Free Never Tease a Siamese: A Leigh Koslow Mystery by Edie Claire Page B

quietly as he passed her.
    "No," she answered. "I mean, not as far as I know. I haven't heard."
    Randall nodded and disappeared into the house.
    "Exactly what do you need to talk to your father about?" Frances questioned, carrying two shopping bags into the kitchen and depositing them on the table. "And why don't you try parting your hair on the other side for a change?"
    Leigh chose to ignore the second question. As for the first, her father had obviously not found his mention in the will of a millionaire to be sufficiently interesting to tell his wife about. Typical. "It has to do with Lilah Murchison," she admitted.
    "Your father told me about the plane crash," Frances said heavily. "Tragic. But what does that have to do with you?"
    Out of the corner of her eye, Leigh caught her father escaping into the basement. She couldn't really blame him for avoiding her. The taciturn veterinarian had, after all, just completed a four-hour car ride with her mother. But talk he would, and now, or the impending explosion of her brain would realize Frances’s every fear.
    "Later, Mom," she answered over her shoulder, taking off toward the basement door. She caught up with Randall at his tiny workshop, where he was busily engaged at screwing something into something else. "Dad," she began almost breathlessly, "you've got to hear what happened last night."
    She first related his role in the will, and was gratified to find him pleasantly surprised about the money earmarked for feline causes. He was less enthused about the Siamese guardian role, though it did not seem to surprise him. What did surprise him was what wasn't supposed to.
    "How could you think I would know something like that ?" he asked her in amazement. "In thirty years I never said a word to that woman about anything besides her cats. Why would I?"
    She looked back at him in confusion. "But you have to know something about the heir, Dad. Maybe you just don't realize it. Why else would someone be threatening you to keep quiet?"
    Randall finished whatever he was doing with the screwdriver and started sanding instead. "I don't believe anyone is," he said calmly. "It was just a prank."
    Leigh launched into a quick explanation of everything she had learned about Mrs. Murchison's son and his likely role in the foiled kidnapping of the Siamese, but it did not make much of an impression. "I assure you that whatever is going on with the woman's heirs," he said finally, "it has nothing to do with me." He took a breath and put down the sandpaper for a moment. "But I do believe now that Ricky Rhodis was probably after Mrs. Murchison's cat, and it sounds like there's a good chance he was doing it for her son. So, no harm done. His grandmother can deal with the moral issue; as for the criminal charges, I'll drop them first thing tomorrow."
    He cleared his throat, and turned to face her. "Now. No offense, but—."
    "I know, I know," Leigh interrupted. "Introvert attack. I'm gone. But you should know that I'm going to run all this by Maura, and see if she thinks you're in any real danger from that rock thrower." She paused. "You'll listen to her opinion, won't you?"
    Randall offered a perfunctory wave as he took out his electric sander and flipped it on to high speed.
    She took the hint.
     
    ***
     
    Leigh knew perfectly well that, with boxes still piled to the ceiling in her toasterless new house, she had absolutely no business going to visit an old woman she barely knew in a shabby boarding house in Avalon’s neighboring borough of Bellevue. But here she was. Her father might be determined not to take recent events seriously, but someone had to.
    Randall wouldn't lie to her about not knowing the identity of Lilah's Murchison's heir, she was certain about that. But it was not improbable that he had information he didn’t know he had. She knew her father's work habits well enough to know that Lilah could have confessed serial murder to him, and if he was in the middle of administering ear