Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “Like a curse or something?” I asked, still not understanding.

  “No, no. Not a curse,” Linda assured me. “Sometimes there’s no bad intent at all, um—”

  “Like at the throat, the fifth chakra, when someone wants you to stop talking,” Tory threw in helpfully. She had a bright, sunny smile on her face, and three guardian angel pins on the scarf wound around her black hair. “People try to cord me all the time. They want me to stop talking.” Somehow, that didn’t surprise me. I even managed a return smile.

  But then I felt a pressure, not unlike a cord, pressing on my own throat. I ran my finger around the inside of my turtleneck to get some air.

  “Yeah, kiddo,” Barbara whispered in my ear. “Like that. I feel it too.” Oh great. Barbara felt it too. Was this supposed to make me feel better?

  “See,” Linda tried again, her broad, weathered face compressed in concentration. “There can be all kinds of reasons for cords. Like mothers may unintentionally cord their children when they want them to keep family secrets, that kinda stuff.”

  Linda wrapped her arms around herself, looking like a child. Was she talking about her own mother? I took a closer look at Linda, plump and sweet, her face loaded with laugh lines and freckles and too many teeth. Could anyone with a face like that be something other than what they seemed?

  “Or husbands,” Elsa put in. “Whooee, husbands lay it on their wives. Not that it ever stopped this ole lady any. If they cord me, I just tell ‘em to take it back.”

  “And of course, there’s always the possibility of cords from murderers to stop those who speak of murder,” Justine suggested gently, quietly.

  There was a short silence as we digested this. Damn. The whole room felt spooky now. I’m sure I would have felt more comfortable visiting the Addams Family mansion. Give me a physical cobweb rather than a metaphysical one any day. And this place was forebrain deep in metaphysical cobwebs. Someone swallowed loudly. I whipped my head around, wondering who it was. Rich? Or Denise? I couldn’t tell.

  “But who’s cording you, Justine?” Barbara asked suddenly, looking around the room. “Who?”

  A cat yowled from the kitchen. I didn’t think it was a confession.

  “I don’t know, girlfriend,” Justine murmured. “I just don’t know. And it’s scaring me. All of what I know feels useless to me right now.”

  “No, honey,” Linda said softly, rubbing Justine’s back with the palm of her hand. “It’s not useless. You’re not useless.”

  “Listen to Linda,” Elsa ordered Justine, her rasping voice filled with the weight of her years now. “She loves you and she’s right. You know how to heal. You’ve got common sense. I like that in a girl.” She coughed in her hand. “This murder thing’s beyond all of us. You can’t clear the soul of someone who’s battier than an attic. You can’t even find them. They’re out of your range if their mind’s that far gone.”

  “Maybe Rogerio can find the murderer,” Tory suggested.

  Then I heard a sigh, but I couldn’t place its origin any more than I had been able to place the swallow. Or than Justine had been able to place the psychic corder. Or the murderer, assuming they were one and the same.

  Tory tilted her head again. If I’d known how to cord her, I would have. Linda left the room quietly as Tory opened her mouth.

  “Rogerio would like to speak,” Tory informed us.

  “So let the boy talk,” Elsa put in impatiently.

  Tory narrowed her eyes, but then complied. “Rogerio says he doesn’t know who’s cording people. But he says to be careful.”

  Elsa began to laugh. Tory turned to her.

  “Whooee, that boy sure hasn’t learned much in angel school, has he, hon?” Elsa laughed again.

  “I fail to see—” Tory began, but Elsa clearly hadn’t had her say yet.

  “Don’t know why we’d expect any more common sense outta that guardian angel of yours than anyone else,” she continued. “Far as I can tell, these angels might even be retarded, sticking around on this plane anyway. I mean, aren’t they supposed to be moving on to their next lifetime or something?”

  “Rogerio is finished speaking,” Tory told us. She didn’t have to add that Rogerio was miffed. Her glare at Elsa was enough.

  “We need to talk about Silk,” Justine reminded us. “What, if any, information can we share that might help us find her murderer?”

  No one spoke up.

  “Look, the woman’s dead,” Gil finally said. “So I say move on with the living—”

  Zarathustra turned away from the wall and pinned Gil with his angry gaze. In fact, he silenced us all, six feet of teenaged rage in black leather, chains, and studs.

  “Man, you are a scrub,” he began, his voice deceptively soft. But then it rose, and he rose with it, seeming even taller as he went on. His raisin-black skin stretched taut across his high cheekbones. “You want to be a player, but all you got swinging for you is bread, man. And you don’t even have that. You’re punkin’ everyone here and dissin’ Silk on top of it. You be movin’ on death row, man. Don’t you have any pride?”

  “I just—” Gil began.

  “You just been sippin and brown-nosin’ everyone here, man. You think they’d give you the skit even if they cared? Silk was killed, man, killed. And you be jawsin’ about nothin’. Silk was a grinder, but at least she had some pride. She was cool. You, man, you’re less than Silk ever was.”

  Gil didn’t even try to answer. His jaw hung open like someone had cut the strings that usually held it in place.

  “Zara,” Justine said gently.

  “I love you, Aunt Justine,” Zarathustra returned, his voice soft again. “But I can’t take this jawsin’ anymore. Silk was real, man. She was alive. She was making her stand. You just find her murderer, okay?”

  And with that last sentence, he was out the door, slamming it so hard that a faint dusting of plaster drifted down from the ceiling.

  In the silence that followed his departure, I thought I heard the sound of a motorcycle being kick-started. Then Gil closed his mouth.

  Linda came back through the kitchen door with a plate of cookies. At least it wasn’t eucalyptus leaves.

  “Zara will be okay,” she assured us all. “He’s just sacred.”

  Well, I was scared too.

  “I just—” Gil began again.

  “Cookies, anyone?” Linda cut him off. Just the slightest scent of almond leavened the eucalyptus still overloading the air. Had she baked those cookies herself? Despite the spookiness of the occasion, my salivary glands seemed to be functioning.

  “But Zara was right on one thing,” Linda continued. “The truth is important here.” She turned to Rich McGowan and looked into his face. “Have a cookie?” she offered.

  Rich took a cookie and stared at it like he didn’t know what it was. Then he straightened his thin shoulders.

  “I have to tell the truth,” he announced, raising the cookie in his hand like a banner.

  The communal gaze of all those present turned to Rich McGowan. Was he going to confess to Silk’s murder?

  “I came to your group under false pretenses,” he said, his voice gaining speed and volume as he went. “I was here as an investigator. I can’t tell you what agency. But it was about a charge of practicing medicine without a license.”

  No one answered him. No one even looked surprised.

  “So?” Gil said.

  Rich turned to Gil. “So, I’m sorry,” he replied simply.

  “Of course you are,” Linda told him. “You’re a good, kind person.”

  Rich blushed now.

  Linda turned to Elsa and offered her a cookie. But Elsa didn’t confess to anything.

  Linda was almost to me with the cookies when Rich turned to Denise, panic distorting his weaselly face.

  “I forgot you do a radio show,” he whispered.

  “And?” Denise replied, her girlish face aged by a deep frown, though her voice was as smooth and soothing as alw
ays.

  “You’re not going to talk about me on your show, are you?” Rich demanded. He tugged at his curly hair. “I took a risk admitting the truth tonight. I could be fired—”

  “Good grief, I wouldn’t do that,” Denise assured him. Her face seemed to soften. She smoothed the sleeves of her neat little blouse, patting the Peter Pan collar. “Privacy is important to me, Mr. McGowan. Very important. I don’t peek into the corners of other people’s lives. The show isn’t about that. My guests come on my show to air their own views. I just listen. The things they say, well, you just wouldn’t believe it sometimes.” She pursed her lips, then let her voice flow on. No wonder she was in radio. No camera would record her lips pursing or her hands clasping. Only her velvet voice would come through the speakers. “I wouldn’t air my own dirty laundry like that, believe me,” she told Rich. “Or yours.”

  “Well, thank you,” Rich said. “Thank you for your ethics.”

  Denise looked as if she was going to reply to Rich’s words of gratitude, but Gil spoke up before she could.

  “So, what’s the use of all this psychic stuff if you can’t figure out Lotto numbers?” he asked.

  “Mr. Nesbit?” Justine inquired, in a low voice I would never have argued with. “Did you hear one word my nephew had to say to you?”

  “But he was—”

  “Angry, Mr. Nesbit,” Justine finished for him. “And justifiably so, no matter what language he is using to express himself at seventeen years of age.”

  “Oh,” Gil sighed, apparently defeated.

  Linda finally got to me with the cookies. I took one and bit in, the homey taste of almond and vanilla dispelling some of the heaviness in the room. But not all of it.

  “Could I have a cookie?” Gil asked.

  Linda gave him a cookie…and a lecture.

  “Have you ever thought how neat it would be to be able to transcend the mundane emotionally and spiritually?”

  Gil shook his head, biting into the cookie.

  “Forget the Lotto, Gil,” Linda advised him. “Think about all the neat possibilities. Infinite possibilities. Suppose you could talk directly to the body and find out what was wrong with it? Suppose you could talk to the psyche? And suppose you could heal those wounds, too?”

  Rich’s shoulders jerked. He was probably hearing just the kind of words he’d been sent to investigate. If he’d had a notebook, I’m sure he would have reached for it. But Justine gave him a look, and his shoulders slumped again.

  “Think as simply as a cat, Gil,” Linda went on. “Cats don’t worry about the Lotto.”

  They might if they thought it would buy them better cat food, I reflected.

  “Linda,” Barbara said eagerly. “I know Justine’s cats couldn’t tell you who killed Silk because they were confused, but maybe Kate’s cat could talk to them.”

  My cat, I thought, my cat. C. C. would just have Tibia and Femur for lunch.

  “Oooh, that’s a great idea, Barbara,” Linda agreed. She turned to Justine. “Would that be okay, honeybunch?”

  Justine nodded, but I had a feeling she had about as much enthusiasm as I did for the project. Linda was a clairvoyant veterinarian, however. She and Barbara were both purring now, discussing the possibilities.

  “And then the kitties will talk—”

  “And then Kate can talk to C. C.—”

  Kate talk to C. C? That’d be a first.

  “And then, maybe they’ll be able to tell us—”

  “Is it okay if we adjourn now?” Justine asked suddenly, her voice breaking into the kitty lovefest. Linda was by her side in a minute, patting her shoulder, stroking her arm. “I’m getting a lot of fear and anger and guilt from the group. And I can’t blame you. We’re all freaked by recent events. But it’s somewhat overwhelming.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I agreed quickly. The heaviness of the room was still tugging at me. Or was it the heaviness of a particular individual in the room?

  And then I took a good look at Justine. There was a gray tinge to her beautiful brown skin. I realized she must be feeling that heaviness far more than I was.

  “We’ll go now,” I said and turned to Barbara. And then I saw that Barbara didn’t look well either, for all of her talk of kitties.

  I grabbed Barbara by the hand, compelled to drag her out of this room, with all of its smoke and fear.

  But even then, as we walked to the door, Barbara stopped to ask Artemisia if we could talk to her in the next day or two. Artemisia lifted her ravaged face and grudgingly agreed to meet us any day after four o’clock, maybe.

  And then we were out the door into the fresh, clean air, walking down Justine’s stone path as fast as we could go without actually running. It was twilight now, usually my favorite time of the day, when the sky turns colors that seem otherworldly. But that evening, otherworldly didn’t appeal. I just wanted to go home. Even if I had to ride in Barbara’s Volkswagen bug.

  But I didn’t even make it into the bug before Barbara grabbed me by the elbow and brought me to a halt.

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s up to us to visit Isabelle,” she told me.

  “No, Barbara,” I begged. “Don’t do this to me.”

  Her face was set like a stone Buddha’s.

  “Why us?” I pleaded.

  “What if she’s hurt or something?” Barbara said.

  “Call the police,” I replied desperately. “Ask someone else—”

  “Kate, I think that’s why we’re here,” Barbara broke in. And her eyes were serious.

  “What, for predestined suffering?” I asked.

  Barbara laughed, but tightly. Way too tightly. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like Barbara’s mood. I didn’t like what it implied. I wanted to go home.

  “We need to find out why she’s silent,” Barbara told me, as if her opinion were a fact.

  “I can’t do this to Wayne,” I tried.

  “Do what to Wayne?” she came back. Her voice was as reasonable as her request was not.

  “I can’t be involved in this,” I said, keeping my own voice even, forcing the panic out. “It’s dangerous.”

  “You’re scared,” she accused.

  “No, I’m not. All right, I am.” I sighed. “I’m scared by things I don’t understand. And I don’t understand this psychic thing at all. I don’t understand the feelings I get when I’m in your little group. I don’t understand cording. I don’t understand why someone was murdered. It’s all too spooky for me, Barbara, way too spooky. I feel…I feel—”

  I stopped as a light breeze rose up. Spirits, cording, murder. I shivered and held myself. Held myself away from the darkness I felt growing around me.

  “Listen, kiddo,” Barbara replied gently, “I’m afraid too. But I’m calling on everything I know to help me.”

  “But you can do that!” I exploded. “I can’t. I’m out of my depth here. The murder on top of everything else is too much—”

  “Kate, how is your tai chi?” Barbara asked me.

  Before I could question the change in subject, I realized I’d probably miss my tai chi class this evening. I should have gone. I imagined myself doing the form in moments: breathing in balance, finding my center, sinking, turning, shifting…

  I barely heard Barbara when she spoke again.

  “Good,” she told me. “You’re ready. You have your protection. I have mine.”

  “You mean, for Isabelle’s house?” I asked like a child.

  “For everything,” she pronounced, hugging me with a sincerity that felt like a blessing.

  Sometimes Barbara reminded me of Glinda the Good Witch, at least when she didn’t remind me of the Wicked Witch of the West.

  So we drove to Isabelle’s house.

  We opened Isabelle’s little gate in a dreamlike silence and walked up the pansy-lined cement path to her front door. Deja vu, without a view. The sky had darkened to a navy blue now. The walk up the path seemed sinister in the dark, pansies or not. Barb
ara rang the doorbell and no one answered.

  My hand reached for the doorknob without my permission.

  It turned. I looked at Barbara. She nodded, her face grim.

  I pushed the door open and walked into a dark room. The smell should have warned me that something was wrong. It did warn me. But I ran anyway, toward Isabelle.

  Isabelle Viseu sat in an easy chair, her head slumped forward, dry rust stains on her salt-and-pepper hair. Only they weren’t rust. Suddenly the colors in the darkened room were intensely clear, even shimmering.

  Dried blood, I realized, my thoughts shimmering as well. How long? my mind asked. Had she been dead and alone every time we’d visited? I heard the thrumming of passing cars filtering through the still-open front door, sounds so incongruous with the sight in front of us.

  Because there was no question in my mind that Isabelle was good and dead now. No question at all. After a time that might have been a minute or an hour, I turned, centered myself, and stepped toward the open door with Barbara at my side.

  Barbara was right. I’d needed my tai chi. And I was going to need it even more as we stepped back out into the world.

  - Thirteen -

  Barbara and I walked slowly and silently back across the street and stepped up onto the sidewalk next to her Volkswagen.

  “I should…” she began, but her voice drizzled away into the cool night air.

  “We could…” I tried. But I didn’t know how to finish the sentence any better than Barbara had.

  I looked into her eyes, usually so different from my own, and saw a mirrored reflection of my own shock and confusion. And then suddenly we were both hugging and crying and sniffling all over each other. Once we were all cried out, we released each other as tentatively as new lovers.

  “We have to call the police,” I said finally.

  Barbara didn’t answer me, though I know she heard me. We did have to call the police. But where would we call them from? Isabelle Viseu’s living room? I’d seen a phone there. But…My mind reviewed Isabelle’s body, slumped in her easy chair, the rust-colored stains on her salt-and-pepper hair. I clenched my teeth, grinding them to banish the image. But it wasn’t that easy. The image was too vivid, too new.