Angel Sleuth by Lesley A. Diehl

certain it was locked when they left.
    “We need to find Leda’s will. It looks like she hid it well. Don’t you think it’s odd she chose not to use her lawyer and, aside from her comments to me, she appeared to have told no one about a new will?”
    “Besides you, who might Leda confide in?” asked Kaitlin. She turned her head to look back down the alley toward the dumpster, but she didn’t see anyone there.
    “Nobody in town. But she did have a lot of friends at ARC. You might want to ask them. Without being too obvious, of course.”
    “How come I’m doing all the work?”
    “You have the contacts, that’s all.”
    “Right.”
    “Call me tomorrow and let me know about your meeting with the mysterious note leaver.”
    When they got to the street, Brittany waved goodbye.
    Kaitlin hesitated for a moment, then walked down the street past the newspaper office, turned between the buildings, and reentered the alley from the other side of the dumpster. The shadows from the taller buildings this far down the alley cast shadows that wrapped the area in darkness. A large recycling bin blocked her view of the dumpster, but it also made it impossible for anyone hiding there to see her approach. She had to check her hunch about who was curious enough to spy on Brittany and her.
    The smell of garbage and cigarette smoke hung in the narrow passage. Maybe this was stupid, she told herself, but she stepped from behind the trash in front of her to encounter whoever hovered beneath the dumpster’s overhang.
    There were two of them, but not whom she expected. Teenage girls wearing the purple and red satin booster jackets of Aldenville’s high school football team and smoking cigarettes.
    “You’re going to regret lighting that,” she said. “It ages you, you know. Creates wrinkles on your forehead.”
    The girls hadn’t heard her approach, and they jumped up from the crates they were using for seats, throwing their lit cigarettes to the ground.
    They recognized her. “Mrs. Singer. You won’t tell, will you? We just wanted to try it,” said the shorter one, a blonde with a chubby face and the requisite baby blue eyes to match. Although still a child in Kaitlin’s eyes, the girl had used a heavy hand to apply enough makeup to look more like a streetwalker than a teenager.
    Kaitlin held out her hand. “I’ll take those,” she said. She gestured toward the pack of cigarettes. The taller one, skinny, with a scattering of freckles across her nose was as flat-chested as a child of ten. She swallowed, her face so devoid of color that Kaitlin worried she was going to throw up. The girl handed over the pack.
    “I wouldn’t think of ratting on you, because you’ll never do this again anyway, will you?”
    They nodded. Two pairs of eyes looked down the alleyway and beyond her, seeking the freedom of escape.
    “Can we go now?” asked the blonde. Her voice was whiny with teenage disdain at getting caught.
    “Tell me something first. Was there anybody else hanging around here just a few minutes ago? Maybe a woman and a boy about nine or so?”
    Blondie hesitated a moment, then spoke. “We didn’t see anybody.”
    “No one?”
    “No one.”
    “Okay then. Get out of here.”
    They rushed around her and fled toward the street.
    “And stay out of alleys.”
    And stop lying, she wanted to say. They’d been there a while, long enough to spot Delbert enter the building and her and Brittany leave. And they had to have seen whoever it was running by from the newspaper office. She toed the pile of butts that lay on the ground, the same brand as the half empty pack she held in her hand.

Chapter 9
    “Police,” said Mary Jane. She held the phone out to Kaitlin who lay napping on the couch.
    “What? What time is it?”
    “It’s almost nine. I tried to wake you a half hour ago, but you told me to go away. I thought you had an appointment tonight.”
    “I did. Police? For me?” Kaitlin grabbed the receiver.
    “Officer