“Can’t you just tell me over the phone?” I countered. But my blood was perking up too. Why was she crying? Did she want to confess?
“Oh, please, Kate?” I heard through the sobs.
I sighed and looked up at Wayne, putting my hand over the receiver.
“It’s Becky,” I told him. “She wants to talk. At her house.”
He looked wistfully at the frying pan, then put it back on its hook, nodding his agreement.
“We’ll be right over,” I told Becky.
But I hadn’t even hung up my phone on Becky’s tearful apologies when Wayne’s business phone began to ring.
- Twenty-Two -
“Gah, I know I’m awful,” Becky was whimpering. “I’m so sorry…”
“Hello,” I heard Wayne on his business line. Then, “No, no, have you tried…”
“Becky,” I said as quietly as I could. “You’re not confessing to murder, are you?”
“Murder?” she mumbled, and her sobs turned to giggles. Hysterical giggles.
“The whole system is down?” Wayne was saying.
“No way, Kate,” Becky finally answered me, gasping as if she’d been running the Bay-to-Breakers marathon. “I mean, I know I’m a complete dope, but I’d never murder anyone. I don’t think I’m even efficient enough anymore.” She had a point. “I’m so messed up…”
Wayne looked over at me, throwing one hand into the air. So much for leaving his restaurant/gallery to the assistant manager for the day. A combination of frustration and desperation showed on his face.
“…you are coming over, aren’t you?” Becky was asking meanwhile, her last word dissolving into the first note of a renewed sob.
“Yeah, sure,” I put in quickly, though I had a feeling I was going to be visiting her alone. “See you soon.”
Then I hung up.
Wayne was not so lucky.
“Hold on,” he told the guy on the other end of the line. Then he put his hand over the receiver.
“Computer’s down,” he growled.
I knew what that meant. Either he spent anywhere from twenty minutes to three hours working the assistant manager through the whole system over the phone or he went into the city in person.
“You stay here and help Gary on the phone,” I suggested. Wayne would be safe here at home. I was the one visiting a suspect. “I’ll go to Becky’s by myself.”
“But she could be dangerous, Kate,” Wayne objected.
“Becky?” I countered, raising my eyebrows.
“Well…”
I could see he was wavering. Of all the suspects, Becky Vogel certainly seemed the least threatening. She’d said it herself. She just wasn’t efficient enough to be dangerous. Especially in hysterics.
“Listen,” I offered. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll go to Becky’s and talk to her. She’s crying her eyes out now. I can’t believe she’s dangerous. Still, she might know something—”
“But—”
I held up my hand.
“I’ll call you to let you know I’m all right in exactly a half an hour from now on my phone line,” I went on. Then I could make sure he was safe too, but he didn’t have to know that. “You’ve got Becky’s number. If you solve the problem early, just call and come over. She’s only ten minutes away.”
He frowned, his eyebrows dipping below the horizon of his eyes, his hand still over the receiver.
“If you go,” he murmured finally, “tell Becky that I know you’re there.”
“Will ‘Wayne says hello’ be enough?”
“Yeah,” he agreed, a foolish smile hovering on his lips. “Guess I’m going a little overboard.”
Actually, as I gobbled a couple of rice crackers with soy cheese and picked up my purse to go, I began to think he wasn’t going overboard. Because I was beginning to worry myself about leaving Wayne alone in the house. I checked the back door. It was locked. I opened the front door and looked out at the street. I didn’t see any suspicious cars lurking. Not that I would have known which cars to consider suspicious in any case.
“Listen, sweetie,” I whispered in his ear as he told Gary what keys to punch on the computer. “Don’t let anyone in while I’m gone, all right?”
“Right, right,” he said, waving his hand.
I was pretty sure he was talking to me.
“Love you,” I told him and kissed the side of his craggy face.
“Love you too,” he murmured back, still preoccupied with Gary. Then suddenly he jerked his head around. “Kate, be careful,” he warned, his tone deep and deadly serious.
I told him I would, and he blew me a kiss as I walked back out the front door and locked it ever so carefully behind me.
There were two surprises waiting for me on the doorstep of Becky’s small stucco house. One, D.V. wasn’t home. He was still at school, according to Becky. And two, Becky seemed to be sober.
“Oh, Kate,” she said as she stepped back from the doorway. “Thanks for coming. I had to talk to you.”
When I walked over the threshold, she gave me a hug. And she didn’t smell of alcohol. At least, not of new alcohol. There was a whiff of that stale, pickled smell that heavy drinkers often have. But nothing on her breath. For a change.
And her step didn’t waver as she led me indoors.
She motioned me to a seat in her living room, and I looked around the inside of her house for the first time. The small room was pleasant and light, with comfortable-looking furniture in soft yellows and beige and ivory. There was a cast paper piece of artwork hanging on the wall above her couch. The layers of paper depicted a woman flying, or maybe dancing, under a moonlit tree complete with an owl. There was a sense of childlike freedom in the piece, but also an undercurrent of sadness. Or menace. I couldn’t decide which. It was like something out of a dream.
“Sarah Glater,” Becky murmured from behind me.
“What?” I replied, startled out of the dreamlike trance the piece had inspired.
“Sarah Glater is the artist who did that one,” Becky told me. “I’ve got a lot of her work.”
And then I turned back to Becky and sat down. She might not have been drinking, but she didn’t look good. Her open blue eyes were red and nearly swollen shut. Her fragile face looked almost battered, it was so blotchy and dry. She wasn’t wearing her usual makeup, I realized. No makeup and she looked sixty years old. I tried to repress the shudder that raised the hairs on my arms but couldn’t. The transformation was like something out of a horror movie. I just hoped Becky hadn’t noticed my reaction.
Actually, I had a feeling Becky wasn’t noticing much of anything as she sat down across from me. For once, she wasn’t smiling. And though she wasn’t wavering, her hands were shaking. She wrapped her arms around herself suddenly and closed her eyes.
“So?” I prompted. I was here. Wayne wasn’t. And I was getting impatient.
She took a deep, rasping breath. Oh God, I hoped she wasn’t going to cry again. Her swollen eyes didn’t look like they could handle any more tears.
“So,” she replied softly, opening those eyes. “I’m a drunk and a drug user. A substance abuser. An idiot. And since you’re investigating—”
“Who told you I was investigating?” I interrupted, a spike of worry jerking my shoulders. The voice on the phone had told me to stop snooping, and even Becky knew I still was. Probably everyone knew. And Wayne was home alone. I’d try to make this talk with Becky short, I decided, glancing at my watch. It had only been fifteen minutes since I’d left Wayne.
“Mark Myers told me,” Becky answered, her swollen blue eyes widening for a moment. As much as they could, anyway. “He said I needed to tell you what was going on with me. Because I’ve been drunk, I’ve been acting inappropriately, acting like a real dope actually, and doing all this weird stuff that might look suspicious if you didn’t know. But I’m not a murderer, I’m just a drunk.”
I looked at her and believed her. Still, I believed everyone. But Becky— A memo
ry of Becky smoking dope and giggling at sixteen bounced into my head. She had always done more than anyone else, done to excess, even then.
“Did Mark suggest you stop drinking?” I asked curiously. Because someone or something had made a difference.
“Yeah,” she answered, one side of her mouth going up in a lopsided smile for the first time. “I don’t know why, but finally it seemed like good advice. And he’s damn well not the first one to give it to me. Jeez, everyone’s been after me forever. D.V. and my boss, especially. Even my ex-husband. My boss told me he’d pay for me to go to one of those dry-out clinics. But I just ignored him. But when Sid died, I…I…”
Tears began to form in her eyes. The smile was gone.
“One day without drinking and look what a mess I am,” she whimpered. The tears rolled out of her swollen eyes. “I don’t know if I can do it—”
“Then take your boss up on his offer,” I suggested. I tried to keep my tone gentle, all the time wanting to take her by her collar and drag her to a clinic bodily if that’s what it took.
“But what about D.V.? I can’t just leave him here alone,” she shot back. She put her face in her hands, muffling her voice. “Still that’s just an excuse, I know it. I know it. Jeez, I just can’t seem to get myself together.”
And then amazingly, she did seem to get herself together, taking her wet face out of her hands and sitting back against the cushions of her chair.
“Marijuana in high school, speed in law school, cocaine after. And alcohol the whole time. Every once in a while I realized the drugs were a problem, but I didn’t even count the alcohol—” She waved her hands suddenly, cutting herself off. “But the reason I’m telling you all this is because you asked me about going out with Sid and I didn’t answer you. Kate, it wasn’t because I was holding back on you. It was because every time I saw him I got staggering drunk. And I couldn’t remember anything the next day.”
“Did you sleep with him?” I asked.
Her blotchy face reddened. “I don’t even know the answer to that,” she told me. A lone tear rolled out of one eye. “God, I’m so awful.”
Damn. I didn’t want to go down that road again.
“How did D.V. feel about your relationship to Sid?” I asked, partly to distract her and partly because I really wanted to know.
“Oh, Jeez, D.V. hated him,” she whispered, shaking her head. “He was so mad. I’d been on the wagon for a whole week before I went out with Sid the last time, but—”
Suddenly she stopped. Did she just realize the implication of what she was saying?
“D.V.?” I prompted, hoping to get her rolling again.
“No, not D.V.,” she replied seriously, leaning forward. “He wouldn’t kill Sid. He’s just a kid. A messed-up kid, but a kid. Honestly, all that scowling and stuff is just an act.”
She looked at me beseechingly through swollen lids.
I nodded my understanding. In fact, I believed her. I could see why D.V. might have killed Sid, but Elaine? I gave myself a mental shake. Here I was believing everyone again.
“Listen,” Becky said urgently. “D.V. hangs out with me so I won’t get bombed. That’s all.” Her voice got quieter. “But I found out he’s been drinking himself, and smoking dope, and cutting classes. Oh shit, Kate, I’m such a failure—”
“No, you’re not,” I cut in hastily. “You’re a practicing attorney, for God’s sake! And you have a kid who loves you enough to protect you. You must have done something right.”
“Jeez, Kate,” she said, a hint of that lopsided smile on her brittle face. “You’re still just the way you were in high school. You always made me feel good. You and Robert.” She sighed and wrapped her arms around herself again.
“Gad, I loved Robert,” she murmured. “I think Mark was right. Robert probably was gay. Jeez, here I was sleeping with everyone but him, and he was the one I loved.” She closed her eyes for a few moments. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “Life is just weird,” she finally concluded. “Especially sober. At the memorial yesterday, I couldn’t help but think of Robert. Even more than Sid. And the fireworks. Those awful fireworks—”
“What did you do after the memorial?” I asked her, cutting her off at the catharsis.
“I came home and got even drunker,” she answered, swollen eyes opening again. “What else?”
No wonder she looked so bad. As I remembered, she’d been pretty well marinated before she’d left the memorial. It was a wonder she’d never hurt anyone driving. Or maybe she had. How would I know?
“Well, Sid would’ve approved,” I told her, trying to lighten the tone. “He was no lightweight in the drinking arena himself.”
“Actually, he was,” Becky corrected me seriously. “He always seemed to be drinking, but it was always just one bottle of beer. Or one glass of wine, or whatever. I think he had to be in control. If only to pull off all those wacko pranks of his.”
“I got a fuzzy purple windup toy in my glove compartment,” I told her.
“So did I,” she said, the smile returning to her face. “Only mine was orange.”
And then we were off and running, at least our mouths were, reminiscing about Sid’s pranks. We couldn’t seem to stop. Suddenly they all seemed funny instead of obnoxious. The fake rubber vomit that he carried with him everywhere he went. And the rubber chicken. And the skeleton he managed to borrow or steal from somewhere and hang from a tree branch that spread out over Main Street. No one had actually run off the road when the skeleton came flying down, but there were a lot of near misses. Becky and I were still giggling about that when she remembered the time he’d sawed off the stop sign in the dead of night and then, just as furtively, tried to put it back up again when Pam convinced him the trick might actually get someone killed.
“Remember when he rigged the toilet so that it sounded like a nuclear explosion when you sat down on it?” I asked. Of all his toilet tricks, that was my favorite.
“Well, at least he thought it up even if he didn’t actually rig it,” Becky answered, gasping with laughter now.
But my own laughter dried up abruptly. I could hear my heart pounding in the sudden internal silence.
“What do you mean, he didn’t rig it?” I asked.
Becky’s eyes opened as far as they could between swollen lids.
“Jeez, Natalie was the one who really rigged it,” she said.
“Natalie?” My mind began to race to keep up with my pounding heart.
“Yeah, I guess I thought everyone knew. Natalie was the one who really did the work on the complicated ones. You know how much into science she was. Sid couldn’t rig those things himself—”
“How do you know it was Natalie?” I demanded, though suddenly it was all making sense to me. Sid hadn’t been good in science. He hadn’t even been mechanical. But Natalie had been.
Becky closed her eyes for a moment, thinking. She opened them abruptly.
“Now I remember,” she muttered. “Natalie told me in the restroom one time. At school. She was crying. I think she was really pissed. She told me that Sid got her to do all the work on the really complicated gags—you know, the electronic ones—and then he took all the credit. Like the backwards light switch and the spooky voice when you rang the doorbell. But she told me not to tell anyone else. I thought she had a crush on him or something, so I…I never told.” Becky’s voice slowed as she leaned forward. “In fact, I’d forgotten all about it until now. God, Kate, do you think—”
“Natalie rigged the pinball machine?” I finished for her.
Becky and I stared at each other for a few moments. Neither of us knew the answer to that question. If Natalie had rigged the pinball machine, I hoped for Becky’s sake that she’d forgotten she’d ever told Becky that she was the one who actually carried out the mechanics of Sid’s gags.
I shook my head. I was making some awfully long leaps in logic. Long and sideways. Just because Natalie had helped Sid with his pranks twenty-five years ago
didn’t necessarily mean she’d do it now. I thought of Natalie’s correct and icy reserve. Would she? Could she? And if she’d rigged the final prank, the one that killed him, what would her motive have been? I looked back across at Becky, wondering for a moment if she was telling me the truth. If Becky was lying—
I looked down at my watch suddenly. Wayne. I was fifteen minutes late in calling Wayne at home. I was surprised he hadn’t called me.
“Becky, I need to use your phone,” I rapped out, jumping up from my seat.
Becky led me to a phone in her kitchen, without asking for any explanation. And left me to use it in private.
But when I called my own number, all I got was my own answering machine.
I even left a message. A long message, hoping Wayne would come on the line any minute.
- Twenty-Three -
But he didn’t. I babbled and babbled onto my own tape and Wayne’s voice never came on to interrupt me.
I left Becky’s in a hurry, hastily hugging her and wishing her luck in her new sobriety, while pleading a forgotten appointment as an excuse for my exit. Her fragile, battered-looking face registered surprise but no affront as I ran out the door. Maybe I hadn’t given her enough time.
Once I was in my Toyota on the main road again, I floored it, hoping to make the ten-minute drive in five. And hoping Wayne was all right. Where the hell was he? Why hadn’t he answered the phone as planned? I came up with plenty of answers. Maybe he was lost in the intricacies of computer land on his other phone. But would he have forgotten he was supposed to pick up my call in half an hour? He couldn’t miss hearing it from his position at his own phone. I shook my head and pressed the accelerator even harder, back wheels shimmying as I took a curve. Had he gone into the city to solve his computer problem on the spot? No, he would have called me. I was certain of that. Unless he couldn’t find Becky’s phone number. But it was listed in the phone book—
I wouldn’t think about Wayne until I got home, I told myself. I’d think about Natalie Nusser instead. Was Natalie the murderer? She’d acted stressed, even angry, most of the times I’d seen her. But that seemed to be her natural persona, even in high school. Sid had been working for Natalie though. That in itself suddenly seemed suspicious. But he probably really was a good salesman. Wayne had said that. Damn it, how could I have ignored the threat to Wayne’s life? What if—
Most Likely to Die (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Page 23
