the playback. Leigh and Allison remained immobile, staring at the screen. “Well, Mom?” the boy repeated. He turned to his sister. “Who’s Skippy?”

  Leigh tore her gaze away from the television and shook her head with disbelief. “A client of your grandfather’s,” she answered.

  “Is that the crazy bird lady?” Ethan asked.

  “She’s not crazy!” Allison argued. “She does parrot rescue, and Grandpa says she takes good care of her birds. She’s just a little… well, weird. You know.”

  “Eccentric,” Leigh supplied mechanically, her mind reeling. Never mind that Skippy was indeed known as “that crazy bird lady” to pretty much the entire North Boros. She lived with dozens of birds in a small house no one else ever went into or came out of. Her backyard was completely screened in like an aviary, and the local children had worn a path to it from the park so that they could sneak a peek at the colorful parrots. Skippy permitted the gawkers, but woe be unto any child who yelled at the birds, much less poked a stick or threw a pebble! It wasn’t the least surprising that a jogger following that path might run into her fencing in the dark.

  Despite Skippy’s antisocial tendencies, the birds she brought to the clinic were always in good health, at least physically. Psychologically, all the larger, more intelligent pet birds showed problems sooner or later, which is why Skippy, along with the rest of Randall’s “bird people,” had gotten out of the breeding business over a decade ago. Now, they all focused on taking in troubled parrots no one else wanted — a population which, unfortunately, was only continuing to grow.

  “She sounded nuts to me,” Ethan said dismissively. “When are we going, Mom?”

  Leigh was distracted. Skippy had been a client of Randall’s forever — even back when Leigh herself had worked in the clinic as a teenager. The woman had looked exactly the same then as she did now. Ageless. Nobody messes with my birds, Skippy had threatened. Was she fired up over the same rumors as everyone else? Had she been so scared that she was sitting on her porch with her gun on her lap, just waiting for someone to try something?

  Knowing Skippy, it would be entirely in character. Not that she was your stereotypical paranoid conspiracy theorist. She was, in fact, entirely apolitical, concerned with virtually nothing that didn’t directly relate to birds. But if you threatened Skippy’s babies, you had best be prepared to defend yourself.

  A bulletproof vest was recommended.

  “Mom?” Ethan repeated. “When are you taking us to the clinic?”

  Leigh tried to focus. “We’ll leave around ten,” she answered, feeling suddenly bleary. Having been dragged out of bed by Allison’s cries of distress, she only now realized that her husband had left for work already. Given that she had gone to bed alone last night, she wondered briefly whether he’d come home at all. But she remembered hearing the chain saw rev up around eleven, and as tired as she currently felt, she doubted she had slept deeply the rest of the night, either.

  After several cups of coffee and a lame attempt at accomplishing something on the pile of work she’d brought home from her advertising agency, Leigh bundled her two kids and one disturbed cockatiel into the van, collected Mathias from the farmhouse next door, and drove to the clinic.

  She was pulling the van up to the curb across from the clinic’s back door when Allison groaned from the back seat.

  “Whoa!” Matthias exclaimed from the oppos
ite back seat. “Who is that?”

  Leigh looked over her shoulder to see a young teenaged girl floating across the parking lot toward the staff entrance. She was petite and generously curvy, with long, loosely curled blond hair that bounced around her shoulders like a model in a shampoo commercial. Leigh shot a glance at Mathias and resisted the urge to laugh out loud at his widened, admiring eyes. She wondered if somewhere in his adolescent mind a pop song was crooning and animated birds were flying around the girl’s head.

  “Kirsten,” Allison answered without enthusiasm. “She’s been hanging out observing. She wants to be a vet.”

  Leigh could hardly miss the derogatory tone in her daughter’s voice. “You don’t sound too happy about that,” she commented. Allison was used to other young veterinary wannabes hanging out at the clinic, particularly during the summer. What was so objectionable about this one?

  Allison sighed dramatically. “It’s just that she’s such a suck-up! Like she thinks that because Grandpa owns the clinic, I can get her into vet school or something. It’s annoying.”

  “She wouldn’t annoy me,” Matthias joked, still staring.

  Allison rolled her eyes at him. “She’s fifteen. And she has a boyfriend already. An older boyfriend.”

  Matthias deflated a bit and slouched in his seat. But his gaze continued to follow the girl as she disappeared into the building.

  Leigh fought a grin. Matthias, who had only just begun to notice girls, showed signs of inheriting not only his father’s ridiculous good looks, but also Gil’s tendency toward smug overconfidence. Suspecting they had not heard the last of the bewitching Kirsten, she cast a glance at her own son and was relieved to find him watching his cousin with equal parts amusement and puzzlement.

  Thank goodness, she breathed. Having one precocious twin was more than enough.

  They all piled out of the van, and as the kids went in through the clinic’s back door, Leigh carried the covered birdcage down the steps to the basement entrance. Bringing the cockatiel into the clinic would stress it more, she knew, but it was important that her father make sure it didn’t have any kind of physical problem. She stashed the bird away in a relatively quiet corner of her father’s office, noticing as she did so that a good deal more of his accumulated paperwork had disappeared from the desk and floor. Then she jogged up the steps into the main part of the clinic to make sure the boys had connected with Jared. She was not surprised to find the three already on their way down to the basement. She was surprised to find Randall already parked on his stool in an exam room.