By the time I drove back over the Golden Gate Bridge and into my own driveway, I was tired. Somehow afternoon had become twilight and twilight had become night, that somehow being Barbara Chu of course. I watched my friend pull her Volkswagen out of my driveway and then turned back to my house, back to face Wayne. Even sick, Wayne must have noticed how long I was gone.
I trudged up the stairs, wondering who Silk Sokoloff had really been, beneath her façade. Was Mattie right, had Silk not even known herself?
I reached for the door and touched flesh instead. Live, moving flesh.
“Holy socks!” a familiar voice exploded. “What are you trying to do, drop me in the lilies? You scared the friggin’ goose bumps off of me!”
- Seventeen -
I jumped back from the door. Not only was the flesh live and moving, it was gibbering too.
My brain began to gibber in accompaniment even as I tried to breathe myself back to reason. It was dark and scary out here. And since when did doors talk?
“Hey, don’t go gonzo on me now!” the door ordered. “Are you tripping out or what—?”
“Felix,” I murmured, solving the puzzle. Doors talk when they are actually Felix Byrne. “Felix, why are you pressed up to the door like that?”
Even in the dark, I could see him now, his body pushed up against my front door like a Post-it on a memo.
“I’m looking at the friggin’ paint,” he said impatiently. “Looks like you’re deep in doo-doo with someone.”
When he turned away from the door, he smiled, his white teeth flashing like the Cheshire cat’s in the night. My bones began to ache, all the way down to the marrow. I’d forgotten about the paint. I’d even forgotten about Felix.
“So you found stiff number two, huh?” he asked quietly. “And presto-pronto, your door is covered in paint. Have any conclusions you’d like to share with your compadre?”
“No,” I answered firmly, wondering if there was a way I could get past Felix and into my house without actually having to push him, or maybe without even having to touch him at all. I was tired. The aching in my bone marrow extended to my head now, throbbing. And Wayne—
“You didn’t ring the doorbell, did you?” I asked, panic raising my voice. And my blood pressure.
“No, I didn’t touch the ringy-dingy,” he answered, his voice full of hurt, false hurt if I knew Felix, which unfortunately, I did. “What kinda geek do you think I am? Think I want to upset the big guy? Anyway, I was looking at the paint job.”
I stared at him for a minute, assessing my chances. A nice friendly push to the side and I could be in—
“So Mr. Gargoyle still doesn’t know about the stiffs, huh?” Felix hissed, his head jutted forward.
“Felix!” I yelped. I could smell wine and onions on his breath now. And determination.
But determination was not Felix’s alone. I was tired, and now I was angry. I moved toward Felix with menace on my mind. I wasn’t sure what had made me the most angry, Felix’s calling Wayne Mr. Gargoyle or his implicit threat to tell Wayne just what I was involved in. Still, I knew one thing, I wanted Felix gone. My hands came up without even asking my brain.
Felix moved back from the door before I reached it, though. Even pit bulls know when it’s time to retreat. Sometimes, anyway.
I put my key in the door and shoved it open. But before I could step onto the parquet flooring of my own entryway, Felix had slipped in ahead of me. I couldn’t believe it. Years of tai chi, and Felix could still beat me through the doorway? I didn’t even close the door as I followed Felix in. I was too tired, too discouraged.
“So give me the poop,” Felix demanded, standing in the tiny entryway with his arms crossed. His voice was low but insistent. “If you don’t, I’ll wake up the Incredible Hulk.”
He’d resorted to blackmail. Worse yet, effective blackmail. Everything in my body screamed to give in. But not my mind. I circled around Felix, trying to block him from further intrusion.
“There is no poop, Felix,” I whispered back then, flipping on the light switch next to me. “Barbara and I have talked to everyone, and we don’t know anything that we didn’t know before. That’s it.”
“Oh, come on.” He sneered. “What kinda potato-brain do you think I am? Two ladies under the lilies, and you found them both—”
“What two ladies?” a deeper voice asked from behind me.
“Oops, busted,” Felix hissed.
At least I didn’t jump through the ceiling. Though my stomach ended up tangled in the rafters. I just centered myself and turned, willing myself into a state of calm, a very difficult feat when fight-or-flight routines have been irrevocably activated.
“Hi, sweetie,” I greeted Wayne, my voice too squeaky. “Felix was just going.”
“Yeah, right, Big Guy,” Felix agreed, turning hastily.
Even in his p.j.’s, Wayne could intimidate Felix. Because even in his p.j.’s, Wayne was tall and muscular, almost hulking, and definitely threatening, traits that had served him well as a bodyguard. But not all of those traits were so appealing in a sweetie who might be angry, for good reason. The remaining internal organs in my body were twisting now. Even the homey smell of Vicks emanating from Wayne didn’t seem to help.
“Hold it, Felix,” Wayne ordered, his voice hoarse with pneumonia and implied danger.
Felix took Wayne’s order literally, standing with one foot suspended in the air like Wile E. Coyote about to plummet.
“Sit down,” Wayne said then. I wasn’t sure if he meant Felix or me, or both of us. He lowered his brows even further, his eyes unreadable, his scarred face suddenly thuggish. Was this the man whose forehead I had felt this morning, tenderly checking his temperature?
We all stepped from the parquet entryway into the living room. I sat down on the couch. Felix sat next to me. And Wayne lowered himself into a swinging chair. I saw the weakness in his limbs as he did. Big and intimidating maybe, but Wayne still wasn’t well. Guilt and worry jockeyed for position in my brain, obliterating my initial fear.
“Sweetie—” I began.
But Wayne interrupted me. He looked straight at the man sitting next to me and declared, “Felix, you’re going to tell me everything that’s been going on. Now.”
Felix’s mouth hopped to it.
“It’s your own Little Miss Typhoid Mary that started the whole friggin’ thing,” he began.
Wayne cleared his throat. Loudly. It was a good sound, frightening but subtle, with a flavor of exorcism. Felix started over again.
“Kate and my baby cakes went to some gonzo, woo-woo party, and this Sokoloff lady got snuffed, like someone always does when your sweetie visits, man—”
“So Kate was there when someone was murdered?” Wayne translated.
“Yeah,” Felix agreed eagerly. “And they found another friggin’ stiff too.”
“What day was this?” Wayne asked.
I began to wriggle on the couch. Something was making my skin prickle. And it wasn’t fear anymore. Or even guilt or worry. It was anger.
“Hey!” I rapped out. “I’m in the room, Wayne. You can direct your questions to me.”
Wayne’s eyebrows rose for an instant, and I saw surprise and hurt there.
“Listen,” I told him. “Barbara and I were there, all right? But I didn’t want to tell you because you’re sick and—”
“And you and Barbara are investigating,” he broke in. It wasn’t even a question. It was a statement. It’s hard to keep the moral high ground when someone else knows you too well. But I tried.
“Just a little—”
“And my own pumpkin pie won’t tell me a friggin’ thing,” Felix whined.
Wayne looked at him with something close to sympathy in his eyes. Now that was a scary thought, Felix and Wayne bonding.
“Look,” I put in loudly, trying to regain the high ground again. “Barbara and I aren’t being stupid about this. We’re only visiting people together—”
Wayne
and Felix moaned simultaneously. Then Wayne looked at Felix with something akin to horror lifting his brows. Maybe they wouldn’t bond after all.
“Kate,” Wayne tried. “I am not your keeper. I’m not even your husband.” He paused to allow me to fully savor the pang of guilt that those words inevitably induced. “But please, for my sake, be careful.”
“I am being careful,” I told him, keeping my voice even and calm with an effort.
“Kate, I’m just asking—” he began again.
“Hey, Big Guy, forget it,” Felix advised. “Both of them are gonzo, looney-tunes. They don’t have a clue—”
Wayne’s gaze whipped back to Felix. Something lasered out under the shadow of his brows.
“Kate is not gonzo,” he said quietly.
“Hey, man, Kate’s a real whiz-bang, you know what I mean?” Felix assured Wayne, flattening himself against the back of the couch just in case. “I just meant—”
“So what’s up?” a new voice asked cheerfully.
I looked over Wayne’s shoulder across the yard or so of entry way at the still-open door and saw who was standing in the doorway. My ex-husband, Craig. Ugh.
“Hi guys,” he greeted us, waving a hand negligently in Wayne’s direction first and then Felix’s. “Mind if I talk to Kate?”
“Yes!” Wayne roared.
I hated to think what that roar had cost his lungs. Or my eardrums, for that matter.
“Craig,” I ordered. “Just go, all right—?”
“Kate, you can’t just keep avoiding me,” Craig insisted. “I’ve made up my mind. We gotta talk.”
“Hooboy,” Felix threw in, rolling his eyeballs. “Women.”
“Women?” I objected. “It seems like the men in this room are making all the fuss—”
“Kate, you’re making a mistake,” Craig said, steering the conversation back, if it was a conversation. I knew it was an effort for him. Craig was a laid-back kind of guy. But the effort wasn’t appreciated. “We loved each other once. I’m not just going to—”
Wayne rose from the swinging chair, holding on to one of the ropes with his left hand and pointing the other hand at Craig. “Out!” he ordered.
Felix chuckled evilly next to me. I nudged him in the ribs with my elbow. Hard.
“Hey, that hurt—”
“No,” Craig told Wayne. “I won’t leave. This is between me and Kate. You can’t—”
“Stop it, all of you!” I shouted.
And for a moment, they did. Time froze.
“Hey, hey,” a fourth voice broke into the silence. “Is this a private fight, or can anyone join in?”
Gil Nesbit pushed his way past Craig and into the living room.
“So, you guys all know about Lotto numbers?” he ventured, smiling his trademark all-American boy smile.
“That’s it,” I muttered, looking at the ceiling. “I’m outa here.”
I wasn’t sure if anyone heard me. It seemed like everyone was shouting at the same time. Wayne was ordering everyone out of the house now. Felix was whining, Craig was bleating, and Gil sounded like a Lotto wind-up toy. “Lotto…lotto…lotto…”
I got up from the couch and walked over to where Wayne stood, swaying now. He was still sick.
“You,” I whispered in his ear. “You are going to bed now—”
“But—”
“But nothing,” I told him and steered him down the hall to the bedroom, my hand firmly grasping the waistband of his p.j. bottoms.
I could still hear raised voices as I tucked Wayne into bed. Maybe they hadn’t even noticed we weren’t there anymore. I buried my head on his chest under the covers for a moment, smelling Vicks and sweat and Wayne. But I could still hear the babble from the living room.
“I’m going to Barbara’s,” I told Wayne finally. “I don’t want to talk to Felix. I don’t want to talk to Craig. And I don’t want to talk to Gil Nesbit—”
“But, I can—”
“No, you can’t,” I told him. He was too sick, no matter how good his performance had been.
“They’ll all leave once I do,” 1 added, tucking the sheet neatly beneath his chin.
“Just you and Barbara?” Wayne asked, his thuggish face pale and vulnerable against the sheet. His eyelids were beginning to droop. All that shouting had taken its toll.
“Just me and Barbara,” I promised him softly.
“You’ll tell me if you visit any more suspects?” Now his words were slurring.
“Of course,” I lied. I bent over and kissed him on the forehead. At least it felt cool. I stroked his hair. How could I have been angry with this sweet man? I started to remember and banished the reruns.
Wayne’s eyes were closed before I even finished telling him I loved him. He was asleep.
The three men in the living room were still arguing when I passed through.
“Gotta know the Lotto—”
“Hey geek, get this into your potato-brain—”
“Look, all I care about is Kate—”
“Bye, guys,” I whispered as I walked through the front door and down the stairs.
One thing I was sure of, pneumonia or not, none of them would bother Wayne. A moment’s doubt almost stopped me as I climbed into the Toyota. Gil Nesbit was an unknown factor. Would he bug Wayne? Not for long, I decided, and turned the key in the ignition. Even Wayne in bed could probably terrify the Lotto visions right out of Gil Nesbit’s head. And then I really was outa there, speeding down the highway, thinking of Silk Sokoloff. I was beginning to understand who she was. But did that bring me any closer to knowing who murdered her?
A few minutes later, I’d parked my car and was walking through the doorway of Barbara Chu’s apartment. It hadn’t been necessary to ring the doorbell. Apparently I’d already pushed her psychic buzzer.
“Hey, kiddo,” she greeted me without surprise. “I’ve got the computer up for us. I’ve got this really cool architectural CAD program. We’re gonna use it to find out who killed Silk.”
“Yeah?” I prompted, patting the fortune-teller machine and surreptitiously fondling a crystal ball as I made my way through Barbara’s living room to her computer. I knew there had to be a reason I was at Barbara’s.
“Yeah, we’re going to re-create the murder scene on the computer, put everyone in place and—”
“Presto-pronto-bingo,” I finished for her. Felix was rubbing off on me.
I pulled up a slatted kitchen chair next to Barbara’s and stared at her computer. As her fingers moved, the circle of chairs that had been at Justine’s the day Silk was murdered came to virtual life on the glowing screen in front of us, each chair represented as a square. She typed a K in one, a B in another, and turned to me.
“We gotta remember where everyone was sitting,” she said.
“Can’t the computer do it for us?” I asked. As far as I was concerned, computers were still magic.
“Jeez-Louise, kiddo,” she said, laughing. “Just cause it’s my computer doesn’t mean it’s psychic.
I sighed and pointed to the chair of importance. “Silk,” I told Barbara. An S went in one of the square boxes.
“And Justine,” I added, pointing again, my spirits—or maybe I should have used a different word under the circumstances—rising. Could this exercise really tell us something?
But as Barbara typed in the J, a slowly revolving crystal ball appeared on Barbara’s screen.
“Oh, no!” Barbara yelped in the manner of all women in jeopardy throughout the ages. “Not the screen saver!”
And then the screen seemed to shudder for a moment and went blank. We stared into blackness.
“What?” I murmured, looking around cautiously. “Have the aliens landed?”
- Eighteen -
“No!” Barbara yelped in frustration. “It’s me. Computers are always breaking down when I use them. It’s so weird. It’s like they sense I’m an electrician, so it fritzes them. Jeez-Louise, it drives me batty.”
I nodded, wo
ndering if computers were just afraid of Barbara. What if computers were psychic, too? Would I be afraid of Barbara if I were a psychic computer?
“Nah,” she said, replying to my thought no doubt. “Anyway, I’m just anthropomorphizing. But computers do seem to break down on me a lot.” She looked at her own graceful hands for a moment under the crystalline light of the room, spreading them out, palm up, in front of her face as if to read them. “Maybe my fingers have just absorbed too much electricity over the years.”
Then she brought her hands back down and jabbed at a few buttons. But the computer’s vital signs were gone. No flash of color graced the screen. Nothing buzzed. Nothing vibrated. Diagnosis: clinically dead.
“Oh, well, that’s the way the circuits break,” Barbara murmured finally and then turned away from the computer toward me.
“You know how my intuition always fritzes when someone gets murdered?” she asked.
I nodded so energetically my neck hurt.
“Well, I think this computer stuff is the same. Like I give it some kind of overload of energy. D’ya think I need a surge protector?” she asked me seriously.
“I think you need an imagination protector,” I answered just as seriously, rubbing my sore neck. I hoped I hadn’t slipped a disk or something, nodding so hard.
“Your neck will be fine,” Barbara pronounced. Then she tilted her head at me and grinned. “So, kiddo, I’ve got a big surprise for you tomorrow.”
I groaned, sore neck forgotten. “No,” I told her. “No more surprises, please.”
“Oh, you’ll like this one,” she assured me.
I opened my mouth to object again. Whether Barbara was psychic or not, I felt at least ninety percent certain I wasn’t going to like any surprise she brought me right now. Especially if it had to do with the murders. Her surprises were beginning to resemble the surprises C. C. occasionally brought me: squirming, heart-rending, and disgusting.
“No mice, no birds, no snakes. I swear,” Barbara promised me. And then, before I could stage a full-scale rebellion, she added, “Hungry?”
It took a few instants for the last half of her message to get through to the proper synapses. But when it did, my incipient rebellion was quelled. I was hungry. Somehow, dinner had gotten away from me. My stomach gurgled hopefully.
Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Page 18