Tea-Totally Dead (9 page)

It wasn’t until after Vesta’s body had been zipped up tightly in a plastic bag and carried out the front door on a stretcher that Wayne finally stood. And when he stood, his movements were like an invalid’s, slow and tentative. I jumped up beside him and together we climbed the stairs to the bedroom area one last time. Officer Yoder and Detective Amador were in the hallway outside the guest room, whispering intently.

“Tell me what you find out,” Wayne barked, his voice rough with disuse.

Yoder’s head jerked up, startled.

“Please,” Wayne added in a softer tone.

Amador was unruffled by the request. “We’ll keep you informed,” she said with a flash of a smile. Then she turned back to Yoder.

Wayne grunted.

My eyes traveled to the door of Vesta’s bedroom. It was shut now, with a red coroner’s seal glued across the doorjamb. I felt a surge of nausea.

“Well, goodbye then,” I said quickly and took Wayne by the elbow. It seemed to take forever to get back down the stairs and across the expanse of the living room carpet.

As I pulled the front door open, I heard Harmony’s shrill voice call out from behind us.

“Thank you ever so much for comin’,” she said, her voice lilting in a mild Southern accent I had never heard on her lips before.

I looked over my shoulder. Harmony was smiling widely, her teeth gleaming. Who did that grin remind me of? Vesta, that’s who, I realized with a shiver. Harmony had Vesta’s shark smile down pat. Damn, that was spooky. I grabbed Wayne’s hand and pulled him through the doorway, out into the sunlight.

“God, Wayne,” I whispered as he shut the door behind us. “Do you think she’s really crazy?”

He shrugged without saying anything and walked toward the car. I suppressed a groan, struggling between sympathy and impatience. After spending the entire morning in silence, I was ready to talk, trauma or no trauma.

“Come on, sweetie,” I prodded, trailing after him. “We gotta—”

“Hi there!” a voice boomed from behind us.

I jumped straight up into the air and turned as I came back down. It seemed to me that I flew high enough for an Olympic pole-vaulting medal, but I might have just imagined it. I didn’t have a pole anyway.

“Name’s Paul Paulson,” announced the man with the booming voice, a chubby blond whose tan face was stretched into an all-American smile. “I’m Vesta’s next door neighbor. I’ve been wondering what all the fuss was about.” He tilted his head and stared at us enticingly out of boyish blue eyes.

Wayne turned and subjected Paul Paulson to a 100-watt Skeritt glare.

“Mrs. Caruso’s passed away,” I said quickly. “We have to get going now.”

“Oh, hey. That’s too bad,” Paulson said. He wrinkled his forehead in a frown for a moment, then smiled again. “Hey, you’re her son, aren’t you? Are you going to sell the condo?”

Wayne had the right idea. I added my glare to his. But it didn’t stop Paulson.

“Well, I always say, when the universe hands you lemons, make lemonade,” he went on. “So when you sell that condo, you might want to think about investing in land development.” He pulled a business card out of his pocket and pressed it into my hand. “You know, predeveloped land is a dynamic growth opportunity for creating wealth—”

“We really have to get going,” I said and took Wayne’s hand in mine. In tandem, we turned and strode toward the Jaguar.

“It’s been really nice talking with you folks,” Paulson called out amiably from behind us.

When we got to the car, I asked Wayne if he was up to driving. He grunted and got in the driver’s seat. I took this combination of sound and action as an affirmative.

Paulson waved heartily as the Jaguar pulled away from the curb. I didn’t wave back. Nor did Wayne.

I wanted to be sensitive to Wayne’s feelings. So I held out for three whole minutes, until we were on Highway 101 heading south, before asking him if he wanted to talk.

He grunted again and pulled into the fast lane. I took this grunt as a negative since he didn’t say anything immediately afterwards.

I settled back in my seat and tried to think of something pleasant as we whizzed down the road. Uninvited, Vesta’s lifeless body swam into my mind’s eye, twisted and sprawling, her black hair pooling on the golden rug. For a moment, I could even smell the vomit. My stomach fluttered, then clenched. What a horrible way to die. Nobody should have to die like that. My eyes burned with the effort to hold back tears.

“Harmony,” Wayne said abruptly.

“What?” I yelped, caught off guard. The impending tide of tears receded.

“Harmony made the tea,” he muttered impatiently. He pulled into the next lane to pass a Volkswagen that was creeping down the highway at the speed limit.

“And you think Harmony killed your mother?” I prompted.

He shrugged. “Harmony or someone else. Someone poisoned Mom.” His voice shimmied on the final word.

I pretended I didn’t notice the shimmy. “Are you sure she was murdered?” I asked carefully. I wasn’t sure. And I would have bet the police weren’t sure either.

He nodded emphatically. “Mom always said she had a heart problem, but she didn’t. You know that.” He turned his head for an instant and shot me a fierce glance. “No other major health problems either. Nothing that could kill her. I had the doctor check her time and time again. She was poisoned. Had to be.”

I opened my mouth to say that Vesta had certainly made plenty of people angry, then closed it again. Now that Wayne was talking, I didn’t know how to respond. This was his mother we were talking about.

Wayne didn’t seem to notice my silence. “Remember last night?” he went on. “Mom said she didn’t feel well. It was an hour or so after she drank the tea.”

I had forgotten, but now I remembered. Vesta had put her hand over her heart. She had been sweating, sweating profusely. And we had just walked out and left her there. Damn. My chest contracted, suddenly making it hard to breathe. I snuck a look at Wayne. If I felt this guilty, then how did he feel?

A rasping sound came from his throat, as if to answer my question. His face crumpled. He took a wheezing breath and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. The veins on his hands stuck out blue and ropy.

“Are you all right?” I asked. Ask a stupid question.

He nodded affirmatively as he wheezed. Get a stupid answer.

“It’s okay to cry,” I said gently, wondering an instant later if crying while driving was actually such a great idea. Especially at seventy miles an hour.

The question was moot. He didn’t cry for the rest of the trip home. Or say another word. But at least he had stopped wheezing by the time he pulled into our driveway.

He set the parking brake, took off his seat belt and pulled the key out of the ignition. Then he just sat there immobile, staring straight ahead.

“Wayne?” I prodded.

“I’m the only one who ever took care of her,” he growled. “I have to take care of her now. Have to find out what happened. Someone killed her. Can’t let that go by. Bad enough what happened at Shady Willows.” He paused. He was breathing hard again. “More than twenty years over-medicated— “

“That wasn’t your fault,” I argued impatiently.

“I should have done something!” he shouted. His words reverberated in the enclosed space of the Jaguar. I stared at him open-mouthed. Wayne never shouted.

“I…” he began again. He stopped, overcome. His sentence turned into a long, painful wheeze.

“Oh, Wayne,” I whispered, my own tears beginning to fall now.

I turned awkwardly in my seat and put my arm around his shoulders. I heard a sob and pulled him toward me.

“It’s all right,” I told him.

And then he began to cry, wheezing at first as he fought the tears back, but finally letting go. He put his arms around my neck and leaned into me as he gulped and sobbed and keened.

I don’t know how long we sat there, crying in the front seat of the Jaguar. But finally he spoke again, his deep voice still rough with emotion.

“I have to know for sure,” he said, pulling away to lean back in his seat. “I have to know who did it and why.”

“Harmony,” I proposed instantly. “She made the tea. She knew that Vesta was sick and didn’t call a doctor.” But even as I said it, I didn’t really believe Harmony was the murderer. Why would she have told us about the tea if she was guilty?

“Clara,” Wayne countered softly.

“Clara!” I yelped. “Not Clara—”

“She’s a nurse, Kate,” he argued. “Has access to drugs. Knows how much would be lethal.”

“But why would she kill Vesta?” I challenged. “And why would she want to call the police if she did?”

He shrugged his shoulders and was quiet for a moment. “Don’t know why,” he admitted finally, his tone bitter. “Guess I just don’t want it to be one of my family.”

“Do you want to talk about your family?” I asked carefully. “Motives, opportunity, all that stuff?”

“Have to, I guess,” he answered succinctly. His eyebrows lowered. “Could be any of them. Especially the older generation.” He stared out the window for a few more moments, then added one word: “Secrets.”

“Like what?” I asked eagerly.

He shrugged again. “Who knows?” he growled. His eyebrows dropped even lower. “Mom was locked up over twenty years ago. If she was killed over an old secret, it would’ve had to have been Dru, Ace or Trent.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because no one else was old enough,” he explained. “Lori was in junior high then. I was just starting college. And Gail was in grammar school.”

“Well, Vesta—your mother—sure jumped all over Dru about her first husband,” I said thoughtfully. “And she gave Trent and Ace a pretty hard time for letting her get locked up.”

“And me,” Wayne mumbled. I stole a look at his face. He was pale again and staring. I was losing him.

“Remember what your mother said about all the generations having secrets?” I added quickly, trying to divert his impending withdrawal. “That means it could be anyone. Lori or Gail for instance. Harmony’s mad at Lori for some reason. Maybe she knows something about Lori that we don’t. And Gail is weird enough to do anything, as far as I’m concerned.”

Wayne grunted.

“Then there’re the spouses,” I went on, glad for the grunt. “I can’t imagine Ingrid killing anyone. Not with all her crying. Or Bill for that matter. I can’t imagine Bill planning much of anything but getting his next drink. Still, maybe to defend someone they loved…” I let my sentence drift off tantalizingly.

Wayne didn’t even grunt. He just sat and stared out the window silently.

“Even Eric or Mandy could have done it,” I said desperately. “Look how Mandy defended her mother. And Eric—we think he’s funny, but everyone laughing at him can’t make him feel very good about himself. And Vesta made terrible fun of him.”

Wayne didn’t grunt. He didn’t blink. I wasn’t even sure if he was breathing. I might as well have been talking to myself.

“Let’s go inside,” I suggested with a sigh.

Wayne shuffled in after me without a word. I told myself that he was doing as well as could be expected. One good cry wasn’t going to be enough to erase the memory of his mother’s violent death. Or her violent life for that matter. I wondered what he was thinking. I wondered if he needed a therapist. I didn’t seem to be doing him a lot of good myself.

“Do you want to lie down, sweetie?” I asked him softly.

He jerked his head to the side and back, then sat down on the living room couch, a homemade denim-and-wood model that was probably even less comfortable than Vesta’s black leather one. He fixed his eyes ahead. At first I thought he was just staring into space again, but then I followed his gaze to the box. The great big box sitting in front of the couch, tied up in an oversized pink bow. The box that contained the mink coat Wayne had bought his mother for her birthday. Damn. Today would have been her birthday.

“Wayne?” I prompted.

He didn’t answer. I patted his hand and kissed his forehead.

“I’m here if you need me, sweetie,” I whispered and tiptoed across the entry hall to my office, where the answering machine was blinking.

The machine was far more talkative than Wayne. First, there was a message telling me I’d won an all-expense-paid trip to Las Vegas. And following that, there was an ominous message from my new accountant asking me to return her call on Monday. Then I heard a couple of hang-ups, and finally, another message from my warehousewoman, Judy. She needed to talk about her divorce. I realized guiltily that I had never answered her call from the night before.

I looked across the entry hall to the living room, where Wayne still sat unmoving.

“I’m going to phone Judy now,” I called out.

He made no objection. I sighed and punched in Judy Mulligan’s number.

“Jeez, Kate,” Judy said once she knew it was me. “You wouldn’t believe what Jerry’s done!”

“No. What?” I asked on cue.

“Well, we were going to do a friendly divorce. You know. Using one of those do-it-yourself divorce books. We don’t have any kids or any major property….”

“Uh-huh,” I said and flopped down into my comfy Naugahyde chair. I could see Wayne from here. And I was pretty sure this was going to be a long telephone call.