A Sensitive Kind of Murder (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “Listen, Claire, Suzi,” he said, a broad smile on his weasely face. “This is a private meeting. I—”

  “Who’s she?” the Hispanic woman said, pointing at the blond.

  “Who’s she?” the blond pointed back.

  “Look, we’re all friends, okay?” Van tried. It was amazing that he could smile at a time like this, but he did. It must have hurt.

  “Has he been dating you?” the blond asked. “Dating” sounded like a euphemism to me, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “Yeah,” the other woman answered. “Has he been dating you, too?”

  “Yeah,” the first woman snarled. It was a scary sound.

  Both women put their hands on their hips. The doorbell rang again.

  “Ted, you get it,” Janet ordered.

  Ted opened the door and a third woman entered, this one a dark, statuesque beauty. You know how they say some women are beautiful when they’re angry? Well, she was.

  “Van Eisner,” she accused. “I followed you here and then I saw these two.” She pointed at the first two women.

  “But you weren’t supposed to come,” Van whispered desperately. He began walking backward and tripped over a low couch. No one came to his aid.

  The blond woman asked, “Are you with Van, too?”

  “Not anymore,” the dark beauty answered. “He’s pond scum!”

  “An earthworm,” the Hispanic woman agreed.

  “Dog dirt,” the blond put in. “And I say we just leave.”

  “Yeah!” the other two women answered.

  “Wanna go for a drink?” one of them asked the others.

  And before Van even had a chance to hide, the three women left together, talking about him. At least it looked like they’d made friends, and Van had lost some of his “women problems.”

  Mike had a field day then, imitating the women. The Kimmochi girls were doubled over with laughter. Even Isaac put his arm around Mike affectionately.

  “Way to go, Van,” Isaac congratulated our resident amorist. Then he stopped smiling for a moment. “Hey, are we really going to ferret out who killed Steve?”

  “How about divulging your secret?” I asked. “That would help clear the air.”

  Helen Herrick grinned. Whether it was at Isaac or with him was hard to tell. Helen was generally as quiet and polite as Isaac was loud and rude.

  “Moi, a secret?” Isaac answered in a falsetto. “Me, an author, the world’s expert on dyslexia?”

  “This is no joke,” Laura Summers reminded us. She was right.

  Everyone shut up then, even Mike and the kids in the background. The younger generation were huddled by the window now.

  “My husband is dead,” Laura reminded us, just in case we didn’t feel bad enough. “I want to know everything that was said at that group.”

  Ted argued for confidentiality. Carl looked worried. Van took a convenient trip to the restroom.

  Laura turned to Carl Russo. “Carl, is it your son?” she asked gently and slowly.

  Carl nodded reluctantly.

  “Carl, you’re doing the right thing,” she assured him. “Nothing your son has done could have had anything to do with Steve’s murder. I’m not even convinced that anyone in this group had anything to do with his death.” Her expression was bleak, for all the confidence of her words.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Summers,” Mike said and then began nervously juggling some heavy bronze candlesticks he’d picked up from the mantel. I wondered how much the candlesticks cost. Not that they looked breakable.

  “Mo-om!” Zora called out, but Janet wasn’t even looking at Mike. She was looking at Laura.

  “She’s right,” Isaac assured Carl. “Prig that Steve was, he would never have written about Mike.”

  “Yeah,” Janet put in. “Steve always was a little repressed, huh? I wonder…”

  Wayne glanced at Laura, whose back was stiffening. Time for a distraction?

  “No one should be forced to tell their secrets,” Wayne interrupted.

  “The real question,” I followed up quickly, “is whether there was anything said at the meeting that might have been cause for murder.”

  There was a long silence after that. How could we know what was important and what wasn’t? Finally, Ted broke the silence.

  “Let’s take that as a no,” he suggested. “Let’s move on to the potluck.”

  “Are you forgetting Laura?” Garrett asked and walked over to put his arm around the woman whose husband had been killed.

  Laura sank back into the support his arm gave her. Slowly, each of us offered our awkward condolences.

  “You ought to read a good novel,” Janet told Laura when her turn came. I flinched. Did she have any idea how she sounded? Obviously not. “That’ll take you out of your funk. It always works for me.”

  “I don’t have time for fiction,” Laura replied, her cheeks reddening.

  “Hey,” Ted said to Wayne. “You and Kate have solved these things before. Why don’t you give it a try?”

  A chorus of voices, including Carl’s and Helen’s and Jerry’s, seconded the motion.

  “Well,” Wayne temporized, his pocked skin pinkening.

  “We can only try,” I put in.

  “Maybe it’s not fair to put Kate and Wayne in exclusive danger,” Garrett argued. “This should be a group effort.”

  Everyone squirmed then. From guilt? Or from fear?

  “Or perhaps the police would be the best in any case,” Laura murmured reasonably.

  Garrett opened his mouth to add more, and then the room was immobilized by the sound of shattering glass.

  “Mo-om!” Niki squealed.

  And then all hell broke loose.

  - Eight -

  I thought terrorism as I heard the shattering glass. Van Eisner didn’t think at all, he just dived to the floor. It was a better move than none. And nothing was what I did, galvanized into inaction by the sound. Still, I was in the majority. I watched as everyone but Van froze. And I listened for something more over the sound of my own pulse, but all I heard was a gasp here, a yelp there, and a “huh” across the room. At least at first. Then Janet McKinnon-Kimmochi started screaming.

  I turned my head. I saw a broken window. Had someone fired a shot through the window? And then I really listened to Janet.

  “You broke my window!” she shouted. My shell-shocked brain tried to make sense of her words. Then she added, “Those are bronze candlesticks, you idiot!” She raised her arm and pointed her finger like a well-aimed gun at Mike Russo.

  I followed her finger to the unhappy teenager. He stood, his feet apart, staring down at the parquet floor where one of the bronze candlesticks lay. Finally, I figured it out. The sound that had just scared the sense out of the entire Heartlink group and their significant others was merely a failed juggling attempt on Mike Russo’s part. The other bronze candlestick had gone out the window the hard way.

  “That’s it!” Carl roared at his son. “We’re outta here.”

  “But Dad,” Mike objected weakly. “I’m sorry. I was just—”

  “No ‘just’ this time, Mike,” Carl snapped.

  “Carl,” Laura Summers said softly. “The boy was only nervous.”

  “With my things,” Janet put in. “That’s real bronze, you know, and—”

  “Where are your broom and dustpan?” Wayne asked Janet.

  “What?” she replied, whipping her head around to look at Wayne. The expression on her freckled face was not happy. She pressed her lips together tightly.

  “Your broom and dustpan,” he repeated. “I’ll clean up.”

  “Thanks, Wayne,” Carl growled. “Sorry, I shoulda thought of that myself. I’m happy to pay the damages.”

  Janet mumbled under her breath. Was that a thank-you or a curse? Or was she just figuring up the bill?

  And then Ted got in on the act. “I remember when we got those candlesticks,” he whispered sadly. “At a crafts fair, wasn’t it, Janet?” He shook his h
ead as if his heart was broken. Yup, Ted and Janet were made for each other.

  “I’m really, really sorry, you guys,” Mike tried. And he looked sorry. Sorry and scared, his eyebrows raised and his lower lip sticking out. “I didn’t mean—”

  “We’ll talk about it later, Mike,” Carl interrupted. “Everyone knows you’re sorry, but sorry isn’t enough.”

  “Carl—” Garrett began.

  But Carl shook his head. “We’re going home, folks,” he insisted. “Kid’s got a little problem. I’ll take him off your hands.”

  Mike bowed his head and headed toward the front door. Carl took up the rear. Janet McKinnon-Kimmochi crossed her arms and glared at them both.

  I wanted to plead Mike’s case. Real bronze or not, Mike had been nervous for good reason. But Mike was Carl’s boy, not mine.

  “Mo-om—” Zora objected as father and son got to the door.

  “Pipe down!” Janet shouted. So much for no yelling in her house.

  Once the Russos were gone, Laura Summers left, too, taking her time to say goodbye to everyone left in the room…and hugging Wayne for the amount of time it usually takes me to cook lunch. It is true that I’m not much of a cook, but still, Wayne was red and sweating when Laura finally let him go. After Laura was gone, Ted got Wayne a broom and a dustpan, and Wayne cleaned up what was left of Mike’s accident. Then it was lemming time.

  Van Eisner was out the door before Wayne even dumped the glass remains into the waste basket. Garrett and Jerry followed soon after. And then Isaac and Helen Herrick departed, after a few unappreciated crockery jokes from Isaac.

  Wayne and I were the last to say goodbye to the Kimmochis. Janet had calmed down by then, and she smiled her hostess smile at the door, but Ted was sunk into a broken glass depression with bronze undertones.

  “Life is so sad,” he murmured in farewell. The loss of minor domestic possessions had never been so tragic.

  “Right,” I muttered.

  Wayne didn’t even reply as we headed out to my Toyota.

  Once we were in the car, however, Wayne spoke.

  “Sometimes Ted can be a jerk,” he muttered.

  I was shocked. Coming from Wayne, this was a harsh condemnation.

  “Well,” I answered cautiously, pulling out from the sidewalk. “He certainly married the right woman.”

  It took me a moment to identify the sound of laughter coming from Wayne. It burbled up as if he were choking for a moment and then filled the Toyota. I was glad he was laughing, though I wasn’t exactly sure why. Post-candlestick stress syndrome? I kept my mouth shut until we were on the highway.

  I’d pulled into the middle lane when I remembered the tropical muffins. They were still sitting on the Kimmochis’ buffet table.

  I was about to mourn their loss when I realized that I would just sound like Ted.

  “Whaddaya say we stop at the library and get Steve Summers’ books?” I suggested instead.

  “I own them, Kate,” Wayne told me, and I shrunk back into my seat. Of course Wayne owned his friend’s two books. And now he’d stopped laughing again.

  We were silent the rest of the way home.

  When I opened our front door, C. C. made a perfect four-paw landing onto the top of my head. It took me a few fraught nanoseconds to realize what had hit me. I stood centered and still, my heart playing a loud background beat to the whoosh of adrenaline through my body, and then a tail came down to swipe my face. I was wearing a perfect C. C. hat.

  Wayne lifted C. C. off my head, smiling a little. I decided not to kill the cat. It was worth one little cardiac shock and a few dislodged vertebrae in my neck to see Wayne smile. I peered at C. C, trying to see into her mind. Had getting Wayne to smile been her purpose? I knew she loved Wayne. But once Wayne had lowered her to the floor, she just blinked and left the room. Cats don’t like to give up their secrets, and she wasn’t giving up hers.

  Wayne and I both dropped into the hanging chair.

  “Kate—” Wayne began as I said, “Wayne—”

  “What?” I asked.

  “We can’t just let Steve’s death go by,” Wayne replied.

  I was glad he’d said it first. Ten-to-one, he would have argued if I had.

  “But what can we do?” I asked. When all was said and done, I was better at finding dead bodies than at figuring out how they got that way.

  “Investigate,” Wayne answered simply.

  “But how?” I asked, my voice rising with frustration.

  I felt, rather than saw, Wayne slump next to me.

  “Don’t know,” he mumbled.

  I told myself not to panic because if Wayne was talking in monosyllables, he was probably panicking enough for both of us.

  “All right,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “Do we agree that it has to be someone related to Heartlink?”

  Now I felt Wayne stiffen.

  “Wayne, the key,” I reminded him. “Someone took the key at the potluck.”

  Wayne sighed.

  Damn. He was the one who’d mentioned investigating.

  “All right,” I went on, holding down any whine that wanted to come out and play. “Either it’s about the group, or it’s not. Who else could have killed Steve Summers? Who else—”

  Wayne shook his head so hard the hanging chair twisted on its ropes.

  “You’re right, Kate,” he whispered finally. “It’s the group. Something to do with the group. We have to plan.”

  “Interview suspects?” I suggested brightly.

  “Get information about them from other sources,” Wayne added.

  “Yeah!” I encouraged him. “There’s always my hairdresser.” My hairdresser, Carol, knew more about the residents of Marin County than C. C. did about getting into trouble.

  “Carol,” Wayne said, like a man waking up. “Right.”

  So Wayne and I got in the Toyota and drove to the Golden Rose, a beauty parlor of the old school. It’s pink with gold accents, filled with chattering women, and, most importantly, it’s inexpensive. There aren’t many like it left in Marin County.

  When we entered the pink portals of the Golden Rose, an orchestra of feminine voices surrounded us.

  “That Martha Lee, why she thinks she can—”

  “Polyester is still the best thing since sliced bread. ‘Natural’ fibers were put on this earth to make women miserable—”

  “No, honey, the right side is the same as the left—”

  “And he’s got a woman on the side all along—”

  “But will it make me look younger—”

  I couldn’t see a receptionist, so I grabbed Wayne’s arm and strode into the bullpen of pink vinyl barber chairs. But Carol wasn’t at her station.

  I looked around me. I’d never been in the Golden Rose without Carol snipping away at me with her scissors. Each station was mirrored, and I saw Wayne’s and my reflections staring back everywhere I looked.

  “Hey, Kate,” Michelle, Carol’s station-mate, greeted me, never stopping her hands as she brushed out silvery curls. “Lookin’ for Carol?”

  “Uh-huh,” I uttered with relief. I’d never noticed how scary the Golden Rose was before, especially the women lined up with their heads under dryers. What would aliens think if they landed here?

  “Well, Carol went on vacation, hon,” Michelle told me.

  “Vacation?” I bleeped, So much for my number one informant.

  “Why?” Michelle asked. “Ya find another murder victim?”

  All the chattering voices went dead.

  “Sorta,” I muttered.

  “Well, Carol isn’t here, but maybe we can help,” she offered.

  I looked at her hopefully. Was it written in the code of hairdressing that all hairdressers had to know everything about the residents of the counties they worked in?

  “So who got killed?” Heather asked from across the way.

  “Steve Summers,” Wayne put in gruffly.

  “Oh, yeah,” Joy piped up. “He was some kinda
reporter or something, wasn’t he?”

  “Married to the assemblywoman,” Michelle added, showing who knew what. “Laura Summers, right?”

  A few gasps erupted.

  “The assemblywoman’s a widow?” a hushed voice asked.

  “Poor thing,” someone added.

  I nodded and waited for more.

  It wasn’t long in coming, but the direction could have used some work.

  “A real tragedy for the assemblywoman,” Margo the manicurist commiserated. “So is this your new husband?”

  Wayne turned as pink as the vinyl barber chairs.

  “Oh, sorry,” I apologized. “This is my husband, Wayne, everyone.”

  “Hi Wayne!” a chorus of female voices called out. It sounded like a twelve-step meeting for a minute.

  Wayne forced a smile and waved.

  “He the one you ran off with to City Hall?” Michelle inquired.

  I cleared my throat. “He’s the one,” I confirmed, frantically trying to think of a way to segue back to murder.

  “I imagine you must want to know something about the suspects in your murder,” Margo guessed.

  I turned her way and smiled.

  “Name ‘em,” Michelle ordered.

  I looked up at Wayne for permission. But he might have been unconscious, or maybe he was holding his breath. The place did smell of hair spray, dyes, conditioners, and nail polish remover, among other things. Or maybe he’d just fainted on his feet from shyness. I turned back to Michelle.

  “Laura Summers,” I began.

  The room wasn’t silent anymore. Everyone was talking at once.

  “That assemblywoman is a saint—”

  “Goes too far on the environment, though—”

  “Good on education—”

  “Good hairdo—”

  “Poor thing, her husband—”

  “Heard her speech on prescription price gouging—”

  “She wears great suits—”

  “Medicare reform is due—”

  “But gun control doesn’t work—”

  “The woman understands Social Security—”

  I felt like a sheep dog whose flock was scattering.

  “Of course, we don’t suspect Laura Summers,” I hollered into the cacophony. Was I lying? I wasn’t sure. “Do any of you know Janet McKinnon-Kimmochi?” I asked at random.