Fat-Free and Fatal (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (7 page)

“Maybe another time,” I said, not sure if I meant it.

“Yes, perhaps we could have lunch someday,” Iris suggested as she walked us to her front door.

“That would be great,” I told her.

Iris squeezed our respective hands goodbye and we turned to leave.

We were all the way out the doorway when Barbara suddenly turned back.

“So whose
were
those last hands?” she asked Iris.

Iris chuckled. “Are you sure you don’t want to guess?”

We both shook our heads.

She brought her face closer to ours and whispered, “Ted Bundy’s.”

I SWALLOWED, THEN forced my face into a strained smile. Somehow, I didn’t think I would enjoy lunching with Iris now, unless we had a chaperon—preferably an armed one.

“Gee, that’s really interesting,” said Barbara, her voice a little too high to be sincere.

But Iris didn’t seem to notice the effect that her identification of Ted Bundy’s hands was having on us.

“I’m so glad you think so. So few people understand,” she said, her speech quickening with enthusiasm. Her wide blue eyes gleamed as she went on. “You can see the cruelty in his fingertips, can’t you? And his extraordinary ability to plan in the way he holds his hands.” She brought her own small hands together, clasping them in front of her chest. “So fascinating really, when you think of the use that he put his hands to.”

Goose bumps formed on my arms. I swallowed again.

“Fascinating,” Barbara echoed.

Iris dropped her hands and smiled apologetically. “But I mustn’t ride my favorite hobbyhorse any longer,” she said briskly. “You two have things to do. It was so good of you to drop by.”

When Iris shut her door, Barbara and I practically ran to my Toyota.

“Jeez-Louise,” whispered Barbara once we were locked in the car.

That about summed it up. I turned the engine on and drove toward the highway without speaking. Before we got there, Barbara broke the silence.

“Let’s go downtown,” she directed. “I want to see the Good Thyme Cafe again.”

I followed her direction without thought. My mind was too busy with Iris to think about anything else.

I parked a block away from the Good Thyme, turned off the engine and looked at Barbara.

“Do you think Iris is our murderer?” I asked softly.

“I don’t know,” Barbara answered. She rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand. “I don’t get anything weird from her psychically. She seems friendly, harmless.” She shook her head. “No, it can’t be Iris.”

“Then who?” I demanded, suddenly angry with Barbara, angry with myself for going along with her. I didn’t want to visit any more murder suspects. “I can’t imagine any of the people from last night’s class as a murderer,” I said. It wasn’t really true. If I allowed myself to, I could imagine each and every one of them strangling Sheila.

“How about Paula Pierce?” Barbara countered, her voice rising. “She’s an attorney. And she was angry when Sheila came on to Gary—”

“Just because she’s an attorney, doesn’t mean she’s a murderer,” I interrupted, holding my sore stomach. “Ruthless, maybe. But not a murderer.”

“Then what about her husband, Gary?” Barbara demanded, her voice even louder. “He’s too quiet. And the way he fondles that crystal. Jeez-Louise! I like crystals, but enough is enough.”

I didn’t answer. I was remembering Gary’s warm smile.

“And Meg, the cooking teacher!” Barbara pressed on. “It was her SaladShooter. And she knows how to use it.”

“Sheila was not shredded to death,” I said evenly.

Barbara let out a quick snort of laughter. Then she frowned and paled. Was she remembering just how Sheila
had
been killed?

“Sorry about that, kiddo,” Barbara apologized softly. “I guess I’m just searching for an easy answer.” She reached out and put her hand on mine. “Are we still friends?” she asked.

“Of course,” I answered, and my stomach relaxed instantly. I looked into her all-too scrutable Asian face and saw real concern there. How could I have been mad at Barbara?

She smiled back at me. “I’ll bet it’s that lecherous creep, Leo,” she said cheerfully.

Damn. Now I remembered why I was mad. I opened my mouth to argue.

“Or his friend, Ken,” she added quickly.

I closed my mouth and thought about Ken Hermann. I remembered the way he had goggled from behind his glasses. And the half-smile on his face after Sheila’s body had been discovered. Sheila had cut him off while he was ranting about poisons in our food. Maybe that had made him angry. I shivered.

“He could be—” I began.

“Alice!” Barbara yelped abruptly. She hit the dashboard with her fist. “Alice knew the Snyders ahead of time!” She turned to me, her beautiful face made more beautiful by the intensity that clarified it. “And Alice set the class up,” she breathed.

Alice Frazier: plump, pretty, friendly and energetic. I had liked her, liked her a lot. I put my head into my hands. I didn’t want to think about it anymore.

“Let’s go check out the Good Thyme,” Barbara said eagerly. She opened the car door and hopped out.

I groaned. Barbara came around to my side and pulled me from the womb of my Toyota.

Luckily, the Good Thyme Cafe was closed. But Barbara dragged me around to canvass the other businesses on the block, hoping for gossip about the Snyders. The boy scooping ice cream at the shop on the corner had never heard of them, but Barbara enjoyed her pre-lunch, double-chocolate cone. The owner of the bike shop knew them, but only because they dumped their extra garbage in his bins. He’d seen them do it, he assured us indignantly. The folks at the book store, the variety store and the barber shop didn’t want to say anything about the Snyders, but the man tending bar two blocks down let us know that the Synders were too “stuck-up” to put Christmas decorations in their windows like the rest of the local businesses.

Barbara stopped to make some phone calls on the bar’s pay phone while I sipped a Virgin Mary—Bloody Mary, hold the vodka—and worried about my undone Jest Gifts paperwork. Barbara was grinning with excitement when she got back from the phone. She had reached Paula and arranged a five o’clock appointment at her law office in San Francisco. At least Paula was working today, I thought miserably.

Barbara hustled me out to the car before I had a chance to finish my drink. We had forty minutes to drive from San Ricardo to downtown San Francisco to meet Alice and Meg for lunch.

It took me forty-five minutes. I was searching desperately for a parking space, knowing I would never find one, when I saw them waiting in the shadow of a tall office building. I couldn’t miss Alice, her ample body elegant in a well-cut electric-blue suit and high heels. But I would have never seen Meg if I hadn’t been looking for her. She wore a gray pantsuit that blended into the gray stonework behind her. Her pale face was visible though, and staring in our direction. She lifted her hand in a tentative wave.

I pulled the steering wheel to the right and skidded into a bus zone. Meg and Alice piled into the car and the whole thing got easier.

“Go up four blocks and take a right,” ordered Alice. “There’ll be an underground parking lot on your left.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied thankfully.

I still liked Alice. She gave great directions. I’d worry about her being a killer after I got out of traffic.

The restaurant she took us to served salad, soup, and a few hot entrees and sandwiches cafeteria style, a necessity for office workers who had only an hour for lunch. Meg, Alice and I all got garden salads with whole-wheat rolls. Barbara asked for lasagna. I eyed her tray enviously as we paid for our meals and carried them to a laminated wood table.

We ate in silence for a few minutes. The salad was limp, the Italian dressing too oily. Barbara squinted her eyes and stared at Alice. Alice stared back at Barbara. Meg sniffled and kept her eyes on her salad.

“So, Alice,” I said finally. I tried to keep my voice friendly, conversational. “You knew the Snyders before, didn’t you?”

Alice’s eyebrows went up. Wasn’t she expecting this kind of question? Why did she think we were meeting her for lunch? After a moment, her eyebrows came back down and she answered.

“Sheila and Dan and I all lived in the same commune,” she told us. Her eyes went out of focus as she remembered. “This was years ago, way before their kids. When I was still thin,” she added, laughing. “So was Dan. God, he was a hunk. There were twelve of us originally. We all put in a little money and leased this huge old farmhouse out in Granville. Called it Heartsong. It was really neat, at least for a while.

“We all shared chores. Sheila cooked vegetarian meals. Maybe that’s why I was so thin. She never could cook worth a damn.” Alice laughed again. Then her eyes came back into focus. She shook her head sadly.

“Did you keep in touch?” asked Barbara.

“No,” Alice answered. She took a bite of salad and mumbled through it “I left the commune in ‘73. Stopped making macrame and went back out into the real world. Got a real job. I didn’t see Dan and Sheila again till a few months ago at a farmers market. What a trip! After all these years. We got together a few times. I ate at their restaurant.” Alice smiled.

“Sheila still doesn’t cook very well,” she said. But then her smile disappeared. “I guess I should say, she
didn’t
cook very well. It’s hard to believe she’s dead.” She bent her head over her salad and took another bite.

“How did Dan and Sheila get along?” I asked through a mouthful of my own salad.

Alice’s head jerked up at the question. Her eyes narrowed, her good-natured face no longer good-natured.

“I mean—” I began.

“I know what you mean,” she snapped. “Dan loved his wife, loved her absolutely, without reservation. Even when she hit the kids, he would just ask her to stop. He loved her more than anything, more than…” Her eyes went out of focus again as her words trailed off.

Was she thinking that Dan had loved Sheila more than her? I remembered the way she had run to Dan the night before, her arms outstretched. She was in love with Dan. Suddenly, I was sure of it. Alice had a motive. I stared at her heart-shaped face for a moment, my head buzzing with adrenaline. I barely heard her as she began to speak again.

“—terrible the way Sheila hit those kids,” she was saying indignantly as I tuned in. She turned to Meg. “Remember when we visited Sheila to set up the class? She hit the little one so hard she fell over.”

Meg nodded, her green eyes round in her pale face.

“Parents shouldn’t do that to their kids,” Barbara muttered.

I stared down at what was left of my salad.

“They shouldn’t, but they do,” I muttered back, thinking of what Wayne had told me about the beatings Vesta used to give him. He still had scars on his back from the belt she had used. And worse scars on his psyche, I was sure. My hands automatically bunched into fists as I thought about her.

“You’ve got my sympathy, kiddo,” Barbara told me, patting my shoulder. “It can’t be any picnic living with that witch.”

I looked up. Meg and Alice were staring at me, wide-eyed with apparent curiosity. Of course they weren’t psychic like Barbara.

“Kate’s boyfriend’s mother is living with them,” Barbara explained. “She beat on Wayne—”

“So, did either of you see anything suspicious last night?” I asked Meg and Alice, changing the subject abruptly.

Alice pointedly shifted her gaze to Barbara. Damn. I guess the sight of Barbara kneeling next to a recently killed corpse might have seemed suspicious.

“I didn’t kill Sheila,” Barbara stated for the record, returning Alice’s gaze. “But I know it looks like I might have.” Alice’s face began to soften. “And I’m scared,” Barbara added. “That’s why we’re trying to figure this thing out.” She waited a beat, then asked, “Won’t you guys help us?”

Alice and Meg both nodded solemnly. Barbara could be persuasive. There was no doubt about it. My insides knotted up. She had persuaded me too, persuaded me that she hadn’t killed Sheila. Was it true?

Of course it was true, I chided myself. I ate my whole-wheat roll and listened absently as Barbara asked questions to which Meg and Alice seemed to have no good answers. The reason Barbara was so persuasive, I reassured myself, was that she was telling the truth.

“I just didn’t notice anything else,” Alice summed up. “Did you, Meg?”

Meg shook her head.

Barbara sighed. “Are you guys going to hold a class next Monday?” she asked.

Meg and Alice looked at each other. I guessed that they hadn’t talked about the possibility of further classes yet.

“I know it sounds weird,” Barbara continued. “But I think it would be a good idea to hold the second cooking class as originally scheduled. Assuming this whole thing isn’t over with by then.” She paused for a moment, her eyes half-closed in thought. “Maybe we could learn something important if everyone who was there the first night would come again on Monday.”

“Maybe,” agreed Alice quietly. She tapped her fingers on the table. “Maybe if we pretended we already knew who did it, like in the movies—”