Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  “Well, I really don’t need—” didn’t get me very far.

  Barbara dragged me into her kitchen and sat me down at her new faux marble table. Then she went diving into her refrigerator, waving away all help. The first dive produced a tray of avocado sushi. How did she do that? I knew she didn’t cook.

  “You don’t have to—” I began.

  “Of course, I don’t have to,” Barbara interrupted and made a second dive, returning with a platter of tofu balls. At least one mystery was solved. I recognized the tofu balls. They came from the local health food store. “I want to feed you.”

  I’d stopped objecting when she brought out a big bowl of tabouli salad and added sliced fresh fruit and a couple of glasses of fizzy water to the feast.

  “Did you know I was coming?” I demanded.

  Barbara just laughed and started in with the side dish, a side dish much like those overcooked vegetables you never wanted as a child. Only Barbara’s was a side dish of shared whodunit scenarios. All of them.

  “So who is Silk’s father, anyway?” she dug in, waving a piece of sushi and scattering rice like fairy dust as she spoke. “What if he’s someone else’s father, and they lose their inheritance unless she’s dead?”

  “Huh?” I said, or something like that. My mouth was full of tabouli, my mind full of prospective surprise anxiety.

  “And how about lovers scorned?”

  “But Silk was always coming on to people,” I tried. “She didn’t have to scorn anyone. She scared them all off. Look at Zarathustra—”

  “Hah! And what if Silk is really Zarathustra’s mother? What if he found out he was adopted?” Barbara bulldozed on.

  I choked on a tofu ball at that one. But Barbara was undeterred. By my choking, by reason, by anything.

  “Or maybe Gil Nesbit is her illegitimate child,” she added, thumping my back absently. Absently, but hard.

  I stopped choking. I wasn’t sure if it was the thumping or Gil Nesbit’s name.

  “Ugh, Barbara,” I croaked. “That’s disgusting. Worse than dead mice. Not Mr. Lotto, please. Anything else—”

  “Okay, okay. So what if Silk’s mother’s not really dead? What if she’s”—Barbara leaned forward, her eyes on mine, pausing dramatically, then finished with a flourish of her tabouli-filled spoon—”Elsa Oberg?”

  “But Elsa—”

  “And what did she and Denise Parnell really do in college, huh?”

  “But Denise—”

  “And Rich McGowan, what if he recognized her from his less conservative days? What if he was a warlock or something? Do government agencies hire warlocks?”

  “Barbara!” I objected, plugging my ears with my fingers. Something I should have done when she first mentioned visiting Justine, actually.

  But that didn’t deter her either.

  “…alienating the affections of Tory’s angel,” came through my fingers.

  “…usurping Justine’s role…”

  I wondered if Craig and Felix and Gil had left my house yet. Even if they hadn’t, home was beginning to look good again. It’s all relative. In fact…I looked at Barbara’s rapt face as she continued to rattle off theories. Maybe Barbara was my long-lost sister. That would explain why I still liked her. Now, that was a scenario.

  “…mean to Linda’s animals…”

  Yes, home was looking very good. Good concept, good idea, good destination. I pictured the rooms of my house in my mind. The gently swinging chairs in the living room. C. C. curled in the corner. The kitchen table. Wayne in bed, snoring angelically. I didn’t put any little details like undone paperwork or dishes in the picture. Or arguments.

  My legs lifted me from my chair magically. Home, no place like home.

  “…messing with Artemisia’s spells…” followed me out Barbara’s door.

  “See you later, you goof-bag,” I muttered with unconscious affection as I turned back to her. She trotted past the fortune-telling machine to enfold me in a hug.

  “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow for sure,” Barbara answered, grinning as she let me go. “You’ll love the surprise.”

  My affection froze in place.

  I drove home, reflecting on how much can happen in a short amount of time. My body was groaning that it had to be midnight by now, but midnight wasn’t even near. And then I reflected on the nature of surprises. But a few minutes later, I decided that was too scary a subject to reflect on. I told myself I’d be better off reading Anne Rice if I wanted to scare myself.

  I climbed my front stairs cautiously once I reached home. There was no one on my deck, no one pressed up against my paint-splattered door. In fact, the door wasn’t even locked. It was wide open.

  I tiptoed inside and peeked in the living room. It was empty. I wondered how long it had taken the boys to notice I’d left. Had Gil, Craig, and Felix left separately, or as a group? And who’d left my door wide open? I slammed it behind me.

  “Kate?” Wayne’s voice called out.

  My body went rigid. Because suddenly I remembered one of the parts I’d left out of my picture of home. Wayne knew. I couldn’t tell him I was shopping with Barbara anymore. I couldn’t tell him I was having dinner for five hours. I couldn’t tell him we were just out playing. I’d have to tell the truth from now on. That was a terrible thought. Or else, I’d have to learn to lie more effectively.

  I erected my blast shields before entering the bedroom, ready for what Wayne had to say about my investigating. Ready and guilty.

  But Wayne wasn’t yelling when I stepped into the bedroom. The room was warm and smelled of Vicks and apple juice. Wayne was lying in bed, p.j.ed and propped up against a stack of pillows, reading. And the book he was reading was Silk Sokoloff’s Looked at Lust from Both Sides Now.

  “Oh, Wayne,” I murmured in disbelief. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “But, Kate,” Wayne answered earnestly, his eyes still on the page. “This is really good. The woman who died was an excellent novelist, did you know that?”

  My mouth hung open, and I reconsidered my opinion of Wayne as an aspiring writer. Then I shut my mouth even more guiltily. Was it possible that Wayne saw something in Silk’s writing that I didn’t? Something that I was incapable of understanding?

  “She was funny, but she was dealing with serious issues,” Wayne pointed out. “Sexual identity, prejudice, women’s experience—”

  “She was?”

  “Kate,” Wayne growled, looking up at me now. “Haven’t you read her?”

  “Um, I just read a little of the first book,” I admitted defensively. Maybe her skills had improved in the second.

  “You might want to read this one,” he suggested, his eyes traveling back to the pages of Looked at Lust from Both Sides Now. And his eyes were hungry. Hungry for excellence.

  I had missed something about Silk Sokoloff, I realized. And Wayne had found it.

  “Can see why you and Barbara feel you have to find her murderer,” Wayne added brusquely.

  I had no answer to that. I had no answer for the man lying in bed, reading so solemnly. No answer for the man whose anger I’d expected. No answer but to throw my arms around him and hold him to me, squashing Silk’s book between us, then returning the book to him with respect, once I’d let go.

  “Thank you,” I whispered finally and left him in the bedroom in peace to read an excellent writer.

  Because I had some sanding to do. There was no other way that red paint was going to come off. And my mind was too tired to work on Jest Gifts. I didn’t even look at the paperwork on my desk. I assembled the electric sander instead, connected it to an extension cord, put on my work goggles, and marched out on the deck to sand in the dark.

  Actually, it was very soothing, sanding in the dark. It wasn’t really completely dark. The deck light threw ghostly shapes onto the door as my body weaved back and forth in rhythm with the sanding. Pretty soon, I was floating on sawdust. I was alone. Wayne wasn’t mad at me. I was at peace with the world
and my front door.

  My phone rang. Ugh. I shut off the sander and went to answer it. I shouldn’t have. The caller was Artemisia and she wanted my help. Not to find out who murdered Silk Sokoloff and Isabelle Viseu, but to assist her the same way Silk had, whatever that had been. I could almost smell the eucalyptus smoldering over the line. My fingers felt odd, light, as if they didn’t belong to me. I told myself it was just a sensation left over from sanding.

  “Kate,” Artemisia hissed urgently. “I figured it out.

  Silk left the same day you appeared she went out of my life, and you came into it. You see?”

  I shook my head, then remembered I was on the phone. “No, I don’t see,” I told her.

  “You can help me.”

  “Help you what?” I asked tentatively.

  Wrong question.

  “Help me scare away the spirits,” she answered. “We can do a ritual.”

  “It’s too late to visit” I began.

  “Please, Kate,” Artemisia begged. “You don’t have to come over. “Just be there for me on the line while I paint the turtle”

  “You’re not going to hurt the turtle, are you?” I demanded, worried now. Hadn’t she said something about animal sacrifices when we’d left? Was I going to have to visit her to save the turtle? I wondered how quickly I could get to her house.

  “No,” she assured me, her voice almost calm for a moment. “I just paint its shell and let it wander.”

  “Do you feed it?” I asked. I still wasn’t convinced of the turtle’s safety in this operation.

  “Yeah, I suppose so,” Artemisia answered impatiently.

  “If you don’t, the ritual might not work,” I threw in.

  There was silence on the line for a few minutes, then Artemisia’s voice kicked back in.

  “Wow, Kate,” she breathed. “You know,”

  “Wait a minute—” I began.

  But a minute was too long.

  “I knew you would help me,” she interrupted. “I have laurel leaves too.”

  “Oh, good,” I said. She couldn’t hurt laurel leaves.

  It was a little over a half-hour later when I hung up the phone. Somehow my presence on the line had facilitated Artemisia’s ritual. I just hoped this was the last one. I told myself I’d sic her on Barbara if she called again, and went back to my own ritual. Sanding. Sanding and trying to forget phone calls about rituals.

  Under the deck light, red flakes of paint shimmered like jewels in the sawdust. But still, even in the dark, I could see that the red stain had seeped deep into the grain of the wooden door. How much sanding would it take? There was only one way I was going to find out. I switched on the sander and began again.

  The phone rang.

  This time it was Denise. Luckily, she wasn’t interested in a ritual. No turtles. No laurel leaves. She just wanted to know what Barbara and I had learned about Silk and Isabelle’s deaths. So I told her what I’d told Felix. Nothing, nada, zilch.

  She wanted to know more. For such a polite little person, she sure knew how to put on the pressure. Of course, she did interview people for a living.

  “Good grief,” she murmured in her smooth, soothing voice. “You can tell me. I won’t use it for the show.”

  Damn. Her show. I hadn’t even thought of that. My scalp tingled unappreciatively. Was this a subtle attempt at blackmail?

  “Barbara and I are giving up,” I told her. It wasn’t really a lie. I didn’t know what Barbara and I could do but give up. Even if Barbara did have a “surprise” for me. “1 don’t want to have anything more to do with it,” I added honestly.

  “Gee,” Denise said, her voice slowing even more. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” I told her and formed the word “goodbye” with my mouth.

  “But you will call me if you figure anything out?” she added before I could say the word aloud.

  “Right,” I agreed quickly. “Goodbye now.”

  I hung up even more quickly. That’s when I noticed the card propped up on my desk. And the dozen red roses. I turned my head toward the roses, cautiously opening the card like I would a possible letter-bomb. The card read simply, “I love you.” I didn’t think it was from Wayne. He was studying Silk Sokoloff now. His card would have been far more creative. This card was from Craig. I even recognized the small, jagged letters of his handwriting, handwriting I’d looked at for years. Handwriting that had formed the words telling me he was leaving me. Telling me he was divorcing me. Telling me about the other woman. The card went straight into the garbage.

  The roses were more difficult. They were fresh. I wasn’t brought up to waste fresh food or fresh flowers. I’d give the roses to someone deserving, I told myself, and left them standing in the florist’s green glass vase on my desk. Maybe C. C. would knock them over.

  C. C. arrived on cue, yowling. But she didn’t knock over the vase. She just demanded food. And got it. I spooned out Fancy Feast and thought about Craig. Then I decided I knew who deserved the roses. The deer who’d been decimating my garden, that was who. I took the vase of roses carefully out to the deck and scattered them like cremated remains. Remains of a dead marriage.

  And then I went back to sanding. Sanding away annoying phone calls, bad memories, and murder. But just as I was relaxing back into sawdust heaven, I realized I’d never brought in the day’s mail. I sighed, turned off the sander one more time, and made my way by moonlight to my mailbox, goggles pushed up on top of my head, my feet feeling their way down the familiar gravel of my driveway.

  I heard a rustling as I was almost there. My chest tightened. Was there a dog waiting for me? I imagined a pit bull. Or a Doberman pinscher. Then I tried a nicer thought. Positive thinking in action. Maybe a bevy of quail was waiting for me. They sometimes did parade in front of the mailbox. I strained my eyes against the darkness, looking for their little fluffy bodies.

  And saw the sudden movement of a female form running toward me. I jerked my chin up. The form running my way was holding something above her head. As my mind screamed for safety, my eyes recognized the object she held aloft. It was a spray can.

  - Nineteen -

  “I hate you!” the woman screamed. And she kept on running at me.

  I didn’t have time to think about centering myself. I didn’t have time to breathe into my stance. I didn’t have time to do anything but turn my body at the waist and step out of the way. The woman sped past me, spray can still held above her head.

  “Who are—” I began.

  But the woman pivoted and ran at me again. She was almost to me when she brought the spray can plummeting down in my direction. I lifted my leg and kicked the can out of her hand, wondering if it was hair spray or cleaner or paint. Or an alien ray gun.

  “Aaaag!” she screamed, her voice echoing in the silence of the night. “I’ll kill you!”

  I hoped she didn’t have anything but a can on her. Anything like a regular gun, for instance.

  I could see her face a little in the dark now. It was an attractive face in general, maybe twenty-or-so-years-old with large eyes and symmetrical features. But the feral snarl twisting those features ruined their symmetry. And I was pretty sure I’d never seen her face before in my life. Not at one of Justine’s soirees or anywhere else. So who was she?

  I decided on the mental hospital approach, all the time knowing the approach would probably work a whole lot better with the kind of staff support I’d had a few decades earlier.

  “Could you tell me what’s bothering you?” I asked gently, putting a soothe-the-savage-beast tone into my voice.

  “You!” she shouted in answer and swung a fist my way.

  I grabbed her swinging hand and whipped it behind her in a hammerlock they don’t even teach in tai chi. That cut off any more explanation on her part. Then I put my other arm around her throat. Mental hospitals can teach you wonderful things.

  “Glarb!” she tried as she struggled, but with each at
tempt at struggle, 1 tightened my hold on her arm, pushing it upwards a little. Very little—I didn’t want to break that arm. Or her throat. I could smell the rage in her perspiration now.

  It seemed like an eternity before the stimulus-response experiment began to work. But then she began to relax, just a little, and I let up on the pressure as she did. She relaxed a little more. I let up a little more. A subtle rhythm guided our mutual de-escalation of hostilities.

  “Can you tell me what’s wrong, now?” I asked finally.

  “Craig loves you,” she croaked. I had a feeling she would have screamed again if I hadn’t had my arm around her throat.

  “Well, I don’t love Craig,” I informed her bluntly. It was time for the Truth in Information Act.

  “You don’t?” she burbled.

  “No, did he tell you I did?”

  “Well, kinda,” she murmured.

  The tension was leaving her body now and entering mine. Craig!

  “Well, I don’t, and he shouldn’t have told you any such thing!” I amplified. Anger was creeping into my voice. What had Craig been telling this poor woman?

  “Who are you?” I asked once more, wishing I could see her face from behind her. But all I could see was her hair. It was long and blond and scratchy where it touched my own face.

  “I’m Nancy, Craig’s girlfriend,” she replied. Then she modified her answer. “At least I would be if it weren’t for you.”

  Clarity at last.

  Nancy. That was the name of the woman Craig had mentioned, the new girlfriend. But he hadn’t mentioned that he’d told her about me. Or that she was crazy, for that matter. But then I knew from experience that Craig could make a saint crazy. Maybe even the Dalai Lama. So I gave Nancy the benefit of the doubt.

  “Would you like to come in the house and talk?” I asked her.

  She began to cry then, softly at first, but then letting the weeping take her in heaves. “I’m sorry,” she choked through her sobs. I was barely holding her now. “I shouldn’t have attacked you. I shouldn’t have thrown the paint on your door—”