Death hits the fan (12 page)

He paused again and added, "Not that I'd like to give the theory a test, for all of my love of Oscar Wilde's words."

I settled back in my seat as I drove, cherished beliefs about Oscar Wilde in place. A man like Ted Brown couldn't have written The Ballad of Reading Gaol That I was sure of. Or, I suddenly realized, Shayla Greenfree's Beth Questra series. Maybe that was the real source of Ted's bitterness. She had taken his idea, yes. But worse, she'd improved on it.

"So, what did we get out of—" I began.

"Pull off the road, Kate," Wayne ordered suddenly.

"Whuh?" I said, but an instant later I pulled over into an emergency lane as ordered.

Wayne leapt from the Toyota and ran back toward the car that pulled over behind us. It was a kelly-green Volkswagen bug.

qi i n f

;f)ut the person who emerged from the Volkswagen bug was not the trench-coated, bulky figure I'd expected.

This person was tiny, no bigger than a child, with curly red, Little Orphan Annie hair. Was it Little Orphan Annie in the flesh? My mind was still fuddled by the sudden order to pull off the road. But Wayne's wasn't.

"Take off the wig," he commanded the small figure, as a truck roared by us in a noxious cloud of exhaust.

Our follower nonchalantly complied with Wayne's command, pulling the red curls from her head and throwing them into the still open door of her VW bug with an easy toss.

"Ah, shi-shick," she said, putting her little hands on her little hips. "I thought you guys wouldn't notice . .."

The tiny person under the wig was, of course, Yvette Cas-sell. The air whooshed out of my lungs with the realization. I wondered why I hadn't recognized her immediately, wig

and all. Who else would drive a kelly-green Volkswagen bug but a leprechaun?

What was it that Ted had said? "Nutty as a health food casserole." Maybe Ted was more observant than I'd given him credit for. Because it was nutty to follow us around. Especially to pull off the road after us, when she could have sped away, with us none the wiser.

"So, what'd you find out from Ted, huh?" Yvette went on, raising her voice to compete with a motorcycle whizzing past. "Some fuddin' character, huh?"

"Forget Ted!" I told her, glad that the noisy, not to mention smelly, vehicles passing by gave me an excuse to raise my voice too. "Why were you—"

But as usual, Yvette interrupted without answering.

"I'm having a meeting at my house tomorrow—brunch, eleven," she shouted. "Bring something if you want to."

"You followed us from Ted's to invite us to brunch?" I shouted back angrily. "Come on—"

But Yvette was already back in her Volkswagen before I could finish my sentence, and back into traffic before I could close my mouth.

"Holy shick, Batman," I mimicked, once Wayne and I were safe inside the Toyota again.

But Wayne wasn't laughing. And neither was I, really. For all her silliness, Yvette was as elusive as the Loch Ness monster. And her interruptions were as effective a deterrent to interrogation as Ted's derision. She was strange, that was for sure. But strange enough to commit murder?

At least Ingrid was missing when Wayne and I ventured into our home, though her belongings were still scattered around our living room. And my answering machine was blinking at me.

Oddly enough, the first message was from Winona Eads.

"Urn," she mumbled as the tape ran. "I guess you could come over this evening, if that's okay. I guess."

Wayne and I looked at each other. Was this important? Did Winona know something?

I played the second message impatiently, expecting a Jest Gifts blast. But the voice wasn't from Jest Gifts.

"Perkin Vonburstig here again," it said. "I will try to reach you again later."

Damn, I never had found out who Vonburstig was. In fact, I'd totally forgotten about him. I tried his number as Wayne waited patiently by my side. But all I got was his android answering machine. I banged the receiver down mid-syllable.

"I'm calling Ivan!" I announced angrily. "It's time to find out who this Vonburstig guy is."

"Wait," Wayne put in, his hand out and blocking the phone.

"Wait?" I shot back. "Wait for what?"

Then it dawned on me. Wayne didn't trust Ivan. Ivan, his own friend. That was the other reason he was going along with this investigation. That was part of the really bad trouble for him.

"Oh, sweetie," I murmured and opened my arms. He hesitated, then allowed himself to be comforted. For a time, I felt I was larger than this six-foot-plus man as I held him as close to me as I could, stroking his bent back as I did.

"Not very macho," he growled a while later, straightening up out of my arms.

"I know," I told him. "I never liked macho."

So we decided to deal with Vonburstig without Ivan as an intermediary, whatever it was that Vonburstig wanted. And we decided to visit Winona. As soon as possible. Wayne had to call La Fete a L'Oiel to arrange his own replacement for the evening again. And I shot the stacks of Jest Gifts paperwork on my desk a glance. A very short glance. Then I returned Winona's call.

"Would you like us to bring some food?" I asked her once

I got her on the phone. It was close to dinnertime, and I for one was hungry.

"Urn, I guess so," she murmured, but I heard a hint of eagerness in that murmur. "Maybe enough for Johnny too?"

"Johnny?" I asked, surprised. Was that her boyfriend? Somehow I hadn't imagined her with a boyfriend.

"My son," she answered, no longer murmuring. In fact, her voice had an edge now. Of hostility? Defiance? I had difficulty with nuances on the phone. Or face to face, for that matter.

"Oh sure," I came back, hoping she hadn't noticed my moment of internal ping-pong. I erased the curiosity from my voice. "What would you guys like?"

"Oh, whatever you think, I guess," she told me, her voice soft again, wistful. That nuance I could hear. "I've heard Japanese is good," she finally added.

So we stopped and got Japanese take-out: miso soup, udon noodles, veggie tempura, California avocado sushi and agedashi tofu. For starters. I didn't know how old her son was or how much he could eat. And I wanted plenty of food to ply his mother's tongue.

Winona had an apartment in the cheap end of Morris. Morris was the cheap end of Marin County in the first place, not as poor as the Tenderloin of San Francisco by any means, but still not a place you'd want to be alone at night either.

When Winona peeked out the door of her apartment, chain lock in place, I didn't fault her for paranoia. And when we walked in and saw her son, I realized the reason for the earlier edge in her voice. Winona couldn't have been much more than twenty. And her son looked around six or seven, as he stared up at us with those familiar turquoise eyes in his freckled face. Winona must have given birth to Johnny while she was in high school. No wonder she felt the need to hide her beauty.

"We brought Japanese food," I said cheerily, holding out the white cardboard boxes.

Winona smiled. It was a brief but lovely sight.

"For us?" her son asked. "For us?"

I nodded and looked around Winona's apartment as Johnny began jumping up and down in place and chanting, "Let's eat, let's eat."

Winona and Johnny's home was a studio apartment, with one bed in each corner neatly made up under its own bright plaid spread, and a table with two chairs in the center. Bookcases made of bricks and boards held paperbacks and what looked like textbooks on either side of the table. A few toys were arranged neatly on one of the beds and in a box beside it.

"I suppose we could eat in the kitchen," Winona suggested, interrupting my survey. And Johnny's chants.

"The kitchen sounds great," I answered hastily, ashamed to be caught staring.

The kitchen was neat and small. We all sat around the homemade pressboard table eating Japanese take-out on mismatched plates.

Johnny laughed with delight at the unaccustomed mixture of foods. And dissected them all, with scientific comments. And jokes. I laughed with him, realizing there was something intrinsically funny about avocado sushi.

"I called you because S.X. Greenfree was important," Winona announced suddenly as I was slurping up some udon noodles and Johnny was carving seaweed.

"Important?" Wayne prodded, his mouth apparently empty and ready, unlike my own.

"To me, to my life," she explained. She hesitated, looking at the ceiling, but only for a moment. "See, I'm working at a drugstore and going to school to be a dental hygienist. I'd love to be a writer..." She sighed, then went on. "But no way I'm any good like S.X. Greenfree. Still, when I read her

stuff, I'm, like, more proud of myself, I guess you'd say. And I think maybe I will be a writer someday ... maybe. She gave me that. So I owe her something."

Then she looked straight into my face without squirming.

"I don't want someone to just murder her and get away with it. No way. So I want to help. I'm not running away or anything, anymore."

I felt like applauding, but asked instead, "So what do you think happened?"

"Urn, I don't know," she answered, looking back down at the table.

And it seemed that she really didn't. Winona had been in one of the back aisles of Fictional Pleasures that night, she told us, blushing. She'd almost finished the book she'd been reading there off and on. So she hadn't really seen much. Only her idol, S.X. Greenfree, as the author had walked in and sat down at the table. And then collapsed. And even then, Winona's view of her idol from the back aisle hadn't been very good. And then she'd run, or tried to. Just because she was scared. That was all she could remember.

And apparently, that really was all. Despite her good intentions, it didn't seem that Winona had much to offer in terms of observations. According to her, that night was the first and only time she'd seen S.X. Greenfree. And she hadn't noticed anything she thought was important. End of story.

"Wanna play table croquet?" Johnny asked, pointing to the miniature croquet set that sat between the salt and pepper shakers on the kitchen table.

"No, Johnny," Winona told him firmly. "They have stuff to do, you know. Adult stuff."

I wanted to object. Maybe spend the evening playing table croquet with Johnny and encouraging Winona to write.

But Wayne nudged me before I offered any of that. He was right. It was up to Winona to decide how long we

stayed. So we stood up from the small table to leave. I thanked Winona for talking to us. I knew that her speaking up had been an act of bravery in and of itself. Maybe, when I knew her better, I'd have an opportunity to play table croquet and encourage her writing. Once we were sure she wasn't a murderer.

She had one last thing to say as we left.

"That little woman with the tinted glasses?" she muttered once we were outside her door.

"Yeah?" I prompted eagerly.

"I don't like her," she whispered. "No way."

Then the door shut behind us and the chain lock slid into place.

Unfortunately, Ingrid was sitting in our living room when Wayne and I got home. There were worse people in the world than Yvette Cassell, I decided as our guest began to speak. And Apollo began to yip.

Wayne and I skipped the evening discussion of Whol-ios and our other hospitality inadequacies and went straight to bed, snuggling quietly in skunky togetherness.

Syringes, I thought, just as my mind reached toward sleep. Dental hygienists have access to syringes. And then I was out.

7 woke on Sunday and stared up for a while at the morning sun that poured in through the skylights. Finally, I turned toward Wayne. He was staring at me, a soft smile on his rough face.

"We gotta find out who killed her," I declared. And watched that sweet smile fade. I damned my timing. But it was too late to take it back. "How many other women did S.X. Greenfree inspire to feel proud?" I asked more quietly.

"And how many more Zoes and Teds did she hurt with her ruthlessness?" Wayne countered.

"Oh," I murmured, deflated.

"Sorry," Wayne whispered. "You're right. The woman didn't deserve to die."

We shared some Whol-ios with Ingrid for breakfast. And then both went to work in our respective offices. Wayne was lucky. He couldn't hear Ingrid's made-for-melodrama sighs from his back room.

By ten-thirty, Yvette's suspects brunch was sounding good to me. At least, compared to lunch with Ingrid. We'd pick up something besides Whol-ios on the way to Yvette's. I played with the idea of deducting all the takeout food from my taxes. But I didn't think there was a column for unwanted-guest avoidance.

We arrived at Yvette's a little after eleven o'clock, a bag of whole-grain goodies in my hand and a six-pack of herbal iced tea in Wayne's.

I hate to be late, even to a gathering of murder suspects. So I zipped up to the curb, jumped out, opened the gate, and rushed into the Cassells' yard, Wayne in my wake, without even looking around me. But then I noticed the yard and paused for a gasp.

The Cassells' house was predictably green with white shutters, but the yard was greener yet, and filled not only with green and living things, but with green and non-living things. Green and non-living sculptures, actually. Of elves, harps, leprechauns, and castles, to name a few, all coyly peeking out from behind bushes and tree trunks and neat clusters of primroses. Wayne came up beside me and stared, too. Lou couldn't have designed this, could he? It had to be Yvette—

"Wow," someone murmured from my other side.

My shoulders jerked up and settled back down onto my body. I hadn't heard any footsteps, too lost in the garden of Irish delights.

I swerved around and saw Winona, her lovely freckled face wide with wonder.

"No way," she murmured, shaking her head. "No way."

No way, precisely. I laughed as I threw my arms around her and squeezed.

There was a blush beneath Winona's freckles when I released her from my hug, but she didn't look displeased by the gesture either. I wondered about her parents. Did she have parents? If she did, they certainly weren't helping her financially. Or emotionally either, I would have bet.