Murder Most Mellow (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (26 page)

“It’d be a friggin’ best seller,” he told me. “People scarf up these kind of stories.” His eyes glowed. “Man, I’d be in fat city for years. Just the movie rights alone…” He shook his head slowly and drifted off into a daydream. What was he dreaming about? The money? The fame?

As I watched him, a little chill went up my already agonized spine. Felix had a motive. Were a best seller and movie rights worth killing for? Are acupuncturists into needles? But if Felix had set up the murder for the story, how was he going to write it without implicating himself?

“Felix,” I asked nonchalantly. “Can you write your book without a confessed murderer?” As soon as I had asked the question, I realized just how paranoid I had become. Felix as a murderer was too farfetched, I thought ruefully. But what about Linda Zatara?

“Maybe I could, though it wouldn’t be as easy without a confession,” Felix was answering me. He looked at me curiously.

“Anyway, back to Jerry Gold,” I said briskly. “What did you find out through your friends at the Sheriff’s office?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he answered snidely.

“Yes,” I said evenly. “And if you don’t tell me, I’ll never speak to you again.”

Felix opened his mouth as if to argue, then seemed to reconsider. “There isn’t much,” he assured me. “I know how Jerry bought it, though. The poor doof was whacked with a shovel. No fingerprints,” he finished.

A shovel. I thought of Jerry’s misshapen head and felt nausea rising again.

Felix went on. “There’re a few angles besides the connection with Sarah Quinn. Jerry married that woman I told you about, the ex-client’s wife—”

“The one he was playing ‘hide-the-salami’ with?” I asked.

His face pinkened as he nodded. He must have recognized the quotation. “But the client remarried anyway. He didn’t seem uptight about Jerry,” Felix said. “There’s another angle too. It seems that old Jerry still kept some sweet stuff on the side after he was married. So they’re checking the ladies out, and checking his wife out.”

Felix was sharing. I decided to share too. I told him about Jerry’s message on my machine.

Felix stood up from his chair. “Jeez-Louise, Kate!” he exploded. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

We were off and running again. I gave Felix the details. He wanted more. I escorted him outside to his car.

The rest of my afternoon was punctuated by incoming telephone calls, each timed to occur at crucial junctures in my paperwork. Tony called to confirm the seance date as I was about to total out my payroll deposits. Barbara called at the moment I glimpsed a possible reason why the bank was charging me for someone else’s automatic teller withdrawals. She chuckled over my account of Felix’s visit. Then, just as I found the IRS code section that might justify my tai chi fees as a business expense, Peter called.

“Sarah came to me in a dream,” he told me.

“Oh,” I said.

Peter spoke in a low, awed voice. “In my dream Sarah and I were sitting on this mountaintop and talking, and she said to me, ‘You really do create your own reality.’ And suddenly I understood, I mean really understood!”

“What did you understand, exactly?” I asked cautiously.

“That I am the one getting in my own way.” His voice was gaining momentum. “That it’s all good if I let it be. That everything is good and God and love at the core. It is only our own minds which limit us. That I can create exactly what I want!”

“Are you all right?” I asked. Perhaps it wasn’t the most sensitive way to greet his revelations.

“Yes, of course I’m all right,” he snapped. “Don’t tell me you don’t understand. You must understand.”

“I think I understand what you’re saying,” I answered slowly. “I feel that way periodically myself. But it just doesn’t sound like you, Peter.”

“Damn it, listen to me!” he exploded. “I’m telling you that I understand now.” So much for “good and God and love,” I thought.

“All right,” I soothed. “It sounds like a wonderfully positive dream. Then what happened?”

“Then Sarah floated up into the sky. Kate, I think it was really her,” he said, his voice low and reverent again. “I think she contacted me in my dream.”

“Did Sarah happen to tell you who murdered her?” I asked.

- Eighteen -

“Sarah contacts me in a dream and you want me to talk about her murder?” Peter demanded indignantly. “She came to me, Kate. She came to me to tell me about my life!”

“All right, calm down,” I said.

“I am calm,” he snapped. “I understood what Sarah meant. Can’t you see how important that is?”

I told him how happy I was for him in about four different ways. Then I hung up.

Late that afternoon at the chiropractor’s, I had plenty of time to ponder Peter’s new behavior while I waited for my turn on the treatment table. Anything was better than thinking about Jerry’s dead body.

Why had Peter suddenly come to understand Sarah’s message? Sarah had told him that he created his own reality at least five times a month while she was alive, and only succeeded in irritating him. Now that she was dead, Peter believed her. Was this new belief akin to the posthumous increase in the value of an artist’s work?

My chiropractor hauled me into the treatment room, laid me on a table, and popped my spine back into place. “What’s new?” she asked when she was done.

I opened my mouth and shut it again. I climbed down from the table and said, “Nothing.”

I was still thinking about Peter on the way home. If Tony or Barbara had told me about the same dream, I would have been comfortable with it. But I wasn’t comfortable with the new Peter Stromberg.

I started fretting over the seance the minute I walked in my front door. It was almost six. A seance! I couldn’t believe I had suggested such a thing. I moved the couch back against the wall and arranged five ladder-back kitchen chairs in a circle next to the pin-ball machines. The arrangement didn’t look very occult. I reminded myself that whether or not Sarah emerged as a spirit this evening, it would be instructive to watch the group members react to the possibility. I closed the curtains and surveyed the effect. The room still didn’t look otherworldly. It looked like a dark-beige and white living room with a bunch of chairs in a circle. I sighed and opened the curtains again.

C.C. sauntered in and lay in the exact center of the circle of chairs. She rolled over on her back and lectured me loudly and enthusiastically.

“Sarah, is that you?” I asked her, giggling.

The doorbell rang. I jumped half an inch into the air. C.C. bolted. That would teach me to joke with my cat. Damn, I was nervous about this seance. If the murderer was one of the invited participants, I just hoped that she or he was suffering worse anxiety than I was.

“Hey,” Barbara greeted me as she came through the door. “Got any spare ectoplasm?” Her choice of clothing for a seance was a simple red-silk jumpsuit. She hugged me tight, then gazed into my face as she released me.

“Felix is really worried about you,” she said. Felix worried? I kept forgetting he was a human being. “He told me how freaked you are over the murders and all.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Should I come stay with you?” she asked softly.

It was tempting. I considered the offer for a moment. Would Barbara’s presence protect me? Or would it just put her in danger, too?

“I appreciate it, but no thanks,” I said finally. “I’ll be all right.”

“Are you sure?” she probed.

“I’m sure,” I told her. I took a big breath. “Now about this seance,” I said briskly. “What do I need to do? Should I go get a crystal ball or some colored lights or something?”

“Nope,” she chuckled. “All I’m going to do is contact some of the spirits I work with and have them try to communicate with Sarah’s spirit. I could do it in the hot tub.” She paused for a moment and grinned. “In fact, I like that idea a lot. Hot tub seance, what about it?”

“Oh God, no,” I groaned.

“Okay, no hot tub,” she agreed. “But don’t worry about any esoteric props. They aren’t necessary.”

“What’s going to happen exactly?” I asked.

“Damned if I know,” she answered cheerfully.

The bell rang before I could ask her for a more reassuring agenda. I let Peter in and offered him some tea. I stared at his tight face. Could this man have killed Jerry only hours before?

“You’ve met Barbara,” I said and left them together. From the kitchen I could hear her asking him what he did for a living.

“I’m an attorney,” he replied somberly.

“So, catch any ambulances lately?” she asked, laughing. Peter didn’t join in her laughter.

I put the kettle on the stove and returned to the living room quickly. Barbara was already acting like Sarah, and we hadn’t even started the seance yet. Barbara offered to do a psychic healing on Peter, but he declined hastily, then lifted an eyebrow at me. I ignored the eyebrow.

“Kate, I have some personal things I’d like to discuss with you,” he announced.

“Fine,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“Privately,” he whispered, rolling his eyes toward Barbara.

I shrugged my shoulders and followed him into the back room. He closed the door behind us.

“What are that woman’s credentials?” he hissed.

“Credentials?” I asked. “I don’t think psychics need credentials.” Peter opened his mouth. I forged ahead quickly. “I’ll say this for her. She’s the only person I know who puts down experience from past-life incarnations on her resume.”

“That’s appalling,” he pronounced, affronted. If he ever did become a judge, I wouldn’t want to plead
my
case before him, I thought as I watched his pinched face pinch even tighter.

“So, what’s wrong with that?” I demanded.

“It’s fraudulent,” he told me.

“Oh, Peter,” I sighed. I patted his arm. “Be open for once. Barbara isn’t lying. She sincerely believes this stuff.”

Peter wasn’t impressed. “What are her qualifications to conduct a seance?” he pressed.

“Barbara’s my friend,” I said hotly. I told myself to calm down. “She’s honest. And she’s taken classes at the Marin Psychic Institute. Look, Peter,” I said finally, “I’m not going to accept what she comes up with one hundred per cent. But we can consider it, can’t we? In the proper perspective?”

Peter glared at me as he thought over my proposal. Was he looking for an excuse to avoid the seance?

“If Sarah were here, she’d tell you to lighten up,” I said. Then I opened the door and led the way back to the living room before he had a chance to respond. It worked. He followed me without further comment.

Tony was sitting on one of the ladder-back chairs, talking to Barbara. They were sipping the tea I had forgotten and discussing punk hair as an art form. Peter and I sat down too.

“How about you, Barbara?” Tony was saying. “You’d be gorgeous in purple spikes.”

“I might just do it,” she said thoughtfully. I hoped Felix liked purple.

The bell rang again. I didn’t have to open the door. Linda entered the house on her own, swiftly and silently. Now the group was complete. Barbara studied Linda intensely for a moment, then smiled and nodded her head as if they had actually conversed. Linda took a chair.

“Shall we begin?” Barbara asked, taking her own seat.

“Sure,” I said. I scrutinized the faces in the circle.

“I’m ready,” said Tony, his face now serious.

Peter nodded ponderously in the affirmative. He didn’t seem particularly nervous.

Linda just stared, deadpan as usual.

“Okay,” Barbara instructed. “If you guys will just sit and think of Sarah for a while, I’ll ground myself.”

She let her eyelids close slowly, then began breathing deeply. After a few minutes, her face relaxed and she seemed to sink into her chair. Suddenly, she looked like a Buddhist monk. A Buddhist monk who wore a lot of makeup, that is.

I pulled my eyes away from Barbara to watch the others. Tony had closed his eyes too and appeared tranquil. Peter was fidgeting in his chair. Linda continued to stare at Barbara without expression. Then Sarah’s face came into my mind. She was laughing. I closed my own eyes to see her better.

“I’m asking the spirit guide I work with to communicate with Sarah,” Barbara said, her voice thick now, unrecognizable.

I popped my eyes open. This was too spooky.

After a few more minutes Barbara spoke again in a deep, slow voice. “I’m not sure what it means,” she said. “But I’m seeing orange everywhere.”

Tony, Peter and I simultaneously leaned forward with interest. Even Linda blinked.

“There seems to be a peace and joy here, no pain,” Barbara intoned in an even deeper voice. “Do you have a question for Sarah?”

“Ask her what the meaning of her death was,” Tony requested softly.

“Whoops,” said Barbara.

“What?” I asked.

“That’s a quote, you guys,” she explained, opening one eye. Her voice was back to normal. “Sarah’s answer is ‘Whoops.’ “

“Ask her who killed her,” I demanded.