A Cry for Self-Help (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “Gary asked me to look into it, and I will,” he told me unequivocally.

  I rolled over and turned my back on the man I was supposed to marry, the hint of tears pressing against my eyes. This hadn’t been the way I’d planned to start the day. But lovemaking wasn’t looking like a very good possibility. Unless I gave in, told him he was right. But damn it, he wasn’t right. Maybe he’d told Gary he’d investigate, but Diana was behind the idea. Lovely, manipulative Diana.

  By the time Wayne and I were in Wayne’s Jaguar on the way to Yvonne’s place in Golden Valley, we had exchanged all of ten words. Ten short words. “Yes.” “No.” “Oatmeal?” “Ready?” That kind of thing. In the perfect mood for the next stage of our Wedding Ritual class. Wondrously, sumptuously sullen.

  Even at that, riding up Yvonne’s driveway managed to make me smile. Yvonne O’Reilley was an heiress. And oddly enough, a good businesswoman. Besides her wedding seminar business, she owned a company that wholesaled frozen vegetarian meals, and was part-owner of a computer astrology venture that was like going gangbusters. And those were just the businesses I’d heard about. She got the ideas, then delegated the parts that weren’t fun. And made money.

  If only my gag-gift business would work that way. But of course, it didn’t. If anyone was doing the fun parts, it was probably my warehousewomen. And they always got paid, even during the lean times, unlike myself. I closed my eyes for a moment, thinking of all the Jest Gifts paperwork waiting on my desk while I was gallivanting around at a wedding seminar that felt pretty useless so far. Not to mention dangerous.

  But when I opened my eyes again, I remembered why I’d smiled. It was the sight of Yvonne’s cow rubbing up against a six-foot wooden statue of some goddess or other that stood on the other side of the chainlink fence. The goddess looked Hindu. The cow looked ecstatic.

  Yvonne’s house was big and redwood and well-baubled. Chimes hung everywhere, singing their discordant notes next to billowing windsocks. Live animals roamed the enclosed yard, alongside stone Buddhas and marble dolphins and wooden owls. Everything from quail and chickens to potbellied pigs and horses. And more. I even spotted a llama munching herbs around the corner of the house.

  We opened the chainlink gate, drove in, and closed it behind us quickly. You never knew what might escape from Yvonne’s yard, cosmically or otherwise.

  The door was open when we got there. And the whole gang was in Yvonne’s front room, mixed in among a collection of kitsch and Oriental gewgaws that could have filled Cost Plus Imports, prominent against the metallic madras wallpaper that only Yvonne O’Reilley could have found. Or lived with. Yvonne waved from where she sat on her rattan throne as we closed the tinkling door behind us.

  At least all the couples seemed to be together. I wondered who Yvonne had meant the night before when she’d mentioned that she couldn’t say that all the couples loved each other. Maybe Wayne and me, I thought with a sigh and looked around, nodding at those who’d acknowledged our entrance.

  Ona and Perry shared a white wicker love seat loaded with velvet cushions. Emma and Campbell were seated on neon purple molded plastic. And Nathan and Martina were curled up on a pair of tiger-stripe pillows on the floor. But Tessa Johnson and Ray Zappa were standing.

  The first thing I noticed after the initial shock of entering a room vibrating with every color of the rainbow was that Ray Zappa wasn’t smiling his affable, good-ole-boy smile. He was glaring. Almost as well as Wayne could. I followed the direction of his glare. Ona Quimby.

  “Everyone knows he was an s.o.b.,” she was insisting. “So what’s the big deal? The guy killed his former wife—”

  A soft voice interrupted her.

  “You’re talking about my father,” Nathan said. It was hard to see if there was any anger behind the glasses and the facial hair. But there was something there, a tremor in that mild voice.

  Ona opened her mouth to object, but closed it again. For a moment her pretty, round baby face looked chastened, but I had a feeling the expression wouldn’t last long. It didn’t.

  “Look, Nathan, no offense—” she began again.

  The door chimes rang, cutting her off.

  Yvonne made her way to the door and opened it, smiling all the way. Was the world wondrous as usual for her?

  Diana, Gary, and Liz Atherton walked in, their familial resemblance accentuated by their identical grim expressions.

  But even then, Yvonne’s smile didn’t fade.

  It was a moment before Diana spoke, but her question was worth the wait.

  “Which one of you killed Sam?” she asked.

  - Five -

  There was an infinitely long silence after Diana’s question. At least it felt infinite, tempered only by the sounds of Yvonne’s discordant wind chimes and the various mooings and cacklings and other animal noises from outside. But the humans inside didn’t moo or cackle. They just stared silently at Diana and her assembled family, faces slack and as still as if someone had pressed the freeze-frame button on a VCR. Even Yvonne had stopped smiling, her eyes widened in an expression that might have been sympathy. Or maybe just shock. Or guilt? With Yvonne, it was impossible to tell.

  And then Yvonne’s smile was back. She ushered the Athertons into her front room, flinging out an arm that tinkled all the bells on her many bracelets.

  “Come on in and take a seat,” she invited cheerfully. “Share your ideas.”

  Diana, Gary, and Liz came in, but they didn’t sit down. Or share their ideas, for that matter. Gary stood, arms clasped behind his back, staring up at the ceiling. Was he as embarrassed by this whole scene as I suspected? I glanced over at Wayne, hoping he would notice Gary’s discomfort. (Not to mention noticing that I was right concerning Gary’s real feelings about investigating Sam Skyler’s murder.) But Wayne’s low-browed expression didn’t give any more away than Yvonne’s open-eyed one had. Liz Atherton’s gaze was directed forward, but she didn’t seem to see the people in front of her. Her eyes were unfocused as she rubbed her temple absently. Only Diana was really looking, peering into each of the seminar member’s faces as if she could read her answer there.

  “Did one of you kill Sam?” she asked, her words a little gentler this time, in content and in tone. So gentle, in fact, they were almost a plea.

  And then it was as if the VCR button was pressed again, releasing the freeze-frame control. Slack mouths closed. Postures shifted. Ona was the first to speak.

  “Honey,” she said with a softness I hadn’t heard before in her voice. “You know no one’s going to answer that question. Especially since Sam Skyler was probably a murderer himself—”

  “Sam Skyler had his trial and was found not guilty,” Ray Zappa interrupted, glaring once again in Ona’s direction.

  You could almost see Ona’s fur stand up. Once more she reminded me of a Persian cat, pink and blond and round. With claws.

  Ray turned to Diana. “Listen, Ms. Atherton, the Quiero Police Department will investigate. No matter what their opinion of Sam Skyler. They are investigating. In fact, right now—”

  “The Quiero Police Department!” Ona objected. She threw a hand in the air. “How good is the Quiero Police Department going to be? Has anyone ever been murdered in Quiero before? Besides sea gulls? Listen, I’ll be blunt, Diana. I know that you’ll miss Sam. I know that you cared for him. But he wasn’t a good man. He was a cruel and abusive man—”

  “My father was not cruel,” Nathan Skyler cut in, gentleness absent from his tone for once. He got up from where he’d been sitting on the tiger-stripe pillow and shuffled his way to Diana’s side, his large shoulders stooped as usual. “And he was not abusive,” he finished up, though the gentleness was creeping back into his voice. Maybe the habit was too ingrained to control.

  “Oh, Nathan,” Ona sighed. She shook her head. “He was your father, so of course you feel you have to defend him. But you don’t have to. It’s useless. He was put on trial for killing his first wife. And all the cops knew he’d a
bused her, too. But that doesn’t reflect on you. You’re a good guy. You know I don’t bullshit, and I can tell you you’re nothing like your father. He just wasn’t a good man. Look what he did to his first wife.”

  “Sally Skyler wasn’t Dad’s first wife,” Nathan corrected her mildly. I looked into his face for signs of anger, but again the facade of facial hair and glasses was impenetrable. How he kept from screaming at Ona was beyond me. Maybe the Skyler Institute did teach some skills after all. “My mother was his first wife.”

  “It doesn’t matter which wife,” Ona plowed on, undeterred. I felt like pointing out it might matter to Nathan which woman had been killed, seeing as one was his mother, but I clearly didn’t stand a chance of getting a word in. Ona was talking faster and faster, shaking her finger at Nathan now like a schoolteacher who’s disappointed in her student. “I had a boyfriend who was working as a bailiff then, and even he knew Skyler killed his wife. Everyone in the legal community did. And that he abused her—”

  “Dad didn’t really abuse her,” Nathan finally broke in, his tone soft but insistent. “Not in the classic sense. He only fought back. They had a very hard time finding a common ground, those two. And she would lash out physically. And sometimes he’d hit her back. So the doctors had two reports on her, a black eye and a split lip. Two.” He stuck up two fingers to underscore his point. “But you should have seen Dad. He was completely beaten up. He was just too embarrassed to tell the doctor who did it. He went to the hospital both those times, claiming he’d been mugged.”

  He turned and looked at Diana. “He wasn’t a bad man. Maybe not perfect, but not bad.”

  Liz turned her head away from Diana and Nathan, her skin reddening as her daughter nodded energetically. I remembered that Liz had disliked Sam too. I wondered if Nathan’s words had changed her mind at all.

  “At least he doesn’t sound as bad as Dad,” Gary Atherton threw in unexpectedly.

  Liz swiveled around and looked at her son thoughtfully. I’d never considered Gary and Diana’s father. Somewhere, a memory surfaced of his dying young. That’s right, I remembered. Tessa Johnson had buried him. Liz had said so at the scuba wedding. I snuck a look at Tessa’s immobile mocha-brown features. Her expression was extremely somber as she watched Nathan talking. But was that unusually somber or just normally somber for a mortician?

  “And my father really did feel grief when Sally died,” Nathan went on in a near whisper. “Natural, deep grief. His book, Grief into Growth, came from his heart. From deep in his heart. He had to see a grief counselor. He was a wreck. But he found a way to channel that grief—”

  “And a way to make a lot of money with his seminars,” Ona cut in, still not satisfied. Maybe Persian cat was the wrong description, I decided. Bulldog was more like it. She wasn’t about to stop shaking Sam Skyler’s dead image by the neck any time soon, that was for sure.

  “And he hurt some people with those seminars,” Perry Kane added from Ona’s side. His dark, soulful East Indian eyes looked into Nathan’s spectacled ones. “He should have been compassionate, encouraging Ona as a proud person of size. But instead he tore her down, tried to make her change her essential nature.”

  He put his arm around Ona’s soft shoulders. Ona leaned into him. Was the size issue really the hurt that had made her so angry? If so, I’d have bet she would never admit it. Or maybe she would. By her own appraisal, she was no bullshitter.

  “Calling me fat was one thing,” Ona said. “And it hurt like hell after all the work I’d done on accepting my size. But that isn’t the point here. The man was a murderer. Insensitivity is one thing, but murder is another.”

  Nathan just shook his shaggy head and sighed. But Martina Monteil didn’t give up that easily. She stood up to her full, almost six-foot height, and looked down at Ona, plucked eyebrows raised, model’s face grim.

  “If you repeat that lie one more time, I assure you we will sue you for slander,” she said in a voice of authority that made me believe her without a doubt.

  “But—” Ona began.

  “Sam Skyler was a brilliantly empowered man who made a monumental difference in the world. His book and the Institute have changed more people’s lives than you can count. And we will find a way to stop you if you continue to spread these ugly lies about this great man.”

  “But Sam’s dead,” Ona said, her brows furrowed, probably trying to remember what she knew about slander. Fast. Could dead people be slandered?

  “The Institute isn’t dead,” Martina replied.

  But could the Institute sue for slander?

  I would have asked, but I was too uneasy watching the two women as they scowled at each other. Or maybe “scowled” wasn’t a strong enough word. There are scowls and there are scowls. These scowls made my scalp prickle, the way it does at the movies when I know there’s a man in a ski mask standing behind the door with a hatchet. I turned my head away, remembering why I avoided those kinds of movies.

  “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m famished,” Yvonne cut in brightly. “And I have heaps and heaps of yummy food in the kitchen—”

  But the sound of Diana’s sniffles interrupted her attempt at good cheer.

  “I just wanna know what happened to Sam,” Diana whimpered in between escalating sobs. Gary, Liz, and Nathan all moved closer protectively, corralling her in their efforts. Liz put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders.

  “The man just fell,” Emma Jett declared brusquely, though there was a hint of kindness beneath the gruffness. She thrust her sharp chin forward, exposing the side of her face that had been draped in red hair. Brass glinted in her ears and nostrils. “Give yourself a break. Don’t worry about all this murder crap. Experience it and get over it. Get on with the next part of your life. Don’t you think that’s what Sam would have wanted?” Those words sounded pretty wise compared to what had been said so far. And from the youngest member of the group. Campbell thought so too, apparently.

  “It’ll take time, but you’ll get over it,” he assured Diana, the soothing, musical rhythm of his voice always surprising coming from such a visually unprepossessing man. He stroked his ginger beard lightly. “The thing is not to obsess. Time really does heal.” Did he speak from experience? Or from something he’d read? Reader’s Digest?

  “The police will clear it up,” Ray Zappa threw in one more time. His face was grim. But not so grim as Tessa’s next to him. “Let them take care of it.”

  Diana shook her teary face. “I have to know,” she insisted through her sobs. She stood straighter and cleared her throat. “Please, if anyone knows anything, anything at all. Or saw something. Or whatever. Call me.”

  “Of course,” Yvonne said. Of course? What if you were the murderer?

  “And,” Diana added, “Wayne and Kate will be helping me too, so please tell them what you know when they ask.” A sob filled her voice. “Please,” she finished and began crying full force once more.

  I was still trying to think of a way to erase Diana’s last words from everyone’s minds, especially my own, when she turned abruptly and headed toward the door, her back as straight as the columns in the ledgers I was avoiding working on today. Gary and Liz followed her just as abruptly. Even Nathan shambled behind the group, only seeming to remember he wasn’t one of the Atherton family when he got to the door. Then he stopped, sighed and closed the door behind them, before turning back to face the rest of us.

  “Lunch, everyone?” Yvonne suggested.

  No one clapped their hands in appreciation, but at least no one objected. Or started arguing before Yvonne brought out the platters of vegan delicacies. The group was uncharacteristically silent as they dished up the goodies.

  As a vegetarian, I probably appreciated the meal even more than most of the others. But even the nonvegetarians were impressed with the garlicky steamed artichokes, the colorful grilled Indonesian vegetables spread out on a star-shaped cut glass platter, the iridescent bowls of Mandarin tofu noodle sal
ad, and the varied homemade breads and spreads that our seminar leader had produced. No wonder her food company was doing so well.

  “The perfect wedding must have all the elements of the perfect meal,” Yvonne began as we finished off the cranberry linzer tart that had been the grand finale. (Nondairy “ice cream” optional.) Even Ona and Martina were smiling as they dug into the dessert. “Sumptuous, balanced, and simple, but magically extravagant—”

  “With or without tofu?” Ray Zappa asked, his good humor apparently restored.

  “With tofu, of course,” Yvonne replied, her laughter like the tinkle of her high-pitched chimes. “And most of all, with love.”

  I looked into Wayne’s face then and saw a little of that love there in his vulnerable eyes. He reached over and put his hand on mine as I licked the last of the cranberry tart from my lips. Maybe it would work, I told myself. But only if our wedding could be anywhere as good as this food.

  “What are your common visions?” Yvonne demanded, standing and spreading her arms, jingling the bells on her bracelets.

  Immediately my mind produced a picture of Wayne and me dressed as artichokes, Wayne slipping the ring onto my garlicky outstretched leaf. And then Yvonne was talking again.

  “What gets you both cosmically charged?” she caroled. “What is it that brought you together?”

  I wished she hadn’t asked the last question. Because it was murder that had brought Wayne and me together. Murder, pure and simple, but not magically extravagant. And as the seminar members watched videos of a nudist wedding (with artfully placed flowers), a renaissance horseback wedding (gorgeous but uncomfortable-looking), a clown wedding (even more uncomfortable with all the guests in clown suits, too), and an aikido wedding (the bride and groom sparring to the mat then rising and bowing), all I could think of was Sam Skyler. And his cosmically charged body splayed on the rocks below.

  *

  “Look, everything’s all right,” I was saying into the phone in my dining room-cum-office the next Monday morning. “Just send the psychotherapist Uh-huh scarves and Uh-huh ties in separate boxes.” I was talking to my warehousewoman, whose name used to be Judy but who didn’t want to be Judy anymore. Not that she was sure what her new name should be. Just that Judy wasn’t the “real her.” I was tempted to call her “hey you” for the time being but resisted.