'Don't be so nice to me. It'll make me cry more.'
A soft chuckle came down the line. 'I'll try to be harsh,' she said. 'But it'll be difficult.'
'I want you to stay on the case, Kylie.' Pen Braithwaite was adamant. 'Oscar would have expected it. Nail Jack Yarrow as a plagiarist…' She paused, then added, 'Or worse.'
As it was Sunday, and much quieter than usual in my office, all I could hear of the outside world was a distant siren and the soft rumble of traffic on Sunset Boulevard. Pen, Rube, and I sat around the coffee table I'd recently purloined from Lonnie's office, where it'd been buried under a blizzard of files and papers.
I had the errant thought of how nice it would be to do what I'd originally scheduled for myself-spend the afternoon planting Australian-native bushes in the backyard. I'd only had time to give them a quick watering, so they'd have to survive in their pots another week.
Ariana leaned forward in her chair. 'You believe Professor Yarrow had something to do with your brother's death?'
She was casually dressed in what looked like the same well-worn blue jeans she'd been wearing on Friday night. I felt a totally unseemly tug of desire.
Pen, her face gray with strain, said quietly, 'I'm sure he's responsible. Yarrow's home free as far as the symposium is concerned. He'll get up in front of his peers and triumph with an address based on Oscar's findings and claim the research as his own. There'll be no one mere to contradict him.'
'I'll contradict him,' declared Rube stoutly.
Pen patted his hand. 'You're such a love to say that, but you know as well as I do that we need hard evidence.' She turned to me. 'Evidence that Kylie's going to obtain this coming week.'
'It would help if I knew what the quokka question was,' I said.
'I've no idea,' said Pen. She looked at Rube. 'Did Oscar confide in you.”
'Not a word.'
Crikey, this was no help. 'Maybe Erin Fogarty knows,' I said. 'She worked with Oscar in the field, so she should have a fair idea what was going on.'
Pen's expression became bleak. 'Erin Fogarty,' she said, 'broke Oscar's heart. He never got over it.'
Rube was surprised. 'Why, I saw them talking together on Friday. They seemed on very good terms.'
'Where and when was this?' Pen demanded.
'I don't know…I think around four-thirty, when I was leaving. I was walking to my car in the parking structure when I came upon Oscar and Erin, heads together, very lovey-dovey. I didn't like to interrupt, so I pretended I hadn't seen them, got into my car, and left.'
Fixing me with a hard stare, Pen said, 'You're friendly with this young woman?'
'Working on it.'
'Work harder. She's the key. I'm sure of it.'
Ariana said, 'If this is a murder case-'
'If? If!' Some of Pen's usual spirit showed in her flashing eyes. 'Of course Oscar was murdered. I've held back from saying this because I know the investigation's just beginning, but I know in my heart it's true-the same way I know Yarrow had something to do with it.'
'What about your stalker?' Rube said. 'You know Oscar swore he was going to track him down and beat him to a pulp. And that call last night to your program was a thinly veiled threat. What if he meant the message was Oscar's death?'
I'd had this thought myself, so I waited with interest to see how Pen responded.
'It was so like Oscar to want to protect me.' Her lips trembled. 'And I laughed at him on Saturday morning when he said he had a lead about my stalker.' A tear ran down her cheek. 'I hurt his feelings. The last thing he said was that he'd show me.'
I could see Pen was about to drop her bundle, so to divert her I said, 'Have you opened the envelope?'
'Envelope?'
'Your brother gave us an envelope to be opened if something happened to him,' said Ariana. 'He said he was giving you an identical one.
'I think I shoved it in a drawer somewhere,' said Pen vaguely. 'I didn't take him seriously.' Her face crumpled.
Rube, obviously seeing she was about to break down, stood up. Taking her arm, he said, 'Come on, honey. Let's take you home.'
It was an indication of Pen's misery that she didn't protest but meekly allowed herself to be led away.
I saw them out and came back to find Ariana had retrieved Oscar's creased white envelope from the safe.
'Let's have a cuppa,' I said, 'and we can open it then.'
The kitchen was one of my favorite rooms because Ariana had first kissed me there. I couldn't help thinking about that kiss as I watched Ariana's slim fingers opening the envelope.
As I made the tea, she spread the contents out on the kitchen counter. After I'd poured us each a cup of tea-I wondered if Ariana actually liked it, or was just being polite-we examined the material Oscar had thought important enough to include in his after-death missive.
There was a photocopy of a handwritten will, leaving everything to his sister, Penelope Braithwaite. Across the top he had written 'Pen has the original.'
Several stapled pages were headed 'Australian Megafauna.' Another set of pages appeared to be an extract of research by someone named Diana Niptucker, Ph.D. The final item was a handwritten letter signed by Oscar Braithwaite.
Ariana read it aloud: 'To whom it may concern. If you are reading this, then Jack Yarrow has had me killed. I won't mince words. To put it in laymen's terms, Yarrow has stolen my groundbreaking research on the relationship between contemporary quokkas and their extinct megafauna marsupial ancestors of the early Pleistocene epoch. In order to pass off my discoveries as his own, Yarrow is likely to find it necessary to eliminate the one person who can prove him a fraud, namely myself, Oscar Braithwaite, Ph.D. I repeat, if I am found dead, even in circumstances that make it seem an accident, Jack Yarrow will be responsible. Throughout his career he has stopped at nothing to inflate his reputation, no matter what the cost to others. In my case it may be my life. It is my hope, of course, that no one ever has to read this. Oscar Braithwaite.'
'Detective Lark will be interested to see this letter,' I said.
'It doesn't prove anything ' said Ariana. 'He hated Yarrow, so these accusations aren't necessarily well- founded.'
'Blimey,' I said, 'what if Oscar committed suicide, knowing this letter had deliberately set up his great rival, Jack Yarrow?'
'You certainly have a devious mind,' Ariana remarked, amused. 'I was thinking, rather, that Oscar Braithwaite's death really was an accident, but this letter exists to unfairly implicate his great rival, Professor Yarrow.'
'When will we have the results of the postmortem?'
'The autopsy? The week after next, if we're lucky.'
' 'Strewth,' I said, 'that long? Can't you hurry it along?'
'Do you have an idea how many autopsies are performed by the Coroner's Office in Los Angeles every week?'
'A lot?'
'And then some.'
I gathered up the stapled sheets. 'You take the letter for Detective Lark. I'll read through this other stuff and see if I can make any sense of it.'
Ariana stood up, stretched, then covered a yawn with her hand. 'We both need an early night,' she said.
I just looked at her.
I never seen her blush before. 'No, Kylie,' she said. 'No.'
'Why not?'
She didn't meet my eyes. 'We have to talk but not now.'
'I'm not going to play detective,' I said. 'I'll wait for you to tell me what it is that makes it so impossible for us to-'
Actions speak louder than words, my mum always said. I took Ariana in my arms and kissed her. For a moment
