A Sensitive Kind of Murder (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “Tell them you had nothing to do with this,” he ordered.

  “I had nothing to do with this,” Mike complied in a prisoner-of-war voice.

  “You mean with Steve Summers or—” I began, but then I stopped. Did they know about Isaac?

  “Dad has some goofy idea that I’m, you know, like a prime suspect for murder or something,” Mike told us.

  “I just don’t want you in trouble,” Carl said. His broad shoulders seemed to sink in his suit jacket. There was fear beneath the anger in his fleshy face.

  “Carl,” Wayne greeted his fellow group member. I jumped. He’d entered the room so quickly and quietly, I hadn’t heard him.

  “Wayne,” Carl returned the greeting, then seemed to remember he’d never said hello to anyone else.

  “Is there any real cause to think your son might be suspect?” Dorothy asked reasonably once all the hellos were finished.

  “The cops called,” Carl answered. “Wanted to know where we were today. I was at work, except for lunch, but Mike—” He turned and glared at his son.

  Mike tried an ingratiating grin, then finished his father’s sentence.

  “—Mike was cutting school,” the boy said, pointing at himself. “No big deal. No federal crime.”

  “Except that the police wanna know where he was,” Carl put in.

  “I was out with my friends, dude,” Mike offered.

  “‘Out with my friends, dude’” his father parroted. “Great! The cops wanna know where the kid is, and all he’ll say is ‘out with my friends!’”

  “Listen, Dad,” Mike whined. “I don’t wanna get anybody in trouble. We were cool. We just felt like fooling around, you know.”

  “So did the police say why they were interested in your whereabouts today?” I asked nonchalantly.

  “No!” Carl hollered. “Those toads wouldn’t tell me nuthin’. Just all these questions about me and the kid. I told them he was in school. Damn it! What if they find out he wasn’t?”

  “Maybe you ought to tell them yourself,” I suggested. “Tell them where Mike was and who he was with—”

  “But that’s exactly what he won’t do. The kid won’t even tell me who he was with or what they were doing.”

  Mike’s cheeks were getting very red, though whether with embarrassment or anger, I couldn’t tell.

  “Mike,” my aunt said gently. “Someone else was killed today. Telling the truth is more important than not getting your friends in trouble.”

  Mike’s face went from red to white. Carl’s eyes widened.

  “Damn it, who?” Carl whispered urgently.

  “Isaac Herrick,” my aunt answered without a pause.

  Captain Wooster was going to put us in jail for sure. If he hadn’t told anyone else that Isaac was dead, he probably didn’t want us telling them. Curried peanuts and spinach whirled in my stomach.

  “You see, Mike, this is important,” Aunt Dorothy persisted. “Who were you with today?”

  “Jason and Tommy and me all went down to the mall,” he gave in. “No big deal. We were just fooling around.”

  “That’s fine,” she assured the boy. “But now you need to call the police and tell them what you’ve told me. And perhaps you should call your two friends as well. Let your friends know that the police might be asking them questions. You all must tell the truth. This situation is far too serious to play around with.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mike said.

  I could hardly believe my ears. Mike was not a boy to “yes, ma’am” his elders. But then again, my aunt had pulled a confession out of him as easily as pulling candy out of a bowl.

  “Hey, thanks,” Carl said to Dorothy, his voice betraying the same surprise I’d felt at Mike’s capitulation. “Ma’am,” he added.

  “Perhaps a trip to the police station is in order?” Dorothy suggested cheerily.

  Carl looked at Mike. The boy nodded.

  The phone rang.

  “Listen, man,” the answering machine said a moment later. “It’s Van here. I’m really freaking.”

  Wayne’s brows dropped. He sighed and walked to the phone.

  “Hey, I wanna thank you and your aunt for helping us out,” Carl rasped. “We’ll go down to the cops and get everything straightened out.”

  “Uh-huh,” I heard Wayne say from behind me. I wondered what Van was saying.

  “Any time,” Dorothy said to Carl, and she seemed to mean it. She gripped his hand and shook it, then did the same with Mike.

  “Thank you for coming,” she finished up graciously.

  Father and son left as Wayne said, “Uh-huh” again.

  I closed the door behind the Russos and leaned against it as if an invading army might burst through at any minute.

  “Um, Aunt Dorothy,” I began.

  “I shouldn’t have told them about Isaac,” she finished for me.

  “Captain Wooster isn’t going to like it,” I said.

  “Mike’s going to tell the truth now,” she countered. “He had to understand the seriousness of the situation.”

  “Yeah, there’s that,” I admitted.

  “Calm down,” Wayne said.

  At first I thought he was talking to me, but he was speaking into the telephone receiver.

  Dorothy and I exchanged looks.

  “You can stop holding the door in place now, Katie,” she told me.

  “Oh, right,” I said. But I locked the door behind me before I joined her on the couch again.

  “Katie, I think that boy was telling the truth, don’t you?” Dorothy inquired, her eyes troubled.

  “Of course he was telling the truth,” I answered, but then I really thought about it. My aunt was faster than me on the uptake.

  “If he had any connection with Isaac’s death, all he had to do was convince his friends to lie for him,” she reminded me. “Friends will do that.”

  “But, Mike…” I faltered.

  All I really knew about Mike was that he was a lovable clown and a trial to his father. Could a clown be an actor, too?

  “Get some rest, Van,” Wayne advised from across the hall, and then slammed the phone down.

  “It’s okay, Katie,” my aunt whispered as Wayne came back to the living room. She squeezed my arm. “I was just thinking out loud. Neither of us can really know what goes on in a teenager’s brain.”

  “Van, again,” Wayne announced. He plopped down into the hanging chair.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Paranoid,” Wayne answered brusquely.

  “And?” I prompted.

  “Very paranoid.”

  “Wayne, is Van a good driver?” Dorothy asked.

  Wayne did a double take before answering her. This was a question we should have thought about before. Who was a good enough driver to have killed Steve Summers? I thought of Jerry and his race car driving. Then I wondered if it necessarily took any particular skill to hit Steve Summers and kill him.

  “Van’s good, I suppose,” Wayne answered finally. “I know he’s fast. Whips around in a red Miata convertible.”

  “How about the rest of the group?” Dorothy pressed.

  “I guess they all drive well,” Wayne muttered, looking down as he thought. “Can’t remember anything unusual about anyone’s driving.”

  “Except Jerry,” I put in.

  “Yeah,” he agreed dully. “Except Jerry.”

  He obviously didn’t want to think about Jerry Urban as a suspect. I didn’t really want to, either. But then again, I didn’t want to think about anyone as a murder suspect.

  Wayne, Dorothy, and I all sat in silence then. But it wasn’t a comfortable silence. Dorothy had to be mourning Isaac, and there were far too many unanswered questions for comfort in any case.

  The doorbell was almost a relief when it rang—except that Felix was the one ringing it.

  “That cat was a friggin’ omen!” he squealed when I opened the door.

  I just looked at him, my brain still on murder suspec
ts.

  “Sheesh, Lucy, how could I have missed it?” he went on. “Brother Ingenio is a fraud! All that presto-pronto stuff, what a crock! How do I know he’s even channeling these guys? All this whiz-bang, and he’s not even logged on…”

  My brain seemed to retreat. Felix ranted, and I watched him, my ears refusing to pick up any more. Then he snapped his fingers in my face. He must have noticed that most of me was elsewhere.

  “Two more friggin’ things, Kate,” he told me. “One: I found out that Carl Russo spent hard time in the joint for stealing a car. He was in college when he did it. Probably majored in shoplifting.”

  I flinched. Carl? No wonder he was so worried about his kid. But why hadn’t he told us?

  “And numero two, amigo,” Felix hissed, his hands on his hips. “Why didn’t you tell me you found another stiff?”

  - Sixteen -

  “Where’d you get your information about Carl Russo?” Wayne demanded before I even had a chance to defend my nondisclosure of Isaac’s death. Wayne’s voice was a low and dangerous growl.

  “Huh?” Felix said, dropping his hands from his hips and taking a step backward. All ready to rant and interrupted. I almost felt sorry for him.

  “Are you sure that Carl went to prison for auto theft?” Wayne pressed, closing the gap between Felix and himself with one stride.

  “Sure as the friggin’ New Jersey penal system,” Felix answered, looking up into Wayne’s scowling face with bravado.

  Wayne shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it. But I believed it. It made sense of Carl’s behavior toward his son in a way that little else could.

  “Anyway,” Felix jumped back in, gearing up for his original rant. “Isaac Herrick—”

  “Isaac Herrick was my friend,” Aunt Dorothy put in, her voice as soft as a plush bunny. “Katie and Wayne were protecting me.”

  Felix’s mouth hung open. Rantus interruptus was not a pretty sight.

  Finally, he said, “Herrick was smothered.”

  My aunt nodded. She rose from the couch, then flopped back down. Damn, all of a sudden, she looked her age. No one would mistake her for a vivacious movie star now.

  “Yeah, well,” Felix went on, his voice subdued now; even Felix could sense the shock in Dorothy’s posture. “It was supposed to look like some whoopde-do heart attack, but the cop-docs can tell. They do all this whiz-bang, and then they tell you everything. Isaac Herrick was smothered with a pillow. While he was sleeping, probably.” He glanced at my aunt and quickly moved his eyes back to us. “Pretty painless, the cop-docs said.”

  That was kind, especially for Felix.

  “Thank you,” Dorothy whispered. “That’s good to know.”

  “Yeah, that’s cool,” Felix muttered, looking down at his feet, obviously embarrassed by his momentary lapse into humanity.

  “Do they know what time he was killed?” Dorothy rallied.

  Felix shrugged. “My source didn’t get anything but crumbs, man. Just that Herrick’s wasn’t a natural death, no way, no how. Captain Wooster is spitting ingots, though. He doesn’t want any cop-talk getting out.”

  “Do they have any suspects?” Dorothy pressed on.

  “Same old, same old,” Felix answered, shrugging again. “Gotta be tied up with the Summers stunt, though. Bunch of looney-tunes playing sensitivity—”

  Wayne cleared his throat. It was an impressive sound; a dog across the street barked, as if in response.

  Felix stopped and began again.

  “So, the potato-brains at the cop shop have got doo-doo, as usual.”

  “You were good to let us know,” Dorothy told Felix. She rose wearily from the couch. “I’ll let you alone now.”

  “Will we see you tomorrow for Steve Summers’ funeral?” I asked her quietly. I could see Felix’s eyes light up, but I knew he’d never get in. “You can ride in with us,” I finished.

  “I’ll meet you here,” she promised, heading toward the door.

  I’d almost forgotten her rental car. Now I was worried about her driving. I looked at Wayne.

  “Would you like a ride—” he began.

  “No. You’re very sweet, but the drive will do me good,” she assured him.

  So we followed her outside to her rental. She rolled down the window after she started the ignition. I could see the moisture in her eyes glimmering in the darkness.

  “We’ll find out who killed Isaac, Katie,” she declared.

  “Right,” I agreed weakly.

  And then she drove off, not wasting any time as she accelerated onto the main road with a mechanical roar. Now, she could have been a race driver.

  “Your aunt’s a pretty cool old broad,” Felix offered.

  I didn’t object to his wording.

  “Your aunt wants to solve Isaac’s murder,” Wayne informed me once we were back inside, with Felix in place on the denim couch.

  “Uh, yeah?” I said, not sure where he was going.

  “What is it with you Koffenburgers?” he asked. “Do you have an extra gene for sleuthing?”

  Felix closed his eyes. Whether he was meditating, sleeping, or eavesdropping, I wasn’t sure.

  “Wayne, Aunt Dorothy and I aren’t related by blood,” I told him seriously.

  Then I really looked at his homely face. He was attempting a smile. He was joking.

  “Oh, Wayne,” I whispered and threw my arms around him. “We just have a gene for marrying good men.”

  “Ack,” Felix commented. Then he pretended to stick his finger down his throat.

  So I gave Wayne a good, long kiss.

  Felix was out the door before we’d even disentangled our lips.

  It was time for bed. And bed was just down the hall. We locked lips again.

  *

  Saturday morning, I woke up and remembered that it was the day of Steve Summers’ funeral. I turned back over and shoved my face into my pillow.

  “Kate?” I heard Wayne whisper, and then I remembered that Wayne had lost two members of his support group. I remembered that Steve Summers had been his friend. Wayne was the one who should have been shoving his face into a pillow, not me. He was such a rock that sometimes I forgot that he might be hurting, and hurting a lot. I rolled back over, took a deep breath, and started my day holding Wayne and wishing I could do more.

  Aunt Dorothy arrived after I’d gobbled down a late breakfast of Wayne’s dairyless pancakes with raspberry conserves. She looked better than she had the night before, her silver-white curlicues of hair bouncing jauntily atop her head. And she was dressed in a well-tailored, charcoal-gray coatdress that looked more appropriate for the day’s activity than my one and only black pantsuit.

  “May I drive?” she offered.

  Wayne and I looked at each other for less than an instant. Was he remembering her speedy exit the night before too?

  “I’ll be glad to drive,” Wayne answered quickly.

  So, the three of us piled into my Toyota with Wayne at the wheel and Dorothy insisting on the back seat as usual.

  Laura Summers had chosen an outdoor setting for Steve’s funeral. An area the size of two football fields, or maybe one UFO landing strip, was conveniently located in front of the cemetery. That space was filled with folding chairs beneath white canopies, to protect the attendees from the July heat. As we tried to find a place to park, we realized why Laura had chosen this venue. The people attending Steve Summers’ funeral couldn’t have fit into a funeral home or a church. There were just too many of them.

  For a short while, I wondered if Steve had really had more friends than we’d thought. But then I recognized who, or what, most of the mourners were: reporters. Even from the car, I recognized the too-loud, questioning voices, and I saw the cameras that security guards were shooing out from under the canopies. I heard the sound of helicopters overhead and looked up through the windshield. Were they filled with reporters, too?

  Once we were parked, we tried to find familiar faces in the half-seated crowd. I spo
tted Helen Herrick, standing at the end of a row of chairs. Dorothy spotted her, too, and the two women ran toward each other to embrace. Helen was here to mourn Isaac as much as Steve, I realized as I saw her red-rimmed eyes. My aunt was probably here for Isaac as well. Who was here for Steve Summers? Wayne, I reminded myself. And, of course, Laura. I thought I could see Laura in the knot of people milling around in front of the chairs near the podium.

  Helen and Dorothy took seats at the end of the row. Wayne and I sat behind them. I began to sweat in my black pantsuit.

  “Think someone will try to take out Assemblywoman Summers, too?” a voice behind me asked eagerly.

  “Nah, not here. Too many people.”

  I turned and saw two men with notebooks. The reporters were beginning to make me queasy. Throngs of people hadn’t stopped other public assassinations; could Laura Summers have somehow been the target of Steve Summers’ death? But, if so, what about Isaac?

  “Kate, Wayne,” I heard and saw Garrett Peterson and Jerry Urban. Wayne and I gladly moved down to make room for them. And then Janet and Ted Kimmochi were in front of us, next to Aunt Dorothy and Helen. Carl and Mike Russo sat next to them. Even Van Eisner showed up, with a petite, tanned beauty on his arm. They sat behind us. Somehow I felt comforted. These were Steve Summers’ friends, his family. They were a dysfunctional family, but a family nonetheless. Then, I thought of Steve and Laura’s son and wondered if I’d meet him today.

  “Please be seated,” a deep musical voice ordered, and the milling multitudes did just that.

  Chairs scraped and voices called out, muffling whatever introductory remarks were being made, but eventually even the reporters quieted down.

  “We are gathered here today to celebrate Steve Summers’ life,” the voice went on in the silence. A warm breeze passed through the canopy as if to remind us of life’s fleeting nature. “To celebrate, not mourn, the life of a talented man whose creativity and ethics…”

  As the voice continued, I peered over the heads of the rows and rows of mourners to see the speaker. He was a white-haired man dressed in a perfect suit. I wondered if he was a minister, or a politician, or something else entirely. His voice had a hypnotic quality. I fought against closing my tired eyes as he spoke of Steve’s contribution to journalism and life in general. The uncomfortable folding chair helped me in my battle, its metal contours impossibly mismatched to my rounder shape. So I wriggled awake as the speaker’s words blended together seamlessly and meaninglessly in my mind.