Tea-Totally Dead

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “Police figure out the cause of death yet?” Wayne asked.

  “Listen, big guy,” said Felix, an ingratiating smile forming on his face. “Before I give you the rundown on our men in blue, maybe you can tell me—”

  “Answer my question,” Wayne ordered.

  Felix answered Wayne’s question. He wasn’t completely insensitive, at least not with someone bigger than he was.

  “Cardiac arrest secondary to ingestion of poison,” he rattled off. “The porkers don’t know what kind of poison yet. They’re like friggin’ doctors, you know. They ask a lot of questions, but when you try to get anything out of them, they just say they’re waiting for the lab results.” He sighed and shook his head slowly and sadly.

  “What else?” Wayne prodded, apparently unimpressed by Felix’s display of feeling.

  “Holy Moly, give me a chance,” objected Felix. He looked up at Wayne, sighed again and went on. “Coroners did the gross autopsy already,” he told us. “They sent the blood, urine and tissue samples to a lab. Lab’s gonna test the tea dregs too.”

  My mind got stuck on the tissue samples. Oh God, that was awful to think about. Nausea rose into my throat. Poor Vesta.

  “Anyway,” Felix went on. “The poop is that one Hermoine Fitch—calls herself Harmony—did the deed if anyone did. They’re saying she’s a real looney-tunes. And she made the tea—”

  “But she’s the one who told us Vesta was sick,” I found myself arguing. “And she told us herself that she didn’t get a doctor. And that she thought it was the tea.” Felix was smiling again. Damn. I wondered if he had a tape recorder going. “Why would she tell us all that if she did it?” I finished weakly.

  “‘Cause she’s nuts,” he answered succinctly. “So, I hear the looney-tunes was living with Vesta. Is that true?”

  “That’s enough,” said Wayne. “End of interview.”

  “Come on, Wayne,” Felix cajoled. “You and all your friggin’ relatives were there partying when she drank the tea in question, weren’t you?”

  “Good night, Felix,” Wayne said.

  “Hey, big guy!” Felix protested. “Give me a friggin’ second, will ya? So, when’s the funeral?”

  “Time to go, Felix,” I told him. “Say hello to Barbara for me.”

  He frowned. “Ever since we moved in together, Barbara’s been grouchier than a camel on steroids—”

  “Gee, that’s too bad,” I said and pushed him gently out the doorway. He didn’t try to duck this time. I shut the door and locked it quickly, then turned to look at Wayne.

  But Wayne had gone. I caught one glimpse of his stiff shoulders, and then he disappeared down the hallway.

  I found him in the bedroom, taking off his clothes. My pulse beat a little faster as he unzipped his pants, then slowed again as he crawled into bed in his underwear, pulled up the covers and stared vacantly at the ceiling. I told myself that this was the time for compassion not lust, all the while hoping the two might not prove mutually exclusive.

  “Wayne?” I said softly.

  He looked in my direction.

  “Can I do anything—?”

  “No, Kate,” he said. “Just want to sleep. Not your responsibility. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I agreed, willing the emotion out of my voice. My responsibility or not, all my muscles were crying out to touch him, to hold him, to do something to make him feel better. I took a deep breath and told my muscles to knock it off. Then I went back to work.

  A few hours later, I tiptoed back into the bedroom. Wayne’s eyes were closed, but the stiffness of his body told me that he wasn’t really sleeping. Still, he didn’t open his eyes when I whispered his name. I lay down beside him, convinced I would never be able to sleep again.

  And then it was Sunday morning.

  I placed a quick call to the La Risa police while Wayne was showering. A man’s bored voice told me to bring the note I’d found in my purse down to the station. I began to tell him that it was connected with the Caruso case, then decided not to in mid-sentence. Wayne and I had a date with Harmony at the condo. I wouldn’t have time to visit the police anyway. I thanked the man on the phone and hung up.

  The phone rang before I even had a chance to lift my hand from the receiver. At least it was easy to pick it back up that way.

  “Hey, kiddo,” said the voice at the other end. “Are you okay?” It was my friend Barbara Chu. My friend and self-proclaimed psychic.

  “I’m fine,” I said quickly. We were due at Harmony’s in half an hour. I didn’t have time to talk to her.

  “Well, I’m getting this weird death vibe—” she began.

  “Come on, Barbara,” I cut in. “You’ve been talking to Felix. Admit it.”

  There was a brief silence. “Felix and I are not speaking,” she informed me coolly.

  “What?”

  “I should never have moved in with him,” she told me, the coolness fading as outrage filled her voice. “Kate, he is so weird! How come I never noticed before?” I nodded in passionate agreement. Luckily, she couldn’t see me. Or maybe she could. You never know with psychics.

  “He’s eating all this greasy food,” she went on, her voice vibrating with disgust. “I just know he’s going to end up with gout again. I mean, even his computer screen is greasy! Jeez-Louise, he’s gross. Why didn’t I notice how gross he was before I moved in with him? And cheap. You wouldn’t believe it—”

  She stopped mid-sentence. For a moment, I thought we’d been disconnected. Then she started back up.

  “Is it murder again?” she asked quietly.

  “Probably,” I said. I lowered my voice. “It’s Wayne’s mother—”

  “The Wicked Witch of the West?” she breathed.

  I nodded.

  “Poor Wayne,” she sighed. “Listen, I’ll try to get over there to do a healing on him when I get a chance.” She paused. “Oh, there he is,” she told me. “He’s not in great shape, is he?”

  I looked over my shoulder. Sure enough, Wayne was standing there as silent as he had been all morning. His face was as rigid as stone and nearly as gray.

  “How do you do that?” I demanded of Barbara.

  Her chuckle floated over the phone line.

  “Ready, Kate?” Wayne asked absently. I looked down at my drop-seat pajamas. Damn. He hadn’t even noticed.

  “See you later, kiddo,” Barbara said breezily.

  Wayne and I weren’t the first ones to arrive at the condo, I realized, spotting Uncle Ace’s van parked nearby as we pulled up to the curb in front of La Risa Green.

  “Do you think they’re all here?” I asked Wayne as we got out of the Jaguar.

  He shrugged.

  There was one advantage to Wayne’s nearly complete silence, I thought, gritting my teeth. He hadn’t reproached me for taking twenty minutes too long to get ready for Harmony’s party. At least not verbally. It was harder to interpret the meaning behind his grunts, glares and shrugs.

  “So, are you ready to party?” I asked as we walked up the well-groomed path to the condo’s front door.

  He shrugged again.

  I rang the doorbell.

  Harmony opened the door a crack and peered out. The odor that wafted our way was her usual sour, smoky potpourri, but somehow she looked different. It was the dress, I realized, as I gazed through the crack in the doorway. I had never seen Harmony in a dress before. But she was wearing one today, a black silk number that I recognized as one of Vesta’s. It looked strange under Harmony’s crystal-and-cross-encrusted leather jacket.

  “Hey, it’s Kate and Wayne, right?” she shrilled. She opened the door wider. “Come on in, man,” she invited with a shaky bow.

  I caught a flash of white as she bowed, the white of her muscular calves and bare feet. Harmony wasn’t wearing her boots today either.

  “Everyone’s here, right?” she whispered as we stepped over the threshold. At least she didn’t greet us with her wooden baseball bat this time. It was sitting harmlessly
on the floor next to the door, along with Vesta’s water gun.

  Harmony grinned at us tremulously, her bleached blue eyes drifting in and out of focus.

  I focused my own eyes on the people in the living room. Harmony wasn’t lying. All of the Skeritts were present. And none of them were smiling. The muscles in my shoulders tightened. This wasn’t going to be a fun party.

  “Look at the wall,” Harmony ordered loudly, pointing behind me.

  I turned to look. The east wall of the living room was layered in sheets of newsprint, each sheet bearing one scrawled, black outline of a cross or crystal.

  “Pretty cool,” she whispered in my ear. “Right?”

  - Eleven -

  I peeked into Harmony’s pale blue eyes and saw the quivering of hope there, the kind of hope that quivers in a dog’s eyes when it brings you something wet and smelly from the beach. I forced an appreciative expression onto my face.

  “Very nice,” I told her. “You must have put a lot of work into the drawings.”

  “I had to do them really fast,” she whispered. Her hand drifted up to a crystal-and-cross cluster hanging around her neck. “To protect the room, right?”

  Maybe her rush to produce the drawings explained the wobbliness of the black outlines. I would have never recognized the crystals if I hadn’t known ahead of time what some vaguely phallic shapes were meant to represent. Even some of the crosses were hard to identify. They looked more like four-legged amoebas, with their rounded edges and less than exact right angles.

  “But I have plenty of protection now that I’m Vesta,” Harmony added. She straightened her shoulders and smiled. The smile looked familiar.

  “Now that you’re Vesta?” I repeated, taking a closer look at her. Her leathery brown face looked tighter than usual, even gaunt under her blond frizz of hair. And her hands were trembling. In fact, it looked as if her whole body was trembling.

  “Vesta gave me her life,” she explained simply.

  My stomach churned unhappily. Was this a confession?

  “It was in her will,” Harmony continued. “Isn’t that cool?”

  “When you say ‘will,’ do you mean—” I began.

  “Kate and Wayne,” came a hearty voice. “Good to see you.”

  It was Uncle Ace, grinning as if this were a real social occasion. He put a meaty hand on Wayne’s shoulder.

  “How’re you doing, kid?” he asked.

  Wayne shrugged slowly. His eyes stared out ahead of him, unseeing. The grin faded from Ace’s face.

  “Listen, Wayne—” he began, his voice a low growl.

  “You know what, Aunt Kate?” came Eric’s voice, advancing on me from Ace’s side.

  “What?” I asked, turning to the boy. At least he was cheerful.

  “I got this totally awesome book at this really cool bookstore last night,” he said, his voice high with excitement. “It’s all about poisons.” His voice dropped to an insistent whisper. “See, I’ve got it like totally figured out. Aunt Vesta musta been poisoned. That’s why she puked…”

  I looked around the living room quickly, wondering who else could hear the boy’s words. Wayne, Ace and Harmony had turned toward him, clearly listening. But the rest of the Skeritts were apparently oblivious, occupied with their individual family groups. Trent and Ingrid stood with Lori and Mandy at the far end of the living room in front of one of the black leather sofas. Lori was waving her hands and talking loudly about healing through chakra work. A few feet away, Dru was saying something to Bill and Gail that I couldn’t quite make out.

  “… gonna figure it out and then I’m gonna tell the police,” Eric was saying. “All the poisons have like totally different symptoms—”

  “Eric!” Ace interrupted sharply. “Not now.”

  “But Grampy—” Eric objected.

  “Come talk to me in the kitchen,” Ace ordered.

  The boy followed him to the kitchen, sputtering, “But, it’s totally awesome.”

  “You guys want some food?” asked Harmony softly, recalling me to her presence. And to Wayne’s.

  Wayne shook his head no. Harmony’s face turned to mine. Her pale blue eyes were wide in her tan face.

  “You’ll have some food, right?” she said to me. Her voice wasn’t soft anymore. It was loud and shrill.

  “Well, I—”I began. I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat whatever food Harmony had cooked.

  “Come on,” she said and grabbed my arm. Her grip was a strong one. As she led me to the center of the room, I wondered if she got that grip from gardening.

  “See, I fixed it all up,” she told me, her shrill voice taking on speed. I looked down and saw the plates of food laid out on the black-lacquered coffee table. “It’s the best, the very best,” she went on. “I can afford the best now, right? I can do what I want. I’m protected now….”

  Her words pinged off my ears as I scanned the food. There was a plate of what looked like roast beef, the edges of the slices curled and grayish, sitting on a bed of limp, browning lettuce. And some miniature quiches, mashed up next to a handful of drying mushrooms and dolmas. A sour smell drifted up from a plate of heaped chicken, and with it, the realization of what was spread out on the table. It was the remains of Friday night’s buffet dinner. I wondered if any of it had been refrigerated.

  “So whaddaya want?” Harmony demanded. “You can have anything you want, man. Anything! Just like Alice’s Restaurant.” She giggled. “Isn’t this far out—?”

  “I’m not really very hungry,” I interrupted.

  Harmony’s eyes widened until I could see the whites all the way around her pale irises. Her hand went to a crystal on her jacket, then moved onto a clump of crosses. Damn. Probably no one else had taken her up on her offer of food, either. Who knew if it was spoiled? Or poisoned, for that matter.

  “It looks very nice,” I lied. “But I just had breakfast.” That wasn’t true either.

  Harmony looked down at the food as her hand raced across the familiar territory of her jacket.

  “That’s okay,” she whispered.

  I looked down again. There was a plate of rye crackers on the table. And a few clusters of red and green grapes.

  “Well, maybe a cracker,” I said. Crackers had to be all right, didn’t they?

  Harmony brought her eyes back up. “They’re really good crackers,” she whispered eagerly. “The best, right?”

  I picked one up and sniffed it. Crackers didn’t generally spoil. They just got stale. And it would be pretty hard to poison a cracker, wouldn’t it? I certainly hoped so as I took a bite.

  It tasted like a slightly stale rye cracker.

  “Great,” I told Harmony. “Delicious.”

  Harmony clapped her hands together and giggled happily.

  I decided to live dangerously. I picked up a cluster of pale green grapes and popped one in my mouth. It tasted good to me.

  “Kate, how lovely to see you,” Dru trilled as I stuffed a few more grapes into my mouth.

  I turned to her and mumbled a greeting through the grapes. Dru’s bright blue eyes were sparkling this morning. And her voice was full of good cheer. It certainly hadn’t taken her very long to get over her sister’s death. Behind her, her husband, Bill, wore his usual expression of bland congeniality. Her daughter, Gail, didn’t look very happy, though, as she stared at us.

  “You sure you don’t wanna have something to eat?” Harmony asked Dru. She looked into the older woman’s eyes as if issuing a challenge. Dru averted her gaze.

  “Oh, dear,” she murmured, putting a delicate hand to her flat stomach. “I’m afraid I just couldn’t eat another bite.”

  Harmony glared at Dru for a moment longer, then suddenly smiled again, a wide smile that exposed large, yellowing teeth.

  “You think you’re better than me, right?” she hissed. “You and your poor, dead husband.”

  The color drained from Dru’s face, leaving it white under its sprinkling of freckles.

  Harmony w
idened her smile, her shark’s smile. Vesta, I realized. She was smiling exactly like Vesta had on Friday night. Goose bumps formed on my arms.

  “Did you kill him so you could marry that drunk?” she demanded, pointing in Bill’s direction.

  Bill’s eyes narrowed in his red face for a moment; then the congenial mask settled back down again. But Dru was not so invincible. Her mouth gaped open, then closed convulsively.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked Harmony softly, her voice thick with impending tears. Or maybe anger. “We’ve never done anything to—”

  “Perhaps we should leave now,” came a calm, resonant voice from Dru’s side. Her brother Trent had come to the rescue. He stood ramrod-straight with his hands clasped behind his back as he glared at Harmony reprovingly.

  Harmony turned her smile in his direction.

  “Isn’t this amazing?” a voice whispered in my ear. I jumped, startled. It was Lori. I don’t know how I missed her approach. Just the smell of her perfume should have warned me. “It’s like Vesta has taken over Harmony’s body,” she continued in my ear. “Maybe she’s a walk-in. They say that a stronger soul can take over a weaker one—”

  “And you, Mr. Big-Man-On-Campus,” Harmony said to Trent, drowning out Lori’s words. “You think you’re such hot shit, right? Well, Vesta was on to you—”

  “That is quite enough,” Trent interrupted. His voice was low but commanding, his gaze intense under lowered brows as he stared at her.

  Harmony’s shark’s smile disappeared as she stopped talking. But her eyes were still alive and flickering with something that looked like rage as she glared back at Trent. Was Harmony the one who poisoned Vesta, after all? Perversely, I had believed her innocent because she was crazy. But I hadn’t seen this side of her craziness before.

  Mandy walked up to Lori as Harmony and Trent continued to stare into each other’s eyes.

  “Mom,” she whispered insistently. “This is really, really hideous. Can’t we leave now?”