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

  “Dad!” she exclaimed. “You’re not supposed to be here yet! I was just leaving to pick you up at the house.”

  Randall threw her a beleaguered expression. “I, uh… had some things I needed to attend to,” he mumbled. “Bess took pity on me.”

  Leigh exhaled slowly. “That bad, huh?” She envisioned Bess trying to make breakfast while Frances yelled helpful tips from the living room about the proper way to prevent fried eggs from sticking to her cookware. Then she imagined what Bess might do with those eggs…

  Randall cleared his throat, but said nothing.

  “I see,” Leigh declared.

  “I have an emergency coming in,” Randall said. “And besides, Bess wanted to take more paperwork back home to keep your mother occupied.”

  I’ll bet she did.

  Leigh started to explain to him about the cockatiel, but before she could get a sentence out the door to the reception room burst open.

  “I’ll find him!” a scratchy female voice announced as none other than “that crazy bird lady” invited herself in and lifted a pet carrier onto the tabletop.

  “If it’s broken,” Skippy raged, staring at Randall with her cool gray eyes, “I’ll sue every damn one of them!”

  “Let’s take a look first,” Randall said calmly, opening the carrier door. Morgan, one of the newer veterinary assistants on staff, slipped behind Leigh and moved into position to help hold the bird.

  “Come on out, lambkins,” Skippy crooned, her affected baby-voice striking a sharp contrast to the masculine figure she made in her long-sleeve plaid work shirt and shapeless jeans. “Mama won’t let anybody hurt you!”

  Leigh watched in silence as a bedraggled and partially featherless African grey stepped tentatively out of the carrier and onto the tabletop, holding one of its wings in an awkward position.

  “I’ve only had her a few months,” Skippy explained, seemingly to Leigh, as Morgan gently took hold of the bird for Randall to examine. “She hardly had a feather below the neck when I got her! But she’s been doing really well for me in the house, nearly got her flight feathers grown back. Then those damned police came storming in and she went totally bonkers, trying to fly and running into everything!” Skippy turned her attention back to Randall. “She seemed okay right after it happened, but now she’s holding her wing all funny-like!”

  “You were on the news this morning!” Morgan gushed as she held the bird. “Did you see?”

  Leigh cringed. Morgan, a slight and pretty dark-haired girl in her early twenties, was sweet-natured, good with the animals, and amenable to instruction. But when it came to client sensibilities, she had the tact of a preschooler.

  “I was?” Skippy barked.

  Morgan nodded emphatically, missing Randall’s warning glare. “They said you shot at an intruder!” Her eyes glinted with admiration. “But it turned out to be just a jogger,” she finished with disappointment.

  “I didn’t aim at the idiot,” Skippy snapped. “Like I told the police, it was just a warning shot. And it worked, too. You’d better believe if he’d tried to snatch one of my birds—” She gestured a trigger pull. “That’d be the end of that!”

  Morgan’s attractive dark eyes widened. “Have you ever shot anybody before?”

  Randall cleared his throat. “Morgan,” he said sternly. “I’ll need you to—”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, young lady,” Skippy answered, ignoring him. “There was this one time, back in Vietnam—”

  “I don’t think the wing is broken,” Randall proclaimed, pulling Skippy’s attention back to the parrot. “But I’d like to take an x-ray, just to make sure.” He looked past Leigh. “Allison, would you go get Jeanine for us, please?”

  Leigh didn’t bother looking behind her. Of course Allison was there.

  Vietnam?

  “Skippy,” Leigh said on impulse, trying to keep her voice casual. “Why were you worried that the jogger might be after your birds? Have you had people try to break in before?”

  The woman — was she a woman? — shot a shrewd look back. “You can never be too careful,” she said grimly.

  Jeanine appeared, and she, Morgan, and Allison took the parrot back to the treatment room, leaving Leigh and her father alone with Skippy. No sooner had the others left than Skippy leaned across the table close to Randall’s ear. “Nobody else’ll tell you,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “But I will. There’s a pet snatcher on the loose. Dogs and cats both stolen. Who says they wouldn’t take a bird? I don’t trust nobody. And you ought to keep your own eyes open around here too, Doc. You ask me, somebody’s doing this methodical like.”

  Leigh sucked in a breath. She could tell from her father’s long-suffering expression that he gave no credence to the woman’s claim. “Doing what exactly?” Leigh asked.

  Skippy studied her. As an extension of Randall whom Skippy had known four pant sizes ago, Leigh evidently passed muster for trustworthiness.

  “Picking their victims,” she answered, “for ransom.”

  “That seems a bit—” Randall began skeptically.

  Leigh jumped in. “What kind of money are we talking about?”

  “Thousands.” Skippy rasped.

  “Shouldn’t someone tell the police?” Leigh suggested.

  Skippy shrugged. “Only the people whose pets got snatched know enough to bother, and they’re all too scared to snitch. So far I hear the critters have all come back all right. But who knows when that’ll change? Somebody’s got to get this guy!” Her voice turned steely. “And me and my shotgun’d be only too happy to give it a whirl!”

  “Has the grey been eating all right?” Randall asked, his tone slightly bored.

  Skippy’s attention was easily diverted back to her bird. “Better and better all the time!” she answered proudly. “I know how to feed a parrot right. You take my quinoa and navy bean porridge. I could market that stuff. Now, Olan says his birds don’t like navy beans; he’s all into mixing everything up with yams and yogurt and sweet stuff. But I say…”

  Leigh tuned out. Skippy and Olan, another client whose collection of rescue parrots numbered in the double digits, had been feuding over various points of bird care — with no small amount of acrimony — for as long as anyone could remember. The staff liked to joke about what would happen if the two met unexpectedly in the waiting room and someone called out, “Should you clip a pet bird’s wings? Discuss!”

  The consensus was that neither would emerge alive.

  Leigh looked at her watch. She couldn’t delay any longer; it was time for her Tuesday shift of Frances-watching to begin. Bess was probably already sitting in her car in the street with the engine running. Leigh had meant to ask Randall’s permission to post the signs soliciting anonymous information about the pet snatchings, but it was just as well that Allison did the honors. If Randall thought it was pointless, he would be more likely to humor his granddaughter.

  Leigh quietly excused herself from the exam room, apprised Allison of the situation, and exited through the back door. As soon as she was back in the van and out of earshot of any curious bystanders, she picked up her phone and called Mason.

  His line went straight to voicemail.

  Leigh frowned. “Mason,” she said sternly, recording a message. “I need to talk to you. The bird isn’t doing well, and we need to contact its owner. Can you get in touch with this Kyle guy, or at least give me his number? It’s important.”

  She hung up, still frowning. The man had a lot of nerve, turning his phone off.

  Two women walked past the van on the sidewalk, one of them chattering so loudly Leigh could understand every word even with her windows rolled up.

  “So then I said, ‘Well, can you make it Thursday?’ And she said ‘No, only Tuesday.’ But she’d just told me she could only make Thursday! That’s why I asked her ‘Can you make it Thursday?’ and she said, ‘No, only Tuesday!’”

  Leigh looked up to see the clinic’s newest receptionist, Amy, heading in to st
art her shift with another of the veterinary assistants, Paige. The slightly heavy, freckled Amy was a nice enough girl and good with the computer, but Leigh had to wonder at Randall’s wisdom in hiring a receptionist who seemed genetically incapable of saying anything only once.

  “Hi, Leigh!” Amy said with a wave as the two women cut in front of the van to cross the street to the clinic. “That’s Leigh,” she informed her companion. “I said ‘hi’ to her.”

  Paige, a frizzy-headed blonde in her early thirties who had been employed through at least four different receptionists now, glanced up at Leigh with a beleaguered expression. Kill me now, her eyes seemed to be messaging as she offered a wave of her own.

  Leigh waved back and then started up the van to head to West View. According to Bess, Frances had found a smudge on the mirror in the half bath last night and responded by setting up a roster of housecleaning duties for all three of the women to carry out. Frances had also determined that Dr. Koslow “needed his books examined,” and that Leigh’s primary job today would be to “dust all these filthy papers.” Leigh’s first round of duty was supposed to have started ten minutes ago. It wouldn’t end until Cara arrived tomorrow morning.

  Kill me now, indeed.

  Chapter 7

  “Koslow,” Maura’s voice boomed from Leigh’s cell phone. “Are you at home?”

  “No,” Leigh answered, staring at the pile of file folders on the table before her with despair. Bess must have scooped them up from the clinic’s basement floor, because their every surface was encrusted with animal hair, dust bunnies, and a gritty veneer of crumbled kibble. Naturally, Frances refused to even look at the papers until they were cleaned, and a card table — “not the kitchen table, for pity’s sake!” — was designated as the triage area. Leigh wondered whose bright idea it had been to tell Jared not to touch any of her father’s paperwork. Didn’t they know the diligent yet mentally challenged kennel cleaner took every instruction literally?

  “I’m at my parents’ house,” Leigh answered.

  “Oh, right. Do you think it would be okay if Eddie and I dropped by?”

  Deliverance! “How soon can you get here?”

  Twenty minutes later the doorbell rang, and Leigh leapt up from her chair. “Maura’s here!” she announced to her mother as she headed for the door. Frances, who was planted on the couch poring over another pile of papers spread out on a tray table, dipped her chin to peer at Leigh over the top of her reading glasses.

  “How is the file cleaning going?” she asked with suspicion.

  “Stupendously,” Leigh replied, hastening to open the door.

  Maura Polanski looked down at her with a smile; Eddie Polanski looked up at her with a scowl.

  Leigh swung open the door. “Come in,” she invited, gesturing the twosome into the living room.

  Frances sat up immediately and pushed her work table to the side. “Maura, dear!” she greeted with enthusiasm. “Oh, bring that little darling over here!”

  “Hello, Ms. Koslow,” Maura said cheerfully. She walked over to the couch and stood next to Frances, leaning down to give her and Eddie a better look at each other. Frances reached out a hand and held his, and the infant gurgled with delight.

  “Oh, give me a break!” Leigh mumbled.

  “All babies like me,” Frances said smugly, making a silly face. Eddie practically contorted himself with amusement, and Maura laughed out loud.

  Leigh bit back a groan. “Did you need to talk to me about something?” she prompted, wondering if the policewoman had heard about Skippy and tied the incident to the petnapping rumors.

  “That I do,” Maura said vaguely, throwing Leigh a meaningful look. Whatever she had to say, she preferred to say it in private.

  Frances’s hawk eyes missed nothing. “Why don’t you take Maura up to your room, Leigh?” she suggested sweetly. “Little Eddie and I can get better acquainted.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Ms. Koslow,” Maura remarked.

  “Nonsense,” Frances argued. “It would be a delightful diversion. You just leave this little cherub with me and toddle along. I’ll give a yell if we need anything.”

  Maura thanked Frances for the offer and lifted the infant out of the belly pack.

  “Come here, Peanut,” Frances cooed, taking him deftly into her arms. She looked up at Leigh and Maura, then shooed them both away toward the stairs. “Off you go. We’ll be fine!”

  Leigh led the only slightly reluctant new mother up the stairs. The small room that had once been Leigh’s own was now outfitted with bunk beds for the grandchildren, so Leigh steered her guest into the sewing room instead, where they settled on a desk chair and a stool. “What’s up?” Leigh asked nervously, wondering why Maura hadn’t wanted to talk in front of Frances. The petnapping rumors were certainly disturbing, but the Koslow Animal Clinic wasn’t directly involved. Was it?

  Maura let out a breath. “Do you know where Mason Dublin is?”

  Leigh’s heart skipped a beat. This wasn’t the line of questioning she expected.

  It did not bode well.

  “I talked to him yesterday,” she answered, considering her words. Lying to Maura was pointless, but she was loath to get Mason in trouble, accidentally or otherwise. “He told me he was flying out to a pawnbrokers’ convention in Las Vegas.”

  Maura’s face bore no expression. “That’s what he said?”

  “Yes,” Leigh answered honestly, her anxiety rapidly increasing. “What’s this about?”

  Maura watched her closely. “Do you know where he is, Koslow?”

  Leigh swallowed with discomfort. “No. I don’t.”

  Maura seemed disappointed.

  “I repeat, what’s this about?” Leigh pressed.

  “Hopefully nothing,” Maura answered, the muscles in her lower jaw working as they often did when she was thinking. “Look, you know I have nothing against Mason. I never have, even if he’s not so crazy about me. I’m not on the job right now and I’m not doing this in any official capacity, but I’d like to speak with him.”

  Leigh tensed. “You want his number?”

  “I have his number. He isn’t picking up. I was hoping you could convince him to call me.”

  Leigh studied her friend’s earnest face. The situation was awkward, to say the least. Leigh was under no obligation to pass along any information about Mason, or any other family member. She did believe that Maura’s motives were good. But good for whom? “You’ll have to give me a little more to go on,” she requested.

  Maura straightened. “Okay. A buddy of mine called this morning; said he wanted to catch me up on a few things before I came in next week. Clearly, he’s betting on the ‘Polanski will come back’ side.”

  “Clearly,” Leigh agreed, smiling a little.

  “So he was trying to whet my appetite,” Maura continued. “He gave me the rundown on a couple of cases, and Mason’s name came up. Mason’s not suspected of anything, but he might know something important. The Bellevue police have already talked to him; nothing I’m telling you is a secret. It’s just that he picked a really bad time to leave town. Whether the timing is a coincidence or not, it looks suspicious. They can’t order him to come back, not at this point. But I’d like to explain to him that he needs to tread carefully.”

  Leigh breathed out slowly. “Does this have anything to do with the break-in at the apartment next to his? Cara told me they called her about that.”

  Maura nodded. Her face took on a pained expression. “The occupant of that apartment has been MIA for a couple days now, which is a problem, because he’s wanted for questioning by the state police. Mason may have nothing to do with this guy’s disappearance, but they did know each other, which makes the whole business pretty damned messy. And potentially dangerous. Can you convince him to call me?”

  “I don’t know,” Leigh replied. Although Mason had gotten used to Maura’s presence at family functions, his cop-avoidance instincts were still firmly ingrained. “I’ll
try.” A heaviness arose in her middle that she knew she would not easily be rid of. Mason was definitely acting weird. Mason suddenly had money. If after all this time on the straight and narrow the man had fallen back onto the wrong side of the law, it would break his daughter’s heart. And Leigh’s.

  Maura rose.

  “Wait,” Leigh said, getting up herself. Did the police think that Mason had helped Kyle escape the law somehow? If so, they were wrong. She was certain that Mason hadn’t known Kyle would leave when he did. Mason had clearly been put out about the timing of his cat-care duties and hadn’t expected the bird at all. But she couldn’t explain that to Maura without breaking her promise to Mason to keep quiet about the pets.

  What a mess.

  She decided not to elaborate, at least not now. It would be better if she could convince Mason to talk to Maura himself.

  The policewoman stood looking at Leigh expectantly. Oh, right. Leigh had been about to say something. She said something else instead. “Have you heard anything about the petnapping rumors? Skippy Titus certainly seems to believe them.”

  Maura grimaced. “A lot of people do. The locals PDs are aware of what’s being said. But no one’s filed a complaint, so they’ve got nothing to go on.”

  Leigh exhaled. “I see.”

  With her mind full of thoughts, none of them pleasant, she accompanied Maura to collect the baby and then walked the policewoman back out to her car. No sooner were the mother and son down the street and out of sight than Leigh pulled out her phone and tried again to reach Mason.

  Her call went straight to voice mail. Leigh left a second message, then walked back into the house with a sinking heart.