A Stiff Critique (22 page)

But it wasn’t bad for a young man’s apartment. I couldn’t see anything actually rotting, and nothing smelled terrible. In fact, the room smelled rather pleasantly of incense, fried onions and male pheromones. Carrie was apparently temporarily immune to the allure of Travis’s fragrance, though.

“We have some questions for you,” she told Travis with a frown.

He frowned back at her. Their eyes locked. They might as well have been making love. I felt just as excluded, though maybe not as embarrassed.

“Could we sit down somewhere?” I broke in after a few more moments.

Travis looked at me as if I had just now landed on the planet.

“Hey, sure,” he said after a beat. “How about the kitchen? Would that be cool?”

The kitchen was neater than I expected. And I could see where the onion smell was coming from. A massive wok filled with onions and vegetables sat on top of the stove with an industrial-sized rice cooker on the counter next to it, full and steaming. Travis was obviously ready for a snack. It was getting close to lunch time. My stomach churned hopefully. But Travis didn’t offer to share as we all sat down at the wooden table.

“Kate would like to know how you first became a member of the critique group,” Carrie said without further introduction.

Travis looked at me for confirmation. I moved my head up and down ponderously, resisting the urge to kick Carrie under the table. Why was she blaming the question on me?

“I rented a room at Mave’s house a few years ago,” he told us after a moment of thought that drew his dark brows together over his big brown eyes. “And we kept in touch. Mave is one cool old woman. A real activist. Man, she was part of the gay and lesbian rights movement before there was a movement! You should see her scrapbooks. Anyway, she was interested when I told her my idea for the survivalist manual. And she thought the group could help me get the word out better. So she asked me to come to a meeting.”

“How about Joyce? You introduced her to the group, didn’t you?” Carrie led him on. He didn’t resist.

“Yeah, I know her from Operation Soup Pot. I volunteer there.” He sat straighter in his chair, his features animated. “But Joyce is the one that made Operation Soup Pot really happen. She was a cook at this restaurant, see, and she noticed all the leftover soup going to waste. So she started taking it to a local homeless shelter. And then she got other restaurants involved. She saved all this food that would have gone into the garbage. And gave it to the homeless and the elderly and the dying.” Then he frowned. “People think no one is hungry in the United States, but there are plenty of hungry people. All you have to do is look—”

“So you invited her to join the critique group?” Carrie said, shepherding him back on the path.

“Yeah, see the Operation always needs money. Most of us are volunteers, but there are a few paid, full-time folks. And then there’s the rent and all. So I came up with this idea for a cookbook and the board of directors loved it. They wanted Joyce to do it, but she was afraid she couldn’t write it, so I told her to come to the group.”

Carrie nodded somberly.

“So, what’s the deal, Carrie?” Travis demanded. “Do you really think someone from the group killed Slade?”

Carrie just frowned at him. And then their eyes locked again.

“Did you invite anyone else to the group?” I asked loudly. I could almost hear the pop when they broke eye contact.

“Oh, just Vicky,” Travis mumbled. “I found out she was writing, uh…”

His face turned deep mauve.

“Pornography,” I supplied helpfully.

“Right,” he said, still blushing. I felt a nip of affection for Travis. There was a certain kind of innocence in his embarrassment that contrasted well with his handsome face. I just hoped that innocence stretched to acts of violence.

“Where did you meet Vicky?” Carrie asked.

“Oh,” he mumbled. “At a meeting.”

“What kind of meeting?”

Travis looked down at the floor in silence. Suddenly, he didn’t look innocent to me anymore.

“Travis,” Carrie said, her voice deep with command. “Tell us where you met Vicky. It may be important.”

“I can’t,” he replied and crossed his arms.

When he raised his big brown eyes again, they were scowling.

- Seventeen -

“Travis,” Carrie growled. There was a real note of menace in her deep-throated growl. And in her frowning face too, her brows sharply angled together in a shape that might have been drawn by a cartoonist to represent anger.

But I could have told her that no amount of auditory or visible menace would do any good. Travis sat there scowling just as deeply, his arms crossed over his chest. He was going to be as stubborn as Carrie herself. Was it pure obstinacy that kept him from telling us where he’d met Vicky? Or did he have something to hide?

My mind explored the possibilities as the two glared at each other. Did the secret of where Travis and Vicky met have anything to do with Slade’s murder? Try as I did, I couldn’t come up with anything that made sense of that theory. Maybe a meeting of a revolutionary society dedicated to killing established writers? No. I shook my head to clear it. And found that I
could
imagine Travis and Vicky meeting in some kind of kinky sexual context, something that he was now unwilling to admit in his new role as suitor to Carrie. But I have a dirty mind. So did Travis apparently.

“Nothing sexual,” he muttered, his skin coloring again. “Vicky’s kinda strange, you know?”

Carrie’s face relaxed a little.

“Listen,” I said to Travis, feeling as if I were mediating a game of Twenty Questions. “Does where you met Vicky have anything to do with Slade’s murder?”

Travis thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“Fine,” Carrie said brusquely, rising from her chair. “If you find that you have anything you
can
share regarding Slade’s murder, please call me.”

Travis got up too. “Carrie?” he said. His voice had taken on a pleading tone. He wasn’t scowling anymore. “None of this has anything to do with us, you know.”

“I hope not,” Carrie answered seriously.

“Well, it doesn’t,” he persisted, throwing his arms out in frustration.

She looked into his eyes. He returned her gaze and his arms drifted back down. Their eyes were locked together once more.

“Okay, Travis,” she concluded after a few more heavy breaths. She jerked her head back, breaking eye contact. “I find you innocent of bad intent until proven guilty.”

She smiled as she said it, but I had a feeling she wasn’t joking.

When we got back to her car, I asked if she was serious.

“Yes,” she said shortly as she pulled away from the curb.

“Carrie, talk to me,” I ordered.

She sighed heavily.

“You’re afraid Travis killed Slade,” I said for her.

She whipped her head around to look at me. “Am I that obvious?”

“More than that obvious,” I said with a smile, trying to lighten the tone. Trying not to worry about Carrie’s eyes being on me instead of the road.

Despite the direction of her gaze, I don’t think Carrie even noticed my smile before she turned her head back toward the windshield.

“Why do you think it’s Travis?” I asked softly.

“I don’t actually believe he murdered Slade,” Carrie corrected me. But her voice didn’t have much spirit. “I just don’t know for certain that he didn’t. And Kate, I have to know for certain. That’s the only way our relationship will work, if it works at all.”

“All right.” I tried again. “Why don’t you know for certain that Travis
didn’t
kill Slade?”

She sighed again, but then spoke. “Travis was extremely hostile to Slade. You were present when the two men interacted. You saw how they were, like dogs sniffing and growling to protect their territories. And Slade was very patronizing in his critique of Travis’s work. Very hurtful. And Travis is so young. He saw how Slade kept trying to date me. And he’s so…so…”

“Hotheaded,” I offered.

“Perhaps,” Carrie agreed reluctantly. “Though I think ‘excitable’ might be a better description. In any case, I don’t believe Travis is actually capable of violence.”

“But…” I prompted. I seemed to hear the word in her tone.

“But…I had a dream Friday night,” Carrie answered, her voice low and trembling.

I glanced at her face again and saw the fear there I had seen the day before, widening her eyes. A shiver prickled the hair on my neck. I didn’t want to see that look on Carrie’s face.

“It was actually a nightmare,” she went on. “In the nightmare, Travis held a sword. It was dripping with blood. And then I looked down and saw Cyril’s dead body. Travis had killed Cyril, Kate—”

“But he hadn’t killed Slade?”

“No. He had killed my husband, though. It was frightening, to say the least.”

“Carrie,” I said slowly, thinking as I spoke. “Did you ever wonder if the dream might be about your own feelings toward Cyril? He was your husband and you loved him. But he died, died of cancer.” I talked a little faster, surer now of my interpretation. “And here you are, all this time later, almost in love with another man. I know you. You think if you love Travis you’re killing Cyril, at least killing the part of him that lives in your memory—” I stopped short. “I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter what I think the dream was about. I’m not a therapist—”

“I believe your interpretation might be correct, though,” she said, interrupting my apology. But there was something wrong with her voice. It sounded too thick.

I turned my head just long enough to glimpse the tears running down her dark, freckled cheeks, then swiveled it back quickly. Sympathy squeezed my chest.

“It’s all right to love Travis,” I whispered, hoping I hadn’t said too much already. “It’s even all right to let go of Cyril—”

“As long as Travis isn’t a murderer,” Carrie finished for me, her voice husky but stronger.

And he might very well be a murderer, I answered her silently. All those country and western songs about looking for a heartbreak started playing in my mind.

“You see, Kate,” Carrie continued, “that’s why I feel so strongly that I need to identify Slade Skinner’s murderer. If I am to have any kind of life at all with Travis, I must know who the murderer is.”

Damn. What if we couldn’t find out?

Carrie didn’t say any more as we rolled along down the highway, but my mind was speeding, prodded by Carrie’s need to know who had killed Slade. She deserved that much. At least that much. But what relevant facts had we uncovered about the group members? Donna’s family was Family. That seemed relevant. Travis wasn’t telling us where he met Vicky. Russell might or might not be following me. Joyce was a saint in the making. Nan was not. And Nan had been Slade’s lover. Mave had known Travis a long time. Vicky was crazy or close to it. And Carrie had very badly wanted to be represented by Slade’s agent.

I glanced over at her as she took the Shoreline turnoff. Her profile was stern. And distant. Had she fought with Slade before I arrived on the scene? Had she— No, I told myself, Carrie had not murdered Slade Skinner. I was sure of that even if I wasn’t sure of much else.

There had to be something more we could do to find out who killed Slade. Maybe check into everyone’s past. But how to do that? There was one thing I
could
do, I realized, finish reading Slade’s manuscript. Maybe there was a clue there. Maybe—

It was then that I noticed we had passed the junction without turning. We weren’t heading for my house, we were heading into downtown Mill Valley.

“Where are we going?” I asked Carrie.

“Vicky’s,” she said without turning her head.

Vicky’s. Of course. My stomach churned in rebellion, but the rest of me kept quiet.

The apartment that Vicky lived in was neat to the point of sterility. There was very little to obscure the view of the spotless white walls and gray carpeting of the living room. One couch, one TV and one lone Georgia O’Keeffe print on the wall comprised its bare-bones furnishings.

“We were concerned about you,” Carrie told Vicky once we were standing inside.

Vicky shrugged her thin shoulders, looking even more waiflike than usual in her oversized T-shirt and baggy pants. I wasn’t sure what her shrug meant.

“You must learn to eat regularly,” Carrie continued.

“I really know that,” Vicky said. Those words should have been reassuring, but they were spoken in a voice too shrill to sound reasonable. “I just get wound up every once in a while and say crazy things. Just ignore me.”

“Have you eaten today?” I asked, really concerned now.

“Yeah,” she answered briefly, turning her head to look away from me as she wrapped her arms around herself and hugged. Was she lying?

I shot Carrie a glance. She gave me a tiny shrug. At least I knew what Carrie’s shrug meant. It meant the eating issue was hopeless. It was time to move on.

“Travis tells us he introduced you to the critique group,” Carrie said, her voice low and quiet. I recognized the tone as the one she had used on difficult patients over twenty years ago. Maybe she had practiced on difficult judges in the intervening years. She still did it well.