And then he was throwing his arms around me. He was wet with perspiration. “The phone call was fake, Kate,” he told me. “Fake! Someone wanted you alone here.”
“Hic,” I said. I had meant to tell him about the knocking I’d heard, but something—maybe it was all of those little U-turns—had given me the hiccups. “Hic,” I said again. Then, “Hic—damn.”
I heard a sound like an insect trying to sing opera, and looked down. The telephone receiver was still dangling inches from the floor.
“Hic-Judy,” I said, pointing.
Wayne released me, but stood hovering less than a yard away as I painfully extricated myself from Judy’s telephone soliloquy. Apparently she hadn’t even noticed I’d dropped the phone, she had been so engrossed in the story she was now finishing up about a Santa Cruz Superior Court judge who had given a divorcing couple custody of their two German shepherds on alternate months.
“I don’t really think that’s fair to the dogs,” she said finally. “Do you, Kate?”
I murmured a “No” between hiccups and struggled to get out a final spasmodic “goodbye,” before hanging up.
Then I turned back to Wayne, glad to have had time to think before telling him about the knocking. He was already scared enough. That was made clear as he began to speak again.
“Was halfway to the Civic Center when I remembered someone from the coroner’s office telling me that they didn’t have a morgue,” he said. His voice was high and shaking, even now. “No morgue, that’s why Mom’s body was held at the mortuary. So I stopped the car and called from a phone booth. Coroner’s office said they hadn’t called me. I turned around and came back as fast as the car would go.”
He threw his arms around me again. “Was so afraid I’d be too late,” he groaned into my hair.
Had someone really been here to kill me? I thought of Harmony’s corpse and shivered in Wayne’s arms.
“Did you see anyone near the house?” I asked his chest. My hiccups were gone now, frightened away. “Any of your relatives’ cars in the driveway or on the street?”
He drew back from me and shook his head. His eyes were still round with panic.
“Should we tell the police?” I asked slowly. “Or will they just think we made it up?”
His mouth opened, then closed again. Finally, he let loose a big sigh and seemed to deflate. His eyes returned to their normal shape. “You’re right,” he admitted. “Wouldn’t do any good.”
His brows descended like curtains. “Gotta find the murderer,” he growled. Then he turned back to the living room and resumed pacing.
I never got a chance to tell him about the rattling. It was just as well. His spell of total panic seemed to be over. And I was scared enough for the two of us anyway.
I went back to my desk and tried to lose my fear in work. But my mind paced along with Wayne as I checked off orders. Two dozen Santas in gilded cages. Check. Had the person who called Wayne tried to open my back door? Six hollow-tooth cups. Check. And if so, why were they interested in me and not Wayne? Because I was the one asking questions, I supposed. Thirteen shrunken-head ornaments, eight “uh-huh” ties and three sets of chiro-crackers. Check. If we told the police everything, would they give us police protection? No, I was sure they wouldn’t. They didn’t have the personnel. Thirty-three shark mugs. Check. Wayne was right. We had to figure out who the murderer was ourselves. But how?
A few hours later, I still didn’t have an answer. But Wayne seemed to think he did.
“Dinner tonight with all of them,” he announced and picked up the telephone receiver. Then he turned to me, frowning. “Where?” he asked.
“Do we really have to feed them to get answers?” I asked back. My stomach churned out a nonverbal equivalent of a whine.
“Yes,” he replied succinctly.
I took a deep breath and thought for a moment. “How about the Laughing Mango Cafe?” I suggested finally. “It’s fun.”
“Fun,” Wayne repeated in a monotone and then started to punch in numbers.
It took him a while to get anyone. I listened as he tried Ace’s room and Dru’s room without success. Then he asked for Trent’s room. Five minutes later he was off the phone.
“Talked to Aunt Ingrid,” he told me. “Everyone else is out for a walk on the Golden Gate Bridge, but she says they’ll probably be happy to meet us at the Laughing Mango.” He paused. “Aunt Ingrid didn’t sound very happy.”
“Aunt Ingrid never sounds happy,” I assured him.
He shrugged.
“What about Clara?” I asked, thinking she might be of help in evaluating Wayne’s relatives, having worked with psychotics most of her life.
“Of course,” Wayne murmured. “Shouldn’t have forgotten Clara. She’s a suspect too.”
“I didn’t mean—” I began, but Wayne had already picked up the phone again to talk to Clara.
“Wayne Caruso,” he said. Then, “Wanted to know if you’d like to go to dinner…”
I wandered through the kitchen to the back door and peered through the glass. Was there evidence of an uninvited visitor out there? I listened for a moment. Wayne was still talking. I opened the door and stepped outside. I couldn’t see any footprints on the deck or beyond it on the hard ground. There were no carelessly dropped business cards or cigarette butts or gum wrappers. Or clubs or vials of poisons, for that matter. Should I call the police over, just in case? It wouldn’t prove much if they found evidence of the presence of any of the suspects. Most of the Skeritts had been on the deck the day before—
“Where are you, Kate?” Wayne shouted, panic in his voice again.
“In here,” I called back, hastily stepping into the kitchen and shutting the door behind me.
Wayne told me that Clara Kushiyama had accepted our dinner invitation. We would pick her up on the way. And Ace called later that afternoon to say that the whole family would be at the Laughing Mango Cafe at six. Wayne made reservations for twelve people. The stage was set. Now all that was needed was for one of the actors to confess. I didn’t have the heart to tell Wayne just how unlikely I thought that would be.
“So, how did you get into psychiatric work?” I asked Clara. She was sitting in the front seat of the Jaguar next to Wayne. We had picked her up at her apartment a few minutes earlier, on our way to the Laughing Mango Cafe.
She turned to look at me in the back seat. “I guess I’ve always been curious about people,” she answered, her words slow and soothing. “Especially people in institutions. I was interned at the Manzinar camp in Southern California during World War II.”
“Terrible thing,” Wayne growled.
“I wasn’t happy about it at the time,” Clara admitted. But there was no bitterness in her tone or her serene face. Her fingertips slowly brushed her dark hair back from her forehead. “It was pretty scary, with all of those armed soldiers determined to guard us ‘potential enemies of the United States.’ Being of Japanese ancestry was enough back then to count as a ‘potential enemy.’ And even after it stopped being quite so scary, it was still dreary. Especially for a teenager. I was fourteen when we were first interned.”
“I’m sorry,” Wayne said. “It should have never happened.”
“Well now, you don’t need to apologize,” Clara said kindly. “You probably weren’t even born at the time.”
“But still—” he began. Then he stopped. As he turned to her, I saw the edge of his sheepish grin. The expression warmed me, reminding me of the Wayne in waiting, the man I had known before his mother was killed. “Guess I was having delusions of grandeur,” he murmured. “Wanted to apologize on behalf of the United States.”
“Okey-dokey,” Clara answered with a soft chuckle. “Apology accepted.” Then she turned to face me again. “Anyway, as to your question, Kate. I was always interested in institutions. And in outsiders, especially the insane. The logic of the insane fascinates me because it always makes sense of their behavior. But first, one must understand the conte
xt from which it springs.”
I nodded eagerly, remembering. “I worked in a mental hospital too, about twenty years ago,” I told her. “There was this one woman who would begin screaming every time we tried to get her out of bed. Finally, I asked her why. It turned out that she thought the floors were electrified and would electrocute her. So I brought her some rubber-soled shoes. It was really exciting when she got out of bed and walked.”
“A perfect solution, my dear,” Clara said, smiling. “So few people even bother to figure out the motivation.”
“How about the motivation for murder?” Wayne asked. “Does that make sense if you know the context?”
Clara’s smile made way for a more serious expression. “I imagine most murderers have reasons for murder that make sense to them,” she replied slowly. “The reasons just don’t make sense to us.”
“But are reasons justifications for behavior?” Wayne went on. “Or just excuses?”
Clara didn’t have an answer for that one. At least, not one she was willing to share. Neither did I. The Jaguar purred along in silence until we got to the restaurant a few minutes later.
The Laughing Mango Cafe tried very hard to be a fun kind of place. It certainly had fun decor. Its white plaster walls were covered with Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig posters as well as various colorful representations of mangoes. And most of the mangoes were complete with cartoon arms, legs and laughing faces.
The Skeritts were all gathered in the bar under a pink neon version of a dancing mango, this one sporting bulging eyes and a top hat. But somehow the Skeritts didn’t look as if they really appreciated the fun decor. Bill and Dru sat silently frowning with drinks in hand at a table they shared with Gail. Trent, Lori and Ingrid sat at another table, without the drinks but with similar frowns. Trent looked up as we entered the bar and gave us a strained, polite smile. Ace was at yet another table with the two kids. No one was talking. Except for Eric, of course.
“You know what?” he was saying to Mandy. He didn’t wait for her answer. “In New York they’re training these totally cool seals to retrieve stuff from the ocean for the police. Like guns and drugs and stuff—”
“That’s really hideous,” Mandy drawled. “What if a gun goes off?”
“But they’re only seals,” Eric objected. “That’s why it’s so totally cool.”
Mandy’s chocolate-brown eyes narrowed. I felt an animal rights lecture approaching.
“Hi, everyone,” I called out quickly. “They have a place set up for us outside.”
It was supposed to be fun outside, too, on the whitewashed cement patio. We sat at a long table made up of a series of smaller tables covered in blue-checked linen. We had a sideways view of the bay over a fence made of metal pylons and thick brown rope. It was all very nautical. There were gulls galore, flying around and screeching over the sound of waves and wind. And the wind was cold, much colder than I expected. I wondered if they could move us to a table inside. But before I could propose the idea, Eric started up again.
“So these seals can even take pictures,” he told Clara. She had made the tactical error of sitting next to the boy. “Really. It’s totally incredible! And they can unbuckle seat belts too….”
I looked down at my menu. There were plenty of burgers under the dancing mango logo: tofu burgers, bean burgers, turkey burgers and beef burgers. And lots of fish, including tequila prawns and blackened red fish with mango chutney. And tostadas, and tacos—
“These are such cute little menus,” Dru said. She and Bill were at the other end of the table. I could just hear her high, tinkling voice over the wind. “And the food looks so fun. Don’t you think so, Bill?”
In reply, Bill took a sip from his glass.
A busboy tossed a few baskets of bread and mini crocks of butter on our table and then retreated. Lori passed a basket to me, exclaiming over the corn and molasses breads. I took a piece of each kind and passed the rest along to Gail. I bit into the molasses bread gratefully. It was as good as I remembered, and warm besides.
“Do you know what else?” Eric asked Clara, his eyes eager under his thick glasses. I could hear his voice just fine.
“What?” she answered, looking at him with apparent interest. I had thought Clara was a saint before, the way she’d put up with Vesta. Now I was certain.
“I read this totally audacious article about DNA profiling last night,” he told her. He crammed bread into his mouth and went on, spitting crumbs. “If they get a trace of your blood, it’s practically like a fingerprint. Or sperm. Or…”
He was still lecturing when the waiter came for our order. And Clara was still listening. Actually, everyone seemed to be. It was easier than talking, I guessed.
“Bean burger with mango relish,” I ordered when my turn came.
Eric looked over at Mandy before he placed his order, then muttered something inaudible into the wind.
“What was that?” the waiter asked.
“Beef burger,” he said in a normal tone.
Mandy turned to him and mouthed one word, “Hideous,” then turned away. It looked as if that budding relationship was doomed. But Eric was irrepressible. Once the waiter was gone, he started in about genetics again.
“This really smart dude named Mendel figured it out,” he told Clara. He looked over at Mandy. Was he still hoping to impress her? “There’s like recessive genes and dominant genes and they control all sorts of things like… like…” He faltered as Mandy glared back at him.
“Like eye color,” Clara put in gently. She smiled encouragingly. “Blue is—”
“Yeah, oh sure,” he said. “Like eye color. Blue’s recessive and brown’s dominant, so two blues make—” He broke off again. This time he seemed to be staring at Gail, sitting beside me. “Hey, why are Gail’s eyes brown? Both of her parents’ eyes are blue!”
You could almost hear the whoosh as heads turned simultaneously to look at Gail.
“Because Bill Norton is not my real father,” she answered brusquely. “My real father had brown eyes.”
“So,” Clara said. “Father with brown eyes and a mother with blue eyes could make a child with brown—”
“Oh, yeah,” Eric said quickly. “I knew that.”
“I’ll bet you did,” Mandy drawled, rolling her eyes to the cloudy sky above.
“Now, sweetie,” Lori said reprovingly to her daughter, but I could hear the laughter in her voice.
I buried my own laughter in a cough. Poor Eric. I wondered if he had stayed up late last night studying genetics to impress Mandy.
“And you know what else?” he said a few moments later. Fortunately, the kid knew how to bounce back. Fortunately for him anyway.
“What?” Clara replied. Her eyes were creased into an affectionate smile.
“I read that male sperm count is down to half of what it was fifty years ago—”
“Uh-oh!” Ace interrupted. He opened his eyes wide and rolled them slowly toward his lap.
Everyone laughed at that one. Well, not everyone, actually. Gail didn’t laugh. Or Trent. Or Wayne, for that matter. But a lot of us did. Even Eric.
“Hey,” the boy followed up, “does anyone know what an entomologist studies?” He gave us approximately three seconds to come up with an answer, then answered himself. “Bugs!” he announced gleefully. “These dudes are totally awesome. They can tell all sorts of things about a dead body by the bugs. See, first there’s flies, then eggs, and then maggots—”
“Whoa, boy!” Ace interrupted. “Enough is enough.”
“But Grampy!” Eric objected. “I was just—”
“Why don’t you tell everyone about your sports career,” Ace suggested quickly.
“Ah, I’m not that good,” Eric said. He lowered his eyes for a moment. Was he being modest? Or was he really terrible? “But I did hit a totally awesome home run for our baseball team. You see, I figured it out…”
But I didn’t hear the rest of his sentence. The minute Eric had said “base
ball,” I’d stopped breathing. I blinked my eyes and saw the living room of Vesta’s condo as it had been yesterday morning when we’d found Harmony’s body. And finally, I knew what was missing. It was Harmony’s baseball bat.
- Twenty -
I figured I’d just close my eyes until I could breathe better, but the all too familiar vision of Harmony’s battered body appeared the instant my eyelids came down. I pulled them back up and looked over at Wayne, hoping for a little visual relief. He sat silent and still between his Uncle Ace and Aunt Ingrid, his gaze straight ahead and unreadable. Had he thought of the baseball bat too, the baseball bat that Harmony had carried for protection? Had he wondered if it had been turned on her and used to beat her into— No, I told myself. I wasn’t going to think about that anymore.
The wind raised the hair on my forearms. It was too damn cold out here, I decided, shifting in my chair impatiently. I surveyed the faces around the table. No one else looked cold. No one was shivering but me. Ingrid was smiling vaguely at Eric as he continued his monologue. Trent was smiling at the boy too, but the effect was marred by the muscle that twitched in his jaw. Ace leaned back in his chair, looking comfortable as he listened to his grandson. And Mandy was still glaring in Eric’s direction.
“… and I’m, like, way taller than the other kids on the basketball team,” he was saying. “It’s totally cool…”
When I finally got around to looking at Gail sitting beside me, I realized she wasn’t watching Eric like the rest of the table. She was watching me. Her stare seemed to intensify as my eyes met hers. I resisted the urge to look away, and clamped my teeth into a smile. She didn’t return the smile. She just stared. God, she was a spooky woman, I thought. Then I wondered if she knew what I was thinking.
“I played basketball in high school too,” Lori announced loudly from my other side. My heart jumped in my chest like a startled deer. Gail didn’t even blink. I turned slowly to face Lori, my heart beating double time.
“It’s a wonderful way to get in touch with your body,” Lori went on enthusiastically, waving a piece of cornbread in the air to make her point. “Sports can be a true meditation….”
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