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

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “Right,” she agreed, pointing her finger. “That’s it exactly. I think Sam would have done anything for someone who really needed him, who really adored him. But if they didn’t”—she spread her hands—”he just lost interest, I guess.”

  We threw around a lot of pop—or maybe not so pop— psychology, after that. Ann did work in a mental health facility after all, even if it was as administrator. I told them about Sam’s mother, Irene. And about the purported beatings Sam had taken from his father as a child.

  After a lot of oohs and ahs on Felix’s part, and a lot of too-bads and too-sads on Ann’s, I turned back to Felix and asked who he’d bet on for murderer.

  “Don’t have a clue,” he said and my heart sank. “But I would lay odds on who wants a publishing contract out of this whole mess.” Then he grinned again.

  “You?” I guessed.

  “Naah,” he said, shaking his head. Though a little blush told me he wouldn’t mind one. If he ever got around to writing one of the true-crime books he kept saying he was going to. “Ray Zappa,” he announced.

  “Zappa!” I objected, but then I remembered the blinking computer and true-crime books in the policeman’s living room. The about-to-retire policeman’s living room.

  “Zappa’s already trying to sell his friggin’ memoirs,” Felix added smugly. “A friend of mine knows his whiz-bang agent. So Zappa’s hoping this Skyler corpse will cap off his pile of memories like a friggin’ marble gravestone.”

  “But the murder’s got to be solved, right?” I said.

  “Not necessarily,” Felix argued. “If he handles it right, he could make it the Great Unsolved American Mystery or some other hot-shit thing.”

  “He wouldn’t have killed Skyler for the publicity, would he?” I asked, thinking of Tessa. I liked Tessa. I didn’t want her sweetie to be a murderer.

  “Nobody but Oz knows,” Felix replied. And then I thought of something else.

  “Hey, remember the guy in the polka dot tie at the memorial reception?” I asked.

  “Sam’s agent,” Felix fired back, nodding. “Sam had a new manuscript too…”

  And then Felix’s eyes lit up. I could almost see the same thoughts going through his little story-riddled mind as had gone through mine. Sam’s manuscript, repository of possible clues.

  “You don’t happen to know his name?” I asked.

  “No, but I’ll find out,” Felix assured me.

  “And tell me when you do?” I demanded.

  “Oh, sure,” he agreed absently.

  I wondered if Felix already knew the agent’s name. But even that was all right, I decided. If Felix could find the agent, the manuscript, and the clues, we would all be that much closer to solving the mystery. I told myself it was just ego that made me want to be the first to know. I had to tell myself that, or I’d be reduced to choking the facts out of Felix. And then I reprimanded myself for the escalating violence of my thoughts. We were talking real murder here. And all I could think about was strangling people. That was, if Felix counted as people.

  Our little tea party broke up not long after that.

  Ann gave me a good long hug before she left and my strangulation urges left me. Mostly.

  Once I was alone in the house, I thought of making dinner. But I was full of bread and glop by that time. I’d wait for Wayne, I decided. His dinners were better than mine anyway. Then I sat down to my stack of Jest Gifts paperwork.

  The telephone rang the minute my bottom touched the chair. Someday, I’d find the magic button that caused that phenomenon. But not now.

  “Hello,” I said, hoping for Wayne’s gruff voice on the other end.

  But the voice that answered was soft and weak. And close to hysteria.

  “Kate,” the voice whimpered. “This is Tessa Johnson. I think someone may have just tried to kill me.”

  - Seventeen -

  “Kill you?” I repeated, my mind a few fibrillations behind.

  “I’m not sure, but I think so,” Tessa whispered. “Here at the funeral home. Kate, I’m so scared—can you come—”

  “Have you called the police?” I interrupted, my mind almost catching up with my heart.

  “No…” she said, sounding confused. Tessa confused was not normal, not good. “Wayne said you were a couple of minutes away…and I…I…”

  “I’ll be there,” I assured her, keeping my own voice from shaking with an effort.

  I hung up, trying for less than a second to remember if Tessa’s funeral home was in the actual city of Mill Valley or outside of it and under Marin County jurisdiction. Then I just dialed 911. Whoever was on the other end would just have to sort it out.

  The dispatcher seemed to keep me on the phone forever, but then time was moving in a very strange and disconnected way. It was probably only moments.

  “Not at my house,” I repeated one more time. “The woman in danger is at the Olcott Johnson Funeral Home.” Maybe this sounded like a prank to him. Attempted murder at a funeral home?

  “Do you have that address?” the dispatcher asked again.

  “It’s in or near Mill Valley. Look it up in the phone book,” I advised and slammed the telephone down. They’d figure it out, I told myself, and ran.

  It took me less than two minutes to get to Tessa’s funeral home. I should have attracted the police just by the way I was speeding, but I didn’t. Unfortunately.

  Because the Olcott Johnson Funeral Home was very quiet when I got there. Dead people don’t make a lot of noise. But Tessa wasn’t dead, I reminded myself. I hoped.

  The door to the reception area was unlocked. That was good, right?

  I centered myself, then opened the door slowly, jerking my head around, looking for Tessa. And/or her assailant. But all I saw was an empty, tasteful room in gray and cream and golden beige, silent except for the pounding in my ears.

  I turned toward the casket room, but then I heard a small cry.

  “Kate?” the voice questioned. “Is that you?”

  The voice came from the chapel. But what if it wasn’t Tessa’s? I tried to shut the idea out, but it clung, holding me there for an agonizing few seconds. Was this a trap?

  “Tessa?” I called back softly.

  “Kate!” she cried again.

  Of course it was Tessa, I told myself and rushed through the doors to the chapel, faster than my own fears could follow.

  I cursed the time my fear had cost when I came to the back of the first pew. Because Tessa was there in the center, alone, her head bent down, an ooze of blood highlighting her gray curls.

  “Oh God, are you all right?” I whispered stupidly. Or maybe I was praying. I was in a chapel.

  And then Tessa lifted her head.

  “Thank you,” I muttered to whoever or whatever was watching over the chapel.

  And then I ran around to the front of the pew, tripping over a brass candlestick in the aisle as I went, a brass candlestick with blood on it. My mind took in the blood, but I kept on going until I was crouched next to Tessa, holding her clammy hand, and wondering what kind of medical treatment I should be giving her that I didn’t know about. What if she had a concussion?

  “What can I do?” I asked her in desperation. She was a funeral director. Maybe she knew the right first-aid procedures as well as embalming techniques.

  “Just stay here,” she suggested distantly, her breathing shallow, way too shallow to my buzzing ears. “I’m okay, just a little dazed.”

  “Someone hit you,” I said, as if she needed that information.

  “I know,” she answered. At least she was talking. I said another thank you, this one silently. “I was doing my evening reflections. I thought I heard someone behind me. And then…I think I might have been unconscious for a minute.”

  Where were the police and the paramedics? Damn. What if the dispatcher didn’t sort it out? I had given the right name of the funeral home, hadn’t I?

  “I went and called you,” Tessa continued, her voice still a whis
per. “Then I came to sit again—”

  “Why me?” I asked. I couldn’t help asking.

  I realized that Tessa probably shouldn’t be talking if she had a concussion, but I had to know. Her calling me instead of the police just didn’t make sense.

  “I thought…I thought it might have to do with Sam Skyler’s murder, but…”

  “What? What might have had to do with Sam Skyler’s murder?” I squeezed Tessa’s clammy hand but got no reply.

  “Did you see the person who hit you?” I tried.

  “No, it’s just that…well…” Her voice faltered to a stop.

  “Tessa?” I asked as gently as I could. “Is there something you know? Something someone knows you know?”

  “I…” Her voice suddenly got firmer. “No, it can’t be related.”

  “What?” I demanded, barely able to control myself. It wasn’t good to shake a possible concussion victim, I was sure, no matter how strong the urge. “What can’t be related?”

  “Nothing,” she told me. “Thank you for coming, Kate.”

  “Tell me, for God’s sake,” I ordered. “Someone tried to kill you—”

  And then the police and the paramedics arrived.

  “Okay, move away from her slowly,” a tall police officer holding a gun told me.

  It took a minute for his words to sink in. Did he think I was the one who’d attacked Tessa?

  “But I—”

  “Just move away,” he ordered again.

  “Kate’s okay,” Tessa told the officer. “She’s the one who called you.”

  But I moved aside, anyway. And the paramedics moved in.

  “You can put down your gun,” I assured the officer, the way I would have calmed a mental patient some twenty years ago. “My name is Kate Jasper. I’m the one who called 911.”

  “That’s right—” Tessa began, but the paramedics shushed her. And here I’d been pressuring her to talk.

  I was certainly glad the paramedics were there. But I wasn’t so sure about the police officer with the gun. Because he wasn’t putting it down, no matter what I said.

  A couple of hours later, the officer had put away his gun and the paramedics had assured Tessa that she would be all right. That was the good news. The bad news was that various police officials were still asking me why Tessa had called me, not them. First the Mill Valley Police had asked me, then the county sheriffs, and finally Chief Woolsey, all the way from Quiero. And as far as I was concerned, I was the wrong interrogatee.

  Because Tessa was the only one who could answer that question, and she’d just told them I was closer when they’d finally received permission from the paramedics to ask her. An inadequate and suspicious explanation, even to my mind. Tessa had wanted to tell me something, but what? I never got to ask. I was the one being questioned, and by the time I was hustled out of the Olcott Johnson Funeral Home, Tessa Johnson was nowhere to be seen.

  At least I hadn’t picked up the murder weapon, I told myself as I drove home slowly in the dark. They’d only find my Reebok sole prints on the bloody candlestick.

  And then my shoulder muscles stiffened. Wayne. I had never thought to leave a note, and he had to be wondering where I was. Worrying about where I was. Going crazy about where I was. If he was home.

  He was home. In fact, he was at my car door by the time I pulled in the driveway, his brows so low they almost touched his cheekbones. Concern or anger?

  “You okay, Kate?” he asked gently. My shoulder muscles relaxed a little. Concern.

  Could I lie? Should I lie? I got out of the car and he put his arms around me. And those arms sucked all the truth out of me like a pump. I couldn’t seem to stop babbling every detail of what had happened at the funeral home. I just kept on talking as we walked up the steps, through the front door, and into the kitchen. Then Wayne fixed me dinner. Silently. He didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t offer any observations. He didn’t smile. I kept waiting for the recriminations, but they never came. After dinner, he just lifted me in his arms and carried me down the hallway to the bedroom.

  “Any wedding ritual,” I murmured a while later, wrapping all my limbs around him like an octopus. “Any ritual at all.”

  And finally, under the moon’s glow that floated down through the skylight, Wayne smiled.

  By the next morning, Wayne was talking again.

  “On this Sam Skyler thing,” he reminded me gruffly, “wherever you go, I go.”

  “Ditto,” I answered, as smugly as one can answer through a mouthful of Granola-O’s and soy milk.

  Then, across the table, his face produced an evil leer I’d never seen on it before.

  “Any wedding ritual?” he asked, leaning forward.

  “Ulp,” I answered. But I had promised. “Ulp, yes,” I amended.

  Not that he’d give me any idea of what he had in mind. No. He just kept directing that evil leer at me as I alternately begged him to give me a clue and gulped down the rest of my cereal. Just what had I promised?

  I still didn’t know by ten o’clock, though my imagination had processed infinite gruesome possibilities, mostly involving lots of white lace and red faces. All I knew was that I couldn’t concentrate on Jest Gifts paperwork. And that I wanted to talk to Sam’s ex-wife, Helen, again. She might know the name of Sam’s agent.

  And whither I went, Wayne did too, flashing that same evil leer every time I turned to look at him in the Toyota. It wasn’t until we got to Helen’s that I realized that maybe the leer was the recrimination I’d been waiting for. If it was, it was a doozy. I opened my mouth to tell him to stop it, then closed it again. He must have really suffered last night, waiting for me. In his place, I probably would have been yelling and screaming. He had reason to give me a hard time. Maybe.

  So I kept quiet, opened the car door instead and marched up to Helen Skyler’s house, Wayne glued to my side, hearing the sound of Helen’s cello and Huzza howling louder and louder as we got closer.

  They both stopped abruptly when I pushed the doorbell.

  Helen answered the door, cello bow in hand. Her eyes were friendly, though, under her thick glasses.

  “Still sleuthing?” she asked before I had a chance to apologize for interrupting her.

  I nodded, suddenly embarrassed by my own arrogance. Why was it that I was still sleuthing? For a moment, I couldn’t remember.

  But when Wayne and I sank into Helen’s plush red velvet couch and she began talking about Sam again, I did remember.

  “Sam wasn’t a hateable man, not really,” she said sadly, throwing her head back in a dramatic gesture that might have been designed to indicate grief. I wasn’t sure. “He could be a jerk, but he didn’t deserve to be murdered.”

  “No,” I said and turned to Wayne. He wasn’t leering now.

  “Whenever Sam acted like a real jerk, I’d tell him he was having a ‘heeling’ crisis,” she went on. Huzza emitted a hooting bark. “Get it, a real heel?”

  I got it. A low chuckle from Wayne told me he did too. And that his sense of humor was in better shape than mine about then.

  “Sam had just written another book,” I interjected.

  “Right, Higher Self Help” Helen said, rolling her eyes. “I was the one who suggested the title. As a joke. But he loved it. And his agent loved it. And his editor—”

  “His agent was the guy in the tweed jacket with the polka dot tie at the memorial reception, right?” I cut in, trying to lean forward as the plush velvet couch pulled me back. Now we were getting somewhere.

  “I don’t know, I never met him,” she answered. I swallowed my disappointment as I let the couch eat me.

  Helen pursed her lips. “Nathan might know, though,” she said, pausing, her eyes directed downward as if in thought. “You’re thinking the manuscript might tell you something about his murderer.”

  I nodded again, letting her think. Helen Skyler was a good observer. A good thinker. Maybe she would come up with something.

  “Knowing Sam,
the book had a lot about himself in it,” she said slowly. “But I doubt if he’d write about anyone who reacted negatively to him. He preferred to think everyone loved him.”

  “You’re probably right,” I agreed, feeling my expectations sink along with my body into the cushiony velvet.

  Still, even positivism can be deciphered, I told myself. There was always a chance of a clue.

  “I’ll miss him, damn it,” Helen told us, her eyes misting behind her glasses. Huzza put his big paw on her knee. “Sam was just a scared little boy inside, craving attention. It was like he had this postdated reality check. And he never had time to cash it.”

  At this point both Wayne and I were nodding frantically. Neither of us wanted to cause this woman any more sadness. Sam Skyler’s ex-wife, who seemed to care more for him than his own mother did.

  “And Nathan understood that and loved his father all the more for his vulnerability,” Helen went on, lifting her eyes to ours. “He would never do anything to harm his father.”

  The phone rang and Huzza began to bark before Wayne and I had to nod anymore. So we struggled our way out of the red velvet couch and left, whispering and waving little goodbye waves to Helen on the way out as she talked to someone about an upcoming concert. I just hoped her concert would take her mind off our visit.

  “Doth the mother protest too much?” Wayne said once we were back in the Toyota.

  Now, that was an interesting question. Just why had Helen felt the need to mention Nathan’s feelings for his father? To assure us that patricide wasn’t on?

  I pulled out into traffic and thought awhile. When we got to a red light, I glanced at Wayne to ask him more. And he leered back at me.

  “All right, all right!” I yelped. “Are we back to flower girls now?”

  He just shrugged. And leered some more.

  “Do you want me to dress up as a steak?” I demanded, sweat forming on my brow as awful possibilities coursed through my mind. “A lamb chop, maybe? You’re not going to make me sing, are you? You know I can’t sing—”

  “Kate, the light’s green,” Wayne pointed out.

  “What?” I answered as someone behind me began to honk.