Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  The woman’s shoulders slumped, and suddenly she hardly looked like her sister at all.

  “Polly?” she whispered.

  Barbara just nodded as my brain belatedly translated Polly into Silk.

  Barbara’s nod got us through the doorway and down the long hallway of a shotgun-style flat into a small, dimly lit study. Two white wicker chairs and a blue futon couch were arranged in the center of the room. All the rest of the space was taken up by the bursting bookshelves on three of the walls, a desk jammed up against the fourth wall, and marine memorabilia everywhere else. Three separate fish mobiles and posters of dolphins and otters and crustaceans gave an underwater feel to the room. That and the whales singing somewhere from speakers in the background. Not to mention the dim lighting.

  Mattie pulled a chain on a lamp made of green glass, adding just enough light to the room to illuminate more oceanic knickknacks in the green glow.

  Mattie must have seen my eyes roving past the table of seashells and dried starfish. Or maybe she heard Barbara’s muttered “Jeez-Louise.”

  “I’m an oceanographer,” she explained brusquely. Then she crossed her arms over her impressive chest. “So you knew my sister?”

  “May I call you Mattie?” Barbara asked smoothly, seating herself in a wicker chair.

  Mattie shrugged her shoulders and frowned, probably wondering why she’d let two strangers into her flat in the first place. Maybe even thinking of ways to escape.

  “We knew your sister,” I explained as gently as I could. “And we were with her when she died.”

  Mattie’s arms dropped to her sides in slow motion. Her eyes widened with obvious fear.

  “You didn’t…” she began and then faltered.

  “We didn’t kill her,” Barbara assured her.

  “Oh, no, absolutely not!” I put in frantically. No wonder the woman looked frightened. For once, I was glad Barbara was psychic. “We’re trying to solve her murder.”

  Mattie dropped into the other wicker chair.

  “Oh, God,” she whimpered and put her face into her hands.

  I turned to Barbara and muttered, “good job,” but knowing Barbara, she probably thought she was doing a good job. Sarcasm is wasted on positive thinkers like Barbara.

  “Poor Polly,” Mattie whispered. “I was always afraid…afraid…”

  “Afraid she’d be killed?” Barbara prompted.

  “Yes!” Mattie lifted her head, tears still shining on her face in the dim light. “Polly liked pulling people’s chains, even when she was a kid.”

  “I can’t imagine Silk as a child,” I put in. And I couldn’t, as hard as I tried. Silk had seemed larger than life the one time I’d met her, sprung from the gods, or maybe the goddesses.

  Mattie gave me a small, shaky smile and rose from her seat. She walked to one of the overstuffed bookcases and rooted around silently. I sniffed. I could have sworn I smelled seaweed in the room. As well as book dust and salt spray.

  “Here’re some pictures of Polly,” she said, and I hastily stopped sniffing as she handed me an old photo album, its dark cardboard cover hole-punched and fastened to the pages with string tied into a bow. “Do you want the long or the short version of my sister’s life?” she asked then, her voice friendly, even hopeful.

  “The long version!” Barbara and I burst out together. I would have asked for the long version even if we weren’t investigating. I wanted Mattie to talk. I had a feeling she hadn’t had a chance yet to unload all her feelings about her sister’s death.

  She sank into the cushions of the wicker chair as I turned the cardboard cover back eagerly. Little black mounting corners held a picture in place on the first black page, a picture of two little girls with a grown woman who looked big and busty in a tight sweater. Even then, it was obvious to me which girl was Mattie and which was Silk. The younger girl’s mischievous smile was already imprinted on her face. The older girl looked worried. I looked up. What had Mattie been worried about?

  Mattie tilted her head toward the futon couch and I sat down, holding the precious photo album carefully, and opening it again once my bottom connected with blue futon.

  “My father left when we were kids,” Mattie began quietly, her face looking as troubled as the one in the picture. “I was seven, Polly was five.”

  “Hard,” I murmured, too able to imagine how hard it might have been in this green lit room, thumbing through old photos.

  “It was hard,” Mattie agreed seriously. “And then Mom began drinking and having terrible bouts of depression. I don’t think Polly—Silk—understood it was beyond her control. She tried to tease Mom out it. She clowned, made jokes.” Mattie sighed. I turned a page, unable to resist, and saw another shot of the woman I assumed Mattie was talking about, a cigarette in her hand, a bleary smile in place. The children were no longer in the picture. “But it didn’t work.”

  My shoulder muscles tightened. “What happened to your mother?” I asked, looking up from the album.

  “She’s dead now, poor soul,” Mattie answered softly.

  There was a moment of silence as the whales sang on eerily in the background. I closed the album quietly and Mattie began again.

  “I still remember the perfume my mother wore,” she told us. “And the cigarettes she smoked. And the alcohol and the beatings. I—” She seemed to catch herself, her eyes focusing suddenly. “We didn’t live with her much after Dad left, anyway. We went to live with my aunt Sonya for a while.”

  “Sonya Sokoloff,” Barbara put in.

  “Yeah, always Sonya Sokoloff,” Mattie replied, bitterness in her voice now. “Never really a sweet auntie, my Aunt Sonya. She was too busy being the great civil rights activist and folk singer. But Polly thought she was great. Everything Aunt Sonya did, Polly wanted to do. She worshiped her. That’s why it hurt her so much when Aunt Sonya realized she didn’t really have the time to raise two little girls and trundled us off to my great-aunt Rose and Uncle Bernie.”

  “It wasn’t the same for Silk after your aunt Sonya?” I guessed.

  “Not anywhere near the same. Polly couldn’t stand Aunt Rose and Uncle Bernie. ‘They’re old,’ she’d say, like it was a crime. They were old, but they were kind and trying to do their best. The real truth was that they weren’t celebrities like my aunt Sonya was. That’s what Silk missed, the limelight. She loved being Sonya Sokoloff’s niece. She loved reporters and audiences. I guess she loved attention.”

  “She never grew out of that,” Barbara put in.

  I opened the album again surreptitiously, skimming for a picture of this famous aunt. But there were only three more pictures in the album and then nothing but blank, black pages. No more mother. No more children. I shut the album, feeling unexpected pressure behind my eyes, the pressure that usually precedes tears. I took a deep breath and smelted seaweed again.

  Mattie was shaking her head slowly, looking at the floor. “Nope, Poll—Silk—never grew out of needing attention.” Then her voice changed. “Do you have any idea how irritating Silk could be?” she demanded.

  I found myself nodding. Then I realized that probably wasn’t the right response. But Mattie hadn’t noticed anyway. She was too immersed in her story about her sister.

  “Polly always found a way to get attention. She worked hard at it. She got good grades, acted in school plays, got her degree in journalism. But what she really learned was that acting outrageous got her more attention than anything else. Like her clothing. Nuts!” Mattie threw her hands into the air. “And her hair. She has to have been one of the first white women to perm her hair into an Afro. But I’m afraid I’m the one that gave her the idea about bisexuality.”

  Mattie looked up at us in the dim green light, as if for our reaction.

  “I didn’t think bisexuality was an idea,” I offered. “I thought you were born that way.”

  Mattie laughed. Maybe I’d given her the right reaction. Or maybe, I’d just been incredibly offensive. But at least she was still talki
ng.

  “Well, I was born bisexual,” she told us. “It drove me absolutely crazy when I was younger. I was attracted to both men and woman. And that wasn’t a popular position to be in then. It still isn’t, even now. But at least now I’m in a monogamous relationship, so the question doesn’t come up much anymore.” I opened my mouth to ask if she ended up with a man or a woman, but then shut it. It was none of my business. “But in those days…” She shrugged her shoulders.

  “How was it then?” I prompted.

  Mattie laughed again, though I thought I saw new tears in her eyes.

  “Then, I was in college and really worried about it. The big ‘it.’ I didn’t think there was anyone I could tell about my sexuality, anyone I could explain my feelings to. Except for my little sister.” Mattie paused and looked me straight in the face. “My little sister. You shoulda seen the way her eyes lit up. One minute, I’m pouring out this terrible secret from my heart, from my guts. I’m sobbing and crying. And I look up and see Polly. I didn’t have to be a mind reader, all I had to see was that look in her eyes, and I knew I’d just handed my sister another way to be outrageous. From that point on Polly was a public bisexual. That’s when she changed her name to Silk, too.”

  “Was she really bisexual?” I asked.

  “Who knows?” Mattie answered, her eyes going over our heads to rest on a spinning tropical fish mobile. “I think ‘Silk’ might have been bisexual. Of course, I used to believe that everyone was naturally bisexual. It’s only recently I’ve realized that sometimes I project my own stuff onto others.” She sighed. “Fish are so much easier to understand than people. Actually, I honestly think Silk wasn’t all that sexual a person. I know that sounds weird, for all her act. But it really felt like an act to me.”

  “And she made money off of it,” Barbara said slowly.

  “God, isn’t that the irony,” Mattie agreed. “Here I was suffering in my own private hell over the issue, and Silk made money—”

  “The Bisexual Weight Loss Plan,” Barbara threw in.

  “As if bisexuality could help you lose weight,” Mattie harrumphed. “But it sure made Silk money. With a title like that, how could it miss? It was a bestseller. She was an overnight success one year out of college. Big bucks.”

  “And attention,” I put in, suddenly understanding.

  “And attention,” Mattie repeated. “And a few years later, she came out with Looked at Lust from Both Sides Now. That one did even better. And then she got her column. She was a professional bisexual. But her affairs were a lot fewer and briefer than anyone would imagine. Though she had to keep up the pose.”

  Mattie was quiet now, still staring into green-lit space as the whales sang. Slow tears came rolling out of her eyes and down her face.

  “Poor Polly,” she whispered. “She was so lonely. I don’t think she ever knew who she was. And now she never will.”

  We didn’t stay much longer after that. I dropped the photo album on the futon couch and ran to Mattie’s side, patting her shoulder ineffectually as she wept. Barbara made her tea and at the same time somehow managed to get the names and addresses of a couple of Silk’s friends who lived nearby.

  “Will you be okay?” I asked after Mattie’s tears had finally run their course and she was quietly sipping tea.

  “Oh, yes,” she told me, a smile on her square face. A very attractive smile, I realized with a little tingle. Was everyone bisexual? I pulled my hand back from her shoulder. “I’m a survivor,” Mattie declared. “All Sokoloffs are. Nothing gets us down for long.”

  I wondered what that said about Silk as we left her sister’s flat.

  But before I got to really ponder the question, Barbara was already directing me to our next destination, another flat a few minutes away from Mattie Sokoloffs. The flat where Silk’s two friends lived.

  “But Wayne—” I protested.

  “Another half an hour isn’t going to make any difference,” Barbara insisted.

  If I hadn’t been trying to untangle Mattie Sokoloffs story in my mind, I might have objected more vigorously. But I was too busy thinking, absorbing the overload of information. And driving according to Barbara’s orders.

  “Do you think Mattie will really be all right?” I asked Barbara as I made my way up Geary Boulevard.

  “Oh, kiddo,” she sighed. “She’ll be all right. She’s strong. Didn’t you notice that? I mean emotionally and spiritually. She’s solid. She’s had to be.”

  “Yeah?” I agreed doubtfully. “But what about Silk?”

  “Silk enjoyed herself,” Barbara answered robustly. I wondered if she was convincing herself of the truth of her own words as well as convincing me as she spoke. “Whether she knew who she really was, whether she was a professional bisexual or not, she enjoyed life.”

  “Yeah,” I said, a little more honestly this time. Silk had seemed to enjoy life. There was something to be said for that epitaph.

  “But do you think Silk—” I began.

  “Stop,” Barbara ordered. “This is the street.”

  I turned right on a penny and heard honking behind me.

  “Listen, Barbara,” I growled while I was parking, a minute later. “Couldn’t you give me a little more warning the next—”

  “Jeez-Louise, Kate,” she chided. “Where’s your sense of spontaneity, of adventure, of—”

  “Of suicide?” I finished for her. I looked at my friend, seeing a little of Silk in her too. Except that I knew who Barbara was.

  “See?” she said, grinning, and we stepped out of the car and climbed more stairs onto another landing to ring yet another doorbell.

  “You must be Kate and Barbara,” a small, slender woman with green eyes to die for and masses of blond curly hair greeted us as she opened the door to a brightly lit living room. “I’m Fayette.” Her voice was deep and smoky.

  The Sokoloffs might or might not be survivors, but Mattie was fast. She must have already called ahead with her warning of our visit.

  “And this is my partner, Holly,” Fayette went on, pointing over her shoulder, having already shaken our hands and within seconds drawn us into the bright, color-filled living room.

  Holly was a plump woman who looked Asian and thoughtful behind her wire-rimmed glasses. I assumed she was Fayette’s life partner, not her business partner.

  Holly nodded her greeting at us without speaking.

  “Have a seat, you guys,” Fayette ordered, her arms spread wide as if to encompass the whole living room.

  There was a lot to encompass. The two flowered couches, three rocking chairs, and corduroy easy chair that Holly occupied seemed almost too functional against the backdrop of paintings in primary colors, stuffed animals, paperback novels, blooming violets, and wind-up toys.

  “Mattie said you guys were investigating Silk’s death,” Fayette enthused once Barbara and I were seated on one of the flowered couches. “I think that is so cool.”

  “Oh, good,” I replied, curving my lips into a smile that hurt at the corners of my mouth. “We wanted to ask you about Silk.”

  “Like if she had enemies and stuff?” Fayette asked eagerly, lowering herself into a rocking chair, her green eyes wide.

  “Yeah, like that,” I told her.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Holly grinning. I wondered why. Was just living with Fayette enough to produce grins?

  “Lemme tell you, Silk riled so many people she could have written a book about it—” Fayette began.

  “She did, dear,” Holly threw in, her voice a pleasant soprano. “She did.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Fayette laughed. She clapped her hands together. “And her column. She put everybody in. It was so cool.”

  “If you weren’t in it,” Fayette’s partner pointed out.

  I leaned back against the floral cushions. I had a feeling we weren’t going to have to participate in this interview at all. And I, for one, was glad. I was tired.

  “Silk would do anything—”


  “For publicity,” Holly finished for Fayette.

  Fayette leaned back in her rocking chair and really laughed at that one. Once she was laughed out, she filled us in.

  “I’m a publicist,” she explained. “Holly’s a social worker.”

  “And Silk was a shameless self-promoter,” Holly added. Then her grin faded. “But we still loved her.”

  “Yeah,” Fayette agreed. “Silk was cool. Like when she wore a body stocking and this really long wig in the Gay Freedom Day parade—”

  “Probably wasn’t even wearing a stocking,” said Holly, chuckling.

  “And she had this humongous poster of herself on a bearskin rug—”

  “Who else but herself?”

  “And she got her own picket sign and counter-protested the protesters at one of her speeches—”

  “I liked it when she kissed the male and female anchors of that live show, whatchamacallit, when they were interviewing her,” Holly put in unexpectedly.

  “Yay-uh!” Fayette whooped. “You shoulda seen their faces! Totally unscripted.”

  “Except by Silk,” Holly reminded us.

  “She did good things too, hon,” Fayette insisted. “Sex education for one.”

  “Even if the university canceled it, and the media ate up the controversy.”

  “Did she have a current lover?” Barbara asked. The question thudded into the brightly colored room like a lead casket. Neither Fayette or Holly was chuckling anymore.

  Holly shook her head.

  “See,” Fayette said, her deep voice quiet now. “For all of the cool stuff she did, Silk was really a shy person.”

  “An intensely private person,” Holly expanded. “Hope you find out who killed her.”

  We tried. We ran the list of suspects past Fayette and Holly. Not unexpectedly, Justine Howe was the only name they recognized. As for real murder motives, neither woman could think of any. Silk annoyed everyone. That’s just what she did. But everyone forgave her. At least Fayette and Holly thought so. My only conclusion was that Fayette and Holly had kind hearts. Kinder than our murderer.