Fat-Free and Fatal (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  Alice looked down at the gun for an instant longer, then held it out to Iris, butt first. Had it been something I thought? I held my breath and waited for the moment of transfer.

  It wasn’t a long wait. Iris glided forward and reached out her hand slowly, palm up. There was nothing abrupt in her motions, nothing that could startle Alice. Alice placed the gun in Iris’s hand. I sucked in a long, deep breath. It was done. Iris had the gun. Paula continued on her way to the phone. Alice collapsed onto the floor next to Dan.

  “All right!” I heard. It took me a moment to realize that I was the one doing the shouting. “All right, Iris!” I shouted again. The relief buzzing through my body was exquisite.

  “Right on!” Barbara chimed in. “Way to go!”

  A pink flush rose in Iris’s cheeks. She lowered her eyes demurely for a moment, looking truly shy. I could have kissed her. But I didn’t want the gun to go off. Iris lowered it into her purse gingerly. I wondered if it had a safety catch, but before I could ask she had turned back to Alice.

  “You did the right thing, dear,” she cooed reassuringly. “Absolutely the right thing. It would have been such a shame if—”

  “I hope they lock the two of them up and throw away the key!” Leo bellowed, his face red and ugly now. I supposed it was better than deathly pale. Maybe. “I could have died—”

  “Dad, calm down,” Ken said, patting Leo’s shoulder. “You don’t want to have another attack.”

  “Are you feeling a bit better?” Iris asked Leo. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I detected a note of mockery in her question.

  “I suppose I’m okay,” he muttered ungraciously. He tossed his long black hair out of his face. “No thanks to those punks. I hope they rot.”

  “But Dan didn’t mean anything,” Alice protested, on her feet again. Her eyes were wide with sincerity. “It wasn’t Dan’s fault. I’ll bet it was all Zach’s idea. Dan wouldn’t really hurt anyone—”

  “He hurt his daughter,” Paula said coolly, back from the phone now.

  “But…but that was an accident—”

  “Don’t hassle it, Alice,” came Dan’s mutter from the floor. “Okay?” The words sounded thick, waterlogged.

  Alice blinked, then knelt down again next to him, whispering urgently. I couldn’t hear her words, but I could guess their general content. Dan Snyder was in a heap of trouble. And he’d better figure out how he was going to handle it. Grief was only going to go so far as an excuse for his behavior.

  “Perhaps we could all sit down while we wait?” suggested Iris, breaking into my imminent depression. She smiled winningly. “All this standing can be such a strain.”

  She was right. I was tired. Damn tired.

  We all sat down at the tables that had been set up for the cooking class. All but Alice, that is. And Dan, of course.

  We weren’t a real perky bunch. Ken helped Leo to the table, then sat down next to him. Leo was glowering and muttering under his breath. Something about what he planned to tell the police. Ken sighed and looked down at his hands. He popped one knuckle, then started on the next one. Ugh. I turned my eyes to Paula and Gary. They sat next to each other in silence. Paula’s mouth was tight, her eyes disapproving as she stared at Leo. Gary’s eyes were almost closed. I couldn’t see his hands, but I would have bet one of them was fondling a crystal under the table. It was better than popping his knuckles, anyway. Meg was staring wide-eyed into the space above our heads. She made no effort to organize what was left of her class.

  Only Barbara and Iris were smiling. I certainly wasn’t. I felt too shaky and nauseated to manage a smile. True, with the exception of Topaz and possibly Leo, we were all alive and unharmed. But after all the fuss, none of us had learned who Sheila Snyder’s murderer was. Of course the murderer knew his or her own name. And I had a feeling that murderer was somewhere in the room, if not at this very table.

  “Well, Meg,” Iris said cheerfully. “Would you like to tell us about the food you’ve planned for tonight?”

  “What?” said Meg, lowering her eyes slowly to focus on Iris. Maybe Meg needed Alice to kick-start her. She wasn’t doing too well by herself.

  “The food, dear,” Iris prodded, her voice a little too tight to carry off the chatty tone. “Some lovely appetizers as I remember—”

  She stopped abruptly. I heard the sound of sirens.

  We waited in silence until the police burst into the dining room. They were the same pair as before, the muscular young policewoman, and the tall Hispanic officer who had caught Barbara and me snooping at the back of the restaurant three nights before. Damn. They were both in uniform and they both held guns out in front of them. The hair went up on the back of my neck.

  “Who placed the call?” the Hispanic officer demanded.

  Paula rose. “I did,” she answered with quiet authority. “Please lower your weapons, Officers. We have had enough of guns for the evening—”

  “The punk that attacked us is over there!” bellowed Leo, apparently unable to contain himself. He pointed at Dan, still sitting on the floor with Alice, his back to us. “Arrest him! And find his friend. They tried to kill me—”

  “Dan didn’t try to kill anyone!” Alice protested, jumping to her feet. Her face was alive again, lit up with righteousness. Both police officers swung around to face her, guns still raised.

  “Perhaps we should start from the beginning, Officers,” Iris suggested mildly. She pulled Dan’s gun from her purse.

  “Hold it!” shouted the female officer, turning to point her gun at Iris. Iris froze, Dan’s gun still in her hand, her mouth open with surprise.

  “Place the gun on the table, ma’am,” the officer recited slowly.

  Iris placed the gun on the table, then smiled. “So silly of me,” she trilled. “I should have warned you.”

  “Forget about her!” Leo bawled. “Arrest Snyder! He’s the one. Right over there.”

  Dan Snyder stood up and faced the police officers. His eyes were red and swollen. “It’s my gun,” he growled.

  The Hispanic policeman sprinted over to Dan. The muscular policewoman holstered her own gun and gingerly picked up the one that Iris had been holding.

  “Please do not talk among yourselves,” she warned us. “We will interview each one of you separately—”

  The door behind her opened before she could finish. Sergeant Oakley marched in, her rangy body clothed in an emerald-green sweatsuit tonight. Her red hair was tousled. Had she been called in from home? She bared her teeth in a wolf’s smile. I flinched involuntarily.

  “Everyone’s here and accounted for, I see,” she commented, her musical voice mild. Her eyes flickered from face to face and then settled on mine. “So whose idea was this little party?” she asked.

  I squirmed in my seat, afraid to look over at Barbara. I opened my mouth to answer.

  “Arrest that man!” Leo hollered, saving me the trouble. He pointed at Dan Snyder.

  “For what?” Oakley inquired softly.

  Leo’s jaw dropped for a moment. “For attacking me, for attacking all of us,” he answered finally. His voice grew stronger. “He held a gun on us. A gun! And his punk friend—”

  The paramedics bustled through the door before he could finish his speech.

  “Heart attack victim?” asked one of them.

  Five different fingers pointed to Leo. Leo himself slumped in his chair, looking suddenly ill. So ill that I wondered if he had faked the earlier heart attack.

  After a whispered consultation with the paramedics, Oakley allowed them to take Leo away.

  Then she turned back to Dan Snyder.

  “Take him in the kitchen,” she told the Hispanic officer, the music gone from her voice abruptly. She turned to the rest of us. “Okay, what happened here?”

  Paula took the lead. “Mr. Snyder and his cohort—I believe his name is Zach—held all of us here at gunpoint,” she recited calmly. Too calmly. “Apparently Mr. Snyder wished to question us about his wife’s
murder—”

  “His friend roughed up my dad,” Ken put in.

  “Mr. Snyder also hit his daughter with his gun,” Paula continued. “I believe she is upstairs with her grandmother now—”

  “Dan hit Topaz by accident!” Alice protested from where she stood, alone now. “And Zach did all the rest of the mean stuff. And Dan let me have the gun. And—”

  “That’s enough,” Sergeant Oakley interrupted. “We’ll talk to you each one by one.” She switched on her wolf smile. “You know the routine.”

  I did by the end of the evening. The routine was a rerun of the night of Sheila’s death. Except that there was no corpse. And Dan Snyder came out in handcuffs after his interview. Much to Alice’s loud distress. Her pleas did no good. She was led into the kitchen by one officer as Dan was led out the restaurant door by another set of officers who had apparently been called for that purpose. After Alice, the rest of us were interviewed individually by Sergeant Oakley. Paula, Gary, Iris and Barbara had already taken their turns by the time the female officer called my name. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders and walked into the wolf’s den.

  Sergeant Oakley was mercifully brusque. Maybe she was tired. She didn’t smile. She didn’t stare at me with warm, concerned eyes. She didn’t even try to draw me out. She just leaned back in her chair and demanded my version of the night’s events, then listened with no visible reaction to my words except for the briefest flicker of a smile when I described kneeing Zach in the groin.

  “And tonight’s class was your idea,” she stated when I was finished. It wasn’t a question.

  “Well,” I temporized, squirming in my chair. She narrowed her hazel eyes. “Mine and Barbara’s, I guess,” I told her.

  “You guess?” she barked.

  “I think Barbara suggested the idea to Meg and Alice,” I explained hastily. “And they actually set it up.”

  Sergeant Oakley stood up the better to glare down at me. “Keep out of it,” she warned, her voice a quiet snarl. “I mean it.”

  I nodded as hard as I could without nodding my head right off my neck.

  “You can go now,” she told me.

  I didn’t need to be told twice.

  Barbara was waiting for me in the dining room. We left the restaurant quietly, then broke into a run once we were out the door. Barbara beat me to the Toyota by a nose. I let her in, then climbed in myself. Safe in the Toyota’s womb, I took a series of deep breaths before sticking the key in the ignition.

  As I turned the key, I heard a high, keening note from beside me. I swiveled my head toward Barbara. Her hands were over her eyes. Her mouth was wide and wailing. Damn. The night wasn’t over yet. I put my arm around her. Her wailing turned to sobs. I squeezed her shoulder helplessly.

  “Jeez-Louise,” I muttered, unconsciously purloining Barbara’s own phrase.

  Barbara’s hands dropped from her wet eyes. She frowned at me.

  “What did you say?” she asked.

  It took me a minute to remember. “Jeez-Louise?” I answered finally, still not sure.

  She smiled moistly. “I knew I’d rub off on you sooner or later,” she told me.

  I turned off the Toyota and handed her a Kleenex. She blew her nose loudly.

  “You have rubbed off on me,” I assured her. “I even psychically willed Alice to drop her gun tonight.” I felt foolish saying it, but I wanted to cheer her up.

  It didn’t work. Barbara’s smile disappeared. New tears squeezed out of her eyes.

  “What did I say?” I asked her desperately.

  “Kate,” she whispered. “I’ve lost them again.”

  “Your psychic powers?” I asked, understanding dawning.

  She nodded. “I tried to tune in to people’s minds,” she said, her voice taking on speed. “But all I got was a garble of disjointed thoughts. Like a dozen TV sets playing at once. It was awful!” She began to cry again.

  “Did you lose it when Dan and Zach came in?” I asked, trying to distract her. She looked up, frowning. “Maybe the fear scrambled your signals,” I went on. I liked this theory. “Once you get over the shock—”

  “It won’t wash, Kate,” she interrupted. At least she wasn’t crying anymore. “I started getting the weird signals before Zach and Dan ever showed up.”

  I tried again. “Maybe you’re getting the murderer. Maybe a killer’s mind is so messed up it gives off weird signals.”

  “That’s interesting,” she murmured slowly. She sat for a minute staring at the dashboard, lost in thought. “You know what?” she said finally.

  “No, what?” I replied. “Have you figured out who did it?”

  She laughed. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I was just going to tell you I was hungry.”

  It took a moment for her answer to sink in. I was waiting for wisdom and she was giving me hunger.

  My stomach let out a loud growl. That made it two against one. I looked at my watch. It was nearly eight o’clock. I turned the key in the ignition and pulled out from the curb.

  By the time we were seated at the nearest Chinese restaurant, Barbara was cheerfully playing Guess-the-Murderer again. The Chinese restaurant had been my choice, not hers. Barbara had grown up on pot roast, potatoes and hamburgers. Chinese food held no nostalgic appeal for her.

  “It’s Leo,” she whispered once the waiter had taken our order, pork chow mein for Barbara and moo shu vegetables for me. “I don’t think he actually had a heart attack. He was just afraid to answer Dan’s questions.”

  “But why would he murder Sheila?” I demanded irritably. “What’s his motive?”

  “Maybe it’s something Freudian. Maybe Sheila reminded him of his mother,” Barbara suggested.

  “But Freud would have him kill his father, not his mother—”

  “Maybe Sheila was blackmailing him,” Barbara went on, ignoring my brief interruption. “Maybe she saw him do something illegal. Maybe Leo didn’t like the way she hit her kid. Maybe Leo and Sheila were distant cousins, the only heirs to a mutual uncle’s fortune…”

  The moo shu vegetables almost made up for listening to another hour of Barbara’s theories. Shredded black mushrooms, zucchini, green onions, bean sprouts, and cabbage sautéed and wrapped in thin pancakes with plum sauce. I savored my last bite and tuned back in to Barbara. She had covered Leo, Ken, Meg and Paula. I was glad she was enjoying herself. But I was really tired of murder. She was working on Alice now.

  “Maybe Alice murdered Sheila because the commune did something wildly illegal twenty years ago and now Sheila was going to spill the beans,” she proposed. “Maybe Sheila did something to her twenty years ago that she’s never forgiven. Maybe Topaz is really Alice’s illegitimate kid and…”

  I flagged the waiter for the check.

  It wasn’t until I had dropped Barbara off at her apartment that I began to wonder if she might have hit upon the murderer’s motive in her long bout of supposition, much like a few zillion monkeys at typewriters will, given enough time, theoretically bang out the collected works of Shakespeare. Maybe I should have listened more carefully.

  Wayne was waiting for me when I got home. His face looked worn and tired. His shoulders slumped. Then I remembered that he had spent the day with Vesta. I wondered if it had been worse than my evening with Dan and Zach.

  “How’d it go?” I asked him cautiously.

  “Talked to a lot of nurses,” he sighed. “Looked at a lot of condos.”

  I put my arms around him and squeezed.

  “And Vesta?” I asked softly as I released him.

  He swiveled his head around to look behind him. Vesta was nowhere in sight.

  “Fought me every step of the way. Didn’t like any of the nurses. Didn’t like any of the condos,” he whispered. “I don’t know, Kate.” He sighed again as he rubbed his temples. “I really may have to put her back in an institution. I can’t just kick her out. She can’t take care of herself. She’d end up on the street.”

  I put my
arms around him again and held him tight, trying to squeeze away his troubles. Trying to squeeze away my own. I didn’t know what the answer was for Vesta. I didn’t know what the answer was for Dan Snyder, either. How did Rose Snyder end up with Dan for a son, anyway? How did Wayne end up with Vesta for a mother?

  I stepped back, shaking off the thoughts.

  “Let’s go to bed,” I whispered.

  Vesta didn’t bang on the wall that night. Maybe the universe wasn’t completely unjust after all.

  In fact, Vesta didn’t make a peep the next day either. She ate her breakfast without a word. Her facial expressions were eloquent, though. Hurt, anger and hatred were the major themes. After she had swallowed her last bite of toast, she stomped back to her room.

  By eleven, I was beginning to worry. I had only heard her leave her room once and that was for a quick trip to the bathroom. Should I check on her?

  The phone rang before I could decide. It was Barbara.

  “Felix called,” she said without further introduction. Her voice was tingling with excitement. “Dan Snyder’s been charged with a whole boatload of crimes, beginning with assault with a deadly weapon.” She paused. “Guess who got him out on bail?” she asked.

  “Alice,” I answered. That one was too easy. “What about Zach?” I asked back.

  “He’s disappeared, Kate,” Barbara told me. Her voice held a new note. Was it concern? “The cops can’t find him.”

  “Do you think Zach is still in the county?” I wondered aloud, remembering my knee in his groin. My hands went cold. “Do you think he’s mad at me?” I whispered.

  “Is the Pope Catholic?” Barbara replied.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “YOU KICKED THE doofus in the balls,” Barbara reminded me. As if I needed reminding. “He’s not gonna be very happy about it.”

  “But he was the one…” I faltered.

  I wanted to tell her that Zach had deserved the knee to the groin, but somehow I had a feeling Zach wouldn’t agree with me on that point.

  “So how would he find me?” I demanded instead.

  “He could try the phone book,” Barbara suggested.