Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  And Barbara wanted me to spend even more time with psychics. She alternately cajoled and sulked until I pulled off the highway to turn around and drive back to where Isabelle Viseu lived in a small, older house in the downtown section of Paloma, not far from Justine’s.

  “Why didn’t you think of this before we left Paloma?” I grouched as we opened the little gate and walked up the cement pathway to Isabelle Viseu’s front door. I tried not to notice the pansies that lined the pathway. I hate flowers when I’m trying to be in a bad mood. Especially brightly colored flowers in the streaming sunlight.

  “Because I’m a big pain in the rear,” Barbara answered cheerfully as she reached for the doorbell.

  But no one answered when Barbara rang Isabelle’s doorbell, psychically or otherwise. Nor did anyone answer on Barbara’s second or third ring.

  “Let’s go,” I ordered, wiggling my shoulders impatiently. I was uncomfortable here despite the pansies. No one had invited us and—

  Barbara responded to my order about as well as she responded to “no.” She strode around the side of the house before I could even shut my gaping mouth.

  “Kate,” she called an instant later.

  I looked around, hoping no helpful and vigilant neighbors were watching…or dialing the Paloma Police Department, then I skulked around to join Barbara where she stood on the driveway side of Isabelle Viseu’s house. I was beginning to sweat and it wasn’t just from the streaming sunlight.

  “Look,” Barbara whispered, pointing at an older El Dorado that sat in the driveway. “That’s her car. She has to be home.”

  “Barbara,” 1 whispered back insistently. “Maybe she knows we’re here and doesn’t want to talk to us.”

  Barbara put her finger on her chin and considered my proposition for a moment.

  “Naah,” she finally concluded.

  “Maybe she went for a walk,” I tried. “Maybe a friend picked her up. Maybe she’s asleep—”

  “Jeez-Louise, kiddo.” Barbara stopped me before I could really get rolling. She smiled serenely. “There’s no reason to get upset.”

  “I know there’s no reason to—” I began, but Barbara was already walking around the back of the house.

  By the time I caught up with her, she was peeking in a back window.

  “Will you stop that!” I demanded. “We’re on private property here, and I don’t just mean the real estate. Would you want your privacy invaded—”

  “I’m sorry,” she interrupted, putting her hand on my shoulder. “I forgot how sensitive fives can be about privacy.”

  A scream bubbled up in my throat, but I shut my mouth before it could escape. A scream would alert the neighbors. My hands suddenly tightened into fists, but then I decided that any physical attack on Barbara would probably alert the neighbors too.

  “I really am sorry, Kate,” Barbara said contritely. “I shouldn’t tease you. I’m just a little spooked. It seems weird that Isabelle isn’t here.”

  “That’s all right,” I answered automatically, telling myself I wouldn’t really have hit Barbara. I let my hands relax again. If I hadn’t done it in all these years, I wasn’t about to start pummeling her now. I opened my mouth to talk some sense into her instead.

  “And you’re right, I suppose. There’s really no reason that she should be home,” Barbara finished up. “She didn’t know we were coming.”

  “Time to go?” I put in tentatively, carefully, before the real Barbara could emerge again.

  “Sure, kiddo,” Barbara said.

  I escorted her off Isabelle Viseu’s property as cautiously as I had escorted patients to the lobby when I worked in a mental hospital more than twenty years ago.

  And even then, I didn’t breathe until we were in my Toyota and heading back down the highway away from Paloma. 1 couldn’t hear any sirens, except the ones in my imagination. What if someone had read my license plate as we skulked around Isabelle’s house?

  “No one noticed us,” Barbara informed me.

  “O All-Knowing-One,” I began in frustration. “If you can tell that, how come you can’t tell who killed Silk?”

  Barbara sighed and I was immediately sorry for my sarcasm.

  “It’s like the high voltage fritzes my wires,” Barbara said. “Psychic abilities are a lot like electricity. The higher the power, the harder to channel. And the heavy-duty stuff around murder is about as high-powered as it comes.”

  This was the best explanation I’d heard out of her yet. But then, Barbara was an electrician by trade.

  “Listen, kiddo,” she added. “Let’s go to my place and toss this thing around.”

  “But—” I began, thinking of Wayne.

  “You don’t want Wayne to hear us, do you?” she asked.

  So we ended up at Barbara’s apartment, in her living room. Colorful futons, pillows, and an iridescent collection of crystal balls gave the place an otherworldly character. And then there was the ancient arcade fortune-teller machine featuring a woman’s head in a gypsy scarf that lit up, nodded, and cackled when a nickel was inserted. She’d eaten my last nickel years ago. It was enough to hear Barbara cackle.

  We both plopped down on a sky-blue futon as Barbara began to talk. I felt incredibly tired, sleepy even. Maybe it was all the crystal balls.

  “We have to talk to folks,” Barbara declared, listing them on her fingers as she went on. She didn’t sound tired at all. “Tory, Gil, Denise, Artemisia, Isabelle, Elsa, Rich. We’ve only really talked to Justine and Linda and Zarathustra so far.”

  “But—”

  “But we can do other things too, I know,” she plunged ahead. “Creative things.”

  “Like what?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to hear her answer.

  “Like hypnotism—”

  “Hypnotism?”

  “Yeah, the cops use it all the time,” Barbara insisted. She turned to fasten her gleaming eyes on mine. “To bring back the details. Maybe we’ll remember something important.”

  “But—”

  “Or maybe we can find a psychic to draw the murderer—”

  “But these folks are all psychic,” I reminded her. “Why should—”

  “Or we can put a cat toy around your neck so you’ll experience what Silk did, and then—”

  “Barbara!” I yelped, grabbing my neck protectively. I could almost feel the wire already.

  “Or—”

  I never got to hear Barbara’s next creative idea. Because Barbara’s door opened, and a small, slender man with soulful eyes and a luxurious mustache stomped in. Felix Byrne, Barbara’s boyfriend. Felix, the reporter for The Marin Mind. Felix, the pit bull. Felix, the—

  “So, you found another stiff, huh?” he demanded with a familiar glint in his eye. “And you didn’t tell me.”

  I waited for him to turn on me with his You’re-my-friend-and-I-deserve-to-know-everything-that-happened speech, but his angry eyes had found another target. His sweetie, Barbara.

  “My own babycakes, and you didn’t even think to mention the lily-maker, huh?” he began. His voice rose a decibel. “Me, your own tiger muffin, and you just forgot I was a reporter, huh?”

  “Never,” Barbara replied and smiled sweetly.

  Finally, Felix pulled back his slender shoulders and shouted.

  “My own pumpkin pie finds a body, and I gotta get the poop from the potato-brains at the friggin’ cop shop!”

  - Eight -

  I almost felt sorry for Felix. Even his loudest shout hadn’t fazed Barbara, who was still smiling her little Buddha smile. But “babycakes” and “pumpkin pie?” Ugh. Even a friend can put up with only so much. I pulled myself up from the sky-blue futon slowly, very slowly, concentrating on invisibility.

  “Holy socks, am I on some gonzo last-to-know list or what?” he shouted, advancing on both of us, but with his large, soulful eyes fixed firmly on Barbara.

  “Felix,” she replied calmly. (I was glad she hadn’t called him “tiger muffin.”) “You know you can�
�t push me.”

  “But honey dumpling—” he began.

  Barbara just shook her head and chuckled.

  Felix’s shoulders went limp in defeat. I took a quick step toward the door. Not quick enough, though.

  “And you,” Felix rapped out, whirling around just as my other foot came up for another step. “My so-called friend, my so-called compadre. After all these years, you still can’t bring yourself to punch a few friggin’ little buttons to give me the poop?”

  “Felix,” I answered, straightening my own slumped shoulders. “You know you can’t push me.”

  “Hah!” he puffed and advanced in my direction. He smelled of anger and cilantro, a particularly Marin combination.

  I sidestepped him before he could put his nose in my face. He was fast, but I had years of training in tai chi and Felix-avoidance in my favor.

  “Just because you always play whiz-bang sleuth-with-the-truth doesn’t mean you can keep away from me,” he continued. His feet might not be as fast as mine, but he made up for it with his mouth.

  I took one backstep, and then another as he berated me for being a lousy friend in times of crises, forgetting that they were my crises.

  “Felix, my mini King Kong,” Barbara called out, her voice high with affection. “You’re bugging Kate.”

  I waited until he turned back to Barbara before I made my escape through the still-open door, thanking Barbara in my mind for her urgent intervention. I was sure she’d get the message.

  “Kettering, Mr. Pop-psy-cop-ology, what a looney-tunes,” rang in my ears as I dashed down the apartment house stairs. Once I was safely in my Toyota, I looked for Felix. He hadn’t followed me. I allowed myself to breathe once, then put the car in gear and shot out of the parking space allotted for friends of the apartment dwellers. All the way home, I tried to remember what it was that Barbara had told me she loved about Felix. But as hard as I scoured my memory circuits, I couldn’t. Though I did remember the most important thing as I pulled into my own driveway. Barbara and Felix didn’t share a home. Barbara was safe from Felix’s mouth. Once she got him out of her apartment. I told myself Barbara could handle Felix, or anyone else for that matter, and raced up my front stairs to see how my own sweetie was doing.

  Wayne was propped up in bed and reading a collection of poetry by Robert Hass with a rapt expression on his homely face. Poetry. I shivered. I’d had a brief encounter with poetry a while back. Actually, I’d been trying to write some. I didn’t even want to think about it. I thought about Wayne instead. I looked at him and reminded myself that lots of people wouldn’t see the Wayne I loved any more than I could see the Felix that Barbara loved. Could there be something intrinsically lovable about Felix? Naah, my mind answered.

  “How are you?” I asked Wayne, skipping my usual endearments. After “tiger muffin,” I couldn’t bear even a simple “sweetie.”

  “Better,” he announced, laying his book down reverently. His eyes weren’t as bleary as they had been. I felt a rush of hope as heady as pure caffeine.

  I put my hand on his forehead. It was still cool. I kissed him on the mouth. When we each pulled away a few minutes later, I decided he really was better. His lungs had to be. I was having a hard time catching my breath, and I hadn’t had pneumonia.

  “Hungry,” he muttered after a few moments of blissful togetherness.

  Then the awful realization hit me. I was being asked to cook for the cook. To cook for the master chef.

  “Soup,” I told him, putting more confidence in my tone than I really had. “I’ll make you soup.”

  And I did. I combined three different cans of soup with a little sherry, garlic, and miso. The effort and the heat of the stove brought dampness to my brow. That and the inevitable comparison my mind made with Wayne’s culinary skills.

  At least I had a box of fresh crackers to go with the soup. Once the soup was ready, I ladled it carefully into my best bowl, set it on my best plate and arranged the crackers around it. Presentation, I thought, and added a sprig of rosemary to the plate. Then I wondered if I should have put the rosemary in the soup, not beside it.

  I carried the soup in to Wayne on a tray, feeling all the confidence of a secret goddess-worshipper about to be questioned during the Spanish Inquisition.

  Wayne brought the spoon to his mouth, closed his eyes, and pronounced the verdict. “Delicious.”

  He had to be lying. What a sweetheart! This man was good, through and through. And he was getting well.

  “I love you,” I told him, sincerely and wholeheartedly.

  “Love you too, Kate,” he answered. He took another sip of soup, then grinned evilly. “What color do you want the bridesmaids to wear?”

  Monday morning, Wayne was asleep in the bedroom again. Earlier, he’d stood up, tried a few karate exercises, turned an unpleasant shade of off-white, and got back into bed. He wasn’t out of the woods yet. And I was back at work on the Jest Gifts gag-gift Website. I had entered the electronic age…and had yet to profit by it.

  My friend Peg had built me the Website. The idea sounded great at first. Peg would manage the Website, send me the orders, which I would fill. And then I would get paid, minus a commission for Peg. We sold some of the same old-same old stuff: shark necklaces for attorneys, uh-huh scarves for psychotherapists, speculum earrings for gynecologists, and cups with twisted spines for the chiropractors, but then Peg came up with the idea for special interest items for the Internet users: “E-eeee!” ties and tie tacks, Web scarves, and earrings, and mouses in icon shapes for the individual professions.

  I designed them, had them made, and we were in business. Only we weren’t really in business. So far the Web sales were running less than five percent of my total sales, closer to one percent, and I was spending my Jest Gifts time and money on more and more Internet projects. Maybe people who used the Internet just didn’t go out enough to dress up with the nifty Web ties and scarves, I rationalized as I sat there drawing one more mouse, this one shaped like a car for the car dealers. Unbridled entrepreneurism is an illness no twelve-step program can cure.

  I put down my pencil, suddenly thinking of Silk. I wouldn’t allow myself to get sucked into more investigating with Barbara. No. I shook my head to reinforce my resolution. We needed to leave the interrogation of suspects to the police. Even if they were Wenger and Kettering. Ugh. Still, maybe I could investigate just a little, the safe way, by the book. I pushed myself away from my desk.

  Wayne was still asleep in the bedroom when I peeked in. I climbed into my Toyota and drove straight to the Mill Valley library.

  I located a few back issues of Bay Vision and found Silk’s column, “Erotica, Et Cetera.” After skimming for ten minutes, I knew more than I needed to about sex toys, the possibility of undead spirits among us, cyberporn, and the hidden mind of dolphins. Erotica, et cetera, indeed. Though sex was the number one topic in her columns, Silk clearly and thoughtfully discussed issues of elitism, sexism, and racism as well. And her interest in the occult and otherworldly was not only obvious, but somehow titillating.

  After I’d finished all the columns I could find, I searched for her books. I found The Bisexual Weight Loss Plan and Looked at Lust from Both Sides Now in the fiction section.

  The librarian at the counter was young, dark, and pretty with a long braid down her back. She looked into my face when I laid the books down for processing. I felt myself blushing guiltily. Then she winked, and I blushed all over again. Why was I taking out Silk’s books? Did I really expect to find a clue there, or was I just trying to make the connection I hadn’t been able to make when she was alive?

  I was still struggling with the question when I pulled into my driveway. Unfortunately, Barbara’s Volkswagen bug was parked in front of me.

  Barbara was out of her car and to my door before I even turned the engine off.

  “Hey kiddo,” she greeted me as I climbed out of the Toyota. “I’m taking a week off work to deal with this murder—”

&nbs
p; I closed my eyes and put my hands over my ears. It didn’t help. I could still hear her.

  “—the guys on the crew are really supportive. They’re holding off on the wiring part till I come back—”

  “Why a week?” I asked her. A week sounded too long to clear up Silk’s murder. Way too long. “Do you know something I don’t know?”

  “Lots of things,” she answered.

  I made a growling sound at the base of my throat. It scared most people. But not Barbara.

  “Anyway, a week just seems right,” Barbara continued cheerfully.

  And, I concluded, the construction crew she worked with would probably let her take a month’s trip to the moon if she asked.

  “So, are you ready for the hypnotist?” she demanded briskly.

  Hypnotist? was the last thing I remembered saying before she shuffled me in to check on Wayne, made up some excuse about where we were going, and shuffled me back out again. At least she let me drive my own car. Probably just because hers was blocked in by mine.

  Then we were somewhere in San Ricardo, sitting on a love seat across from a white-haired woman named Rosalee Snell who was swinging a crystal pendulum in front of our joint eyes. At first it was so hokey, I thought she had to be kidding. But then my eyes started getting heavy. And I started remembering. Justine’s living room in knotty-wood paneling and grass cloth. The breeze through the windows. Justine’s wayward curls where her hair was braided back, Zarathustra’s piercings, Silk in neon-pink, and the smell of patchouli oil. Faces, too many faces, and then the circle of chairs, the masks, the too-hard seat, and Silk, damn it, Silk laughing in my mind as the cats yowled, and my eyes finally adjusting to the light. And the scream. I could actually hear it. Barbara had been right. I now remembered every painful and irrelevant moment in complete detail.

  “But did you remember anything important?” I asked Barbara as we drove away in the Toyota.

  “I don’t know what’s important,” she answered me seriously. “That’s the problem, kiddo. Maybe I remembered the clue that could solve the whole thing. Maybe I didn’t.”