Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “All right, all right.” I tried a new tack. “Did you remember anything new?”

  There was a long silence in the car as traffic whizzed by on the highway. I asked myself the same question I’d just asked Barbara. I didn’t think I remembered anything new. I just remembered everything more vividly.

  “Exactly,” she agreed. Then she added, “We have to visit Elsa.”

  I know I should have said no. I was driving. Barbara couldn’t force me to visit Elsa or anyone else. But I thought of Silk’s columns. I thought of her talent. And Elsa was on the way home. What could an eighty-year-old woman do to us anyway? Barbara waited out my internal rationalizations quietly. Interpersonal tai chi at its best. And she’d never even taken a class.

  Elsa Oberg’s house was a gem of a house in downtown Mill Valley. As we walked to her door, I wondered how she bribed the deer not to eat her plants. Roses that wouldn’t have stood a chance against a little midnight munching in my yard were in glorious bloom in hers. Satin reds, velvet lavenders, silken yellows. I sighed and breathed in their varying scents. I had almost forgotten why we were there when Barbara lifted the old-fashioned iron knocker and let it bang on Elsa’s door.

  It took a while, but Elsa answered the knock. And she even seemed glad to see us, her impish face lighting up behind her bifocals. Maybe she was just too nice for deer.

  “Hey kids,” she rasped enthusiastically. “You here to see this ole lady?”

  Barbara assured her we were, all the time telling her she wasn’t as old as she pretended. Elsa laughed and led us into a living room that was as beautiful as her garden, furnished with treasures in oak and stained glass, plush couches, and larger-than-life Toulouse-Lautrec prints on the walls. And blasting music. We could have been on stage at the Moulin Rouge. And there was a another dancer in the room.

  “My granddaughter, Neva,” Elsa introduced the dark-haired woman. “She’s an artist.”

  “Oh, Gram-crackers, I’m nothing but a cartoonist,” the woman who had to be close to our age protested over the wail of the Grateful Dead coming from the CD player. “I’ve given up on art.”

  “Modesty,” Elsa declared and hugged the younger woman to her with one skinny arm. “I like that in a girl.”

  Neva rolled her eyes, and Elsa released her to turn down the music.

  “Neva’s got herself a do-goodin’ husband too,” Elsa told us, turning back from the CD player. “A hot hunk. What’s he out doin’ today, hon?”

  “Doing good,” Neva answered. “How’s your hot hunk?”

  Elsa laughed. Her laugh was worn and scratchy but comfortable. Even Neva had joined in with a chuckle by the time we got settled on Elsa’s plush couches.

  The couches were as cozy as they looked. I wouldn’t have minded moving in with Elsa. Along with Wayne, of course.

  “So, you kids want some tea?” Elsa asked.

  “You get to pick your own cup,” Neva told us, smiting.

  Barbara said yes for both of us. Elsa motioned us to stand and led us to a pair of lighted cabinets filled with teacups. The teacups were as beautiful and varied as the roses in her garden: one gold-and-pearlized design shaped like a sea shell, the next a simple china blue, another painted with meticulous Japanese crowd scenes, and others with flowers, humming birds, and butterflies. We oohed and aahed as Jerry Garcia sang quietly in the background. Elsa Oberg knew how to live.

  Once we made our choices, Elsa had us sit again and brought out an already steaming pot of herbal tea, fragrant with licorice, peppermint, cinnamon, and a thousand other spices in a lavender-pearlized teapot with a scene of insects and flowers so minutely rendered I almost missed it.

  Barbara held out the cup she’d chosen, an exquisite gold-rimmed cup with three clawed feet and a fluted gold handle with a tiny market scene painted around its delicate edges. It couldn’t have held more than a few tablespoons of tea.

  I’d chosen a larger cup in pure periwinkle-blue. Its magic was inside, glazed ivory white with a peach at the bottom.

  Elsa offered us additions from a delicate, pale green creamer and sugar bowl, but I was already inhaling the scent of the tea and knew it was perfect.

  Then Barbara spoke, and I remembered that only the tea service was perfect.

  “We wondered what you could tell us about Silk Sokoloff,” she said.

  “Was that the woman who was killed?” Neva asked, moving closer to her grandmother where they sat together across from us.

  Barbara and I nodded together.

  Elsa’s eyebrows creased over her bifocals for a moment.

  “Silk was battier than an attic,” Elsa finally announced. “Not that anyone should have killed her for it. But she knew how to rile people, that’s for sure.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Any way she could.” Elsa’s frown disappeared and she laughed, coughing halfway through. “She’d find someone’s sore spot and then press on it. Not out of cruelty, but curiosity, I think. Always pestering me with questions about sex after eighty. Smart, but no common sense.”

  “Well, Gram-crackers, you are the expert on sex after eighty,” Neva pointed out, affection in her voice.

  “Tee-hee.” Elsa coughed again. “It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.”

  Neva and Elsa laughed together. And Barbara and I tried to think of other questions.

  “Any idea who…um—” I began.

  “Who killed her?” Elsa helped me out. “Nope, this ole lady’s been around, but I don’t understand this killing business. Silk was an equal opportunity manure-stirrer. Can’t figure who she really pissed off.”

  “Gram-crackers—” Neva began.

  “Excuse my French,” Elsa offered. “Having a hot honey again’s got me all stirred up. Don’t know what I’m saying these days.”

  I would have liked to stay at Elsa’s, drinking her wonderful tea and listening to her music all day, but she didn’t really have a lot more to say. I thought she was being honest with us, but then, so far, I’d thought everyone had been honest.

  When Barbara and I said our protracted goodbyes, I realized I’d like to see more of Neva’s Gram-crackers someday. But after she was out of the murder-suspect lineup.

  “Denise Parnell,” Barbara ordered once we were back in the Toyota.

  “But—” I objected.

  “Come on, Kate, you wanna know just as bad as I do.”

  So I drove back to the highway, taking the off-ramp into Larkspur, where Denise owned a small condo. As I parked the car, I finally thought to ask how come Barbara knew where everyone lived.

  “Justine,” she answered simply.

  I didn’t ask her whether she just read Justine’s mind or whether she had a list of addresses secreted on her person. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.

  Denise Parnell was home. Barbara smiled and charmed her way into her home, if Denise’s condo could be called a home. It was scrupulously clean, in white with teal accents, smelling vaguely of furniture polish and disinfectant. Her shelves of books were neat and in library order. Soothing abstract art hung on the walls. And her mantelpiece had busts of great thinkers from Aristotle to Einstein. Compared to Elsa’s comfortable old house, Denise’s was a modern museum.

  And Denise did not look happy to see us. Her girlish Aryan face looked haggard today. I couldn’t really blame her. We were intruding on business hours.

  “Gee, I’m sorry if I seem inhospitable,” she explained, her voice as smooth as her silken pageboy. “But I just wrapped up an interview with some UFO weirdos. It can be exhausting to talk to these people sometimes.”

  I nodded sympathetically, all the time wondering how she could use the word “weirdos” to describe her own interviewees. She was, after all, the host of Acceptance.

  Reluctantly, she allowed us to sit on her white leather couch. Then she looked at us expectantly, her hands clasped together tightly once she took her own seat.

  “So,” I floundered, “it must be wonderful hosting
such an interesting show.”

  “Goodness, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?” she declared, twisting her clasped hands. “Though sometimes it’s difficult. I’m such a perfectly normal person.” She smiled to show she was joking. At least, sort of joking. “And I get to interview people with alternative lifestyles for a living. UFO abductees, participants in group marriages, graffiti ‘artists,’ Mr. Moms, transsexuals, lesbian mothers.” She shook her head. “I’m not really sure they should be mothers,” she admitted. “People have even assumed I’m a lesbian because I’m not married.”

  She laughed, and we laughed with her, but it wasn’t a really comfortable laughter. Maybe I was just missing Elsa and her tea.

  “I watch myself do that show, and it really amazes me,” she went on. “It’s not really my show, but you have to sound right in my business, and they tell me I have a good voice.” It was a good voice, smooth and slow, almost confident. Though a look at her haggard face and twisting hands told me the confidence was voice-deep. Suddenly, I felt very sorry for Denise, stuck in a job she didn’t really know how to handle.

  “I’m a good journalist too,” she added as if she’d heard me. “I’m good at observing and reporting.”

  “That’s why we came to you,” Barbara put in slyly. “You are good at observing, and we needed someone who observed that day.”

  “Oh my,” Denise responded, shaking her head sadly. “I just wish I’d never gone to the bathroom.”

  “But you knew Silk,” Barbara prodded. “What did you think of her?”

  “Well, I’m afraid I never knew her well,” Denise answered, her eyes focusing above our heads. “Until the other day, I hadn’t seen her since college. She could be abrasive, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Do you have any idea who killed her?” Barbara asked.

  “Oh my, no,” Denise replied, her eyes widening.

  “You were watching at least part of the time while the rest of us were in the circle,” Barbara tried one more time. “Did you notice anything, anything at all?” There was a note of desperation in Barbara’s voice now. I couldn’t tell if it was feigned.

  Denise closed her eyes for a moment.

  “Nothing that I can really remember,” she finally answered. “Golly, I’m sorry.”

  “Any little thing you didn’t think was important at the time?” I asked. I’d caught Barbara’s desperation, feigned or not.

  “Just the wood paneling,” Denise said unexpectedly. “I suppose I should have been watching the people. But the wood paneling was so interesting. It seemed to have eyes. The knotholes, I mean.”

  “Oh,” I said. I was stumped.

  I turned to Barbara and saw nothing but the frustration behind her strained smile.

  “I have to do my exercises,” Denise said suddenly, looking at her watch and standing. “I lift weights. It helps, you know.”

  We didn’t ask her what it helped as she escorted us out of her condo. We didn’t have time.

  “She’s a confusing woman,” I commented as I pulled onto the highway once again. “But she seems honest.”

  Barbara laughed. “Kiddo, have you ever met anyone who didn’t seem honest to you?” she asked.

  “Of course I have,” I retorted and then flipped through the files in my mind for a recent example. I didn’t think an insurance saleswoman I’d met months ago counted.

  I was glad to reach home without another order from Barbara. I watched her take off in her Volkswagen and then went to my mailbox.

  As I walked up to the house and unlocked the door, I counted bills, advertisements, mortgage come-ons, credit card applications, mail-order catalogs, and a letter.

  I was at my desk when I opened the letter.

  It read in bold, block print, “YOU HAVE ONE MAN, WHY DO YOU NEED ANOTHER?”

  - Nine -

  I was pretty sure the letter wasn’t an advertisement. But I was afraid it might have been a bill…for a debt I hadn’t realized I’d incurred.

  But what debt? I rubbed my arms as I thought. It felt too cold in the room now. “YOU HAVE ONE MAN, WHY DO YOU NEED ANOTHER?” That didn’t sound like a friendly inquiry, especially in bold print.

  I tried to connect the question to Silk’s death, but I couldn’t. As far as I knew, Gil Nesbit, Rich McGowan, and Zarathustra Howe had been the only males at the fatal gathering. And I was fairly sure none of these guys had any interest in me. Why would they? But then, who—

  I called Barbara on her car phone, the one I teased her about needing, being a psychic.

  “Hey, Kate,” she answered. I could hear the sound of cars honking faintly in the background. Barbara was dangerous enough driving without a car phone. Was I adding to the danger by calling her?

  “You know I can drive and talk at the same time,” she informed me. “What’s up?”

  I felt smug with the realization that there was at least one thing she didn’t know about without my telling her first.

  So I told her about the letter and the message in bold print.

  “Craig,” she intoned in her voice-of-prophecy persona.

  “You mean this hate mail is from Craig’s girlfriend?” I demanded, wishing I’d listened more closely to him the other night. Hadn’t he just broken up with Bonnie? I knew Bonnie, though not well. She worked at a folk art gallery in Hutton.

  “I don’t know if it’s from his girlfriend, but I’ll bet it has something to do with Craig,” Barbara assured me, her voice back to normal.

  Some assurance. Some psychic.

  “Barbara, how about a little more specificity—”

  “Kate?” I heard whispered from behind me. I spun around, my heart thumping louder than the whisper.

  And saw Wayne. I let out a long breath. It was only Wayne, Wayne peering down at me, still dressed in his p.j.’s, his eyes confused.

  “Thought you came in,” he murmured.

  Translated: He thought I’d come in without bothering to check on him where he lay sick in our bedroom.

  It might have been a mistranslation, but still. I took the letter in my hand and laid it face down on my desk as I said goodbye to Barbara.

  “Hungry?” Wayne murmured once I’d hung up, padding his way unsteadily toward the kitchen. And then I realized I was. Somehow, lunchtime had come and gone. That somehow being Barbara, of course. It was nearer to dinner than lunch now.

  But Wayne was too weak to cook. Uh-oh. It was my turn again.

  “Sit down, sweetie,” I told him as he leaned on the kitchen counter. He looked like he’d rather be leaning on the kitchen floor.

  “But—”

  “You can’t cook,” I insisted and helped him to a chair.

  And that was how I discovered his recipe for sweet bread spread, a recipe I’d been asking him about ever since he first made it for me. And never received an answer.

  “Blender,” he ordered, defeated. He seemed to collapse into the chair. “Silken tofu, preserves, maple syrup, lemon juice, vanilla—”

  “Wait a minute,” I stopped him, palm up. I’d gotten as far as pulling out the blender and opening the pantry door.

  “Just one more ingredient,” he offered, his shy smile tantalizing. I only wished he had the energy for cooking, in more ways than one.

  “What?” I whispered huskily.

  “Peanut butter,” he told me.

  I threw my arms around his neck. “You trust me!” I exclaimed.

  “Consider it a wedding present,” he answered, his brows lowering. I leaned down and saw the smile still tugging at his mouth. I gave him a sisterly kiss on the cheek, knowing any more would make cooking impossible.

  Even at that, it wasn’t easy. I’m not a cook at heart, not even a blender-master. It took me a lot longer to make the bread spread than it did for Wayne to list its ingredients. But once it was done, it tasted as good as always, smeared thickly on whole-grained bread.

  Wayne curled his nose a little, but nibbled at his bread and spread as I gulped mine down. That’s when I r
emembered that he’d originally made this recipe for me, not for himself. Wayne was not a vegetarian. And he objected to tofu under ordinary circumstances, no matter how well disguised. Even sick, the man was still cooking for me. This time, I couldn’t resist a little more than a sisterly kiss. Yum. A little something we both could enjoy.

  “I’ll cook something for you next time,” I promised in a whisper a few minutes later.

  “More of the kissing, please, ma’am,” he begged in the manner of Oliver Twist. I never could resist begging. Our lips were numb by the time we unhooked them.

  Wayne didn’t curl his nose when he took his next bite of bread and spread. He just grinned inanely. I’m pretty sure he was imitating me.

  But he was really eating. Not to mention drinking apple juice by the quart. He was getting well. It was good to have him back.

  We sat side by side at the table, leaning into each other and talking, talking about everything, as the late afternoon sun floated across the kitchen, lazily marking time. Wayne told me he’d been thinking about spending more hours writing and less hours working. I controlled the urge to jump up and down and cheer. Then we talked a little about weddings. Maybe Wayne wanted to jump up and cheer then too, but fortunately he was still too weak. We even talked about poetry. And science fiction. About everything. Everything except murder and the menacing letter that lay face down on my desk in the next room.

  Then I put him to bed and did paperwork late into the night.

  Tuesday morning, the letter was still on my desk, and its message was still written in bold, block print. I stared at the print. Bonnie, it had to be Bonnie. I was pretty sure he’d said he’d broken up with her. Well, maybe I couldn’t solve Silk’s murder, but there was nothing to stop me from talking to Craig’s ex-girlfriend.

  I peeked in the bedroom door to make sure there was really nothing to stop me. There wasn’t. Wayne was snoring gently and peacefully. I pulled my shoulders back and practiced scowling. Then I stalked down the stairs and revved my engine. Righteous anger takes a lot of revving.

  I was fully revved by the time I’d parked across from Folk Artisans R Us in downtown Hutton. Actually, the gallery that Bonnie worked for had a much longer and more tasteful name than the one I’d given it, a name that managed to convey the uniqueness and social importance of folk art from Asia, Africa, and South America, only skipping a few snooty continents that it had deemed undeserving of mention.