Never Tease a Siamese: A Leigh Koslow Mystery by Edie Claire

first she had thought her dad was doing a simple spay—but now that she thought about it, he rarely did anything but emergencies this late in the day. And the abdominal incision he was working through was unusually long.
    "This is Number One Son!" she exclaimed. "He did get obstructed. Is he going to be okay?"
    Randall didn't answer, and she realized he was waiting for information from her. She touched the Siamese's gums with a fingertip, pressing until the area went white. When she pulled back, the gums quickly turned pink again. "CRT's good," she answered, then lightly touched the corner of the cat's eye. He blinked. "Palpebral's fine. Have you found the metal piece?"
    She watched as her father's gloved fingers gingerly handled a solid mass of twisted intestine. "Adhesions?" she asked.
    Randall nodded, his head still down. "The blockage doesn't seem to be in the worst of it, though. I think I can get it."
    Leigh was silent as her father concentrated. They would soon find out what it was that Dean and Rochelle had wanted back so badly. Or, what it was they didn't want Lilah Murchison to see. Her thoughts returned automatically to Peggy Linney.
    It couldn't be a coincidence.
    She made herself face the thought. Could Peggy Linney have been murdered? Her legs were starting to shake slightly beneath the surgery table. She checked the cat's color again, then pulled over a stool and sat down.
    Perhaps someone else knew that Peggy Linney was an eyewitness to Dean's birth. Perhaps they wanted to silence her. Had they been watching Leigh as she visited? Was it her visit that made someone see the old woman as a threat? If she had never gone to see Peggy, would—
    "Here it is," her father announced, holding up a gnarled mass of green cloth with a hemostat. Leigh held out a paper towel, and Randall dropped both the instrument and the mass onto the middle of it. She sat down with the soggy paper towels in her lap and probed the tangled threads with the tips of the hemostat. In a few moments, she had managed a semireconstruction. "It is a little key," she announced. "On some type of cloth key chain. Woven threads of different colors, maybe— I’ll have to wash it up."
    Randall merely grunted as he bent studiously over his patient, sewing carefully. "I'm just glad it didn't perforate."
    "Does it mean anything to you?" she asked hopefully. "I mean, did any bells go off when you saw it?"
    He didn’t answer, which she took as a rather disappointing no . She stared hard at the tiny key, which was paper thin and shaped like a footnote symbol. She had similar keys that opened luggage padlocks, but this one was a little more ornate, with a three-dimensional design at its base.
    Perhaps Rochelle had simply been attempting to steal something of Ms. Murchison's, she reasoned hopefully. Rochelle had found the key and opened whatever it was, but when she cast the key aside, there was Number One Son, licking his lips. When the thief realized what had happened, she would have had to try and hide it from her mother-in-law, particularly if Dean was on thin ice as far as his inheritance was concerned.
    Mrs. Rhodis's troublesome words came back to Leigh in a flash. Ricky had told his grandmother that Dean and Rochelle claimed to be "coming into major money real soon. " Why should they think that? And why, she realized suddenly, feeling foolish for not wondering before, would a woman in her sixties expect her much older, frailer housekeeper to outlive her?
    "Help me rinse and reglove, would you?" Randall asked, the stitching on the bowel completed. Pushing her new and disturbing thoughts to the side, Leigh rose and helped him prepare a new sterile field. They had just finished when the A-team checked in.
    "Doc? I haven’t heard you call. Are you ready for—" Jeanine eyed her substitute with the merest hint of jealousy, but quickly replaced it with a knowing smirk. "Oh. Hello, Leigh. I didn’t realize it was you in here. How are you feeling?"
    "Fine,"