Felix stopped as he stared at the man sitting on my couch.
Lieutenant Perez smiled evilly. A chill went down my spine. Or maybe it was just the exhaust from Felix’s gasp.
“Mr. Byrne, just the man I wanted to see,” Perez announced in a voice out of an Alfred Hitchcock film.
“Hey, yeah, well—” Felix tried.
“Come to confess?” the lieutenant asked conversationally.
Felix’s face paled, his luxurious mustache dark against his skin.
“Hey, man,” he replied. “You’re the friggin’ public servant around here. You can’t say spooky junk like that.”
“I just did,” the lieutenant pointed out. “If you confess, it’ll go easier on you.”
“What is this?” Felix demanded. “A friggin’ Dragnet episode? I haven’t done anything. You some kinda skinny Gestapo or what?”
“What,” Perez answered calmly and smiled again.
“Why do you geeks hate me so much anyway?” Felix whined. “Just cause your captain is missing a few bars from his sheet music—”
“The police department doesn’t hate anyone, Mr. Byrne. We only investigate…and suspect.”
“But why me?” Felix’s voice was a few octaves above mine now. “I haven’t done a friggin’—”
“You live in an apartment, Mr. Byrne,” the lieutenant cut in. “Where’s your garden?”
“I don’t have any stupid garden. I just—”
“Then why were you at the deer group?”
But he didn’t even give Felix a chance to answer.
“We’ve checked the records,” he went on. “You’ve never bought a plant from Eldora Nurseries. Had you ever even been there before the night of the murder?”
“I don’t know, man—”
“Did you ever even see a deer before the one that mowed you down in the parking lot?”
“Deer, holy socks! I’ve seen deer—”
“But not in your garden.”
“I told you, I don’t have a friggin’ garden!” Felix’s skin wasn’t pale anymore, it was red. And his fists were clenched.
“So why were you at the Eldora Nurseries Thursday evening Deer-Abused Support Group?”
A long silence followed. Felix breathed in and out of his nostrils like an asthmatic yoga practitioner. Finally, he spoke.
“Like I said, I don’t have a garden.” He paused and looked my way. “I just thought that since Kate was there—”
I gave him a warning glance. If he said, “Typhoid Mary of Murder,” he was a dead man. He seemed to get the message psychically. Maybe Barbara was rubbing off on him.
“—that it would be fun to be in class with her,” he finished off feebly.
Perez shook his head sadly, as if arresting Felix would be a great sorrow to him.
“Or did you want to be in the class with your former doctor?” he demanded once he’d finished the head-shaking.
Felix’s skin color returned to paper-white. He groaned. I had a feeling he hadn’t told Perez that Dr. Sandstrom had been his personal doctor. I just hoped I hadn’t been the one to spill that secret. Hadn’t Perez said he’d already known?
“You must remember,” the lieutenant plodded on, “Dr. Sandstrom, the doctor you argued with.”
Felix’s skin went even a shade lighter. I looked at the floor. Was I going to have to catch him if he fainted? I considered interceding on his behalf, but I figured it would just rile the lieutenant.
“Jeez Louise, that was just a little disagreement, you know?” Felix laughed unconvincingly. He sounded like a turkey being choked. “No Titanic thing, man. Just a question of medical approaches. Some of these doctors don’t have a friggin’ clue, and when you call them on it they get testy. That’s all.”
“The witnesses said you were the one who got ‘testy.’“ Perez paused. “In fact, the witnesses said you were screaming at the doctor. That you had to be escorted out.”
I looked at Felix. He hadn’t told me about the escort. Dr. Yamoda?
“Listen, you turnip-brain,” Felix challenged. “Two can play your game. What if I write an article about your looney tunes boss—”
“All we have to do is nab you as a suspect,” the lieutenant responded calmly. “And believe me, we could, just on the evidence we have now. You won’t be writing much then. The only reason I’m holding off is that your friend Ms. Jasper doesn’t believe you could commit murder.” He shook his head sadly again. “But with these nasty insinuations, I just don’t know.”
“You can’t do that,” Felix told him, but it came out as a whisper.
“Why not?” the lieutenant asked, smiling.
“This is America.”
“No kidding.”
“Kate,” Felix whined
“What?” I asked.
“He’s not being fair, Kate. Tell him.”
“You’re not being fair,” I told the lieutenant.
But Lieutenant Perez just smiled and stood, the smile wavering as C.C. tried to retain her place on his pants leg with her claws. C.C. lost in the end, and turned to leave the room, her tail high with displeasure.
The lieutenant left too, but not without one last parting shot at Felix.
“We’ll be watching,” he warned, and then he marched through the still open doorway and closed the door carefully behind him.
“Whoa, Kate, that guy is trippin’ gonzo,” Felix started in the moment the door closed. He staggered to the sofa to sit where Lieutenant Perez had. He was sweating now. And he had the appropriate scent to go with it. Eau de Terror.
“I told you, they were all flipped,” he resumed after he dropped onto the denim surface. “Me, why me?”
“Felix, can’t you see he’s just goading you?” I replied angrily. I wasn’t sure who I was angry at, Felix or the lieutenant. Both, I decided. “You shouldn’t have ever said anything about his boss. That’s why he hates you.”
“But, Kate, you heard him. He’d put me in a cell with some seven-foot-tall rapist who takes his orders from the spirit of Attila the Hun or something and—”
“Felix, stop it!” I ordered.
Felix looked at me, and opened his mouth again.
The phone rang just as I was going to put my hands over my ears.
I picked it up without even waiting for the machine to kick in.
“Maxwell Yang here,” a soothing, calm voice greeted me. I could have sang my thanks for the pure contrast to Felix’s current bleating. But I didn’t have a chance.
“Did your police friend tell you anything relevant?” Maxwell asked before I could even breathe.
“Nothing,” I answered. “Except that we’re all right-handed.” I was glad I could be honest. There was nothing to hold back. “How’d you know Lieutenant Perez was here?” I asked.
“He was driving in as I was driving out,” Maxwell told me.
I wondered how he recognized the lieutenant’s unmarked car, but I was too tired to ask.
“Perez wasn’t there to harass you?” Maxwell inquired smoothly.
Was this gallantry?
“No,” I answered briefly. In spite of the lieutenant’s handling of Felix, a sense of loyalty kept me from telling Maxwell that a representative of the Abierto Police Department had come to me for help.
Maxwell heard the blankness of my answer. I could feel it in his own silence over the line.
It s okay,” he declared finally. “I don’t have to know everything. I just like to.”
I laughed. “Me too, I guess.”
“Kate, I’m sorry to press.”
He sounded so sincere. Too sincere.
“No problem,” I assured him and hung up, after promising to call if I had more ideas.
The minute I sat back down in the swinging chair, Felix started in on the Abierto police, specifically Captain Thorton.
“The old looney tunes is totally bonkers, man,” he insisted. “It all started when his freakin’ house slid off the hill in a mudslide. Right off into the rain,
kersplat! Then his spousal unit split and left him in the mud. And then he blew a burglary investigation big time. But the people who work for him are trying to protect his butt, going friggin’ Watergate, man. Won’t let anyone near him, for fear they’ll find out the head of the police department is a nut case.”
“I knew that,” I said, doing my best to imitate Lieutenant Perez. He scared Felix. I didn’t.
“Whaddaya mean, you knew?” Felix objected. “What are you, Barbara?”
“I wish I were Barbara,” I whined. It was definitely my turn to complain. “I’ve talked to everyone, and everyone’s partners and receptionists, and I still don’t have a clue. Not one!”
“Holy moly, Kate, don’t get your wedgie in a twist,” Felix ordered. “You’re not in trouble. I’m the one that’s in friggin’ trouble. With a capital friggin’ T—”
“Felix, do you ever think of anyone but yourself?” I asked. I was truly curious.
“Huh?” he replied.
“Two men are dead. What about them?”
“Um, okay, I’ll bite,” he tried. “What about them?”
“Felix, this isn’t a knock-knock joke!”
“But, Kate—”
It must have been the word “knock.” Someone started knocking on the door before Felix could get in any more trouble.
I took a deep, cleansing breath, choked, and answered the door.
Gilda Fitch stood outside, dressed in a post office uniform, carrying my mail and a package.
“Gilda?” I whispered.
“Rather,” she replied. “Don’t look so thick, old bean. I am a postal carrier, don’cha know?”
“Not mine, you’re not,” I told her. I knew my postal carrier. I gave him a tip every Christmas. And he had a beard. Gilda didn’t.
“I’m not your regular carrier,” Gilda offered. She grinned. Her expression didn’t make me feel any better. “Your regular chap’s got the flu. I got you on the overtime list. Dratted nuisance, in the midst of a murder and everything, but there you are.”
“I am?”
“What are you doing here?” Felix asked from behind me. Directly behind me. Kate Jasper, human shield.
“Mail delivery service,” Gilda answered, handing me my mail and the package. “New thing you have in the States, what?”
“Would you like to sit down or anything?” I finally asked, primordial hostess instincts kicking in.
“No, but thanks, old bean. Neither rain nor sleet nor snow, you know the drill. Well, cheerio.”
And then she turned and trotted back down the stairs.
I closed the door slowly behind her. What would she have done if Felix hadn’t been with me? She must have known it was my house. My name was on the mail…and the package. My regular carrier always brought the packages to the door too, it was true. But—
“How long has friggin’ Hail Britannia been delivering your mail?” Felix asked, still behind me.
I turned to him. “Never, as far as I know.”
“Whoa,” Felix murmured, shaking his head. “Well, it’s been real, but I gotta go.”
“Afraid she’ll come back?” I asked sweetly.
“Kate!” he yelped.
Still, he was out the door within minutes. Two minutes.
Who was Gilda Fitch? I asked myself as I listened to Felix’s car roar away. My hairdresser liked her, I remembered. My hairdresser was a good judge of character. I hoped.
I trudged across the entryway to my desk, dumped my mail, and thudded into my office chair, my pulse thudding along with the rest of my body. Work was the thing to do, I reminded myself. Mindless, soothing work. Soon, I was in rhythm. Pay an invoice, wonder about Gilda Fitch. Why had her appearance at my door worried me so? Pay another invoice. And Maxwell Yang. Was he spying on me? Another invoice. Lisa Orton. Why was she angry sometimes and sweet at other times? Another invoice. I thought about the threatening phone call. Another invoice. Another suspect.
An hour later, the rhythm had taken on a sinister beat. What if the murderer was never identified? I reached for my suspect chart. I told myself I could fill it in if I really tried. There was the anger against the doctor that—
The doorbell rang. I almost put my head in my hands and wept. But I was trained like a rat. The doorbell rang, and I had to answer.
I should have wept instead. Kevin and Xanthe pushed through the doorway the moment I opened up.
Kevin had something that looked like a cell phone held up to his head, but it was making funny noises. “Yeah, yeah,” I heard. Kevin thumbed a dial on the side of the contraption. A violin played somewhere. He thumbed the dial again. “Oooh, baby,” someone moaned.
Kevin’s mouth moved. “Mom’s in—” But the moan music in the background drowned out the rest of his statement.
“What?” I shouted.
“It’s a transistor radio, Katie,” Kevin shouted back.
“Turn that thing off,” I ordered.
But he couldn’t hear me.
“I got it in trade for a pyramid cap,” he kept on. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Turn it off!” I bellowed.
“Anything you say, Katie,” he replied as the moaning woman was mercifully silenced.
“Hello, Kevin. Hello Xanthe,” I started over. “What did you say about Mom earlier?”
“Mom’s in town,” Kevin answered cheerfully. “She came to visit, but you weren’t home.”
- Twenty-Two -
My chest tightened. I tried to swallow. Mom was in town?
“See, Katie,” Kevin lectured me, “family is a holistic bond, really cosmic. You can’t run away from it. Mom wants to be with you in your time of need—”
“Time of need?” I repeated. Did she know about the murders?
“Your wedding,” Xanthe reminded me. “She’s all bugged out about your wedding. She’d barely listen to us at all—”
“Did you try to sell Mom your pyramid scheme?” I demanded.
“Well, yeah,” Kevin conceded, a blush showing around the edges of his dark glasses. “I thought she’d recognize its leading edge potential, but—”
“She didn’t,” Xanthe finished for him bluntly.
Kevin shrugged. “Older people, you know.”
I was going to object to his lumping my mother in a group called “older people.” Then I remembered the original point of our conversation. Mom was in town.
I began packing in my mind. Barbara, I’d visit Barbara. Not that I didn’t like my mother, but I couldn’t bear her accusing eyes, not now. Lieutenant Perez was bad enough. And if Mom was really “bugged out” about my wedding, I didn’t want to expose Wayne to her anxiety. Or to expose him to her extended version of her pregnancy at the wedding gone wrong and its obvious warping of my prenatal psyche. My brain was going in circles now. Maybe Kevin was right. Maybe there was no running away from family.
“Hey, Katie, have you checked your answering machine?” Kevin asked. “Maybe Mom left you a message.”
I would have applauded Kevin’s unprecedented good sense, but I was too busy running to the machine.
There was indeed a message from my mother. Actually, there were quite a few messages. I pressed the button and heard her voice. On the first message, Mom sounded annoyed. She was angry by the second, raving by the third and fourth, and strangely calm by the fifth. Then there was a message from my aunt Mags, asking if I was really married, and a few more from friends with the same question. A call from Jade, my Jest Gifts warehousewoman, followed, enumerating the day’s crises. Then a brief request for a return phone call from Avis. And finally, my mother’s last message, in a tragic voice that would have done Shakespeare proud.
“I’m afraid I’m just going to have to leave,” she told me sadly. “What’s the use of waiting if you’re never coming home? Call me when you need your mother. And tell Kevin to get a job.”
I walked back from the machine, grinning with relief.
Now all I had to do was figure out who killed the two doc
tors.
Kevin and Xanthe grinned back at me. I should have started worrying then.
“We’ve come to tell you that we’ve got you covered on this murder thing—” Kevin began.
“Yeah,” Xanthe finished for him. “Slammer’s on the case.”
I let the grin roll off my face.
“Kevin!” I snapped. “I said No. Did you hear me?”
“But, listen, Katie,” Kevin went on. “I did a real good deal for you. And Slammer will only charge you five hundred dollars—”
“For what?” I asked. Then I shook my head. “No, never mind, I don’t want to know. Just get him off the case.”
“But—”
“I’ll tell Mom, Kevin,” I threatened. He flinched. How soon he’d forgotten who was in the family doghouse.
“Whoa, Katie, it’s no big deal,” he shot back. I swiveled around as if to return to the phone. He put up a hand. “I’ll tell Slammer to forget it.”
“Thank you,” I said with all the dignity I could muster, and then I went to call Avis.
Kevin and Xanthe wandered into the kitchen as I punched out her phone number.
No one answered at Avis’s house. I looked at my watch. Of course. It was a few minutes short of closing time at the nursery. The refrigerator door slammed in the kitchen as I called the Eldora Nurseries.
And sure enough, Avis was there.
“Kate!” she greeted me. I could almost hear a welcoming hug in her joyful voice. And that sound of joy released the tension I’d been holding in my own body.
“How are you?” I asked her, wanting to ask about Reed, but afraid to.
“Oh, great,” she answered, then added more seriously, “I’m fine, really. I just know that Reed is at peace too. I’m trying to remember him positively. He did so many things, loved so many people in his life. It was full, however short.”
“Right,” I replied, trying to inject an enthusiasm I didn’t quite feel into my tone.
“But that’s not why I called, Kate,” she told me. “I have a surprise for you. Why don’t you come down to the nursery?”
Murder, My Deer (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Page 23