Fine-Feathered Death (6 page)

Only now, I wasn’t sure how anyone would react to anything today. Not with Ezra lying dead in the office, and the whole place subject to a police investigation.

Poor Ezra. Not that I was best buddies with the guy, but he’d occasionally grown on me during our short acquaintance. He obviously cared for Gigi. And he had a sense of humor way down deep inside that even sometimes emerged.

We finally reached the office, and I pulled into an empty parking space. There weren’t many—not with all the emergency vehicles around.

I lowered a couple of Beamer windows enough for Lexie to stick out her inquisitive nose, and I exited the car.

Unsurprisingly, Mignon stood outside the open building door. The usually effervescent receptionist appeared pale and unperky. “Oh, Kendra, did you hear?”

I nodded, though it was hard to hear anything. Gigi screeched from somewhere inside. Plus, unfamiliar voices raised a ruckus, not the rule for the generally sedate law office. And several secretaries stood around, sighing and speaking loudly about being kept in the dark on this bright January day.

A somber-looking lady in a gray pantsuit approached, holding a clipboard. “May I have your name?” she asked.

“Kendra Ballantyne. I’m an attorney with this firm. And you are . . . ?”

“Detective Schwinglan.” She proffered L.A.P.D. ID.

Not Ned Noralles. He was the detective who’d investigated the other murder cases I’d been involved with.

But then, this was Encino. The others had been closer to the North Hollywood Police Station. I wasn’t sure which station would have jurisdiction here, but not that one.

“Do you know yet what happened?” I asked.

The detective, who was half a foot taller than me, lifted one edge of her slim lips in a droll grin. “That’s what I need to ask you.” She edged me several feet away from Mignon by a movement of her shoulder and a follow-me stride. When we were separated from the others, she said, “Tell me what you know.”

I told her how I’d received a call from Elaine Aames, and that I knew Ezra had been hurt. “Is he alive?” I asked.

“Sorry, no.” She shook her head, barely moving a strand of the hair pulled to the back of her head and fastened with a clip.

“Well, what about Elaine? Is she here? Is she okay?”

“I believe she’s still being questioned. And as I said, I’m the one who needs to ask the questions.”

But before she did, I heard a familiar, raised voice call me by name. “Ms. Ballantyne. This is becoming a habit.”

I winced and turned. “Not one I enter into willingly, Ned,” I said. The L.A.P.D. detective approached up the walkway.

Ned Noralles was a tall, solemn African-American, a good-looking dude with a job that I assume jaded most cops. Not only had he tried and failed to prove me guilty of a couple of murders, but he had also been the detective-in-charge when my tenant was accused of killing an acquaintance right in my leased-out house.

I’d helped to prove his theories wrong in both instances. He nevertheless remained cordial—more or less.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him. “This isn’t your jurisdiction, is it?”

“As I told you, Ms. Ballantyne,” Detective Schwinglan said, “I’m supposed to ask the questions.” She faced Ned. “Like she said, Detective. What are you doing here?”

“Let’s talk,” he said, giving a brisk sideways nod signaling her to follow him. They strolled far enough off that I couldn’t hear the conversation they held with their heads together.

Was Noralles here in an official capacity? If so, how had he managed to get involved here, out of his typical territory?

Whatever he said must have satisfied the other detective, since she nodded, then headed back inside the office building.

Ned stayed outside with me. “So, what do you know about this one?” he asked. As always, he wore a dark suit. He seemed especially skilled at staying expressionless, but right now his dark eyes overflowed with irony. I suspected he didn’t much like that I was likely to stick my own, rather ordinary nose in one of his cases again.

Unless, of course, he’d taken on this case expressly to take
me
on.

“I don’t know anything,” I told him truthfully. “What happened?”

“I think you know,” he said. “Another murder, Ms. Ballantyne. And somehow, you’re involved.”

I sighed and said, “So you’re not just visiting? You’re one of the detectives on this case?”

“I’m assisting on this investigation.”

“How—” I could see by the way his dark eyebrows rose that he wasn’t going to tell me.

“We’ll talk later,” he said. “Right now, I need to see the scene.”

“One thing I should warn you about,” I told him, then mentioned Gigi, whom I still heard shrieking in the background. “She’s highly excitable.”

“That’s the noise I hear?” Ned asked.

I nodded. “I’m afraid she’ll hurt herself, especially if you have Animal Services haul her off. Can you please just leave her here? There’s no reason to have her removed, let alone ‘humanely euthanized.’”

I used the term I’d learned before when referring to animals who’d supposedly caused a crime—like some ferrets I’d met during the last situation I’d sunk my teeth into that involved cops. Of course, ferrets are illegal in California to begin with, and those particular ferrets were considered murder suspects.

Fortunately, the ferrets hadn’t been euthanized, humanely or otherwise. They’d found a new home. Well, not necessarily new, but . . . Heck, no need to get into that, since its result might not have been fully legal.

In any event, Gigi wasn’t to blame here. All I knew from Elaine was that she thought Ezra had been shot.

“Please, just let some of us here continue to take care of her,” I finished. “Okay?”

“We’ll see,” he said, then stomped inside.

Since this had once been a restaurant, there was a paved patio to one side of the entry where patrons must have been sent to await their tables. I checked often on Lexie in the car, of course. Those who’d arrived so far all milled around the patio.

“Poor Ezra,” Mignon chirped sadly, in the middle of a group of support staff. “He wasn’t the nicest man, but he still—”

“Kendra!” Ned Noralles called from the door. “Come here.”

I couldn’t help swallowing hard in consternation. Being shown up as an awful amateur detective didn’t faze me . . . much. But what if Ned had decided to handle this homicide in the hopes he’d finally pin one on me after all?

I nevertheless obeyed his command and came near him. “What’s up?” I asked, striving to sound confident.

“You want to save that bird? Then you calm her down.”

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“She’s screaming, beating her wings, and . . . can you help?”

I considered my first contact with Gigi and her shrieks in the night. Her continued squawking and how it had driven Ezra nuts. I thought about the visit from the expert Polly Bright yesterday, and how Gigi had responded to my whistle and singing—if you could call it that—better than to her macaw shrink stuff. “I can try,” I said slowly. “No guarantees. But you still promise to let her stay here?”

“If you don’t promise, I don’t. But come on.” Noralles gestured, and I followed him inside the building that still bustled with crime-scene investigators, then down the hall.

“Is Gigi still in Ezra’s office?” I asked, my anxiety increasing.

“Yeah. So’s the body. You okay with that?”

Not hardly—but I nonetheless responded, “More or less.”

In moments, that’s where we were. I tried not to face the part of the floor where investigators snapped photos and foraged for clues—where Ezra lay, on the floor beside his desk. Identification numbers were scattered about, each signifying where some piece of evidence had been removed. Judging by the number of numbers, there’d been a lot of clues.

Gigi was secured in her giant wire cage, screeching and flapping and shifting around as if she wanted to soar out of it. Ezra must have put her in it last night to take her home.

Only they hadn’t gone.

Elaine had been the only one with them when Jeff and I left . . . but I didn’t see Elaine as Ezra’s killer. I’d only say what I saw to Noralles if he asked. After all, he’d undoubtedly be interrogating Elaine anyway, since she was the one who’d found Ezra’s body.

“Do something!” Noralles shouted, his expression perplexed and even a little pleading. His tone grew commanding, though, as he insisted, “But don’t get too close. And don’t touch anything. We’re almost ready to let the coroner remove the victim, but this crime scene is still under investigation.”

What I wanted to do was to cover my ears, but instead approached Gigi. I stuck my fingers in my mouth and whistled.

She hardly looked at me as she continued her crazy movements and even crazier screams. If she kept it up, she’d not only deafen the investigators but also upend her cage and injure herself.

Sighing because I was undoubtedly about to make an ass of myself in front of the dour detective and his assemblage of investigators, I started singing at the top of my voice, “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall . . .”

No change. She didn’t even start repeating her vocal repertoire about bottles of beer.

I went through a couple of choruses before giving up. “I think we’d better call in the expert,” I finally said.

 

FORTUNATELY, POLLY BRIGHT made fast emergency office calls. She promised to be there in half an hour.

I’d looked in again on Lexie, still locked in my car. It was January and overcast, so I hadn’t had to find her some shade. I could also see her from my office window and all seemed well. I knew her ears were sensitive, though, so I wondered whether they were being assailed long distance by Gigi’s endless cries.

I spent the time waiting for Polly in my office, an investigator in attendance, as soon as Noralles gave me the go-ahead. I was permitted to pull some of my files to work on outside the Yurick offices while the investigation continued.

Speaking of Yurick, Borden had arrived, too, and stood out on the patio with other attorneys—William Fortier and Geraldine Glass, both senior citizens who’d joined up with Borden after retiring from other firms. Also the rest of the secretaries and paralegals, including Corrie Montez, who’d come with Ezra from his former firm. All had been initially interrogated by Noralles and his investigators, I learned when I went outside with Ned at my side. I believed that all those who’d finished going through the wringer had been permitted to leave for the day. Corrie, crying softly, had stayed.

I considered fleeing, too, but figured someone who’d met Polly ought to greet her. I only wished I could plug my ears, even as I stood outside.

Eventually, she arrived. By then, I’d gone back to my office. A cop poked his head inside and asked me to meet her in the reception area—and not to touch anything on the way.

I joined Polly there. Her plumage—er, clothing—seemed equally colorful as yesterday. She wore a multicolor neon scarf over her brilliant green blouse and matching peasant skirt.

Her eyes were huge, her skin pale. “Ezra’s dead?” she rasped, as if she somehow hadn’t believed what she’d been told.

I nodded. “And Gigi’s going nuts. I was told one of the crime-scene investigators tried to take fingerprints from her cage and she stuck her beak out between the wires and bit him. Fortunately, he saw it coming so he wasn’t hurt. But the poor bird hasn’t stopped shrieking.”

“I noticed.” There was a slight wryness now to Polly’s tone. “Let’s go see her.”

I was glad to discover that Ezra was no longer in his office. Noralles was, and I introduced him to Polly. The parrot expert approached the rocking cage that contained Gigi and began speaking softly. Unsurprisingly to me, Gigi didn’t calm.

“First thing, let’s remove her from these surroundings,” Polly said. “But not too far. Please help me move her to someplace quiet in these offices. Any suggestions?” she asked me.

“Well, there’s what used to be the restaurant kitchen. We still use it as a coffee-and-lunch room. It’s fairly remote and we can keep people out of it.”

“Sounds perfect.”

I looked at Noralles. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah. It looks like the homicide took place in one location. The victim wasn’t chased around the building, so his office is our main focus. The kitchen’s been checked already for evidence, and we’ve conducted some interrogations there.”

“Good,” Polly said. “But we’ll need a little help.” She looked pointedly at Noralles. “A strong police officer to push her cage would be just the thing.”

Meekly—for him—Noralles followed her orders. A burly uniformed officer pushed the large wheeled cage containing the upset macaw down the hall and around a couple of corners.

The kitchen was quiet and dimly illuminated from a window with miniblinds till we turned on the lights. There were gleaming metal counters containing a sink, coffee-maker, and microwave. There was also a full-sized refrigerator. The room had already been preliminarily probed for evidence, so no one was likely to bother Gigi here. Once tables were pushed out of the way and the macaw’s cage slid into the center of the room, everyone left except Polly and me. Was it my imagination, had my eardrums atrophied, or was the bird finally crying less loudly?

This time, when Polly started speaking to Gigi, she sounded more persuasive, as if this was a training session. She commanded the macaw to say, “Gigi, gorgeous girl. That’s you. Now say it, Gigi.”

Amazingly, after half a dozen reiterated orders, Gigi stopped squawking and started talking. “Gigi, gorgeous girl, gorgeous girl.”

“You did it!” I exclaimed softly, forbearing from giving Polly a great big hug.

The parrot pro turned to me and smiled proudly.

 

BEFORE POLLY LEFT, I made sure she, the expert, instructed Noralles that Gigi was not to be shuffled off to an animal shelter.