They were seated right away, handed menus, and left to their own devices. Jake glanced at his, apparently made an instant decision, and set the menu aside. A.J. quickly selected something at random and followed suit.
“So. Catch any bad guys today?”
He eyed her thoughtfully. “No. The bad guys caught all the breaks today.”
She wondered how the interview with John Baumann had gone and if there was any possible way of asking him about it.
There was another of those silences, this one mercifully broken by the waitress who took their drink order.
“Wine?” Jake asked.
A.J. assented. Andy would have asked all kinds of pertinent questions about the wine; Andy was a wine connoisseur. Jake just asked for a recommendation, checked to see that A.J. was okay with it, and that was that.
A.J. told herself that she really, really needed to stop comparing every other man to Andy—and, uncannily, Jake chose that moment to ask how long she had been divorced.
“Didn’t you find that out when you got hold of my bank and business records?”
He met her gaze levelly. “Sure. I’m making conversation.”
She blinked, then laughed. “We’ve been officially divorced four months.”
“Not a long time.”
She lifted a shoulder. “I guess not.” He was making her uncomfortable. That unwavering stare—was it part of his cop training?
The waitress arrived with their wine. Jake tasted and approved in that brisk, businesslike way he seemed to do everything. The waitress filled their glasses, took their meal orders, and departed once more.
“What about you?” A.J. inquired—and found she really was curious. “You’ve never been married?
“Nope.”
“Do you live with your mom or something?”
He laughed. He had a nice laugh. “No. Although I’m guessing my mom is easier to live with than yours.”
“Elysia’s okay.” She realized he had changed the subject. “So how is it you never married?”
“It’s not easy being married to a cop. Even a small-town cop.” Once again he changed the subject. “What happened with your marriage?”
“Oh, the usual,” A.J. said. “My husband decided he was gay and ran off with an FBI agent.”
Jake swallowed his wine wrong and had to lower his glass quickly. A.J. watched him cough and splutter with faintly malicious amusement.
“You’re…kidding,” he said hoarsely, at last. His green eyes were watery. Boy, he had long eyelashes.
A.J. was astonished to hear herself chuckle. Even a week ago she wouldn’t have believed she could ever see the irony, much less the humor, in her situation.
“Straight up, as my mother would say. He—Andy, my ex—was buying a cake for my birthday, and as he was leaving the bakery he was hit by a car. It turned out that the car was an FBI vehicle in pursuit of some counterfeiters. Anyway, the agent who was driving apparently felt bad about mowing Andy down, and he showed up at the hospital to see how he was.”
“And what? Your ex sustained some kind of brain damage in the accident?”
A.J. laughed again, although it didn’t come quite as easily this time. “I thought so at first. Apparently not. Apparently we’d been living a lie for ten years.”
The grave sympathy in those keen eyes was too much to take. She was relieved when the waitress arrived with their dinners.
The food turned out to be delicious, and a couple of glasses of wine eased A.J. over the conversational lulls. She found that talking to Jake was much easier than she’d expected. She couldn’t imagine ever being actually comfortable with him, but she felt certain she was going to enjoy this one date.
Over dessert and coffee she relaxed enough to ask, “So isn’t this dinner some kind of ethical breach? I’m your main suspect, aren’t I?”
Jake’s expression was odd. “No. You’re no longer a suspect. If you were, we wouldn’t be having dinner.”
“When did that change?”
He seemed to hesitate. “We confirmed your alibi for Friday night.”
“What alibi? I didn’t have an alibi. I was home in bed.”
“You were home, that’s true. You weren’t sleeping, though, because your neighbor heard you fixing dinner around ten thirty and then later watching TV until about six in the morning.”
A.J. blinked. “I didn’t realize the TV was that loud.”
“Yeah, well.” She couldn’t understand the apologetic look he cast her. “According to your neighbor you have a lot of sleepless nights.”
Six months worth. Ever since her husband had told her he wanted a divorce. She was silent. “Actually, I was sleeping. I have a habit of falling asleep on the couch watching TV.” It was a fairly recent, postdivorce habit, and she was not thrilled that the neighbors and now the cops were aware of it. It seemed so…pathetic.
“We’ve confirmed your mother’s alibi as well,” he added.
“You cannot seriously have thought…”
“Hey,” he said calmly, “unfortunately I see the worst side of people in my line of work. I’ve learned not to take anything for granted.”
“That’s a pretty cynical way to live.”
He didn’t respond.
“So…do you have a suspect now?”
He flicked her a look and didn’t answer that either. Instead, he said, “I really didn’t want to bring this up at dinner, but we’re releasing your aunt’s body for burial.”
A.J. couldn’t immediately think of a response, her emotions instantly in turmoil.
Jake said slowly, “The…autopsy revealed something strange.”
A.J. gathered her wits, looked inquiringly at him.
“Your aunt wasn’t strangled. Someone—a not very knowledgeable someone—apparently tried to stage it to look like she died of asphyxiation, but the fact is, she died of anaphylactic shock.”
“I-I’m not following.”
“The yoga tie around her neck, the swelling of her throat, the apparent asphyxiation initially threw us off. Your aunt was injected with bee venom.”
A.J. felt the blood draining from her face. “Aunt Di was deathly allergic to bee stings.”
Jake nodded. “We now believe the yoga tie was placed around her neck after she was already dead.”
“Oh my God. But…why?”
“Either someone hoped to hide the real cause of death or someone hoped to implicate the owner of the yoga tie. Unless the owner of the yoga tie is the killer.”
“That would have to be a very stupid killer.”
“Yeah. Someone didn’t do his homework, that’s for sure.”
“Who owns the yoga tie? Do you know?”
Jake shook his head. “How many people knew about your aunt’s allergies to bees?”
“It wasn’t a secret. Aunt Di didn’t make a production of it, but she always had the EpiPen with her. She was outdoors a lot, so she did occasionally have to use it.”
A.J. felt numb. Good-bye to the theory of a roving maniac killer. Someone really and truly had plotted to kill Aunt Di—and then cold-bloodedly carried out that plan. As little as she wanted to believe it, she could think of only one person who fit this particular murderous profile.
“If this is true, then I can’t for the life of me understand why you’ve let John Baumann go,” she said, her voice trembling despite her effort to keep it steady. “He had the motive, and he certainly had the means. They’re farming bees right there in the pasture!”
Jake stiffened. “What the hell do you know about the Baumann’s bee farming?” There was not a vestige of friendliness in his face now.
“We drove out there today.”
“Who?”
“My mother and I. We thought…” Speaking of thinking, she realized it would probably be smarter not to complete that sentence.
“You thought what?”
“We—I—we—”
“Just spit it out,” Jake advised. “You thought what?”
&nbs
p; “Well, I found that letter from him to Aunt Di, and you didn’t seem to take it that seriously, so I thought…” She faltered into silence at his expression.
“God almighty,” Jake said. “Did you watch an episode of Scooby-Doo and decide anyone could be a detective? What the hell do you think you’re doing tromping around in my homicide case?”
She tried not to get mad at the Scooby-Doo crack. She had suspected he might view her well-meant interest as trespassing. “I just wanted to—”
“Let’s get something straight. Interfering in a police investigation is a crime. If I catch you poking your nose into this again, I’ll haul your cute little ass right down to the jail. Got it? I do not need or want the help of an amateur sleuth.”
Jake Oberlin was chewing her out in public as though she were a dumb and disobedient subordinate. A.J. was so angry and embarrassed she was shaking—and trying hard not to show it. It didn’t help that she knew in her heart that he was right. She had no business sticking her nose in his investigation. It wasn’t even like her, really.
“Have I made myself clear?” he demanded into her furious silence.
“Crystal.”
“Good.” He nodded curtly to their unfinished desserts. “Finished?”
“Oh, we’re finished,” A.J. returned.
Seventeen
“Even the gorgeous royal chariots wear out; and indeed this body too wears out. But the teaching of goodness does not age; and so Goodness makes that known to the good ones.”
The owlish priest in his saffron robes paused in his reading of the Buddhist text. The silence was filled in by a woodpecker high in the tree overhead, and one of the young women at Diantha’s graveside—Jennifer Stevenson, A.J. guessed—giggled nervously.
Of course this was not really Diantha’s grave. Diantha’s ashes were in the simple urn that was to be handed over to A.J. at the end of the funeral ceremony. Instead, the headstone on Gus Eriksson’s grave was being exchanged for a lovely hand-carved stone that had both their names and the inscription: They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it.
White flowers and white candles were arranged around the gravesite, and the contrast between these and the autumn colors of the trees and woodland was striking. A framed picture of Diantha and Gus rested on a small table with a basin and a pitcher of water.
The priest inclined his head to a grim-faced Lily, who nodded to the circle of students from the Yoga for Young Adults class. A.J.’s eyes rested momentarily on Chloe William’s pale, hollow-eyed face.
It appeared as though every person in Stillbrook was attending the late afternoon funeral in the old cemetery. Mr. Meagher stood next to Elysia; Michael Batz was there with a slim red-haired woman; the Baumanns and their flock of children were present as were all the instructors from the studio. Most of these people were strangers to A.J. Her mother and her old school chum Nancy Lewis had filled her in on names and faces as necessary.
Feeling someone’s gaze, she glanced around and caught sight of Jake Oberlin. He looked heart-stoppingly handsome in a dark blazer—and tie. The tie had a strange effect on her; she got the impression Oberlin rarely went in for neckwear.
Their eyes held. He nodded curtly. They hadn’t spoken since the unpleasant ending of their first and only date two nights previously. She didn’t want to think about the long silent drive back to Deer Hollow after they’d left the restaurant. Not that it had been a lot more silent than the drive out, but the mood had definitely been different. When they finally reached the farm, Oberlin had requested John Baumann’s letter, waiting on the porch while A.J. went to get it. He had taken it with brusque thanks, and that had been that.
Which suited A.J. fine, she told herself, offering an equally tight nod in return.
At Lily’s nod, the students—all young women dressed in virginal white—fumbled to open the triangle-shaped white cardstock boxes they held.
Lily began to give her eulogy. “Diantha Mason was my good friend and colleague, but more than that, she was my teacher….”
As Lily read, painted lady and monarch butterflies began to emerge from the boxes and flutter away, swooping and flitting through the yellow and scarlet leaves of the surrounding trees.
Chloe Williams began to cry. Jennifer Stevens had to shake her box to get the butterfly out of it.
It occurred to A.J. that that young lady owed her for the dry-cleaning bill of her coat. Frankly, Jennifer seemed a little old for pulling pranks—although A.J. had an uncomfortable memory of one or two college escapades—including a game of quarters that was now legendary with her former roommates.
She stiffened as someone took her hand. Turning, she caught her breath. Andy, looking unusually somber in his favorite Hugo Boss suit, leaned over and kissed her cheek.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said softly.
A.J. opened her mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say. She looked past him to see if Nick Grant was in tow, but he was nowhere to be seen. That was one bright spot. She wasn’t sure she was prepared to deal with Andy, let alone his boyfriend.
Lily suddenly broke down in the middle of her eulogy.
It seemed to A.J. from the sympathetic murmurs of the crowd that most of the people here seemed to genuinely grieve with her, although Diantha’s stance on certain political and social issues had not made her universally beloved.
Lily stepped away from the graveside, shooing the young students before her with her usual diplomacy, and Stella Borin took her place.
“Oh crikey,” muttered Elysia on A.J.’s other side.
Stella, garbed in what appeared to be a white bedspread, raised her hands and said, “The Goddess wishes all here to remember Diantha Naomi Mason, born of man and woman. The wheel has turned, and our sister has gone on to Summerland and now awaits rebirth. I ask you to join hands for a moment and let us meditate together on our own past lives and our approaching death.”
Andy squeezed her hand very lightly; A.J. knew instantly what he was thinking. Andy found all of this silly and a little tasteless, but she tuned out that thought. Diantha’s funeral was not so much about what her aunt had believed as it was a chance for the people who loved her to say good-bye in their own way, and A.J. thought that was rather a lovely thing—although Stella was sort of pushing it with that particular meditation request.
A.J. prayed Elysia would manage to make it through the entire ceremony without some outrageous comment.
Her attention was momentarily diverted by the sight of an extraordinarily beautiful woman in a wheelchair parked in front of the row of seats. According to A.J.’s old friend Nancy Lewis, this was Pamela Stevenson, Jennifer’s mother. When A.J. had asked what ailed the immaculately groomed and frozenly lovely woman, Nancy explained that Pamela suffered from horrible arthritis that crippled her at a very young age.
It was interesting and sad, A.J. thought, studying Pamela now. The Stevensons were probably one of the wealthiest and certainly most socially prominent families in the county, but neither of these things had been able to shield Pamela from disabling pain and illness. A.J. glanced at Jennifer’s stony face and felt a stab of sympathy. She knew firsthand the difficulty of having a disabled parent. True her mother’s disability had been self-induced, but it had been a terrible strain on her family, nonetheless.
Pamela’s eyes were trained on Jennifer. Jennifer’s own gaze rested for a moment on the still-sobbing Chloe. Then she leaned over and whispered something to Nancy Lewis’s daughter, Charlayne. Charlayne bit back a laugh and then looked guiltily in her mother’s direction. Nancy Lewis smiled wryly at Pamela Stevenson, whose face grew even tighter.
Nancy had commented earlier that Diantha had always hoped Jennifer would prove stronger than circumstances; that sentiment confirmed A.J.’s own feelings. What would have happened to her had she not had Aunt Di to depend on during those bleak years her mother was drinking and her father working himself into an early grave?
She blinked back tears and then realized that Ste
lla had finished communing with the Goddess on Diantha’s part, and it was time for A.J. to speak.
She let go of Andy’s hand, crossing round to the table with Diantha’s picture. She opened the book of poems she had selected from Diantha’s collection, and turned to the page she had marked. Quietly, she read, “Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there, I do not sleep.”
She glanced up, catching and skirting Andy’s sympathetic gaze, finding Jake Oberlin’s serious green eyes in the crowd. She swallowed hard, looking away. Even now, inappropriately, that man had an unfortunate and distracting effect on her.
“When you wake in the morning hush, I am the swift, uplifting rush…”
At least it was a relief to know he was no longer trying to prove she was a murderess.
She looked back at the text. “…of quiet birds in circling flight. I am the soft starlight at night….”
“Why don’t you drive back to the house with Andrew,” Elysia suggested after the service, as they stood accepting final condolences.
“Because I don’t—”
“She has all kinds of things to get ready before people start arriving,” Elysia told Andy, who stood patiently to the side. “Would you be a love—?”
“Of course,” Andy said. “Come on, A.J.”
A.J. opened her mouth to decline his services and her mother’s suggestions in no uncertain terms, but she caught sight of Jake Oberlin moving toward them through the crowd.
“Fine. Whatever,” she said ungraciously, and allowed Andy to take her arm, steering her through the grass and leaves away from the gravesite. Her heels kept sinking into the soft ground, like crampons. She felt a little like she had been scaling cliffs. She felt tired and remote, tightly clasping her aunt’s ashes in the titanium urn. It was such a sad occasion, and yet every moment seemed to teeter on hysterical farce—as though she had somehow wandered into a Woody Allen movie.
“Are you okay?” Andy asked once they were in the car and he was skillfully negotiating his way out of the cramped parking space.
“Numb.”
“I never told you how sorry I was…”
Corpse Pose Page 16