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

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “What?”

  “An exclusive,” he repeated more loudly. “You tell me everything, man, the whole poop. Me and nobody else, you get it? And I’ll disappear the reporters for you, zippo presto, pronto. Cool?”

  “I guess so,” I answered slowly. “But Felix, they think it was me.”

  “They won’t be so sure after a few other rumors get passed around,” he assured me.

  I didn’t even get a chance to consider the ethics of that proposal before he was wheedling again. And wheedling some more. I gave in finally. An exclusive it was.

  Then I hung up the phone and waited in the kitchen with all the blinds shut as Wayne cooked. Darkness at noon. And we listened to the mingled voices of the reporters hovering outside. High and low, loud and soft. But all intense. After a while, we heard some shouts and the sounds of a few cars being driven away. Then a few more departures a couple of minutes later. And a few more. Until all the voices had disappeared.

  Half an hour later the doorbell rang. I peeked out the window. No reporters in sight—except for Felix Byrne. He was at the front door with a big grin twitching under his mustache. Felix is not an unattractive man, at least physically. Small and slender with a luxurious mustache and soulful eyes.

  “How’d you get rid of them?” I asked, opening the door.

  “I buzzed in a hot tip to three news rags and two TV stations,” he declared in a radio announcer’s voice. “Gave them the poop that a prominent state senator was up on Mount Tam to meet the aliens that he believed visited him seven years ago. Said I got it from his deep throat assistant who couldn’t handle working for a senator anymore who thinks he’s a secret UFO diplomat.”

  I couldn’t help laughing.

  “And they bought it?” I asked incredulously.

  He nodded, shoving his way in through the doorway.

  I instinctively moved to block him, then remembered that I was the one who’d asked him here.

  “Then I switched phones and told a bunch of other media geeks that Campbell Barnhill had just confessed to the county sheriffs that he killed Sam Skyler…”

  Damn. That wasn’t fair.

  “Then I switched phones again and told a whole different bunch of the boys and girls of the press that Yvonne O’Reilley was busy confessing her little heart out down at the Quiero cop shop—”

  “Stop,” I told him, putting up my hand. I didn’t want to hear any more.

  “Hey!” Felix objected, arms outstretched. “You wanted them off your friggin’ back, right? And don’t get your hemorrhoids in a twist—I spread the rumors around plenty. Now everyone’s a suspect. With the truckload of bull puckey I threw out there, they’ll need a shovel to get through it all. And they won’t have time to be on your case. You know, you’d be deep in doo-doo without a pooper scooper—”

  “I know, I know,” I conceded. I even forced myself to thank him. I’d worry about the ethics later.

  Then Felix raced me to the kitchen to eat the lunch that Wayne had prepared. Wayne cooks when he’s nervous. That day, he’d made seitan-stuffed tomatoes, two kinds of cucumber salad, and three kinds of sandwiches on his homemade sunflower-millet bread. Avocado-tahini, marinated tofu, and pesto eggless “egg-salad.” And there was leftover carob fudge torte for dessert.

  Felix’s eyes lit up when he saw the food. If Wayne could cook, Felix could eat.

  “Speak,” Felix ordered and dug in.

  I spoke. I told Felix what I could remember. In bits and pieces. But I kept my own suspicions to myself. Especially of Diana. Wayne even threw in a word here and there so I could take a few bites in between questions. The pesto-eggless was delicious, even if the dining circumstances were less than desirable.

  After Felix’s third sandwich, I asked the question I’d been wanting to ask. And not wanting to ask.

  “Are the police sure it was murder?”

  He smiled widely.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he asked and tilted his head coquettishly.

  Wayne rose from the table.

  “Hey, everything’s cool, big guy,” Felix backtracked. “Great food.”

  “Well?” I demanded.

  “Yeah,” Felix said, his voice low with lust. He leaned forward as Wayne sat back down. “Nine times out of ten they wouldn’t have a clue, but this time…”

  He paused for suspense.

  Wayne stood up again.

  Felix came back up to speed.

  “See,” he told us, “usually when some geek dives off a cliff like that you can’t tell what the hell happened ‘cause they’re all bruised up. But there was this really weird thing, I mean really weird, you know.”

  He stopped to grab another sandwich.

  “What?” I prompted as calmly as I could. My heart was pumping hard now.

  “First of all, don’t tell a friggin’ soul, ‘cause my source told me, but no one but the cops are supposed to know. She made me promise not to go public until she gives me the word.”

  “All right, I promise I won’t tell anyone,” I agreed impatiently as he bit into his fourth sandwich.

  “Well,” he mumbled through the avocado-tahini. “All the bruising from the rocks is cool, you know, regular stuff, but there were these really bizarre patches of bruising on the shoulder blades. Even that salami-brain Woolsey could tell they’d been made by a man-made object, not the friggin’ rocks. And get this, they were in the shape of five-sided stars—”

  “Like the bottoms of Yvonne’s vases,” I breathed.

  “Yeah,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “You saw them, right?”

  “Great big tall brass vases with brass stars for bottoms,” I confirmed.

  “Well, they found the friggin’ brass vases too, not far from the stiff.”

  My mind was trying to picture it now. Had the murderer pushed Sam Skyler over with those vases? Maybe grabbed them where they curved in at the top and then slammed his shoulders with the star-shaped bases? That would do it, the way Sam’s top-heavy body was leaning. But why? Why not use your bare hands? Fear of fingerprints? Fear of hand prints? Goose bumps rose on my arms as if I were back there on that cold, windy bluff.

  “The murderer blew it, man,” Felix went on. “If the looney tunes had just pushed with his hands, the cops probably still wouldn’t know it was murder, but with the imprints of the vases, it’s as sure as dentists suck.” He shook his head. “Friggin’ vampires.”

  I had a feeling Felix had been to the dentist lately or not much of the last part made sense. Not that much of any of it made sense.

  “And then there’s these oily hand prints,” he went on. “On the back of the poor geek’s jacket—”

  “Skyler’s, you mean?” I asked. I was getting lost again.

  “Yeah, good old guru Sam Skyler. Guru on the rocks. It was some kind of massage oil. They’re having it chemically identified now. Technical whiz-bang, you know. Presto, pronto, and they come up with a brand name.”

  “But that means two sets of imprints then,” I reasoned slowly. “The vases and the oily hand prints—”

  “The cops don’t have a clue, either,” Felix interrupted cheerfully. “Skyler left a will splitting his estate three ways. His tantric sweetie, Diana, gets a chunk. And his nerdy son, Nathan. And his mother, this hot old lady, you wouldn’t believe her.”

  “So, theoretically,” Wayne put in, “the police have motives for two of the people who were actually present.” His frown told me he wished Diana wasn’t one of them.

  “Yeah,” said Felix. Then he bent forward again. “And 1 bet plenty of other people had motives too.”

  I took my cue. Felix would know everything soon enough anyway. I told him about Campbell shaking his fist and Ona’s dispute with Skyler and everything else I could come up with. And then we just sat there eating and talking theories, connections, and personalities until C.C. came in, yowling for food.

  I was scooping out cat food when I suddenly stopped to ask myself how come Felix knew so much and hadn’
t bugged me before.

  “Why weren’t you out there with the rest of the media pack?” I demanded.

  He grinned so widely his face seemed to disappear behind his mustache.

  “Now, what good would that have done?” he asked rhetorically. “You wouldn’t have talked to me. You never talk to me, your old pal, your compadre. Leave me out in the friggin’ fraggin’ cold every single friggin’ time. But now I have an exclusive.” Then he leaned back in his seat and laughed.

  Had we been had? I looked over at Wayne. His eyebrows were descending fast. Had Felix sicced the media on us in the first place just so he would look like the lesser of two evils?

  Is the Dalai Lama a Buddhist?

  Wayne stood up and stepped around the table.

  Felix stopped laughing and sat up straight in his chair.

  “You’re the one who sent the media here in the first place,” Wayne accused, glaring down at Felix.

  “Well…” I could see the war on Felix’s face. Part of him wanted to tell us how cleverly he’d worked us. But the other part was afraid. I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t want Wayne towering over me with that look on his battered face. I just wished I could pull off the same towering stance myself.

  “You’re leaving now,” Wayne growled and hoisted Felix up by one arm much more gently than I would have. But very effectively. He guided Felix to the door, Felix objecting and wheedling the whole way, and then slammed it behind him.

  We waited until we heard the final footsteps down the front stairs, and then Wayne turned to me. I flinched and waited for him to say “I told you so” about Felix. Not that I needed any more blame. I was already kicking myself. My gut had sprung a whole set of miniature flailing feet. But Wayne didn’t say another word about Felix.

  All he said was, “Time to talk to Ray Zappa.”

  The Quiero police had just stepped from Ray Zappa’s doorway and were heading down the tanbark path when we got to Ray’s condo in Sneath Hills. Chief Woolsey gave us a curt nod but said nothing as we passed and Wayne knocked on the door.

  “Wondered if I could speak with you,” Wayne asked when Ray opened up, his voice low and serious. Man to man. My skin prickled. Damn, I hated all this man-to-man stuff. It was like I wasn’t even there. But I kept my mouth shut, because it seemed to be working.

  Ray nodded and opened the door wider. Still, his reluctance was clearly evident in the stiffness of his shoulders and the frown on his long, handsome face.

  His living room was surprisingly neat and orderly with a blinking computer on a desk next to a neat stack of papers and a couple of bookshelves filled mostly with true-crime books. Ray and Felix. Two of a kind. Ugh.

  We sat down on a worn leather couch across from Ray, and Wayne started in.

  “Sam Skyler—”

  “Police business,” Ray interrupted instantly. “I don’t talk about police business. You gotta understand something here, buddy. I was a real wild kid. Then I joined the Marines. There’s a code, you see. Same with the police. Anyway, the Skyler case isn’t even in my jurisdiction.”

  “I understand,” Wayne replied quietly. “But I’m concerned about Kate. How would you feel if the police suspected Tessa?” More man to man. Would it work?

  Ray bared his teeth in a shadow of his usual good ole boy smile when Wayne mentioned Tessa.

  “Tessa’s a great lady, isn’t she?” he said. He pulled a pencil out of his shirt pocket protector and started chewing on it. Then he frowned again.

  “I’m with the Sneath Police Department now. Desk job. Got less than a year till retirement. You understand?”

  Wayne nodded, but I could see his mouth opening for one more try.

  The doorbell rang before he could make it.

  Ray answered the ring, opening the door about six inches. I couldn’t see who was there, but I could hear.

  “Hey, howdy-hi,” came the all too familiar voice. “Saw a couple of my pals come in—”

  “Is this little weasel of a reporter a friend of yours?” Ray asked, turning to Wayne and me.

  “No,” came our two voices as one.

  “Not today, anyway,” I added more fairly. Felix was Barbara’s sweetie, after all. Unfortunately.

  “Sorry,” Wayne said, rising from his seat with a sigh. “I’ll take care of him.”

  And then I followed Wayne out, where he escorted Felix away from Ray Zappa’s doorway and down the tanbark path toward the curb where our cars were parked. That was it for our interview with our one possible police contact. So much for the man-to-man approach.

  “Hey!” Felix was objecting. “I’m walking, I’m walking. Holy moly, you don’t have to be so twitchy, guy. I was just—”

  And then we heard the sound of cars driving up. And saw a white truck with the Channel 7 News logo. Reporters came scrambling out of their various vehicles. A recurring nightmare under construction.

  Was this more of Felix’s work? I turned to look at his grinning face just as Wayne released him. Wayne and I shuffled down the path quickly, passing some of the same people who’d surrounded our house, our faces turned away. But they didn’t even notice us, they were so intent on reaching Ray Zappa’s condo.

  “Corruption in the police department…” I heard.

  “Cops take care of their own…”

  “Whaddaya know about this Zappa guy?”

  And Felix was nowhere to be seen.

  By the time we made it to my Toyota, I felt like we’d run a marathon. It wasn’t about us this time, but it could have been. At least that’s what my pulse seemed to believe.

  “Do you think Ray will be all right?” I asked Wayne as I got out my keys.

  But before he could answer me, a whole new fleet of cars drove up. And the people who got out weren’t reporters. I could tell by the puppets on their fingers.

  They grouped together at the foot of the tanbark path. Ten or fifteen of them, male and female.

  “Grief into growth!” a man yelled, sticking out the puppet on his ring finger in a Nazi-like salute.

  “Grief into growth,” more voices chanted in unison.

  “Denial into determination…”

  And then they began marching up the path en masse, puppets extended.

  I unlocked the Toyota as quickly as I could with shaking hands. And then we were out of there.

  Wayne and I were halfway home before either of us said a word. My mind was still trying to detoxify from the media, Felix, and the puppeteers. The puppeteers had to be from the Institute for Essential Manifestation. And they weren’t cute. They were spooky.

  “Think he’s really just worried about his retirement?” Wayne finally muttered.

  It took my brain a moment to find the right box. Not the Institute. Not the puppets. Ray Zappa.

  “Or himself?” I suggested. “If anyone could carry off a successful murder it would be a policeman.”

  “But then why use the vases?”

  I pondered that one as I took the curves from the highway toward home.

  “Maybe he’s protecting Tessa?” Wayne offered as I pulled into the driveway.

  I mulled that one over as we walked up the stairs. Neither of us noticed what was pinned to our door until we were on the deck, not a yard away.

  We both came to a halt in the same instant and stared.

  There was a long hollow metal tube pinned to the wood, right where a door knocker would’ve been if we’d had one.

  The thing had to be close to two feet long. And the big fluffy red Christmas bow wrapped around it was almost as wide as the metal tube was long. Worst of all, the tube seemed to be dripping blood from the sharp point at its bottom. Slowly dripping blood down the door, onto our doorstep.

  “What the hell is that?” I whispered, totally absorbed by the sight.

  “It’s a mortician’s trocar,” a voice from behind me answered.

  I whirled around, raising my arms defensively, and then looked into the eyes of Chief Woolsey of the Quiero Police Department
.

  - Seven -

  A trocar’s the tube that morticians use to drain the blood from a body,” Chief Woolsey went on as I slowly lowered my arms. And seemed to feel all the blood drain from my own body.

  I kept my eyes on Woolsey’s lean face as he kept talking. At least I wasn’t looking at that thing pinned to our door.

  “Dead bodies, that is,” he said, throwing back his forearms as if in explanation. Officer Fox, standing a few inches behind him, ducked a forearm. “Part of the embalming process. Not as ecological as some other choices, but commonly used.”

  Morticians? Embalming? Did this have something to do with Tessa? I wanted to turn and ask Wayne. But if I turned, I might see the trocar again. I reached out with my hand instead and felt his reassuring grip.

  “Is that…is that real blood?” I asked Woolsey.

  “You tell me, Ms. Jasper,” he shot back, his voice louder now, hostile. He thrust his face toward mine and I noticed the little diamond stud he wore in his left earlobe. Was Chief Woolsey an ex-hippie? Or did the left side mean he was gay? Then I shook my head to clear it. What was he saying now? “The trocar’s pinned to your door, Ms. Jasper. Your door.”

  “Well, I didn’t put it there,” I snapped. “Do you think it’s my idea of a Christmas decoration or something? I—”

  “It isn’t anywhere near Christmas, Ms. Jasper,” the chief informed me.

  Damn. Chief Woolsey was not only hostile, he was humor-impaired. Not that there was really anything funny happening here. My stomach could tell you that. It wasn’t feeling amused at all, just sick.

  “Neither Ms. Jasper nor I have anything to do with pinning that thing to our door,” Wayne stated absolutely.

  Chief Woolsey shifted his glare in Wayne’s direction.

  “Do any of your friends have very strange senses of humor?” Woolsey demanded.

  Most of them, my mind responded. But I kept my mouth shut. No one, not even Felix, was the type to pull a practical joke this weird.

  “None of our friends or acquaintances pinned a trocar to our door,” Wayne answered clearly, his low voice sounding calmer than I was sure he was feeling. “Don’t you think it’s more likely to be related to the Skyler murder?”