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

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “How about opportunity?” I asked next. “Did anyone have better opportunity than anyone else?”

  “Yvonne,” he answered immediately. “She arranged the event. She knew the territory.”

  “And Nathan,” I added. “He probably knew his father’s habits better than anyone else.”

  “Same for Diana,” Wayne put in quietly.

  “All right, we’re up to motive,” I said, careful not to allow the renewed relief into my voice. Wayne not only knew Diana was a suspect. He knew she was a prime suspect. Wayne still had his reason. Beyond a reasonable doubt.

  “Nathan and Diana,” Wayne proposed. All right! One hundred percent beyond a reasonable doubt. “They both inherit.”

  “And they might be in love,” I contributed.

  “Yeah,” he muttered unhappily. I patted his thigh in sympathy. I wouldn’t want the murderer to be my favorite employee’s sister either. Whether she was a gorgeous tantric yoga instructor or not.

  “Ona was angry,” I added quickly.

  “So was Campbell,” Wayne said, seeing my suspect and raising me one.

  “Liz might have wanted to protect Diana from Sam,” I put into the pot.

  “And Perry might have wanted to protect Ona.”

  “Now this is where it gets complicated,” Wayne murmured as he pulled into our driveway, popping gravel. “Because all eleven of our probable suspects might have known Sam in other circumstances. Might have had motives we have no idea of.”

  “Like Sam and Yvonne had an affair thirty years ago and Emma is their illegitimate daughter,” I suggested lightly, climbing out of my side of the car.

  “Or Yvonne and Sam were married before Nathan’s mother married Sam and Martina Monteil is a possible heir to the Skyler empire,” Wayne proposed, jumping into the game as he stepped from his side of the car.

  “Or—”

  We heard them before we saw them.

  “Grief into growth!” a score of voices chanted.

  Wayne and I looked up onto our front deck simultaneously. And the chant became louder.

  “Grief Into Growth!”

  And angrier.

  “GRIEF INTO GROWTH!”

  The men and women on the deck waved their hands under the porch lights. Shadow and light battled discordantly as the chants became louder. At this distance, the people looked like monsters, their fingers deformed. Though reason told me we were just seeing the shapes of the puppets they wore.

  But that didn’t make their appearance any less scary.

  Because they were on our deck, blocking our way.

  “Anger into achievement!” someone shouted.

  And the shout became a roar.

  “ANGER INTO ACHIEVEMENT!”

  And suddenly, the group on the deck looked less like people and more like a village mob. A village mob ready for a lynching.

  - Ten -

  I cast my eyes in Wayne’s direction as my heart began to thump in time with the chants of the mob on our deck.

  “Control into cooperation!” they screamed over and over again, their deformed fingers still flying in the dim porch light, creating a poorly coordinated shadow play.

  Wayne returned my look as one of the puppeteers took a step down the deck stairs. I caught a glimpse of fear in his eyes. Or thought I did. Was it just my own fear winking back at me?

  “Denial into determination!” The new chant was repeated.

  Maybe we could just spend the night in a hotel. It wouldn’t be running away, exactly, I told myself. I just didn’t want any more visitors. Ever.

  “Wayne, let’s just leave—” I began.

  “Higher self into living grace!” The voices were getting closer.

  I turned and saw the lead puppeteer not a yard away.

  “Let’s go!” I shouted, turning to dash back toward the Jaguar. But I was too late. Wayne took a fighter’s stance as the mob surrounded us. Even if I were to make it inside the car, Wayne wouldn’t be in there with me.

  I took a deep breath and centered myself. Were we actually in physical danger?

  “ANGER INTO ACHIEVEMENT!” they roared. And suddenly I didn’t even care about physical danger. I just wanted to be in the house, away from these people.

  I considered pushing the closest puppeteer away. I knew I could do it. Sweep the one man away with one turn. But I didn’t want to arouse the rest. This was no random sprinkling of reporters. These people were all one beast.

  “What is it you want from us?” I asked instead, my tone as loud and as deep as I could make it—compensating for the tiny, shrill whine in my head. Whining to get away. Whining to run.

  For a moment, there was silence. Then a single voice took up the chanting again.

  “Grief into growth!”

  But not as many voices joined in the second round.

  “What do you want?” I asked again.

  “The killer of Sam Skyler,” a voice broke out from the chants.

  “We don’t know who the killer is,” I told that voice as calmly as possible.

  The group began to splinter into individuals. Some kept chanting, but some wanted to talk. Some were human.

  “My name is Jeffrey Hitchin,” said one of the puppeteers, introducing himself. In the dark I could see he was a tall, gaunt man with wild, curly hair. He extended his hand to shake, then seemed to remember the puppets stuck on his fingers and withdrew it. “People say you know who killed our leader.”

  “What people?” I asked, telling my body to relax. This man was a person, not just a piece of a mob.

  It was the wrong response.

  “Who cares who told us?” demanded a woman, looming up in the darkness in a voluminous flowing jacket, puppets peeking out the long sleeves. “If it’s true.”

  “It isn’t true,” Wayne declared, his voice deep and loud.

  “We don’t know who the murderer is. You’ve been deliberately misled.”

  There was a blessed silence then. Were they actually considering his words?

  “Grief into growth!” someone started up again.

  “Oh, cool it, Simon,” someone else said.

  “Who do you think killed Sam Skyler?” Wayne asked quickly.

  Upraised hands dropped as shoulders shrugged.

  “Were there any threats made at the Institute?” I chimed in.

  “Don’t think so” seemed to be the general consensus. Not very helpful, but now they were answering our questions. At least most of them were.

  “Who told you we knew who did it?” I asked again.

  “Um,” said the woman with the flowing jacket, far less confident in her tone now. “I took a phone call at the Institute. Someone called asking to talk to a student, and I was closest.”

  “Did the person give you their name?” I asked.

  “Nooo…” she answered thoughtfully. “Actually, they hardly talked. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t even tell if the voice was male or female.”

  So much for that.

  After ten more minutes of admissions of ignorance on their-side, and denials on ours, the puppeteers departed, waving their finger puppets at us over their shoulders as they walked to their cars parked across the street. I smiled for a moment. They looked like overgrown children, discouraged, overgrown children going home after a field trip. But then I wondered if they had parked across the street on purpose, to hide their presence until we showed up. So they could terrify us all the more effectively from the deck. And suddenly they didn’t look like children anymore. I shivered now. Now that they were just people again, not a raging mob.

  I felt Wayne’s arm around my shoulder.

  “Handled that well, Kate,” he murmured. “I was ready to fight. Would have been stupid.”

  I turned to him, astounded by his praise, only remembering how much I’d wanted to run.

  “You were the one who turned the questions around,” I reminded him.

  “We’re a good team,” he compromised and we made our way up the stairs toget
her.

  I felt very old, very fragile, as Wayne opened the front door and we shambled over to the denim couch to sit down quietly, side by side. Alone at last. No puppeteers. No murder suspects. No cops. No one but us.

  Except for the blinking light on the answering machine.

  Like a well-trained lab rat, I ignored the weakness in my legs and dragged myself over to the machine to let the message tape run.

  “Hi, this is Judy,” the Jest Gifts’ warehousewoman’s tinny voice greeted me cheerfully. “No, no, not Judy anymore. Whaddaya think of Blossom for my new name? Too yin, maybe? I thought of Adara. Whaddaya think? Too yang? Maybe Dara-Blossom. Anyway, you know the cat-carrier earrings for the veterinarians, well, there’s something wrong with them…”

  Ten minutes later when the tape finally ran out, I took one guilty look at the stacks of paperwork on my desk and went back to sit on the couch with Wayne. My mind still couldn’t seem to focus clearly. C.C. came slinking in and leapt into my lap effortlessly, snuggling up next to my unsettled belly. Without complaining. Had she been as frightened as we had?

  “Wayne?” I whispered. “You know what you said earlier about us being a good team?”

  He turned to me slowly. I looked under his brows and saw that his eyes were no more focused than my mind was.

  “Did you mean it?”

  He nodded absently and stroked the side of my face with his big hand, gently pushing my hair back. C.C. purred.

  “You and me on this Skyler thing, together,” I pressed, resisting my own urge to purr.

  He removed his hand and thought awhile.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “It’s not just Diana anymore anyway. Tessa was right. Sam Skyler deserves no more and no less than any other person.”

  We sealed it with a kiss. A very long kiss, in space as well as time. One that left us both feeling much better a half hour later, woven into a single entity in each other’s arms.

  *

  By Tuesday morning, the previous night’s events seemed like a dream. Or a nightmare, depending on which piece of tape I ran through the reel in my mind.

  Wayne had called Ona early and arranged to meet her and Perry for lunch. Then he’d run off to La Fête à L’Oie to take care of some things, with a promise to return in time to keep our appointment. I’d been alone for four hours with the reams of Jest Gifts paperwork. And C.C. The towering stacks seemed sinister that morning, almost as sinister as the mob the night before. Almost, but not quite.

  I checked off another order and thought about motives as C.C. crouched on the top of my chair and played batting practice with the back of my head. If Sam Skyler had indeed killed his previous wife, or even was believed to, wouldn’t there be someone left who’d want to avenge that act? No matter how many years had passed? Was that someone a member of our Wedding Ritual class? The real question, I told myself, was whether anyone in the group had a past association with Sally Skyler.

  Yvonne might know, I decided, and dragged my phone over, dislodging C.C, much to her unmuted displeasure. But all I got when I punched Yvonne’s number was her canned message, hoping my day was filled with “the energy of cosmic bliss, wonder, and delight.”

  I slammed the phone back down and thought of calling Felix. If anyone could find out, he could. But still, Felix was Felix.

  On cue, the phone rang. It wasn’t Felix, of course. It was his psychic sweetie, my friend Barbara Chu.

  “Felix doesn’t have a clue, kiddo,” she greeted me when I picked up the phone.

  I still don’t know how she does her psychic shtick, but it drives me crazy. Lately, though, I’ve been trying to be cool, to pretend I don’t notice. As if you can pretend with a psychic.

  “No clue in general?” I asked her. “Or only as to this murder?”

  “As to this murder,” she replied. “And he also can’t figure out why you guys are so pissed at him.”

  I opened my mouth to give her the earful I would liked to have given Felix.

  “I know, I know,” she said before I could even start.

  “You probably do know,” I muttered. “Any idea who the murderer is?”

  “Nope,” she replied cheerfully.

  I figured that would be her answer. Psychic though she might have been (and I still wasn’t totally convinced that she was), she had yet to do anything useful with it, like identify a murderer. Until it was too late—

  “I know, I know,” she said again.

  Then I opened my mouth once more, to ask her why she’d called.

  “You don’t have to worry about Wayne falling in love with Diana,” she informed me. “She’s too young, too scatterbrained. And too skinny.”

  “But—” I began. And heard the front door open.

  I whirled around in time to see Wayne walk in. I smiled at him foolishly as Barbara hung up with a parting message, ordering me to give Wayne a great big hug.

  Ona and Perry were only minutes away in Cebollas. Wayne and I barely spoke on the way up there in my Toyota. Maybe he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of agreeing to act as a team. Especially with me as his partner. And I was still thinking over what Barbara had said about Diana. But Ona made up for the silence the moment she opened her front door.

  “Boy, do you believe that Ray Zappa?” she began as we walked into the house. And kept on talking as we entered the living room, a room filled to the redwood rafters with books and computers and sports equipment. “What a macho creep, telling us who we can and can’t talk to…”

  The walls of the living room sported a couple of paintings of women, large pink women. And a blowup photo of Perry Kane that had what looked suspiciously like dart holes in it. Or bullet holes? I was examining the pitted surface more closely when Ona’s voice filtered back into my consciousness.

  “…always try to have at least one lunch together every week. I only work a few miles away and Perry makes his own hours. Perry’s a great cook—”

  “And a real asshole,” a burly looking blond teenager added under his breath. I vaguely remembered seeing him before at one of the Wedding Ritual classes. But I didn’t know his name.

  Ona introduced him, ignoring his comment. “My son Ogden,” she announced, pointing. Ogden snarled some sort of greeting in our direction. “And Orestes,” she added as a smaller version of Ogden came running into the room.

  “Pammy told me to shove my penis in the blender,” he whined.

  “Fine, fine,” Ona responded. “Are you going to do it?”

  “No, but I—” Orestes objected.

  “Look, if you’re not going to do it, then what’s the point?” his mother asked him. “I keep telling you to ignore that kind of bull-crap, okay?”

  “I guess so,” he answered sullenly.

  “These are Kate and Wayne,” she introduced us briefly, then turned away from her sons.

  “Perry’s got two girls, Pammy and Page,” she explained. “And I’ve got these two boy wonders here. And they don’t always get along.”

  “Rather eat shit then live with those two,” Ogden muttered in clarification. “And their asshole of a father.”

  Ona ignored him and went on. Talking and walking, leading us toward the kitchen.

  “So what’s going on with this Skyler fiasco?” she demanded. “Those clowns from the Quiero Police Department grilled me and Perry till they sucked us dry. And we both got some really weird stuff on our doorsteps this morning, papier-mâché daggers covered in catsup.” She paused for a moment and glared at her sons, who were following us. At least she had suspects outside the Skyler case. “None of the kids would cop to leaving them, and we think we believe them—”

  “Wayne and I got a real live trocar,” I interjected. “Along with catsup.”

  “Really?” Ona said, her eyes widening. For a moment she was stopped in her tracks. She really was a pretty woman in all her blond pinkness, especially with her sea-green eyes wide open.

  “What’s a trocar?” asked Ogden.

  Unfortunately,
Ona knew and explained in gruesome detail as we entered the kitchen where Perry was decimating something in a blender. Something that smelled of curry. I peeked over at Ogden. He looked a little pale but seemed okay. When I looked back, Perry gave us a little wave, and two new pairs of brown eyes surveyed us. With evident hostility. Or were they glaring at the boys behind us? The boys, I decided, looking over my shoulder where Ona’s two offspring were returning the glare. Oh, the joys of children.

  “Pammy and Page,” Ona threw out in apparent introduction.

  “Hi, there,” I said.

  The two girls mumbled something back. At least Ona and Perry had matched sets. The oldest girl and boy looked about fifteen, the younger ones about ten. The girls were both slender, brown-skinned, and black-haired; the boys wide, pink-skinned, and blond like their mother. At least I could tell the combatants apart.

  “Curried vegetables and saffron rice,” Perry announced as his hands flew back and forth from stove to tiled counter.

  Wayne wandered Perry’s way, sniffing and asking about spices.

  “Wayne’s the cook in the family too,” I told Ona, trying for a nonchalant tone, here in the neutral zone between the hostile tribes.

  “Not a family yet,” Ogden muttered inevitably.

  When the meal was ready we served ourselves from the glazed blue tiles of the kitchen counter. The food was good, not as heavy with oil as most restaurant Indian food. The vegetables were fresh and deliciously undercooked, loaded with spices and coconut and raisins, the saffron rice sweet and full of cinnamon. I was stuffing my face within seconds of sitting down with the rest of the crew, all eight of us crammed together at the expanded teak table.

  Even Ona’s boys ate hungrily, without comment.

  “My father was English,” Perry told us after a few minutes of silent feasting on everyone’s part. “My mother Indian. It was hard on Mom sometimes, always hard on an outsider. And Dad wasn’t very compassionate about her situation—”

  “‘Compassionate,’“ Ogden mimicked, picking up the gushy side of Perry’s friendly voice almost perfectly.