But he must have let her have the story, because suddenly she made a series of smooching noises into the receiver and told him goodbye.
“The San Ricardo Police Department is interviewing Zach,” she whispered after she hung up.
“They caught him?” I breathed.
“Yeah, you’ll love it.” She grinned. “He was picked up for speeding in Santa Rosa. And he had his whole stash of drugs with him.” The grin left her face. “The police think he may be the one who murdered the Snyders. He’s got a history of arrests for drugs and violent crimes. And he doesn’t have an alibi anymore—”
“But did he really do it?” I interrupted, asking myself the question as much as Barbara.
Barbara sighed in instant understanding. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.” She looked up at me. “It’s up to us,” she announced.
“Oh, no,” I told her, moving toward the door. “We’re out of it.”
“But Kate,” she objected, following me. “Think about poor Mrs. Snyder. Her first son dead in a car accident…”
I didn’t hear her next few sentences. I had forgotten about Rose Snyder’s firstborn son. My stomach spasmed as if someone had punched me. Poor Rose. Both of her children dead. All of her children dead.
“…if you’re going to the East Bay anyway,” Barbara was saying when I tuned back in, “why don’t you catch Paula and Gary in Berkeley? And maybe Leo at his gallery on your way back. Find out where they all were this morning. I’ll do Iris. I wanna look at her hand collection again. And Ken. Maybe I’ll get to see his ant farm this time.”
“Fine,” I said, too rushed to even think about it. I took another look at my watch. “I really have to go,” I told her.
She gave me a quick hug. “Thanks,” she whispered and let me go.
I was almost out the door when she called out to me. I turned back reluctantly.
“Find out if Leo really had a heart attack,” she ordered with a grin.
“All right,” I agreed. “Will you do something in return?”
She nodded.
“Say goodbye to Vesta for me.”
I could hear her chuckling as I ran out the door.
It wasn’t until I was stuck in rush hour traffic on the Richmond Bridge that I realized I had agreed to see suspects alone. And so had Barbara. In my hurry, I had forgotten the buddy rule. Maybe I had forgotten on purpose. It felt so good to be in my car alone, even in the middle of traffic. I reviewed suspects in my mind the rest of the way down the highway to the Jest Gifts warehouse. And I couldn’t make any of them into a murderer. Maybe Zach did do it, I thought as I pulled into the warehouse parking lot. It was nearly five o’clock.
Judy had found the signed checks after all, in a locked drawer where she had moved them for safety’s sake a week ago. And she had received the C.O.D. package. Only the package wasn’t ours. It was full of auto-body parts. Tomorrow, I told her. It will all be straightened out tomorrow. There was probably an auto-body shop in the area wondering why they received a package of gag gifts. All we had to do was find them and make the exchange. It took me ten more minutes to locate the ambulance-chaser mugs, and another five to restore the files that Judy had erased. Then I was on the road again, heading for Paula and Gary’s house.
I pulled my car into their driveway hesitantly. I was hot and sweaty from driving. And my mind was shouting out warnings. If either Paula Pierce or Gary Powell was a murderer, one of them would be sure to protect the other. And that would make it two against one in confrontation. I took a long, deep breath and forced myself to climb out of the womb of my Toyota. A light breeze came by to cool my damp skin as I marched up to the stucco house and rang the bell.
I heard the thunder of paws behind the door along with a full chorus of threatening barks and frantic yips. Now it was six against one if you included the poodle, the Labrador retriever and the beagles. I waited five long minutes for the sound of a human voice, but never heard one. Even the dogs seemed to have lost interest by the time I gave up and left, only occasionally yipping half-heartedly.
I was more relieved than disappointed as I returned to my car, my pursuit unrewarded.
But it was a different story when I got to Leo’s gallery. I slunk in the Conn-Tempo door, made my way around the seven steel breasts on the metal monstrosity in the middle of the room and came face to face with Leo himself.
“Hello there, beautiful,” he purred. His breath almost knocked me over. Either he had spent the day drinking or he was marinating himself in red wine in preparation for broiling. He cocked an eyebrow at me as he stroked his beard. “Haven’t I met you someplace—?”
His jaw fell open before he could finish his own sentence. He must have recognized me. He backpedaled frantically, stumbling over the outstretched leg of a bronze nude. His close-set eyes widened.
“I just—” I began, afraid for a moment he was going to have another heart attack.
“Stay away from me!” he shrieked. “Just stay away from me!” Then he turned and ran.
I watched as his pear-shaped body disappeared through the door behind another naked lady, this one carved in stone.
A few minutes later, Ophelia emerged from the same doorway, her long legs showy in sparkling metallic tights under a green miniskirt.
“How may I help you?” she asked, projecting her voice as if from the stage. Then she whispered, “Up there,” and pointed toward the front of the gallery.
“He can’t hear us now,” she explained once we had hustled on up to the front. “So what’s the old guy done now?” she asked, her freckled face alive with curiosity.
“I’m not sure,” I told her honestly. “Was he in this morning?”
“Nah,” she said. “He never comes in before twelve. He rolled in here today around four, drunk as a skunk.” She stuck her tongue out, put her finger down her throat and made gagging noises. I assumed she was just commenting on Leo’s excessive drinking and not really going to throw up.
“Did he tell you he had a heart attack?” I asked hastily.
She took her finger out of her throat and looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Uh-uh,” she said, shaking her head. “Did he?”
I thought for a moment. “I don’t actually think so,” I answered slowly.
Ophelia straightened her back suddenly.
“He’s watching us,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth. “Pretend you’re looking at something.”
So I looked at some expensive abstract paintings, a few even more expensive carvings of naked ladies and one large welded God-knows-what that was priced at twelve thousand dollars. I could have bought a new car if I’d had that kind of money to spare. As I left the gallery, I wondered if Meg’s carrot was a bargain at two thousand.
The sky had taken on the luminous quality of twilight by the time I dragged myself back up my front stairs. I was tired, hungry and unhappy. I had three days’ worth of Jest Gifts work to do in one evening. I was no nearer to knowing who had killed Sheila Snyder than I had been a week ago. And I was dreading another confrontation with Vesta. I looked up at the sky as I reached the top of the stairs, taking one last moment to enjoy the shimmering twilight.
As I turned the doorknob, I thought I heard a man’s voice. I checked the driveway again. Wayne’s Jaguar wasn’t there. I pushed the door open cautiously.
The house was in darkness. Someone had pulled the curtains closed and turned out all the lights. Vesta? I wondered.
Then I heard the sound of the deep voice again. Or did I? It was gone before I could be sure. For one instant of pure panic, I thought it was Dan Snyder’s voice. Then I remembered that Dan Snyder was dead. I stepped toward the light switch quickly. I wanted to see what I thought I had heard.
I didn’t think of Zach until my hand flipped the switch.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE LIGHTS FLASHED on, dazzling my vision. In that instant I assured myself that Zach was in police custody and simultaneously realized that the police might have rel
eased him by now. My stomach lurched.
But it wasn’t Zach who was waiting for me in the living room. Even with the light still dancing in my eyes another instant later, I could tell my visitor wasn’t tall enough to be Zach. I let my breath whoosh out of me in relief. My visitor was Meg Quilter. At least I thought so. I walked into the living room, looking closer as I blinked away the light. Was it Meg?
The figure before me had the cooking teacher’s height, her coloring and her slender build. But the stance wasn’t right. Meg, if it was Meg, stood in a martial arts posture, feet spread wide, knees bent and arms slightly raised as if in readiness to fight. And Meg’s face was wrong too. It was more angular than I remembered, the green eyes too narrow and pinched. I could have been seeing a double exposure. It looked like Meg Quilter, but at the same time it looked like a young man, a very angry young man. Maybe my relief had been premature.
“Meg?” I said.
“She ain’t here, man,” Meg replied in the deep, vibrating male voice I had heard at the door. The hair went up on the back of my neck. That wasn’t Meg’s voice. It was someone else’s, someone who was made of pure rage.
I told myself to breathe evenly, and dropped my center of gravity, bending my knees slightly and trying to find the stillness inside that would be my best weapon. If I needed a weapon.
“Why are you here?” I asked, taking care to keep my voice low and calm.
“We’re here to waste the bitch, man,” Meg growled. We? I scanned the room. Then I saw Vesta, crouching in the corner with her arms crossed over her bowed head. Was Vesta the other half of “we”? Or was she “the bitch”?
“She’s gotta die, man,” Meg’s deep voice ground on. I kept my breathing even, but I couldn’t control the shiver that jerked my body. “You know what she is, man. You know what she does.”
“Who has to die?” I asked slowly.
Meg raised her hand high and pointed at Vesta. For the first time I noticed the glove on that hand, the kind of disposable latex glove that my dentist had taken to wearing as a protection against AIDS. But I didn’t think Meg was worried about AIDS. I thought she was worried about fingerprints. I fought to control the nausea that rose in me.
“She’s crazy!” Vesta screamed suddenly, her voice ringing shrilly in the silence. She had taken her arms away from her head and looked up, exposing a face that was twisted in fear.
“Shut up, bitch,” Meg snarled, then turned back to me.
“Why does she have to die?” I asked quietly.
“We waste all of them, man,” Meg replied matter-of-factly in her deep voice. “Anyone who hurts a little one.” Then she bent forward, her voice even deeper, her eyes dark with rage. “Everyone’s gotta pay the freight, man. The woman’s dead. She’s history.”
“But—” I stopped speaking as Meg abruptly closed her eyes.
In seconds she unbent her knees, shifted her feet closer together and drew her back up straight. When she opened her eyes again, they were cool and competent, the rage erased from their shape. I blinked, unbelieving.
“Stiletto has been responsible for many incidents,” Meg said crisply, her voice unarguably female once more. “However, we must not be caught. The children would never survive in prison.”
“Stiletto?” I asked, if only to say something while I tried to absorb what I was seeing. What I was hearing.
“Stiletto,” she said impatiently. “You have just met him.” I searched my mind for something else to say, but could only stare blankly.
“There are many of us here besides the woman who calls herself Meg,” she told me, assuming a lecturing tone now. I recognized that tone. It was the one Meg had used when she was teaching her class. She had seemed to change into a different person then, too, I remembered suddenly. Multiple Personality Disorder. My shoulders jerked as the diagnosis came to me.
“The original Meg left to go to sleep the day her mother stuck her hand in boiling water,” the lecturer continued. “She was two years old.”
My body stiffened. Two years old.
“Another child left when Meg’s mother locked her in a box for two days in her own excrement,” she went on, unheeding of my horror. “Another when the mother broke her wrist because she had drawn a flower, another when she was held under water…”
My mind refused to take any more in as the lecturer spoke of blows and burns and forced sex with her mother’s boyfriends. And worse. And as my mind shut off, I glimpsed for a moment how it would be if these things had happened to my body, how I might have let the part of me who had the experience leave and create a new person, a new personality, to replace her.
“We had to find some way, someone to bear the pain,” the lecturer was saying. “And then later, someone to prevent it from ever happening again. Someone to avenge the children. Stiletto.” She looked me in the eye. “Do you understand now?” she asked.
I nodded. I was beginning to. “But what about the Meg I met before, the…the shy one—?”
“The airhead?” the lecturer responded drily.
“Yes, how does she feel about—”
“The woman who calls herself Meg is a sniffling ninny,” she told me. Then she paused and cocked her head as if listening to someone else. “That’s right. She’s useless. She couldn’t fight her way out of a paper bag.”
“But what does she think about you?” I asked, still confused by her attitude.
“She doesn’t know us,” the lecturer said brusquely. “We know her. Sometimes—” She stopped again to cock her heard. “Stiletto wants to come out again. He wants to complete his mission.”
“Wait!” I yelped. Keep her talking, I thought. Keep Stiletto at bay. “Wait,” I said more evenly. “I still don’t understand. Can you explain how this all works?”
The lecturer nodded tersely. It was her role to explain. At least I had guessed that much correctly.
“Children should not be hit,” she told me. “It is The Rule. Stiletto enforces The Rule. He had to kill Sheila Snyder. And Dan Snyder.” She paused and looked into my eyes. I shivered again. The coolness in her gaze was almost as frightening as Stiletto’s rage. “Do you understand?” she asked.
I nodded. There’s a difference between understanding behavior and condoning it.
“Stiletto met Sheila Snyder when the woman who calls herself Meg went with Alice to arrange the class. Sheila hit the child that day. And we knew that if she hit the child in public, worse would be happening in private. Beatings, burnings, torment. But we waited. There had been too many incidents. We did not want to have to leave California as we had Oregon.” She paused, her eyes still cool and competent. I wondered if this part of Meg was completely devoid of feeling. “Then Sheila hit the child again on Monday night. We agreed that Stiletto must act.
“Stiletto called up the stairs after everyone else had left. He told Sheila there was something she must see in the pantry. Then he strangled her there with the cord from the food machine.
“Dan Snyder’s death was just as easy to arrange. Alice told the woman who calls herself Meg that she was going to pick Dan up from jail. We followed Alice until she had taken Dan to her apartment and left him there. I rang Alice’s doorbell and talked to Dan. Once Dan let us in, Stiletto took over.”
She started to close her cool eyes again.
“But Vesta?” I interjected hastily. “Do you have to kill Vesta? She doesn’t have any kids to hurt now.”
“We know she hit her son in the past,” the lecturer argued. “She broke The Rule. And she told us that she still believes ‘hitting kids is good for them.’ Though perhaps you are right. She will probably do no future harm.” She frowned in concentration. “Stiletto wants to come out,” she told me. “He says we must kill the old woman. And you. There is some disagreement here. But we will not go to prison.” She gazed directly into my eyes. “Will you tell the authorities what you now know?” she asked.
I should have just said no. But I couldn’t lie under her cool gaze. “Maybe not,�
�� I said finally.
“You must consider the children,” she reminded me.
“What children?” I asked.
She closed her eyes and I braced myself to meet Stiletto again. But when she opened her eyes she was smiling a soft little smile.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Sweetie,” she answered in a high voice of childhood. “I’m five years old. Do you have any cookies?”
Before I could answer, she had closed her eyes again.
Her body bent forward into a stoop and the face that looked up at me when she reopened her eyes seemed far more wrinkled than a moment before.
“I’m Granny, dear,” she told me in a voice that trembled lightly. It was a kind voice. “I take care of the children. There are many children here. Many. Sweetie and Baby and Joey and Toby, just to begin with. They’re afraid they’ll be hurt.” Her voice cracked as she spoke. “Many of us are tired of the killing, dear. But prison is no place for the children. Stiletto would be the only one left if we go to prison. We don’t know what to do.”
Then her eyes closed and the lecturer was back. I could tell by the sudden coolness of her gaze.
“Do you understand?” was all she said.
“No,” I answered quickly. If I could keep asking questions maybe I could figure out what to do. “What about Meg…the woman who calls herself Meg?”
“I have told you,” the lecturer said impatiently. “Meg does not know us. She hears us sometimes, but she thinks she’s going crazy. Hearing voices. She can’t figure out where the paintings come from. She doesn’t understand why she can’t remember what has happened when we’ve been out—”
Her eyelids sank to half mast, then popped up again. I could see the struggle there in her face. She clenched her teeth. The muscles around her eyes bulged. And then her eyes were closed. And her body was changing, crouching. When her eyes opened they were no longer cool. They were filled with rage.
I centered myself.
“We gotta waste you too, man,” Stiletto growled as she raised her gloved hands. “You’re too dangerous, man. You won’t keep quiet.” She took a step toward me.
Fat-Free and Fatal (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Page 25