“I love you both,” she said, her calm voice suddenly clear over the sound of waves and wind.
An instant later, the tape echoed, “I love you both.”
And finally the tape clicked to an end as Gary ran, stretching out his hand.
And Liz Atherton jumped.
- Twenty-Four -
We all stood on the wooden pier watching a ferry boat aglow from stem to stern with candlelit lanterns floating toward us under the cool, moist night sky. At least this time I was dressed for the occasion, in two pairs of socks, a long parka, and a knit cap. I leaned against Wayne for a little more warmth and sighed contentedly. The scene was breathtakingly beautiful, the golden lanterns reflected on the bay waters, the night sky clear and starry. The sound of the revelers was just beginning to reach us in high-pitched laughter and low shouts. Frying garlic from a nearby restaurant, fishy bay smells, and Wayne’s unique herb-musk scent intermingled deliciously. Tonight was the last meeting of the Wedding Ritual class. And yes, the ferry wedding was as sumptuous and wondrous as Yvonne had promised. Though not as hot as the tango wedding. But then, nothing was ever going to be as hot as the tango wedding. Unless Wayne and I thought up something really good.
Little starbursts of conversation competed all around us from the remaining members of the class. Martina Monteil wasn’t there for the last class, but Nathan Skyler was. Maybe to show he forgave the group for their part in his father’s death. “For closure,” he’d probably say once he became a psychologist. Tessa and Ray, Emma and Campbell, and Ona and Perry had all stuck it out too. And—surprise, surprise— we had a new member in our group, Park Ranger David Yasuda, who stood grinning absurdly and holding hands with our fearless leader, Yvonne O’Reilley.
A gull shrieked, and my thoughts bounced back to Diana Atherton. And Liz Atherton. Nathan had told us Diana was already in therapy. She was remembering everything now and stronger for it, he insisted. She was going to make it. I hoped so.
Wayne had spent long hours closeted with Gary Atherton. Gary had told Wayne he’d always known his mother had killed his father. Since he was all of eleven years old. It was his little sister, Diana, only seven herself, who had wandered sleepily out of his parents’ bedroom over twenty years ago, murmuring, “Mommy put a pillow over Daddy’s head and now he’s really, really quiet,” before she made her way back into the room where her father lay so silently. When Liz had announced their father’s death the next day, Gary knew she’d killed him, and had been grateful. Very grateful, but worried about Diana who’d never mentioned the pillow again. Or her father. So Gary had kept a watchful eye on his little sister all those years, waiting for her to remember. Waiting for her to explode. But it was Liz who finally exploded.
I shook my head as hard as I could. I didn’t want to think about Liz Atherton now. It had been only one night since she’d jumped and landed on the same rock as Sam Skyler. With the same result. I forced my eyes back out over the bay, banishing the image of Liz Atherton’s spread-eagled body.
The glowing ferry was finally docking, the celebrants spilling out, laughing and chattering, some of them even singing. And finally the bride and groom emerged, their faces as luminous as the candlelit lanterns on the boat. The happy pair were decked out in full Navy whites, an oversized bow tie on the groom’s neck and the same oversized bow atop the bride’s head with a couple of yards of white lace trailing from it. The wind caught the lace, wrapping it around the groom’s shoulders. The two of them laughed and ran for shelter into the restaurant where the reception was being held, while our group watched from the deck. And talked.
Emma told us she was going to mortician’s school next semester as Campbell nodded proudly, his face pink from the cold under his ginger beard.
“What could be more cool than death?” Emma asked beneath the night sky. I shivered a little in my parka as she flung out her arms as if to embrace the universe, darkness as well as light. “Life, death. Yin, yang. In, out…”
Tessa smiled gently and gave the younger woman’s shoulders a little squeeze, before turning her head away. Was Tessa thinking of Liz, too?
“Did you know Liz killed Sam?” I asked her. I had to find out.
Tessa sighed, her narrow face somber in the dim light.
“I was fairly certain Liz had killed her husband,” Tessa began, her hushed voice just audible over the bay noises.
All the members of the Wedding Ritual class turned her way. I wasn’t the only curious one in the group.
“I was only an assistant all those years ago when Liz brought her husband to the Olcott Funeral Home to be buried,” Tessa murmured, her dark eyes losing focus to memory. “I saw a woman covered with bruises.” She paused. “And pinpoint hemorrhages in the eyes of her dead husband. Among other things. I wondered then if he’d been smothered. But the police were calling it a heart attack. So I kept my mouth shut.”
She shook her head slowly, as if still there.
When she spoke again, I flinched, startled by the steel in her soft voice.
“But Sam Skyler?” Tessa sighed and shrugged. “I never saw the connection. This woman might have killed her husband over twenty years ago. But I just didn’t see a relationship to Sam Skyler’s murder.” She paused for another moment. I sucked in a chestful of cold air. “I’ve seen a lot of death over the last twenty-five years.”
There was an even longer silence from Tessa as the bay waters lapped at the pier and little spurts of laughter and conversation peppered the night air.
“Tessa,” I asked finally, unable not to. “Why wouldn’t you talk about the night you were attacked? Why wouldn’t you let me ask people where they’d been that night?”
Tessa seemed to come out of her reverie then. She even laughed lightly.
“Because I assumed the police were doing the necessary detective work,” she answered.
“Oh,” I mumbled, embarrassed by my own assumption that I had been the detective. Some detective.
She must have seen the “duh” look on my face, because she laughed again and whispered in my ear, “and to keep the peace with Ray,” so quickly I wasn’t even sure I’d heard her until she’d finished and turned away again.
Time to change the subject, I decided, swiveling my head in Ray Zappa’s direction.
“So, how are your memoirs going?” I asked.
Ray’s handsome face went scarlet under the night sky.
“Um,” he muttered. “Uh…” And abruptly I tried to remember if I was even supposed to know about his memoirs. Nope. I remembered what Tessa had said about keeping her mouth shut and decided to try that method for a change as Tessa stood on tiptoe and kissed her stammering fiancé into silence.
“Ah, love,” Ona commented with a wink, snuggling up to Perry like the Persian cat I’d always see when I thought of her.
I opened my mouth to ask Ona how Perry’s daughter and her son were coping with their teenage romance, then shut it again. How many seconds had expired before I’d forgotten the Tessa method?
“Pammy and Ogden were in love for all of eight hours before they started arguing again,” Ona said, as if she’d heard me, anyway. So much for keeping my mouth shut. My mind was probably wide-open. At least that’s what the psychics always told me. “What a hoot! But they’ll probably fall in love again. We’re talking a lot about safe sex now—right, Perry? Damned if we know what else to do. Kids.” Ona squirmed closer to Perry as he nodded and nuzzled the top of her head. Then she suddenly whipped around in Nathan’s direction.
“Hey, where’s Martina the Malevolent?” she demanded.
Nathan jumped in place, but answered her calmly enough.
“Martina and I have split up,” he said, rubbing his hands together softly.
“Good for you!” Ona said and gave him a congratulatory pat on the back that almost sent him sprawling.
“Well, Martina will be the acting president of the Institute,” he added quietly.
“Hey, don’t let that barracuda push you around,” Ona advised
, shaking a finger in Nathan’s face. “She’s a real ball-buster—”
“It’s fine,” Nathan interrupted, raising his hands as if in surrender. “Everything’s fine. Martina has no signatory control at the Institute. She’s merely the figurehead.” I thought I saw him grin. “I’m not completely naive. The Institute was really who Martina wanted to marry in the first place.”
“And you?” Ona prodded.
Nathan looked down at his feet. Or maybe he suddenly saw something of interest in the wooden slats of the pier.
“Diana,” Yvonne murmured dreamily. And Park Ranger Yasuda’s absurd smile grew even wider, a Cheshire cat’s grin in the darkness.
“Well,” Nathan muttered, still looking down. “Diana’s really healing. You know, she won’t touch Dad’s money. She’s using it to set up a trust fund for battered women’s counseling with it. And one for battering men.” He brought his head up, but his eyes were still hidden by his thick glasses, the condensed mist of the bay shrouding them even further. “The irony is that my father would have never hit her, I’m sure. My dad dead, her mom dead. I just don’t know…”
“No, Nathan,” Yvonne piped up, her high voice tinkling in the cold air. She reached out the hand that wasn’t holding Yasuda’s and her bracelets tinkled in harmony. “It’s cosmic, really, all that karma played out in each of their lifetimes. Sam pushes, he’s pushed. Liz’s husband hits, he’s killed. Liz leaps from the same bluff as Sam. They’ll all go clean into the next lifetime. You see, it’s really just wondrous. Just perfect. You can let it go.”
Nathan looked into the curving lines of her face for a few laps of the bay waters against the pier. Then she released his hand.
“Interesting,” he murmured thoughtfully. “Really interesting.” His stooped shoulders straightened a little.
I gave Yvonne a big hug. Her logic may not have been exactly in the right place, but her heart certainly was. I hoped it worked out with her park ranger. Wayne and I still didn’t have a wedding ceremony planned, but still…
I snuggled up to my sweetie and whispered in his ear, “Let’s go home.”
And then Wayne and I quietly exited the Wedding Ritual class, waving goodbye to the remaining members on the pier.
We were back in the Jaguar, on our way home before I spoke again.
“How’s Gary?” I asked.
“He’ll be okay,” Wayne said.
Then I asked the question I’d wanted to ask from the beginning.
“Were you in love with Diana?” I whispered softly.
“Diana?” Wayne barked, jerking his head around. “You mean Diana Atherton?”
I just nodded.
“Good God, no!” he spat out, staring at me, eyebrows raised as the Jaguar veered ever so slightly to the right. He turned his eyes back to the road, his voice softening to a low growl. “I love you, Kate. And even if I were to fall for anyone but you, it’d never be Diana. She’s too…too young. She’s too scatterbrained. And she’s too damned skinny!”
The words rattled around in the back of my brain for a moment, tickling a forgotten memory. Hadn’t Barbara used those same words an eternity ago to assure me of Wayne’s lack of interest in Diana?
I leaned my head back and laughed, unable to stop for five or ten miles of blacktop despite Wayne’s sidelong glances.
Until, finally, I was all laughed out. Only then did I put my cold hand gently on my sweetie’s warm thigh. And kept it there as we rolled home under the starry night sky.
Do It Yourself: Grief Into Growth Puppet
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Cut along dotted lines.
2. Fold and tape, leaving bottom open.
3. Follow the arrow for personal transformation.
4. Share the experience!
Table of Contents
Kate Jasper Mysteries
Acknowledgments
Creat Your Own Wedding Ritual
Members of the Wedding Ritual Class
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Do It Yourself - Grief Into Growth Puppet
A Cry for Self-Help (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Page 25
