Feline Fatale (29 page)

“No, I—hell, that’s enough. I’m not saying another word. I think I’d better—”

I expected him to finish that statement with something like “call my lawyer.”

Instead, I turned and saw that Teddy Bertinetti was aiming a lethal-looking handgun toward all of us.

His hand was unsteady enough to keep it waving. And I suddenly became afraid it might go off whether Teddy intended it to or not.

“OKAY,” I SAID loudly, practically aiming my boob, where the cops’ gadget was located, toward Teddy. “You’re pointing a gun at us. Is that a confession that you killed Margaret?”

“I was afraid you did, Teddy,” wailed Ruth, wringing her hands as she stood off to one side of the living room.

“What the hell are you doing, Ruth?” Teddy demanded, backing up enough so that every other human being in the room, including his wife, was within range of his weapon. That meant he had to sidestep the matching sofa and chairs. I kept half hoping he’d trip over something, but that could mean he’d fire the gun wildly and hit someone. I didn’t care a whole heck of a lot about Ruth, but I definitely didn’t want him to hurt Dante. Or me, for that matter.

“You know exactly what I’m doing,” Ruth said softly.

“Yeah, I do, you bitch.”

“What do you mean?” Ruth’s voice was now raised a humongous number of decibels. “You’re the one who had an affair with her.”

Ahhh. The motive was now making its presence known. But was it Ruth’s motive, or Teddy’s, or both? Either way, why murder someone over it? Damned if I knew.

Interesting, though, that the not-so-attractive dead lady had slept with both Rutley and Teddy.

“And you’re the one who killed her, because of that,” stormed Teddy. His gun hand was waving, which made me more than a little nervous.

Dante, too, apparently, since he gallantly stepped closer and shielded me with his big, beautiful masculine body.

Not that I allowed him to. I moved aside, which seemed to make Teddy’s gun hand shake even more, back and forth, between us. Dante shot a glower at me, and I attempted a brave but determined smile back.

“You’re so horrible!” screamed Ruth. “First you start an affair with that woman. When I caught you, you promised to back off. You said you’d just been doing it because you and she were so simpatico about that stupid no-pets-allowed position. But did you stop? No! I should have killed you instead of her.”

Okay, now that sounded pretty much like a confession to me. But Dante and I were still in a dangerous situation.

Where were the cops?

I decided to try to buy some time. “So, Ruth, why did you take Lady Cuddles’s collar off?”

She’d been staring with hatred toward the man she’d married and lived with in Brigadoon. The look she shot toward me then wasn’t exactly adoring. “I didn’t hate cats before—not like Teddy does. One scratched him when he was a little kid, and he’s loathed them ever since. I didn’t care too much, though I wouldn’t have minded having one before. But to try to keep our marriage together, I thought that if I got onto the condo association board with Margaret, I’d be able to help sway things the way Teddy wanted even more than she did. I planned to run for the next open seat. I started suspecting they had something going . . . and when I accused her, she laughed about it. Said that I hadn’t done a great job teaching my husband how to really please a woman. In fact, he was pretty rotten at it.”

“Hey!” Teddy roared, pointing the gun decidedly in his wife’s direction. “That’s a lie!”

“It’s what your mistress said, dear,” Ruth said sweetly. “I wanted to kick her teeth in then, but decided to wait and see. After all, if she taught you better, you might use some of your lessons the next time you touched me . . . if I ever let you.”

“You’ve always been a cold bitch!” Teddy shouted, but at least he didn’t shoot.

And Ruth didn’t shut up, still speaking to her husband. “Even after that, Margaret kept goading me about being an awful wife, in so many ways. And about how she was sure she could convince you to divorce me. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I went to her place that night ready to confront her one final time and insist that she back off. I found her in her kitchen, and did she act nervous? No! She started making fun of me . . . Even showed me the key to the Gustins’ condo that she used to let that cat out and make trouble in a way you approved of, like you approved of everything about her. She even encouraged that stupid cat to creep into all the buildings at Brigadoon when it was loose. That night, she had a nasty-looking barbecue spit in her sink, with one hell of a point on it. Guess she was planning a cookout, but I cooked her goose first.”

Lovely image, but I didn’t say a word. Listening worked a whole lot better. Apparently, Ruth hadn’t been happy holding everything inside, and now it was in everyone’s best interests to let her vent her hysteria as much as she wanted. As long as it was verbal and not physical, at least.

“So,” Ruth continued, “when what happened, happened, in Margaret’s apartment, that damned kitten was there and saw it all. I’d already wiped the spit clean, so it wouldn’t have had any fingerprints. But the cat had blood on her, and I picked her up to try to rinse it off her—and she clawed me. I bled, too, then, and I saw that some of the blood was on that white collar. I’d dropped her, and she’d nearly gotten away, but I figured I’d better take the collar off. She might wipe off the blood on her paws and fur as she ran around the condos, but the blood that was on that white thing might be partly mine. The thing is . . . Hell!”

Ruth ran across the room toward the piano, and Teddy looked even more unnerved, as if ready to shoot her.

“What’s wrong now?” Teddy bellowed.

Ruth raised the lid of the piano again and looked in. “The blood was near the buckle on that collar, not in the center. I’ll bet . . .” She ran at Dante with her own claws outstretched. “I’ll bet this came from one of your stores, you damned interfering bastard. It isn’t the one I took off that kitten at all. I knew I did a good job getting rid of it.”

“In the complex’s garbage?” Dante inquired calmly, catching Ruth by her wrists and turning her so she’d be a shield if Teddy happened to shoot.

“Of course not. I put it in a plastic bag and took it to the Dumpster at a supermarket near here.”

Which meant it was unlikely to be found easily, if at all, depending on how often the Dumpster contents were hauled off, and where they were taken.

But there could be another clue that might be found more easily. “So, Ruth, did you steal the key to Margaret’s unit from Teddy, to get in there that night? One of those he’d sneaked away from the contractor Rutley Harris—at Margaret’s request, I assume?”

“That’s what happened to Margaret’s key?” Teddy squeaked.

“How did you know about that?” Ruth demanded at the same time.

It had been the clue that had made me assume one of the Bertinettis was guilty. A while back, I’d seen Teddy try to open the door to their unit with a key that he’d assumed would work, since it was the same kind used for all the condos. But it hadn’t worked, and he’d had to dig out another one. Rutley’s telling me about the keys that went missing had gotten my mind spinning around several possibilities.

“I assume, Teddy, that Margaret asked you to retrieve her key from Rutley Harris, after they started arguing and you began seeing her on the side. That way you could visit her at any time, right? And, while you were at it, you were to ‘borrow’ Rutley’s key to the Gustins’ unit—the one Margaret started using to let Lady Cuddles out now and then to bolster her point about pets being out of control around here.” No answer. I’d assumed that Rutley had received a copy of the Gustins’ key when he had updated their shelves and hardwood floor. “Ruth found out about Margaret’s key when she learned the two of you were seeing each other. Her turn to ‘borrow’ a key—yes? And, Ruth, I’ll bet you took the Gustins’ key that night but left Margaret’s in its place—after removing any fingerprints, probably—and that you’re now the one letting Lady Cuddles out and about to help make the anti-pet point.”

“I still wanted to help Teddy.” There were tears in Ruth’s eyes.

Which was when a knock finally sounded on the outside door. “Police,” called a brusque voice. “Open up.”

The look on Teddy’s face suggested he was weighing whether to shoot first and open up second. But he quickly realized the futility of that . . . for him. It wouldn’t have done us any good, either.

Soon as he lowered his weapon an iota, Dante rushed forward to grab it, and him, just as the door splintered open and the Burbank police, in gardening gear, poured in with their weapons drawn.

Ruth melted onto the floor, sobbing hysterically. “He killed Margaret,” she shrieked. “My husband’s a murderer.”

 

OF COURSE THE statements given by Dante and me to Detective Candace Melamed, who arrived a few minutes later, contradicted Ruth’s last allegations.

“Not that I’m certain,” I told the detective as we stood out on the patio, where she used a more obvious recording device to take my statement, “but I think you’ll hear on the recordings your nifty little device made that Ruth pretty much admitted her guilt; that last claim was probably an attempt to shift suspicion back on her husband, the way she’d started before.” I also mentioned how fascinating I found it that Ruth, whom I now believed to be the killer, had accused Wanda so quickly right after she’d found Margaret’s body.

This was the first time I saw the detective in something other than a formal suit. Today, she wore a Burbank PD T-shirt over jeans. I assumed it might have been her day off.

Her icy blue eyes looked almost warm for a change. Why not? I’d solved her case for her and had promised that she could take credit.

“I know you were narrowing your suspicions down on these two,” she told me. “Why did you think it was them—or one of them?”

I described my thought processes on the scenario about the key to Margaret’s unit—and the Gustins’, too.

“It wasn’t a certainty, of course,” I admitted. “In fact, it was a pretty sketchy reason to suspect them. But when the contractor Rutley Harris admitted losing a couple of keys to units around here, that made me really consider that incident with Teddy and focus on the Bertinettis more strongly than anyone else I was wondering about.”

I didn’t bother to mention that had I not obtained a confession from one Bertinetti or the other, I’d planned to try my scenario on Ivan Tradeau. He had, after all, once used a barbecue spit as a prop in a film he worked on. But now, he was exonerated. And Ruth had apparently used the spit simply because it was convenient.

“I’m glad you came through on this, Kendra,” Detective Melamed said as she prepared to let me leave. “Ned Noralles’ vouching for you notwithstanding, I really stuck my neck out here, letting you play your little games with the police department’s tacit approval.”

I thought the approval was a little more than tacit, but I didn’t tell her that. Plus, the credit she’d been searching for would be all hers. I’d even say so to my reporter friend Corina Carey.

I waited in the winding hallway while Candace took Dante’s statement. I saw a bunch of crime scene sorts going in and out of the Bertinettis’ unit, and some of the same condo residents who’d been around Margaret’s unit stood outside the tape barrier, exchanging gasps and comments and nods of their heads.

One of them was James Jerome, who came up to me and asked what was going on.

“I think Margaret’s killer has been apprehended by the cops,” I said, then added, good lawyer that I am, “allegedly.”

“Was it Teddy or Ruth?”

“I think they’ll have to sort that out,” I said tactfully, although I knew the answer: the wronged wife. Even so, Teddy was a possible accomplice after the fact, and he’d definitely held Dante and me at gunpoint. There were certainly charges that could be brought against him for that.

Wanda joined us, too. “Is it over?” she asked almost fearfully.

“I think so,” I said. “At least as far as you’re concerned.”

“Kendra, you’re the best,” she said, and hugged me.

I noticed then that the Gustins were among the people milling in the hall and mulling over what was going on.

As Dante and Candace Melamed reentered the hall, I turned toward them . . . which was when I saw a yellow streak stream past, through the open door of the Bertinettis’ unit.

“Lady Cuddles!” I shouted. And then I started laughing.

SINCE IT WAS a crime scene, the cops had to be the ones to round up and boot Lady Cuddles from the Bertinettis’ condo unit. They seemed none too pleased that the elusive little kitty had once more potentially messed up parts of their investigation.

“But she helped to solve Margaret’s murder,” I reminded Candace Melamed when the detective was ultimately the one to carry the kitten into the hall and hand her to me. “Did you thank her?”

Candace glared through her glasses with her again chilly blue eyes, then smiled. “Don’t press your luck.”

Standing beside Wanda were the Gustins, and I handed their sweet, if slippery, pet back to them—without telling them, just then, about the stolen key. Some condo residents in the hall laughed and cheered. I figured they were among the pet-loving contingent.

I wondered what would happen to the pet-haters, with three of their most vocal supporters now out of the picture. At least I assumed that was so, with the Bertinettis in such trouble.

“You’re a heroine of this tale,” I assured the cute ginger kitten, who looked up at me with big blue feline eyes, the picture of utter innocence, and I couldn’t help smiling at her.

“Mew,” she responded.

I wasn’t the only human in the area to laugh.

 

LATER IN THE evening, we were in Dante’s car. We’d undergone further interrogation by Detective Melamed and her folks, who’d had additional inquiries after rerunning their recordings from the equipment they’d attached to me and, fortunately, monitored while we were in the Bertinettis’ condo unit.