Murder Most Mellow (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “And ours,” I prompted quietly.

  “What a joke,” she snarled. But she didn’t laugh. “Human Potential. Bitch-and-crow sessions, that’s all. Bitch about the people less advanced than your self-righteous selves. And crow about your success. What bullshit!”

  She vented her spleen for a few long minutes more, her eyes no longer on me, her face mobile with long-suppressed malevolence. I almost wished she’d put the mask back on. I felt nausea rising as I listened to her.

  Finally, she seemed to remember me. “So what have you found out about Sarah’s murder?” she asked, her voice flat again. Her grey eyes were still alive though, intent on mine.

  “Not much,” I said, wondering if I was looking at the murderer.

  The rage this woman had hidden could carry her through murder. I was sure of it. But what about motive?

  “No more fires?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. I realized I was grinding my spine into the back of the couch, trying to get as far away from Linda as possible. I took a breath and slid forward, determined to take the advantage again.

  “What’s your relationship with Dave Yakamura?” I demanded.

  She shrugged. I waited five tense minutes for an answer, but none came. She was apparently finished talking. But she wasn’t finished smiling. She bared her teeth once more as she stared at me.

  I left without saying goodbye.

  I felt the sweat on my body chill as I walked out into the late-morning light. I hadn’t realized just how much I had perspired in Linda’s living room. I breathed in the cool air gratefully.

  I reviewed Linda’s words in my mind as I drove home. She was a spy, a particularly venomous one at that, but was she a murderer?

  I hadn’t come up with an answer to that question by the time I pulled into my driveway. All I had come up with was a bunch of new questions. I walked up my front stairs lost in thought, opened the door and stepped inside. Something grey squished beneath my foot.

  - Twenty-One -

  I jumped back, startled, then decided I must have stepped on C.C.’s catnip mouse. I shook my head affectionately and bent over to pick it up. Only the grey thing I had stepped on wasn’t a toy. It was a real dead mouse. I gagged and turned away.

  I was sweeping the mouse into a dustpan when the phone rang. I raced to the garbage can and gave the poor little thing a hasty burial before answering. C.C. yowled in protest, berating me for my cruel refusal of her gift. She tripped me as I lunged for the phone, then slunk off, her honor satisfied.

  I regained my footing as the answering machine clicked on. I switched it off and grabbed the receiver, panting, “Hello, hello, I’m really here.”

  “Wanna buy some life insurance, lady?” the voice on the other end asked ominously.

  “No, thank you,” I replied cautiously. My shoulders tightened. Was this another death threat?

  “Just kidding!” the voice assured me. “This is me, Ellen Quinn.”

  “Oh, hi,” I said, relaxing.

  “Listen, me and Nick were wondering if you’d like to come over for dinner tonight,” Ellen went on blithely.

  “You and Nick?” I repeated. I didn’t understand.

  “Yeah, we’ve been getting along pretty well, if you know what I mean.” She cackled suggestively. “We wanted to pay you back for helping Nick out, and for giving me dinner. Nick says he can do something vegetarian, like he used to do for Sarah. How’s about it?”

  I agreed to dinner, wondering just how dangerous it might be. I hastily added that I might bring Barbara along. Even if Barbara couldn’t come, I could tell her where I was going. No one was going to kill me at a well-publicized dinner, at least I hoped not.

  I shook off the thoughts. I had some questions for Ellen.

  “Where were you and Nick yesterday morning?” I asked. I didn’t even try to sound casual this time. It never worked anyway.

  “Why?” Ellen said, her voice suddenly serious. “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you about it tonight,” I promised. I didn’t want to talk about Jerry now.

  After a brief silence, Ellen answered my question. “I was in my motel room for most of the morning,” she said. “Then I came over to visit Nick.”

  “Was he there?” I demanded eagerly.

  “Of course he was,” she snapped. Then she lightened her tone. “The kid doesn’t go out much, you know.”

  But I could still hear a trace of anxiety in Ellen’s voice. If she was “getting along” with Nick, she had to wonder if he had murdered her sister.

  “Nick couldn’t hurt anyone,” she insisted, as if she’d heard my unspoken thoughts.

  “Sure,” I said uneasily. “See you tonight.”

  I hung up the phone and looked down at the carpet, pondering the wisdom of dinner with two murder suspects. Then I saw C.C. She had retrieved the mouse. She laid it at my feet and looked up expectantly. It’s not everyone who gives you a second chance, I thought. I thanked her for the mouse graciously. But I wasn’t going to eat the damn thing.

  I was ten minutes late by the time I reached The Elegant Vegetable to meet my friend Ann for lunch. Luckily, she hadn’t arrived yet. Tony was there, though. He greeted me with a warm hug and kept me company while I waited for Ann.

  We sat at the front bar surrounded by massive ferns, and shared lemon-and-hibiscus tea. A colorful selection of young punkers served the tables quietly and efficiently against the background of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos as we sipped and talked. Tony’s face looked lined to me that day. His eyes were pink and puffy. But he put on a cheerful voice and told me about his specials, vegetable pilaf and stuffed mushrooms.

  He had just finished a description of the day’s soups when Ann Rivera came through the door. Heads turned as she walked toward us. She was tall and elegantly dressed-for-success in a mauve wool suit with a maroon silk blouse. Her brown face had a big toothy smile that didn’t usually go with that kind of outfit. I introduced her to Tony. He showed us to our table and left us to our menus.

  Today’s waitress had gold-tipped lavender hair. She set a basket of fresh-baked bread on the table and asked us for our orders. Ann followed my lead and ordered the potato-dill soup and garden vegetable salad.

  “It’s driving me crazy,” Ann said once the waitress was gone. She pulled a slice of oatmeal-rye bread out of the basket.

  “What’s driving you crazy?” I asked.

  “Tony.” She frowned and tore the bread into bite-size pieces. “I know I’ve met him, or maybe just seen him before, but I can’t think where.”

  “Have you ever been here before?” I asked. A new mystery to solve. Just what I needed.

  “No.” She shook her head. “Somehow there’s something, oh, sleazy associated with him. Oh hell, I just can’t place it.”

  “Sleazy? What’s sleazy to you?” I probed. “Anything to do with gay bars or parties or something?”

  She rolled her eyes upwards and thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think that’s it,” she said slowly. “That doesn’t compute as sleazy to me.”

  “Is it the punk help?” I asked, helping myself to bread. It was warm and sweet when I bit into it, delicious.

  “No.” She frowned even harder, deepening the grooves between her eyebrows.

  “Stop thinking about it and it’ll come to you,” I advised. “That’s how it usually works.”

  “You’re right,” she said and looked at me as if for the first time. “How’ve you been, Kate?” she asked.

  My answer was postponed as our soup arrived. I slurped a couple of spoonfuls before telling her. Should I burden her with my problems? Yes, came the instantaneous answer from my brain.

  “Have you read in the paper about the recent Mill Valley murders?” I asked her.

  “Not ‘Mysterious Hot-Tub Death’ and ‘Gardener Bludgeoned with Own Shovel’?” Ann said. She put her spoon down and leaned toward me, her interest evident.

  I nodded.

  “You’re involved
with those? How do you manage it, Kate? Every time someone gets murdered—” She must have seen something in my face. “Not so fun, huh?” she said softly. “Want to talk about it?”

  I found that I did want to talk about it, at length. I told her about the murders, the death threats and the arson. Ann was a good friend. And a good audience: intelligent, attentive, and exempt from suspicion of murder. Our salads had been served and halfway consumed by the time I had finished my rundown.

  “Have you looked at this thing from the psychological angle yet?” she asked, peering into my eyes. An appropriate question from the administrator of a mental health facility.

  A sudden chill raised goose flesh on my arms. The last murderer I had met had been pathologically embittered. Was I up against that kind of hatred again? I thought of Linda Zatara and put down my fork, my appetite temporarily gone.

  “Who has the requisite personality for murder?” Ann asked gravely. “I know theoretically anyone is capable of murder, given compelling enough circumstances. But two murders and arson! Somebody must have a real kink in them to do these things.”

  “So, ‘who’s crazy’ is the question,” I summed up. I tapped my fork on the table and thought. “The obvious one is Nick, the Rodin of the reproductive organs,” I answered, trying to lighten the tone of the conversation.

  “He doesn’t seem the right type of crazy to me, though,” Ann replied. Her tone was dead serious. She reached her hand into her hair and twirled a curl around her finger absently, lost in thought.

  “No,” I agreed, sighing. “Nick isn’t right. The same goes for the accountant. He’s screwy, but murderous? I don’t think so.”

  “How about Sarah’s attorney?” Ann asked.

  “She’s a beacon of normalcy in this crowd. And Dave Yakamura appears to be a nice guy, at least on the outside. Of course, there’s Peter.” I smiled for a moment, feeling an unexpected surge of affection for him. I tried to explain. “Peter’s not crazy, just compulsive and perpetually irritated. He wants the world to be perfect and he’s always disappointed when it’s not.”

  “A neurotic, not a psychotic,” Ann diagnosed.

  That was one way to put it. I nodded and took a bite of my salad before continuing down the list.

  “Ellen is certainly obnoxious, for what it’s worth,” I mumbled through the salad. “And Vivian is downright hostile at times.”

  “Hostile enough to murder?” Ann demanded.

  I swallowed hard. “I just don’t know,” I answered slowly. I thought about it, then shook my head. “I can’t see Vivian as the murderer.”

  “Who, then?” Ann prompted. She found a new curl to twirl around her finger and went for it.

  “Linda,” I said in a low whisper. “God, that woman’s full of hatred.” I was chilled again just thinking about her. I moved on quickly. “On the other hand, Myra’s pretty strange too. She’s bitter, and she seems right on the edge of insanity.” I paused to consider Myra seriously. “But she probably just sounds nuts because she’s one of these people who’s been in therapy so long that she tells complete strangers her innermost feelings. Anyone sounds like a lunatic if they do that.”

  Ann smiled her toothy smile. Too late I remembered her sharing the details of her therapy with me the first time we had met.

  “Tony seems the most unlikely to me,” I continued hastily. “He’s so sweet, so good to people.”

  “But if he’s that saintly, is he repressed?” asked Ann.

  “He’s not repressed sexually,” I assured her.

  “I didn’t mean sexually,” Ann said. “I meant anger. Someone that sweet and good has to be suppressing a lot of anger.”

  I thought about Tony and couldn’t agree. “I think he really is one of these people who just doesn’t feel that much anger,” I said.

  “That makes me suspicious,” Ann insisted, frowning.

  I chuckled. After years of therapy, Ann would suspect anyone who didn’t express anger. Then I remembered how serious the question of Tony’s repressed anger could be.

  “He is the kind who’s described as ‘such a nice young man’ after they dig up the bodies in the basement,” I conceded. Then I shook my head. “No, I just can’t buy him as a murderer.”

  “Who else?” prodded Ann.

  “Craig,” I said. “He used to know Sarah.”

  “I was wondering if you recognized him as a suspect,” Ann commented with a smile.

  “Oh yeah,” I admitted. “But like Tony, it just doesn’t fit. Craig rants and raves sometimes, but he never tries to hurt. He’s like a great big friendly dog that’ll knock you over by mistake and then stomp all over you licking your face to apologize.” Ex-husband or not, I knew he wasn’t murderer material.

  I looked at Ann’s thoughtful face and sighed. Talking to her had only served to expand my list of suspects. I wasn’t any closer to narrowing it down to one person. Two murders and arson. She was right. Someone had to be pretty sick.

  “How’s Wayne doing?” she asked.

  I jumped in my chair, startled out of my thoughts. “Still holding out for marriage,” I muttered. I didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Why don’t you want to marry him?” she asked. There was genuine curiosity in her tone.

  “Because!” I cried angrily. I caught myself and modulated my tone. Ann wasn’t the enemy. Even Wayne wasn’t the enemy. “I liked our old relationship,” I told her briefly. “No dirty laundry, no dishes in the sink, no lies.” I sighed. “I just don’t want to be married again.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have to be,” she agreed in the time-honored fashion of all good woman friends.

  I reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Any time,” she replied. “Now maybe you can help me with my love life.” A blush tinted her brown skin. She reached up to twirl her hair again.

  “Who, what?” I asked eagerly.

  “I have a new sweetie,” she blurted out. Suddenly she looked very young, despite her dress-for-success suit. Young and insecure.

  “That’s wonderful,” I assured her. Ann had been single for a long time. She deserved a good man in her life. “What’s he like?”

  “He’s kind and sweet and handsome and charming,” she said uncertainly. “But he is a man.”

  I burst into laughter. Ann looked stunned for a second, then grinned and laughed with me.

  “So what’s he really like?” I asked finally.

  “He’s a Jungian therapist,” she answered. Her eyes looked so vulnerable as she described him. He ‘d better treat her right, I thought fiercely. “It makes me a little nervous. But he really is kind and sweet. And he really is handsome and charming.” She was twirling her hair furiously now. “The only friction, so far, is that he’s a meat-eater and doesn’t understand why I’m not.”

  “That’s not insurmountable,” I said. “Wayne—” I began, then stopped. Wayne and I weren’t a good example right now.

  “I know, I know,” she said. “Every once in a while I sneak off to McDonald’s myself for—” She stopped mid-sentence. “That’s it!” she shouted suddenly. She slapped her palm on the table.

  “That’s what?” I asked, startled.

  “That’s where I’ve seen Tony!” Her voice was loud and carrying. I saw heads turn toward us.

  “At McDonald’s?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yes,” she said, bending forward across the table, her voice quieter now. “The reason I remembered him is because he looked so damned furtive. I could tell he was ashamed of what he was doing.”

  “What was he doing?” I asked, fearing the worst.

  “He was buying two Big Macs and a milkshake!”

  - Twenty-Two -

  “Oh, no, not Big Macs!” I protested.

  A momentary hush fell over the restaurant. My voice must have carried through the whole room. I could feel a flush creep up my neck and into my cheeks as I turned to look for Tony. He stood staring at me
, just through the swinging kitchen doors. He wasn’t smiling. Lines of worry had sharpened his usually smooth face. I turned back to Ann hastily, wondering whether Tony had heard my outburst. And if he had, did he know it concerned him? Then another worry grabbed me.

  “I hope the customers don’t realize I was talking about Tony,” I whispered urgently to Ann.

  “It’s not a crime to eat at McDonald’s,” she whispered back, her whisper belying her words.

  “No, it’s not,” I agreed. “But to the people eating here, it might be an incentive to spend their money somewhere else.”

  Ann began twirling her hair again. “Sorry,” she said.

  “No problem,” I assured her in a voice far more cheerful than I felt. “Anyway, it’s not your fault.” Tony at McDonald’s? I was still reeling. “But back to your new sweetie,” I said with what I hoped sounded like heartfelt interest.

  We discussed Ann’s new man through the rest of our meal and a pot of blackberry tea. He sounded wonderful, but my thoughts kept whirling back to Tony’s guilty secret.

  Tony thanked us graciously for the visit as we left. I pretended not to notice the tension in his face.

  I called Barbara as soon as I got home. “I’m going over to Nick’s for dinner tonight,” I told her.

  “The loony sculptor?” she said incredulously. Her voice was filled with concern. “Are you going alone?”

  “No, not exactly,” I mumbled defensively. “Do you remember Ellen, the graveside comedienne? She and Nick invited me.”

  “What’s their connection?” Barbara demanded.

  “Romantic, I think. Ellen seems to be taking over with Nick where her sister Sarah left off.”

  “Ah,” Barbara murmured thoughtfully. “They might make a good couple. I wonder what their signs are. She’s got to be a Taurus—”

  I took a deep breath and interrupted her. “I told Ellen I might bring you with me.”

  “But I can’t go tonight,” Barbara objected. “I’m facilitating a Kundalini workshop.”

  “That’s all right,” I assured her, ignoring the way my stomach was tightening. “I just want them to know that someone else knows that I’m going to be there.”