“We won’t get that lucky,” I replied gloomily.
My aunt laughed. I looked up, surprised by the sound.
“I wonder if he’ll ever catch up to your friend Felix?” she asked.
“Now you’re really trying to cheer us up,” I said, beginning to smile again. “Can you see it—”
But the doorbell cut off my imagined Wooster/Byrne interrogation.
Wayne got up and opened the door. I would have just left it shut.
Jerry Urban came through the doorway. He gave Wayne a brief one-armed hug, his round face smiling. But I could see tension in the hug.
“Hey, Kate. Hey, Dorothy,” he greeted us.
Then he just stood for a moment. He crossed his arms briefly, then uncrossed them. He began to whistle. The three of us stared at him. Finally, he broke.
“Okay, I’m here about Garrett,” he told us.
As if we couldn’t have guessed, I thought. My aunt was more gracious than I was.
“Please sit down, Jerry,” she offered, pointing to the hanging chair for one.
Once Jerry was seated, Dorothy started in. Captain Wooster might have been the master of interrogation, but my aunt was the mistress of polite inquiry.
“Is Garrett in some sort of distress?” she asked Jerry ever-so-gently.
“Whoa, have you been mind-reading or what?” he exclaimed. Then his face grew more serious. “See, Garrett is a great caretaker for everyone but himself. Everyone depends on Garrett, but who does Garrett depend on?”
“You,” Dorothy answered him.
“I wish,” was all Jerry said, and then I saw the real hurt in his eyes. “Garrett won’t lean on me, but then he won’t lean on anyone. And when he gets depressed, I…I just don’t know what to do.”
“Is he depressed now?” my aunt continued in therapist mode.
“He’s so depressed, I’m worried he’ll just go into his shell and never come back out,” Jerry replied. “I can’t even talk to him. You know I’ve got this diabetes thing going on. I don’t even dare tell him when I’m afraid. He’ll just try to take on all my fear for me. He’s like that, always taking on everyone else’s stuff, never dealing with his own.”
“And then there’re the murders,” Wayne put in.
Jerry sighed, long and deep. Finally, he nodded.
“And then there are the murders. I was hoping you guys would have this all wrapped up. Not that there’s any reason you should; it’s just that I’m desperate. It was bad enough when that kid committed suicide.” He shook his head. “And that thing with his sister.” Jerry sighed again.
“His sister?” I prompted, propelled by a tiny squirt of adrenaline. Did his sister have something to do with all of this?
“Oh, you didn’t know about that?” he asked. Then he answered his own question. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. Garrett never talks about his own problems…His sister was killed by a hit-and-run driver when he was a kid. He never got over it. And this thing with Steve is bringing up all the bad memories. It was a big newspaper thing when Garrett’s sister was killed. She was just seventeen, and she was pregnant. None of the family had known about the pregnancy. It wasn’t like her. She got good grades, wanted to be a nurse, all of that stuff. And then, bam! It was all over. And to top it all off, reporters hounded Garrett’s mother while she was still grieving. It was a really bad scene.”
It sounded like a bad scene. And then I wondered, could Steve Summers have been one of those reporters on that bad scene? Garrett was a good fifteen years younger than Steve. It was possible.
“How old was Garrett when this all happened?” I asked.
“Thirteen years old. He calls it his unlucky year.”
Yep, it was possible.
“Did Garrett ever say anything to you about Steve Summers?” I asked.
“Just general stuff. He liked him. Thought he was ethical.”
My mouth wanted to ask if Garrett had recognized Steve Summers as one of the reporters that had made his mother’s life miserable, or if Garrett had even stalked Steve Summers (all the way to Heartlink?), or—the biggie—had Garrett killed Steve for the pain he’d caused. But my brain told me that you don’t ask someone’s lover those questions.
“Did they ever find the hit-and-run driver?” I asked instead.
Jerry shook his head. “White man, black neighborhood. That’s what all the newspaper fuss was about. But no one ever got any further than that on figuring out who the driver was.”
“Did Garrett ever try to find out?” my aunt asked.
“Yeah, he asked around. But no one really saw anything but a big, expensive car.”
“Speaking of cars,” I began slowly. “I heard you used to drive race cars.”
Jerry smiled, and the smile looked genuine. “Whoa, those were the days,” he said. “Racing was my life—well, besides sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, that is. It was the late Sixties. You know, they say that if you can remember the Sixties, you probably weren’t there.” Then he guffawed, and I felt like I was seeing the real Jerry Urban again.
“Sometimes, I think it’s just because Garrett is so young that he’s so damn earnest,” he added. “He didn’t have fun during the Sixties like the rest of us.”
“Hey,” I plunged in again, trying to stop my mind from doing a roll call of all the people who didn’t have fun in the Sixties, most of them in Vietnam. “We have a friend in common, Barbara Chu. She says you’re a real practical joker.”
“You know Barbara?” he asked, his voice squeaking. He slapped his knee. “That woman’s a hoot! Helped me wire up the talking drinking fountain. You shoulda seen the people spit out the water in their mouths. Now, she knows how to have fun.”
I nodded. I should have known that Barbara would have helped with Jerry’s jokes.
“Jerry?” Aunt Dorothy asked quietly. “Do you think that Garrett’s depression might have something to do with these murders? Perhaps he might have some idea of the murderer’s identity.”
My heart seemed to stop. Was that it? Had my aunt stumbled on the reason for Garrett’s mood change?
Jerry’s good-natured face wrinkled in concentration as he stared at the floor.
“He hasn’t said anything like that,” he muttered, as if to himself. “He would have told me…I think.”
“Are you really sure?” Dorothy persisted.
Jerry looked up again and met her eyes.
“No, I’m not,” he declared, standing abruptly. “But I’m gonna find out, right now.”
And then he strode back to the front door.
“Let us know!” my aunt called after him as he took the stairs.
“You’ll be the first!” he promised. And then he walked down the driveway, climbed into his BMW, and disappeared in a low hum of precision engineering. I thought of Wayne’s Jaguar and sighed.
“We all need to cheer up,” Aunt Dorothy announced.
“It would be nice to know who the murderer was,” I put in hopefully. For all I knew, she had it figured out already.
“You really think Garrett might know?” Wayne added, his face as hopeful as mine.
But Dorothy just shook her head.
“Garrett would be upset if he suspected the murderer’s identity, but that’s no proof that he does,” she reminded us.
“Oh,” I said. Then I remembered Garrett’s sister. “What if Steve was one of the reporters who covered the hit-and-run?” I asked. “Would that be enough motive?”
“What if Steve drove the hit-and-run car?” my aunt countered.
My mouth dropped open. I hadn’t even thought of that possibility.
Wayne shook his head hard.
“Garrett just isn’t a murderer,” he proclaimed.
“Then who is?” I fired back.
Wayne looked stung. Sometimes I wished he had thicker skin. Sometimes I wished I could sew my mouth shut.
“Listen,” Aunt Dorothy chirped. “I’ll bet we can all use a change of pace. Let’s all go do something
fun—”
“That sounds—” I began.
“—like look at wedding books,” she finished up.
“Wedding books!” I objected. “But Aunt Dorothy, we have a murder to solve.”
“I am quite capable of multitasking, Katie,” she told me. She didn’t shake her finger my way, but she might as well have.
I turned to Wayne. He turned his grinning face away. Well, at least she’d made someone happy.
I wondered if she would believe there were no bookstores in Marin.
“Kate, how about that little store in Horquillo?” Wayne suggested helpfully. “They have a big section on wedding planning.”
My mouth dropped open again. If I kept this up, I’d have more than one reason to sew it shut. But I just couldn’t believe that Wayne had noticed they had a section on wedding planning. I certainly hadn’t. And worse yet, I realized it was possible that he had actually browsed there.
“Oh, that sounds perfect,” Dorothy declared, standing.
“Aunt Dorothy,” I began.
“What, dear?” she asked.
“Um, this wedding stuff, I just don’t know whether I’m really up for—”
“That’s exactly why you need to research,” my aunt assured me with a big smile. “It must seem overwhelming, but any task can be broken down to its component parts. And some of these books can be very helpful.”
Wayne was standing now, too. What was I supposed to do? Faint? Demand to go to the hospital? Claim aliens had arrived to abduct me? It was no use.
“I’ll drive,” I muttered glumly.
Wayne obviously didn’t hear me. When we got out to the driveway, he was in the driver’s seat as fast as Felix Byrne pouncing on a good story. Maybe he was afraid I would hijack the car. In fact, that was a good idea. Too bad I wasn’t faster than he was.
Once we were rolling, I worked on the multitasking.
“So, Aunt Dorothy, who’s your best bet for murderer so far?” I asked.
“Well, I can think of a motive for everyone in the Heartlink group, and for their sigos,” she began.
“You can?” I exclaimed. She was a lot farther along than I was. “Like what?”
“Well, Van Eisner is obviously paranoid about his drug problem,” she pointed out. I nodded. That was a no-brainer. “Carl Russo would do anything to protect his son. And his son is none too stable, judging from appearances. Ted Kimmochi has secrets he doesn’t want his wife to know. Is she, perhaps, the money as well as the brains in their little partnership? Even Helen—”
“Look at that,” Wayne interrupted, pointing. We were passing a boy on a bicycle with a six-inch crystal tied to his shoulder by a black Velcro strap.
Dorothy laughed.
“Only in California,” Wayne told her.
They were bonding. Ack.
“And Helen?” I prompted.
“No more talk about murder,” Dorothy ordered. “We’re out here to cheer up.”
And then she proceeded to talk about wedding books. Funny, I’d never thought of murder as a relatively cheerful subject before now.
“So, I suggest a comprehensive book,” she was finishing up when Wayne turned the Toyota into the small, shrubbery-bordered Horquillo shopping center where he’d spotted the wedding books. There were no places directly in front of the bookstore, so Wayne parked across the lot, in front of the empty space where a yardage store had once been.
“The book by Murray Lynne is the most comprehensive, I think,” Dorothy continued after the two of us had exited the car.
She linked her arm in mine, and we began to cross the lot together while Wayne locked the Toyota. We were almost to the bookstore when I heard a car gunning its motor. I turned to look for Wayne. He was in the exact center of the small lot, in an aisle between two rows of cars, his eyes lowered thoughtfully as he ambled along.
A black car came barreling down the aisle in his direction.
“Wayne!” I screamed.
He looked up, but he looked at me, not at the car. And he stopped moving.
I reached him in three leaps, and I shoved him with everything I had. He flew through the air, out of danger from the car that was almost on us. Then I dropped to the ground and rolled away from the shrieking engine, smelling exhaust fumes. As I rolled, I remembered something important: I had to get the license plate number of that car.
But the car was gone by the time I raised myself to sitting position again. I could hear the roar of its engine speeding away, but I couldn’t see it over the shrubbery surrounding the shopping center.
If it hadn’t been for the aching of my body, and Wayne sitting stunned on the ground a few yards away from me, I would have thought I’d imagined the black car. But I hadn’t.
- Eighteen -
“That vehicle tried to run over Wayne,” my Aunt Dorothy announced from somewhere above me. Her voice sounded distant, as if from another planet.
I brought my own body back down to Earth, looked up, and took in the shock on my aunt’s elfin face. No, I hadn’t imagined the black car.
The last of my adrenaline rush faded away, leaving me weak. I closed my eyes. I was already on the ground. If I fainted—
“But Kate hit me first,” Wayne growled. My eyes popped back open. Wayne! He stood up, wincing at me. “Remind me not to ever make you really mad.” He limped toward me, held out his hand, and then whispered, “Thank you doesn’t cover it, Kate. Love you.”
“Oh, Wayne,” I answered. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I took his hand and let him lift me to a standing position. “Are you really hurt?”
“No, just a little bruised, ego more than body. All that karate training.” He shook his head. “Shouldn’t have let you throw me. Should have been underneath the wheels of a car. Hate it when I goof up like that.”
I giggled, then couldn’t believe I had. Wayne had almost been killed, for all I knew. I threw my arms around him and squeezed.
“Ouch,” we both said at once, and I let go.
“Oh, no, I didn’t look at the license plate!” Dorothy broke in, her voice sounding a little closer now. “Did either of you?”
Wayne and I looked into each others’ eyes, and shook our heads.
People were streaming into the parking lot now.
“What happened?” a tall woman in khaki demanded.
“Should we call an ambulance?” a shorter man in a Grateful Dead T-shirt asked.
“Did someone get hurt?” someone I couldn’t see threw in.
“It was a car; it almost hit that guy,” a red-haired teenager said, pointing Wayne’s way.
“On purpose?” asked the woman in khaki.
“Sure looked that way,” the guy in the Grateful Dead T-shirt answered.
“Did any of you get a license plate number?” Aunt Dorothy inquired politely.
But these people had more questions than answers. No one remembered the make of the car, just that it had been black. Or maybe dark blue. An American car, kind of big. No one saw the driver, though one woman thought she’d seen dark glasses and maybe a muffler or something. They were actually doing better than I was in the memory department; all I could remember was Wayne’s face as he’d looked at me and stood stock still in the path of the speeding car.
“What were you thinking about?” I asked him.
“Thinking about?”
“When the car was coming at you,” I explained. “You didn’t hear it. You didn’t see it.”
“Oh.” His skin grew pink. “I was thinking that I shouldn’t be so judgmental about all the secrets that people have been keeping. Secrets aren’t necessarily lies.”
I wondered whether Steve Summers would agree, but then people were asking questions again.
“D’ya wanna report this thing?” was the question that came through the loudest.
Did we?
“Perhaps we should call Captain Wooster,” Dorothy suggested.
“I’ll get my cell phone,” Wayne said. That’s when I knew he
was still shaken. The cell phone was in his Jaguar, not my lowly Toyota.
“Um, Wayne—” I began.
“Right,” he muttered. “No cell phone. Home.”
So, the three of us said goodbye to the sympathetic crowd that had gathered, got into my Toyota, and went home to call Captain Wooster.
On the way, Wayne, Dorothy, and I all argued over who should call the captain.
“I saw the most,” I put in.
“The car was aimed at me,” Wayne insisted.
“That young man won’t listen to you,” my aunt pointed out.
“I heard it first,” I tried again.
By the time we got home, we were all tired and cranky. But I was the fastest on my feet into the house, and I was dialing Captain Wooster’s number before Aunt Dorothy and Wayne even made it up the stairs. Unfortunately, the captain was in, and my call was put through to his office. I should have listened to my aunt.
First, I told him about going to Horquillo for wedding books. I should have never mentioned the “W” word.
“Weddings! Eve’s apples, do you have to marry the poor clod twice before you kill him or what?”
“I don’t even want to get married again,” I fired back. Then I looked over my shoulder. Dorothy and Wayne were just settling into the living room. I lowered my voice. “But that’s not the point. We were in this little shopping center, you know the one that used to have the yardage shop in Horquillo—”
“To get wedding books?”
“I…yes. Anyway, I heard this car—”
“Hell’s bells, just do up the wedding favors in cyanide and be done with it—”
“So this car came barreling down on Wayne, but I shoved him out of the way—” I pressed on.
“You’re saying this was in Horquillo?” Captain Wooster stopped me, his voice sounding almost happy for a moment.
“Yeah, and then I rolled away—”
“If this was in Horquillo, why are you calling me?” the captain demanded.
I closed my mouth for a minute to digest his words.
“Because this has to be related to Steve Summers’ murder—” I finally started up again.
“So you say. I say, let the Horquillo Police Department deal with it.”
A Sensitive Kind of Murder (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Page 20