A Stiff Critique (14 page)

“What kind of car does Russell drive?” I asked, turning to Carrie.

“A Honda. A Civic, I believe,” she answered. “Why?” “Because, I think he’s—” I began, swiveling my head to look behind me again. But the car had disappeared.

- Ten -

I stared over my shoulder in disbelief. Where had the beige Honda gone? Had it turned onto a side street? Or had I imagined the whole thing? Goose bumps formed on my arms.

“Because what?” Carrie asked next to me.

I jumped in my seat, wrenching something in my swiveled neck. Something that hurt. I rubbed the sore spot as I turned my head back to look out the front window.

Hutton was still rolling by, tastefully as ever. But its well-groomed gardens and hedges had lost their appeal.

“Never mind,” I whispered.

“Are you all right, Kate?” she asked, her voice a little louder.

“I’m fine,” I lied. Then I shook my head. Lying was no good. Not that I was making a moral judgment. I just knew that Carrie would see through my lie. “Fine except that someone came and stood in my yard last night,” I amended.

“And you think that someone is Russell Wu,” Carrie told me.

I turned to her in astonishment, wrenching my sore neck once again. “How did you know?”

“Kate, you just asked me about Russell’s car,” she said impatiently. She threw up her hands for a moment, then grabbed the wheel again before I had time for a fresh anxiety attack. “Did you see his car last night?”

“I only
heard
it last night,” I muttered. The whole thing sounded so ridiculous aloud. “At least, I think I heard it. And I think I might have seen it behind us a couple of seconds ago. A beige Honda Civic. But now it’s gone.”

Carrie frowned as she pulled onto the highway. Was she reconsidering her choice of an investigative partner?

“Look, I don’t know if it really was Russell, but—” That was when I noticed that we were going north on the highway instead of south. “Hey, where are you going?”

“To Russell’s,” Carrie said. “Of course.”

Of course.

Russell had an apartment in San Ricardo. Or maybe it was a condo. The complex looked upscale enough. We wound our way through the landscaped grounds until we found this building alongside a patch of lilies of the Nile and climbed a short flight of stairs to his upper-story unit. He appeared at the door within seconds of the doorbell’s chime.

“Hello,” he said without blinking. His tinted glasses looked even darker in the light of the doorway. I wondered if they were the kind that changed in the light.

“Hi, Russell,” I said uncomfortably. “Carrie and I thought…”

I realized abruptly that I had no idea how to finish the sentence, especially with Russell just standing there, staring.

“We thought we might visit with you and discuss Slade Skinner’s death,” Carrie finished for me, her voice matter-of-fact. “After all, you do have a special expertise in these matters.”

Something that might have been a smile tugged at Russell’s lips briefly. Then he turned without a word and swept his hand in front of him, motioning us inside.

Inside turned out to be a Spartan living room with one blue-and white-checked sofa, a couple of bookcases, a stack of newspapers and a curling poster of Monet’s “Water Lilies” on the wall. I had a feeling Russell didn’t do a whole lot of entertaining.

Carrie and I sat on the checked sofa while Russell went to get a chair. The room felt cool for July, even cold. Or maybe it was me. A pretty tiger-striped cat approached and sniffed our feet curiously, then leapt up to sit between us. I felt relieved, even warmer, as if the presence of a cat proved that Russell wasn’t a murderer. I hastily reminded myself that Hitler had liked dogs, as Russell came back with a wooden chair and sat down to face us.

He didn’t even bother to make small talk. He just stared our way without speaking.

“May I ask how you happened to join the critique group?” Carrie said after a few moments of silence had passed. Her voice sounded easy, unstrained. But I glimpsed her hands out of the corner of my eye. She was wiggling her fingers again.

“I found out about the group through Vicky Andros,” Russell answered, his voice as unruffled as Carrie’s. But his body was still too, completely still as he spoke in a soothing hypnotic tone. “Vicky works as a computer programmer at a company called AB Networks. I’d done some freelance tech writing for them. Got to know Vicky. She invited me to join the group when she found out I was writing true crime.”

There was another long minute of silence. But Russell didn’t add anything to his statement.

“What was your opinion of Slade Skinner?” Carrie asked softly.

Russell’s lips twitched, ever so gently. Yes, that was a smile. I was sure of it this time.

“He could be a real s.o.b., couldn’t he?” Russell replied, just as softly. “On the other hand, I don’t think he meant to be cruel. He was just completely self-absorbed.”

“In that case, why did he stay with the critique group?” Carrie prodded.

“Good question.” Russell lifted his eyes to the ceiling for a moment. That was a relief. He had moved almost naturally. “My theory is that Slade, like many self-absorbed men, was really lonely. And he was uptight about people wanting to be his friends. Afraid they only wanted a piece of his wealth and success.” Russell brought his head back down and looked at us again with yet another twitch of a smile. “For some reason, he seemed to think writers were exempt from that kind of motivation. The group was like family to him, I think. A safe bunch of people to hang out with.”

“Interesting,” Carrie said thoughtfully. She paused, then bent forward to ask her next question. “How did you feel about his critiques?”

“I assume you mean his critiques of my own writing,” Russell said.

Carrie nodded.

“They were nasty, but they were useful too. Slade was a good writer. People got so pissed off at his critiques that they never bothered to listen to what he was saying. And some of his tirades contained damn good advice. He had an eye for what worked in writing. And what didn’t work. Especially in mine. A true-crime story should have all the elements of a good thriller. When he told me sections of my manuscript bored him out of his skull, I listened.”

“You know, I believe you are right,” Carrie said admiringly. She leaned back on the couch, her fingers no longer wiggling. “I never actually noticed the content of his critiques because they made me so angry. Not that he actually critiqued my own work. It was hearing the comments he made about the others.”

“But he didn’t piss you off enough to make you kill him,” Russell stated.

Carrie leaned back and laughed. “No, he didn’t,” she agreed.

“Me neither,” Russell said.

They smiled at each other. And I felt the interrogation slipping away. I took a deep breath.

“Didn’t Slade make fun of you in his book?” I asked, my voice coming out too loud.

Russell shifted his eyes my way. “I don’t think Slade really ‘made fun’ of me,” he answered calmly. “He wrote a character who’s a lot like me. And it’s pretty weird to see yourself from someone else’s perspective. But the fact is, he wrote about a stereotypical Asian kinda nerd. And I
am
a stereotypical Asian kinda nerd. I don’t think there was anything derogatory in his portrayal. Of course, I think I have more aspects to my personality than he gave his character. But if that character was so obviously recognizable as me, then I guess Slade did a good job.”

I was beginning to like Russell myself. He really was a good observer of people, just as Carrie had told me. And funny in his own way. I reminded myself that we were here to get some answers from him, funny and likable notwithstanding.

“Did you visit me last night?” I demanded. I couldn’t think of any better way to ask.

“Visit you?” he asked back. He fixed an unblinking stare onto my face.

I felt the blood rise into my cheeks. If he wasn’t my late-night visitor, he probably thought I was nuts. Most people know who their visitors are.

“Never mind,” I said for the second time in an hour.

“So much for our mutual investigation,” he commented, smiling gently. “Maybe we could continue over dinner.”

I barely noticed the dinner part. Mutual investigation? Damn. What the hell did that mean? Carrie and I were the ones asking questions. At least I thought so.

“We were hoping to speak with Joyce while we were in the area,” Carrie was saying as I began to listen again. “Though a meal does sound good.”

“Maybe we can get Joyce to come to dinner, too,” Russell suggested.

“Kate?” Carrie asked.

“Huh?” I said.

She frowned at me. My brain began to process again.

“Oh, sure,” I said, belatedly trying to pump some enthusiasm into my voice. “Dinner would be great.”

The next thing I knew, we were downstairs getting into Russell’s car. It was a beige Honda Civic. Of course.

I climbed into the back of the Civic. Carrie sat up front with Russell. When he turned the key in the ignition, I realized he’d never really answered my question about the night before. I stared at the back of his perfectly still head. Was he my nighttime visitor?

Joyce’s apartment was located above Operation Soup Pot’s headquarters, up a long flight of steep stairs.

“I’m sorry there’s no place to sit down,” Joyce apologized as the three of us walked into her living room. She hadn’t exactly invited us in, but she had stepped back from the door. And that was enough.

Carrie murmured something reassuring to Joyce behind me while I looked around the living room.

I had thought Russell’s living room was Spartan, but Joyce had him beat hands down for simplicity. Russell owned a couch. Joyce had two cushions. One cushion sat in front of a framed photo of an aged, serene face that looked faintly Asian. I had to bend over to see it where it was hung on the wall a couple of feet above the floor. I couldn’t tell if the face in the photo was male or female. I turned to ask Joyce who it was.

“This is my meditation area,” she explained with a sudden blush that dyed her face all the way to the roots of her black hair.

“It’s very nice,” I told her, changing conversational course before I’d even started. “Very peaceful.” Joyce’s blush was enough to discourage me from asking any questions about the photo. Though now I had a new question. What was she so embarrassed about? But I probably wouldn’t ask that one either.

I turned instead to look at the only other furniture in the room, a word processor laid out neatly on a low teak table with Joyce’s other cushion in front of it. I wondered for a moment how she could sit on that cushion and type. Where the hell did she put her legs?

“We thought we’d take you out to dinner,” Russell said.

“Oh dear,” Joyce murmured, her eyes widening under her oversized glasses. At least the blush seemed to be receding. “I’m sorry. I was just soaking some beans for tomorrow.”

“Have you eaten yet tonight?” Carrie asked.

“Well, no,” Joyce admitted, shaking her head. “I haven’t. But—”

“Then why don’t you come with us?” Carrie cut in. “A night out would do you good.”

“Well, I should—”

After a few more minutes of cajoling, Joyce finally agreed to go to dinner, her acceptance about as enthusiastic as a cat’s considering a visit to the vet.

Once Carrie had twisted Joyce’s arm sufficiently, we followed her into the kitchen to watch her soak her beans. At least the kitchen looked lived in. It was furnished with a stained and scarred teak table and four chairs. And a lot of cooking equipment. It smelled good too, of garlic and rosemary and yeast. An air-brushed painting of irises was on one wall, and a framed poem in black calligraphy on the other.

I read the poem as Joyce poured more than a quart of beans into a huge cast-iron pot and carried it to the sink.

“This existence of ours is as transient as the winter snow…”

Maybe I should jot it down, I thought, show some interest in other people’s poetry. Joyce ran water over the beans and I read on.

“…To watch the birth and death of beings is like watching the dance of a butterfly—”

“Can I help?” Russell offered as Joyce lifted the pot up onto the stove.

“No, I’m fine,” she said, blushing again. “I can lift much heavier. You have to be strong to be a cook.”

“A lifetime is like a burst of song…”

“I guess that’s it,” Joyce said with a wistful edge of sadness in her tone. She looked around her kitchen as if she were memorizing it. I read the last line of calligraphy quickly.

“Come and gone, like a flash of lightning in the sky.”

And then the four of us left her apartment.

“So,” I said as she and I climbed into the back seat of Russell’s Civic. “Who wrote that poem in your kitchen?”

“What poem?” She tilted her head as she looked at me, her brows raised in inquiry.

“You know,” I told her. “The one about life being transient—”

“Oh, that,” she said with a little laugh. “The Buddha wrote it. Or at least he is said to have written it. Did you like it?”