Murder, My Deer (A Kate Jasper Mystery)

by Girdner, Jaqueline

  Reed frowned.

  “Sometimes, surgery is inevitable,” he answered.

  - Fourteen -

  “Surgery?” I muttered, startled by Reed’s pronouncement. Then I remembered that Reed was a doctor himself, a plastic surgeon. But still…”Did you see Dr. Sandstrom as a disease?” I asked.

  “No, no,” he answered impatiently, tapping the fingers of his left hand on his thigh. His right hand was still grasping Avis’s. He was probably going through synthesizer withdrawal. He didn’t even seem to notice the food on the coffee table. “Jeez, I just meant that someone that moody and abrasive was pretty much asking to make enemies. And he probably made a really bad one.”

  “What was he like?” Olive asked, her face oddly softened by her curiosity.

  “He was okay, I guess,” Reed murmured. He wriggled around in his chair as if he couldn’t quite get comfortable. “But he didn’t know how to have fun. He’d rather argue and make people mad—”

  “And someone killed him for that?” Olive interrupted, shaking her head. “It’s lucky I’m still alive.”

  Three mouths restrained themselves as one. Reed, Avis, and I all just sat and looked into the air.

  “Maybe it wasn’t just the doctor’s unpleasantness,” Avis suggested after enough time had gone by to change the subject. “Maybe it was a secret he knew.”

  “A doctor,” Olive mused. “Abortions, transmittable diseases, insanity—”

  “Or maybe someone inherited,” Reed put in. “Do we know who his heirs are?”

  Now that was a point. Had Lieutenant Perez looked into the question of Sandstrom’s heirs? He must have, right?

  “His wife was dead,” Avis reported, frowning. “But I think he had grown children.”

  “Look,” Olive put in. “Maybe someone was jealous of him.”

  “For what?” I asked, taking one last bite of orange-date bread while waiting for her answer.

  “I don’t know,” she shot back, throwing up her hands. “Could be anything. Success—lots of people are jealous of success. Or maybe he had affairs with more than one woman.” Olive wrinkled her nose. “Men!” she finished up.

  “He was a doctor.” I offered my own theory. “Maybe he was guilty of malpractice.” I thought of the Watkinses. But neither of them had mentioned Dr. Sandstrom in their screed. And he wasn’t an eye doctor or a plastic surgeon. Though Reed was—

  “Maybe he made a pass at someone,” Olive cooed, her eyes on her mother.

  But Avis didn’t even catch the look.

  “How can anyone kill another person?” Avis asked, rubbing her arms and dislodging Reed’s hand in the process. “It’s too hard to even imagine.”

  “Oh sure, Mom,” Olive sneered.

  Avis looked at her daughter then, concern in her eyes.

  “Hey, Avis,” Reed suggested, his voice high with enthusiasm. “Let’s go on a little trip. I know some friends who are taking a sailboat down the coast. It’ll be fun—”

  Avis laughed. One look at her clothing should have given Reed a clue that sailboats wouldn’t be her idea of fun.

  “I love it when you say those things,” she told him.

  Reed smiled, looking as innocent as a puppy dog. Olive was right. Avis had luck when it came to men. Reed was smitten, no doubt about it.

  “Well, then, let’s just do it. We can both make arrangements to take the time off, then I can call my friends, and—”

  “Betcha the police won’t let you go sailing off into the sunset,” Olive piped up. “You’re suspects.”

  That was a real conversation killer.

  In the silence that followed, I saw Olive smile for the first time. Then she stood up and left the room.

  Reed and Avis looked at each other. I couldn’t see Avis’s face under her hat just then, but I could see Reed’s. And Reed was not a happy plastic surgeon.

  “Cripes,” he muttered under his breath.

  “I think she’s probably right,” Avis whispered, turning to me now. “Kate, we have to figure this out.”

  Why “Kate”? How many people had included me in the “we” of whodunit since Dr. Sandstrom was murdered? Did I look like a detective or what? It had to be the “what.” But I didn’t know what the “what” was. Unless I had a sign that read “sucker” on my forehead. I actually raised my hand to feel my forehead, then jerked it back.

  “Tomorrow, Avis,” I told her. “We’ll get a better idea what’s going on tomorrow.”

  I left not long after that, suggesting that Avis and Reed take a motel room until Olive left. They both giggled at my suggestion, suddenly seeming very suitable for each other despite their age difference.

  I thought about the pair on my drive home. Something about Reed bothered me. Was it just his relationship with a much older woman? Or his nervousness? Then it hit me. He was a doctor. After talking to the Watkinses, maybe that was enough to indict him. But not for murder, I decided as I backed into my driveway, carefully positioning my car for the possibility of a quick getaway. I don’t know what I thought I’d need to get away from, but the possibilities of relatives, reporters, police, and suspects seemed statistically significant enough to justify a different way of parking.

  I was just in the door when the phone started ringing. I waited for the answering machine to pick it up. Some time around the seventh ring, I remembered I’d turned the machine off. I picked up the receiver cautiously.

  “Kate, it’s me,” the voice on the other end of the line announced.

  “Me” was Jade, my warehousewoman at Jest Gifts. I was expected to know this. And expected to know that when she announced herself this way, something was really wrong. I waited. It didn’t take long.

  “You know the guy who’s supposed to make the new computer mouses,” she began.

  I nodded. Apparently, she heard me.

  “Well I found out what his little problem is. I tried to call you yesterday, but your line was always busy. And today no one answered at all.”

  “What’s his problem?” I asked, not really wanting to know.

  “He’s in jail.”

  “Jail!”

  “Yeah DUI, driving under the influence,” she filled me in. “He thinks he can make a deal to go into rehab, but he’s not going to make our computer mouses.”

  I grabbed my manufacturers file, thumbing through frantically for a new mouse-maker.

  “Kate?” Jade asked in a tiny voice, way too tiny for her.

  “What?” I asked impatiently. Was she in jail too?

  “Did you get married?”

  My heart contracted. Damn.

  “Um…yeah,” I confessed.

  Then I heard her crying.

  “Jade,” I began. “No one was supposed to know. You would have been one of the first—”

  “Really?” she asked nasally.

  “Of course. You know Wayne and I care about you…”

  Half an hour later I hung up. And while comforting my warehousewoman, I’d also searched my manufacturers file and found at least three leads to follow on Monday for replacing our imprisoned, and hopefully sobered, mouse man.

  The phone continued to interrupt me for the rest of the evening as I worked on badly neglected Jest Gifts paperwork and worried about mouse manufacture. The whole Northern Hemisphere now appeared to know that Wayne and I were shamefully married. The rest of the world was waking up to the news too. And a few entities on other planets were probably gossiping about it as I worked and apologized over the phone. At least Kevin and Xanthe seemed to be gone.

  Wayne came home late that night. My eyes opened from a light sleep to see him gliding around the room quietly, trying not to wake me. A ghost with a body. A nice body. A nice body that smelled of Wayne. He was almost in his p.j.s when I ambushed him.

  *

  Sunday morning, Wayne and I lay in bed, staring out the skylights into the morning sun…and discussing murder suspects.

  It felt like a morning to snuggle under the covers and sniff th
e sweaty roses. But Wayne had other ideas.

  “Who have you talked to?” he asked, rolling my way, his eyebrows lowered to half mast.

  “Um…everyone, I guess,” I told him. Better to get it over with now.

  He rolled on his back, glared, and crossed his arms over his bare chest. C.C. came ambling in, took her place beside him and glared at me too. I shifted into striking position and kissed Wayne on the forehead. C.C. was on her own. Wayne sighed. I kissed his mouth, gently. He sighed again, but this time the sigh had an underlying note of contentment.

  “It’s our honeymoon,” I reminded him coyly.

  “Can’t have a honeymoon without the traditional dead body, now, can we?” he retorted.

  Now it was my turn to roll on my back and cross my arms.

  “Okay,” he mumbled. “Who do you think did it?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered impatiently.

  “You probably know more than you know,” he said.

  That was a thought, though I wasn’t sure what it meant.

  “How about a word-association test?” he suggested. “I’ll say a name and you say the first thing that pops into your mind.”

  “All right,” I agreed, uncrossing my arms and closing my eyes.

  “Avis Eldora?” he shot off.

  “Nursery,” I responded. That was easy.

  “Howie Damon?”

  “Manuscript.” That was even easier.

  “Lisa Orton?”

  “Therapist.”

  “Reed Killian?”

  “Synthesizer.”

  “Synthesizer?” Wayne asked.

  “You know, like for music,” I explained.

  He paused to digest that. I felt, rather than saw him shake his head. And then he went on.

  “Darcie Watkins?”

  “Baseball cap.”

  “Jean Watkins?”

  “Social worker.”

  “Gilda Fitch.”

  “Cheerio.”

  “Maxwell Yang?”

  “Smooth.”

  “Natalie Miner?”

  “Southern belle.”

  There was a long pause.

  “I can’t think of anyone else,” he finally admitted.

  “How about you?” I suggested.

  “Wayne Caruso?” he murmured, confused.

  “Sexy,” I purred.

  I didn’t see him coming with my eyes closed, but I felt his warm, gentle hands and his soft lips.

  After a few minutes, I pulled away and asked, “Are you sure it’s dead bodies that are traditional on honeymoons?”

  He pulled me back.

  “Live ones,” he mumbled through our joined lips.

  It sounded right to me. Actually, it felt right to me. Deliriously right.

  But all honeymoons must end. Or at least endure intermissions between acts. An hour later, we were up and showered and breakfasted, ready for the meeting of the Deer-Abused Support Group, minus one, at Eldora Nurseries.

  On the way out, I checked the daffodils. They were weak, but alive. Condition critical.

  When I told Wayne about the bulbs, he frowned a gargoyle frown that might have killed those bulbs if it had been directed their way.

  “Don’t like this,” he announced. “You’re right, Kate. Can’t just run away. It’s come to us.”

  He was seriously silent as he drove his Jaguar to the nursery. I didn’t even try for light conversation.

  When he parked the car, we saw a flurry of people near the entrance. Was that our group? Then I saw the picket signs and deer antlers. Deer Count had joined the Deerly Abused.

  As Wayne and I got out of the car, we heard the raised voices.

  “Deer count, deer count!”

  And saw the picket signs bobbing in a circle.

  “We are attempting a harmonious solution,” came Avis’s voice floating over their chants. Those years as an actress must have taught her how to project her voice.

  “Deer killers!”

  “How can you accuse us of killing deer?” Jean Watkins challenged the picketers, standing her ground on sturdy legs. “We’re here to find natural solutions to their eating our gardens, not to kill them.”

  “Yeah, tell those wackheads, Gramma!” Darcie added loudly, yanking the bill of her baseball cap.

  “Deer are human too!”

  “People are more important than deer!” Lisa Orton shouted, hands on her hips.

  None of our group had the slightest impact on the chanting picketers.

  “Deer count, deer count!” they began again.

  Maxwell Yang and Gilda Fitch stood off to the side, whispering back and forth and laughing, as if the whole performance had been staged for their enjoyment. It did have its comic aspect, the bobbing signs and antlers.

  But Reed Killian wasn’t laughing. He emerged from the main building and stood in front of Avis, addressing the pickets.

  “I’ve called the police,” he announced firmly. “This is private property. You picketers will have to leave. So please go take care of the planet somewhere else.”

  Deer Count skedaddled as fast as C.C. did when she was caught shredding curtains.

  “Oh, Reed, that was so smart,” Avis told him. “I didn’t even think of the police.”

  Reed grinned. “I didn’t really call them,” he admitted.

  “And a bully, bully for you,” Gilda said. Reed’s grin turned into a diffident smile. Was she really complimenting him? I wouldn’t have bet on it.

  But Deer Count was gone, and I, for one, was grateful. However, all things wonderful are not always possible in the same moment. Felix Byrne showed up just as the last antler had bobbed out of the nursery. And it seemed that Felix had assumed a Clint Eastwood persona for the moment.

  “So, which one of you put the doc under the lilies?” he asked by way of a greeting. He smelled of garlic and frustration.

  Maybe someone would have answered Felix, but Howie Damon was the next to arrive. And Howie had news.

  “I’ve got a publisher!” he whooped.

  “For your California manuscript?” I asked, hoping the incredulity wasn’t evident in my voice.

  “A small press,” he answered me. “They do all California history.”

  “Well, congratulations,” I told him, holding out my hand.

  He shook it, his own hand moist with excitement.

  And then everyone was congratulating him. I just wished we could’ve had a party to celebrate his success, instead of rehashing Dr. Sandstrom’s murder.

  Natalie was the last of our group to arrive, her eyes reddened, her baby face a sad baby’s. I wondered what was wrong, but was afraid to ask. There were enough things wrong for the time being. She smiled briefly upon hearing Howie’s news, though, and then asked where we were going to meet.

  We all filed into the main building, seating ourselves on metal folding chairs arranged in the same semicircle as on the night that Dr. Sandstrom was killed. Only Reed didn’t stand at the podium today. He had clearly abdicated his duties as class teacher.

  I began to shiver as we sat down. Was it just the memory of the doctor’s death? I locked my hand with Wayne’s. His usually warm fingers were cool too. Maybe the room was just cold. The smell of earth, plants, and fertilizer floated on the air. I even thought I smelled roses.

  “Okay, you guys,” Felix demanded. “You got any friggin’ idea how the doc bought it?”

  Silence was his answer.

  “Anything?” he asked more softly.

  Reed looked thoughtful. “There was the pill,” he said.

  And suddenly, I was even colder.

  “What?” Avis asked sharply.

  “I remember a green pill,” Reed went on, his eyes almost dreamy. “Dr. Sandstrom pocketed it after the first time he was hit with the deer statuette.”

  “So what kind of gonzo clue is that supposed to be?” Felix asked. “Probably was his own friggin’ pill.”

  But Reed didn’t answer him. “Maybe the statuette had
a Freudian significance,” he theorized instead. “I used to read Freud.”

  “Freud was a lousy therapist,” Lisa declared. “He was the worst kind of testosterone-based life form. I heard he took a bunch of women who were actually abused by their fathers and labeled them hysterics. He made a whole career out of it—”

  “As opposed to those who are making careers out of women who weren’t abused and are convincing them they were,” Jean Watkins interrupted.

  “Was on the couch once, myself, eh what,” Gilda put in. “Always wondered what the guy sitting behind me was doing. A bit much, I say. And for a tidy sum, to boot.”

  “Did you know psychoanalysis came to California quite early?” Howie put in. “Even in the earliest part of this century, California always had room for new ideas.”

  “All therapists are wack-offs,” Darcie told us. “Bunch of jerks.”

  “Well, most of them are,” Lisa conceded. “But not mine. You oughta try her. She’s wonderful.”

  “Huh!” Darcie snorted.

  “Excuse me, but we don’t want to talk in terms of generalization,” Jean Watkins piped up. I had a feeling we were in for a lecture. “Generalization leads to stereotyping. Just because one therapist is bad doesn’t mean they all are. And the same goes for doctors. I’ve had my troubles with doctors, but Reed seems like a fine man.”

  Avis smiled in agreement.

  Maxwell winked. “All I can say is that Freud would make a fantastic subject to interview if he were alive. Did he consciously accuse women of hysteria who’d actually been abused? Did he realize it? Did his views just reveal his own hang-ups?” Maxwell paused. “A fantastic interview, but not a fantastic friend, would be my guess. The man was probably homophobic, to begin with.”

  “And Dr. Sandstrom?” Avis put in, bringing the group back where they’d started. Where they should have stayed.

  “He was a jerk,” Darcie put in.

  “He was a doctor,” Jean reminded us.

  “He was a gardener.” Avis commended him. “A man who had his loves and his hates.”

  “He was a deer killer,” Lisa snarled.

  “An officer and a gentleman,” Maxwell offered, without irony, as far as I could tell.

  “So, who whacked the old fart?” Felix bawled in frustration.

  The conversation went downhill from there.