A Cry for Self-Help (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “This is ridiculous,” I said as Wayne got out to open the gate to Yvonne’s chainlink fence.

  “What’s ridiculous?” he asked once we were safely in, with the gate locked behind us.

  “All these theories,” I told him, climbing out of the Toyota to stare into the glazed eyes of a spaced-out llama. I lifted my hand carefully toward its muzzle, palm up. The llama turned and ambled away, rubbing up against a marble statue of Aphrodite on the way. Maybe carnality was in the air. “Do you think the police have this many theories?” I finished.

  “Nope,” Wayne answered succinctly as Yvonne came bursting out the door with her last Creative Office Spacing class member. Or maybe her only Creative Office Spacing class member, an older man with a gray goatee and stacks of binders and manila envelopes in his arms.

  “Aren’t you just cosmically charged?” Yvonne demanded of the man. “Now just go to your office and laser thorough it all. Remember, keep thinking creatively!”

  The goateed man nodded, but his eyes were as glazed as the llama’s as he walked to his car. Quails and chickens scattered as he backed out of the enclosure.

  “Kate, Wayne!” Yvonne greeted us enthusiastically. She raised her arms, jingling with bracelets as usual, and embraced each of us in turn before swiveling around to lead us into her house, silken rainbow fringes fluttering from the shoulders of her jacket as the wind chimes rang in accompaniment.

  Yvonne’s place looked even stranger without the Wedding Ritual class members—the white wicker love seat, molded neon-purple plastic couch, paisley throw rug, and tiger-stripe pillows all empty. Our teacher sat on her tall rattan throne and motioned us to sit down too. At least we had a choice of accommodation.

  We shot each other glances and chose the wicker love seat, appropriately, I hoped.

  Yvonne squeezed her curvy face into a big smile as her hands danced in the air.

  “I’m just so energized,” she told us. “So blissed…”

  I watched her as she spoke, dazed by the electric flow of her words, thinking that if energy was required for murder, this woman had all that was necessary. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen her down, even in the aftermath of Sam Skyler’s fall.

  “…starting a new class,” she buzzed on. “For Adult Children of the Paranormally Gifted. They need help, my help. My own mother was highly attuned to the paranormal. So few people really appreciate its potential.” She leaned forward, her eyes zooming in on me like a dental drill. “But you do, don’t you, Kate?” she finished.

  “Huh?” I said, startled by her sudden attention.

  “You practice tai chi,” she accused, leaning further forward and pointing her waltzing finger my way. “Chi kung masters can push people without using their hands, just with their chi. But you know that, don’t you?”

  “Huh?” I said again. But I was beginning to come out of my daze. Clearly, Wayne and I weren’t the only ones with theories.

  “Of course you know. It’s called ‘empty force.’ It can hurl a person right over. Right over—”

  “Well, Diana does tai chi, too,” I cut in defensively. Then I shook my head. Why was I getting defensive? This was not a theory the Quiero police were going to accept. I thought of Chief Woolsey and his earring. At least I hoped not.

  “But that’s fascinating about chi kung,” I added, lowering my voice in an imitation of relaxed interest. “I hadn’t heard of that aspect before.”

  Yvonne leaned back in her chair, still squinting her eyes at me. One of her hands tangoed up to her curly hair and then she opened her mouth again.

  “So, I understand you’re on the Golden Valley Planning Commission,” I put in quickly, feeling Wayne stir impatiently beside me.

  “Oh, yes!” she caroled, clasping her hands together. “I love this land so much. It must be preserved. Did you know that redwood trees entwine their roots and share water in times of drought? And people treat the nonanimal species as if they have no feelings—”

  “The Skyler Institute for Essential Manifestation must have plowed down a few redwoods to clear a space for their building,” I interrupted.

  That stopped her. She even frowned. At least for a second.

  “Well, actually, they were pines,” she came back after a quick breath. “Oh, I was pretty tinkled at first, especially when I looked at the plans. They weren’t harmonic at all. But the contractors did end up erecting the Institute with some respect for the environment, you know, like leaving the oldest trees standing. And actually, the building was kinda cosmic when it finally went up, with all those skylights and solar collectors and neat shapes. Of course, the interior is pretty boring.” She scanned the rainbows of kitsch and metallic madras wallpaper surrounding her with an expression of fondness softening her curvy face, then patted the nearest brass Shiva statue. “But Sam had to appeal to the masses, I suppose.”

  “Were you still angry—” I began.

  A long moooo from behind us stopped my interrogation. It practically stopped my heart. Wayne and I turned to face a pair of big brown eyes and a thick, exploring pink tongue. I ducked the tongue, wishing I could use chi kung to move the cow away. Far away. Wayne dodged the cow’s next swipe. When the hell had she wandered in? Or had she been in the house the whole time? I was pretty sure I’d shut the door behind us.

  “Oh, Isis, sweetie pie,” Yvonne chirped. “Are you hungry?”

  And then Yvonne rose from her chair with a quick apology to us humans.

  She was back even more quickly, with a handful of alfalfa sprouts for Isis. I nodded in approval. At least Yvonne had that right. I always thought alfalfa sprouts were made for cows, not people.

  After kissing Isis on the forehead, Yvonne escorted her out the front door, which had indeed been shut, and came back to sit on her rattan throne.

  “Isn’t Isis wonderful?” she asked us. “She’s figured out how to open the back door. I think she’s psychic.” I hoped we weren’t back to a discussion of the paranormal. I shot Wayne a pleading glance. But he was busy eyeing his watch. Right, time was running out in our less-than-an-hour slot, and so far we’d only elicited accusations and attempted cow licks.

  “Sally Skyler,” Wayne interjected just as the words were about to come out of my mouth. More paranormal behavior? “Wondered if anyone in our class knew her besides Nathan?”

  Yvonne looked at Wayne for a moment as if he’d just arrived from Mars, but she did answer his question.

  “Not anyone on this plane,” she said. I assumed she meant the earthly one since we weren’t flying at the moment. Physically, that was. I couldn’t even imagine where Yvonne’s mind was.

  “Do you know anyone at all I could ask about Sally Skyler?” I probed desperately. “Anyone who knew her. Maybe a friend?”

  “Or a family member?” Wayne added.

  “Well, there’s always Karma Irvine,” Yvonne answered.

  “What’s a karma irvine?” I asked.

  “Oh, Karma was Sally’s best friend back then, maybe her only friend.” Yvonne paused. “I never met her, but from what Karma said, Sally wasn’t always so, um, cosmically attuned. She kinda rubbed people the wrong way.”

  That was probably an understatement, I thought, remembering Nathan’s description of his stepmother. But still…

  “Do you know how I might get in touch with Karma?” I asked, hoping my wording didn’t get me a lecture on past lives.

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Yvonne assured me. “She owns the Karma Boutique in Hutton. It’s a wonderful store. The most sumptuous adornments.” She stroked her silken streamers. “I get all my clothes there.”

  “Thanks,” I said, looking at my own watch. Only twenty minutes left. And I wanted to talk to this Karma person.

  “Speaking of karma,” Yvonne said enthusiastically. “Sally Skyler on the rocks, then Sam. That has to be karma at work, don’t you think?”

  “You mean Karma avenged her friend?” I asked eagerly.

  “No, no, I mean real karma,” Yvonne c
orrected me. “The force of Sam’s actions determining his destiny. I think Sally Skyler’s spirit must have channeled through someone’s body.”

  “Whose?” Wayne and I demanded simultaneously.

  Yvonne leaned back in her chair, steepled her hands, and closed her eyes.

  “I don’t know, but I can meditate on it,” she assured us. Maybe her cow could help with the psychic stuff.

  But Yvonne’s doorbell chimed before she got very far in her meditation.

  I expected a glowingly menopausal woman with a guardian angel on her shoulder to walk through the door. But it was Park Ranger Yasuda who was doing the visiting. His eyes were glowing, though, but with what looked like infatuation to me, not menopause.

  “David,” Yvonne breathed.

  “Ms. O’Reilley,” Yasuda breathed back.

  More pheromones. The moon must have been in lust or something. I’m sure an astrologer could have explained it. Or maybe even Yvonne could have, but her attention was otherwise occupied.

  Wayne and I looked at each other, rolled our eyes simultaneously, and left. Yvonne and Yasuda barely registered our disappearance. Though Isis managed to give me a lick before I made it back inside the Toyota.

  “How do we know Yvonne O’Reilley and Ranger Yasuda really met arranging the scuba wedding?” Wayne murmured as I guided the car back home.

  Damn. The beginnings of a new theory. Just what we needed. Were Yvonne and Yasuda in it together? Maybe they knew Sally and loved her. Or maybe Sam’s Institute competed with Yvonne’s seminars. Or maybe…

  Wayne must have heard what was in my mind as it buzzed through the permutations like a chain saw through pine trees.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Gotta stop this speculation.”

  “Do you think there’s a twelve-step program for unbridled murder theorists,” I asked him. “Theorists Anonymous?”

  He shot me an “I’m serious” look.

  But it didn’t stop my mind from buzzing.

  And it didn’t stop me from finding Karma’s Boutique in the phone book when I got home. Or from punching in the number.

  Karma answered personally on the second ring, her voice turning very friendly once she heard I was a “friend” of Yvonne’s. Until we got to Sally Skyler.

  “Oh, I stopped worrying about Sally years ago,” she informed me briskly. “What’s done is done. Take my boutique, for instance. I’ve been looking for the right partner to invest. That’s now. That’s today. Or someone to buy it outright. Maybe you might be interested.”

  I never did get the conversation steered back to Sally Skyler. I felt like I’d dived into a swimming pool only to find myself in the jaws of a solicitor. Karma kept on trying to sell me her boutique even when I swore I was broke. She suggested I take out a loan. Then I fought fire with fire. I tried to sell her Jest Gifts. Her efforts faltered. C.C. jumped on the back of my chair and yowled for food into the phone. And I let her yowl until I heard the click on the other end. Too bad. Karma and C.C. were clearly soulmates, both equally ruthless and single-minded.

  I looked up at Wayne in defeat as I replaced the limp receiver in its cradle, my ear sore from solicitation, my throat sore from protesting.

  “Let’s just leave it alone,” Wayne suggested. “We’ll think on it.”

  I wanted to object, but he was right. We had talked to everyone, discussed everything, and imagined every single suspect murdering Sam Skyler. There was nothing left to do but think.

  “Gotta go to work now,” he followed up. “Sunday night crowd.”

  One last hug and Wayne was gone. I fed C.C, and then I was staring at my stacks of paperwork again.

  Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang.

  I knew the minute I heard the sobbing that Diana was on the other side of the door. Oh joy. But I opened the door, anyway. Cautiously.

  Diana held her face in her hands, mumbling through her fingers.

  “What?” I asked impatiently.

  “Mama,” she gurgled.

  “What about your mother?” I prompted, my pulse speeding up a little. “Have the police accused her now?”

  “No, no.” Diana wept on, shaking her face, a face I couldn’t see since it was still hidden in her hands.

  Time for a little shock treatment, I decided.

  “Did your mother kill Sam Skyler?” I tried.

  Diana’s face popped up, out of her hands finally. “Noooo!” she wailed.

  “Then what?” I demanded.

  “I…she…I…”

  I took Diana by the shoulders and shook her. And it felt good. Too good.

  - Twenty-Two -

  I jerked my hands away from Diana’s shoulders and stepped back guiltily.

  “Oh, Kate,” she burbled.

  And then she threw herself at me, like a child casting herself into a willing parent’s arms. Unfortunately, I’m not as good as Wayne at catching. And Diana wasn’t a child. At least not in size. She almost knocked me over with the unexpected move. But all those years of tai chi came in handy, allowing me to absorb the blow of her tall body and catch her before she bounced back off.

  Once I had a stiff grip on the weeping yoga goddess, I led her into the house and onto the denim couch, only resisting the urge to shout at her by biting my lip hard enough that I tasted blood. She smelled of honeysuckle oil and gamy sweat, the latter scent new to my nostrils, at least on Diana’s body. Even her long black hair was mussed, strands sticking out at random from her usually smooth braid. A tingle of fear tickled my chest. What had happened to Diana’s mother? Was it really something serious this time? Had Liz Atherton been murdered like Sam Skyler?

  But I knew I wouldn’t get an answer till Diana calmed down. So I sat and clenched my jaw as Diana continued to weep, loudly enough that even C.C. came out for a good look before turning tail and ambling away. I wished I could have followed her to lie in the dirty laundry basket, or wherever else she might have been headed. But I remained dutifully next to Diana on the denim couch until her wailing quieted into subdued sobbing.

  “Could you tell me now what you wanted to say?” I asked then, as gently as I could.

  “My mother!” she yelped.

  I jumped back, my ears ringing. Once again, I’d forgotten how loud this woman could yell.

  “What about your mother?” I persisted.

  “SHE’S GOING TO KILL HERSELF!” Diana shrieked.

  Luckily, this time I was far enough away that my ears weren’t blasted. But my mind was.

  “Why?” I asked in a daze. The tingle of fear was a pounding now. “Why would your mother want to kill herself?”

  “I don’t know!” Diana wailed.

  Had Liz Atherton killed Sam Skyler after all? I hadn’t meant it seriously when I’d asked before, but now…

  “All right,” I said sternly, speaking as much to myself as to Diana. “Calm down. What makes you think your mother’s going to kill herself?”

  Diana’s story came out in bits and pieces, actually in wails and murmurs and yelps. And finally a coherent stream.

  “There was a message on my answering machine,” she babbled. “From my mom. And she said she was going to kill herself. But that everything was going to be all right. That everything would be as it should be. She said not to worry.”

  “Are you sure that’s what she said?”

  “Yes!” Diana shouted.

  “All right, all right,” I soothed her, as my brain spun through possibilities. If Diana was telling the truth, we had to find Liz Atherton quickly, before she carried out her threat.

  Then we’d try to figure out why she wanted to kill herself. First things first. “Have you been to her house?”

  “I went, but she wasn’t there, Kate. She wasn’t there. And she wasn’t at Gary’s. And she wasn’t at work. And she wasn’t at any of her friends’.”

  “Where else would she go?”

  “I don’t know.” Diana’s voice rose again. “I don’t know!”

  But I did. At least I th
ought I did. The ocean bluff in Quiero. That’s it, my pounding blood answered. The same bluff where Sam Skyler had stood as we’d watched the scuba divers rise from the surf.

  “Could she have gone to Quiero?” I asked, keeping my voice as soothing as morphine.

  Diana’s eyes widened, wet blue saucers streaked with red.

  “Yes!” she cried and jumped from the couch. “Yes, you’re right, that’s where she is. She must be.”

  It was all I could do to restrain Diana’s wriggling body with one hand as I called Wayne’s number at La Fête à L’Oie with the other. I needed to call Wayne and tell him where I was going. But I didn’t want Diana driving. She’d probably go off a cliff in her car, and then I’d have two dead bodies on my conscience.

  The restaurant phone was busy. I slammed it down in frustration.

  “Please, Kate,” Diana begged softly. “Please. We have to stop her.”

  She was right. I scribbled a quick note to Wayne, then Diana and I were out of there.

  As we sprinted for the Toyota, I wished once more that I’d bought a mobile phone like everyone else.

  The steel-blue sky was already beginning to shimmer with twilight as we jumped into my car. I stuck the key in the ignition, and one more theory occurred to me. What if Diana was setting me up? I looked at her panic-stricken face. No, I told myself. No. I wouldn’t even think it.

  Still, I backed out of the driveway knowing that Wayne would kill me if I let this woman murder me.

  The Toyota fishtailed as I took the turn onto Highway 1 leading to Quiero, thinking of the endless blacktop between us and there. What if I was wrong in my guess? Damn, I should have kept trying to call Wayne. He could have checked the other possibilities while I drove to the bluff. I pressed harder on the gas pedal.

  “Has your mother ever threatened suicide before?” I asked Diana, suddenly wondering if the whole thing was a wild goose chase.

  “No,” she whispered. “My mom wouldn’t threaten something she wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t feel right to her. She…she does the right thing. She believes in right and wrong, and all of that.”