Elizabeth Zelvin - Bruce Kohler 04 - Death Will Save Your Life (5 page)

She gazed at her toes.

“I didn’t tell you this part,” she said. “We met on one of those cruises. He was still married to Annabel. That’s why she hates me.”

Jojo was still up when I let myself into the room at 2 AM. He looked at me over the top of his reading glasses.

“Out on the tiles?”

The closest to an honest response would have been “Yes and no.” My lips still buzzed with Honey’s kisses. We had gone down by the lake and necked like a couple of kids. I hadn’t done that since I was thirteen, with an older woman of fourteen named Peggy Costello, under the bushes in Carl Schurz Park.

“I heard you were spied comforting the grieving widow.”

Jeez, how did that get around so fast?

“While you stayed in to mourn for your bestselling client? Or were you out comforting the grieving ex?”

“I’ll rend my breast with the best at the funeral, never fear. Tonight I’m resting up from all that emotion. Too much
sturm und drang
for me. Poor Annabel is devastated.”

“Why? She dumped him, didn’t she? Or was it the other way around?”

A sly smile flickered on his lips.

“Reports of the death of that steamy relationship were greatly exaggerated. If you ask me, the little chippie was on her way out. Oops, I forgot she’s a friend of yours. Just a word of warning before you bet your shirt on the wrong horse.”

I did not like this guy.

“Is she in the will?”

“That would be the point, dear, wouldn’t it?”

“I meant Annabel, and you know it.”

“Now that I couldn’t say.” He wiggled his reading glasses on the bridge of his nose and turned a page.

I stripped down to my shorts and climbed into bed.

“You might consider the sister,” he said as I turned out the light. “Feather née Arlene and her mad, mad husband.”

“According to Jojo,” I told Barbara and Jimmy the next morning, “Annabel and Melvin still had the hots for each other. If you can believe Jojo. So wouldn’t she have wanted him alive?”

“Not if what she really wanted was his money,” Jimmy said. “But the timing is wrong. We have only Jojo’s word for it that the marriage with Honey was cracking.”

“Suppose Mel and Annabel did have a thing going,” Barbara said. “Maybe they hiked up there together.”

“To see the sunrise?”

“To make love—or both.”

“Don’t you think it was premeditated?” I asked. “Somebody hiked all the way up there toting a luggage strap, the perfect weapon for a strangler.”

“An Aquarius rainbow luggage strap,” Barbara said. “It could have been a sex toy.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said, while Jimmy made horrible faces at me behind Barbara’s back. “Like what?”

Barbara’s face brightened in a blend of perky and clinical that’s unique to her. “There’s erotic asphyxiation—although I guess it’s not
auto
erotic if you’ve got a partner helping you—and there’s bondage. Or they could have used it as a doggie leash.”

“Too much information, peanut,” Jimmy said with commendable restraint.

“That’s fascinating, Barb,” I said, just to bust his chops. “Go on.”

“Cut it out, dude,” Jimmy said.

“Okay, okay. So maybe they have a lovers’ quarrel about who gets to take who for walkies, and—”

“Dude!”

“But in that case, why didn’t she just push him over the cliff?”

“When you don’t have answers, ask more questions,” Barbara said. “I’m going to the kitchen to schmooze with Feather some more.”

“They’ll be busy getting ready for lunch,” Jimmy said.

“So I’ll eavesdrop. I’ll lurk.”

“Lurk, she says!” To Jimmy, lurking is something you do on the Internet. “You’re not a ninja, pumpkin. Be careful, will you?”

“Yes, dear.”

That versatile phrase, we all knew, meant Barbara would do what she wanted.

“And don’t antagonize Madhouse. The man wields knives for a living,” Jimmy said.
“Big
knives.
”

“Then if he were the murderer,” Barbara said, “he would have used a knife. It’s perfectly safe, Jimmy. I’ll be
fine
.”

Barbara peered around the kitchen door. Madhouse and Feather stood at a scarred and stained slab of butcher block, swathed in unbleached linen aprons over their tie-dyed garments. Madhouse hacked at a giant watermelon with a massive cleaver. Feather fluffed bean sprouts, her arms buried to the elbows in a big bowl.

“So hitchhike into town and call the lawyer.” Madhouse spoke through clenched teeth. “He always promised he’d take care of you.”

“Oh, Madhusudhana! As if I could think about that right now!” Feather sniffled and twisted in an attempt to wipe her nose on her shoulder without removing her hands from the bean sprouts.

“You’d
better
think about it, you moronic twat,” Madhouse said. “I don’t plan to spend the rest of my life slinging tofu in this two-bit Utopia.”

Feather shrank away from him. Barbara, ears and cheeks hot with indignation, had to restrain herself from charging in and calling down the wrath of the Goddess.

“A few months in India with one of the more enlightened gurus,” Madhouse said, as if South Asia abounded in gurus who failed to meet his standards, “would add to my credibility. And I need to see Katmandu. Lhasa too, if I can get there.”

“You don’t even like mountains,” Feather squeaked.

“Idiot! I don’t like
climbing.
You need to get the lawyer to tell you how much you come in for. It’s got to be seven figures. The advance on that last book alone—he left most of it to you when he redid the will after that bitch Annabel split, didn’t he? I bet he didn’t change that much when he remarried. He had to know the wives would come and go from now on, at his age.” Not spiritual at all—oh, poor Feather. “Once the estate’s distributed, we can travel as comfortably as we want.”

Barbara had heard enough. She flung the swinging door wide.

“Feather! Hi! Can you come out and talk a minute?”

Feather cast a nervous glance at Madhouse.

“Go, go, you’re useless in this state.”

He sounded personally offended that bereavement interfered with a woman’s ability to chop vegetables. Barbara put her arm around Feather and drew her through the door.

“I just wanted to ask how you were. You must be having a tough time. Here, have a tissue.”

“Thanks.”

Feather mopped at her eyes and nose with the tissue and tore it into smaller and smaller shreds as they made their way across the lawn to a cluster of picnic tables. Barbara straddled the nearest bench. Feather slumped beside her.

“It’s nice of you to bother.”

“It’s okay. This must be so hard for you.”

“It’s this place! I’m tired of people telling me Melvin’s on another plane or his spirit is one with the universe until the next cycle of the Wheel. Two people I don’t even know offered to channel him for me, and another woman said he’d come to her in a dream last night and asked her to give me the message that he’s at peace.”

“Woo-woo,” Barbara said.

Feather looked shocked, then giggled. “It should be comforting, but somehow it’s hard to imagine Melvin in the tunnel of light.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I don’t know what loving relative would be greeting him on the other side, either. Our mother ran off with a dental hygienist when I was six and Mel was fifteen. Dad was a dentist. He got depressed and started to drink. Well, he already drank, but it got worse. Five years later, he killed himself. He left a note saying he had nothing to stick around for.”

“Mean-spirited of him,” Barbara said. “Suicides really hurt the people they leave behind.”

“I was only eleven when Dad died. Melvin and Annabel brought me up. They were already living together. I sometimes think they got married because Mel thought I needed parents. Just like he went into his field because he wanted to figure out good relationships. I don’t remember my mother very well, but Mel said she and my father fought most of the time as far back as he could remember.”

“It’s amazing he was so successful,” Barbara said. “I mean, he was amazingly successful.”

“Oh, Mel was brilliant. He had it all in his head, and he could write like an angel and speak like—like a god. But he didn’t have a spiritual center. I hoped things would change for him if he only came here, to Aquarius. And they did, but not like I expected. Oh, God, it’s all my fault.” She leaned on the picnic table, head buried in her arms, and sobbed. “I just wanted him to have a little serenity.”

“It’s not your fault,” Barbara said.

“It was my idea he should come here,” Feather wailed. “If I hadn’t—”

“He might still be dead. It sounds to me like you made a lot of allowances for him.”

“He was good to me,” Feather said, “in his own way.”

“You can’t go around blaming yourself,” Barbara said.

“That’s what Madhusudhana says.”

“Oh?”

“He says it might be misunderstood,” Feather said. “Mel always promised to take care of me. He never forgave our parents for abandoning us in their different ways, and he swore he would never be like either of them. He made a new will when he and Annabel got divorced and another one when he married Honey. But each time he made a point of telling me I would be okay. He didn’t want me to worry. So, you see, they’ll talk to Melvin’s lawyer and they’ll know I get the money, and—and—I’m scared.”

“How is Madhouse taking it all? I mean Madhusudhana.”

“It’s okay. Everybody calls him that except me. He told me not to talk to anyone about Melvin. He says I might say the wrong thing.”

“So tell him I just came by to offer my condolences,” Barbara said, patting her shoulder. “Are you sure you’ll be okay? He seemed kind of angry.”

“Oh, Madhusudhana says things, but he doesn’t mean anything by them.”

Barbara made a therapeutic noise intended to soothe without conveying agreement.

“Madhusudhana is an old soul,” Feather said. “He’s had many more turns of the Wheel than me. Oh, help, there’s the conch. I’d better run, or he
will
be mad at me. Thanks a million for being so nice.”

Barbara watched Feather scurry up the hill to the dining hall. Madhouse had made it clear what he wanted: enough money to follow his spiritual path. How far would he go to get it? What would it take to make Feather doubt him? Madhouse needed Feather’s inheritance. To benefit, he had to remain her husband. But once she got the money, how safe would Feather be?

We drove into town that afternoon so Jimmy could get online, Barbara could shop, and we could all eat ice cream. The sun lit up the mountains with late-afternoon gold as we started back. Barbara insisted on driving.

“Don’t get distracted,” Jimmy cautioned.

“No back seat driving, please.”

She meant that figuratively. Jimmy had the death seat, and I sat in back, zipping the lip.

“I’m perfectly capable of driving and participating in a conversation at the same time,” she said.

“It’s not the conversation itself that concerns me,” Jimmy said, “it’s the way you talk with your hands when you do it. Don’t you want to hear about my search? You don’t have to look at me while I tell you.”

“So tell us.”

“I looked up everybody’s credentials. Lorenzo the chiropractor is legit. He’s got a degree, teaches, belongs to professional organizations.”