Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (10 page)

- Ten -

Silk Sokoloff?

“But you drew…the victim…” Kettering’s disappointment fluttered out of his mouth into the still air and dropped. He stood up, grabbed a stack of books to his chest, and staggered out of Marilyn Levin’s kitchen like an accident victim.

Barbara and I at least said our goodbyes before we left the psychic sketch artist.

“Maybe Silk was a victim of her own behavior on some level,” Barbara mused as I pulled the Toyota away from Marilyn Levin’s home.

“So Silk was killed by a karmic cat toy?” I shot back.

“Oh, Kate,” Barbara admonished. “Ye of little faith—”

“Faith!” I objected.

“The woman did draw Silk Sokoloff,” Barbara reminded me. “She tuned into the face that was probably most prominent in our thoughts.”

I swallowed guiltily. I had thought of Silk’s face, it was true. On the other hand, Marilyn might have seen a picture of Silk Sokoloff on the jacket of one of her books. Or in the paper, for that matter.

“And we’re still no further than we were,” I added. I figured Barbara had already caught the gist of my previous thoughts.

We were still arguing when Barbara followed me into my living room and gracefully lowered herself into one of the swinging chairs. I plopped into the one across from her.

“Jeez-Louise, kiddo. I’m just saying it might be a bona fide clue,” Barbara cajoled. “Maybe the picture was to tell us that Silk’s own behavior drew the murder to her. So we should be asking ourselves—”

“What murder?” Wayne growled.

I was lucky I was sitting down or I might have fallen down. As it was, my heart astrally projected itself about three feet above my body and then dropped back with a thud. How did that man walk so quietly?

“A movie,” I said at the same as time Barbara supplied, “A novel.”

“Movie adaptation,” I explained. “Great story.”

Wayne didn’t smile. He stood, wavering a little in his p.j.’s, like a pine tree in a strong wind.

“Sit down,” I ordered. He was still so weak, he could barely stand. And here I was keeping secrets. But that was the whole point, the other part of me argued. Not to worry him while he was sick. But—

Barbara must have heard the inner struggle. She stood suddenly and said, “See you later, kiddo.”

I couldn’t blame her. I’d shut out my internal bickering if I could, too.

“Kate,” Wayne rumbled as Barbara roared away in her Volkswagen. “What’s going on?”

His face was serious. No teasing. No jokes. Just concern. With a pinch of barely repressed anger.

“I love you,” I told him hopefully.

“And?” he prompted.

“And…I’ve got to get the mail,” I improvised. “Why don’t you go back to bed, and I’ll meet you there?”

Wayne sighed deep and long, an eight on a scale of one to ten, I decided. But he eventually padded back down the hall to the bedroom. And I went back outside, and walked down the gravel driveway to the mailbox. It was warm outside, with a breeze that was just strong enough to blow some leaves from the trees. I enjoyed my short walk, inhaling the scent of my neighbors’ uneaten roses (
they
used barbed wire to imprison them), feeling the sun’s heat on my shoulders, and ignoring the lessening twinges of guilt.

I really did need to get the mail, I told myself when I opened the box and scooped out an armful of bills, catalogs and the usual assortment of postal detritus. Then I noticed a letter wedged in between a business seminar brochure and a bank statement. The envelope looked familiar. Mail deja vu?

I hurried back into the house and sat at my desk to go through the stack in my hands. I took a little breath before opening the letter. It didn’t help. The letter wasn’t identical to the previous day’s missive. It was worse.

“GET OUT OF HIS LIFE OR ELSE!” this one read. Same bold, block print. Different words.

But the general message seemed to be consistent, that is to say, confusing.

What man was I mixed up with besides Wayne? Assuming that Wayne was man number one from the earlier letter.

I called Barbara on her car phone again and read her the new message to the muted symphony of angry traffic sounds.

“It’s Craig’s honeybun,” she told me.

“Barbara!” I screamed into the phone. “I talked to Bonnie. She doesn’t know anything about the letter.” Or else, Bonnie was a very good actor. That was a spooky thought.

“What does Bonnie look like?” Barbara asked.

“Huh?” I said, still wondering if Bonnie had been putting on an act that would require a degree in social pathology.

Barbara repeated her question.

“Long red hair, gorgeous white skin, green eyes,” I told her.

“Wrong woman,” Barbara said.

“What do you mean, wrong woman?” I ranted. “She was—”

“Kate,” Wayne called out from the bedroom.

“See you later, kiddo,” Barbara said obligingly.

A preemptive strike seemed in order. I rushed down the hall, into the bedroom, and flung myself on top of Wayne’s outstretched body before he had a chance to ask any more questions. And to make absolutely sure he couldn’t interrogate me, I glued my lips to his and kept them there. The method worked too well. I was lightheaded within minutes from the kiss. I would have told Wayne anything. But luckily, he didn’t ask. He was too busy flexing his atrophied hands with complex clothing removal and handling exercises. Exercise is important for the bedridden, I concluded twenty minutes later. It is truly amazing what a man who can barely walk can do lying down. Truly.

Wednesday, I was back to work on my tower of Jest Gifts paperwork. No design work for me today. A gag-gift business, like any other business, generates more paperwork than cash. More paperwork than artistic expression. More paperwork than—

My phone rang.

“Barbara?” I answered it, omnisciently. I wanted to do it to her just once. Only, of course, Barbara wasn’t on the phone this once. It was my warehousewoman, Jade.

“I’m not Barbara,” she corrected me. “It’s
me
, Kate.”

“So, give me the bad news,” I said. At least I was right on that.

“Well, they screwed up the acupuncture earrings,” she informed me.

And it went downhill from there. Especially when Jade got to the subject of her brother-in-law, Eddie, the genius of the Internet, the maestro of Websites, and a guy who could probably use some money.

“See, Kate,” Jade explained for the fourteenth time. “He’s a real geek. He could make your Website work. Peg doesn’t have it linked up to the right places. Now, Eddie’s got contacts…”

I filled out an invoice while she went on. I hoped Eddie knew how hard she was pitching on his behalf.

The doorbell rang about fifteen minutes later. I pinched my brows together, concentrating. A picture formed in my mind. Barbara was at my door. Yes, I was sure this time. A course in statistics that I took in college made this psychic stuff a little easier. Chances were about nine-point-nine out of ten that it was Barbara, taking all the recent data into account.

I hung up on Jade gently as she continued to list Eddie’s virtues, and marched to the door.

“Hey, kiddo,” Barbara greeted me. “Good job. It
is
me. In the flesh.”

I felt pretty smart for a minute. Then I asked myself why I’d answered the door at all if I knew it was Barbara.

“I brought food,” Barbara explained, holding out a bag filled with steaming takeout cartons. I smelled Thai: lemongrass, galanga, chili paste, and basil.

“A little late lunch and a few quick visits to suspects before the meeting at Justine’s?” she bargained softly.

“There enough there for Wayne?” I countered.

“Chicken coconut milk soup and rice, green curry, spicy duck salad—”

Wayne walked in, arms outstretched like a zombie. This time, at least, I heard his flat-footed approach. But this time, he was trying to be funny.

“Fe-fie-foh-fum, I smell the bones of a chicken, yum,” he growled. The man was definitely getting well. And he hadn’t even asked me about the murder Barbara and I had been discussing the day before. Maybe he just didn’t want to know.

We all ate the feast at the kitchen table. Coconut soup without chicken for me, sweet potato slices in a sweet and sour dip, and basil tofu. Not to mention the pad Thai noodles with chopped peanuts, green onions, and bean sprouts. Food for an army. A gourmet army. Wayne finished most of it. It was probably the best food he’d had in a while, I concluded guiltily.

Barbara jerked her wrist to face level and peered at her watch as Wayne swallowed the last bite.

“Oh, wow!” she cried. “We’re late for the seminar.”

The overacting even lost me for a moment.

“What seminar?” I asked.

“The psychic seminar,” she answered.

“Oh, right,” I said and jumped out of my chair. “You go back to bed,” I told Wayne.

A flash of suspicion crossed his face, but a quick kiss erased it. Boy, I was gonna pay big time for my sins when he found out.
If
he found out, I reminded myself. There was always the possibility that Silk’s murderer would be discovered before Wayne found out anything. It was time to believe in miracles.

Barbara and I stopped at Isabelle Viseu’s first. Once again, we opened the little gate and walked up the cement pathway to her front door. But the only beings stirring were the bees buzz-bombing the pansies along the pathway. Otherwise the place was silent.

Barbara rang the bell three times, then headed off to the side of the house again.

“Barbara!” I whispered angrily. “She’s not home.” I figured she’d hear the whisper psychically if not auditorily.

Barbara reappeared in front of the house again. I let out the breath I’d been holding. And then froze once more as she gave the doorbell another poke. This place made me nervous for some reason. That reason probably being Barbara.

I turned around and started back down the pathway to the gate.

“I’m leaving,” I told Barbara.

“But—” she began.

“You can always walk home,” I suggested.

And oddly enough, Barbara followed me out of Isabelle Viseu’s yard.

She didn’t say anything until we were back in the car.

“I don’t like it,” was what she finally said. And she was serious. I hated it when Barbara got serious like that. “Her car’s there, but she isn’t.”

“Barbara—”

She put up a hand to silence me.

“Forget it, kiddo,” she advised. “Weird things bother me.”

“All right,” I agreed, pulling the Toyota into traffic, though I really wanted to ask her if she meant that things bothered her that shouldn’t, so those things were weird, or if she meant that Isabelle’s situation was weird and therefore bothersome. I was surprised when she didn’t answer my unvoiced question.

“Merlot,” she said.

“You want wine now?” I demanded.

“No, Merlot is the subdivision where Rich McGowan lives,” she explained. “Remember, he was the weaselly looking guy that Silk called a narc. I think he works for the Medical Board of Examiners, or the FDA, or the FHA, or some other set of initials.”

I didn’t even ask where she got that idea. I didn’t want to hear the explanation.

“Is he going to be home yet if he works?” I asked, checking my own watch.

“No, but his wife and kid will be,” she told me. She smiled evilly. “We can ask them why he was at Justine’s.”

For once, Barbara was wrong. Rich McGowan’s wife and kid were home all right, but so was he.

I didn’t get a chance to savor Barbara’s lapse though, because it was Rich who opened the door. And he looked sick. Almost as sick as Wayne.

“Are you all right?” were the first words out of my mouth. I couldn’t help it. The man’s narrow face was grayish. His close-set eyes were twitching. And he smelled of that kind of sticky sweat that goes with illnesses, or nightmares.

“Flu,” Rich mumbled succinctly, but he wouldn’t look either of us in the eye.

“It’s hard to see someone die like that, isn’t it?” Barbara cooed soothingly as she stepped past him through the doorway and into the white-walled, beige-shagged living room that I’d seen in what seemed like a hundred other apartments and houses. Including my own, but at least I’d covered mine up with bookshelves and plants and pinballs. Rich McGowan’s living room appeared to house two utilitarian plaid couches, a TV set, and one sports poster. That was it for decor. I stepped in after Barbara, before he could think to close the door on me. He’d have to work on his reflexes if he was going to deal with Barbara.

“Honey?” a voice called, and a plump and pretty, pink-cheeked woman entered the living room from a side door at the same time as Barbara and I entered from the front. The pink-cheeked woman was followed in turn by a little girl who must have been all of seven years old and stared at us silently, her hazel eyes round. Were we that scary? I wondered and bared my teeth in a smile. The little girl hid behind her mother, clutching her Care Bear shirt. So much for the smile.