“Oh, good,” she sighed and led me to the table. “And I have cookies and everything. My therapist says I should have more fun, see more friends.”
“Well, this looks fun,” I tried.
The wing chair was worth the trip, as soft as well…velvet, and perfectly proportioned to my body. I sighed as I settled in.
“Perfect,” I murmured.
Lisa’s face brightened.
“I did this little corner myself,” she declared proudly. “I think I could be an interior designer maybe. And I’m tired of being an accountant, but I want to be a psychotherapist too. People suffer—”
The doorbell rang.
Lisa jumped, nearly knocking over her new chair. Then she made the long trek across the marble floor to the double doors.
“Maxwell!” she chirped an instant later.
Was Maxwell Yang another guest for tea? An impromptu one, it appeared.
“Okay for an estrogen-deprived being to drop by?” he asked.
Lisa actually giggled.
“I was visiting an interviewee down the street, and I thought, why not?” he continued. Well, that explained how he got past the guard.
“Kate’s here too,” Lisa announced as she led Maxwell in.
It seemed as if a flicker marred Maxwell’s impish grin for a moment, but then it was back in full-wattage.
“I admire your choice of residence, Lisa,” he remarked, surveying the expanse of living room. “The whole deer group could meet here.”
“And the deer,” I added.
Maxwell laughed, and Lisa followed up a beat later. But something uncomfortable lingered in the air.
Why was Maxwell Yang here? I doubted that the talk show host lacked for friends. And I doubted that he would choose Lisa for one, even if he did. Was he here to investigate? Or—I couldn’t stop my mind from wondering as Lisa brought out another flowered teacup—was he here to murder? Maxwell sat across the table from me and winked, almost imperceptibly. Did this mean we were both here in the pursuit of clues?
A cup of herbal tea of the tasty kind and a few oatmeal cookies later, the ambience was comfortable again. Maxwell Yang could tell a story. And he had already told us a few about the guests that came on his show. Suspicion dissolved into laughter as he spoke.
“The cat psychologist was one of the worst nightmares in my entire career,” he went on. “The woman proposed to emotionally heal anyone’s cat from the audience. So we had a studio full of cat carriers and screaming cats. She chose one young man from the audience at random. He brought up a precious-looking Persian in a basket and handed it to her. The cat jumped out and clawed our guest’s face.”
“No!” Lisa protested, her child’s face lit up in wonder.
“Yes, but that woman was a trouper. She said, “I sense some hostility here,’ and the audience was laughing so hard, they forgot what had just happened.”
“Did you ever interview anyone really famous?” Lisa asked.
“Jamie Lee Curtis,” he shot back.
“Wow.” Lisa’s eyes went out of focus. She was probably considering a career in acting now.
“And the mayor,” he added, rolling his eyes. “I hate interviewing politicians.”
“Because you are one, yourself?” my mouth said before I gave it permission. Maxwell Yang certainly acted like a politician.
“How very perceptive, Ms. Jasper,” he replied, doffing an invisible hat my way. “You have it in one. I give speeches, satisfy warring parties, and can be voted out of office on the whim of ratings.”
“I’d hate that,” Lisa muttered. “People are so stupid.”
“There are parts of this job I’m not so fond of,” Maxwell admitted, his automatic smile dimming momentarily. “But there’s nothing like show business.”
And with that, Maxwell Yang rose from our tea table. I rose with him. I wanted to catch him outside to ask him why he had come to Lisa Orton’s in the first place. Then I saw the sad look on Lisa’s face.
“Thank you, Lisa,” I murmured and felt immediately guilty about leaving. This young woman wasn’t really someone I wanted as a friend. If Maxwell had used her, so had I. I added hastily, “Your tea and your cookies and your furniture are all just wonderful. I had a really nice time.” Lisa smiled.
Maxwell did me one better. He kissed her hand. Then she really smiled. I wondered if he felt as guilty as I did. But I never got a chance to ask him. My goodbyes lasted longer than his and I could only watch as his Mercedes pulled out of Lisa’s driveway while I stood in her open doorway.
“Take care,” I told Lisa.
“I will,” she promised me.
All the way home, I fretted about Maxwell. What did he hide under his frivolous demeanor? In our whole “conversation,” nothing personal had been said except when I’d challenged him about being a politician. Ambition motivated him, I was sure. But what did that mean? Was Maxwell Yang a murderer?
The phone rang the instant I walked in my door.
I stared at it as the answering machine picked up.
“This is Avis,” she said after the beep.
I scooped up the phone before Avis began another sentence.
“Avis?” I asked. “Are you all right?” It was too easy to forget what Reed’s death might have done to her.
“Um…I’m fine, Kate,” she answered.
I waited. She had called me, after all.
“I wondered if you might be able to do me a favor. I think it’s a positive thing. I hope so, but I know I shouldn’t really ask. Still, I don’t know who else—”
“What favor?” I stopped her. She had to be on some kind of medication.
“Oh,” she murmured. “Sorry for rambling. Um, my daughter, Olive, has got a line on a job for a clothing wholesaler, but she needs recommendations.”
“Will she go live somewhere else if she gets the job?” I asked.
“Yes,” Avis whispered. I thought I heard her giggle. “Now, Kate, you don’t have to do this. But I did wonder…I mean you’re a wholesaler. A recommendation from you might carry some weight—”
“I’ll do it,” I told her. Years of business had taught me the skills to recommend anyone. Already I was reworking Avis’s daughter’s personality in my mind. Olive wasn’t aggressive, she was enterprising. She wasn’t nosy, she was interested in people. She wasn’t nasty, she was good with words. And then, there was her boundless energy. Any good wholesaler ought to be able to translate my words well enough.
“Thank you, Kate,” Avis murmured.
“And here’s to your empty nest,” I told her, wishing I hadn’t used those words the minute they were out. “Avis, are you all right, really?” I asked.
“I am really,” she declared in a much stronger voice. “Amazingly better. I know it will take a while, but Reed is fine wherever he is, I just know it. And I’m an old war horse. I can take it.”
“You’re a lot stronger than you look,” I told her.
“Thank you, Kate. Not very many people notice.”
We talked a little while longer, about gardening and food and life, and then we hung up. Avis really would be all right, I realized. I took in a deep breath. I finally believed it. Avis had enjoyed her short time with Reed. I was glad for her.
I looked out at the sunshine of the day. There was a lesson here. Before I did any more Jest Gifts paperwork, I would enjoy the sunshine.
I grabbed a glass of apple juice and walked out onto the deck, settling into a comfortable old deck chair and surveying my property. Sunshine lit the branches of the trees and warmed my shoulders. Birds argued. Traffic sounded from the main road. Life in all its glorious forms surrounded me.
I looked at the far end of my deck. The few roses that had been left in the rearmost terra-cotta pots had now been snipped as neatly as the hair of an insurance salesman.
- Twenty -
The sunshine seemed to cool as my own temperature flared. They hadn’t left me one bloom, not one! All right, so maybe I should have put
netting or wire over the roses. But a rose is a rose is a rose. And a rose in prison just isn’t.
Enough, I told myself, and clumped back inside.
No more Jest Gifts for me today. No more charts. No more apple juice on the deck. The afternoon wasn’t over yet. I was going investigating. If I couldn’t find the guilty deer who had murdered my roses, maybe I could find a guilty human who had murdered two doctors.
But who needed investigating?
I thought of my chart. There was one motive, one woman. Natalie Miner.
Twenty minutes later I drove up to Natalie’s real estate office, which was housed in an old Victorian in downtown Abierto. I walked up a short path of cobblestones after parking on the street. The landscaping was sparse, a few rosemary bushes and vinca vines. There was no evidence of the kind of garden that would be plagued by deer. But maybe Natalie saved her more extensive gardening efforts for her home.
Inside the office, it was a different story. No computer cubicles marred the coziness of Natalie Miner’s Pennsylvania Dutch motif. Rocking chairs, quilts, even stenciled rafters, gave her workplace the feeling of home. A calico cat lounged in a window seat. And the smell, was it apple-cinnamon? Either Natalie was a truly cozy woman or a fiendishly intelligent real estate agent. Or both. Who wouldn’t want to buy a fairytale house after a visit to her office?
“Kate!” Natalie cried out. “Lord, it’s good to see you.”
“You too,” I replied, and I meant it.
Natalie was looking better today. Her heart-shaped face was expertly made up, her blond, spiral curls were tousled perfectly, and her rosebud mouth was in full bloom.
She stepped my way on high heels and planted a kiss on my cheek. I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke underlying the apple-cinnamon scent.
“Richard, Zachary,” she lilted, introducing a couple of young men sitting behind rough-hewn desks. “This is Kate Jasper from my deer group.”
Both young men smiled my way, gorgeously. Could Natalie have been as desperate for Dr. Sandstrom’s love as my chart theorized? Not with Richard and Zachary around. I tried to banish the lewd thought from my mind. Just because Natalie employed two much younger, handsome men didn’t mean she had romantic designs on them.
“Hello, Ms. Jasper,” both men greeted me simultaneously. They sounded like schoolboys.
No, Natalie would prefer a more mature man. I was sure of it after hearing the boyish voices. Almost sure.
“Natalie…” I began, hesitantly. I had considered feigning interest in new housing, but decided against it. “Could we talk about the…the deaths? I just can’t help feeling—”
“Oh hon, of course we can,” she agreed. “I can’t stop thinking about them either. Both such attractive men. Dear God, what a waste.”
Her eyes flicked back to Richard and Zachary. Maybe Natalie appreciated the male species of any age. There was nothing wrong with that, I reminded myself sternly.
“So you found Dr. Sandstrom attractive?” I prompted. I was remembering the grouchy doctor’s narrow features and cold eyes under his aviator glasses.
“Oh, Lord, yes,” Natalie whispered. “You see, he was such a good man.”
“Good?” I was finding “good” an even more difficult adjective to apply to the doctor than “attractive.”
“Oh my, yes. He set up vaccination programs in South America, you know, and AIDS awareness programs here. Shoot, he took patients for free who were without insurance. All kinds of things—”
“How did you know so much about him?” I asked.
Natalie blushed beneath her makeup.
“I had a friend who went out with him after his wife passed on,” she admitted. “It didn’t work out for her, poor thing, so she told me I might as well give it a try, you know, romantically. Lord, it sounds like hand-me-downs, doesn’t it?” Natalie smiled nostalgically.
I smiled back. It was hard not to like this woman. Just as hard as it was not to like her office.
“Oh shoot, I haven’t even offered you a seat,” she apologized and pointed. I sat down in an old cane-backed rocking chair. A cannonball landed in my lap instantly. The calico cat.
“Jezebel,” Natalie scolded. She looked up at me. “The poor little thing does love a warm lap. Do you mind, Kate?”
I shook my head. Jezebel was already starting to purr. I stroked her silky fur and wondered who had named her.
“Yes,” Natalie went on, “Dr. Sandstrom was a good man, too good to have been murdered.” Her eyes misted up.
I panicked. It was all over for her mascara if she actually cried. “What did you know about Reed Killian?” I cut in quickly.
Natalie shrugged her shoulders, taking a seat across from me. “Not a thing anyone else doesn’t know,” she shot back, tilting her head as she looked my way. “I truly just can’t imagine what could have driven anyone to such ungodly acts.” She sighed, and a sable-brown Burmese cat appeared from nowhere and leapt into her lap. Was there a cat for every client in this place? Probably.
“Was Reed a good man?” I tried again.
“Hon, he was a doctor,” Natalie answered after some thoughtful stroking of the Burmese. “Where I come from, doctors usually are good men.”
We petted our respective cats in silence a little longer. I wondered what Natalie was thinking now. And I wondered what place she came from where doctors were held in such high regard. Her brow was furrowed, no smile on her face now.
“Do you know why they died, Kate?” she finally asked.
“Not yet,” I whispered.
I left Natalie’s office once I’d lifted the calico from my lap.
Back in my Toyota again, I sat for a while, the gears in my mind turning but not meshing. Was Natalie Miner the woman she appeared to be? If so, I didn’t think she was a murderer. But who was? I wondered if it would help to know more about Dr. Sandstrom. And Dr. Killian. It couldn’t hurt, I decided, and aimed my car in the direction of Searle Sandstrom’s office first.
Dr. Sandstrom’s office didn’t smell of apple-cinnamon when I stepped into the waiting room; it smelled of antiseptic. But then, it didn’t reek of cigarette smoke either. And the salmon-and-teal decor was easy on the eyes. I wondered if Dr. Sandstrom had chosen the decor. He’d had a garden, maybe he’d had an aesthetic nature too. I shook my head. Coffee-can Claymore land mines didn’t bring art to mind. Or goodness to mind for that matter. Or attractiveness.
“May I help you?” the young woman behind the desk asked me. At least she wasn’t crying today.
“I’d like to see Dr. Yamoda about Dr. Sandstrom,” I told her.
“Why?” she wanted to know.
“You may not remember me, but I was a member of Dr. Sandstrom’s deer group,” I said. And then her face pinched. Damn. Maybe she was going to cry.
But all she said was, “I’ll ask the doctor.”
After twenty minutes, a young, painfully thin woman left, looking unhappy. I hoped her illness wasn’t serious. But before I could indulge in morbid fantasies, Dr. Yamoda strode into the waiting room.
“Ms. Jasper,” she greeted me, her face lost in a frown.
“Dr. Yamoda,” I returned her greeting, standing so as not to be intimidated. It almost worked.
“What do you want now?” she demanded.
“I want to know how a man who made land mines to kill deer could be a good man,” I challenged her. “I want to know why he was murdered.”
Dr. Yamoda’s shoulders slumped, ever so slightly. She jerked her hand back and fingered her glossy black knot of hair for a moment.
Then she ordered, “Come with me.”
I followed her to her office and was once again seated in the patient’s chair. The rose that had been on her desk in memory of Dr. Sandstrom was gone now. Only the tastefully appointed room remained.
“Did Dr. Sandstrom pick the color scheme for your office?” I asked.
Dr. Yamoda smiled. And she might have been a different person.
“He did,” she murmur
ed, and I heard the tender sadness in her voice. “I wouldn’t know white from ivory, but he had an eye for color, an eye for beauty.”
I waited for more. It wasn’t long in coming.
“You asked how the man could kill deer,” she reminded me, strength returning to her voice. “Dr. Sandstrom’s wife had a rose garden. She was in ad design when she was healthy, but you wouldn’t believe the time she spent on that garden.” Dr. Yamoda shook her head. “It was perfect in color, in design, in fragrance. And then she died. Ovarian cancer. Can you imagine how it was for a doctor to watch his wife die of cancer? Dr. Sandstrom changed. He was angry. And he took over his wife’s garden, his shrine to her, I think. And the deer desecrated it. He couldn’t kill the cancer cells that drained the life from his wife, but he could kill the deer.” Dr. Yamoda bent toward me, pinning my eyes with hers. “Do you understand now?”
“Yes,” was all I could say.
After a long moment, the doctor asked me, “Do you have any more questions?”
I almost said no, but I did have more questions. And knowing the goodness that had resided somewhere in Dr. Sandstrom gave me all the more motivation to ask them.
“Do you know who his heirs were?” I tried. I wanted confirmation from more than one source.
“His son and daughter,” Dr. Yamoda shot back. “And don’t look for a motive there. They’re both physicians. No money problems. And they’re both in shock over their father’s death.”
I couldn’t leave it alone. This woman knew things.
“Were they acquainted with any of the members of the deer group?” I prodded.
Dr. Yamoda just shook her head.
“I can’t tell you no for certain, but I can tell you this. The doctor’s children loved him. They needed him more than his money. First, their mother, then their father.”
I just nodded. I couldn’t ask her any more questions. It was too painful. But that didn’t stop her from asking me questions.
“I want to know who killed him,” she told me. “Are you any further along in your investigation?”
“No, I’m sorry,” was all I could answer. The answer was as painful as my questions had been.
Murder, My Deer (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Page 21