Fat-Free and Fatal (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  I once knew a dog whose vocal cords had been cut to prevent him from barking. His mouth would move, but all that would come out was a little mewling sound. It had seemed heartbreaking to me at the time. Now, I was wondering if the same operation could be performed on Leo, preferably without anesthetic.

  The young woman gave Leo the finger without breaking stride. I chuckled at the forlorn expression on his face, and issued a silent Right on, sister. Spoken aloud, the words of support would probably be meaningless to this young woman of the nineties.

  Paula Pierce wasn’t chuckling. She rose and crossed the street, bearing down on Leo, oblivious to a BMW which slowed down to let her by. Leo saw her coming and quickly headed back into the Good Thyme Cafe. Whatever he had found to drink, it hadn’t slowed his reflexes.

  I lay down again and stared at the darkening sky.

  “Hey, the pecan praline was great,” I heard a few minutes later. Barbara was smiling down at me. “It’s time to get back, kiddo,” she added.

  It was past time. We rushed back into the Good Thyme and down the dark hallway, now lit only by the glow from the kitchen. Someone had turned off the hallway’s one dim light bulb.

  “I’ve gotta go to the bathroom,” Barbara whispered as we were almost to the kitchen.

  “Me too,” I whispered back. All that iced herbal tea was weighing heavily on my bladder. I could hear more than one voice coming from the kitchen. Apparently, Meg hadn’t resumed the lesson yet. Were they waiting for us to reconvene?

  Barbara crossed the hallway, giggling.

  “Is this the ladies room?” she asked, pulling open the first door she got to.

  “You’re the psychic,” I teased softly, walking up behind her. “You tell me.”

  “Whoops,” Barbara said as she took a step in. “I think this must be the pantry. I tripped over something.”

  I followed her in, felt for the light switch and flipped it on.

  As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that we were in fact in the pantry. The walls of the small room were lined with shelves holding an assortment of oversized jars, bags and boxes.

  Then I looked down and saw what Barbara had tripped over. It was a red high-heeled shoe.

  I didn’t want to look any further, but my eyes traveled without permission to the foot the shoe had fallen from, and then moved swiftly up one long, crumpled leg to the seat of a pair of red shorts, passed the buttoned back of a red-and-white striped top, and came to rest on a mass of blow-dried hair lashed with loops of white electrical cord to what I now realized had to be Sheila Snyder’s neck. A Salad Shooter hung from the end of the electrical cord like a haphazardly placed bow on a hard-to-wrap package.

  No! my mind screamed. The room shimmered, then swayed as my stomach turned over. No, I told myself, closing my eyes, I will not pass out. Or vomit. My ears began to buzz.

  A gurgling sound broke into the buzzing. I opened my eyes. Was Sheila still alive?

  THREE

  I TOOK A deep breath, and the room stopped swaying. I let the breath out and pushed past Barbara, dropping to my knees beside the body.

  I grabbed Sheila’s wrist to feel for her pulse. The instant I touched her flesh, I knew I wouldn’t find one. Her body was too inert to be alive, her arm too heavy. But I desperately pressed my fingertips to her radial artery. I was right; no pulse. I laid my ear against her back and listened for breathing, in vain. I wondered frantically if I should turn her over. Bile rose in my throat. I didn’t want to see her full face. I had already glimpsed its blue-gray edge under her mass of blow-dried hair.

  Should I try to unwind the electrical cord from around her neck? A look told me it was wrapped too tightly. It was too late. She was dead. She had to be.

  I stood back up. I needed help.

  Then I heard the gurgling sound again. But it wasn’t coming from Sheila. It was coming from Barbara. She bent over Sheila, then knelt down where I had knelt a moment before.

  “Barbara…” I tried to say, but my voice didn’t make it past my throat.

  Barbara wasn’t listening, anyway. She clawed at the loops of cord wrapped around Sheila’s neck, failed to loosen them, then grabbed Sheila’s shoulder and shook it hard.

  “Barbara, we’ll get help,” I said, my voice shaking but audible now.

  She whipped her head around in my direction. Her eyes were wide and empty of reason.

  Then she screamed, a long, shrill scream of pure terror.

  At least I didn’t have to go for help. The scream brought all the help I needed running to the pantry.

  Alice was the first one through the doorway. I watched her heart-shaped face change expression as she took in the scene. Her eyes widened and her plump hand leapt to her face as her skin lost color. Then she looked at Barbara, who was still on her knees next to Sheila. Alice’s eyes narrowed. Did she think Barbara was the murderer?

  “Barbara!” I ordered loudly. “Get up.”

  Barbara stood and looked into my eyes blankly. I put my arms around her and held her close to me. Looking over her shoulder, I saw more faces crowding the doorway.

  “Does anyone have medical training?” I called out.

  “I do,” came Iris’s voice, clear and calm.

  The faces in the doorway shuffled and disappeared as Iris made her way into the room, her silvery head held high. I didn’t have to point out the body. Her gaze landed on it immediately. There wasn’t enough room for all of us in the small space, so I squeezed past Iris and Alice, pushing Barbara ahead of me through the doorway into the hall.

  Grisly as the scene had been inside the pantry, it wasn’t much better outside in the hallway. First Leo shoved his way into the pantry. Then Paula demanded to know what had happened. Before I could answer, Leo rushed back out the doorway, his hand over his mouth. He made it two feet beyond us and threw up. Ken went goggle-eyed behind his glasses and asked Meg with apparent seriousness if this was part of the class

  “That woman was killed,” said Barbara softly to Paula. I took a quick look at Barbara’s eyes and saw with relief that there was intelligence in them again.

  “What woman? What do you mean, killed?” questioned Paula, her voice shrill with urgency. Gary walked up behind her and laid his hand on her shoulder.

  “Sheila Snyder, the woman who owns the Good Thyme,” I explained. “Strangled.” Sheila’s body rose up in my mind’s eye. My own body began to shake.

  This time it was Barbara who put her arms around me. She was still holding me when I remembered that I had been on my way to the bathroom an eternity ago. I returned her embrace for a few more heartbeats, then broke free to complete my original mission as Paula rushed to the phone to call the police.

  Sitting atop cold porcelain, I tried to breathe away my nausea, tried not to think about what was going on outside. But through the thin bathroom door I could hear Iris as she announced that Sheila was past help. And Alice as she asked Barbara whether she had killed Sheila. Barbara’s high-pitched denial brought me out of my imperfect refuge. I came back into the hall in time to see tears running down Barbara’s stricken face. I helped her to a seat at one of the tables in the dining room and sat down beside her.

  By the time we heard the police sirens, Paula had shepherded the stragglers into the dining room with us and told everyone to sit down and keep quiet. I took a deep breath and glanced furtively at the silent members of the Monday evening vegetarian cooking class, now scattered at tables around the room. One of this group’s members might be a murderer, I thought. Which one?

  Leo didn’t look much like a murderer. His face was a sickly greenish color from the beard up, and totally devoid of its usual arrogant lechery. Nor did Meg, her face pale, her eyes more bewildered than ever. Her friend Alice refused to sit, pacing frantically around the dining room instead. She was no longer eyeing only Barbara, but peering into each and every one of our faces as if looking for evidence of guilt. Paula’s face was grave, her mouth pursed and trembling. She placed her hand gently on t
he back of her husband Gary’s bent neck. He reached over without looking and patted her navy-blue-suited thigh with one hand, while continuing to caress his ever-present crystal with the other.

  Ken’s expression was the most disturbing. He wore a half smile as he watched the rest of us watch each other. Why was he smiling? Was he nervous? Was he psychotic? I shivered violently, seeing Sheila in my mind again, strangled with electric cord, the Salad Shooter hanging from her neck. Someone was psychotic. Someone had to be.

  Only Iris held her head high. Her handsome features were calm now, even serene, her hands folded gently in front of her.

  Why serene? I wondered, and then the police burst into the dining room.

  “Who placed the call?” demanded the first officer, a tall, uniformed Hispanic man, holding a gun with both hands straight out in front of him. Behind him was a muscular young policewoman, also pointing a gun in our direction.

  “Please lower your weapons, officers,” Paula said, her voice filled with authority. She rose to her feet and frowned in their direction. “The guns are unnecessary.”

  The Hispanic officer lowered his gun reluctantly until it pointed at the floor. The female officer followed suit.

  “I called,” Paula told them. “I think—”

  “Where’s the injured party?” the woman in uniform interrupted her.

  “I think she’s dead,” Paula said.

  “Where?” repeated the policewoman.

  Paula shrugged and pointed down the hallway. “Down the hall to your left, in the pantry,” she answered.

  The Hispanic officer nodded to his partner, who raced down the hallway. I hoped she had a good stomach. Only when she was gone did the policeman holster his gun. He kept his hand on it though, and remained standing, glaring silently at the lot of us. Paula sighed and sat back down.

  “Officer,” began Iris, “perhaps—”

  Her speech was abruptly canceled by the arrival of the paramedics. They flashed through the door and past us into the hallway in the time it took for the policeman to direct them with a pointed thumb.

  “Possible crime scene, careful!” the officer warned as they disappeared down the hall.

  No one spoke as we waited. The muscular policewoman came back, gun holstered. She gestured to her fellow officer and they stepped a few yards away from the rest of us to hold a hasty, whispered conference. Then she went back down the hallway again.

  When the paramedics came back, they were no longer rushing. One of them shook his head and they left by the front door.

  “Oh,” said the policeman watching us. It was not a happy sound. He shook his head, then turned back to us, his face angry.

  “So, what happened here?” he demanded.

  No one answered. The silence was absolute among the members of the cooking class. The only sound was a tapping from behind me. I turned. Alice was finally seated, and tapping her fingers on a vinyl-covered table.

  “Did anyone see who did it?” he pressed.

  Again, no one answered.

  The officer sighed. “It’s gonna be a long night,” he predicted, his voice human for a moment. Then he got professional. “You’ll have to be patient, you will each—” he began.

  The policewoman interrupted him as she emerged from the hallway. “All the outside doors are locked,” she said. She turned toward us. “What’s up those stairs?”

  “Oh dear,” said Iris. “I forgot about the two little girls.” Her face lost its serenity, crumpling into concern.

  “I think the family of the dead woman lives upstairs,” Paula clarified.

  “I’ll check it out,” the policewoman promised and jogged back down the hallway one more time, pulling her gun out of its holster as she went.

  The Hispanic policeman turned back to us. He looked tired to me. There was red showing in the whites of his eyes, and the bags beneath them were too pronounced for a man of his age. Poor guy, I thought. He couldn’t be over thirty. Then he began giving orders.

  “Okay!” he barked, surveying us with hostile eyes. “We’ll want everyone’s names and addresses. Then we’ll interview each of you separately. Do not talk among yourselves.” He finished off by patting the gun in his holster.

  I didn’t feel sorry for him anymore. I felt sorry for us.

  “Officer,” said Iris, raising her hand for attention. “I’m concerned about those poor little girls—”

  “No one talks!” he interrupted, drawing himself up to his full height and glaring menacingly at us. “Do you understand?”

  I certainly understood. Yes, sir! I nodded emphatically. From the silence around me I figured we all understood.

  After a few minutes of this silent treatment, someone new came through the door. She was a tall, rangy redhead, with an open, freckled face that might have been a teenager’s but for the wrinkles that put her years past forty. Her copper-colored suit had a cut similar to Paula Pierce’s navy blue one. The woman wasn’t smiling, but her neutral expression was an improvement over the hostile gaze of the policeman who stood guard over us. Trailing behind the redhead was an undistinguished, medium-sized white man. His only memorable feature was a rosy complexion—and a surly expression.

  I sighed. It was going to be a long night.

  The redheaded woman pulled the Hispanic policeman away for a quick conference, headed down the hallway, then returned, her face less open than it had been a few minutes ago.

  “I’m Detective Sergeant Oakley,” she said in a surprisingly melodic voice. “Who’s in charge here?” Melodic, but firm. Very firm.

  She got the same answer the policeman before her had received. Silence.

  “Come on,” she prompted, her voice ringing higher now, but still on key. “Someone talk to me.”

  I turned to look in Meg’s direction. I wasn’t the only one. Barbara was giving her the eye now too. So was Ken. And Alice. I guessed Alice didn’t feel like taking charge anymore. I couldn’t blame her.

  “Um,” said Meg in a tiny voice. “I suppose I might be the one in charge. I was teaching a vegetarian cooking class here this evening.” She stopped to blow her nose in a tattered Kleenex. Her voice was even smaller when she spoke again. “But I don’t really know anything about this place, or anything, really. Maybe Alice…”

  Twenty minutes later, Sergeant Oakley, having ascertained that no one was in charge, and that the closest thing to being in charge was having found the body, was interrogating me in the kitchen at the chest-high butcher-block table. Detective Utzinger, the nondescript man with the rosy complexion, was taking notes.

  Sergeant Oakley had an interesting interrogative technique. She was friendly, undemanding, even consoling—and as manipulative as a psychotherapist as she led me ever so gently through my story.

  I told her everything I knew, in great detail. She would say “ah,” “hmm” or sometimes, “That must have been upsetting,” as I ended a sentence, and stare at me with warm, concerned hazel eyes. Then I’d tell her something else. I actually found myself telling her about Wayne’s mother, Vesta. Oakley was a great listener. If I had been the murderer, I’m sure I would have confided that fact to her too. I actually felt a bit guilty that I wasn’t the murderer as I left the kitchen to have my fingerprints taken by yet another police officer, blond and male this time, standing guard in the dining room. It would have been so nice to help Sergeant Oakley out with a confession.

  The blond policeman introduced himself as Officer Tate, rolled my fingers in ink and pressed them to a card, then told me I could go. He was the only policeman left in the dining room. The original two officers were nowhere to be seen. I would have taken Tate’s advice and left the Good Thyme, but I had to wait for Barbara. She was in the kitchen with Sergeant Oakley now, presumably undergoing the same gentle grilling I had. I hoped she would be all right.

  I took a seat near the front of the dining room where I could watch everyone else. God, I was exhausted. My body felt unnaturally heavy, and my head ached with the effort to thi
nk clearly. Was one of the cooking-class members a murderer?

  Not necessarily, I told myself as I surveyed those members with exhaustion-blurred eyes. Meg was sitting with Paula and Gary now. She looked even more tired than I felt, her pale face slack, eyes staring into space. Gary leaned against Paula’s sturdy shoulder, his dark face relaxed, his eyes closed. Was he actually napping? I shook my head. If he could sleep at a time like this, he was a lot more relaxed than I was. Maybe I needed a crystal to rub. In any case, Paula was tense enough for both of them, her face tight and twitching. Was hers the face of a murderer?

  Someone else might have come in and killed Sheila, I reminded myself. I looked at Leo, slumped in his chair. I would have loved to believe he was the killer, but he looked too shaken to me. Or maybe he just needed a drink. Ken, on the other hand—

  The front door of the restaurant swung open, interrupting my thoughts. Two men strolled in. Were these more policemen?

  The first man was big and burly in a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. A diamond stud glistened in his left earlobe. He might have been good-looking with his curly black hair, mustache and strong jaw, but his eyes squinted. They looked mean. The second guy was tall and thin, except for his pot belly. His face was friendlier, clean-shaven with protuberant eyeballs and a big smile. A big stoned smile. I smelled the not-so-faint odor of marijuana wafting from their direction. Policemen?

  “Whoa,” said the man in the Hawaiian shirt jovially. “What’s happening?”

  The thin man’s eyes drifted to Officer Tate in his police uniform, and he nudged the burly guy.

  “Who are—” the policeman began.

  “Dan!” interrupted Alice. She ran to the husky man, her arms outstretched. “Oh, Dan,” she wailed. “Sheila’s dead. She was killed, murdered—”

  “You, sit down!” commanded Officer Tate, glaring at Alice. “Sir,” he said, bringing his gaze back to the burly man. “If you will identify yourself…”

  The man didn’t so much as glance at Tate. After a moment of slack-jawed blankness, he grabbed Alice by her shoulders and pulled her toward him. “What do you mean, Sheila’s dead!” he shouted.