“This was supposed to relax you to where you could be hypnotized? Or was whatever she was giving you supposed to take the place of hypnosis and put you in the same sort of state?”
“I’m not sure.” Mrs. Linderman gave a nervous titter. “Actually, it felt kind of, oh, frivolous, delving into the—I don’t know, secrets of the universe?—with a glass of root beer in my hand.”
“She didn’t say what she was giving you?” Cate asked.
“No. She just said, didn’t I ever take a sleeping pill? And I said, well, yes, sometimes I did. I’ve had trouble sleeping ever since Duane passed away four years ago. She said this was no different than about half a sleeping pill.”
“I see,” Cate said. She didn’t want to let on that she still had no idea what the woman was talking about. She did remember now that Robyn’s aunt had said Celeste wanted to give her something, but she’d refused to take it. “Dr. Chandler gave you a pill?”
“No, she mixed something in the root beer.”
“Was what she used a powder or liquid?”
“I didn’t see. She had this big tote bag. It’s funny, I can’t remember much, but I remember that bag so clearly. It was a beautiful tapestry material, with golden threads woven in, and leather handles.”
“You say you can’t remember much. Do you mean you can’t remember much about Dr. Chandler, or the past-lives session, or … ?”
“It all just seems so … far away. Except I remember her lighting this candle that smelled so heavenly. And she drank a glass of red wine herself. The prettiest wine, like a red jewel.”
“Where did she get the wine?” Cate asked.
“She must have brought it in that bag. Anyway, I started feeling happy and kind of oh, maybe a little tipsy. Or what I think tipsy is like, because I’ve never been tipsy. Then everything just kind of fades away, and I don’t remember anything more until I woke up.”
“It put you to sleep?”
“Well, I guess. Kind of. I mean, I woke up. I couldn’t remember anything. But I didn’t really feel as if I’d been asleep. It was more like I’d just lost a stretch of time. Maybe she hypnotized me after I got relaxed, and that’s how you feel after you’ve been hypnotized.”
“So you didn’t go into any past lives?”
“Oh, I went into past lives all right!” Mrs. Linderman’s face lit up as if an interior bulb had turned on. “I’ve lived some interesting lives.”
“But if you don’t remember anything—”
“But I talked up a storm! Dr. Chandler took notes. She said I talked so fast she could hardly keep up with me. All this fascinating information about a life I was living way back in ancient times. I was wearing clothes made of wolf and bear skins, and I carried my baby in a sling made of the special soft skin of some unborn animal. She said I kept stroking the air as if I were actually feeling that soft skin and murmuring to my baby.”
Cate made some noncommittal murmurs of her own.
“And then I lived another life when it just rained and rained, and everything started to flood. We decided afterward that that must have been during Noah’s time, when he was building the ark!” Mrs. Linderman smiled, as if she was delighted with having been a contemporary of Noah’s. “Then I lived in Egypt once, a very hard life, making bricks with straw in them. That sounds like Moses’s time, doesn’t it?”
“Quite a variety of lives,” Cate murmured.
“I also told her about a life when I came across the plains in a covered wagon. I’ve always been interested in that era.” Mrs. Linderman nodded, as if having lived in that era explained why she had an interest in it now.
“You really think Dr. Chandler took you back to these past lives?” Cate said.
“Of course.” Mrs. Linderman sounded surprised at the skepticism in Cate’s question. “I still have her notes.”
“Could I see them?”
“Oh, they’re such a treasure I wouldn’t dare keep them here. They’re in my safe deposit box.”
A satisfied customer.
“But I’m still not sure we should be messing around with some things,” Mrs. Linderman fretted. “Duane wouldn’t approve.”
She glanced at a blue vase on a corner shelf—Duane’s final resting place?—as if she were afraid he might pop out and wag a disapproving finger.
“He wouldn’t approve of the past lives thing, or the relaxant?” Cate asked.
Mrs. Linderman hesitated and finally, like a child who’s been caught at something, sighed and said, “Probably both.”
“Why did you do it?”
“A friend knows a woman who found out that she’d died rescuing a girl back when the Romans were feeding Christians to the lions. She said it ‘opened up new vistas’ for her, knowing she’d been a heroine back then.” Mrs. Linderman’s smile turned self-conscious. “I figured I needed some new vistas in my life. I seem to plod along in the same old rut day after day.”
“Do you feel as if new vistas opened for you?”
“Um, well, I guess not,” she admitted. She glanced toward the vase again. “Duane would say that it was all phony-baloney. That was a word he used. Phony-baloney. So once in a while I wonder if I was just … spouting nonsense.”
And maybe she hadn’t spouted anything. Maybe Dr. Celeste Chandler had busily scribbled fake notes while her client lay in a silent semi-coma induced by something she’d given her.
“Dr. Chandler charged for these, um, services?” Cate asked.
“Four hundred dollars. That’s a lot of money, but what bothers me more is that stuff she put in my root beer.”
“You think it may have been something harmful?”
“I think it was something illegal,” Mrs. Linderman said flatly. “And that’s why you’re here.”
This was the crux of her worries when Cate had called, Cate realized. Mrs. Linderman was afraid Cate might be coming with handcuffs and a prison jumpsuit because she’d taken some illegal drug.
“What makes you think it was illegal?”
“I’ve had pain pills when I hurt my back. I’ve had tranquilizers and antidepressants when I was so down after Duane died. I have to take a sleeping pill once in a while since then too. But that stuff she gave me …” She shook her head. “It was different. It was like it just cancelled out time.”
Cate didn’t particularly feel like defending Celeste. The woman’s excursions into past lives struck her as phonier than the brown wig Octavia had demolished, and Celeste couldn’t do prescription drugs if that “Doctor” degree wasn’t a real MD degree. But maybe she’d found some way to circumvent that.
“It may have been a legal relaxant you’ve simply never taken before,” Cate said.
“It was something illegal,” Mrs. Linderman repeated. “She was murdered, wasn’t she? Right when I heard about it, first thing I thought was that it was a drug dealer or someone like that who did it.”
“Do you think she knew it was illegal?”
“Dr. Chandler was a very caring person.” Her face brightened. “If she was using something illegal, it was only because she needed it to help people. But if she got mixed up with drug dealers … Well, murders and drug wars and drive-by shootings, that’s what those drug people do, isn’t it? I hope they get whoever killed her.”
Cate had to wonder how Celeste had apparently gotten away with this for a considerable time. Perhaps because people expected to be in some altered state with hypnosis, and simply accepted Celeste’s explanations.
“I’ve always expected that someday the authorities would come after me for taking something illegal.” Mrs. Linderman was now back to resignation about her future.
Cate patted her hand. “I don’t think you have any cause for worry. Even if it was an illegal substance, you didn’t know that when you took it.”
“What’s that old saying? Ignorance of the law is no defense. Or excuse. Something like that.” A burden of guilt obviously weighed heavily on Susan Linderman’s shoulders. “But I feel better now that I’ve
told you. I’m willing to take my punishment.”
“Mrs. Linderman—”
“Susan.”
“Susan, you seem to have some familiarity with Noah and Moses in the Old Testament of the Bible?”
“Duane was never one for going to church, but he liked me to read to him after his eyes got bad. Sometimes he wanted to hear something out of the Bible.” She tilted her head. “Sometimes he wanted Stephen King or Tom Clancy.”
“Try reading in the book of John in the New Testament. And Romans. They’ll help you understand what comes after this life. God cares, you know. And you can contact him without having anything in your root beer.”
“Maybe I’ll do that.”
Now Cate had to figure out what to do. Report this to the police herself? She couldn’t think Susan Linderman needed punishment for anything she’d taken. Could Celeste’s use of an illegal drug have any connection with Ed Kieferson’s death?
Should she ask Kim if she knew anything about what her mother used to deal with hard-to-hypnotize clients? Another thought occurred to her. Was the reason Celeste had never done a past-lives regression on Kim because she didn’t want to give her own daughter some illegal drug?
20
Back home, Cate wrote up notes about the interview with Susan Linderman to add to her growing file. She called the hair salon, but her replacement wig hadn’t come in yet. Only one more week until the wedding next Friday night. Octavia had been staring at her while she made the call.
“You’re lucky Robyn didn’t want white hair, or I might be wearing yours on my head,” Cate said. Octavia ignored her and batted at the phone. Cate pointed out that she wasn’t expecting any calls, but the cat kept staring at the phone.
And Octavia was right again. The office phone rang only a moment later, just as the notes were spewing out of the printer.
“Coincidence,” Cate mouthed at the cat before she said aloud, “Belmont Investigations. Assistant Investigator Cate Kinkaid speaking.”
“My caller ID shows I had a call from this number. So I’m calling now to find out why Belmont Investigations is interested in me. It’s not every day I get a call from a private investigator! In fact, I’ve never had a call from an investigator. I’m all in a dither! If you could see me, you’d see I’m goose-bumpy all over.”
“This is D. Dustinhoff?”
“It is. Destiny Dustinhoff. Although, if you’re investigating, you probably already know that the name my parents gave me is Diane. But the name we’re given is not necessarily our Destiny—so I changed mine! Dustinhoff really is my last name. Not that it’s so great, but it is the original. I took it back after I gave Pinocchio Paul his walking papers.”
“Pinocchio Paul?” Cate repeated doubtfully.
“You know. The creepy little wooden guy whose nose grew when he told lies? Given ol’ Paul’s creative talent for lies, it’s a wonder he didn’t need a wheelbarrow to carry his nose in.”
Cate hid how taken back she was by this barrage of unasked-for information by muttering her all-purpose “um.”
“So, why did you call me? Am I on a terrorist list of OOWs?”
Again all Cate could do was repeat her caller’s peculiar words. “OOWs?”
“Outrageous Older Women. Although I really think of myself as a GYT.”
Cate didn’t want to ask what that meant. She refused to ask. But the next words out of her mouth were a repetition of the letters. “GYT?”
“Gorgeous Young Thing, of course.” Destiny Dustinhoff sounded victorious. “You’re not the Belmont of Belmont Investigations?”
Cate repeated her identity. “Right now, I’m investigating the death of a local woman, Dr. Chandler, and I found your name—” Cate broke off and tried again. “I mean, I’m investigating another murder, a different murder, and this death seems to be connected with that, and then—”
Cate broke off again. Now she was rattling on like Diane Destiny Dustinhoff herself. Maybe it was an infection, virulently contagious even over the phone, and next she’d be telling the woman how she became an assistant private investigator, how she had this deaf white cat who’d wrecked her wig and knew when the phone was going to ring, and her favorite guy had just rattled her cage by getting a motorcycle. Although it didn’t have ape hanger handlebars.
She took a deep breath and tried for brisk professionalism. “I understand you had a recent meeting with a Dr. Celeste Chandler.”
“Yeah, and now she’s dead. That’s kind of spooky. And I’m dead serious about that. Uh-oh. That didn’t come out right. Dead serious, get it?”
Got it. Didn’t care for it.
“I understand Dr. Chandler did some kind of sessions that were supposed to bring up memories of lives you’ve lived before. A past-lives regression, I believe it’s called.”
“Right. I had great past lives. I was the palace spy for a queen back when an ol’ Egyptian pharaoh was building himself a pyramid, and Queenie was afraid he might be going to stuff her in it and take up with the court bimbo. I was a dancer in some other exotic court, a real dynamo with the swirling veils and diamond in the belly button. But once, back in the Wild West days, I was hung.”
Cate didn’t want to ask, but curiosity overrode the reluctance. “What did you do to get hung?”
“Stole this fantastic horse named Midnight Meteor that could run like the wind! I was a man in that life. We aren’t always the same, you know. There were some other lives and deaths too, if you’d like to hear about them?”
“I think these are sufficient to give me an idea of what Dr. Chandler was doing.”
One thing Celeste did, Cate could see, was recycle time periods. She researched something such as ancient Egypt, and then everyone just happened to have an old Egyptian past life.
“What did you think of the experience?” Cate asked.
“It was, oh, you know, kind of like going to a fortune-teller, except instead of going forward to what’s going to happen, you go backwards.”
“You don’t take it all too seriously, then?”
“I’m not sure I believe it. But I’m not sure I don’t believe it, either. I keep an open mind about all things!”
An open mind could be a good thing. Or a flytrap for any weird idea sailing around the universe.
“Do you remember telling Dr. Chandler about your lives as you were experiencing them, or did she report to you afterward what you’d said?”
“You think the doc was a big quack, don’t you?”
“I’m just investigating the death. What I really need to find out is, did Dr. Chandler hypnotize you? Or give you something that put you in a kind of hypnotic state?”
“Is that what this is about? Like maybe she gives you some drug to get you hooked, then she goes for the big bucks by supplying you with it?”
Cate gave Diane Destiny Dustinhoff credit for an active imagination. This particular thought had never occurred to Cate. Could Celeste have been selling more than candles and books and astrological earrings there at the Mystic Mirage?
“Anyway, she didn’t give me anything. I can get hypnotized at the drop of a Frito. Zing! At a party one time, this guy was fooling around with hypnosis, and I was the one who got hypnotized when he was trying to do someone else. Then he gave me this posthypnotic suggestion that whenever I heard the words ‘What time is it?’ I’d start doing a Lady Gaga imitation. I’m pretty good at it too. Though it doesn’t always work now.” She sounded disappointed.
Talking to Destiny Dustinhoff, Cate decided, was like carrying on a conversation with a chatty tornado. And you never knew which way the wind might blow.
“Could she have slipped something into a drink, and you didn’t know it?”
“I didn’t eat or drink anything while she was there.”
So, Celeste hypnotized if she could, helped things along with a dose of something if she couldn’t, or if she was in a hurry.
“Do you know anyone else who went into a past-lives regression with Dr. Chandler?”
“Yeah, my friend Pam did it. You know, come to think of it, Pam said Dr. Chandler gave her a glass of wine to help her relax. And she thought there was something in the wine.”
“She could taste something?”
“I don’t remember about that. Anyway, whatever it was, Pam blamed us, because we’d, oh, you know, kind of pushed her into going to Dr. Chandler. I was hoping the doc would give her some posthypnotic suggestion to loosen her up a little. Maybe have her get a whole new wardrobe of miniskirts. Or pole dance around a tree in the park.”
“Um,” Cate muttered.
“But the whole thing really upset Pam. She said it made her feel as if she’d fallen into a black hole. She couldn’t remember a thing. She said Dr. Chandler could have made her tell secrets that were none of the doctor’s business. Although Pam is so prim and prissy that I figured her deepest secret couldn’t be more than hiding her broccoli under a napkin instead of eating it when she was a little girl.”
“How long was she in this ‘black hole’?”
“She didn’t say. But I don’t know that it was really as bad as she said. Pam is kind of … well, we call her Paranoid Pam, if that tells you anything. She quit taking some vitamins because she thought the company was putting something addictive in them.”
Not your most reliable witness, perhaps. Cate asked the question anyway. “Could you tell me how to get in touch with her?”
“She moved to Texas or someplace and we never heard from her again. Maybe that was Dr. Chandler’s posthypnotic suggestion.”
Or maybe Paranoid Pam just had a brilliant idea about getting far away from her so-called friends.
“Okay. Well, thanks.” Cate had one more question, strictly extracurricular curiosity, she had to admit. “What do you do? I mean, do you work somewhere?”
“You’ve never heard of Destiny Dustinhoff? Well, you and most of Eugene, I’m afraid. Story of my life.” Melodramatic sigh. “I’m a deejay! ‘Nights with Destiny.’ From 11:00 p.m. till 2:00 a.m. on the local AM station. A little talk and a lot of music now, but I’m hoping we can turn it into a call-in talk show. If this podunk station ever gets more than one phone line.”
Dolled Up to Die Page 19