Never Sorry: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (27 page)

Her answering machine had collected five more messages, and she listened to them dutifully. One from Frank, two from her mother (where was a fast-forward button when you needed it?), one from Katharine setting up their next appointment, and one from Jeff Hulsey asking if she could make it to the office early tomorrow afternoon.

Deciding that Katharine and Jeff could have their wishes and that Frank could go to hell, she picked up the phone, plastered a fake smile on her face for mental preparation, and dialed home.

***

She was back at the zoo, cleaning up after the bison. It was cold, and wisps of steam rose from the gargantuan brown patties. The wheelbarrow was full, and so heavy she could barely move it. Someone was blocking her way out the gate.

"Move," she yelled, agitated. "Can't you see this is heavy? Get out of the way!"

The figure reached out a booted foot and kicked the handles out of Leigh's hands. Foul-smelling smudge sloshed out of the wheelbarrow, splashing over her face and arms. She looked up, furious.

Horse-faced Kristin looked down at Leigh from an impressive height, her thin lips curled. "You got my shoes dirty," she said sinisterly. "Nobody gets my shoes dirty."

A rising panic spread over Leigh, and she abandoned the wheelbarrow and started running. The zoo hospital was in sight, but no matter how hard she ran, she couldn't seem to reach it. Her knees were weak, her legs heavy. Every footstep seemed glued to wet ground.

"Where you running, girl?" came a voice inches from her ear. Kristin didn't even sound tired. The pursuer wasn't running, she was floating. Floating right over Leigh's shoulder. "Gonna see your boyfriend?"

"
He's not my boyfriend!
" Leigh yelled vehemently, stopping and whirling around. She couldn't see Kristin anymore, but she knew she was there.

"Damn right he's not," came another voice. Leigh strained her eyes to see through the heavy fog. She was still sinking into the wet ground, up to her knees now.

"He's mine. And he always will be." Carmen stepped out into clearer air, raven hair billowing around her lithe form. "You understand that, don't you Leigh?"

Leigh nodded frantically. "You can have him, you hear me! Take him! Just go away, both of you. Go away and leave me alone!"

Carmen tilted her head, an endearing mannerism Leigh had forgotten she remembered. "I like you, Leigh Koslow. You make me laugh. You think maybe we're cousins or something?"

As Carmen spoke the last words, a flash of metal shone over her shoulder and a giant saw blade cut across her shoulders.

"Take that!" said Kristin, now towering like a giant. Carmen's head rolled toward Leigh, entangling itself in its own mass of black hair. Leigh tried to recoil, but couldn't move. The cold wetness of the ground was seeping around her waist, crawling up to her armpits.

"It won't do you any good to run," said Carmen's head, looking at her sympathetically as it leaned against her ribs. "She'll find you, you know."

Leigh sat straight up in bed, her breath coming fast. She lunged over to turn on her bedside lamp.

It was her room, it was fine, and she was only dreaming. It was just a nightmare. A dumb nightmare.

Her breathing slowed, but only a little. She had known it was a dream while it was happening—she usually did. But that didn't mean the fear wasn't real. Or that it would go away easily. She reached for Mao Tse, who whined plaintively at being disturbed from her place on the other pillow, but soon mellowed and began to purr.

1:54 AM. Only a few hours since she'd fallen asleep. There were plenty more to go till morning. She sat bolt upright, trying to rationalize away the lingering fear. Kristin was not coming back. Why should she? She wasn't out to get Leigh. She had killed Carmen because…because why? Over Tanner? Over money? Over some other personal argument?

It was a hard sell. Cat fighting was one thing. Dismemberment was another. Why would Kristin throw Carmen to the tigers? Poetic justice? Was Kristin even bright enough to understand poetic justice? Leigh doubted it. And Stacey…did she kill Stacey because Tanner still loved her? Did Stacey accidentally intrude into Kristin's hideout, or had Kristin lured her there? And if Kristin really loved Tanner, why wasn't she trying to be with him?

Or maybe she was. Maybe framing Leigh was just an attempt to get Tanner off the hook. If that was the case, Leigh wasn't in any real danger now, right?

Right
. Kristin was a perfectly rational human being who had no intention of hurting anyone. Stacey had probably backed up onto the knife accidentally and Carmen had asked to be fed to the tigers because the zoo was out of cat food. Leigh was perfectly safe. It wasn't like Kristin knew where she lived. Or how to pick locks.

Leigh had thought enough. Now she started moving. Mao Tse squawked in protest as she was swept up and out of the bed, her middle clutched in a viselike grip. Cat in hand, Leigh threw a robe over her sweats, pushed aside her barricade with one arm and a hip, and locked the door behind her. Within seconds, she was knocking on Warren's door.

It took a while, but eventually footsteps pounded inside, followed by a pause—undoubtedly for a look through the peephole. The door swung open to reveal a wide-eyed Warren, looking GQ as usual in department-store pajamas. "Leigh! What's happened?" He pulled her inside, walking backwards towards the phone as he spoke. "Did someone try to break in again?"

She shook her head, embarrassed.

"Then what?" he said, stopping.

She didn't answer for a moment. She had gotten him up in the middle of night and scared him to death—for nothing. Why was she here?

Because she was petrified, that's why. She dropped a grateful Mao Tse onto a chair and avoided Warren's gaze.
How embarrassing
. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come down. It's just—I just had a nightmare, that's all."

Warren let out a sigh of relief. "Oh. You had me worried there for a moment."

"I know, " she said miserably. "I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing," Warren said as cheerfully as one could at 2:00AM. "I told you you were welcome to stay here. I kind of meant all night—but that's all right. You want the couch or the bed?"

"The couch," Leigh said quickly. "I don't want to put you out. I probably won't sleep much anyway."

He looked at her thoughtfully. "What was the dream about?"

She tried to put it into words in her head.
Well, I was scooping bison poop, and Kristin was there, and there was this fog…
"It was just stupid stuff," she said dismissively. "Quicksand and decapitated heads—the usual."

Warren didn't look convinced. "It might help to say it out loud. The stupider it sounds, the easier it may be to forget."

Leigh shook her head. She knew exactly how stupid the dream was—and she still wasn't going back to her apartment.

Warren dumped a pillow and blanket on the couch, took Leigh's keys out of her hand, and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" she asked, startled.

He chuckled. "I wish I could say I was riding off on my white horse to slay your dragon, but you know I'm not the athletic type. Don't worry, I'll be back in five minutes."

He was back in three. Leigh sat tensely on the edge of the couch as the door reopened and he slid around it, carrying Mao's litter box under one arm. She resisted a smile. "Now, come on. Was that really necessary?" she teased.

He narrowed his eyes at her and sat the box down by the door. "You may not care squat for my belongings, but I'm rather attached to them. Now, the door is locked, and nobody knows you're here. If you don't mind, I'm going back to bed. I have a horrific schedule tomorrow."

Leigh's eyes felt suddenly moist. She averted her gaze.

"Thanks, Warren," she said quietly.

"Thanks, nothing," he said with a smirk. "You're making breakfast."

***

Stirring milk into a powdered mix was just within the bounds of Leigh's culinary capabilities, and she proudly waved the warm blueberry muffins under Warren's nose.

"Excellent," he smiled. "I could get used to this. You have nightmares often?"

In the light of day Leigh's dream seemed quite surreal, and her fear inexcusable. But Warren was sick of hearing her apologize, so she made reparations by cleaning up both her dishes and his—a definite break in tradition. An impressed Warren headed off to work, and she returned to the specter of her apartment. Staying just long enough to resettle Mao Tse and get dressed, she headed back to the office of Katharine Bower, attorney at law. This time Maura was going to be there too, and Leigh was anxious to know if her volunteer investigator had learned anything new. She was also anxious to see Katharine Bower, who, she remembered with a smile, had not been at Warren's last night.

"Kristin Yates killed them both," she announced with a flourish as she plopped into one of Katharine's leather chairs. "I'm sure of it."

Katharine and Maura exchanged glances. "What makes you so sure?" Katharine asked. Leigh summarized her last, depressing meeting with Tanner, finishing with an impassioned editorial. "I don't believe Kristin killed Carmen over Tanner, though. I think there was something else going on that we don't know about."

"Quite possibly," Katharine agreed, and asked Maura to repeat the conversation she'd heard at the bird house.

"So," Leigh responded sullenly. "Tonya and Dena both saw Kristin at the zoo that night. A
pregnant
Kristin."

"We can't know that for sure," Maura cautioned. "Dena just said 'with the baby coming,' she didn't say whose baby, or where it was coming from."

Leigh was unconvinced, but didn't say so. If Kristin were pregnant, her unexpected return from DC made sense. And if "friend" Tanner was the father, so did her desire to confront Carmen. "So, Dena went out on a limb to protect Kristin," she mused. "I wonder if she knows Kristin was the killer. Do you think she's scared of her now?"

"She sounded scared all right," Maura retorted. "But not of Kristin. She's worried about perjury charges if all this goes to trial."

"It won't," Katharine interrupted. "I had a little talk with Frank last night."

Leigh's eyebrows rose. "After I threw him out?"

She nodded. "I'm not Frank's favorite person, as you know, so he wasn't exactly effusive. But I'm virtually certain that he's beginning to doubt your guilt. It appears that he's working with the State Police to get the pond by Tanner's cabin dragged."

"Dragged?" Leigh repeated. She knew what dragged meant, but she had no idea there was a pond near Tanner's cabin. He had talked about fishing, but she assumed he meant going to a lake.

"I believe the police are thinking that whoever killed Carmen was using Tanner's cabin as a hideout. They removed the rest of the body from the zoo—probably in a car trunk—and drove to the cabin to dispose of it. Of course, they could have disposed of it anywhere along the way, but the pond would be a relatively easy target. I also learned from Tanner's lawyer that the wheelbarrow in the shed behind the cabin was spanking clean—in great contrast to everything else there. That may indicate the killer used it to haul the body, then cleaned it out."

"Did Tanner have a boat?" Maura asked Leigh.

Leigh shrugged, finding the question an odd one. "I don't know. I know he fished and hunted, that's all. I hardly saw the cabin."

"There's no mention of a boat in the report I have," Katharine answered, flipping papers, "but that doesn't mean anything. Why?"

Maura sat back in her chair, brow furrowed. "It's probably not important. Leigh, you said Tanner was the outdoors type. What about Kristin?"

"I don't know anything about Kristin's hobbies," she answered. "But I know she grew up around West View, somewhere near Carmen. It's hard to picture either one of them pitching a tent or cleaning fish, if that's what you mean. They were definitely urban types."

Katharine, who seemed a little miffed at losing control of the conversation, broke in. She explained her plan to get the charges against Leigh dropped, which included pushing the police to locate and question Kristin Yates. There was no credible evidence to connect Kristin directly to Carmen's murder, and the link with Stacey's murder was tenuous at best. Furthermore, suspects had already been arrested in both cases. But looking at the whole picture, Kristin's rating as a suspect—or at least as an accomplice—wasn't too shabby. The police had known all along that Leigh couldn't possibly have removed Carmen's body from the zoo herself; somebody had driven away with it. And not in her car or Tanner's truck, either.

"If we can break down either Tonya or Dena," Katharine hypothesized, "we can place Kristin at the zoo the night of the murder. I think I can trip Dena up pretty easily—thanks to Officer Polanski's information gathering. With the prosecution's star witness debunked and another plausible suspect in the picture, I think we've got a shot here. A good shot."

Leigh smiled. Things weren't looking so bad, at least from the standpoint of her going to prison. Now if she could just stop her growing fear of a freely roaming homicidal Kristin, things would be perfect.