Read Most Likely to Die (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Online
Authors: Jaqueline Girdner
When Becky stood up, I decided it was time for Wayne and me to leave too. I wanted to catch Becky and ask her about Elaine’s rumor that Sid had raped her. I was pretty sure that she’d tell me the truth about it. And that would give me an idea if any of the rumors Elaine had heard by phone were true. Just because the one about Wayne was a lie didn’t mean that they all were.
I tugged at Wayne’s hand as I stood. He was up in an instant. I had a feeling he didn’t want to stay here any longer than I did, not for all the good apple juice in Sonoma County. But at least he was courteous.
“Thank you for having us,” he said with a nod in Aurora’s direction and then in Lillian and Jack’s. The etiquette was still a little confusing. Aurora had clearly hosted the event, but the house belonged to her son and daughter-in-law now. Then he gathered up our dishes and took them to the kitchen.
“Yeah, thanks,” Becky and I said simultaneously.
We looked at each other and she giggled.
Charlie and Pam were still in their huddle, murmuring to each other anxiously, as I shook Aurora’s hand and peered into her serene face, wondering what she had gleaned from today’s luncheon. (And as I clasped Lillian’s firm hand and Jack’s looser one, wondering why he wasn’t looking me in the eye.) So I left without saying goodbye to the two ex-spouses and hurried out the door with Wayne. Becky was just a little ahead of us.
“Let me talk to Becky alone for a minute,” I whispered in Wayne’s ear once we were following her down the flagstone path to our cars.
Wayne made a sound between a sigh and a groan, then shrugged his massive shoulders and went to wait in the Toyota.
“Becky,” I caroled. “Wait up a minute.”
She stopped where she stood on the sidewalk and turned to look at me, her face sad and drawn. Then she tried on a lopsided smile.
“Jeez, Kate,” she trilled. “What now?”
1 smiled back as I walked to her, trying to think of a diplomatic segue to the question of her rape.
“I was talking to Elaine—” I began.
“Lucky you,” Becky put in, winking one blue eye.
That really made me smile. But only for a moment. I still had to know.
“Listen,” I said finally. “Did Sid ever rape—”
“Did Sid ever rape who?” growled a familiar voice less than a foot behind me.
I whirled around, tempted to raise my knee to the groin that went with the voice. But, with an effort, I suppressed both the temptation and the knee, though not my own volume.
“Didn’t I tell you not to sneak up on people like that?” I demanded loudly.
D.V. Vogel took a step backwards, hands up defensively. His baggy pants looked in danger of falling down.
“I just drove over to pick up my mom,” he muttered with a jerk over his shoulder at the Fiat parked behind him.
I wrestled with a squabbling list of priorities. I wanted to ask Becky about the rape, but I couldn’t with D.V. here. I wanted to give D.V. a lecture, but it was none of my business. And wasn’t he fifteen years old anyway? What was he doing driving a car by himself? And I could see past D.V. to Wayne waiting for me in the Toyota. He looked like he was chuckling. I wanted to know what he thought was so funny.
In the end, I gave up the match, said goodbye, and marched back to the Toyota.
Wayne wasn’t chuckling anymore by the time I climbed in. There wasn’t even a smile on his face as I turned the key in the ignition. Wayne’s a smart man. And he had a question for me as I pulled the car away from the curb.
“Has Jack Kanick ever been institutionalized?” he asked.
That was a good one.
“I don’t know,” I answered slowly.
Because, of course, Jack was classic. I’d worked in a mental hospital. I should have noticed. In fact, I had noticed. But everyone was acting nuts, so the impact hadn’t been too great.
“Jack, Aurora, Lillian,” Wayne muttered. “Three possible motives from one man’s insanity.”
Now that was food for thought. And I did think about it all the way home, past the rolling hills of Sonoma County into the questionable civilization of Marin, as Wayne and I rode silently for a while and then tried to talk about other things, cheery things. Nonhomicidal things.
We sniffed for cat spray when we got home. There was nothing new. But the message light on my answering machine was blinking.
I played the tape reluctantly. And heard the unedited story of yet one more crisis for Jest Gifts. My warehousewoman Judy had gone to work that day, Sunday or not, to make up for missing Friday and had noticed that two whole cases of obstetrician belly cups were missing. And a case of speculum earrings. They hadn’t been stolen. I knew that. We’d find them. But probably after the OB-GYN convention was over.
The phone rang before I’d even finished playing the message. While Judy was still promising to seek and find.
It was my psychic friend, Barbara Chu.
“Are you all right?” she demanded.
Damn. I just hated it when she did that.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“Except that you’re involved in something—”
The rest of her sentence was lost as I heard the clatter of the cat door opening.
A mammoth black cat came hurtling in like a furry bowling ball. He took one look at me and stopped in his tracks. Then his yellow eyes widened with panic.
- Eleven -
“Out!” I screamed, dropping the receiver and searching around me for something to throw at the cat. Something deadly. I recognized the yellow color of his eyes. It was the color of urine. “Out, you…you rug molester!”
Mammal, bird, fish, reptile, insect, they were not all the same to me. I had caught one of the enemy. Blood lust heated my body.
The big black cat turned and ran. Not out the cat door though, where he might have been safe. But up my curtains, his claws making frantic ripping noises as he ascended.
My hand found a stapler to throw at him. But even as I lifted it, a saner self prevailed. Or maybe just a less homicidal one. I only wanted to scare the cat, not maim him. And I certainly didn’t want to staple him to the curtains. I’d never get him down.
Water. That’s what I needed. If he stayed up the curtains long enough maybe I could run a whole bucket full to pour on him. The thought gave my legs the energy to sprint to the kitchen.
Unfortunately, the plumbing was not as inspired as my legs were. I settled for filling a tall glass of water and ran back into the living room just in time to see Wayne with the cat in his arms, gently guiding him out the cat door.
“Wait, wait!” I yelled, waving the glass and splashing water all around me. “We’ve got to scare the pedinkle outa him so he’ll never come back!”
“And you don’t think you already have?” Wayne said, looking down at a wet stain on the rug near the curtains.
A wet stain that wasn’t water.
“Do you think he’ll come back?” I whispered.
Wayne looked into my eyes. “Would you?”
Would I? Fear was a good negative motivator. But revenge might be a stronger positive one. Especially when combined with territoriality.
C.C. walked up behind me and meowed plaintively. It was then that I remembered Barbara. I picked up the receiver, wondering if she’d still be on the other end.
She was.
“You’ve always had such a way with small animals,” she commented. I could almost see the amusement in her very scrutable Asian eyes as she said it.
“Barbara!”
I could never tell if Barbara was really psychic or just intuitive. Probably anyone could have figured out I was engaged in cat battle listening to the dangling telephone.
“So anyway, kiddo,” she went on. “I woke up this morning with the feeling that you’ve been in the presence of death again.” She paused. “You can tell me I’m wrong,” she added.
“No,” I mumbled. I sat down in my comfy chair. C.C. immediately jumped in my lap and settled in to shred my thighs with a purr of satisfaction. “I can’t tell you’re wrong.”
“Murder?” she asked softly.
“You tell me,” I replied.
And then I waited. Barbara took these kinds of challenges seriously. I could picture her, leaning back in her own chair, her eyes closed, her face peaceful and expectant as she awaited an answer from wherever the hell it was she got her answers.
Maybe Barbara could help. It was always possible. Not that she ever had before. Not exactly. Barbara always knew things she couldn’t possibly know. But never at the right time.
Wayne came in and began cleaning the wet spots on the carpet, both water and cat pedinkle. What a guy. Maybe I should give in and marry him in a formal ceremony. But Wayne’s willingness to scrub carpets or not, I just knew I couldn’t stomach the whole archaic ritual. Not again. Craig and I had even had flower girls at our wedding, for all the good it had done—
“Yes,” Barbara intoned in a voice that sounded weirdly unlike her usual cheerful tone. “I do believe it was murder.” Then her tone lightened again. “And don’t worry, you and Wayne will work the wedding thing out.”
I ignored her last comment.
“Listen,” I put in anxiously. “Does Felix know I’m involved with this one?”
Felix Byrne was Barbara’s pit bull reporter of a boyfriend. And if he found out that I’d been at the scene of a murder and hadn’t bothered to tell him, I knew the process by which he would wring every detail of information from me would be as painful as unlicensed liposuction.
“He doesn’t know yet,” Barbara answered after another pause. “He would have bugged me about it by now if he did. But Jeez-Louise, you know Felix, he’ll ferret it out soon. You’d better be ready.”
Ferret, I thought. What a good description for Felix. Small and slender with dark soulful eyes. And always sniffing.
“Take care, kiddo,” Barbara added. “You might be in some danger.” Her voice dropped. “And Wayne too.”
“Wayne?” I whispered, my heart pole-vaulting to my throat.
“Just a feeling.” The line went silent once more as my pulse accelerated. Was she communing with her spirits? “Don’t worry,” she said finally. “I don’t see any real damage in the future for either of you. Not anything permanent anyway. Everything’s cool. You’ll both be fine, I’m sure.”
“But—”
“See you later, kiddo,” she finished cheerfully.
And then she hung up.
Wayne was finished cleaning when I got off the phone. He stood, rag in hand, staring at me with a mournful expression on his kind, homely face.
“You’re going to get involved in this murder, aren’t you?” he accused quietly.
Was I? If Wayne was in danger, I wanted to know who the murderer was. How else could I protect him? And if the police didn’t come up with an answer soon, maybe I could find out something on my own. Then my skin tightened with gooseflesh. What if sticking my nose in would just put Wayne in more danger? I shook away the question and the gooseflesh. Why was I listening to psychics anyway, even psychics who were my friends? Especially psychics who were my friends.
“I’m not sure if I’ll get involved,” I answered slowly.
“Nothing I can do will stop you anyway,” Wayne growled, as if he hadn’t heard my answer. “But please, Kate, be careful.”
And then he turned away, his back and neck stiff with rejection.
“I have paperwork to do,” he told me over a rigid shoulder.
“Well, so do I,” I shot back.
This was nothing new. Both being self-employed, we did paperwork on Sunday afternoons and evenings fairly regularly. Usually in an atmosphere of companionable self-imposed drudgery. But not that Sunday. Papers were shuffled angrily, our evening meal was quiet and constrained, and our bedtime ritual was even worse. After a peck each on the cheek, we rolled over back to back and then crawled as far to the edges of our queen-size bed as possible. And I wasn’t even sure if we were mad at each other about involvement in Sid’s murder or about getting married. By the time my head hit the pillow, I told myself I didn’t even care anymore. Of course, I was lying.
*
By seven o’clock Monday morning there was a new message on the answering machine. I was hoping it was from Judy telling me she’d found the boxes for the OB-GYN convention. We had to find them soon. The convention was less than two weeks away.
But the message wasn’t from Jest Gifts. It was from the Gravendale Police Department. Wayne and I were requested to come in for an interview. At 9:45 a.m. Exactly.
Wayne and I looked at each other as the message played and then hugged each other convulsively. For a moment I blessed the Gravendale Police Department for bringing us closer together. But only for a moment. Because the Gravendale Police Department hadn’t forgotten Sid Semling. And if they hadn’t, we would never be able to either.
We ate and showered, asking each other what the Gravendale police thought. As if we could figure it out. And came up with the same damn answers we had come up with at lunch yesterday. Heart attack (they couldn’t really buy that, could they?), accident (they couldn’t really blame me, could they?), suicide (not really likely, but would they understand that?). Or, of course, homicide. I didn’t want to talk to the police, no matter what their theory was. Nor did my stomach. It wasn’t happy with its nine-grain toast and soy yogurt. Not happy at all.
Especially on the way to Gravendale. Wayne drove this time, his foot heavy on the Jaguar’s gas pedal, rolling hills tumbling by in a nauseating blur. Cows churning into buttermilk.
Gravendale’s Police Department was where it always had been, in one of the old red brick buildings near the library. Inside, the lobby was painted an institutional mold-green I hadn’t seen since the first apartment I’d rented when I went away to college. A color I’d painted over within three days.
The uniformed policewoman behind the counter asked us to sit down and we did. The wooden benches we sat on had probably been there as long as the police station, scarred by years of carved initials and obscene communiqués. I wondered what kind of nerve it took to carve on a police station bench. Or what kind of stupidity. Then I wondered if the football player Sid had dressed in woman’s undies twenty-five years ago had sat on this bench. I ran my hand along the wood, surprisingly smooth for all the carving. Maybe the football player’s initials were inscribed here too.
“Ms. Jasper,” the woman behind the counter announced. “Detective Sergeant Gonzales will see you now.”
Wayne stood up with me. So did my queasy stomach.
“One at a time,” the policewoman ordered, shaking her finger at Wayne. At least it wasn’t a gun.
Wayne sat back down, his face a stone mask. I gave his shoulder a quick squeeze and then marched down the long dark hall the policewoman had indicated, pausing at Sergeant Detective Gonzales’s office only long enough to knock on its frosted glass door and be commanded in.
Sergeant Gonzales’s office didn’t look anything like the lobby. The walls weren’t green, to begin with. They were cream-colored. And there were framed water colors on each side of his Daily Planner calendar. Not a wanted poster in sight. He motioned me to a seat in front of his desk. His very neat desk. Only a blotter, a few files, paper and pen. He looked good behind it with his dark, handsome features and Clark Gable mustache. Like an actor playing a policeman. Or maybe not a policeman. He was too good-looking. Maybe an actor playing a politician.
A young, red-haired officer sat next to the sergeant’s neat desk, a notebook in hand. And a tape recorder.
“Glad you could come in and help us today, Ms. Jasper,” Sergeant Gonzales began. Then he paused. “I’m sure you won’t mind if we record this interview.”
I shook my head. Not me. I didn’t mind. No way. I had nothing to hide. Heh-heh.
“And of course you won’t mind if we go through the Miranda formalities,” he continued in a suave David Niven tone, the sort of tone suitable for asking if one preferred one’s martinis shaken or stirred.
“Yeah, sure,” I answered, hoping he couldn’t hear the tremor in my voice. Miranda warnings at this stage?
It was the young, red-haired officer who actually asked me if I understood that I had a right to remain silent, that anything I said could be used in a court of law, that I had a right to an attorney, and all of the rest.
I said yes to everything and signed the form, feeling shaky as well as nauseated now. Then I waited for the sergeant to ask me a question.
He didn’t. He just stared at me. If he was trying to make me nervous, he was succeeding. Was I supposed to blurt out something incriminating?
I looked at his two framed watercolors instead. They both featured vivid carnivals of images: an urban pueblo inhabited by an overstuffed stork, ladders, stars, and a yellow dog in one, and two dogs meeting against dark and light in another. Whimsy in motion.
“Sharon Searles,” I said, suddenly recognizing the paintings.
“What?” Sergeant Gonzales demanded, his eyebrows jumping for a moment in his classic face.
This was obviously not a name he expected to hear.
“Sharon Searles,” I repeated, pointing to the paintings behind him. “I saw her show in Mill Valley. She’s a wonderful artist, isn’t she? I’ve never seen anyone else who could catch color like that—”
“We’re here to discuss Sid Semling’s death,” the sergeant snapped. Then he smoothed his tone down again. “As I’m sure you well know,” he added.
“Oh,” I murmured innocently. “I’m sorry.”
Suddenly, my stomach was feeling much better. And I wasn’t shaking anymore. Except with the adrenaline of triumph. Petty triumph.
“Is Hot Flash your pinball machine, Ms. Jasper?” the sergeant kicked off.
I nodded.
“Can you say ‘yes’ for the tape recorder?” the red-haired officer asked me.
I said “yes,” and “yes” again to the repeated question, feeling not quite as triumphant as seconds before.
“You and Wayne Caruso assisted Sid Semling in loading this machine onto a truck borrowed by Mr. Semling from Jack and Lillian Kanick a few days before the day of the party?” Sergeant Gonzales pressed on.
I took a minute to take the question apart to its components and check, then finally nodded my head again.
Sergeant Gonzales tilted his head toward the tape recorder and raised his eyebrows.
“Yes, that’s right,” I verbalized loudly.
Like a skillful conductor, Detective Sergeant Gonzales took me minute by minute through the mechanics of the loading of the machine, the day of Sid’s party, and the day of Aurora’s luncheon without missing a beat. Someone had reported everything back. Except for the personalities involved. Somehow those vital personalities seemed missing from the recital. Who was the informer? I wondered. Elaine? Or Aurora? Or someone else entirely?