A Stiff Critique (5 page)

It was still light out as we walked up the path to Carrie’s house a little before eight. And warm. A tenuous breeze rustled the leaves of a nearby apple tree before moving on, leaving a sweet scent in the air. I took a deep breath. Then Carrie stuck her key in the door.

An explosion of yips, howls and yowls erupted as if detonated.

The sounds quickly converged on the other side of the door and I heard Yipper’s claws stripping the paint from the wood. Yipper was a young schnauzer, an aptly named animal. The howler was an old basset hound named Basta. And the yowl belonged to Sinbad, an ink-black cat with neon-green eyes. At least the animals were all guarding the door, more than my own cat, C.C., would ever consider doing.

Carrie opened the door and yelled, “CEASE AND DESIST!”

Taking orders is another thing C.C. would never do. But Carrie’s animals did. The cacophony ceased within seconds of her shout.

“After you,” Carrie said.

I tried to lead the way to the living room, but the animals were all vying for the honor. Sinbad won. He was settled on a couch licking a black paw by the time I walked through the doorway.

Carrie’s living room was a pleasant collage of well-organized chaos. In the center, a rose-colored easy chair and two cornflower blue couches loaded with colorful throw pillows were arranged around a wooden coffee table. The walls were almost invisible under shelves of books, art prints, paintings, and photos of Carrie’s children and her late husband, Cyril. More tables and chairs were scattered around the room, the tables loaded with books, seashells, rocks and vases. And more framed prints and photos.

My eyes stopped at a photo of Cyril taken in the years before cancer had fastened onto him, changed him and finally killed him. I looked at that kind, smiling face and my chest hurt.

“Please, sit down,” Carrie ordered brusquely. “I need to make a brief phone call.”

I sat down on one of the mauve couches. And then craned my neck trying, and failing, to hear Carrie’s phone conversation in the other room. The two dogs and the cat watched me with accusing eyes. I had to listen, I told them silently. What if the call had to do with the murder? What if Carrie had to do with the murder? I was ninety-nine percent sure she didn’t, but that remaining one percent kept pinching me.

I hadn’t seen much of Carrie during the fifteen years she had lived and practiced law in southern California. But nine months ago the appellate law firm she worked for had opened an office in San Francisco and Carrie had come home to Marin. We picked up our former friendship as if those fifteen years had never passed. Just like the old days. But did I still know her, really?

She had been standing over the body. She had turned off the computer—

“Well, Kate,” came a voice from behind me, Carrie’s voice.

“So,” I said quickly, turning my head to disguise the way I had jumped in my seat. “You think someone in your group murdered Slade Skinner?”

“Yes, I do,” she answered quietly. “Shall I tell you about the group members?”

I nodded as Carrie crossed the room and took a seat on the couch facing mine.

“Nan Millard acted as my real estate agent when I purchased this house,” Carrie began, her eyes losing focus as she spoke. “She was quite friendly. We had lunch together. I mentioned that I wrote, that I was beginning a novel of speculative fiction. She invited me to the writers’ critique group.”

Carrie flashed a crooked smile at me.

“Now that I’ve gotten to know Nan better, I realize her interest in me was based primarily, if not entirely, on my status as an attorney. Nan is only interested in people who have status or money. Period. But at least she’s an equal opportunity social climber.”

I chuckled, but only for an instant before the guilt set in. How could I laugh so soon after seeing Slade’s dead body?

Basta waddled up and took a seat on my toes, and the guilt seemed to dissolve under the warm pressure of his body. The old basset hound liked to sit on people’s feet more than almost anything else. Except for bringing Carrie sticks. Carrie had a stack of Basta’s gift sticks behind the couch. She was too soft-hearted to throw them away.

“Then there was Slade Skinner,” she went on. “As you know, Slade could be a very, very difficult man to like.”

“No kidding,” I said, remembering his sneering face.

Basta rubbed his head on my leg. I reached down and gave him a pat.

“Didn’t you say Slade seduced Nan?” I asked.

“I suppose I should have said that Nan slept with him upon occasion,” Carrie answered carefully.

“Did they have a falling out?”

“Not so you’d notice.” So much for that idea. “Slade was cordial to Nan, at least by his standards. He was still sleeping with her, after all. And Nan reciprocated that cordiality. Slade was a famous writer. Quid pro quo.”

“Quid pro quo?”

“One thing in return for another,” Carrie translated absently. “Then there’s Donna Palmer. She’s writing a
Mommy Dearest
about her family, a pretty nasty family if there is any truth whatsoever to her allegations. But she has the New Age to keep her company. She is so”—Carrie’s voice rose in mimicry— “so incredibly involved in her healing process.”

Carrie stuck a finger under her chin and took on a look of innocent vacancy as she spoke the last line. Right, Donna—I remembered. The one who had spilled something on her purple blouse. The one who thought I had a gift for gag gifts.

“What about the woman with the black perm?” I prompted.

“Joyce Larson. Doer of good work, started Operation Soup Pot. Have you heard of it?”

“One of the groups that gives leftover food to the homeless?” I hazarded uncertainly.

“That’s correct. They not only distribute food to the homeless, but to the sick and old too. Joyce started the organization. Currently, she’s the kitchen manager. A very quiet woman.” Carrie steepled her hands together in an imitation of prayer. “Joyce is some sort of Buddhist. She is currently writing a cookbook with homey little anecdotes to raise money for the Operation. Only she’s having a bit of trouble with the homey little anecdotes, having even less of a personal life than I.”

I smiled. Carrie’s tongue always got sharper under stress. At least that much hadn’t changed.

“Then we’ve got Vicky Andros, who must be the skinniest woman alive. The woman just plain won’t eat. She writes soft porn. And Russell Wu, he’s another quiet one. He writes true crime. And Mave Quentin. She’s a hoot, isn’t she? Seventy-some years old and one of the most agreeable shit-kickers I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. She’s writing a historical biography.”

“What did Slade mean about Mave not being a normal woman?” I asked, jolted by the sudden memory of his words.

“Mave is a lesbian,” Carrie answered. Then she paused to take a big breath. I got ready for a major revelation.

“Then there’s Travis,” she said finally and paused again, wiggling her left pinkie. I was still waiting.

“Travis?” I repeated.

Carrie got up from the couch and began to pace.

“Travis is writing a survivalist manual for the coming fall of the United States,” she said as she strode across the room.

“The fall of the United States?” I repeated. I was beginning to feel like a parrot.

“According to Travis Utrelli, the U.S. is going to collapse into chaos within the next five or ten years.” Carrie turned and strode back toward the couch. “First the Government won’t be able to pay its debts. Then all the banks will close down. No more credit cards. No more cash. No more groceries. Warfare on the city streets. You know the rhetoric.”

Actually, I didn’t. But I nodded anyway, all the time wondering what it was about Travis Utrelli that made Carrie get up and pace.

She sat back down. “Those are all the group members,” she said softly. “Except that Slade Skinner is no longer a member, being deceased.” She clenched her fists suddenly. “Damn it, Kate. He said he had a secret meeting, and I had to be smartass and not allow him to tell me who he was supposed to meet.”

“But Carrie—”

“And I turned off the computer. The police think it’s a burglar, for God’s sake! I tried to suggest to Chief Gilbert that it might have been someone in the group, but he wasn’t interested.” She got up and began pacing again. “And if the burglary theory doesn’t work out, they have Slade’s three ex-wives to investigate—”

“Carrie,” I put in. “Maybe they’re right. Maybe it was a burglar or an ex-wife. I mean, if he had three—”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” she rapped out, cutting me off. At least she had stopped pacing. Now she was standing in place, waving her hands in the air. “But then again, maybe not.” She dropped her hands and sighed. “Sorry, Kate.”

“Carrie,” I asked softly, “can you tell me what happened before I got there?”

“I went to his house a little after six-thirty,” she told me, her voice racing now as she stood still. “I rang the bell. There was no answer. And the door was open. Just a few inches. So I pushed it open the rest of the way and went inside. He wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen. I decided to check the study and then leave if I couldn’t find him.” Carrie gulped and I saw tears on her round, freckled cheeks. “I found him.”

I jumped up from the couch.

“No,” she said, thrusting an arresting palm in my direction before I could get to her. “I’m fine.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “I promised you dinner. I’d better start cooking it.”

And with that, she marched into the kitchen, the cat and dogs at her heels. I wasn’t hungry and I doubted that she was either. But I followed her in without protest. If cooking would make her feel better, I wasn’t going to argue.

Carrie’s kitchen had as much color crammed into it as her living room. Copper-bottomed pans hung from the wall and ceilings. Dishware in bright blues, pinks and yellows sat on open teak shelves. Floral art prints decorated the walls. And strings of brightly colored papier mâché vegetables hung alongside real garlic and herbs.

“I believe I should call an emergency meeting of the group,” she informed me as she grabbed a copper-bottomed saucepan. “Speak to everyone. Find out if anyone will admit to meeting Slade at five. Find out—”

But the rest of Carrie’s words were lost in the renewed racket of her animals. All at once, the three of them seemed to go crazy. With a deafening explosion of sound, they raced out of the kitchen and across the hall to the glassed-in patio that Carrie used as a study.

What the hell?

“The back door,” Carrie explained. Then her eyes widened. She dropped the saucepan onto the counter. “The back door!”

- Four -

“Back door?” I repeated as Carrie went racing across the hall after her animals. Then my brain kicked in and I went racing after her.

I thought I could hear the pounding of running footsteps other than our own as I rushed toward the study. But it was hard to tell over the animal clamor. Then I heard a door slamming. I came through the study’s nearest doorway in time to see a flash of brown, freckled legs as Carrie ran out the far door.

“Carrie!” I called out as I ran across the room to catch up with her. My mind told me there must be intruders here and I didn’t want Carrie tangling with them.

Luckily, she wasn’t fast enough.

I heard a car start and roar off as I sprinted across her backyard. Then the yipping stopped. And the yowling and howling. And Carrie came huffing and puffing back toward me, the now quiet animals dancing behind her. I could see drops of sweat shining on her face. And hear my heart beating in my own chest.

“Well?” I demanded.

She held a protesting hand up as she caught her breath.

“Who was it?” I pressed her anxiously.

“I don’t know,” she told me between breaths. “I only saw the back of their suits.” She sucked in more air. “Expensive suits. Armani, I believe. They got into a car and drove off.”

“What kind of car?”

“Big,” she said, extending her hands outward. That was a lot of help. “American,” she added. Then she shrugged. “I couldn’t read the license plate.”

Damn. We hobbled back into the study in silence.

Then Carrie looked over at her desk. With one last sprint, she ran toward it.

“The manuscript’s gone!” she cried.

“Slade’s manuscript?”

“No, Donna’s.” Carrie collapsed into her chair. “Oh hell,” she whispered, looking at the empty surface of the desk. “Maybe Donna’s family really is Mafia.”

At first, the word “Mafia” just bounced off of my fatigued mind. But on the second bounce, it sank in.

“What!” I shouted.

Carrie looked up at me, her perspiration-drenched face apparently calm now that she had delivered her bombshell.

“Donna Palmer,” she explained quietly. Then she raised her hands and started waving them in the air, belying that quietness. “I told you she’s writing a
Mommy Dearest
about her family.” She took a deep breath, then went on. “Well, she claims her family is ‘da Family,’ if you know what I mean.”

“Organized crime?”

She nodded.

“And you think those guys in Armani suits are part of the family?” I whispered. My sweaty shirt felt cold against my skin.