When it was our turn to enter, we were greeted by a pleasant-faced, older woman who asked us if this was our first reading. We said yes, and she handed each of us a brochure and requested twenty dollars. I wondered if this was the clairvoyant herself collecting admission fees as I handed over my twenty. We followed the crowd and turned right into a large front parlor. The overstuffed sofa and chairs that normally occupied the room were pushed against the walls to make room for as much additional seating as possible. Rows of mismatched chairs, taken from the kitchen and dining room or brought by the regular attendees, were crammed into every available square inch.
Margo and I eased ourselves into the last two folding chairs at the end of the back row and tried to adjust our eyes to the dim lighting. The early arrivals sat with their eyes closed, hands turned palm upward in their laps, the tips of their thumbs and index fingers pressed together. I spotted Suzanne Southerland in the third row and poked Margo, pointing her out. I didn’t recognize anyone else.
A single straight-backed chair faced the other seats. The young woman who sat in it seemed to be leading the others in a meditation session.
“Walk slowly through your meadow. Notice how soft the grass feels under your feet, how perfectly the temperature of the air suits you. Enjoy the sunlight, and feel the wonderful, cool breeze.”
In light of the fact that the temperature in this room had to be well over eighty degrees, I hoped that those around me had been successfully transported. Margo and I exchanged glances and fanned ourselves discreetly with our brochures.
“Follow the sound of the little waterfall to your special healing pool,” the leader continued. “Drop your clothes on the grass, and walk to the edge of the pool. Notice that the water at the rear of the pool is a deeper blue. Step in and enjoy the sensation of the cool water on your skin. The temperature is perfect for you. Swim out into the darker water and immerse yourself completely in it. Let it remove all of your tension, all of your aches and pains. Direct it to any special problems you may be facing, and allow it to work its healing upon them. Spend as long as you need to here.”
The leader remained silent for a full two minutes. I was beginning to wonder if she would ever speak again when she continued. “Now it’s time to leave your pool refreshed and dry off on the fluffy towel that is waiting for you by your clothes. Put them on again and walk slowly back through your meadow. Notice the gnarled beauty of the ancient birch trees. Notice the spotted owl high up in the tallest tree.”
I looked at Margo, puzzled. As far as I knew, birch trees weren’t gnarled, and owls, spotted or otherwise, were nocturnal creatures. She stopped fanning herself long enough to make a “who knows?” gesture.
“Now, relaxed and ready to re-enter the world, step out of your meadow and awaken.” The leader opened her eyes and waited. After another minute the meditators started to stir and open their eyes. They blinked in the dim light and settled back into their chairs, murmuring expectantly to each other. The leader of the group vacated the straight-backed chair and reseated herself at the edge of the room. It must be time for the main event. I clutched at Margo’s arm, not knowing what to expect next and excited in spite of my skepticism.
Without ceremony or introduction, a small, sixtyish woman with short gray hair entered the room from the rear. Other than the rather dramatic, flowing robe she wore, she looked every inch the suburban grandma. She seated herself in the chair facing the group, both feet flat on the floor, and all conversation ceased as she closed her eyes. In a few seconds she raised both arms and began scooping air toward her chest in a circular motion. She appeared to be muttering some kind of incantation to herself, but I couldn’t hear her words.
After a minute or two of this, she lowered her hands to her lap, opened her eyes, and addressed the group in an affected falsetto that was at once coy and imperious, as if she were flirting with us and chastising us simultaneously. “Well, well, who do we have with us tonight, and what do you all expect of me? Many of you have come here expecting to see miracles, but you will not get any. My name is Ishmael, and I am visiting you from another dimension within the universe. Oh, I lived among you many years ago. I lived many, many lifetimes on earth, but when I mastered my lessons there, I moved on, as those of you who have chosen to do the work will do also. Because of the special powers we have granted to your teacher, Esme is channeling me. It is physically demanding work, so we must not tarry. I will call upon each of you in turn, and you may ask one question, but first, you must state your first name and your date of birth.”
Well, this all seems very silly, I thought, attempting once again to stir the hot, dead air under my chin with the brochure. I couldn’t imagine anyone buying into this transparently phony shtick, yet I appeared to be surrounded by people who had, quite literally. Silently, I counted forty-eight people besides Esme in the room. At twenty dollars apiece, that was nearly a thousand dollars in clear profit, since there was no overhead that I could discern. I wondered if Esme reported the income. I glanced at Margo out of the corner of my eye and saw sweat trickling from beneath the brown wig, which must have been almost unbearable.
Esme, a.k.a. Ishmael, nodded at a tense-looking woman who must have arrived an hour early to claim the seat nearest the channel.
“My name is Patricia, and my date of birth is July 21, 1958. I am terribly afraid that my husband may be having an affair with a woman at work. Can you tell me if he is, and if so, what I should do about it?
I looked at Margo in amazement and saw that she, too, was surprised at this level of candor among strangers. I had expected sweeping, spiritual questions about the hereafter or perhaps how to achieve world peace, and here was this total stranger airing her marital problems. Eeeuww.
The alleged channel seemed quite comfortable with the question, but instead of asking for details, such as how long the woman had been married or why she believed her husband was having an affair, she merely gazed at the anxious questioner for a count of ten, then said, “He may be having an affair, as you modern people put it so strangely, or he may not. It makes no difference. That is his life and his choice. You need only concern yourself with making choices that are right for you and the lessons you contracted to learn before embarking upon this life. You cannot control his behavior, and you should not try. It is not the first time you have involved yourself with a faithless man, is it?
Sheepishly, the woman admitted she had been married once before to a man who habitually cheated on her.
Esme nodded. “You must focus your energies on your own behavior to learn why you have still to learn this lesson. Make choices that will move you forward on your journey, with or without this man, for you are destined to repeat this mistake until you do.”
Briskly, she nodded at the occupant of the second seat, a man of perhaps forty. With one hand, he was mopping his forehead with a handkerchief already damp with perspiration. With the other, he held the hand of the pale little woman sitting next to him.
“I’m Richard,” he said, “November 29, 1969. My wife and I desperately want to have a baby. We’ve been trying for several years. All the doctors say there’s nothing wrong with us physically, but it just doesn’t happen. Can you help us?”
Again, Esme took this extremely personal question in stride, as did everyone else in the room except Margo and me.
“Maybe she should call herself Dr. Ruth,” Margo whispered, and I giggled. A woman in front of us turned around and held a finger to her lips. Bad girls.
“Perhaps you are trying too hard,” Esme responded archly. “You need to relax and enjoy yourselves more. If a baby is meant to come into this world through you, he or she will find you, never fear. In the meantime, lighten up and have a good time!”
Delighted chuckles broke out throughout the room. Apparently, it was okay to laugh when Esme made the joke.
Next up was a teenage girl. “My name is Joanie. I was born on May 12, 1988. My question is about the Titanic, you know, the ship that sank.”
<
br /> Esme waved her arms around some more, probably to keep from passing out in the airless room. “Go on, my child.”
The girl leaned forward earnestly. “Well, there was a movie that came out a few years ago. Leonardo DiCaprio starred in it, and I must have seen it six times before it came out on video. Now I have it on DVD, and I still play it over and over.”
“What is your question, Joanie?”
“I just feel so connected to what happened, as if I had, like, really lived through it or something.”
Not surprising, I thought, since she had probably committed every word of the movie’s dialogue to memory. I was certain that Emma could repeat ninety percent of the dialogue in the movie “Dirty Dancing” to this day.
Joanie peered at Esme hopefully. “Is that why? Was I on that ship in a previous life, do you think?”
Whoa, direct and specific. How is she going to tapdance around this one, I wondered. I didn’t have long to wait.
“That is precisely right. You were a passenger on the Titanic. Your life ended by drowning when the ship sank on that terrible night. That is why the movie is so meaningful to you.” Esme nodded knowingly.
Margo and I exchanged “oh, puh-leeze” looks, but the girl and the rest of the crowd were thrilled.
“Oh, I just knew it!” Joanie sighed ecstatically, and an excited murmur circulated throughout the room.
On and on the questions went in much the same vein as Esme nodded or pointed at one attendee after another. The room got hotter and stuffier by the minute, but Margo and I seemed to be the only ones bothered by such earthly discomforts. My head began to swim. I looked at my watch furtively. Not yet nine o’clock, but it seemed as if we had been sitting in this airless room for hours, and fully half of those present, including Suzanne Southerland, had yet to ask their questions. I leaned back in my chair and looked out toward the entrance hall. I hoped a breeze might find me from the door, which still stood open. My eyes wandered to the wide staircase that rose from the hall to the upper stories of the house. The banister was constructed from a particularly handsome piece of cherry wood. I admired its sheen and the lovely, though worn, carpet on the shallow steps. Then I saw him.
Not daring to take my eyes off the staircase, I grabbed Margo’s arm and jabbed a finger urgently toward the stairs, keeping my hand low enough to be out of sight of the rest of the crowd. She shook off my hand, too hot to be touched. Then she gasped. Silently descending the last few stairs to the entrance hall, his eyes on the open door before him, was Harold Karp.
~
Half an hour later, Margo and I were headed for my place, all four windows and the moon roof wide open to the night air. We had given Karp a five-minute lead, then crept out of our seats and followed him out the front door, unable to bear the heat or the transparently phony goings-on any longer. As soon as we got into the car, Margo ripped off her wig and propped her head on the edge of the window to catch every bit of breeze. Her eyes were closed in blissful relief.
“Who could believe that hooey?” she snorted.
“Not only believe it but pay for the privilege of hearing it,” I replied somewhat absentmindedly, still considering the implications of seeing Karp at Esme’s house. “That woman didn’t say a single thing that I couldn’t have made up on the spot, and I would have charged them a lot less, too. But people need all kinds of crutches, I guess, and she seems careful not to say anything that might really be harmful. As therapy goes, it’s cheaper than psychoanalysis and less damaging than booze.”
Margo flapped the hem of her dress to stir the air over her legs. “Mmm. Well, now that you mention it, Sugar, Esme’s performance wasn’t any scarier than the fire and brimstone stuff our fundamentalist preacher used to holler at us on Sunday mornin’s. I’m sure my daddy still believes in his heart that I’m goin’ straight to hell for my fornicatin’ ways.” She shook her head and smiled ruefully without opening her eyes.
“Our Lutheran minister had his unbelievable moments, too,” I assured her. “My parents insisted that I attend Sunday school and two years of confirmation classes, and then I could make my own decision about continuing. The day I was confirmed was my last appearance in church, except for the occasional Christmas Eve service. I know it’s hypocritical, but I get a kick out of the little ones singing carols,” I apologized.
“What did you do about your own kids’ religious education?”
“Their father and I thought about that quite a lot. What are confirmed agnostics supposed to do? Finally, I went to see Reverend Levitz, the minister of the local Congregational church. That was as nonsectarian a group as I could find. I had become acquainted with him at PTA meetings. Our kids went to the same elementary school. He had always impressed me as being kind of hip and nonjudgmental. He drove a red spots car with a vanity plate that read REV LEV. I told him I wasn’t a believer, but I felt an obligation at least to expose my children to some sort of religious theory so they could decide for themselves what they believed or didn’t believe later in life. I asked him if my kids could attend his Sunday school.”
“What did the good reverend say?”
“He said that over the years, he had welcomed several agnostics to his services. They didn’t always agree with the church’s answers, but they found it comforting to be around other people who were at least asking the same questions. My ex and I were very comfortable with that, so we packed the kids off to Sunday school for a couple of years. We stopped, though, when they told us that their teenaged class leader didn’t teach them anything, just took them for long walks around the churchyard so she could smoke cigarettes behind the monuments.”
Margo broke up, and I laughed along with her. A few minutes later, we sat comfortably on my couch, enjoying the cool breeze from the ceiling fan and taking long pulls from bottles of light beer. Jasmine and Ollie lay belly up on the floor, and even Moses was too hot to play. He lay quietly between the two oldsters, occasionally batting at Jasmine’s tail. She growled warningly but didn’t move. Kitty détente.
We used the conference call feature on my house phone to call Strutter, who shut herself in her bathroom to avoid being overhead by her little boy, and Ingrid, who went out on the deck of her sister’s house for similar reasons. When everyone was connected, I punched the speaker button and filled the two absentees in on Margo’s and my evening.
“Karp again,” said Ingrid thoughtfully when I had finished. “It seems like everywhere we go, we bump into Harold Karp. From what Vera Girouard told us the other day, he and she and Alain were friends years ago when they all attended Boston University. At least they were friends until Alain stole Vera right out from under Karp’s nose.”
“Yeah,” said Strutter. “Where I come from, that’s an unfriendly kind of thing to do. How come Karp and the Girouards stayed friends after that?”
“We don’t know that they did, actually,” I commented. “Harold and Vera remained friends, but we don’t know that Harold and Alain did.”
“Oh, of course they’re friends or at least friendly business colleagues,” put in Margo. “Both of them have been at BGB practically forever. Alain was one of the founding partners, of course, but there are lots of places for an MBA to work in Hartford if Harold wanted to avoid Alain.”
We pondered this in silence. “Okay, then,” Strutter took another tack. “What’s the connection between Karp and this Esme? Suzanne said Karp had put her onto Esme’s classes, and he was there tonight, so there’s something between them.”
“Maybe Esme taught Karp some magic spells he could use to hex Girouard,” Margo said wickedly, “or maybe she helped him make a voodoo doll wearing an itty bitty Armani suit and holding a cursed amaretto latte.”
“Not funny,” said Strutter, but she laughed anyway.
Ingrid had been silent through this exchange of nonsense, but now she spoke up. “You’re making jokes,” she said, “but how do we know that Harold Karp isn’t Alain’s murderer? Think about means, motive and opportunity. He ce
rtainly had the botanical knowledge and therefore the means. His thwarted love affair with Vera Girouard could be the motive, assuming he’s a grudge-holder. The only thing we aren’t sure about is opportunity.”
“What makes you think he didn’t have an opportunity to kill Girouard?” asked Strutter.
“Because he was at home when Girouard was killed in the office,” I said.
“I called him at his home number myself,” remembered Ingrid. “He answered, we talked for a minute, and he came into the office about twenty minutes later. Of course, he could have programmed his home phone to forward calls to his office number. Alain did that all the time.”
“It’s possible, but I’m sure Diaz checked out his whereabouts that morning right along with everyone else’s,” I observed. “The coroner believes Girouard ingested the poisoned coffee sometime between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m. I happen to know for a fact that Diaz checked the sign-in log for that time period,” I added wryly, “and Karp’s name wasn’t in it.”
“On the other hand his name wouldn’t have been in the log, even if he was in the building,” Ingrid pointed out. “Karp had his own passkey for the elevators, remember. He could have parked on Church Street, slipped in the rear entrance to the building and walked right into an elevator without being seen. He could have poisoned Alain, slipped out the same way, and been home when I called him.”
Margo and I looked at each other. “How on earth could we ever prove that?” Strutter asked.
“We don’t have to prove it. We just have to show Diaz that it was possible,” Ingrid said, on a roll, “and the more I think about it, it was possible.”
“How far away from the office does Karp live?” I asked. None of us knew, but Margo thought of a way to find out. Following her instructions, I ran upstairs to the spare bedroom and turned on my computer. Moments later, I had accessed BGB’s intranet, something I had been unaware that I could do until Margo clued me in. “Okay, I’m in. Now what?” I yelled down the stairs.
Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) Page 12
