Fat-Free and Fatal (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (17 page)

I thought of the years Vesta had spent in a psychiatric facility. There were no locks on the doors of the patients’ rooms there either. They had no privacy, not even in the bathroom. I shook my head. I couldn’t do it. Opening that door would be like putting her in an institution all over again. I sighed and walked back down the hall.

Minutes later, I was at my desk again, still feeling weak but a little warmer. As I picked up the State Board of Equalization’s Sales and Use Tax form, I wondered why the twins had come to my house in the first place. Had I missed another appointment? I looked at my calendar. It was blank for the day except for my date with Ann—and a note about the taxes that were due. I turned my calculator on and began jabbing the keys.

Barbara showed up an hour later, looking perfect in turquoise linen.

“Hey, kiddo,” she sang as she breezed in. “You look terrible.”

“Barbara!” I objected.

“What happened?” she asked, her tiny body quivering like a pointer on a scent.

“Dan Snyder visited,” I answered briefly.

“And…” she prodded.

I knew from experience that it was no use trying to avoid her questions. I told her the whole story, standing there in the entryway. Then I waited for her reaction. She scrunched up her beautiful face and nodded slowly.

“You’re not in any shape to drive to Gary and Paula’s,” she said finally. “I’ll drive.” Then she led the way out the door to her Volkswagen bug.

I was so dazed, I followed her.

We had just pulled onto the freeway when I suddenly remembered why I usually refused Barbara’s offers to drive. She turned to me, explaining why she now thought that Ken was our murderer, while she guided her Volkswagen into the next lane, two feet in front of a barreling lumber truck’s front bumper.

“Look out!” I yelped to the sound of squealing brakes.

“Kate, you know they never hit me,” she said and continued with her theory.

I couldn’t say what that theory was. It was wiped from my memory banks by the near collision with a Mercedes when Barbara switched lanes again. I closed my eyes for the rest of the trip across the Richmond Bridge and into the Berkeley hills. But I could still hear the squeals, honks and curses from the other cars.

When we arrived at Paula and Gary’s house I got out of the car and knelt on their blacktop driveway.

“What are you doing?” asked Barbara.

“I’m kissing the ground,” I told her. “I thought I’d never see it again.”

“Get up, you wacko!” she ordered, laughing. She dragged me to the front door.

Paula and Gary lived in a two-story stucco house perched on the side of a steep hill. There was a small garden in front with yellow and orange nasturtiums running riot. Potted red geraniums lined the walkway.

Barbara rang the bell, but we’d barely heard its chime before barking and yipping ensued from inside the house.

“Did you tell them we were coming?” I asked anxiously.

Barbara nodded. Something thumped against the door. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be there when the door opened.

“Get down!” came a disembodied voice. There were more assorted thumps and yips and barks. “Down!” shouted the voice. “Down!”

The door opened a crack. Paula Pierce peeked out. “Back, get back!” she shouted over her shoulder as she waved us in.

I followed Barbara in reluctantly. Paula shut the door quickly behind us and the dogs exploded again.

A graying Labrador retriever almost knocked Barbara over as it jumped up to lick her face. I was glad she was in front.

“Down!” Paula shouted again. She wasn’t in a business suit today. Blue jeans and an “Oil Isn’t Worth Dying For” T-shirt clothed her stocky body.

A small, yipping, unshaved poodle scurried around in back of me and leapt with military precision to shove its nose into the center of my buttocks. Luckily, my yelp was inaudible over the general din. One of a matched set of two beagles sauntered over and leaned against my leg, looking sad. I bent over to pet him. The poodle took its opportunity to leap again. I jerked straight up as its nose goosed me the second time.

“Down, Emma! Down, Cesare! Down, Joe! Down, Joan!” Paula commanded. The animals were still for a moment.

Paula quickly ushered us into an adjoining room equipped with glass doors, telling the animals to “stay,” in no uncertain terms. And they did, whining and begging the whole time, but remaining miraculously in place until the doors were shut. Then they lined up to stare at us through the glass, their eyes beseeching.

“Sorry about that welcoming committee,” came a rich baritone from beside us.

I turned my head and saw Gary Powell. I had forgotten how attractive the man was. The smile he greeted us with stretched all the way across his good-natured face. His brown eyes exuded warmth and serenity.

“A seat?” he offered, indicating a long beige couch.

Barbara and I sat down and were swallowed up by the plush cushions. I tried to think of something to say. Barbara beat me to it.

“What a nice room!” she gushed.

I ran my eyes around the room. It
was
nice. There were plenty of windows and skylights illuminating the beige-and-white interior. And they were all filled with crystals, which reflected random rainbow fragments of light onto the carpet, bookcases and walls, even across the bottom of a Martin Luther King poster on one wall and the edge of Picasso’s “Guernica” on the other.

Gary flopped into a cocoa-colored lounger across from us. Paula pulled up a straight-back wooden chair next to him. Colored lights danced merrily off her salt-and-pepper hair as she sat down. But her face was serious, her mouth pursed tight. She stared at us unblinkingly.

“Nice,” I echoed Barbara weakly. I forced my face into a friendly smile.

“I’ve advised my husband to speak to you about the night of the murder,” Paula said briskly. “But under no circumstances will he—”

“It’s okay, honey,” Gary interrupted, his voice soft but firm. He looked into her eyes. “I didn’t kill the woman. Nobody thinks I did.”

“Well…” said Paula doubtfully.

“Everything’s fine,” Gary assured her. He reached a long arm out and squeezed her shoulder gently, then turned his gaze back in our direction. “What did you want to know?”

I turned to Barbara. I didn’t want to be the one to ask the questions. I was already embarrassed to be here, intruding on Paula and Gary’s time together.

“Can you tell us what you did during the class break?” Barbara asked cheerfully. Apparently, she wasn’t embarrassed. “It might help us figure out where everyone was.”

“Let’s see,” Gary rumbled, leaning back in his chair, his eyes staring up at the ceiling. He pulled his arm from around Paula’s shoulders and stuck his hand in his pocket.

“Paula and I talked to Meg for a very short time—probably two or three minutes. I’m sorry I can’t be more exact,” he said. His hand came out of his pocket with something in it. A crystal? “Then Paula had to go to the john. I waited for her. Then we went outside—to the little park across the street.”

“Who else did you see?” Barbara pressed.

He looked at her for a moment, then back up at the ceiling. As he rolled the contents of one hand to the other, I saw that I had guessed correctly. It was a crystal.

“I think everyone else was gone from the restaurant by the time we finished talking to Meg,” he answered slowly. “When we went to the park we saw your friend Kate.” He nodded toward me and smiled. “And the silver-haired woman, I can’t remember her name—”

“Iris,” Paula supplied.

He nodded. “Later, we saw the man in the linen suit—”

“Leo,” said Paula.

“And his friend,” Gary finished.

Paula didn’t give Ken a name. Maybe she had forgotten.

“That lunatic interrupted Gary’s class,” she said instead, her face and voice both tight with anger.

“Ken?” asked Barbara.

“No, no!” Paula said impatiently. “Dan Snyder. He came to Gary’s class and started raving. Racial epithets, accusations that Gary had been sleeping with his wife!” She shook her head. “They had to call campus security to remove him.”

“It’s okay,” soothed Gary, putting his arm around her shoulder again. “No one believed what he said. He didn’t attack me physically.”

“No, it’s not okay,” Paula insisted. “I don’t like knowing there’s a madman out there.” She crossed her arms. “It’s like those murders when we were in Oregon. A woman we knew was one of the victims. Only an acquaintance, but still. And they never found the killer—”

Paula stopped speaking abruptly. Her eyes narrowed. God, I wished I could read minds. Did she suspect Gary? He looked calm enough. I glanced at Barbara, hoping her psychic powers were working.

“Anyway,” Paula continued briskly. “Something needs to be done about that man.”

“Dan’s harassed me too,” I offered. “He came—”

The sound of the dogs exploding into renewed barks, yips and thumps cut me off.

“Paloma must be home,” said Gary with a smile. “Our daughter,” he explained.

We heard a new, higher voice crying, “Down! Down!”

Then a beautiful young woman burst in through the glass doors. She had Gary’s warm brown eyes, and his height and slender build. But the firmness of her mouth belonged to Paula. Her skin was a flawless blend of both parents’ genes. She looked old enough to be finishing high school, maybe starting college.

“Mom,” she rapped out. “Have you been smoking again?”

I turned back to Paula in time to see her face redden. She recovered quickly, making introductions all around and telling Paloma that we were there to discuss Sheila Snyder’s death. Paloma flopped down on the couch next to me.

“Are you guys real detectives?” she asked eagerly.

I shook my head. Barbara just chuckled.

It didn’t take long for Barbara to get back to interrogating Gary, but the results were disappointing. Gary didn’t seem to know any more than we did. Actually, he seemed to know a lot less.

“Do you have
any
idea who killed her?”’ she asked Gary finally, a hint of desperation in her tone.

“No,” he answered thoughtfully. “But it’s probably only a matter of time. Once the police know all the variables—”

“Daddy!” Paloma objected. “Life isn’t just an equation, you know.”

“I stand corrected,” Gary replied with a bow of his head. “Actually, life is more like a series of simultaneous equations, which must be solved simultaneously. If they’re to be solved at all.”

Paloma groaned loudly and rolled her beautiful eyes. Then she got up and gave her father a kiss on the cheek.

“No more cigarettes,” she told her mother sternly, then exited the room to the joyous barks and yips of the four family dogs.

“She’s a beautiful girl,” Barbara said once she was gone.

Paula and Gary smiled together for a change.

“We love her,” Gary said simply.

Then Paula’s face tightened again. “I worry about the two Snyder children,” she said. “The fact that Sheila Snyder would hit a child in front of witnesses indicates an even worse pattern of abuse behind closed doors.” She sighed. “The children are bound to be further traumatized by their mother’s death. And the father is probably abusive himself.”

“You don’t know any of that for sure,” Gary admonished gently.

“I can recognize the signs of child abuse,” she argued. “Remember, I was abused myself.”

THE ROOM WAS quiet for a few moments. I could hear Paloma and the dogs knocking around in some other part of the house as I stared down at a rainbow shimmering across the toes of my sneakers. I didn’t know what to say. Barbara did, though.

“I know about abuse, too,” she blurted out. “My father used to hit me all the time.” Lines of anger creased her face. “Hard,” she added.

Paula leaned forward in a mirror reflection of Barbara’s posture. “My mother was the one who beat me,” she revealed. “For anything. For nothing. It didn’t matter.”

They both shook their heads indignantly. Barbara couldn’t have created more rapport with Paula if she had tried. For a moment I wondered if she
had
tried, if her revelations had been meant to manipulate Paula. But a look at the stiff set of her shoulders convinced me otherwise. After a few more moments of angry silence, Gary cleared his throat.

“Well, my dear,” he said to Paula in an exaggerated upperclass accent. “You most certainly have had your revenge.” His warm brown eyes were twinkling. “You married a black man.”

Paula leaned back in her chair and laughed. It was a great laugh. Full-bodied and unrestrained. I was surprised she had it in her. She laughed until there were tears in her eyes.

“I did indeed get my revenge,” she agreed, wiping the edge of her eye with her index finger. She put a loving hand on Gary’s arm. “And it was worth it. In more ways than one.”

She turned back to Barbara and me, smiling. “My mother would have probably joined the KKK if it weren’t for the sort of ‘riffraff’ they allow in their membership. When I married Gary I effectively divorced Mother. A two-for-one deal. The best deal I ever made.”