“But what for?” I asked in confusion, slamming the door behind me. I couldn’t seem to get my mind around what was happening.
“For your house and for both of your cars,” she answered without consulting her boss. I thought I saw sympathy in her gentle smile. Or maybe it was just pity.
“Like to see the warrant,” Wayne requested quietly as he walked up behind me.
Amador handed it over. Wayne scanned the document and handed it back to her.
“Looks fine,” he said.
I was glad it looked fine to him. I had no idea what a search warrant was supposed to look like. I still couldn’t believe this was happening.
“Tell them to get going,” Detective Sergeant Upton ordered.
At first I thought he meant for her to tell us to get going, but Amador turned and delivered the order to Yoder and Zappetini, who had popped out of the police car like eager genies. I wasn’t sure if the cheerful-looking blond woman emerging from the van behind them was included in the order too. The blonde wore a baseball cap with the La Risa police insignia, but no uniform.
I was about to ask who she was when she turned and slid open the rear door of her van. The back of her blue windbreaker read evidence technician in white block letters.
She pulled out a pair of latex gloves, shut the door and walked up the crowded driveway, smiling pleasantly.
“Do you have a key for the front door?” she asked.
“Oh, I’ll let you in,” I assured her. I started toward the stairs.
“Tell her and her boyfriend to wait out here,” Upton snapped. At least he didn’t bellow this time.
As Amador transmitted the message, Zappetini pushed by me and stood in my path. Did he think I was going to make a run for the house? My hands were trembling when I gave the technician my house key, with anger as much as fear. She and Yoder marched up the front stairs and into the house. Zappetini followed them and stationed himself at the front door with his arms crossed.
I looked over my shoulder at Wayne. His face was a study in impassivity, but I could see the tension in his stiff shoulders and in his clenched hands. He needed comfort now. He had been through enough at his mother’s funeral. Then I wondered if Upton knew about the funeral and had timed this search accordingly, hoping to rattle us.
“So, do we all just stand around waiting in the driveway?” I demanded angrily.
When no one answered my question, I took a deep breath and tried to make my face as wooden as Wayne’s. I doubt if I succeeded. But I must have made some impression, because Detective Amador let out a little sigh and whispered in her boss’s ear, then climbed the front stairs and started nosing around the deck. She poked at the potted plants sitting near the door and hanging from the deck railing. She picked up each of the sagging porch chairs and looked under them. She kicked at the mounds of leaves from the walnut tree. Then she came back down and whispered in her boss’s ear again.
“Tell them we can all wait on the deck,” he said.
Once the message was duly transmitted, the four of us trooped up the stairs, passed Officer Zappetini on guard at the front door and took seats on the sagging porch chairs, which Amador had rearranged. I heard voices coming from the living room as I sat down.
“… some really nice pinball machines.” That sounded like Yoder.
“Anything inside them?” A woman’s voice. The evidence technician’s.
“Nothing yet.”
“Keep looking.”
I turned to Amador. I didn’t want to think about the two people searching my house. If they were searching my house, that meant the police thought we had something to hide. Something like poison or a weapon. Or bloodstained clothing. And that meant they thought either Wayne or I was a murderer. My skin tightened. I shook my head. How could they think that? Then I remembered Clara.
“Is Clara all right?” I demanded.
Amador turned to Upton for an answer.
“Tell her we don’t have any information about Clara Kushiyama at this time,” he said. Then he rotated his head and began to drum his fingers on the porch chair.
“But she is alive and functioning, isn’t she?” I pushed, not waiting for the delay of Upton’s words. “She knows that neither Wayne nor I attacked her. All you have to do is ask her who did.”
When Upton didn’t say anything, Amador gave a little shrug. I knew it was hopeless. But why hadn’t Clara spoken up yet?
I didn’t like my own answers to that question very much.
“Tell her we know she’s been involved in murder before,” Upton said, interrupting my grim train of thought.
“We know you’ve—” Amador began.
“Kate’s only ‘involvement’ was as a witness,” Wayne interrupted. He sat up straight in his chair, 200 watts of glare radiating from his eyes. “Each of those cases was solved. The murderers confessed. Kate can’t be blamed for those murders or for any others.”
Upton looked over Wayne’s shoulder, apparently unimpressed, and popped a knuckle.
“Tell him we know he inherited from a man who was murdered.”
“We know—”
“Now stop that!” I snapped. “You know damn well Wayne didn’t murder that man.”
Upton shrugged and looked up at the October sky.
“Wayne is not murderer material,” I insisted. I lowered my voice. “He couldn’t hurt anyone, much less his mother. He loved her. You ought to be looking at the rest of the relatives. They’re the ones who hated her. You should have heard the things she said to her sister and her brothers—”
I stopped when I noticed that Upton hadn’t bothered to interrupt me. He wanted me to jabber on like this. I was sure of it. I closed my mouth and joined him in staring up at the October sky. The view through the limbs of the walnut tree was especially nice.
Upton’s further attempts to prod us into unguarded speech seemed painfully obvious. He instructed Amador to tell me that he had signed statements from witnesses who said I disliked Wayne’s mother intensely. Wayne didn’t bite. Instead, he moved his own gaze upwards. That made three of us. If anyone walked by, they’d probably look up too, wondering what we were all watching so intently. Upton went on. Then there were the statements that Wayne had endured a dysfunctional childhood, that Wayne was a deeply conflicted and potentially violent man. I had a feeling we had Gail to thank for that assessment.
Upton took a couple more jabs at us, then got up and stomped to the other side of the deck. Amador followed him. I moved my chair closer to Wayne’s and took his hand in mine, then closed my eyes and leaned nonchalantly back in my seat.
Time moved excruciatingly slowly after that. Sometime during the next couple of hours, the evidence technician exited the house. She went to her van and got a roll of brown wrapping paper and some paper bags, then went back inside. That was pretty exciting.
A while later she and Yoder brought out three wrapped packages, each slender enough to be held in one hand but at least four feet long. It felt like Christmas in hell as I tried to guess what was in the wrapped packages. Yardsticks? I had only one that I knew of. Rolled up posters? Broom handles?
What? Then she went back in and brought out a bunch of paper bags. I wouldn’t even try to guess what was in those. I looked at Wayne. He shrugged his shoulders.
Then they started their search of the yard, taking cuttings of various plants and putting them in plastic bags. They searched the cars. They searched the backyard. They searched the deck. And finally, they were done. The technician handed me my keys and a written receipt. It listed “3 wooden rods, approx. 4 feet long and 1½ inches in diameter; misc. herbs, teas and spices; misc. plant cuttings.”
Upton told Amador to tell us not to leave town, Amador told us and then the whole lot of them pulled out of the driveway in reverse order.
“Three wooden rods?” I murmured to Wayne as we watched them go. “Where did they find three wooden rods?”
“Curtain rods?” he guessed.
I shook my head. As far as I k
new, all my curtain rods were brass not wooden. And they certainly weren’t an inch and a half in diameter. Unfortunately, I’d have to go inside the house to find out what was.
“After you,” I said to Wayne.
We walked through the front door. I suppose it could have been a worse mess inside. At least the furniture in the living room was still standing. But the pillows were all piled on the wrong side of the room and the books were in a series of piles near the empty shelves. I started to feel sick when I peeked into my office. My stacks of paper were no longer in stacks. One desk had been pulled out from the wall along with the crates of old paperwork I had stored underneath it. Another—
“I’ll help you clean it up,” Wayne offered softly.
“Thank you,” I whispered back without really hearing him. I couldn’t understand the mess. Why didn’t they put things back after they were finished? We might as well have been burglarized. Except that burglars might have been neater.
“Sorry,” Wayne said even more softly.
I came back to earth with a thump. So my house was a mess. Wayne’s mother was dead. That couldn’t be cleaned up. And Harmony was dead. And Clara? I turned to Wayne.
Maybe I turned too fast. The room began to shimmer in front of my eyes.
“You okay?” Wayne asked.
I took a deep breath and tried to remember when I had last eaten. Not since the night before, I was pretty sure.
“I’m just hungry,” I told him, relieved to have found a physical cause for my distress. “How about you?”
“I’ll make you something to eat,” was all he said.
I followed him into the kitchen. All my herbs were gone. Not just the healing herbs and the teas but the Schilling and Spice Islands jars too. They must have been looking for whatever had been in Vesta’s herbal tea, I realized. Some deadly dill or bloodstained basil. Or—
“Guess I can’t make you that spaghetti sauce from scratch tonight,” Wayne commented, jerking his head at the nearly empty spice cabinet.
I looked up into his face, confused. What spaghetti sauce? His eyebrows were raised, the corners of his mouth curved upwards. It took me a while to interpret this data. Then I realized he was making a joke. Hallelujah! Shaking my head at that weak joke felt as good as eating the peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches he made for us. Even better.
After we finished stuffing our faces, we went to the bedroom to change our clothes. I opened the closet door. All the clothes that had been hung up were now piled on the floor. I picked up a blouse and tried to rehang it. But there was nothing to hang it from.
“What the hell?” I whispered.
“Four-foot wooden rods,” Wayne answered. “That’s what the hangers were hanging from.”
“But why—” I began.
“Long, rounded, varnished wooden objects—” he said.
“Like Harmony’s baseball bat,” I finished for him.
Fifteen minutes later, we had changed our clothes and were heading for the Redwood Grove Inn in the Jaguar. When I’d asked Wayne if he thought we needed a lawyer, he told me that we needed to solve the murders. Period. And inevitably, he had arranged another social outing with the Skeritts. They would be waiting for us in the Timber Lounge for cocktails before dinner at the Old Burl Cafe. How lovely. Before leaving the house, I had called the hospital to ask about Clara, but once again I had been told nothing.
“You don’t have to be here,” Wayne said once he had parked in the motel parking lot. It was twilight now and peaceful. It would be so easy to go somewhere else, to drift away—
“I want to be here,” I told him, shaking off any dissenting thoughts.
We walked into the Timber Lounge together. It was dark in there under the hanging ferns. I heard the Skeritts before I saw them.
“… must decide if we leave tomorrow or not,” a resonant voice was insisting. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that it was Trent who was speaking. He was standing with the rest of the Skeritts near the bar, his hands clasped behind him, his trim body erect and dignified.
“But, Dad,” Lori objected loudly. She waved a hand in his face as if to get his attention, jangling bracelets as she did. He glowered at her, making full use of his heavy Skeritt brows, but she went on anyway. “How will we know who killed Aunt Vesta if we leave? I don’t think we’ll really heal until—”
“I’m sure the proper authorities will notify us once they uncover the perpetrator’s identity,” he said crisply. “It’s simply a matter of time.”
“Two people dead,” Ingrid whispered hoarsely. She shook her white head slowly. As tall as she was, she looked shrunken now. But then again, that was comparatively easy in the land of the giants.
“It’s all part of the karmic plan, Mama,” Lori explained enthusiastically. “We’ll heal. We’ll find out who did it ourselves—”
“But that’s totally bogus,” Eric interrupted shrilly. “How can we find out anything ourselves if we leave?”
Lori waved her hands in the air. ‘That’s exactly what I mean!” she exclaimed.
“Grampy and I will stay,” Eric offered eagerly. “Won’t we, Grampy?”
Ace shrugged his massive shoulders, reminding me of Wayne once again.
“You know what?” the boy continued, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I’ve been reading all these totally cool books about investigation techniques. All we have to do is like work as a team—”
“What if one of our team is the murderer?” Gail asked quietly.
No one seemed to have an answer to that one. Everyone just stood, stunned, as Gail and Eric stared at each other nose to nose, glasses to glasses.
“Hi, you guys!” I called out as if I hadn’t heard any of the conversation.
Dru came out of her trance first.
“Well, hello there!” she called back, her voice high and taut. “Fancy meeting you here.” She giggled at her own little joke. Bill toasted us silently with his everpresent glass.
I forced an answering smile onto my face as we walked over to the group.
Ace put his arm around Wayne’s shoulders when we got there.
“Hey, kid,” he greeted him. “Been trying to figure out how much longer we’re staying.” He looked down at the floor, then added, “If you don’t mind a goofy old guy like me hanging around, I’d like some more time with the two of you.”
Wayne didn’t say anything. Ace pulled his arm away from Wayne’s shoulders slowly.
“We’d love it,” I said hastily.
Ace reached for my hand and pulled it to his lips, smacking loudly as he kissed it.
“Hooboy, forget Wayne,” he suggested with a quick grin. “Just the two of us. Whaddaya say?”
I winked at him, conspiring to ignore his hurt feelings. I knew that it was Wayne he wanted to see, Wayne he loved. I stared at his homely clown’s face. Was he really Wayne’s father?
“Hey, Kate,” Lori whispered in my ear. “Can I talk to you a minute?”
“Sure,” I answered, turning away from Ace.
She jerked her head to indicate the other end of the dimly lit room. Her beaded earrings dangled musically as her head moved. She had changed into a new outfit since the funeral, pink stirrup pants and a paisley dashiki.
I followed her across the room obediently, past a harassed-looking waitress who was pushing tables together for our family group. I took a quick look around me. There didn’t seem to be anybody else in the bar but the waitress and the Skeritts.
Lori waited until we had reached the safety of the furthest corner from the rest of the family before she spoke. And even then, she peered back over my head first.
“We had a visit today from your friend Felix,” she whispered. Her brown eyes were wide as she gazed down at me.
“Oh, no,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Did he talk to everyone?”
Lori nodded.
I groaned.
“Is he hideous or something?” Mandy asked from where she stood next to me. I started. I hadn
’t heard her footsteps.
“He is hideous,” I answered gravely. “Worse than hideous.”
Mandy giggled. Oh well, let her think I was kidding.
“Felix said you were very, very intuitive,” Lori told me. “That you’d solved murders before.” She lowered her voice again. “He said you’d probably solved these murders too, and just weren’t telling. Is that true, Kate?”
I shook my head vehemently, inwardly damning Felix. What if he had told the murderer that?
Lori put her face very close to mine and looked into my eyes. I held my breath to keep from drowning in the scent of her sweet and spicy perfume.
“Really?” she asked.
“Really,” I whispered back.
Lori was the first but not the last of the Skeritts who wished to speak with me privately. Gail shanghaied me as I walked back to the main group, whispering that she would be over later tonight to discuss suspects with me. I nodded agreeably. What fun. I’d make sure I was armed for the meeting.
Then Trent took my arm and led me in the opposite direction, asking if he could speak to me alone sometime before dinner. I resisted the urge to tell him to take a number, and accepted his invitation.
Dru was next. Only she didn’t need any privacy.
“Your friend Felix told us you were quite the detective,” she gushed. “So when are you going to solve our little murders for us?”
I took a leaf from Wayne’s book and shrugged my shoulders enigmatically. I was even able to smile at her as I thought about throttling Felix the next time I saw him.
Bill leaned toward me, wafting alcohol.
“Death turns you on, huh?” he asked.
I was stunned. The man had finally spoken. Considering his words, I was just as glad he didn’t do it more often.
I shrugged again, leaving off the smile this time.
Trent tapped me on the shoulder. I turned away from Bill and Dru gladly.
“Can we talk?” Trent asked quietly.
“Sure,” I said. At least he didn’t smell of alcohol.
“Perhaps it would be better if we went outside for a moment,” Trent suggested.
I looked for Wayne and saw him with Ace, listening to the older man with a solemn expression on his face. I wouldn’t interrupt them.
Tea-Totally Dead Page 22
