Murder Most Mellow (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (29 page)

As I climbed into my Toyota, I scanned the parking lot for Wayne’s Jaguar. It was nowhere in sight. I let out a long, sighing breath and turned the key in the ignition.

I pulled the slip of paper with Linda’s address from my purse. Should I warn her I was coming? No, I decided. I might have a better chance of cracking her stone facade if I didn’t.

Linda’s house turned out to be a condominium. I got lucky. Linda was not only home, she buzzed me in.

She met me at the door with her usual deadpan expression. “Kate,” she acknowledged curtly.

It was one word. Maybe I could get more out of her.

“I was in the neighborhood, so I thought—” I began babbling. There was something about Linda that made me go on like that. A good listener, indeed. I decided to get to the point, even if I hadn’t been invited in.

“How do you know Sarah?” I demanded without further preamble.

Linda’s grey eyes widened ever so slightly. But I couldn’t tell what emotion the widening signified.

She silently motioned me into her living room. The room was as devoid of life as she was. There were no pictures on the white walls, no knickknacks anywhere. The only furnishings were two slate-grey couches and a teak coffee table. There were two thick stacks of paper on that table, though. I looked closer. The top sheet of one stack was typed and had scribbling between the lines and in the margin. Was this a manuscript?

“A W.I.B. support group,” Linda said in a monotone. I jumped, startled. I had almost forgotten she was there.

“What?” I asked.

“Women In Business,” she droned on. “That’s where I met Sarah.”

I didn’t know what to do with the information. I was stunned. Linda had volunteered a full sentence. I kept on going.

“Did you visit Sarah’s house very often?” I asked.

Again her eyes widened. “A few times,” she answered.

A phone rang in the next room. Linda got up slowly and glided out of the living room to answer it.

I pounced on the manuscript. I scanned the top sheet. “—self-indulgence in hot tubs,” was the first line, continued from the page before. Then, “ ‘You create your own reality,’ was Sally’s favorite phrase.” And scribbled between the double-spaced lines, “Little did she know what reality she was creating… (see insert 42).” Was “Sally” Sarah? Plenty of people in Marin parrot “You create your own reality” at the first sight of anyone’s problems except their own. But what about the hot tub?

I read on. Peter and Tony’s words leapt up at me. And my own. The names were all changed, but the words were ours. Was Linda updating the chapter to include Sarah’s death? I leafed through the pages quickly, searching for “insert 42.” No luck. I turned over the other stack and saw the title page. “SUPPORT GROUPS, THE NEW ADDICTION, by Z.L. Harvard.” Damn. Another best seller.

I heard a harsh chuckling sound behind me. I whirled around to face Linda. She was smiling widely now, the first smile I had ever seen on her face. But it wasn’t a friendly smile. Her teeth were bared in triumph, her eyes narrow with something close to hatred. A sudden shudder jerked my shoulders.

“Satisfied?” Linda asked flatly.

I wasn’t satisfied. “Did Sarah know you were writing this?” I demanded.

Linda took her time walking to one of the grey couches and sitting down. I had a feeling I was in for the silent treatment again. I sat down myself, determined to wait her out.

“No,” she finally answered, surprising me. “I don’t think so.” She bared her teeth again. “That woman was so caught up in self-adoration, she didn’t even think to ask me why I wanted to join your group.”

Linda laughed. It took me a moment to place the sound as laughter, it was so slow and deep. My shoulders jerked involuntarily again. “Sarah,” Linda hissed. “What an incredible bitch! She’d been to almost as many groups as I had, but I was doing research. Sarah had to have an audience every other minute for her incessant preening.”

Linda settled back into the couch, her eyes alive with malice. “Support groups!” She sneered. The mask was gone from her face. “Alcoholics, Overeaters, Sex Addicts, Asexuals, Menopausals, Compulsive Shoppers. You wouldn’t believe some of these groups.”

“And ours,” I prompted quietly.

“What a joke,” she snarled. But she didn’t laugh. “Human Potential. Bitch-and-crow sessions, that’s all. Bitch about the people less advanced than your self-righteous selves. And crow about your success. What bullshit!”

She vented her spleen for a few long minutes more, her eyes no longer on me, her face mobile with long-suppressed malevolence. I almost wished she’d put the mask back on. I felt nausea rising as I listened to her.

Finally, she seemed to remember me. “So what have you found out about Sarah’s murder?” she asked, her voice flat again. Her grey eyes were still alive though, intent on mine.

“Not much,” I said, wondering if I was looking at the murderer.

The rage this woman had hidden could carry her through murder. I was sure of it. But what about motive?

“No more fires?” she asked.

“No,” I said. I realized I was grinding my spine into the back of the couch, trying to get as far away from Linda as possible. I took a breath and slid forward, determined to take the advantage again.

“What’s your relationship with Dave Yakamura?” I demanded.

She shrugged. I waited five tense minutes for an answer, but none came. She was apparently finished talking. But she wasn’t finished smiling. She bared her teeth once more as she stared at me.

I left without saying goodbye.

I felt the sweat on my body chill as I walked out into the late-morning light. I hadn’t realized just how much I had perspired in Linda’s living room. I breathed in the cool air gratefully.

I reviewed Linda’s words in my mind as I drove home. She was a spy, a particularly venomous one at that, but was she a murderer?

I hadn’t come up with an answer to that question by the time I pulled into my driveway. All I had come up with was a bunch of new questions. I walked up my front stairs lost in thought, opened the door and stepped inside. Something grey squished beneath my foot.

- Twenty-One -

I jumped back, startled, then decided I must have stepped on C.C.’s catnip mouse. I shook my head affectionately and bent over to pick it up. Only the grey thing I had stepped on wasn’t a toy. It was a real dead mouse. I gagged and turned away.

I was sweeping the mouse into a dustpan when the phone rang. I raced to the garbage can and gave the poor little thing a hasty burial before answering. C.C. yowled in protest, berating me for my cruel refusal of her gift. She tripped me as I lunged for the phone, then slunk off, her honor satisfied.

I regained my footing as the answering machine clicked on. I switched it off and grabbed the receiver, panting, “Hello, hello, I’m really here.”

“Wanna buy some life insurance, lady?” the voice on the other end asked ominously.

“No, thank you,” I replied cautiously. My shoulders tightened. Was this another death threat?

“Just kidding!” the voice assured me. “This is me, Ellen Quinn.”

“Oh, hi,” I said, relaxing.

“Listen, me and Nick were wondering if you’d like to come over for dinner tonight,” Ellen went on blithely.

“You and Nick?” I repeated. I didn’t understand.

“Yeah, we’ve been getting along pretty well, if you know what I mean.” She cackled suggestively. “We wanted to pay you back for helping Nick out, and for giving me dinner. Nick says he can do something vegetarian, like he used to do for Sarah. How’s about it?”

I agreed to dinner, wondering just how dangerous it might be. I hastily added that I might bring Barbara along. Even if Barbara couldn’t come, I could tell her where I was going. No one was going to kill me at a well-publicized dinner, at least I hoped not.

I shook off the thoughts. I had some questions for Ellen.

“Where were you and Nick yesterday morning?” I asked. I didn’t even try to sound casual this time. It never worked anyway.

“Why?” Ellen said, her voice suddenly serious. “What happened?”

“I’ll tell you about it tonight,” I promised. I didn’t want to talk about Jerry now.

After a brief silence, Ellen answered my question. “I was in my motel room for most of the morning,” she said. “Then I came over to visit Nick.”

“Was he there?” I demanded eagerly.

“Of course he was,” she snapped. Then she lightened her tone. “The kid doesn’t go out much, you know.”

But I could still hear a trace of anxiety in Ellen’s voice. If she was “getting along” with Nick, she had to wonder if he had murdered her sister.

“Nick couldn’t hurt anyone,” she insisted, as if she’d heard my unspoken thoughts.

“Sure,” I said uneasily. “See you tonight.”

I hung up the phone and looked down at the carpet, pondering the wisdom of dinner with two murder suspects. Then I saw C.C. She had retrieved the mouse. She laid it at my feet and looked up expectantly. It’s not everyone who gives you a second chance, I thought. I thanked her for the mouse graciously. But I wasn’t going to eat the damn thing.

I was ten minutes late by the time I reached The Elegant Vegetable to meet my friend Ann for lunch. Luckily, she hadn’t arrived yet. Tony was there, though. He greeted me with a warm hug and kept me company while I waited for Ann.

We sat at the front bar surrounded by massive ferns, and shared lemon-and-hibiscus tea. A colorful selection of young punkers served the tables quietly and efficiently against the background of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos as we sipped and talked. Tony’s face looked lined to me that day. His eyes were pink and puffy. But he put on a cheerful voice and told me about his specials, vegetable pilaf and stuffed mushrooms.

He had just finished a description of the day’s soups when Ann Rivera came through the door. Heads turned as she walked toward us. She was tall and elegantly dressed-for-success in a mauve wool suit with a maroon silk blouse. Her brown face had a big toothy smile that didn’t usually go with that kind of outfit. I introduced her to Tony. He showed us to our table and left us to our menus.

Today’s waitress had gold-tipped lavender hair. She set a basket of fresh-baked bread on the table and asked us for our orders. Ann followed my lead and ordered the potato-dill soup and garden vegetable salad.

“It’s driving me crazy,” Ann said once the waitress was gone. She pulled a slice of oatmeal-rye bread out of the basket.

“What’s driving you crazy?” I asked.

“Tony.” She frowned and tore the bread into bite-size pieces. “I know I’ve met him, or maybe just seen him before, but I can’t think where.”

“Have you ever been here before?” I asked. A new mystery to solve. Just what I needed.

“No.” She shook her head. “Somehow there’s something, oh, sleazy associated with him. Oh hell, I just can’t place it.”

“Sleazy? What’s sleazy to you?” I probed. “Anything to do with gay bars or parties or something?”

She rolled her eyes upwards and thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think that’s it,” she said slowly. “That doesn’t compute as sleazy to me.”

“Is it the punk help?” I asked, helping myself to bread. It was warm and sweet when I bit into it, delicious.

“No.” She frowned even harder, deepening the grooves between her eyebrows.

“Stop thinking about it and it’ll come to you,” I advised. “That’s how it usually works.”

“You’re right,” she said and looked at me as if for the first time. “How’ve you been, Kate?” she asked.

My answer was postponed as our soup arrived. I slurped a couple of spoonfuls before telling her. Should I burden her with my problems? Yes, came the instantaneous answer from my brain.

“Have you read in the paper about the recent Mill Valley murders?” I asked her.

“Not ‘Mysterious Hot-Tub Death’ and ‘Gardener Bludgeoned with Own Shovel’?” Ann said. She put her spoon down and leaned toward me, her interest evident.

I nodded.

“You’re involved with those? How do you manage it, Kate? Every time someone gets murdered—” She must have seen something in my face. “Not so fun, huh?” she said softly. “Want to talk about it?”

I found that I did want to talk about it, at length. I told her about the murders, the death threats and the arson. Ann was a good friend. And a good audience: intelligent, attentive, and exempt from suspicion of murder. Our salads had been served and halfway consumed by the time I had finished my rundown.

“Have you looked at this thing from the psychological angle yet?” she asked, peering into my eyes. An appropriate question from the administrator of a mental health facility.

A sudden chill raised goose flesh on my arms. The last murderer I had met had been pathologically embittered. Was I up against that kind of hatred again? I thought of Linda Zatara and put down my fork, my appetite temporarily gone.

“Who has the requisite personality for murder?” Ann asked gravely. “I know theoretically anyone is capable of murder, given compelling enough circumstances. But two murders and arson! Somebody must have a real kink in them to do these things.”