Most Likely to Die (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (5 page)

- Five -

I turned slowly, raising my arms defensively as I did. Ready. Lifting my knee ever so slightly too. Just in case.

D.V. Vogel was standing inches from me when I finished my turn, his scowling face thrust toward mine. Up this close, I could see the obvious resemblance to his mother in the delicacy of his features. He was a good-looking boy, almost pretty with his large blue eyes and soft mouth. Maybe it was the fear of that prettiness that kept his otherwise attractive features contorted so sullenly under his backwards baseball cap.

I lowered my arms and knee as slowly as I had raised them.

Then I pushed my face even closer to his, our noses almost touching now.

“Don’t you
ever
do that to me again,” I told him, keeping my voice low and serious.

“Didn’t mean anything,” he muttered, pulling his head back on his shoulders like a turtle withdrawing. “Anyway—”

“D.V.,” I cut in, unwilling to let it go. “I’m serious about accosting people like that. You may not realize it, but I could have arrested your hormonal development in mid-puberty just now.”

“Whaddaya mean?” he demanded.

I lifted my knee in explanation. His pants were so baggy it only took a few inches to touch their cloth crotch.

“I could have kicked you in the balls,” I added in case he still didn’t get it.

He got it. His face went pale as he stepped away, crossing his hands in front of the vital area.

It appeared I had his attention. I looked over my shoulder. Wayne and Becky were still in the Fiat. Time to ask nosy questions.

“So why are you so angry that I’m here?” I demanded.

“Didn’t know who you were,” he mumbled. “Didn’t know Mom was gone till she came back.”

“Do you always keep your eye out for your mother?” I prodded. This was weird. Most mothers were keeping their eyes out for their fifteen-year-olds, not the other way around.

He shrugged, then lifted one shoulder and balanced himself on the opposite leg. A teenager trying to turn himself inside out. I remembered the feeling, if not the exact move.

“Is that why you came to Sid’s party?” I pressed.

He shrugged then balanced himself on his other leg.

“So, what did you think of Sid?” I tried conversationally.

“He was a total butt-head,” D.V. answered.

“Yeah?” I prompted.

“Yeah,” he repeated angrily. “Takes her out, gets her totally wasted. And blah, blah, blah, all the time, like he’s trying to sell me something—”

“Don’t be like that, D.V. Please don’t,” Becky’s wavering voice cut in from beside me. I flushed guiltily, caught mid-interrogation. “Sid’s dead.” She put her hand on her son’s arm. “And Sid was my friend—”

“Some friend,” D.V. muttered and marched out from under Becky’s hand, toward the house.

“Time to go?” Wayne suggested softly. Softly and firmly.

“Time to go,” I agreed.

Becky gave me a quick, fermented goodbye hug and then went tottering off after D.V. Wayne and I looked at each other, shrugged simultaneously, and climbed into the car.

I had to crane my head all the way around behind me to steer the Toyota back down the steep concrete driveway. And I couldn’t stop thinking about Becky and D.V. as I did. Not having any children myself, I couldn’t really tell just how odd their mother and son relationship was. But it did seem that—

“Hungry?” asked Wayne beside me.

All analysis of Becky and D.V.’s relationship left my mind, blotted out by hallucinations of food. Garlic bread, peach pie, even forbidden visions of roast beef. I could almost taste it. Because I was hungry. Very hungry. Even the thought of Sid’s death didn’t put a damper on the rebellious growls from my stomach. I couldn’t count the number of hours that had passed since we
hadn’t
eaten our promised tofu burgers at Sid’s party. Lunchtime may have been lost, but dinnertime was at hand.

“New place called Chill-Out in San Rico,” Wayne went on. “I called them and they’ve got six varieties of chili, three of them vegie, plus fresh-baked corn bread—”

“How do I get there?” I interrupted, salivating.

Ten minutes later, we were in opposite self-service lines at the chili bar. One side for vegetarians, one side for carnivores. First you got to ladle out your choice of three chilies: “mild,” “hot,” and “from hell.” Then you got to choose from bowls and more bowls of toppings. Peanuts, jalapenos (in case “from hell” wasn’t hot enough, I supposed), two kinds of onions, sprouts, yogurt, sour cream, grated cheese (soy an option), raisins, croutons, and everything else that could possibly top a bowl of chili. And finally there were warmed trays of French bread, whole wheat, and corn bread to go with it. All for six bucks and ninety-five cents. With refills.

I was in near ecstasy, halfway through my loaded bowl of “hot,” crunching on a spicy crouton when Wayne spoke up.

“Do you believe Sid Semling was murdered?” he asked.

The crouton went down the wrong way and I grabbed for a glass of water, wheezing. Wayne was up in a shot, slapping my back. I slammed into the table, dislodging the crouton. Wayne’s black belt in karate had paid off in a new way.

“Women shouldn’t try ‘from hell’ unless they’re ready for it,” I heard a male voice comment scornfully a table away.

“I’m fine,” I rasped out, tears streaming down my face. If there was anything I hated, it was jalapeño machismo.

Wayne sat back down and busied himself tidying up the mess my frontal assault on the table had left. His face was as red as mine.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“Yes, I do believe Sid Semling was murdered,” I whispered back. My throat hurt too much to express myself any louder.

“Thought so,” he said miserably. “No separate, coinciding events—”

“His—”

“Hands were burnt,” he finished for me considerately.

I nodded, took a drink of water and a small bite of corn bread.

“Any favorite suspects?” he asked.

I swallowed carefully, faces popping into my mind like flashbulbs. Pam’s angry one when Sid had talked about the Mexicans downtown. Mark Myers’s even angrier one after Sid’s HIV crack. Aurora’s, teasing. D.V.’s, unable to be teased. Charlie, Natalie, Jack—

“How could Jack go along with Sid’s bosom buddy act when Sid was busy trying to get his arm around Lillian?” I asked aloud.

Wayne frowned, as if trying to imagine a reason. And finding himself unable to.

“And how could Natalie hire Sid?” I went on. “I can’t believe it was from the goodness of her heart. I’m not sure she even has a heart.” I felt petty the minute I said it. I didn’t know Natalie very well back then. Or very well now. Maybe she was just shy, not cold.

But Wayne only nodded thoughtfully. I took another small bite of chili.

“Sid might actually have been a good salesman,” Wayne pointed out a couple of swallows later. “But…”

“But he was a pretty miserable specimen of a human being otherwise,” I finished for him. I could hear it in his pause.

He nodded, lowering his head. Wayne generally tried to like everyone. And generally succeeded. Except for my ex-husband, of course. And, it would appear, Sid Semling.

“I know, I know,” I agreed. “Half the time he was so obnoxious you wanted to strangle—” I corrected myself mid-sentence. “Not really to strangle, but maybe to scream at him. Or kick him. But there was something occasionally endearing about Sid.”

Wayne raised his heavy eyebrows and looked across the chili-strewn table, trying to understand.

“Sid was funny,” I tried to explain. “And always determined to have a good time, if nothing else. He played football, but not very well. He didn’t take it very seriously. Same with classes. He didn’t get very good grades. But he was so damned alive—”

I regretted the word instantly. Because “alive” was the very word to distinguish what had made Sid Semling special. So alive and now so dead.

“His cousin, Elaine, seems to have liked him,” Wayne interjected. I could hear the struggle in his voice as he tried to be fair about Sid.

“And Becky went out with him,” I added. “Now that, I don’t understand. But I guess I don’t understand Becky at all anymore.”

We both ate in silence for a while after that. The chili still tasted good, actually better after the crouton-ectomy. I even thought about trying a few bites of the “from hell” just to show the guy from the other table.

“What was it that Becky said about someone named Robert dying?” Wayne asked after I had finished what was left in my bowl and taken a last swallow of water. Wayne’s a quick learner. This time I didn’t have anything to choke on.

I took a big breath and explained slowly. How Robert had put on the fireworks show. How he had lit the big rocket and then bent over it when it hadn’t blown up. How it had blown up then.

“Nobody pushed him over? Or nudged him?” Wayne asked.

“No.” I played it over in my mind. We had all stood way back from Robert as he did his show. Yards away. “No, he bent over on his own.”

“And the rocket wasn’t wired to anything?”

I played the scene again from another angle. But 1 couldn’t see any wires. And the police hadn’t either. Their only question had been who’d sold Robert the fireworks.

“I don’t see how it could have been anything but an accident,” Wayne finally concluded, just as I had. “Even if you could get the rocket to blow up when you wanted, how could you get him to bend over it?”

“What if someone blamed Sid anyway?” I asked, sitting up a little straighter with the thought.

“And then waited twenty-five years to kill him?”

“Oh, right.”

We left the Chill-Out on that note.

All the way back in the car, I asked myself why come to a reunion after twenty-five years in the first place. Murderer or not. Each of us must have had our own agenda. I was pretty sure Mark’s had been to talk about his gayness, to be accepted as he was.

I understood that agenda implicitly. I had gone to the reunion and to the party partly out of curiosity. But mostly to be accepted. To face the very people who made me feel “not good enough” when I was in high school. Not pretty enough, not popular enough, not cool enough. (Smart was barely an issue then; “girls” weren’t supposed to be smart.) And to face those same people, bringing twenty-five years of hard-won adult self-esteem to those memories. For a moment, I felt a tingle of pleasure in my chest. I was glad I’d overcome the pain of the old self-consciousness. I’d faced the old devils, and they weren’t devils at all, just a bunch of adults, a lot of whom had probably felt just as worthless as I had as a teenager.

And then I remembered that one of them was probably a murderer. The tingle of energy turned to mass, a mass of lead in my chest.

I had barely closed the front door behind us, when I pulled Wayne to me for a kiss. My self-esteem needed a recharge. And anyway, I loved him. Loved the way he listened to me. The way he held me. The way he tried to be fair. The way his body felt beneath my fingertips. The way his mouth—

The doorbell rang, rudely interrupting love’s inventory.

Wayne and I looked into each other’s eyes, still holding on to each other. Maybe if we were very quiet…

“Guess we’d better answer,” he whispered a few heartbeats later. All right, I didn’t always love the way he tried to be fair.

At least Charlie Hirsch stood at the front door instead of stumbling in like Becky had.

“Okay time to visit?” he asked, without looking either of us in the face. He leaned his weight on one foot and then the other.

“Sure,” Wayne answered, stepping back from the door.

Charlie remained standing where he was, squirming in place.

“Felt like I needed to talk,” he added softly.

“Fine,” I said, my voice taking on the volume his lacked. I motioned him forward with my hand. “Come on in.”

“If it’s okay,” he murmured.

It was close to ten minutes before we actually convinced Charlie that it was okay to shamble on in and take a seat on the wood and denim couch, Wayne and I on either side of him. Then he sat and stared out across the room without speaking, looking down at his hands at times, turning them over as if to inspect them for dirt. They actually were a little dirty. And calloused. Gardening, I remembered. He did gardening. He certainly didn’t speak for a living.

I looked at him, trying to see him through Pam Ortega’s more positive eyes. Charlie Hirsch was good-looking in his own way. Tall and lean-faced, with large, dreamy eyes and dark, wavy hair. But where were his social skills? Then I remembered how shy Wayne had been when I’d first met him. Maybe there were hidden depths of wisdom and kindness and wit within Charlie too. Or maybe not.

“Here to talk about Sid?” Wayne finally hazarded.

“Sid?” Charlie shot back, his head jerking up, focus in his dreamy eyes abruptly. “What about Sid?”

“Well, what are you here to talk about?” I demanded, my voice sharper than I intended.

“Pam,” he whispered and looked down at his hands again.