Read Most Likely to Die (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Online
Authors: Jaqueline Girdner
“There’s a rumor that Lillian was—” I began, then changed my mind. He didn’t need to hear about that one. Lillian already had. He didn’t seem interested anyway.
“How’d you feel when Sid put his arm around Lillian?” I asked instead.
He shrugged once more, but at least he talked. “None of my business,” he told me. “Lillian’s a damn strong woman. She can take care of herself. Doesn’t need a knight in shining armor jumping in to defend her.” He paused and I thought I’d lost him again, but then he went on. “She’s a damn good woman too.” Tears formed in his eyes. “Don’t know why she puts up with me. I can’t get it together anymore. I’m useless—”
“Daddy?” a voice asked from behind us.
I jumped in my chair. But it was only Lark.
“Yeah, hon,” he replied quietly. “You need something?”
“No,” she answered earnestly. “Do you?”
“Just a hug,” he told her, stretching a smile onto his haggard face.
She crawled into his lap and put her little arms around his neck. He squeezed her gently and she jumped off again. My own eyes were getting a little misty now. Just who was taking care of whom around here?
“Househusband,” he commented as Lark left the room again. “One thing I can still do. Cook, garden, take care of the kids.”
I nodded. That was the most positive thing he’d said yet. And it was good to know he was responsible for the color and symmetry of the front yard. For some reason I couldn’t imagine a man that put that much care into daisies and delphiniums and petunias as a murderer.
“All the rest,” he went on. “It’s gone. Just like Sid. Gone.” Tears were in his eyes again. “And Robert. Remember Robert? Gone too. Everyone gone but me.” The tears were flowing down from beneath his glasses now, soaking into his beard. His voice was thick with emotion.
“Their lives are over. Gone. Mine’s gone too. I’m dead, but I’m still standing upright. Too stupid to lie down.” He put his face in his hands. “I can’t do anything. Nothing means anything…” His words dribbled off into a chasm of tears.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry, Jack,” I murmured. I wanted to put my arm around his shoulders, but I wasn’t sure if it would help. All I knew was that he was in pain. And all the time I wanted to help, I kept wondering if this was the pain of a guilty man, garden or no garden.
At one time I would have known how to handle him. But I wasn’t working in a mental hospital now. I didn’t know his history. And there was no one to call for medication. He might be suicidal. He might be violent. He might be a murderer.
“Jack,” I tried. “Is there someone I should call? Is there—”
I heard the front door open and turned around in relief, expecting to see Lillian.
But it was Aurora Kanick who came striding through the door, her usually serene face tight with determination. She saw me and nodded briskly in my direction, but her attention was all on Jack. I might have been another chair.
“Remember what is written on your heart, Jack,” she commanded, her deep, calm voice crisp. “Remember it now.”
Jack’s head jerked up as if she had yanked it. Even his eyeballs moved behind his glasses, rolling so high in their sockets they almost disappeared.
She had his attention. She had mine. A chill of recognition crawled up my spine. Hadn’t she used those exact words before? I searched my memory and found them. She’d told Jack the same thing at Sid’s party. After Sid had been electrocuted.
“You know you have the resources to heal yourself in your heart,” she went on, her voice slowing, less crisp now, more hypnotic. “When I reach out and touch your shoulder, you’ll remember something pleasant.” She paused. “Maybe something amusing or pleasurable.” Then she reached out and touched Jack’s shoulder.
His face relaxed into a near smile, his eyes unfocused.
“Now, Jack,” she pressed on, quietly and firmly. “I want you to keep those good feelings as we deal with the unpleasant ones. Do you think you can do that?”
He nodded his head slowly. I could see the struggle in his face to obey as the sadness came up again. Tears were still coming from his eyes as his head moved up and down.
“Jack, is there someone inside you who could deal with these unpleasant feelings?”
“Yes.” The word came out uncertainly, thick with tears.
“Someone who could even find pleasure in experiencing the unpleasant feelings and overcoming them?”
He nodded again, a little more confidently.
“Is that person sitting over in that chair?” she asked, pointing at the flowered easy chair that sat at the end of the couches.
“Yes,” he stated. His eyes focused on the chair.
“Who is he?” Aurora asked.
“Super-Jack,” her son told her.
Super-Jack? I rubbed my arms, cold in the gloom of the dark living room. This was too weird. But I said nothing. Because it was working.
“Can you see him clearly now?” Aurora asked and paused. Jack moved his head up and down, his eyes never leaving the flowered chair.
“Can you hear him?” Aurora asked so softly I could barely hear her. And then, “How would it feel to be him?”
“Good,” Jack said.
“Jack, you can move now.” Aurora’s voice took on volume. “Go over now and sit in that chair. Become Super-Jack.”
Jack got up from the couch and stepped over to the flowered chair. The minute he sat down he began to change. His shoulders straightened. Light came into his eyes. And he started to sing. Beautifully. A song I’d never heard before. He was a different man. Super-Jack. The hair went up on the back of my neck. Could Super-Jack kill?
Jack was still singing as Aurora turned to me. There was no serenity in Aurora’s face now. And certainly no friendliness. Only determination. And anger.
- Fifteen -
“Wait for me outside,” Aurora ordered brusquely. “I’ll meet you at your car in a few minutes.”
I obeyed her command instantly, fleeing the Kanick house with only one last look over my shoulder at the glaring mother and her singing son. Maybe Aurora had me mesmerized too.
Unfortunately, the promised “few minutes” became fifteen, and then twenty, as I sat in my oven of a Toyota. The only air-conditioning the car had ever offered me before was the rush of air through open windows as I drove. And I wasn’t driving now.
On the other hand, I had all the more time to wonder about Jack Kanick as I sweated in the front seat. And Super-Jack. Was one or the other a murderer? Jack was certainly acting crazier than anyone else who had been there the day that Sid died. But did that mean anything? There were all kinds of crazy: crazy-deluded, crazy-mean, crazy-catatonic, and crazy-frenzied. Just for starters. Not to mention crazy-psychopathic. But one thing was for sure. Jack was out of control. I thought of the tears soaking into his beard. And his words. What had he said? “Dead, but still standing—”
The rap on my car window was as good as a goose. I jumped in my seat and thought about adding a new category.
Crazy-nervous? Then I told myself to cut it out and rolled down my window.
Aurora Kanick was peering down at me. I looked back up into her eyes through the transparent expanse of her oversized glasses. At least I could see friendliness there again. And serenity. Her eyes had that soft but alert look certain Buddhist monks’ and Carmelite nuns’ eyes have, the look that says they’ve seen it all and it doesn’t hurt anymore. But I’d seen Aurora’s eyes narrowed in anger. If only for a moment. And that made me doubt her serenity altogether. Did monks and nuns have their moments of pique too, their moments of rage?
“Kate,” Aurora said, her voice as deep and quiet and calm as ever. “I apologize for my bad manners. When Jack is in pain, I seem to lose my center.”
I could only nod. I was still processing her mood change. And her words. If you lose your center, do you ever kill people?
“I know you must have some questions,” she went on kindly. “Would you like to share some tea and I’ll answer them? I left Cassandra in charge of the store for the next hour or so anyway.”
“That’d be great!” I answered enthusiastically. My baked brain was coming back to life with a buzz. I wiped the sweat off my forehead. Someone wanted to talk to me! What a change. Tea it was.
The Honeybuns Teahouse was only a few blocks away, so Aurora and I walked, chatting about the mild June weather, and the old houses and newer businesses that we passed. It was good to be out of my oven of a car. And even better to be away from the murk of the Kanicks’ living room. I let the summer breeze caress my face as Aurora’s gentle voice caressed my ears all the way to the teahouse.
It wasn’t until we’d sat down and ordered peppermint tea for me and chamomile for Aurora (as if Aurora needed to be any more relaxed) that I felt I could begin with the questions she had offered to answer.
I took a big breath and asked, “What’s wrong with Jack?”
“Jack is out of touch with the joy in his heart,” Aurora replied easily. Something in my chest sank. Was she going to answer all my questions with New Age no-speak? Because I knew from experience that this form of speech could be as content-free as a politician’s.
She must have seen the look in my eye.
She added quickly, “A doctor would say ‘severe manic-depression with suicidal tendencies,’ but I believe what my son really suffers from is a great overwhelming despair.” She leaned forward, her eyes earnest. “When Jack is overwhelmed by that despair, everything else vanishes. It’s as if a wall comes up that blocks love and light and play. That blocks harmony and music, anything that really matters.”
“How long has he been this way?” I whispered, sobered by her description, now that her words were all too full of content.
“The despair comes and goes in bouts,” she told me. She brought the palms of her hands together gently as if in prayer. “Most of the time he’s in touch with the experience of joy and the pleasures of everyday life. He really is a kind and playful man. A vibrant man. But every once in a while— sometimes months will go by without a problem, sometimes years—he loses himself in the despair.” She shook her head slowly, looking down at her empty setting on the table. “Sometimes I wonder if the bouts are actually necessary to his ultimate healing, if I shouldn’t interfere. But he’s in so much pain.”
I nodded my agreement. I’d seen the pain. I wouldn’t be able to let that go by in someone I loved.
“And the alternatives are worse,” she added in a murmur. “Medication. Hospitalization.”
Poor Aurora. Suddenly I found myself pitying the woman whose serenity and spirit I’d been so envious of before. What would it be like to be mother to a son like Jack? But then, a little voice niggled, what if it was something in the way she’d brought Jack up that caused him these mid-life bouts of depression in the first place? Neglect? Or even abuse? No, I told the voice. I just couldn’t look at Aurora and believe that. And anyway, I remembered her as she had been twenty-five years ago, the mother whose house all the kids had loved to visit. She’d been perfect, kind and interested in us, one and all. Not that that proved anything, the voice reminded me.
Aurora looked back up from the table. “I will not be negative,” she stated, her voice calm and firm again. “Everyone has cycles of joy and despair. They’re what life’s about. Jack’s are just more intense than most.”
“What did you do to bring him out of it today?” I demanded. Because whatever it was, it seemed to work better than medication or hospitalization. My patients of twenty-five years ago could have used a dose of Aurora’s magic.
“Just some techniques I’ve picked up,” she replied. “You’ve got to remember I own a metaphysical bookstore.” She tilted her head and smiled, her skin pinkening ever so slightly. “I’ve probably read every pop-metaphysical-self-help-recovery book ever written. But the wisdom in each book really boils down to one thing. Each one of us has the power in his or her own heart to heal. What I did with Jack was to simply access that source of power. Jack’s own inner source of healing power.”
It’d looked a little more complicated than that to me. More like magic. Or witchcraft, I thought, remembering Super-Jack. But I didn’t have the proper vocabulary to ask Aurora for details.
“Was that his own song he sang?” I asked instead.
“Yes,” she answered, a lilt of pleasure raising the pitch of her usually deep voice. Her eyes sparkled. Metaphysical mama or not, she was clearly as proud of her son’s music as his ability to heal himself.
‘The melody was really beautiful,” I told her sincerely, remembering what Lillian had said about the corresponding “vibes” of Jack’s music and her sculpture. Both were powerfully evocative, that much was for sure. “Has Jack ever tried to sell his work?”
“Not very hard,” Aurora shot back with a wry look. “Lillian got very energetic and sent out some of his tapes one time, and for a while Windham Hill seemed interested in producing a collection. But Jack let it slip.” She put her palms together again. “I need to remember that Jack’s music is a very personal resource for him. In his good times he’s able to channel the pain he feels directly into his music. And the joy for that matter. But as far as sharing the experience with others…” She shrugged. “He just isn’t as skilled at marketing himself as he is at making music.”
“Too bad,” I put in. “It’s a loss to the rest of us.”
Aurora lifted her hands gently in a gesture of resignation, then said briskly, “It’s enough that he’s alive right now. And coping by using various techniques. When he gets better, then…” She let her hands fly up like freed birds. “Only the goddess knows.”
I had a feeling she was reassuring herself as much as me.
“Does he hum and sing to himself to fight his depression?” I guessed.
“Yes,” Aurora said, nodding eagerly. “He thought up that technique himself. It’s his trigger to fight the worst of the despair.”
I wasn’t about to tell her, but it didn’t seem to be working very well as far as I could see. On the other hand, maybe he’d be even worse without the humming and singing. I shivered. I didn’t like to think of him worse.
“Lillian and I work with him when we can,” Aurora went on. “Pulling him through the bad times. And then suddenly he’s himself again, laughing, singing, loving. He has so much love within him. Even in his bad spells, he never loses his kind nature.”
Which brought me back to thinking of Jack as a murderer.
“Is this recent depression related to Sid’s death?” I prodded.
“I don’t believe so,” Aurora answered slowly, frowning as she thought. “Jack’s gotten worse, but the despair was already enveloping him before Sid’s death.”
“How soon before?” I asked eagerly. Maybe too eagerly. Aurora was an astute woman, not a “perma-twink” as my ex-husband termed those poor souls who searched for spiritual and emotional meaning at every New Age seminar that came around the pyramid. No, Aurora seemed truly wise, not naively expectant. And certainly not stupid.
“Jack had been upset for about a month or so,” she said, looking me straight in the eye. “And no, Sid wasn’t the cause of this current bout to the best of my knowledge. Remember, Kate, Sid’s been back for two years. And he actually seemed to cheer Jack up, to get him in touch with his playful side.” She paused and looked back down at the table. “But I have wondered if the high school reunion itself could have triggered this bout.”
I thought about that for a second. And about all the feelings the reunion had stirred up in me. Feelings of inadequacy and painful self-consciousness. For Jack—
“Here’s your tea,” our waitress announced cheerfully, interrupting my thoughts as she plopped a tray down on the table and began distributing the goodies. “And almond cookies. No white sugar.”
No white sugar. Only lots of honey and fat, I guessed, and ever so delicately snatched a sample from the china plate. One crunch confirmed my guess. Nothing that tasted this good could be completely sin-free. I was just glad it wasn’t labeled. As I chewed, I decided to change my interrogative approach.
“Funny how some people liked Sid so much and some couldn’t stand him,” I put out for comment.
“Jack liked Sid,” Aurora assured me, nibbling on her own cookie. “Maybe it was because they were such complete opposites. Sid, funny and playful but completely insensitive. Jack, kind and intense but oversensitive.” She put down her cookie and took a sip of unsweetened tea before going on. “Lillian is the one who had a hard time accepting Sid. But she tried for Jack’s sake. The kids disliked Sid though. Intensely. Odd, because Sid was so much like a child himself.” She frowned at her tea. “Children can see things sometimes, things the rest of us can’t.”
“Jack takes care of the kids?” I asked. I tried to keep my tone neutral. But the whole thing worried me. Jack might not be crazy enough to murder, but was he sane enough to watch over two young children?
“Don’t worry about the children,” Aurora answered quickly, as if she’d immediately divined my concern. Owning that metaphysical bookshop might have given her psychic abilities for all I knew. “No matter what state Jack is in, he never forgets the children. Or ceases to love them. Lillian and I used to worry. But he’s never forgotten to feed them, never failed to come to their rescue for scraped knees and sibling spats, never had a day he didn’t share art or music projects with them.” She shrugged. “I don’t fully understand it myself, but the children seem outside the wall of Jack’s despair. They center his energy and love.”
I wasn’t convinced. I’d seen Lark’s concern for her father. What would it do to a child to see her father cry like that?
“And I believe the children have actually been made more compassionate by their experience with their troubled father,” she added. Damn. Maybe she really was psychic. “All families are dysfunctional in their own way. At least in Jack’s case he sincerely loves his children.” She lifted her hands gently. “Lark and Josh are vibrant, happy, intelligent, and caring little beings. That’s all the proof I need.”
I took a casual sip of my tea, waiting for my hot cheeks to cool down. Aurora didn’t need to prove anything to me. The whole thing was none of my business. And she was probably right about the children.
She nodded as if she had heard my thought and went on.
“And then there’s Lillian,” she said, leaning back in her chair with an unfocused smile on her face. “Lillian is truly the perfect soul mate for Jack, his exact counterpoint. She not only runs Karma-Kanick, but she creates sculpture of…of a completely magical quality.”
I bobbed my head up and down earnestly. “I saw her sculpture at her workshop today,” I told Aurora.
Her eyes widened with surprise. Maybe she wasn’t psychic after all, I decided smugly.
“The bronze busts are my favorite,” I added and took another sip of tea, peppermint clearing my sinuses.
“Lillian is an incredible woman,” Aurora went on. “She’s Chinese-Indonesian. Did you know that native Indonesians discriminate against those of Chinese ancestry?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t even sure where Indonesia was. And I didn’t know if this conversation would ever lead back to Jack, much less to Sid’s murder.
“They just aren’t thinking globally yet,” Aurora told me, shaking her head. “They even have quotas so not too many Chinese-Indonesians can go to school or have government jobs. But this discrimination was what ultimately brought Lillian to the United States, so I can’t complain. It was serendipity at work. Her aunt, a farseeing woman, sent Lillian to art school here.” Aurora threw up her hands. “As if Lillian needed an art degree. Everything she needs for her art comes from her heart. But the education did help her English. Lillian wants very badly to speak English correctly, not like some of her Chinese-Indonesian friends who settle for pidgin. Not Lillian.” Aurora’s voice was deep with affection. Then she smiled. “Though Lillian does get her idioms a little confused sometimes. She loves American expressions.”