A Sensitive Kind of Murder (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  I took the call on the extension in our bedroom.

  “Um, this is Mike Russo, you know?” the voice on the extension informed me.

  “Yeah?” I said tentatively.

  “Um, my dad is like, really upset,” he whispered. “And, um, I wanted you to know that I saw you guys at the store,” Mike speeded up. “Dad said I should tell you. I was just shopping. I shop for my dad lots of times when he’s busy.”

  “All right,” I assured him, preparing to hang up. But it wasn’t that easy.

  “And…I thought maybe you could cheer my dad up,” Mike suggested diffidently. “You know, you or Wayne, maybe?”

  I took that to mean that Mike really wanted Wayne to talk to his father. I put my hand over the receiver. “You wanna talk to Carl Russo?” I asked my sweetie.

  Wayne sighed but nodded.

  “Mike, get your father,” I ordered as Wayne reached for the phone.

  When Wayne took the phone, I could hear the buzz of Carl Russo’s voice on the other end.

  “Don’t worry,” Wayne said when he got a word in ten minutes later. By then he was lying on top of the mattress on the floor that served as our bed, and he was lying backward to accommodate the short phone cord. I lay down beside him.

  Another ten minutes later, he said, “Yeah, someone is talking about the group, but—”

  “Mike’ll be fine,” he pressed on after a minute. His interrupt speed was getting better, at least.

  Then he said, “uh-huh,” a few more times and, “don’t worry, he’ll be fine,” and then he hung up.

  Less than a breath later, the doorbell and the phone both rang simultaneously. Wayne and I looked at each other with instant agreement in our eyes. We wouldn’t answer either my fancy new phone or the doorbell for the rest of the day. Wayne said he’d leave La Fête à L’Oie to his manager for the evening; we would work in our home offices.

  After a quick hug, Wayne headed back to his little room at the end of the hall, and I heard the clacking of calculator keys. Then I returned to my own office next to the entry way and closed the front curtains. It’s lucky no real focus is necessary for paperwork; my brain was throbbing, but my hands shuffled papers, entered numbers in columns, and wrote checks. And all bells rung unanswered.

  Wayne and I had a late dinner, followed by an early bedtime. And for once, when our lips touched, no bells rang but the ones in our heads.

  *

  When I woke up on Thursday morning, I put out my hand to feel for Wayne, but he wasn’t next to me. I rolled off of our mattress bed, put on my robe, and exited the bedroom, looking above me to make sure that C. C. wasn’t in position to leap on my shoulders. She wasn’t. She was behind me, singing opera.

  I led the way down the hallway and found Wayne in my office on the phone.

  He turned. I didn’t think it was to see me in my ratty old robe; C. C.’s opera probably had more to do with it. He smiled, briefly.

  Then he put his hand over the telephone receiver.

  “They want another group get-together,” he whispered.

  “All of us?” I whispered back.

  “Everyone who was at the potluck.”

  I nodded, wondering who he was talking to, but he’d turned away again.

  “We’ll be there,” I heard him say into the receiver.

  I trundled on into the kitchen to the tones of a feline aria, which stopped abruptly when I opened a can of Fancy Feast.

  I was eating oatmeal and blueberries with maple syrup when Wayne joined me at the kitchen table.

  “Who was on the phone?” I demanded before his bottom even touched his chair.

  “Garrett,” he told me brusquely. “He’s arranging it. At Ted’s house.”

  “A meeting?”

  Wayne nodded.

  “When?”

  “Today.”

  We could have been on Dragnet, except for our p.j.s and robes.

  “How are you doing, sweetie?” I asked gently, trying to change the tone of the interaction.

  “Fine,” Wayne muttered, lowering his eyes.

  “Right,” I said, keeping the sigh out of my voice. Fine, perfectly fine. “Have you eaten?”

  “Not hungry.”

  “Oh, Wayne,” I murmured. Then an evil thought gripped me. “I’ll make you breakfast,” I offered.

  Wayne’s eyes came back up, and they were panicked. Wayne did not eat my cooking, but he was too polite to ever mention it. He just kept beating me to the culinary punch.

  “I, I…” he sputtered.

  “How about oatmeal?” I suggested.

  His face blanched, looking a bit like the oatmeal I’d suggested.

  “Okay,” he gave in. “Banana pancakes?”

  “Yum,” I said. Wayne had a dynamite recipe for dairyless banana pancakes. I suspected that carob and a few other spices were involved. But I knew that the end result was worth a second breakfast.

  So, Wayne got out his mixing bowl and cooked. Minutes later, he ate a big stack of pancakes and I scarfed down a smaller one. And, as usual, cooking did the trick. Wayne was ready for a shower when we finished eating, and he was talking again.

  “So Garrett thinks that whoever did it will confess,” Wayne told me as he scrubbed my back in the apricot soap-scented steam of the shower.

  “Oh, please,” I objected. “And this man is a psychiatrist?”

  “He thinks loyalty to the group will force a confession.”

  “So he thinks it was a group member, and not a significant other?” I turned and soaped Wayne’s chest.

  “Yeah, mmmm,” Wayne murmured.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Wayne stopped mmmming.

  “Familiarity breeds contempt, maybe?” he guessed.

  “Did you guys feel contempt for Steve Summers?” I asked, not soaping him anymore.

  Now Wayne was squirming instead of mmmming.

  “Not contempt, never,” he muttered.

  “But?” I could hear an exception in his voice.

  “But, he could be, well…a perfectionist sometimes.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, if you only apply your standards to yourself.”

  “But Steve applied his standards to everyone, and expected them to measure up?” I tried. But I didn’t quite have it.

  “No, not really.” Wayne struggled in thought, looking like a wet Wookiee in search of the meaning of life. “Steve had his own sense of integrity. He wouldn’t allow anyone else to interfere with that integrity.”

  “And if someone did?”

  “Steve wouldn’t let it happen.”

  We rinsed off the apricot soap, each lost in our own thoughts, all sensuality gone.

  “It sounds as if Steve Summers could have been ruthless if pushed,” I finally concluded as we clamored out of the shower.

  “Kate,” Wayne said, grasping my arms, “Steve was the victim of this crime, not the perpetrator.”

  “But why was he the victim?” I asked. Wayne dropped my arms.

  Neither of us had an answer. Wayne had cared for Steve as we all do for our friends, forgiving them their flaws. But I didn’t really know Steve, and what I was hearing now made me feel that I had known him even less well than I had thought. Wayne and I dressed in silence, more quickly than usual, and less playfully. That was actually lucky because the doorbell rang just as I was slipping a vest over my turtleneck.

  Wayne and I crept to the living room window like hunted beasts. Should we answer this bell?

  But then we saw who was on our doorstep—Laura Summers and one of her assistants—and I remembered that Laura’s other assistant, Julie, had asked on the telephone if Laura could visit today.

  Wayne and I raced to the door and practically tumbled over each other as we each grabbed for the doorknob. I won. I did the honors: unlocking, turning, and pulling back the door. But Wayne was on hand with the first word.

  “Laura—” he began and stepped toward her.

  Lau
ra strode in and held Wayne to her. Poor Laura, I thought, and then, this hug is way too long. Because it was. Laura’s grip was a drowning woman’s and Wayne was her buoy. I tried to remind myself of Laura’s situation. She was grieving. She needed Wayne now. I took a deep breath in, and she was still holding him. I let the breath out and took in another one. Then Laura kissed Wayne, somewhere between the cheek and the mouth, way too close to the mouth.

  Wayne was bright red when Laura finally let go of him, and I had a feeling I was, too. Only Laura’s complexion had withstood the assault. Her eyes were misty when she turned to me.

  She gathered me into her arms for a secondary hug and I forgot my jealousy. This woman had lost her husband. We were lucky she wasn’t screaming. Instead, she was finding solace in its most primal form. I could smell the floral fragrance of her soap and deodorant, and I felt the desperate strength of her arms around me. Still, she didn’t kiss me before she released me from her hug.

  “Kate,” she said, her voice low and serious, “thank you.”

  “Um, anything we can do…” I began, but stopped myself. I didn’t want to offer up Wayne’s body through a slip of the tongue. “How are you?” I asked instead. “Has your son come home?”

  “Not yet,” she answered. “We’ve talked on the phone. He’ll be home as soon as he can. This is a difficult time, but we’re taking it day by day.” She paused, then said, “We must move forward.”

  Her all-American face looked haggard, but her hair was still perfectly styled, and she was dressed both for mourning and for political success in a charcoal gray pinstriped suit and low-heeled black pumps.

  A petite young woman I’d barely noticed in the hug-fest stepped in behind Laura.

  “Ms. Summers’ life may be in danger,” the woman announced.

  My jaw must have dropped. Was this murder really about Laura?

  “Now, Tiffany,” Laura admonished, and then she introduced the young woman. “This is one of my able assistants.”

  But Tiffany wasn’t finished.

  Her gray eyes widened as she spoke. “If only I had been with Ms. Summers that day. But that’s her private day.”

  Laura nodded solemnly.

  “Even I need one day a week for privacy. Steve understood. When the Assembly is in session, of course, I have to be there. But when I am at home, Wednesday is my day—our day, mine and Steve’s.”

  My eyes filled with tears. Steve had been killed on her private day. It wasn’t fair.

  “Laura?” Wayne put in urgently, “Is your life in danger?”

  Up until now, neither of us had believed such a thing, but suddenly it didn’t seem so far-fetched. How many enemies could you make as a state assemblywoman? Could someone have killed Steve to hurt Laura?

  “No,” Laura said, shaking her head slowly. “I can’t believe that Steve’s death had anything to do with my role in the Assembly. My people worry, of course. But I think Steve’s death had to do with Heartlink.”

  I shivered. It was one thing for us to talk about a murderer in Heartlink, but it was another to hear Laura state it.

  “Please, Wayne, Kate,” Laura begged. “Tell me what you know.”

  I led Laura and Tiffany into the living room, thinking hard and fast. Did we know anything that could lead us to the murderer’s identity? Tiffany took out a little notebook and a pen as the two of them sat on the couch. I didn’t think we were going to tell her much to put into that little notebook.

  “Laura,” Wayne asked, once we had plopped down into the hanging chair. “Are you sure there’s no link to you?”

  Laura shook her head curtly, her blond bob rippling with the effect. Tiffany’s gray eyes widened a little further under her own identically styled brown bob.

  “No crank notes?” Wayne persisted. “No threats?”

  “You don’t act as a member of the Assembly without receiving letters, but none of them threatened myself or Steve with any kind of physical violence. Julie reads those letters. She would have told me.” She hurried on. “No, it was in Steve’s other life, his life as a journalist, his life as a member of Heartlink. I’m sure of it.”

  This put the ball back in our court. I turned to Wayne. Would he break confidentiality for a grieving widow?

  “You know something,” Laura stated. I shouldn’t have looked at Wayne. This woman could read people, and she had read my look all too well.

  “Has Steve been upset over the last couple of weeks?” Wayne asked. I knew he was buying time, deciding where his duty lay—with Steve’s confidentiality or with his widow.

  Laura shook her head and crinkled her brow. “He was quiet, maybe more quiet than usual. I thought maybe something had happened in the group two weeks ago. But he didn’t tell me. Was there something?”

  “Nothing that I can equate with murder,” Wayne answered. I could tell he’d made up his mind to protect Steve’s confidentiality. “Upsetting things were said in that group, but I can’t see how any of them could have led to murder.”

  Laura closed her eyes. “My Steve,” she moaned.

  I ran over and put my arm around her shoulders. Hugging didn’t seem to be one of Tiffany’s duties.

  “Steve was okay,” Wayne assured her. “His death was quick.”

  “But why?” Laura insisted, clinging to me now. “Why? It must have something to do with the group. It has to.”

  “You know, the group and everyone from the potluck are meeting today,” Wayne sidestepped her question. He paused. “Maybe we’ll find out more then.”

  “You don’t know anything that will solve this mystery?” Laura asked again, bending forward, regarding Wayne intently.

  No,” Wayne said, and I knew he was being honest.

  “Do you, Kate?” she asked me.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I just wish I did. But we’ll keep looking,” I promised.

  Laura frowned.

  “Thank you,” she told us. “Thank you for being dear, dear friends. But please don’t put yourself in any danger asking questions. I couldn’t bear another death.”

  And then Laura Summers got up from the couch. Tiffany closed her notebook and followed her to the front door, where Laura hugged us both again. This time she held on to Wayne for a shorter time, but she kissed him again. I can’t say exactly where she kissed him because I averted my eyes at the last moment.

  Once she was gone, Wayne and I held each other for a long time. I know we were both thinking how awful it would be to lose one another. And there was nothing we could do for Laura—nothing but find Steve’s murderer.

  We might have held each other for the rest of the day if the doorbell hadn’t rung again. But it did.

  And, unfortunately, I answered it.

  Felix was on my doorstep now, though, not Laura Summers.

  “How goes the spiritual—” I began.

  But Felix pushed past me, a scowl on his face, anger in his sweat.

  “Holy socks!” he began. “You found another stiff, didn’t ya? And you didn’t tell me nada! Your pal, your compadre. D’ya know what Brother Ingenio would say about that? Huh? Huh?”

  - Seven -

  “No,” I said to Felix, keeping my voice steady. “What would Brother Ingenio say about my listening to your spiritual struggle instead of burdening you with the details of a tragic death?”

  That stopped him for a second. Exactly one second.

  “Some buddy you are, Kate. You, smacking my spiritual beliefs in my friggin’ face at a time like this.” Felix widened his soulful eyes. “You found another dead body and didn’t tell me. All the rest of the media ghouls got it first. Friggin’ first, and I’m your friggin’ friend. Sheesh, Louise, ya wanna see me out on the street—”

  “Is there something you want?” Wayne asked from behind me.

  Felix looked up, a forced smile on his face. Wayne had never violently assaulted Felix, an amazing feat of self-restraint, all things considered, but Wayne made Felix nervous, anyway. Maybe Felix had figured out somewhere
in his tiny conscience that he deserved a quick karate kick just for all the times he’d made our life miserable.

  “Hey, Big Guy,” he greeted Wayne. “Just here to get the poop on the Summers’ hit, ya know what I mean? Real bummer, and they don’t know doodly down at the cop-shop.”

  “Yes, it was a real ‘bummer,’” Wayne agreed, his deep voice vibrating on the word. “Especially for Steve’s widow. Have you thought about her at all?”

  I knew Wayne was asking Felix about his sensitivity to the widow’s grief, but Felix didn’t. Sensitivity wasn’t big in Felix’s repertoire of behavior. Badgering, yes; sensitivity, no.

  “Nah, the widow just doesn’t play, ya know what I mean?” Felix answered earnestly. “No friggin’ motive. But the dudes from your group…”

  He let his sentence drift off, his eyes taking on an unholy gleam.

  “The guys from my group what, Felix?” Wayne demanded.

  “Um, they might have friggin’ motives. That’s all, man. Look, here’s this bunch of Mr. Sensitives pouring out their boo-hooey little hearts. And here’s this prize-winning, whiz-bang journalist. Whaddaya think’s gonna happen? If I’d been in that group, I’d have found a way to make a story out of it.”

  Oddly enough, he was making some sense. That was kind of scary when I thought about it.

  “Felix, what do you know about Steve Summers?” I asked.

  “What did the C.I.A. know about Abby Hoffman, man?” Felix answered.

  I took that to mean that he knew something. We let Felix in the door and onto the denim couch. Felix was our source of information; we were not his—at least I hoped not.

  I plopped down into the hanging chair, but Wayne remained standing, all the better to intimidate Felix. And all the better to be ready to lead the reporter out of the house on a moment’s notice.

  “Felix, you knew Steve Summers as a writer,” I said sweetly. “Tell us about him.”

  Felix squinted his eyes and crossed his arms, but he talked.

  “The man got all the breaks, okay? He wrote for the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly. All that pseudo-intellectual cow patty. He started out like the rest of us, a small-time paper hack, but then he got Big, with a capital ‘B.’ He even wrote books—one on politics and economics, one about ethical investing. Holy Moly, I can do better than that. Where’s the sizzle, man? If it bleeds, it leads; if it thinks, it stinks. And then he gets these friggin’ awards—”