Most Likely to Die (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (12 page)

- Twelve -

“Me!” I yelped. “What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t need to kill Sid Semling!” A half a heartbeat later I added, “And I didn’t kill him, either.”

But Sergeant Gonzales didn’t answer me. He was back to staring again. I felt the cool drizzle of sweat on my forehead and beneath my armpits. Even the palms of my hands and the backs of my knees had gone moist. Good, I told myself. Maybe that would cool me off so my heart would stop beating so fast. Maybe then I could breathe again. I needed air.

Because I had no idea how serious the sergeant was with his accusation. I looked hard, but saw no clues in his smooth, handsome face. Then I remembered the earlier Miranda warnings. I wished I hadn’t. Because as that memory rose in my mind, my nine-grain toast and soy yogurt began to rise in my stomach.

I forced a long painful breath in and out. And willed breakfast back where it belonged.

How could I have been so stupid? I knew I shouldn’t have told anyone about the second remote control idea. And who did I choose to tell? The policeman in charge of the murder investigation. Well, I’d wanted a response from the sergeant. And I’d gotten one.

“Look, this second remote control thing wasn’t my idea,” I told him. “It was my ex-husband’s.”

The sergeant’s eyebrows rose. He leaned back in his executive chair with his arms crossed.

I went into babble mode. There was no use holding back now. There was nothing left to hide.

“Listen,” I told him. “My ex-husband and I used to own a pinball machine business together. We took old machines and refurbished them and sold them for home use. He was more technical than I was. He’s a computer programmer now. I was more the artist…”

Did his brows go up just a little higher? Somehow I had the feeling he didn’t believe I was the less technical partner. Or maybe he was just trying to rattle me more. As if he had to. Now I understood just what Wayne had meant about scaring the cat enough already.

“Anyway,” I went on. “The day Sid died I called my ex-husband—”

“His name, please?” the sergeant interrupted.

“Jasper,” I complied, “Craig.”

And immediately wished I hadn’t brought him into it. Craig was my ex-husband and he could be a pain in the rear, but still—

“His address and phone number?” the sergeant asked.

I gave them to him reluctantly. At least Craig hadn’t known Sid Semling. He couldn’t be a suspect. I hoped.

“You were telling me about the day Sid Semling was killed,” Sergeant Gonzales prompted me. “And how you called your ex-husband.”

“Yeah,” I admitted, trying to remember where I’d been. Rattled, that’s where, but I went on anyway. “When we got home, I started thinking about Hot Flash. I could tell Sid had been electrocuted…”

I stopped myself that time. But too late. Was that another stupid thing to say?

The sergeant’s face remained impassive. I repressed a sigh and went on.

“And I could tell that Sid’s been electrocuted by my pinball machine. I couldn’t believe it’d been an accident. But I wasn’t sure. So I called a real expert, my ex-husband—”

Abruptly, the sergeant sat straight up and looked over my head, his eyes narrowing. What the hell had I said this time?

“So, Gonzales,” a hearty voice boomed from behind me. I jumped in my seat. I’d never even heard the door open. “Found us our here murderess?”

I swiveled my head around and saw a barrel-chested, red-faced man standing over me, grinning. Simultaneously, I wondered who the hell this guy was and hoped that whoever he was, the grin meant he was joking.

“Chief Irick, Ms. Jasper,” the sergeant introduced blandly. But the blandness of his voice didn’t make it to his eyes. There was hatred there now. And it was directed toward the barrel-chested man. “Ms. Jasper, Chief Irick.”

“Pretty cute for a murderess,” observed Chief Irick, giving me his beefy hand to be shaken.

“I’m not a murderess,” I snapped as I automatically shook his hand. I would have liked to have snapped his wrist too. But his hands were too big and strong. And damp on top of it.

“Just joking, little lady,” the chief assured me. Then he turned his attention back to the sergeant. “About finished up in here?” he demanded.

I watched the sergeant’s Adam’s apple go up and down. What was he swallowing? A sigh? A shout? A homicidal urge of his own? Could Chief Irick see the hatred in his sergeant’s eyes? Did Sergeant Gonzales know he could?

“I’m almost finished with Ms. Jasper,” the sergeant answered evenly. “Then I’ll be talking to Mr. Caruso.”

“Well, finish up then,” Irick ordered and sat down in the chair next to mine. Ugh. No good cop/bad cop here. Just a bad cop and an ickier one.

“Ms. Jasper,” Sergeant Gonzales complied, his words coming more quickly now. “You have stated for the record that you did not kill Sid Semling. Is this a true statement?”

“It is,” I replied, resisting the urge to cross my heart and hope to die.

“Do you have any theory as to how Mr. Semling might have been accidentally electrocuted by your machine?”

“Not a one,” I replied briefly.

“Have you any reason to suspect anyone else of Sid Semling’s murder?”

“Nope.” This was getting a lot easier. It reminded me of my Girl Scouts’ swearing-in ceremony a long time ago.

“Is there anything else you wish to tell us at this time?”

“No.”

“Then you’re free to go,” he told me.

My legs had propelled me out of the chair and toward the door before my mind had even taken in the permission. Free! I was free!

“Don’t leave town,” Irick ordered just as my hand landed on the doorknob.

I looked over my shoulder to see if he was serious. He
was
grinning again. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a real warning.

“Ms. Jasper,” Sergeant Gonzales put in then. “I’m sorry if I didn’t answer your earlier question. Yes, I think Sharon Searles is a wonderful artist.”

Chief Irick’s grin turned to a look of puzzlement, then sullen hostility.

“Yeah!” I agreed too loudly, the taste of freedom increasing both my enthusiasm and volume. “She’s great!”

Then I got on out of there.

My brief feeling of complicity with Sergeant Gonzales faded the minute I closed the frosted glass door behind me. As much as I instinctively disliked Chief Irick, Sergeant Gonzales was the one who’d accused me of murder. Well, so had Irick actually. But he hadn’t been serious. Or had he? Was I the official Gravendale Police Department’s solution to the murder of Sid Semling?

My worries about myself transferred themselves to Wayne the instant I saw him heading down the dark hallway toward me. He must have been ordered to the sergeant’s office the minute they let me go. When Wayne and I met midway, I scanned the hall to make sure no one was looking, then wrapped myself around him in an unshakable hug. He’d need it, I told myself as he returned my embrace tightly. Not only was it his turn to be grilled, he was going to get both Detective Sergeant Gonzales and Chief Irick for the job.

The wooden bench in the lobby felt even less comfortable than it had before as I sat and waited for Wayne. I was beginning to understand the urge to carve one’s initials. And wishing I’d brought a book to read. I thought of making small talk with the policewoman behind the counter.
So, do you guys really think I did it?
That kind of thing. But then a worse idea occurred to me. What if they thought Wayne and I were in on it together?

Wayne had helped load the machine. Elaine had passed along the rumor that Wayne knew Sid before. And Wayne was so damned homely, people always thought the worst of him. If they thought I did it, why not make it a doubleheader?

By the time Wayne came back down the dark hallway, I had our separate prison cells pictured right on down to the hungry rats and the larger, more disgusting roommates. Formal marriage, informal marriage, what did it matter? I just wanted a joint cell with my sweetie.

Wayne’s face was set in stone until we got to the car.

And we were a good ten minutes hurtling down the road before he finally spoke. Not that
I
wasted any time. I’d been jabbering all the way, spewing out theories about suspects and motives and methods as fast as they came into my head. If it wasn’t one of us, it had to be someone else.

“They think we did it,” he finally growled when I paused for a breath.

“What did they say exactly?” I demanded.

“Sergeant Gonzales asked me why I killed Sid Semling.”

“He asked me the same thing,” I told him. Maybe this was good news. Maybe Sergeant Gonzales asked everyone if they had killed Sid Semling. He’d probably ask Chief Irick if he had a chance of conviction.

Wayne’s brows lowered angrily. “Then he asked if we did it together,” he added, his deep voice up an octave. “Kate, can they really believe that?”

Neither of us had an answer by the time we’d returned home.

Wayne and I were barely in the house long enough to sniff for cat spray before Wayne had to turn around and go to work.

“Be careful,” he told me at the door. My neck stiffened. Was that an order? “I love you,” he added softly and I relaxed…as much as I could relax anyway, having been recently accused of murder.

I closed the door behind him and went straight to my desk. No genies had taken care of my stacks of Jest Gifts paperwork in my absence. But then again, no cats had sprayed the towering piles either. I counted myself lucky and called in at the Jest Gifts warehouse.

Judy told me she’d found the obstetrician belly cups and the speculum earrings. Jean had put them under a table the Friday Judy had been gone. So they wouldn’t get lost.

“Pretty funny, huh?” Judy giggled.

I didn’t argue. A few hours lost employee time was a lot funnier than murder. And Judy was a good employee. So was Jean when she wasn’t hiding our products.

June was a fairly quiet time for Jest Gifts. I was always working on new designs, and the paperwork was endless, but at least holiday madness wasn’t fully upon us yet. I was pushing paper about forty hours a week and designing the rest of the time. And counting myself lucky. I had a friend whose vision of hell was eternal food preparation. She had a family of five. My infernal vision was eternal paperwork.

I picked up a stack of ledgers. It was time to begin preparing the figures for my quarterly financial statements. Something I would never ever consider bothering with if my accountant, and more importantly my banker (who ever so cautiously extended me a puny but often lifesaving line of credit), hadn’t insisted. But as I ran my pencil down columns of figures, my mind inevitably drifted back to Sid Semling.

It didn’t take long before I broke the pencil lead and decided that was a perfectly good reason to go look for high school yearbooks.

I found them on the top shelf of a nine-foot bookcase, next to a how-to-do-your-own-divorce handbook I’d bought in self-defense when Craig had started proceedings. Marriage, divorce, they’d be forever linked in my mind. I shook off the thought and carried my Gravendale High senior yearbook to my comfy chair to read. C.C. climbed up the back of the chair as if it were a mini-Matterhorn and then perched on my shoulder to help.

“Look,” I told her. “There’s Patty Innes, she was my best friend. ‘National Thespians, Player’s Guild,
Our Town, Taming of the Shrew, The Panama Game
.’ She’s a gastroenterologist on the East Coast now. Put herself through medical school as an actress in TV ads.”

C.C. sniffed, unimpressed, and delicately nibbled her armpit.

“Think I should call her?”

C.C. jumped off my shoulder onto the yearbook. I shoved her under it and flipped a page.

“There’s Jack,” I went on. “‘Band, Music Club.’“ I kept flipping. “And Mark Myers, no extracurricular activities. He’s sure better looking now than he was then. And Natalie Nusser. Wow, look at all this stuff: ‘Astronomical Society, Chess Club, Computer Math Club, Finance Board, National Merit Finalist.’ And here’s Pam, ‘Esperanto Club, Library Club—’“

I stood up, dropping the yearbook, but not C.C, whose claws held her securely onto my thighs for a few extra instants before she descended at her own leisurely pace.

“Lunch with Pam!” I yelped. Those claws hurt. “I was supposed to have lunch with Pam.”

C.C. stalked away as I looked at my watch. Twelve-thirty. Luckily, Pam and I had decided on a relatively late lunch. I could still probably make it by one as promised.

As I rushed out the door I picked up the stack of business cards I’d collected at Sid’s party. Maybe I’d check out a few people on the way back from lunch. Wayne’s concerned face rose up like a ghost on the windshield as I turned the key in the Toyota’s ignition. Forget it, I assured him mentally. No one’s going to kill me at their place of business. Anyway, I rationalized further, visiting without Wayne would keep him out of danger. Then I popped gravel, tearing out of the driveway.

The Nepalese restaurant that Pam had recommended was actually a Nepalese-Tibetan-Indian restaurant with an unpronounceable name located in the Richmond district of San Francisco. I got there exactly at one o’clock. Pam literally came running in the door a couple of minutes later. She looked good in a belted burgundy tunic over black leggings as her heavy breathing animated her substantial curves.