Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (11 page)

- Eleven -

I stared, slack-mouthed, absorbing the visual reality of the red paint. Nearly two-thirds of the door was covered Jackson Pollock style, in blobs and splatters. No, I decided, not Jackson Pollock style. Jackson Pollock had been neater. And there was anger in this pattern. Then I smelled it, that unmistakable tang of solvents. The red paint was still wet.

At least it matched the state of my armpits. In fact my whole body felt slippery with sweat. A breeze floated by, bringing more of the paint smell with it, and chilling my wet body to boot.

“Jeez-Louise,” Barbara murmured from my side.

I was suddenly very glad she was there. I looked to either side. None of my neighbors’ windows were open on the left or the right. Would it be worthwhile to ask them if they’d seen anyone? Or across the street? I looked over my shoulder. The street might as well have been a movie set…before the action started. Nothing moved. No doors slammed, no curtains fluttered, no cars went by. Even the dogs seemed strangely silent. Only insects hummed along with the sound of faraway traffic. And you can’t interrogate an insect. At least, I can’t.

Barbara put a gentle hand on my shoulder, and I brought my eyes back to her, the red paint glowing in the periphery of my vision.

“I’m really sorry, kiddo,” she whispered, so sincerely that tears stung my eyes for a moment. Barbara was my friend, no matter what. I always knew that in spite of her driving, in spite of her interfering, in spite of—Anyway, she was my friend, period.

I straightened my spine and pulled back my shoulders.

“Paint thinner,” I declared.

“Where?” she asked without hesitation.

Pretty soon, Barbara and I were rummaging under the deck where I kept the painting supplies in a plastic chest. There was about four feet of vertical crawl space under the deck, so Barbara and I did Quasimodo routines as we gathered the paint thinner and rags.

When I heard the door open above us, my head hit the deck.

“Kate?” Wayne called out, his voice confused.

I ran back out from under the deck, still hunched, but not hunched enough, my head
thunking
the struts every few feet. Had Wayne seen the door yet? Somehow, this seemed like the kind of stress his doctor had recommended he avoid.

I ran back around the front of the house and up the stairs, panting, “Wayne.”

And just as I reached the top step, Wayne closed the door behind him, and glanced back at its red-painted surface.

He turned into a pillar of Jell-O before my eyes. He swayed as I sprinted across the deck. I put out my arms and caught him, using all of what tai chi had taught me to receive his full weight without collapsing myself.

“Barbara!” I called out, and then she was there, and we were walking Wayne into the living room.

“Fine,” he kept insisting. I assumed he meant himself. I certainly wasn’t fine.

“You almost fainted,” I told him as we plunked him down on the couch.

“Did not,” he replied.

The conversation wasn’t going very well to begin with, so I resisted uttering the “did too” that wanted to jump out of my mouth.

And the conversation only got worse when Wayne’s head cleared.

“Who did that to our door?” he demanded, looking at me with his brows at half mast over eyes that would take no prisoners.

“Craig,” Barbara answered for me. She’d already settled herself in one of the swinging chairs.

“Craig threw paint on our door?” Wayne yelped, his brows hoisted to top of the mast position.

“No, Craig didn’t throw the paint,” I corrected Barbara, sending her a look that was meant to be chilling. But Barbara continued to look warm and cozy, swinging back and forth rhythmically in her chair.

“Not Craig himself,” she replied mildly. “But someone associated with him.” She closed her eyes for a couple of swings. “I still think it’s his—”

“Is this what you’ve been keeping from me?” Wayne interrupted suddenly.

“Yeah!” I cried out, trying not to sound too surprised. Or too cheerful. I didn’t have to tell him it wasn’t the
only
thing I’d been keeping from him.

“There’ve been anonymous letters too,” Barbara added, getting into the spirit.

“Show them to me?” Wayne suggested.

So I did. I ran into my office and retrieved the letters, thrusting them into his hands eagerly after I’d run back. Wayne was smart. Maybe he’d be able to figure out what the messages meant. He studied the bold print thoughtfully as I sat down next to him.

“Did you check out his girlfriend, Bonnie?” he asked a while later.

“Uh-huh,” I told him. “But it wasn’t her.”

“Didn’t I hear Craig’s voice a few nights ago?” he followed up.

“You heard him?” I said, surprised. Usually Craig’s voice brought Wayne running and scowling.

“Thought I’d let you two work it out yourselves,” he murmured, looking down at his feet suddenly.

“Oh, Wayne.” I kept my voice steady. “Craig came over to whine. You know, the usual. He was splitting up with Bonnie, and he had some new girlfriend or something, but he really wanted me—”

“And you?” Wayne asked quietly.

“Wayne!” All right, I raised my voice a little. “Craig is still a complete…a complete, you know—”

“Doofus,” Barbara put in helpfully.

“Worse,” I insisted. “Much worse.” I crossed my arms. “If he weren’t so pathetic, I’d kick him down the stairs. But then he always has some sad little story—”

“I know, Kate,” Wayne put in. “Really.” His voice sounded better. And he was looking at me again. “Maybe it’s this new girlfriend,” he went on.

“I’d forgotten about his new girlfriend up until now. But even if she is his girlfriend, why should she be upset about me?” I asked. “I’ve never even met her. And the other night is the first time I’ve even seen Craig in ages. Bonnie’s the one he split up with—”

“But Bonnie’s the wrong woman,” Barbara threw in.

“How’d you know that?” Wayne asked.

Barbara rolled her eyes up into their sockets until her irises were invisible and murmured, “Voodoo.” Then she laughed maniacally.

And Wayne laughed with her. Sometimes, I just don’t get it.

“Listen, Wayne,” Barbara suggested. “Why don’t I rustle you up some food and then take Kate out to dinner. She needs a break.”

I looked at her unbelievingly.

But Wayne was nodding. “Kate’s been working too hard. Doing her business, taking care of me. She needs some time off.”

“But—” I began.

Barbara gave me a look that silenced me. She
was
getting me out of the house without suspicion.

“How’s some pasta with chicken in white wine sauce sound?” she asked Wayne.

I looked at her again. Pasta? Wine sauce? Barbara didn’t cook any more than I did. But apparently she could dial the phone. Because that’s what she did, and the takeout service promised the chicken pasta within a half hour.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” I muttered.

“You’re not psychic?” Wayne whispered into my ear. I settled back against him. He was so warm, and yielding, and he smelled so much like…like Wayne.

“Craig could never be you,” I whispered back.

We shared a quick kiss as Barbara added a quart of minestrone to her order. An order which Wayne insisted on paying for when it came, thirty minutes of pleasant conversation later. Barbara can be really scary when she’s good. I’d almost forgotten the murders, and the paint, by that time.

Barbara and I left the house once I was sure Wayne had food and water and apple juice. And another kiss.

“Go,” he insisted, shooing me away. “Maybe you two can take in a movie.”

So, Barbara and I left with one backward glance at the paint-splattered door. I’d clean it tomorrow, I told myself, guiltily.

The door opened just as I was looking at it, and Wayne peeked out.

“Take good care of her,” he commanded Barbara.

“Always,” Barbara answered with a salute, and a wink.

My mind was so scrambled that I got into Barbara’s Volkswagen bug when she opened the door for me.

We were already on the road when I thought to ask, “So who did throw the paint on my door?”

“Craig’s new sweetie’s my guess,” she answered with a long stare my way.

We drifted into oncoming traffic.

I didn’t say another word until were safely parked in the lot of the new Fresh! restaurant.

Fresh! had an innovative menu. That was for sure. Fashioned like a palm-sized chapbook of poetry, it described each dish lovingly in verse:

Wild mushrooms

tamed

by the love of lemon vinaigrette

finally at rest

on a bed of greens and noodles.

Fresh! had either put a lot of money into a writer for their menus, or the owner was a frustrated poet. I suspected the latter. The tables were covered in white paper, the walls covered in art. A sort of perverted El Greco style permeated the paintings. The owner again? Or a relative?

I wondered if the El Greco elongation was intentional or whether the artist had vision problems.

I stared at one particular painting, trying to figure out if the entwined figures were actually engaged in copulation or just tangled up.

“Ready to order?” sounded in my ear.

I swallowed a less than tasteful scream, dropped my eyes, then flipped through the chapbook frantically for something vegetarian. And edible.

Barbara ordered first, reciting a ballad of prawns provençale with garlic and wine. Then it was my turn to read aloud.

I cleared my throat nervously, then spoke:

Sun-baked tofu with honeyed mustard

on a clear blue tortilla day

waiting and wanting

kalamata olives, and sweet peppers

yes.

“Excellent,” the waitress commented. I raised my eyes. She looked just like Mrs. Telfer, my fifth-grade teacher, only she wore a dashiki. She smiled down at me. “Good voice, good choice,” she added.

I waited until Mrs. Telfer’s clone was out of earshot before I turned back to Barbara.

“Where do you find these places?” I whispered urgently.

“Kate,” she whispered back. “Notice we’re nearly the only ones here?” I turned and surveyed the room. There were two other couples seated. She was right. “We can talk here.”

“But can we eat here?” I asked.

“Food’s great,” she assured me, back to a normal voice. It was true that I could smell something deliciously garlicky being sauteed in the kitchen. “And we can do our chart on the tablecloth.” She pointed at the paper covering our table. I heard a masculine voice yelling out, “prawns provo and tofu blue.”

“What chart?” I asked.

“Of the suspects,” she explained slowly, as if I were, well, in the fifth grade. My brain did feel fuzzy. Or maybe it was too full. Full of red paint and suspects and duplicity. And questions. Was our waitress Mrs. Telfer’s grown daughter?

“Earth to Kate,” Barbara called.

“What?” I snapped, and shivered for no particular reason.

“Look,” she told me and drew a circle in the center of the paper tablecloth. She wrote “Silk” in the circle, but left room for more. “What do we know about Silk Sokoloff?”

“She was a writer,” I ventured.

“Good puppy,” Barbara commended me and penciled “writer” under Silk’s name.

“She knew Justine,” I added.

“Right.” Barbara drew another circle for Justine and connected them with a line.

“She knew Zarathustra,” I went on. All right, this was easier than reading menu offerings aloud.

By the time our Mrs. Telfer clone/waitress brought back our orders, Barbara had filled the tablecloth with circles for each of the participants in the psychic soiree. And made lines between them, and to Silk. Justine had a line to Silk and to almost everyone else. Zarathustra had a line to Justine, Linda, and Silk. Linda had reciprocal lines. Tory, Artemisia, Isabelle, and Elsa all had dotted lines to Silk, indicating their minimal relationship through the soiree. And Denise had a double line to Silk indicating her previous relationship with the dead woman. Only Rich McGowan and Gil Nesbit were unconnected. It had been a first visit for both of them.

“And neither of them knew Silk,” I was saying.

“As far as we know,” Barbara corrected me. “Okay, now we fill in the circles. Artemisia?”

“Nuts,” I offered.

Barbara wrote “nuts” under Artemisia’s name, saying, “We gotta visit that woman soon.”

“Denise?” Barbara asked.

“Hates her job,” I free-associated.

Barbara filled it in.

“Tory?”

“Too much money.”

“Rich McGowan?”

“Secret agent man—”

From behind us came an interruption:

Prawns provençale