Tea-Totally Dead (28 page)

Then I heard another siren. I turned and saw a car with the La Risa Police Department insignia approaching. I looked at Wayne. He looked back at me, eyebrows raised. The car pulled in near the ambulance.

“Police,” announced the uniformed man emerging from the vehicle. As if he could have been anything else. Then I realized the uniformed man was Officer Yoder. His buzz cut was a dead giveaway. “Who placed the call?” he asked.

The gray-haired woman raised her hand and stepped forward, but she didn’t look very happy. Her shoulders were hunched as if anticipating a blow. Maybe she was afraid of the police. I wouldn’t blame her.

“Well, ma’am, if you’ll—” Officer Yoder began. But he stopped as the gurney came wheeling out of the apartment building.

I guess I hadn’t really believed that Clara was the victim until I glimpsed her lying on that gurney. But it was her. Even at this distance I could see the serene moon of her face looking all the more serene because it wasn’t moving. Her head was propped up on one side. As they wheeled her into position at the back of the ambulance, I saw the edge of a large white bandage outlined against the black of her hair. And then she was in the ambulance and gone from view. The doors closed and the siren wailed as the ambulance pulled away from the apartment.

“Oh, damn,” I said and began to cry. Why hadn’t I talked to her? Or called the police myself? Or— Wayne put his arms around me. I could feel his body trembling as I leaned into him.

I looked up into his face. His eyes were closed, but tears were still leaking out.

“Oh, sweetie—” I began.

“Hey, Stan,” came a voice from behind me. “Look who’s here.”

I turned and saw Officer Zappetini, standing tall with one hand on his gun. He grinned widely at us.

My tears dried instantly. As did the inside of my mouth.

And in the same instant, all that leftover moisture transferred itself downward to settle in my armpits and in the palms of my hands.

“Excuse me for a moment, ma’am,” Officer Yoder said politely to the gray-haired woman. Then he trotted over to us.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, his tone not nearly so polite as it had been with the woman.

“We were supposed to see Clara,” I told him.

“Clara Kushiyama?” he asked and I wondered if he had just now made the connection to the other murders.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “We had an appointment for nine—”

“Wait,” Zappetini interrupted gleefully. “Shouldn’t we Mirandize them first?”

“Good thought,” Yoder agreed. He marched to his car, brought out a clipboard and then marched back to us. This short march seemed to take an eternity.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said, looking at Wayne. His words sounded ominously like an order to me. “First, you, Mr. Caruso. You have the right to remain—”

“I know my rights,” Wayne assured him brusquely.

“Okay, sign here,” Yoder said and Wayne signed the form on the clipboard.

I let him read me my rights all the way through, trying to slow my beating heart as he did. A small crowd had gathered around us by the time he finished. As I signed at the bottom of the form, a second patrol car pulled up.

“Let’s take them down to see the boss now,” Zappetini suggested.

Wayne and I rode together in the back of the police car. At least they didn’t handcuff us.

Once we arrived at La Risa police headquarters, we had to go through the whole Miranda routine a second time. Only this time we got the relay version.

“Tell her she has the right to remain silent,” Detective Sergeant Upton said to Detective Amador. Amador told me and I said I understood.

“Tell her…” he went on.

And then they did the same thing to Wayne, despite his assurances that he knew his rights. All told, I heard those damn rights five separate times. By then, I could have recited them myself to the next suspect who came into the station.

Once they had both of our signatures on the second set of forms, they asked me to wait outside with Officer Zappetini. I tried to meditate during the half hour that I sat with him in the hallway, but instead of embracing stillness, I found myself contemplating Clara’s injury, Harmony’s battered corpse and what a jail cell would really be like. Would my cellmate be psychotic, sociopathic or drunk? And if drunk, would she be vomiting drunk, passed-out drunk or mean drunk? And what if I had more than one cellmate? I almost missed it when Amador told me it was my turn.

The interrogation wasn’t as bad as I expected, though. Maybe Upton and Amador appreciated the fact that neither Wayne nor I had called attorneys. I explained all about Clara and her answering service message. I did what I could to trace her involvement with the other Skeritts from the time of the buffet to last night’s dinner. And I pointed out that Wayne and I had arrived at Clara’s apartment about the same time the ambulance had, not before. (This small exculpatory point had occurred to me in between contemplating possible cellmates.) Upton glared over my shoulder and asked Amador to ask me if anyone saw us arrive.

“I’m not sure,” was the only answer I could come up with.

In fact, that was the only answer I could come up with to most of their questions. I told them what I knew about Clara’s relationship with Vesta (not much), and what I knew about Clara’s background (even less). And I told them most emphatically that Wayne and I had been together all morning. I did not tell them in what positions, however.

And then, finally, Upton told Amador to tell me I could leave. I was so relieved, I had to restrain myself from whooping and hugging Wayne where he stood frowning in the hallway. But I sobered up during the police car ride back to the apartment building, where my Toyota was parked. We weren’t in jail, but Clara was still hurt.

I decided to exercise my right to remain silent as I drove us home in the Toyota. Wayne didn’t seem to mind. He wasn’t doing much talking himself. The only really talkative one in the car was my conscience. It told me I should have done something to prevent Clara’s injury. My eyes teared up again. I’d known the murderer was dangerous and I’d let Clara—

“Not your fault,” Wayne commented.

“Thanks,” I sniffled.

His absolution helped a little, but not much. Of
course
Wayne figured it wasn’t my fault, I told myself. He probably thought it was his.

I called La Risa General Hospital the minute we walked into the house. I figured that’s where they would have taken Clara. But the switchboard operator told me she didn’t have any information on a patient by that name.

“But she is a patient there, isn’t she?” I pressed.

“I’m afraid I don’t have that information,” the woman insisted.

“Well, who does?” I demanded.

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” she said.

And so on.

As I hung up the phone, I turned to Wayne. He looked down at me, a somber expression on his battered face.

“You get the runaround?” he asked.

I nodded and put my arms around him.

He held me for a moment before saying, “Time to get dressed.” And only then did I remember that Vesta’s funeral was that afternoon. I looked at my watch. We had less than a half hour. No wonder Wayne looked so somber.

It took me four minutes to change into a black sweater and a long black skirt. I couldn’t find any pantyhose without runs in them, so I wore a tall pair of black boots over my knee socks and reminded myself to sit like a lady so no one would notice. Wayne had changed into a charcoal-gray suit by the time I finished.

I didn’t insist on taking my car to the funeral. I didn’t really feel like driving anymore. And driving the Jaguar gave Wayne something to do. He certainly wasn’t talking as he sped up the highway.

“It’ll be all right,” I said.

He shrugged.

I sighed in return. If only each of us could believe even half of the other’s assurances, we’d both be happy people. But of course we couldn’t.

As Wayne took the turnoff to the funeral home, I offered up an agnostic but sincere prayer to whoever was in charge that Clara would heal quickly and completely. She was too good a woman to lose. Then I offered a more selfish addendum, that she would not only recover but would be able to tell the police who had assaulted her. Then the police would know it wasn’t Wayne or me.

Apparently, the funeral immediately preceding Vesta’s was still in progress when we arrived at the McLoughlin and Edwards Funeral Home. A man dressed in a well-cut black suit met me at the door and escorted us into a waiting room located off to the side of one of the two chapels. As he opened the door, strains of what sounded like organ music drifted by. I was still looking back over my shoulder, trying to locate the source of the sound when I heard a loud sniffle.

I swiveled my head around to look where I was going, and saw Ingrid, blowing her nose into a large handkerchief. Lori put her arm around her mother. Then I noticed that all the Skeritts were in the room, seated on padded black folding chairs.

“It’s only a passage to another life, Mama,” Lori insisted. But her voice was low and subdued. Her clothing was subdued too. She was wearing a navy blue jumpsuit today, no bracelets and only the smallest of gold rings in her ears.

In fact, everyone looked subdued as we entered. Even Eric sat without speaking, looking down at his feet. Dru managed a brief, wobbly smile in our direction. Trent and Lori nodded, and everyone else stared. Ace’s homely face looked frozen. There were tears in his eyes.

“Wayne,” he whispered.

As Wayne went to him, the older man stood and opened his arms. The two men embraced and our escort went out the door. Dru patted the seat next to her and I sat down dutifully.

By the time Wayne took his own seat next to Ace, our escort had brought in a new group of people. I wondered who they were, until I recognized Paul Paulson bringing up the rear. These had to be the other neighbors Paul had promised to bring. I stood to meet them.

“Ms. Jasper, right?” Paul greeted me. He kept his voice low, but his tone still had an undercurrent of exuberance. Apparently he alone remained unintimidated by the atmosphere of the funeral home.

A frail, stooped man with a gnarled brown face approached diffidently.

“This is Mr. Quaneri,” Paul said. He patted the elderly man on the shoulder. “He was a great admirer of Mrs. Caruso’s.”

“Oh… how nice,” I said and shook Mr. Quaneri’s hand. I just couldn’t think of anything better to say.

“She was a good woman,” Mr. Quaneri told me, and tears flooded his eyes. I was shocked by the realization that this man had cared for Vesta enough to mourn her loss. What had Vesta been to him?

As I tried to think of something comforting to say, Paul introduced another neighbor, a Mrs. Somerville, and then another.

Not long after I had been introduced to each and every member of the small group, our escort returned.

“We are ready for you now,” he announced in the resonant tone of a B-movie vampire hungry for a taste of blood.

I made my way over to Wayne and held out my hand. He took it without a word and together we followed an usher into the chapel.

The chapel was a modest, whitewashed room with windows set high into the walls above our heads. There were five or six rows of benches on either side of an aisle that led to the front of the room, where a slender woman stood behind a lectern. She had a lovely oval face, set off perfectly by the white lace collar on her black dress. I assumed she was our nondenominational minister.

Vesta’s coffin was to the right of the lectern, on a marbleized dais. As I looked, I felt Wayne’s hand begin to tremble in mine. I squeezed it hard, wishing I could do more to comfort him, but knowing he would be embarrassed by any further attention. At least the coffin was closed, and it was almost invisible under the sprays of yellow and white gladioli which covered it. Golden curtains were pulled back to either side of the coffin, as if just opened.

The usher cleared his throat.

Wayne and I walked down the center aisle to sit on a hard bench in the front row. I resisted peeking at Wayne’s face, allowing him whatever privacy I could in this public place. From behind us came the rustling sounds of people seating themselves, a few whispers, and scattered coughs and throat clearings. And then the music began. It was Chopin.

“We meet here today to pay tribute to the life of Vesta Skeritt Caruso,” the woman at the lectern declared as the music died away. Her voice was deep and carrying, surprising from such a small body. “And we meet here to express our love and admiration for her. And also to bring some comfort to her family and friends who are here and mourn her untimely death…”

I heard someone sob behind us. Probably Ingrid, I thought, and felt my own eyes blurring with moisture.

“The catastrophe of her death cannot be altered, but it can be transformed by love…”

But who would transform Vesta’s death by love? Her son? Mr. Quaneri? I tried to think of her with love now, as I never had while she was alive. Poor, unloved, unlovable Vesta. I sniffled back a tear.

“… her son Wayne tells me that his mother found life difficult at times, but that she was unique. Unique in her love of life, her vitality, her fearlessness, her sense of humor…”