Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  So he wants to realign my chakras? I just bet he does! Maybe he could rotate my tires at the same time but I bet that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun for him.

  His stubby thumb left a greasy trail up my bare arm. I yanked my hand away, just as Vera Mae slapped on her headphones and pointed at me.

  “Line three, Dr. Maggie. Thelma has a question about...bio-energetic healing.” Vera Mae permitted herself a small eye roll as Thelma’s voice burst into the booth.

  “Well, thank the Lord I finally got through! I’ve been calling for hours and all I got was Celine Dion and that dopey song–”

  “Sorry about that, Thelma, but we’re here now to help you.” I plastered a grin on my face because someone once told me that smiling helps to inject warmth into your voice. “And your question is...”

  “It’s for your guest, Guru Sanjay. I just have to say, I’ve read all your books and I think you’re amazing. You’re my hero!”

  The Guru gave a mock-humble bow. “I am but a channel, a funnel for all of life’s mysteries, a river for spiritual healing. But if I have helped you in some small way, then I am gratified.”

  He glanced over at the two thugs at the door and they nodded approvingly. I bet they had heard this all before.

  “And your question is—” I repeated, breaking up the love fest.

  “Well, I’m getting a lot of bad vibrations from my boss. I can see his aura, and let me tell you, it’s mighty scary. I think he might be trying to control my mind.”

  “You were very wise to call me, today, Thelma.” The Guru’s voice was low and soothing. “Because I can feel some very negative energy emanating from the phone and disturbing the glowing white light at the center of your being. You are right to be alarmed.” He paused. “Let me guess. Are you calling from work at this very moment?”

  “Why, yes! Yes, I am calling from work.” Thelma sounded awestruck. “That’s incredible, you really are psychic!”

  “When you are in tune with the universe it cannot surprise you. I know all of its secrets. Now, how can I help you?”

  “I guess I need some specific ways to deal with my boss,” she said hesitantly. “I’ve read Heal the Cosmos, Heal Yourself, and I tried out some of the things you suggested.”

  “Ah, yes, Heal the Cosmos, my latest release. It’s only seven ninety-five in paperback and just eighteen ninety-five for the audio version. Both are available on my website, Guru Sanjay dot com and at fine bookstores everywhere.”

  Nothing like plugging your own book, Guru!

  Before Thelma could reply, Vera Mae piped up, “Say Thelma, did you ever read a book called Working with Jerks? It’s my bible. I bet it could give you some tips on how to deal with this guy.”

  “I’ve never heard of it, but I could look it up on Amazon—”

  “Here is what you must do, Thelma—” Guru Sanjay cut in swiftly. “You must stand firm as a spiritual seeker and not let any negativity influence your aura. You have within you the power to be a healer, a human energy force field and you must emit only good energy.” He paused dramatically. “Do you understand me? You have the power within you, Thelma. Never forget that.”

  I think he stole that line from Glinda, the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz, but I could tell Thelma was falling head over chakras for it. I hated to admit it, but put him in front of a mike and the guy had charisma. He had an uncanny way of tapping into people’s thoughts and feelings and telling them what they wanted to hear. All good performers have this talent, and I reminded myself that sociopaths are experts at reading people and scoring in on their hopes and dreams.

  “Yes, I do have the power!” Thelma gushed. “You’ve helped me so much, Guru, I’ll never be able to thank you!”

  Again, the modest bow. Difficult to do sitting down, especially with an expanding gut in the way. Funny, but on television, he looked imposing, not fat, and I wondered if he wore a corset for his public appearances.

  “I am but an instrument. I am here today merely to explain the mysteries of the cosmos, through my understanding of kinetics and the human energy field.”

  That’s all, just the mysteries of the cosmos? Maybe next week he can tackle global warming and the Middle East crisis. Oh yeah, and the Riemann hypothesis, I’ve never been quite clear on how that works.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Vera fingering her selection of signs. I just knew she was itching to hold up the BS! one. I gave her a tired smile as we headed into a Sassy Snippers commercial.

  Who knew I would actually welcome the chance to hear about Twyla Boyd’s hair salon and her Thursday special on foils and perms?

  Anything was better than the mystical mumbo-jumbo coming from the Guru!

  ~*~

  “I can’t believe you met him,” Lark Merriweather said later that day. “If I could meet Guru Sanjay, even for five minutes, it would be the high point of my life.” Lark is into all things New Age: pyramids, crystals, incense tarot, I Ching, channeling and chi.

  She sat back with a little sigh, her cornflower blue eyes wistful. Lark is slim and petite with a choppy blond bob that suits her pixie-ish face. Physically, we’re polar opposites. I tower over her at five-ten with straight auburn hair that can be sleek or frizzy depending on the famous Florida humidity.

  “Really? I should have remembered you’re into eastern mystics,” I said ruefully. Or pretend mystics, I felt like saying. Deep in my bones, I knew that Guru Sanjay had as much in common with mysticism as I did with aboriginal tribes in New Guinea.

  The sun was beginning to dip in the western sky and the last traces of sunlight spilled onto the round oak dining table. I’d finished my shift at WYME a couple of hours earlier and we were sharing a veggie pizza in the kitchen of our townhouse. It’s a cozy place with wide oak floors, exposed beams and creamy walls dotted with colorful canvases that Lark picks up at local flea markets.

  Lark and I have been roommates for the past three months and are on our way to becoming best friends. When I rented the three-bedroom condo on a quiet street lined with bright pink hibiscus bushes and flaming bougainvillea, Lark was the first person who asked to be my roommate.

  Plus she and Pugsley hit it off, and I knew it would be a good match. Pugsley, my three year old Pug adopted from an animal shelter, has an unfailing instinct about people, and I’ve always subscribed to the adage “love me, love my dog.”

  Lark is twenty-three but seems younger sometimes. Maybe it’s because of her perpetually sunny personality. She has a kind of life-hasn’t-crushed-me-yet optimism that’s a nice balance to my Manhattan-style pessimism. Her favorite movie is Forrest Gump and mine is anything by Woody Allen. That about sums it up.

  Lark’s studying to be a paralegal, and I had no idea she was a fan of the Guru. I could have invited her to sit in on the broadcast today, even though we don’t usually allow visitors in the booth.

  “He’s my idol. I can’t believe I missed the show,” she said plaintively. “Why didn’t you let me know it was on today? I would have called in with a question. I’ve read all his books!”

  I gave myself a mental head slap. “I’ll bring you a tape of the show, how’s that? And if you’re really interested in going to one of his workshops, I can give you a couple of press passes he left at the station. He’s doing a breakfast presentation in the morning, and there’s a big awards ceremony tomorrow night. I have tickets for everything.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t take your tickets! “ Her eyes were shining with excitement. “How could you ever part with them?”

  “I’m not going to use them. Really.” I had to smile at her enthusiasm. “The dinner is right next door at the Seabreeze Inn, so the food should be good. The Guru and his staff are staying there.”

  We live next to one of the town’s nicest small hotels and Ted Rollins, the manager, is a friend of mine. Sometimes I think he’d like to be more than friends, but somehow the chemistry just isn’t there. Not for me, anyway.

  “The Seabreeze, huh?” She shook her head
in wonderment. “Just think, Guru Sanjay is only a few yards away from me, this very minute. I wonder what he’s doing right now?” She peered out the window with her chin cupped in her hand, like Nicole Kidman staring out over the Paris rooftops in Moulin Rouge. “I bet he’s mediating,” she added in a dreamy voice.

  “Ommmmmm.”

  “What?”

  I grinned. “You said he was meditating.”

  “Oh, nobody says Om anymore. He’s probably sitting in the lotus position, chanting his mantra.” She sighed, as if the thrill of it all nearly sucked the air out of her chest.

  Not a good image. A picture of a half-naked Guru with his gut hanging over his yoga pants drifted into my mind and I blinked quickly, willing it to disappear.

  Lark continued to stare at the side entrance of the Seabreeze, as if willing Guru Sanjay to materialize like a genie out of the bottle. “I could practically reach out and touch him.”

  Ewww. Who would want to?

  I nodded. “You’ll have to catch him tomorrow if you really want to see him. He told me Team Sanjay is driving back to South Beach right after dinner. So this is his last night in town.”

  “Really!” Lark glanced at her watch and then scrambled to her feet, tugging her burgundy knit Juicy top down over her low-rise jeans. She gave a little hip twitch and adjusted her studded leather belt so it cinched her tiny waist more tightly. “You know, I just remembered I need to pick up a few things at the drugstore. Do you want anything?”

  “No, I’m fine, but what about your pizza?” It was Lark’s favorite, a mouth-watering concoction of goat cheese and fresh basil called Pizza Margarita, from Carlo’s.

  “What? Oh, the pizza...I’ll take it with me. “ Lark popped into her bedroom for a moment and returned carrying her huge yellow leather Coach bag. I noticed she’d fluffed her hair and had dabbed on some new peach lipgloss. “I’ll eat it in the car,” she said, grabbing a generous slice and folded it over into a napkin, Calzone style. “See you later!”

  And with that, she was gone.

  A minute later, I realized her car keys were still sitting on the counter.

  ~*~

  “Can you cover the morning news? The eight o’clock drive time? Everyone’s out on assignment this morning. Things are really hopping at the police station and I think the mayor’s gonna gave a statement later today.” Cyrus Still’s voice boomed over the phone, crashing through my sleep-fogged brain with such force it made my teeth hurt. Someone told me that Cyrus has permanent hearing loss from covering so many rock concerts in his younger days and that’s why he always sounds like he’s shouting into a hurricane.

  “Wha–” I sat straight up in bed, winced, and glanced at the clock. Six a.m. I was barely conscious and my producer wanted to discuss the news of the day. I didn’t know which was more remarkable; the fact that Cyrus expected me to be coherent at the crack of dawn or that I was working for someone who actually says things like “really hopping.”

  I desperately needed an infusion of caffeine, an adrenaline rush, and oh yeah, a functioning brain. “I can be there in forty-five,” I told him, running a brush through my hopelessly matted hair as I searched for my terry robe.

  Thank god it’s radio and not television, I thought, taking in my pale skin and sunken eyes in the wall mirror. A vision of loveliness. I’d fallen asleep watching Conan O’Brien, and had barely woken up when Lark had tiptoed in, sometime after midnight.

  Something niggled at the edges of my consciousness. News...the police station...the mayor. “Cyrus, what’s going on?” I asked, padding along the terra cotta tiled floor to the kitchen. No sign of Lark and no coffee brewing. Lark and I have an arrangement. Whoever wakes up first makes the coffee and today that would be me. Lark’s door was firmly shut.

  “You mean you haven’t heard the news?” Cyrus sounded incredulous.

  I stifled a jaw-popping yawn. “Haven’t a clue. Fill me in.”

  “The guru,” he barked. “He’s dead.”

  “Dead? Guru Sanjay is dead? Guru Sanjay the guy I interviewed?”

  I couldn’t get my mind around the fact. He’d seemed perfectly healthy yesterday, if a trifle overweight with a florid complexion that probably hinted at metabolic syndrome. But he couldn’t really be dead, could he?

  In Heal the Cosmos, Guru Sanjay insisted that death is just a state of mind, a transition of energy from one form to another. I wondered what this would do to his book sales.

  “How many other gurus do you know?”

  Ah, point taken. So Sanjay was dead and was now part of that ultimate cosmic consciousness he always talked about. So now he was just a tiny (well, maybe not so tiny) blip of energy, flashing around the universe like a manic firefly. Ironic, isn’t it?

  But there was still Cyrus’s nagging comment about cops and the Mayor. I forced myself to focus. “Why are the police involved?”

  I was cradling the phone on my shoulder so I could spoon half Dunkin’ Donuts decaf and half French Vanilla high-voltage into the coffee pot when I heard someone pounding on the front door.

  Mrs. Higgins! We have an eighty-year-old neighbor who loves to go for early morning walks and sometimes forgets to take her key. Lark, petite little thing that she is, always manages to find an unlatched window in Mrs. Higgins’ house and squeezes in, saving the day.

  “Look, Maggie, I’ll explain it when you get here, okay? Make it snappy.”

  “Just give me the short answer. I can’t stand the suspense.” The hammering on the door intensified, a maddening counterpoint to the drilling noise in my head.

  “The short answer is, Guru Sanjay Ginjii may have been murdered!”

  And with that Cyrus hung up.

  I ignored the pounding, filled the pot with filtered water, pressed the red button and padded to the door. Six in the morning, a dead guru and a pesky neighbor. Things couldn’t possibly get worse.

  They could and they did.

  Standing on my doorstep, looking way too sexy for such an early hour, was none other than Cypress Grove’s finest, Detective Rafe Martino.

  FOUR

  My first thought (after noticing that he looked like a million bucks) was that I was looking my absolute worst. Pale, shiny morning face, bed head, and a ratty yellow bathrobe decorated with faded blue ducks that had seen better days.

  “Sorry to wake you, Dr. Walsh,” he said, not looking the least bit repentant. “May we come in?”

  I shielded my eyes from the glaring sunshine and noticed he had a uniformed cop with him, a gangly guy who looked about twelve in his scratchy blue serge uniform.

  “Officer Duane Brown,” he said, gesturing to the Opie look-alike who was shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other and mopping his forehead with a white handkerchief. It was early morning, but they were predicting a scorcher and the day already had a hazy glow to it.

  “What’s this about?” I said quietly, not wanting to blast him with morning breath. (Although when you think of it, what does he expect, when he comes barging into someone’s house at this ungodly hour?)

  “It’s about a homicide investigation,” Detective Martino snapped, suddenly all business. “Could we come inside?”

  I reluctantly stepped back, yanking the robe more tightly around me. He must be talking about Guru Sanjay! “If this is about the Guru, I don’t know anything about it.”

  I regretted the idiotic remark the second the words flew out of my mouth. Why did I immediately assume it was about Sanjay Ginjii? Methinks the lady doth protest too much!

  Maybe Martino wasn’t up on his Shakespeare because he lifted his shoulders in a slow shrug and made a noncommittal sound.

  “But you can come in, since you seem determined to,” I said inhospitably. I glanced over my shoulder toward Lark’s door and though I saw it open a tiny crack. Was she standing there listening to our conversation or was I imagining it?

  “Where were you last night?” Detective Martino asked abruptly. He moved past me into the living room, eased h
imself into the green and white wicker loveseat and whipped out a tiny notebook.

  I noticed Officer Brown took a cushiony armchair and looked like he was ready to settle in for the long haul. Were they going to play good cop, bad cop? (Or have I been watching too much Law and Order?)

  “I was here. I came straight home after my shift at WYME. I ate a pizza, watched TV and then I went to bed.” Dear god, he was writing all this down! Now all of Cypress Grove would know about my non-existent social life.

  “No unusual occurrences?” Opie asked.

  I had the feeling he’d piped up just to be saying something. Martino shot him a look and he sank a little deeper into the armchair. He was so slight, the padded arms engulfed him, threatening to swallow him whole like an amoeba.

  “Well, just one. They forgot to put extra cheese on my pizza.”

  “Do I write that down?” he asked Martino who silenced him with a look.

  “So...you’re claiming you were alone?”

  “I’m not claiming I was alone, I was alone.”

  “I see.” A beat of silence fell between us. His eyes skimmed over my terry bathrobe, and there was a wry twist in his voice. The corner of his mouth quirked and I knew exactly what he was thinking— no wonder she was alone!

  The notion of me having a hot date was about as likely as Mother Teresa pledging Delta Gamma.

  He stared at me and I stared back. He had a strong mouth and of course, those smoldering eyes. Wary, watchful eyes. Cop eyes.

  “So,” he continued, staring at his notebook as if for inspiration, “what can you tell me about Guru Sanjay Ginjii?”

  He stumbled over the tongue-twister of a name, but I resisted the impulse to smile. I had the uneasy feeling that I was in trouble, even though for once in my life, I was completely innocent.

  The only thing I could possibly be charged with was being a fashion disaster in a tatty terry bathrobe and yellow flip-flops but as far as I knew, that wasn’t a criminal offense.

  “Besides the fact that he’s dead?” I said wittily. My mother always said my sense of humor would be the death of me, and I wondered if she could be right.