Dolled Up to Die (23 page)

“Dr. Chandler was a very caring person.” Her face brightened. “If she was using something illegal, it was only because she needed it to help people. But if she got mixed up with drug dealers . . . Well, murders and drug wars and drive-by shootings, that’s what those drug people do, isn’t it? I hope they get whoever killed her.”

Cate had to wonder how Celeste had apparently gotten away with this for a considerable time. Perhaps because people expected to be in some altered state with hypnosis, and simply accepted Celeste’s explanations.

“I’ve always expected that someday the authorities would come after me for taking something illegal.” Mrs. Linderman was now back to resignation about her future.

Cate patted her hand. “I don’t think you have any cause
for worry. Even if it was an illegal substance, you didn’t know that when you took it.”

“What’s that old saying? Ignorance of the law is no defense. Or excuse. Something like that.” A burden of guilt obviously weighed heavily on Susan Linderman’s shoulders. “But I feel better now that I’ve told you. I’m willing to take my punishment.”

“Mrs. Linderman—”

“Susan.”

“Susan, you seem to have some familiarity with Noah and Moses in the Old Testament of the Bible?”

“Duane was never one for going to church, but he liked me to read to him after his eyes got bad. Sometimes he wanted to hear something out of the Bible.” She tilted her head. “Sometimes he wanted Stephen King or Tom Clancy.”

“Try reading in the book of John in the New Testament. And Romans. They’ll help you understand what comes after this life. God cares, you know. And you can contact him without having anything in your root beer.”

“Maybe I’ll do that.”

Now Cate had to figure out what to do. Report this to the police herself? She couldn’t think Susan Linderman needed punishment for anything she’d taken. Could Celeste’s use of an illegal drug have any connection with Ed Kieferson’s death?

Should she ask Kim if she knew anything about what her mother used to deal with hard-to-hypnotize clients? Another thought occurred to her. Was the reason Celeste had never done a past-lives regression on Kim because she didn’t want to give her own daughter some illegal drug?

 20 

Back home, Cate wrote up notes about the interview with Susan Linderman to add to her growing file. She called the hair salon, but her replacement wig hadn’t come in yet. Only one more week until the wedding next Friday night. Octavia had been staring at her while she made the call.

“You’re lucky Robyn didn’t want white hair, or I might be wearing yours on my head,” Cate said. Octavia ignored her and batted at the phone. Cate pointed out that she wasn’t expecting any calls, but the cat kept staring at the phone.

And Octavia was right again. The office phone rang only a moment later, just as the notes were spewing out of the printer.

“Coincidence,” Cate mouthed at the cat before she said aloud, “Belmont Investigations. Assistant Investigator Cate Kinkaid speaking.”

“My caller ID shows I had a call from this number. So I’m calling now to find out why Belmont Investigations is interested in me. It’s not every day I get a call from a private investigator! In fact, I’ve never had a call from an investigator. I’m all in a dither! If you could see me, you’d see I’m goose-bumpy all over.”

“This is D. Dustinhoff?”

“It is. Destiny Dustinhoff. Although, if you’re investigating, you probably already know that the name my parents gave me is Diane. But the name we’re given is not necessarily our Destiny—so I changed mine! Dustinhoff really is my last name. Not that it’s so great, but it is the original. I took it back after I gave Pinocchio Paul his walking papers.”

“Pinocchio Paul?” Cate repeated doubtfully.

“You know. The creepy little wooden guy whose nose grew when he told lies? Given ol’ Paul’s creative talent for lies, it’s a wonder he didn’t need a wheelbarrow to carry his nose in.”

Cate hid how taken back she was by this barrage of unasked-for information by muttering her all-purpose “um.”

“So, why did you call me? Am I on a terrorist list of OOWs?”

Again all Cate could do was repeat her caller’s peculiar words. “OOWs?”

“Outrageous Older Women. Although I really think of myself as a GYT.”

Cate didn’t want to ask what that meant. She refused to ask. But the next words out of her mouth were a repetition of the letters. “GYT?”

“Gorgeous Young Thing, of course.” Destiny Dustinhoff sounded victorious. “You’re not the Belmont of Belmont Investigations?”

Cate repeated her identity. “Right now, I’m investigating the death of a local woman, Dr. Chandler, and I found your name—” Cate broke off and tried again. “I mean, I’m investigating another murder, a different murder, and this death seems to be connected with that, and then—”

Cate broke off again. Now she was rattling on like Diane Destiny Dustinhoff herself. Maybe it was an infection, virulently contagious even over the phone, and next she’d be telling the woman how she became an assistant private
investigator, how she had this deaf white cat who’d wrecked her wig and knew when the phone was going to ring, and her favorite guy had just rattled her cage by getting a motorcycle. Although it didn’t have ape hanger handlebars.

She took a deep breath and tried for brisk professionalism. “I understand you had a recent meeting with a Dr. Celeste Chandler.”

“Yeah, and now she’s dead. That’s kind of spooky. And I’m dead serious about that. Uh-oh. That didn’t come out right. Dead serious, get it?”

Got it. Didn’t care for it.

“I understand Dr. Chandler did some kind of sessions that were supposed to bring up memories of lives you’ve lived before. A past-lives regression, I believe it’s called.”

“Right. I had great past lives. I was the palace spy for a queen back when an ol’ Egyptian pharaoh was building himself a pyramid, and Queenie was afraid he might be going to stuff her in it and take up with the court bimbo. I was a dancer in some other exotic court, a real dynamo with the swirling veils and diamond in the belly button. But once, back in the Wild West days, I was hung.”

Cate didn’t want to ask, but curiosity overrode the reluctance. “What did you do to get hung?”

“Stole this fantastic horse named Midnight Meteor that could run like the wind! I was a man in that life. We aren’t always the same, you know. There were some other lives and deaths too, if you’d like to hear about them?”

“I think these are sufficient to give me an idea of what Dr. Chandler was doing.”

One thing Celeste did, Cate could see, was recycle time periods. She researched something such as ancient Egypt, and then everyone just happened to have an old Egyptian past life.

“What did you think of the experience?” Cate asked.

“It was, oh, you know, kind of like going to a fortune-teller, except instead of going forward to what’s going to happen, you go backwards.”

“You don’t take it all too seriously, then?”

“I’m not sure I believe it. But I’m not sure I don’t believe it, either. I keep an open mind about all things!”

An open mind could be a good thing. Or a flytrap for any weird idea sailing around the universe.

“Do you remember telling Dr. Chandler about your lives as you were experiencing them, or did she report to you afterward what you’d said?”

“You think the doc was a big quack, don’t you?”

“I’m just investigating the death. What I really need to find out is, did Dr. Chandler hypnotize you? Or give you something that put you in a kind of hypnotic state?”

“Is that what this is about? Like maybe she gives you some drug to get you hooked, then she goes for the big bucks by supplying you with it?”

Cate gave Diane Destiny Dustinhoff credit for an active imagination. This particular thought had never occurred to Cate. Could Celeste have been selling more than candles and books and astrological earrings there at the Mystic Mirage?

“Anyway, she didn’t give me anything. I can get hypnotized at the drop of a Frito. Zing! At a party one time, this guy was fooling around with hypnosis, and I was the one who got hypnotized when he was trying to do someone else. Then he gave me this posthypnotic suggestion that whenever I heard the words ‘What time is it?’ I’d start doing a Lady Gaga imitation. I’m pretty good at it too. Though it doesn’t always work now.” She sounded disappointed.

Talking to Destiny Dustinhoff, Cate decided, was like carrying on a conversation with a chatty tornado. And you never knew which way the wind might blow.

“Could she have slipped something into a drink, and you didn’t know it?”

“I didn’t eat or drink anything while she was there.”

So, Celeste hypnotized if she could, helped things along with a dose of something if she couldn’t, or if she was in a hurry.

“Do you know anyone else who went into a past-lives regression with Dr. Chandler?”

“Yeah, my friend Pam did it. You know, come to think of it, Pam said Dr. Chandler gave her a glass of wine to help her relax. And she thought there was something in the wine.”

“She could taste something?”

“I don’t remember about that. Anyway, whatever it was, Pam blamed us, because we’d, oh, you know, kind of pushed her into going to Dr. Chandler. I was hoping the doc would give her some posthypnotic suggestion to loosen her up a little. Maybe have her get a whole new wardrobe of miniskirts. Or pole dance around a tree in the park.”

“Um,” Cate muttered.

“But the whole thing really upset Pam. She said it made her feel as if she’d fallen into a black hole. She couldn’t remember a thing. She said Dr. Chandler could have made her tell secrets that were none of the doctor’s business. Although Pam is so prim and prissy that I figured her deepest secret couldn’t be more than hiding her broccoli under a napkin instead of eating it when she was a little girl.”

“How long was she in this ‘black hole’?”

“She didn’t say. But I don’t know that it was really as bad as she said. Pam is kind of . . . well, we call her Paranoid Pam, if that tells you anything. She quit taking some vitamins because she thought the company was putting something addictive in them.”

Not your most reliable witness, perhaps. Cate asked the
question anyway. “Could you tell me how to get in touch with her?”

“She moved to Texas or someplace and we never heard from her again. Maybe that was Dr. Chandler’s posthypnotic suggestion.”

Or maybe Paranoid Pam just had a brilliant idea about getting far away from her so-called friends.

“Okay. Well, thanks.” Cate had one more question, strictly extracurricular curiosity, she had to admit. “What do you do? I mean, do you work somewhere?”

“You’ve never heard of Destiny Dustinhoff? Well, you and most of Eugene, I’m afraid. Story of my life.” Melodramatic sigh. “I’m a deejay! ‘Nights with Destiny.’ From 11:00 p.m. till 2:00 a.m. on the local AM station. A little talk and a lot of music now, but I’m hoping we can turn it into a call-in talk show. If this podunk station ever gets more than one phone line.”

With Destiny’s line of chatter, Cate had no difficulty saying sincerely, “I’m sure you’ll be very good at that.”

“If you ever need a deejay, master of ceremonies, anything like that, just remember, I’m your Destiny. Call me.”

Don’t hold your breath.

As if Destiny heard the unspoken words, in a more serious voice she added, “Actually, I really am a pretty good deejay. And I have my own sound equipment.”

Cate tried to call Mitch, got his voice mail, and left a message asking if he’d like to come for fajitas that evening. The phone rang again as soon as she hung up. Caller ID showed that it was Jo-Jo, so Cate didn’t bother to identify herself.

“Hi, Jo-Jo. I’ve been meaning to call and check in with you.”

“Bad news, I’m afraid. First thing, I’m moving back out to the house.”

“That isn’t so bad, is it?” Cate asked. “I’m sure Maude will be glad to have you back. It’s a little far out of town, but it’s nice out there in the country.”

“Oh, well, that part’s okay. That’s not the bad news. The bad news is, I heard from the lawyer, who just heard from Eddie’s insurance company. There isn’t any insurance after all.”

“No insurance? You mean Kim gets it instead of you?”

“No. There was supposed to be some way set up so Eddie couldn’t let it lapse, but he managed to get around that and hasn’t been paying the premiums. So it’s gone. I’m sorry Eddie got himself killed, but sometimes I just get so mad at him. I’ve been telling myself he was there at the house because he wanted to get back with me, but I’m thinking now that’s about as likely as Maude taking up crocheting. He was up to no good.”

“That is bad news about the insurance,” Cate said, although she also was thinking that Jo-Jo’s more realistic view of Eddie the Ex was probably good.

“On the bright side, maybe no insurance will convince the police I didn’t have anything to do with Eddie’s death. I didn’t have anything to gain from killing him.”

Cate appreciated Jo-Jo’s attempt to look on the bright side, although she suspected the police would still be thinking Jo-Jo could have murdered to get insurance money she thought at the time she had coming. Cate saw no point worrying Jo-Jo about that detail, however, and she said, “You lost the alimony payments from him too, so that should be further proof to them.”

“Right. But Celeste’s apartment was broken into. Did you know that? I suppose they’ll be asking me about that too.
Like, since I wasn’t getting insurance money, maybe I’d just grab something valuable at the apartment.”