Double Dog Dare (18 page)

Did I imagine she’d offed her ex-husband? I sort of hoped so. Domestic quarrels were most likely to lead to a killing. But my research and Althea’s had indicated the Knoxes had been divorced for three years. Court records— Althea’s bailiwick, not mine—showed that the property settlement had been handled then, and there’d been no resurrection, at least not officially, of any gripe or unhandled claim. There’d been no kids, so no complaints about custody or support. Edwina and her current husband owned a franchise for a tony clothing store. No apparent need for her to demand spousal support, at least not now.

So if there’d been some kind of disagreement that might provide a motive for murder, I’d have to try to figure that out by digging as deep as possible into Edwina’s soul, since nothing stood out on the surface.

The elevator door slid open almost silently, except for the
ding
signaling my arrival on the designated floor. I stopped outside the appropriate entry and pressed the door-bell.

“Who’s there?” resounded a voice via an intercom. Heck, she knew who it was. The guard downstairs had already announced me.

Even so, I played along. “This is Kendra Ballantyne, Ms. Horton. We spoke on the phone about an hour ago.”
As if you didn’t know
.

“Just a moment,” she said, but that moment grew into a minute, then three. Was this a kind of game to assert alphaness like a canine? Well, I was alpha enough myself to play along—then nip when it made sense to take control.

Finally, the door opened. The woman who stood there was slightly shorter than me, slightly younger than me, and a whole lot more stylish, despite the fact that I was wearing jeans I’d paid a fortune for and a pretty, silky top. Oh, she had on jeans, too, but they were so worn in strategic areas that they screamed of a high-end label. Her blouse all but flowed in its exotic floral print. A sweet yet spicy designer scent filled the air around her. All products from the trendy store she owned with her current hubby? A logical assumption—and I was nothing if not a logical lawyer. And prime pet-sitter. And intelligent pseudo investigator.

“Ms. Ballantyne?” she said in a low and dramatic tone. “Could you please state your business again?”

Come on
, I wanted to say. No way would she have forgotten our earlier conversation. But telling her off wouldn’t get me inside her door. Instead, I said in a tone worthy of the excellent litigator I was, “I’m here to discuss your former husband, Earl Knox. I work with Hubbard Security, and we’re conducting our own investigation into his untimely death. May I come in? I don’t think this is the kind of conversation you’ll want to have in a hallway.”

She blinked shifty brown eyes that were skillfully made up to look larger than they were. Her mouth was all shimmering pout, and I suspected that Botox and she were not strangers. “Earl and I divorced several years ago. I doubt I can tell you anything helpful.”

“Please let me be the judge of that.” Since she had neither invited me inside nor moved beyond her entry, I figured I’d do what was most inclined to embarrass her. “Okay, then, suppose you tell me how you met Mr. Knox in the first place.”

To my great delight, a neighbor’s door opened and an older couple started inching down the hall. They’d get an earful if I didn’t get my entry invitation.

Obviously, Edwina thought so, too. “Please come in,” she all but huffed.

“Thank you,” I said, oozing earnest etiquette.

Inside, her condo looked as if it had been decorated for drama, all decked out with gorgeous, modern furniture that could have been featured in an issue of
Architectural Digest
. And maybe it had been. That wasn’t a magazine I went out of my way to indulge in. Most of the stuff was in shades of white, which suggested that she either had no pets at all, or that what she had was white, too—a Bichon Frise, or a mini-poodle, perhaps. A snooty white kitty would fit, too. But nothing came out to greet or sneer at me. And I’d learned in my life that I thought a whole lot more of people who loved animals than those who didn’t.

Edwina’s gait was all grace as she waved me toward her pristine living room and onto a white sofa. This woman had been married to the unsophisticated promotional person from The Clone Arranger? An odd match. No wonder it had come to an end.

She lowered herself into a chair that actually had some color to it—pale pink, a fitting foil to the plainness of the other stuff. “So what can I tell you, Ms. Ballantyne?” She looked at me expectantly until her brow puckered in a small frown beneath her short, well-highlighted hairstyle. “No, wait. You tell me first who hired you. Is it that woman who threatened Earl’s employer because they supposedly hurt her dog?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m not at liberty to reveal my client’s name.” I kept my expression neutral, trying to interject professionalism. “I’m also an attorney, and confidentiality is paramount in this situation.”

“I’m not sure I want to talk to you then.” She crossed her arms stubbornly and leaned back, her smug face conveying a challenge similar to her words.

“That’s certainly your prerogative right now,” I said. “But of course if litigation results, you’ll be subpoenaed, and then you will need to respond. On the other hand, if we receive the kinds of answers that lead to conclusions other than those we believe are in order, there may not be any litigation, and therefore no subpoenas.”

My turn to shoot her a smug look. Which obviously worried her, since she frowned again.

“All right, ask what you want, and I’ll decide whether to answer.”

“Fair enough.” I started slowly and way in the past, asking about how they’d met: in college. He’d been a computer science major, and she—big surprise—had gotten a degree in fashion design. They’d fallen for one another. Who knew what caused serious vibes between two so different people? They married. They fought. They divorced.

Nothing extraordinary there. Nothing suggested that this woman had any emotions strong enough even to consider slaying a former mate, for any reason.

Still, I started asking her about Earl’s prior job with CW Ultra Technologies and his former boss, Clark Weiss.

Suddenly, Edwina’s demeanor darkened. “That bastard! You talk about a horrible person, someone Earl could have killed—or even I could. He screwed Earl over horribly, and then accused
him
of stealing. Go ahead, Ms. Ballantyne, if that’s why you’re here. Ask me who I think killed Earl.”

“Okay,” I began. “Who do you think—”

“Clark Weiss. If it wasn’t that nutty woman who had a grudge against The Clone Arranger, then it was Clark Weiss who killed poor Earl.”

Chapter Fifteen

WELL, HELL. I knew Edwina could have been making up a motive for Clark Weiss to have killed Earl simply as a ruse to remove herself from my list of suspects.

Even so, I bit—or at least allowed her to believe so. “What do you mean?” I tried to sound as if I was in utter shock.

“If you’re really an investigator, you’ve got to know something about Earl’s background. Right?”

“My investigation isn’t complete,” I retorted defensively. “If it was, I wouldn’t be here asking questions, would I?”

“How should I know?” The woman flicked manicured fingernails toward me as if she didn’t give a damn. “But if you were any good, you should have done your homework. Earl worked for CW Ultra Technologies before joining The Clone Arranger. CW stands for Clark Weiss.”

“That part I got,” I responded dryly. “What did Earl do there?”

“The company is an umbrella composed of many separate businesses, mostly to do with medical research, including pharmaceuticals. They raise private funds and invest in other organizations conducting research. More important, they figure out areas where knowledge is needed but lacking, find people skilled in those areas, and hire them to come up with the next generation of . . . whatever. That includes things like DNA duplication for medical purposes, and testing for law enforcement forensics, for example.”

Aha! DNA. I perceived the link between CW Ultra Technologies and The Clone Arranger.

“I can see from your expression that you see where I’m headed, Ms. Ballantyne.”

“Kendra,” I corrected. I’d learned that I’d elicit a whole lot more from people when we seemed to be on a friendly, first-name basis.

“Whatever.” She waved pink-polished fingernails toward me again. “Anyway, Earl started with a pharmaceutical sales company and worked his way into management, and that background is why Clark Weiss hired him. But Earl was fascinated by DNA research and technology. He hung around the laboratories where CW scientists worked with DNA and cloning research, coming up with all kinds of ideas for going forward with the stuff. But Clark got upset with Earl for not sticking to what he’d been hired to do—sales and management for existing technologies, not research and development. Clark even took away some of his vacation days that he claimed Earl owed him for wasting company time.”

“Then Earl helped to develop their DNA technology?”

“I don’t think so,” Edwina contradicted, “but he wanted to. Since the DNA stuff intrigued him, he left when he found a job at The Clone Arranger, where they weren’t as structured as CW. He still excelled in sales, but he was allowed to make suggestions about the company’s direction. Of course, The Clone Arranger had its own technology already. ”

“Really?”

“That didn’t keep Clark from making claims against Earl that he’d stolen proprietary processes from CW. Even threatened a lawsuit.”

“But if Clark thought he had enough evidence to pursue a legal claim against Earl—and, presumably, against The Clone Arranger—why would he kill Earl?”

Edwina glared as if I was the stupidest person in the room. Which in this instance, on this topic, she might be correct—not that I’d admit it to myself, let alone her. “Because a lawsuit would be slow and expensive, and the outcome wasn’t guaranteed. But when Earl talked to my husband, Marty, and me about what he was doing at The Clone Arranger, at least at first, he got all happy, the way he used to when we were married and he wanted to rub my nose in something he thought he knew more about than I did.”

She frowned and stuck that small, possibly artificially reduced, nose in the air. Okay, sue me for cattiness, but I was definitely amenable to criticizing this snotty—er, snooty—lady.

“Only at first?” I asked.

“Oh, you know how things go after the honeymoon period is over, even on jobs. And I didn’t talk to him a lot. But when I did, he never complained about his new company— not much, at least.”

I slipped in several more questions, but I thought I’d heard nearly enough. One thing I felt a little deflated about was that she had seemed genuinely caring in this conversation about her ex-husband. Friendly, at least. I couldn’t quite conceive of her offing him.

Too bad her current husband wasn’t there for me to interrogate. If she had stayed mightily fond of her first mate, husband number two could have considered he had a real reason to off Earl.

“Oh, one more thing,” I said, shrugging as if I actually intended this most telling question of all to be offhand. “Did Earl ever mention to you anything about an investigator, maybe hired by Clark”—or anyone else, such as Lois Terrone—“snooping around The Clone Arranger?”

Edwina once more furrowed her forehead, then quickly wiped away telltale crinkles along with any facial expression. “He did mention that once The Clone Arranger’s promotion started to work, there were always people nosing around, wanting more information—the media, outfits that had started cloning before The Clone Arranger, even others who thought cloning was against the natural scheme of things. Some apparently went so far as to hire people as snoopy as you.” Her grin was more than a tiny bit sly.

“Everyone wants in on a good thing,” I said with a smile I hoped was equally slimy. I rose and started for the door. “Thanks for speaking with me, Edwina. I’ll be in touch again if I have any more questions. Oh, and I’d love to visit your boutique. Do you have a card?”

Do dogs under my aegis poop, even at inopportune times? Just as silly a question. Of course she did, and she even had it handy, in a small holder on a table near the entry.

But if I ever elected to visit said shop, I’d arrive only after a prior phone call to see if Marty was available to talk. And without a credit card. That way, I wouldn’t be tempted—much—to interrupt my talking time by shopping for high-end apparel I couldn’t afford anyway on my limited, unlucrative law-and-pet-sitting income.

BACK IN MY way-less-than-Beamer rental car, I called Althea’s cell phone, despite the fact that it was Sunday.

“Where are you, Kendra?” she demanded, then asked the usual. “Have you learned anything about Jeff?”

“No,” I said sadly. “I gather you haven’t, either.” But I didn’t wait for her negative response before asking, “Can you give me the address for CW Ultra Technologies?”

Sure, it was Sunday and the business was unlikely to be open. But if it happened to be on my way, or not too far out of it, I’d drive by just to get a sense of how successful it appeared from the outside.

Althea informed me that its office was in Arcadia. That upscale town a little east of Pasadena was not far from my current locale. I decided to drive by and scope the site out for future, deeper scrutiny, then head back to pick up the pups and take off on the evening’s pet-sitting.

I got onto the freeway once more. I had to travel only two exits, then head about half a mile on commercial surface streets.

The structure that housed CW Ultra Technologies was a typical three-story office building in an area filled with similar ones. With all its windows, it didn’t resemble a laboratory at all. Except for me, the parking lot was empty, and I supposed that even if the place had a guard instead of a security system, I wouldn’t be able to talk myself in . . . would I? But then what? Even if I assumed that digging into unknown files could yield useful results, I needed a better sense of what I’d be looking for. That meant speaking with someone—such as CW himself—first. But if I alerted him to my quest, might I ever have an opportunity to get this near to the place again, let alone snoop in the paperwork?