A Stiff Critique (26 page)

Carrie pushed past me and stepped into the room.

“No,” I said. At least I tried to. But my voice wouldn’t work.

I laid a restraining hand on Carrie’s arm and took a long, painful breath.

“Don’t go in.” My words came out in a wheeze. “Don’t touch anything. We’ve got to call the police.”

Carrie turned to look at me, her eyes wide.

“My Lord,” she whispered. Then she shook her head hard. When she stopped shaking it, her eyes had contracted to normal size again. That was good, I supposed. Wasn’t it?

“Are you okay, Kate?” Carrie asked, her low voice shaking.

Was I okay? The room was shimmering with light. And something was buzzing in my ears. I had the feeling that I could float away from the doorway if I wanted, just float and float— No, I probably wasn’t okay, I decided. But I had to be. I took another breath. Then I tried Carrie’s method and shook my head hard. So hard, I almost fell over. Damn, I was dizzy.

“Fine,” I answered a few moments later. “I’m fine. Let’s find a phone.”

But I wasn’t really fine. I was chilled, outside and in. I looked over at Carrie once we were safe inside my Toyota again and I couldn’t stop my mind from wondering. Had she arranged for me to be with her when she found Nan’s body? Was it possible?

Then I noticed the grayish cast of her skin. And the way she kept breathing in and out in convulsive bursts. And the way her hands were shaking. She was as frightened as I was. I couldn’t believe she’d known Nan’s body was going to be there. Her present shock was too real.

“Do you know where the police station is?” I asked her finally.

She shook her head, twisting her hands together.

We sat a little longer. I had my voice back, but my brain still wasn’t working very well.

“Perhaps a pay phone,” Carrie suggested.

“With a phone book,” I agreed and started the car.

But after fifteen minutes of speeding up and down the tree-lined streets of Hutton I was convinced the city didn’t have any pay phones. I didn’t even see any businesses. I was about to give up, when I turned another corner and Carrie pointed.

I followed her finger. We had found the business district. I drove by a market, a flower shop and a cafe. And then finally, I saw a pay phone. Right next to the Hutton Police Department.

The lobby of Hutton’s police station reminded me of a doctor’s office. White walls, institutional linoleum and a glassed-in counter. The only difference was that the man behind the counter was wearing a uniform and a gun.

“We need to talk to Chief Gilbert,” I announced and then caught my breath. We had sprinted up the stairs and through the door.

“Yes, ma’am?” he replied, raising his brows with an interrogatory emphasis that could have belonged to a butler.

“We are here to report a crime,” Carrie specified from my side.

The man shot her a glance and opened his mouth.

“A murder.” I spelled it out for him. “We found the body.” That shut his mouth for a second.

“Stay where you are,” he ordered and slid the glass window shut. I wondered if it was bulletproof glass.

Maybe I shouldn’t have asked for Chief Gilbert. As we sat waiting for him on an uncomfortable Naugahyde couch, I realized the man behind the counter had probably called him in from home. And no one had asked us for any details, not even our names, so I assumed that nothing would happen until Gilbert arrived. And meanwhile, Nan…I shuddered, not even wanting to think about it.

Twenty minutes later, Gilbert came bustling through the lobby to usher us politely into his well-furnished office. Even then, comfortably seated on real leather, it took us more frustrating minutes to make him understand that we weren’t there about Slade Skinner’s murder but about Nan Millard’s.

“Nan Millard.” He pronounced the name judiciously after Carrie twice repeated our claim to have found Nan dead. “Who is Nan Millard?”

“She lives—lived—across the street from Slade Skinner,” Carrie told him.

“And she was a member of his critique group—”

“And she is dead—”

“Dead?” asked Chief Gilbert, furrowing his aristocratic brow. Finally, we had gotten through. “In Hutton?”

“She was shot in her home, inside Hutton city limits,” I said impatiently. “And the gun’s still there.”

Gilbert’s brow unwrinkled. “Ah, suicide,” he said. “How very sad.”

Then he left the room, coming back before he’d even shut the door, to ask for Nan’s address. Luckily, Carrie had it in her purse.

After that, we heard a lot of bustling and commanding, even a little muted shouting from somewhere outside Gilbert’s office. Then we were asked to wait in the lobby by the uniformed man we had spoken to before. It was at least an hour later before we saw Gilbert again. Carrie and I didn’t talk much in that hour. The only thing I wanted to talk about was Nan’s death. Had Nan really committed suicide? Somehow I doubted it. But being in a police station was enough to discourage me from asking Carrie what she thought.

I had closed my eyes in an attempt to visualize a calming garden scene—actually any calming scene would have been nice—when I heard the sound of a man’s voice coming in through the lobby door. An angry man’s voice. I popped my eyes open and saw Chief Gilbert bearing down on our Naugahyde couch. The two other lean and aristocratically featured men who had accompanied him on the day of Slade’s death were trailing behind him, identically cowed looks on their black and white faces. Uh-oh.

“Why in hell were you two there?” Gilbert demanded without preamble.

“We thought Nan might know something about Slade’s murder—” I began.

“Certain statements that Ms. Millard had made in the setting of our critique group seemed to indicate that she might have seen someone or something on the day that Slade Skinner was killed,” Carrie finished for me.

It was a good thing she was a lawyer. I might have said the same thing in far fewer words. Not that Gilbert was happy with her explanation.

“Why in hell didn’t you tell us if you thought this Millard woman knew something?” he shouted.

“You were set in your belief that Slade Skinner’s death was the result of an interrupted burglary,” Carrie snapped back. “And Nan’s insinuation seemed directed at someone in the critique group.”

Gilbert’s face flushed. “Separate ‘em,” he ordered. “I’ll take this one in my office.” He pointed to Carrie. “Zuleger, you watch the other one. Make sure she doesn’t leave.”

But for all his bluster, Chief Gilbert didn’t have Carrie in his office for long. It couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes before she was escorted out and I was escorted in. The chief asked me what time we’d arrived at Nan’s, what we’d touched, whose idea it had been to visit Nan, if Nan and Slade had been lovers, and a few more fairly easy questions about Carrie and the other critique group members. Then he asked what Nan had said to make me believe she knew something about Slade’s murder.

That was a hard one. Because I couldn’t remember exactly. And I had spent a lot of my time in the lobby trying to remember just that.

“It was something about being able to see Slade’s house across the street that day,” I told him uneasily. “But then when she was challenged, she said she hadn’t really seen anything.”

Surprisingly, Gilbert didn’t delve any further. Carrie had probably been more specific. He only had one more question for me. Well, actually two. Did I kill Slade Skinner? And did I kill Nan Millard?

“No,” I answered emphatically to both questions.

I just hoped I sounded believable. Even when I was a child, I’d always managed to sound guilty in the process of denying things that I really hadn’t done.

But Gilbert didn’t clap me in handcuffs. He just blinked and stood up from his desk to deliver me to yet another uniformed officer who took my fingerprints. And finally, I was free to go.

I was sure of one thing as Carrie and I left the police station into the darkening evening. If Nan had seen something, she would never tell us what it was now.

“Kate, I’m sorry,” Carrie said to me when we got to the Toyota.

“Sorry for what?” I asked, my heart pumping a little faster. I couldn’t make out her features in the waning light.

“For getting you into this…this mess.”

Then she put her arms around me and hugged. It felt good. I hugged back, releasing fear and anxiety as I did. Releasing suspicion. I could feel it flow from my tense body as belated tears flowed from my eyes. My friend Carrie was comforting me. And for a time, that was all that mattered.

“Do you think Nan saw the murderer and blackmailed him?” I asked once we were back in the car rolling toward Carrie’s house.

“Him or her,” Carrie corrected. “And yes, it does seem probable. Though there are other possibilities.”

“Like?”

“Perhaps she was killed for the same unknown reason that Slade was killed.”

“Like?”

“I just don’t know,” she sighed. “Slade and Nan had so many connections. They were lovers. They lived on the same street. They belonged to the same critique group. They were both extremely insensitive to others’ needs. They were both published authors.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure of one thing,” I told her. “Nan Millard didn’t commit suicide. Even Chief Gilbert figured that out.”

“Gilbert and his two clones,” Carrie muttered.

“Hey,” I said, trying for a cheery note. “Maybe it’s not a job requirement for the officers in Hutton to look like Gilbert. Maybe they’re Gilbert’s illegitimate children.”

Carrie laughed then and told me what a good friend I was. I was glad she couldn’t see me blushing in the dark, the good friend who had suspected her.

We spent an hour or so at Carrie’s house tossing around murder theories unenthusiastically. Neither of us had much real energy for the exercise. And when Carrie started calling the Hutton Police department “Gilbert and Sullivan” and singing operetta, I couldn’t seem to stop laughing. I made a quick diagnosis of communicable hysteria and left to drive home, still giggling uncontrollably.

I’d finally stopped laughing when I pulled into my driveway some time after ten. What I saw in my driveway would have stopped my laughter anyway. It was a vintage ‘57 Chevy. And I knew it was turquoise even though I couldn’t see the color clearly in the dark. Because a turquoise vintage ‘57 Chevy was what Felix Byrne drove. Felix, my friend Barbara’s boyfriend, the pit bull of newspaper reporting. As I watched, he jumped out of his car, a short and skinny cauldron of steaming journalistic fervor running to meet me. I rolled down my window as he got to the Toyota.

“Found another one, huh?” he greeted me. I knew there was a hurt look in his soulful eyes just like I knew the color of his car. He always started in with a hurt look. “And didn’t bother to tell your old friend Felix?”

I thought about backing out of the driveway as fast as I could and going back to Carrie’s, but Felix had my car door open in the instant it took me to think of escape.

I stepped from my car cautiously.

In the dim light I saw Felix’s mustache twitch in what might have been a smile. I flinched.

“Guess where I’ve been?” he ordered.

“The Hutton Police Department,” I answered. I didn’t even try to dissemble. Felix knew. Felix always knew.

“I shoulda gotten hip when the poop came in on the first Hutton stiff,” he started in softly. Then his voice picked up volume and speed. “I shoulda thought about my
pal
Kate. My compadre. Always finds the body but never calls her friend, her friend who’s a crime reporter for Christ’s sake! But noooo.” He drew the word out like a cow mooing. “I have to have strangers enlighten me when she finds the second stiff. Holy moly, were you going to hold out on that one too? Huh, Kate? Were you just gonna—”

“How come you didn’t come by when you heard about Slade Skinner?” I asked, truly curious. Felix never passed up an opportunity.

“My contact didn’t mention your name when she told me about the first one,” he said, a sulk slowing down the speed of his harangue. But not for long. “I shoulda known something was up when Wu asked about you—”

“Russell Wu?”

“Yeah, Russell Wu. Russell Wu of your friggin’ critique group! The critique group you never told me about. The critique group that both Nan Millard and Sherman Francis Skinner were in—”

“Sherman Francis?”

“What are you, a friggin’ parrot?” Felix demanded. I could feel his glare in the dark. “Sherman Francis Skinner was the poor friggin’ shlunk who bought it. Slade was just his pen name.”

I smiled in spite of myself. Slade’s real name was Sherman Francis. I couldn’t wait to tell Carrie. Of course, it would have been more fun if Slade were still alive, I realized, and my smile fizzled.

“So why was Russell asking about me?” I said, getting back to the first point.

“I don’t know,” Felix answered softly. “Wu was down at the Hutton cop shop taking notes after this Skinner weenie got roasted. So, just being friendly, I talk Wu up a little, trying to find out what he knows. He just gives me this real spacey, looney-tunes smile, like there’s nothing there behind those weird-ass specs of his, and then he asks if I know Kate Jasper. Out of the blue. I told him we were friends, like real compadres, and Wu asks if you’ve been involved in other murders—”