Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “I’d forgotten about his new girlfriend up until now. But even if she is his girlfriend, why should she be upset about me?” I asked. “I’ve never even met her. And the other night is the first time I’ve even seen Craig in ages. Bonnie’s the one he split up with—”

  “But Bonnie’s the wrong woman,” Barbara threw in.

  “How’d you know that?” Wayne asked.

  Barbara rolled her eyes up into their sockets until her irises were invisible and murmured, “Voodoo.” Then she laughed maniacally.

  And Wayne laughed with her. Sometimes, I just don’t get it.

  “Listen, Wayne,” Barbara suggested. “Why don’t I rustle you up some food and then take Kate out to dinner. She needs a break.”

  I looked at her unbelievingly.

  But Wayne was nodding. “Kate’s been working too hard. Doing her business, taking care of me. She needs some time off.”

  “But—” I began.

  Barbara gave me a look that silenced me. She was getting me out of the house without suspicion.

  “How’s some pasta with chicken in white wine sauce sound?” she asked Wayne.

  I looked at her again. Pasta? Wine sauce? Barbara didn’t cook any more than I did. But apparently she could dial the phone. Because that’s what she did, and the takeout service promised the chicken pasta within a half hour.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” I muttered.

  “You’re not psychic?” Wayne whispered into my ear. I settled back against him. He was so warm, and yielding, and he smelled so much like…like Wayne.

  “Craig could never be you,” I whispered back.

  We shared a quick kiss as Barbara added a quart of minestrone to her order. An order which Wayne insisted on paying for when it came, thirty minutes of pleasant conversation later. Barbara can be really scary when she’s good. I’d almost forgotten the murders, and the paint, by that time.

  Barbara and I left the house once I was sure Wayne had food and water and apple juice. And another kiss.

  “Go,” he insisted, shooing me away. “Maybe you two can take in a movie.”

  So, Barbara and I left with one backward glance at the paint-splattered door. I’d clean it tomorrow, I told myself, guiltily.

  The door opened just as I was looking at it, and Wayne peeked out.

  “Take good care of her,” he commanded Barbara.

  “Always,” Barbara answered with a salute, and a wink.

  My mind was so scrambled that I got into Barbara’s Volkswagen bug when she opened the door for me.

  We were already on the road when I thought to ask, “So who did throw the paint on my door?”

  “Craig’s new sweetie’s my guess,” she answered with a long stare my way.

  We drifted into oncoming traffic.

  I didn’t say another word until were safely parked in the lot of the new Fresh! restaurant.

  Fresh! had an innovative menu. That was for sure. Fashioned like a palm-sized chapbook of poetry, it described each dish lovingly in verse:

  Wild mushrooms

  tamed

  by the love of lemon vinaigrette

  finally at rest

  on a bed of greens and noodles.

  Fresh! had either put a lot of money into a writer for their menus, or the owner was a frustrated poet. I suspected the latter. The tables were covered in white paper, the walls covered in art. A sort of perverted El Greco style permeated the paintings. The owner again? Or a relative?

  I wondered if the El Greco elongation was intentional or whether the artist had vision problems.

  I stared at one particular painting, trying to figure out if the entwined figures were actually engaged in copulation or just tangled up.

  “Ready to order?” sounded in my ear.

  I swallowed a less than tasteful scream, dropped my eyes, then flipped through the chapbook frantically for something vegetarian. And edible.

  Barbara ordered first, reciting a ballad of prawns provençale with garlic and wine. Then it was my turn to read aloud.

  I cleared my throat nervously, then spoke:

  Sun-baked tofu with honeyed mustard

  on a clear blue tortilla day

  waiting and wanting

  kalamata olives, and sweet peppers

  yes.

  “Excellent,” the waitress commented. I raised my eyes. She looked just like Mrs. Telfer, my fifth-grade teacher, only she wore a dashiki. She smiled down at me. “Good voice, good choice,” she added.

  I waited until Mrs. Telfer’s clone was out of earshot before I turned back to Barbara.

  “Where do you find these places?” I whispered urgently.

  “Kate,” she whispered back. “Notice we’re nearly the only ones here?” I turned and surveyed the room. There were two other couples seated. She was right. “We can talk here.”

  “But can we eat here?” I asked.

  “Food’s great,” she assured me, back to a normal voice. It was true that I could smell something deliciously garlicky being sauteed in the kitchen. “And we can do our chart on the tablecloth.” She pointed at the paper covering our table. I heard a masculine voice yelling out, “prawns provo and tofu blue.”

  “What chart?” I asked.

  “Of the suspects,” she explained slowly, as if I were, well, in the fifth grade. My brain did feel fuzzy. Or maybe it was too full. Full of red paint and suspects and duplicity. And questions. Was our waitress Mrs. Telfer’s grown daughter?

  “Earth to Kate,” Barbara called.

  “What?” I snapped, and shivered for no particular reason.

  “Look,” she told me and drew a circle in the center of the paper tablecloth. She wrote “Silk” in the circle, but left room for more. “What do we know about Silk Sokoloff?”

  “She was a writer,” I ventured.

  “Good puppy,” Barbara commended me and penciled “writer” under Silk’s name.

  “She knew Justine,” I added.

  “Right.” Barbara drew another circle for Justine and connected them with a line.

  “She knew Zarathustra,” I went on. All right, this was easier than reading menu offerings aloud.

  By the time our Mrs. Telfer clone/waitress brought back our orders, Barbara had filled the tablecloth with circles for each of the participants in the psychic soiree. And made lines between them, and to Silk. Justine had a line to Silk and to almost everyone else. Zarathustra had a line to Justine, Linda, and Silk. Linda had reciprocal lines. Tory, Artemisia, Isabelle, and Elsa all had dotted lines to Silk, indicating their minimal relationship through the soiree. And Denise had a double line to Silk indicating her previous relationship with the dead woman. Only Rich McGowan and Gil Nesbit were unconnected. It had been a first visit for both of them.

  “And neither of them knew Silk,” I was saying.

  “As far as we know,” Barbara corrected me. “Okay, now we fill in the circles. Artemisia?”

  “Nuts,” I offered.

  Barbara wrote “nuts” under Artemisia’s name, saying, “We gotta visit that woman soon.”

  “Denise?” Barbara asked.

  “Hates her job,” I free-associated.

  Barbara filled it in.

  “Tory?”

  “Too much money.”

  “Rich McGowan?”

  “Secret agent man—”

  From behind us came an interruption:

  Prawns provençale

  longing to be more

  but asking so little, really

  garlic, wine

  and your lips.

  I looked up at our waitress, suddenly pitying her as she plopped Barbara’s plate on the circle that had been Elsa Oberg and dived into her recitation of tofu. I had to read for my meal once. She had to sing suppers all night long.

  My plate landed on Gil Nesbit.

  Barbara was right. The food was good. The honey-mustard sauce on the tofu was perfect, rolled in the blue tortillas with olives and sweet peppers and a few more ingredients
that hadn’t made it into the poem.

  We stuffed our faces and moved our plates around as necessary to make more notes on the chart. I ate my meal carefully, avoiding honey-mustard spills. Justine had been the closest to Silk, at least on the surface. And she had arranged the soiree. But I don’t think either Barbara or I really wanted to suspect Justine. And Linda had been almost as close to Silk, and twice as spacey. Now, Zarathustra was a case. Silk had taunted him, a young man caught up in the throes of angst and possible violence that teenaged hormones can trigger. But Barbara pronounced him sweet. All right, I agreed, he was sweet. But still…We both agreed that Tory was suspiciously cheerful, and Artemisia was suspiciously depressed. I asked Barbara if the two women were friends. Should there be a line between their circles? Gil Nesbit—”

  “Another one we have to visit, kiddo,” Barbara put in. “He’s a jerk—”

  “But does jerk mean murderous?” I asked through a mouthful of tofu and olives.

  Barbara threw up her hands. “Whaddaya think I am, psychic?”

  “Mrmph,” I muttered through another bite. The joke was no longer funny.

  “And don’t forget Denise, Kate,” Barbara moved on. “She knew Silk before.”

  “And Isabelle and Elsa and almost everyone else knew her after,” I replied in frustration. I slapped my hand on the paper tablecloth. “So what are we looking for?”

  “A connection.”

  I looked down at the chart.

  “I see too many connections.”

  “A secret connection,” Barbara went on.

  “But how do we find out if there’s a secret connection?” I could barely keep from screaming.

  “Okay, kiddo,” Barbara conceded. “Let’s look at this from another angle. There are plenty of methods we haven’t tried.”

  “The rack,” I suggested. Barbara thought for a moment, furrowing her brow ever so slightly.

  “I was kidding, Barbara,” I told her slowly.

  “Still…” she said.

  “What other methods?” I asked, changing the subject quickly. I didn’t know if electricians had access to racks, and I didn’t want to know.

  “Okay, make a drawing of the room and then place rocks where everyone was sitting—”

  “Yeah?”

  “And then we see which one moves.”

  “Which one of the rocks moves? By itself?”

  “Okay, okay,” Barbara went on. “There’s still the cat toy. We take it and put it around your neck—”

  “Not that idea again!” I objected, raising my hand to my neck protectively. “Why don’t we put the cat toy around your neck?”

  “Because if you put the cat toy around my neck, you’ll probably actually strangle me.”

  I smiled. The idea had its appeal.

  “Kate!” Barbara shouted, and I came out of my reverie.

  “What?” I asked.

  She looked at her watch.

  “It’s time to go to Justine’s,” she told me.

  The drive to Justine’s was a long one, or maybe it just seemed that way, with all the honking and swerving. By the time we got out of the Volkswagen, I was holding my stomach to keep its contents in place.

  But when we walked up the stone path to Justine’s redwood-shingled cottage, I felt a new sense of strength entering me. Something would happen tonight. I could just tell.

  Justine’s living room was filled with people and the smell of incense when we arrived. Linda stood by Justine’s side, patting her shoulder. I wondered why. Zarathustra was staring at the wood paneling on the wall. Artemisia had the stunned look of a politician caught by a photographer’s camera. Tory smiled cozily. Denise stood quietly to the side of the room, surveying us with the detachment of the professional observer. Rich stood near her, his face only slightly less gray than it had been earlier in the day. And Elsa was across from Rich.

  “Sure, hon,” Elsa was saying to Rich. “I know this spook stuff doesn’t set well with you, but take it from this ole lady, you ain’t seen nothing yet!”

  The thought didn’t seem to cheer Rich any. He stepped back from Elsa as if pushed.

  Gil Nesbit, on the other hand, sidled up to Elsa with a smile on his smarmy lips. “Got any hot Lotto tips?” he asked.

  “Yeah, save your money in a bank,” she replied and guffawed. “You’d be amazed at the interest.”

  But my eyes were on Justine and Linda. Something was wrong. I could see it in the tightness of Justine’s dark eyes. And in Linda’s worried glances at Justine and her accompanying pats.

  Finally Justine spoke. “Well, we’re all here,” she began. “Except for one of us.”

  At first, I thought she meant Silk. But she didn’t.

  “I’m worried,” she explained. “I can’t get hold of Isabelle Viseu.”

  - Twelve -

  It’s not good when a psychic is worried, especially one as powerful as Justine Howe. Even I knew that.

  The whole room had gone silent with Justine’s pronouncement. Justine stood straight and tall in fuchsia leggings and a long beaded turquoise sweater. Her hair as usual was tightly braided to the back of her head where it exploded into tight curls. But the expression on her broad-boned face was not festive. Her large, dark eyes looked like they were in mourning. She took a deep, yogic breath. What did she mean, she couldn’t get hold of Isabelle Viseu?

  I rubbed my arms, suddenly cold. I wanted to be somewhere else, out of this room. I looked at the now-familiar walls of knotty pine and grass cloth and wished myself through the fluffy white-curtained windows. Wished myself into an uncomplicated world. But wishing didn’t take me out of the room or away from its discomforting inhabitants. And they were discomforting, or at least discomforted. The scent of uneasiness permeated the room along with the incense.

  Apparently Artemisia wasn’t pleased with the aroma either. She stepped to a table and loaded a plate with what looked like dried leaves, lighting them with a swift flick of a long kitchen match before anyone had a chance to question her, much less to stop her. The leaves burned and smoldered and smoked, as she carried the plate ceremonially around the room until the space was filled to choking with the scent of what I now recognized as eucalyptus leaves. The good news was that all the other smells were erased. The bad news was that the air was now unbreathable. Rich McGowan began coughing first. And then Gil. I’d joined in the hacking when Artemisia began to speak.

  “Curse Be Lifted,” she intoned, her pinched eyes pinpoints through the smoke. “Spirits Be Gone.”

  Now I was chilled and coughing. Because a further heaviness descended on our group with her words. I couldn’t have named the heaviness. Fear, despair, anger? Or something else entirely. But it was as choking as the eucalyptus leaves.

  “Silk Be Gone!” Artemisia shouted, flicking her hand toward a window. Artemisia was still dressed for Wall Street in an expensive wool suit, her styled hair in place, but suddenly I imagined her as an ancient priestess. One I wouldn’t want to argue with.

  “Any of you guys ever go to Las Vegas to try your luck?” Gil Nesbit rasped out and then began to cough again.

  Artemisia didn’t answer him. I don’t think she even heard him.

  “There is One here who Murders,” she announced prophetically. Her voice deepened. “And that One will Suffer. There are Spells, but Spells may be Countered.”

  “This is too weird,” Gil put in. He’d finally said something I agreed with. Way too weird. I looked longingly toward the door, trying to catch Barbara’s eye. “Is this some kinda voodoo?” he asked.

  “Is it?” Artemisia returned his question. She turned her ravaged face on him, a modern mummy come to life, lipstick chewed from her lips, her eye makeup running. “What do you know of voodoo?”

  “Hey, hey. Listen, lady,” Gil protested. “All I want is some hot tips. Okay? It doesn’t have to be Lotto. Blackjack would be fine. Any of you guys play blackjack?”

  I wondered for a moment if Gil was for real. His all-American f
ace with those symmetrical features. The aviator glasses. Central casting for a nice young man. A nice young man with the sensitivity of a lizard. Maybe even less.

  “I once knew a good ole boy named Black Jack,” Elsa wheezed through the smoke. “But I guess you wouldn’t be interested in him. He rode the rodeo circuit.”

  Gil turned to Elsa, confusion on his all-American face now.

  “Hey, hon,” she told him gently. “Just trying for some common sense here.”

  “You can joke, but the Spirits are Here,” Artemisia warned. I wasn’t sure if the warning was directed at Elsa or Gil, but both of them were temporarily silenced.

  Linda moved toward Artemisia and took the plate of smoldering eucalyptus from her hands.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Linda said, her high voice belonging to another world also, but one I liked much better than Artemisia’s. Artemisia didn’t seem comforted, however.

  “There is a murderer in this room!” she insisted, her priestess voice lapsing into a wail. Linda put an arm around the woman’s shoulders as Artemisia began to cry.

  I looked at Barbara. She ignored me, and ignored my unspoken plea to leave.

  “Wait,” Tory ordered, tilting her head. “Rogerio wants to speak.”

  So we waited.

  And moments later, Rogerio delivered his verdict in Tory’s lowered voice. “Artemisia is right. The murderer is here.”

  I felt a rush of frantic energy like I’d put my foot out and missed a stair. I had a feeling it was a metaphysical stair I’d missed, but I didn’t have a clue which one. For an instant, I was glad I was in a room of psychics. They had to be able to sort this out. They just had to.

  “Then ask Rogerio who—” Rich McGowan began as I willed my frantic energy into something approaching relaxation. Something approaching it from a great distance.

  “Someone is cording me at the fifth,” Justine interrupted. She surveyed our group solemnly. The room reeked of eucalyptus and paranoia.

  “What’s cording?” I asked, tired of the mystification, tired of all the games that were being played. Anyway, what are a bunch of psychics worth if they can’t answer a few simple questions?

  “Oh, cordings are kinda like an emotional attachment that another person sends to you energetically,” Linda explained. Or at least she tried to. “You know, something you don’t want, but someone else wants to put on you, emotionally I mean. Or maybe spiritually…” Her high voice drifted off into the ether.