“Kate,” a voice murmured solicitously behind me. If I hadn’t realized it was Avis, I probably would have whirled around and kicked. Instead, I just turned stiffly. “Did he scare you?” she asked.
“Yes, he did, Avis,” I admitted.
“Oh,” she whispered, pulling her smock tighter around her thin shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Kate.”
It wasn’t until later that evening in tai chi class while I was doing the sparring called single push hands, sinking to the rear and turning my body and arm in retreat, then circling forward to seek the center of my partner’s resistance, that I realized the lieutenant had probably scripted his words about me and Wayne, counting on my being frightened enough to help him. My body stiffened as I retreated again. My partner took advantage and pushed me gently backwards. I thanked her sincerely. That’s just what the lieutenant had been doing. Pushing me gently, finding my weaknesses. And that sexy voice and those burning eyes—were they just another form of manipulation? I consciously relaxed my body and circled more softly this time, catching my partner off guard. By the end of the round, I wondered if Perez really wanted my help at all. Or was he just testing me? And of course, I stiffened again.
I learned a lot from push hands that night. If I stiffened from fear or resistance, the lieutenant could topple me. If I relaxed, and remained true to my principles of balance and centering, I might just find a murderer. And then I left the tai chi hall for the real world and immediately forgot my lesson.
*
Saturday morning, I told Wayne we had to talk. His face took on that unmistakable look of dread that statement inspires in most males.
“It’s about C.C.,” I told him. “We have to adopt her.”
He lifted his eyebrows and smiled tentatively, waiting for the joke.
But then I showed him her wound and told him what the veterinarian had told me.
Twenty minutes later, after a whispered consultation, Wayne and I sat on the denim-and-wood couch, C.C. enthroned between us.
She moved her head from side to side, eyeing each of us suspiciously.
“We want to tell you that we’re married, C.C,” Wayne began.
C.C. licked a paw. Tell me something new, she seemed to be saying.
“And we want to adopt you,” I put in quickly.
C.C. looked up at me, her eyes wide-open now. I could have sworn she was actually listening.
“We, hereby,” Wayne and I chanted in unison, “take you, C.C, as our lawful, legitimate cat who we will love and take care of for as long as we are married.” The three-by-five card I’d prepared before our speech helped the simultaneous nature of the broadcast.
“Merowr?” C.C. said hopefully. And then we each petted her.
Wayne and I were still ogling long after C.C. had left the room, her tail held high, her steps purposeful as she pushed her way out of the cat door to make some other local animal’s life a misery.
“Did she really understand?”
“I think so.”
“But she’s just a cat.”
“A legitimate cat.”
And so it went until it was time for Wayne to go to work. Whether C.C. had understood us or not, Wayne and I felt better. We were a family now: woman, man, and cat.
And I was ready to protect my family. I was ready to find out who killed Dr. Sandstrom. I hadn’t forgotten Lieutenant Perez. And it was Saturday, a good day to catch members of the Deer-Abused Support Group at their respective homes. But I needed backup.
Felix.
Ugh.
It was a horrible thought, but one that actually made some sense. And if there was any trouble, I could always use Felix as a human shield…or a semihuman shield anyway.
I punched out the numbers of Felix’s phone guiltily, my stomach objecting with each jab.
He answered within a ring.
“All right, Felix,” I told him, getting the words out of my mouth as quickly as I could. “You win. I want to investigate.”
“Far friggin’ out,” Felix breathed after a second of silence. “Listen, I know I’ve been a potato-brain, man, talking about spreading the poop around about you and your Big Guy to your family. I was just being a wiseacre. Holy socks, I wouldn’t really say anything.”
“Fine, Felix,” I answered through clenched teeth. I didn’t stoop to reminding him that he had already told my brother, which was the equivalent of telling my whole family.
“I’ve been sweating over some cool-as-pool announcements for you,” he went on.
It took me a moment to remember what he was talking about. Post-wedding announcements, the answer to all faux pas.
“See, I got this really hot-as-jalapeños idea, man. They could look like friggin’ newspaper headlines, but on this classy paper. I did a quickie-wham-kazaam sketch. I can bring it.”
In the short silence that followed, I realized that he was serious. Felix Byrne was trying to be my friend. I was still scanning my brain for the words to answer him by the time he’d told me he was on his way, “burning rubber” to my house, and hung up the phone.
Fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rang, and the man was there himself, mustache, soulful eyes, and all. He flashed a sketch my way. THEY DID THE DEED was printed in boldface across the top. An impossibly rendered bride and groom were below, labeled Wayne the Swain and Kate the Mate.
“I’m…I’m…touched, Felix,” I finally choked out. It was better than choking him.
Scratch the announcement idea, the still-functioning part of my brain told me.
“So, let’s visit Howie,” I suggested quickly.
Felix’s grin disappeared for a moment, but then reappeared as quickly as cat hair on trousers.
“Wow, Kate, you’re really ready to sleuth the truth!” he whooped.
We were rolling out of my driveway in his vintage ‘57 Chevy, complete with foam dice, before he had time to ask for feedback about his announcement. I wondered how long I could keep him away from the subject.
“So d’ya think Howie’s the weirdo-in-the-works?” he asked eagerly once we were on the highway, heading toward Howie’s address in Green Valley. Felix wasn’t such a bad partner. He had everyone’s address already in his little spiral notebook. And he knew how to get anywhere in Marin County.
“I don’t have a clue, Felix,” I told him. “But I want to talk to the members of the group I haven’t seen since the…incident,” I told him.
“Holy moly, you mean you’ve already seen some?” he breathed.
“Just Avis and Jean Watkins,” I began. “And Darcie and Maxwell. Oh, and Gilda. And Natalie,” I added defensively. How had that happened?
That’s what Felix wanted to know. And I still hadn’t answered him to his satisfaction by the time we reached Howie’s. But at least he’d forgotten the announcement.
Howie seemed surprised, but not unhappy to see us at the door of his little cookie-cutter duplex. His round, undistinguished features reflected a mild curiosity if anything. I was even more curious as I surveyed his front yard. Gray stones, a few boxed plants. Was Howie really a gardener? Not even the remains of a rosebush were in sight. Maybe he had a magnificent backyard, I told myself.
“Terrible thing, Dr. Sandstrom’s death,” he commented, ushering us into his living room. Or maybe I should say “library.” Books were scattered liberally across the room, spilling out of shelves onto the coffee table, chairs, and even the floor. This was his real garden. A garden of literary delights. The smell of old paper tickled my nose.
He cleared off a couple of chairs absently, his mouth moving as if he were talking to himself. Cataloging the books he was removing?
“It was a very painful experience,” he amplified, once we were all seated.
“Pretty good friends with the old doc, eh?” Felix led the witness. Or tried to.
“No, I never met him before,” Howie answered, his face a study in innocence. “But I’m sensitive. Every man’s death is important.”
I didn’t ask him what
he thought of women’s deaths.
“Well, we thought we’d ask a few questions—” I began.
But Howie’s small eyes filled with a sudden recognition of Felix that stopped my mouth in its tracks.
“You’re the reporter, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s me, I scoop all the poop,” Felix assured him cheerfully.
“You know, you might like to do a feature article on my manuscript,” Howie suggested eagerly. “Three generations of Californians. It will be important, really.”
Felix barely had time to blink. Howie’s eyes went out of focus as he launched blissfully into a dizzyingly long summary of his manuscript.
We left, twenty minutes later. And Felix was carrying a complete copy of Howie’s work.
“Jeez, what a friggin’ geek,” he exploded when we made it back to his Chevy. “Everyone and their friggin’ iguana thinks they’re a writer.”
“But is he a murderer?” I asked.
“Single-minded sucker, that’s for sure,” Felix replied thoughtfully.
“All right,” I agreed. “If Dr. Sandstrom had some way to block publication of Howie’s manuscript, I’m sure Howie could have overcome his sensitive nature to do the act—”
“But the doc didn’t have diddly to do with Howie or his friggin’ manuscript,” Felix pointed out.
“Right,” I said, and we rode the rest of the way down the highway to Lisa Orton’s house without further conversation.
Lisa’s house was not a cookie-cutter job like Howie’s. Hers was produced by a cookie couturier, and protected in a gated community. The guard at the gate took a while for secret communications before we were allowed in to drive past mini-mansions, set back on full-acre lots, with identical fluted columns and double doors. But one look at Lisa’s garden when we arrived told me the gates didn’t keep the deer out. Her garden was filled with deer fodder, the remains of rosebushes, clematis, and Korean lilac, giving her garden a Bosnian sort of character. Why had she planted all the very flowers and shrubs that the deer loved so well? Lisa for one, appeared to need the information that the Deerly Abused had to offer.
She met us at the door, unsurprised, having been warned by the guard. I stared at her large, childlike eyes, her freckled cheekbones, and her sucked-in lower lip and wondered how she’d wound up in a mini-mansion. (What did she do for a living?)
“My father died,” she explained before I asked, before we were even through the doorway. “My mother was already dead, died when I was a kid. I inherited a whole bunch of money.” As we crossed her double-doored threshold, she pointed to a marble mantelpiece with an eight-by-ten picture of a severe-looking man whose face was neatly crossed out in Magic Marker.
“Oh, how—”
“I deserve wealth. I deserve to be happy after his abuse. And I’m tired of working as an accountant.”
“I’m sure you—”
“And now I have the money for therapy. He would have a fit if he knew,” she said proudly, then lowered her voice. “But he doesn’t. And I am becoming a fully actualized woman, finding my goddess within—”
“Did you know Dr. Sandstrom before?” I inserted abruptly.
“No, but I know his type. My father was a doctor. If it weren’t for my therapist and my survivors’ group, I don’t know what I’d do—”
“Did you put out the doc’s lights?” Felix interjected, his voice raw with frustration.
“Huh?” Lisa replied.
“Did you kill him?” I translated.
“He killed himself,” she declared, her eyes widening even further. “Karma,” she whispered.
Felix and I let ourselves out as Lisa went back to being a goddess or whatever she’d been doing before we arrived.
“Whoa, not logged-on,” Felix muttered as we drove back by the security guard.
“But a murderer?” I asked.
“Karma.” He smirked.
“Be good, Felix,” I warned him. “You’re still in Marin County limits. Karma will get you.”
He laughed, and so did I. But I wasn’t absolutely sure I was joking. Anyway, we still had one more stop to make. I didn’t want to offend the parking gods.
But there was plenty of parking at Reed Killian’s house. His place wasn’t a cheap, cookie-cutter house or an expensive one. It was…itself, a rambling brown adobe with little cutouts in the walls all along the outer edges. The cutouts were fun. Each one had a puppet or a rubber dinosaur or a piece of pottery or—
“Don’t spend all day like a friggin’ tourist,” Felix hissed in my ear. “We gotta grill the poss-perp.”
“The what?”
“Possible perpetrator, Kate,” he explained impatiently. “Your friggin’ hearing going or what, man?”
“What, man,” I answered, but Felix was already ringing Reed’s doorbell.
I was admiring the deer-proof lantana bordering the pathway to the front door when the door opened. The sound of Tibetan bells with a salsa beat greeted us.
Reed Killian was unshaved, dressed in short-shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, and playing. His living room was filled with toys. Light-activated sculptures barked and twinkled as we followed him into the room. Banks of black built-in stereo equipment stood at attention. Travel guides littered the room. But Reed only had eyes for something that looked like an oversized synthesizer linked to a computer screen.
“Wow, you guys have to see this,” he told us, as if we’d been friends since childhood. “I just got it last week.”
He pushed some buttons and a saxophone blared Bach to a rock beat.
“Is that a synthesizer?” I asked. I wanted to play too. But he didn’t offer.
“No, no,” he said, pushing another button. Harps played a happy tango. “This thing could be a whole recording station, it’s so cool. You can pick style, rhythm, instruments—”
“We wanted to talk about the murder,” I told him.
“Talk,” he declared. “And music will answer you.”
“Avis Eldora—” I began.
A pastoral symphony with the hint of a shimmy came wafting our way.
“Lisa Orton?” Felix tried.
Discordant jazz, with too many instruments, filled the room. An organ joined in sorrowfully.
“And you.” Reed pointed at Felix.
Rapping drums pounded, obliterating all other sound. Felix? Yep.
“So who did it?”
Reed turned from his new toy with obvious sadness.
“I’m a doctor, a plastic surgeon, not a detective. I play at a lot of things, but Hercule Poirot isn’t one of them.”
He turned back to the synthesizer recording station, and a frantic harpsichord played.
“Howie Damon?” I guessed.
“Yeah,” he agreed, grinning. Then his grin faded. “But I don’t think he did it. Look, I just want to have fun. I was going hang gliding next weekend. But this whole thing is a downer, especially for Avis.”
Classical music brought an auditory image of Avis into the crowded room, and once again some instrument played a mischievous shimmy in the background.
Reed turned the machine off. Only then could I hear my ears ring in the silence.
When he turned back to us, his eyes were serious, pupils dilated.
“I’ve thought and thought,” he told us. “And I’ve come up empty. Solve it for Avis,” he ordered.
“Friggin’ easy for him to say, man,” Felix complained not too long afterward as we sat in the Acorn Grows restaurant. Felix asked for three burritos and a side of refried beans. I asked for a soba noodle salad.
“No venison,” Felix told the waitress when I ordered. She smiled.
How Felix could wrap waitresses around his finger was a mystery to me. Maybe it was the magic of first contact. Or maybe they just wanted good tips. But they always smiled at Felix. I told myself to forget the waitress and tried to get a word in edgewise. Felix was ranting. From what I could make of his words, he thought detecting should be easier. Because with t
hese last three visits, I’d had a second shot at talking to each and every one of the suspects, and I wasn’t a whisker’s breadth closer to knowing who did it. And Felix was not a happy camper. Karma.
After Felix dropped me off in my driveway and sped away, his foam dice swaying, I grinned. He’d forgotten about our wedding announcements in his post-detection snit.
I walked up my driveway, listening to a burst of unexpected birdsong and smelling what was left of my garden. The scent of grass, rosemary, lavender, and a few remaining roses mingled with the smell of dirt and barbecue smoke from next door. I was too busy enjoying the feel of the sun on my neck to look up until I got to my front stairs. I should have kept my head down. Kevin and Xanthe sat on my front deck. Frantically, I looked over my shoulder for Felix. But Felix was long gone. And for the first time since I’d met the pit bull reporter, I missed him.
“Hey!” Kevin shouted. “Guess what?”
- Twelve -
“I don’t want to guess what!” I shouted back, ascending the stairs cautiously for all my volume. “In fact, I don’t even want to know. Maybe if you just left—”
“Katie, what’s happened to you?” Kevin whined, his Wookiee face showing hurt somewhere beneath the dark glasses. “It’s like you’re in a totally different emotional zone or something. You didn’t used to be so mean.”
“Did too,” I told him. Family brings out the real Oscar Wildeian wit in me.
“It’s that man she’s married to,” Xanthe intoned. She shook her blond poodle head and threw back her shoulders, exposing the full Mae West effect of her body under her tight T-shirt. “A man can do that to a woman, take away her power, her individuality, her woman-soul—”
“Wayne has not taken away my woman-soul!” I barked. “If anything, he’s helped me grow into it. He’s a kind, sweet—”
“Hey, Katie,” Kevin interjected. “We’re just here to help.”
I stood for a moment, my mouth hanging open, panting like a dog.
“Help me what?” I finally asked, knowing an instant later that I shouldn’t have.
Murder, My Deer (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Page 12