I took the chance for a quick glance at Avis. Avis stuck a gloved finger into the air and opened her eyes momentarily. Then she closed them again quickly. So quickly, I wasn’t absolutely sure that it had happened.
“When he picked up the pill, I knew he knew, and he’d tell,” Lisa whispered. “So the next time, I ran and put on a nursery smock and gloves from the shed, and then I hit him and hit him till I knew he was dead. Nobody even noticed I was gone. They were all watching you and Avis and that little jerky guy. I was brave, wasn’t I? It must have been Goddess energy. But his head was so icky. I hid the smock and gloves in the trunk of my car. No one ever checked there.” Now she did look at me, and her wide eyes seemed to call out for absolution. “It’s all so complicated. I feel like I did before I saw my therapist, so confused. But I had to defend myself. You can’t trust anyone.”
I nodded. Lisa’s hands eased on the pitchfork, color running into her white knuckles.
“And Reed.” She kept her eyes on mine now. “Reed guessed from the pill. I could tell. And he was a doctor! My father was a doctor. And there was a hoe right there when I went to talk to Reed. Just like it was left there for me. ‘Cause no matter how many times I hit Reed with it, the blood didn’t splatter far enough to get on me. And I used the bottom of my shirt to hold the handle. No fingerprints. And no one saw us. I did the right thing.” Her voice went quiet, but it was scarier that way. “Doctors should die. Not ones like my therapist, but other doctors.”
I nodded again. She pulled the pitchfork over to the concrete floor, away from my body. Was nodding the thing to do?
“Like my father,” she explained. “When you’re small you can’t fight them, but when you’re bigger and filled with your true self, you can kill them.” Then Lisa actually smiled. I swallowed and smiled back.
“See,” she whispered confidentially. “I have a wonderful therapist. She recovered memories for me…memories of my father abusing me sexually. I didn’t believe it at first—sometimes I still don’t—but it doesn’t matter. He was mean to me.” Her round eyes narrowed ever so slightly. And I remembered what Jean Watkins had said about abuse not having to be sexual to be hurtful. Whether or not Lisa had been sexually abused, she was obviously deeply wounded emotionally. I just wished she was receiving therapy right now. In an institution. “My therapist takes us survivors through cleansing enactments. I got to kill Daddy over and over again. That’s what he deserved. He always told me to shut up.”
“Was that how he abused you?” I asked. Even now, I was curious as to what had actually happened to Lisa Orton to drive her mad. Because there was no question left in my mind about her sanity.
“No, it was more,” she whispered, but her voice was uncertain. She shook her head. “It was more…my therapist says so. But, but…”
“That’s okay,” I said as gently as possible. “It doesn’t matter.”
Lisa’s mouth opened wide. “He didn’t love me!” she screamed. “What does it matter if he abused me sexually or not, he didn’t love me!” She looked back outside. “So I left the rosemary sprig.”
“For remembrance?” I asked.
She nodded.
“But he wasn’t your father,” I commented, keeping my voice light. “Dr. Sandstrom, I mean.”
“Oh,” Lisa said earnestly, “but he could have been. He was just the same, so cold and yelling at me. Just the same.”
I thought of the other Dr. Sandstrom that I’d come to know posthumously, and was sorry that Lisa met him on a bad night.
“But how about Reed?” I asked. “Was he like your father?”
“Not exactly, but still, I couldn’t trust him. He was a doctor, wasn’t he? At first I thought he was okay anyway. I even thought I might go out with him. He flirted with me. But I saw him with Avis. They were kissing! How can you trust someone like that? And then he started in about the pill I dropped. He was torturing me, torturing me! He was easy to kill. The hoe was really simple.”
As simple as a pitchfork, I thought, but kept the dialogue going.
“Does your therapist know?” I asked.
Tears poured out of those wide eyes then, down Lisa’s freckled cheeks. She was still a child. If she hadn’t been holding a pitchfork on me, I would have held her.
“I’m afraid to tell her,” she sobbed. “I think she’d be proud, but I’m not sure. I trusted her so, but I was afraid she’d turn me in. I miss her. The hypnosis sessions especially.”
“Hypnosis?” I repeated.
“Oh, yeah,” Lisa murmured, her voice slowing down. “It’s so neat. See, first she says, ‘Walk down a long green road,’ and you do.” Lisa’s eyes lost focus. I hoped she was seeing that road in her mind.
“And then, when you’ve walked down the long green road?” I whispered, beginning to hope. Years ago, I’d taken a class in hypnosis with Barbara. She’d said I’d need it someday. Was today the day? And more important, was “long green road” Lisa’s trigger phrase?
“She says, ‘You see something at the end of the road,’“ Lisa replied dreamily.
I felt a gloved hand clasp mine. Avis’s. Giving me encouragement. I could have cried. But I didn’t have time.
“And what do you see at the end of the road?” I prodded gently.
“It’s a little cottage, with roses and ivy and lots of nice things inside.”
“Let’s walk inside,” I suggested. Then I purred, “Oooh, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is beautiful. There’s all kinds of pretty things in here. And my mother is here, and we’re having a tea party.” The mother who’d died young, I remembered suddenly.
“With porcelain cups?”
“Oh, yes,” she murmured, closing her eyes. “Mommy asks me to pour. The tea smells so good.”
“Lisa, isn’t your arm awfully heavy?” I soothed. “Wouldn’t it be nice to lay down that load?”
“Oh, yes.” Lisa set the pitchfork down, and then sank to the floor to sit cross-legged at our feet.
Avis rose quietly from the concrete floor at the same time.
“Are there treats?” I asked and pushed myself into a sitting position.
“Oh, yes.” Lisa’s voice was drowsy now. She extended her legs and torso and lay her own body down on the cold concrete. But she didn’t seem to feel it, lost in her ivy-covered cottage.
I heard the door of the main building swing in. I just hoped Lisa didn’t. But Lisa was too far gone to hear anything from the outside. I heard a voice, Kevin’s, and saw Avis press her finger against her lips urgently, pointing down. Kevin and Xanthe circled around the counter to see Lisa and me. And to hear Lisa.
“And little dogs and kittens,” Lisa went on, her voice slurred. “And I have a big flowered hat.”
Avis carefully picked up the pitchfork and placed it on top of the counter.
Then Wayne and Felix burst through the door.
Avis lifted her finger to her lips again, but Felix was not to be stopped.
“Holy moly!” he shouted. “What’s the friggin’ scoop here”
Wayne clapped a hand across Felix’s mouth. I envied him the pleasure. But it was too late. Lisa’s eyes had popped open.
“You tricked me,” she accused, looking for the pitchfork.
“No,” I told her. “No, Lisa. It’ll all be all right now.”
More softly, Xanthe asked, “What happened, Kate?”
“The Goddess told her to kill two men,” I whispered back angrily. I wasn’t sure who I was angry with. Lisa? Her therapist? Xanthe? Or their Goddess?
“Oh, Kate, I’m so sorry,” Xanthe said, and tears moistened her eyes.
Then Xanthe knelt down and took Lisa into her arms and held her. Lisa clung to her and wept in great racking sobs.
Then I realized. Xanthe understood Lisa. I didn’t. I hoped I never would.
- Twenty-Four -
We were all there at Eldora Nurseries on a Sunday afternoon three days later, standing outdoors among the flats of annuals.
We, being the survivors of the Deer-Abused Support Group. And Lieutenant Perez, my friend Barbara, Dr. Yamoda, who I’d thought to invite at the last minute, and Kevin and Xanthe, who I hadn’t thought to invite, but who came anyway.
I stood in the streaming sunlight, sweating under my turtle-neck and listening to the blend of conversation, traffic, and the hum of the countless insects the plants had attracted. No one seemed about to sit on one of the metal folding chairs that Avis had brought outside for the meeting. Or was it a celebration? I breathed in the fragrance of soil and vegetation, felt the sun on my nose, and decided, yes, we were celebrating. I looked up into Wayne’s face. His brows were relaxed and a rare public smile tugged at his mouth. I put my arm around his waist, leaned for a moment against his torso, and added his unique scent to the nursery’s brew.
Wayne. I felt my own face flowering into a smile. Wayne, who’d had second thoughts when he’d called the nursery from his car phone Thursday morning and received no answer. Wayne, who’d then turned his Jaguar around to come back to Marin after he’d crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. Wayne, who’d even called Felix to meet him at the nursery. I squeezed his waist and glanced over at Kevin and Xanthe, who’d shown up at the nursery too that day. I still didn’t know exactly why. Xanthe had only said they’d been “vibed out” by my overheard decision to visit Avis the day before. They’d come to visit at my house that morning and immediately realized where I was.
Maybe Xanthe was psychic. I swiveled my head Barbara’s way and she winked in my direction. An affirmative answer? I didn’t really care. I was just thankful I’d been alive and well when the gang of four had arrived at Eldora Nurseries. I could never have forgiven myself if these people who cared for me had found my dead body next to Avis’s. “These people” especially being Wayne.
Now, Avis was bragging once again about how I’d saved her life. She straightened her spine and spread her arms wide, perfect in teal today. Teal gloves, hat, hip boots, scarf, and jumpsuit were just the beginning of her outfit.
“I suppose I should have never asked Lisa about the pill,” she explained, her voice gentle and clear in the shimmering air. “But it was niggling at me, that pill she’d swallowed. And then Reed mentioning a pill. I didn’t mean to get Lisa worked up. In fact, I really didn’t think I had at first. She just said ‘what pill?’ when I asked, and then she was gone. Kate came in and went back out to get her plant. And the next thing I knew, I was reaching to answer the phone, and Lisa ran at me and threw me onto the concrete floor behind the counter like I was a sack of manu…” She paused. “Tanbark,” she finished. “I must have been unconscious when Kate found me—”
“And Katie talked Lisa out of killing you,” Kevin declared proudly. Brothers are good for something.
“I just got her to talk, really,” I replied with false modesty. I was still astounded that my hypnosis trick had worked. Hot damn! But then, Lisa had been preconditioned for hypnosis.
“Kate could get a friggin’ deer to talk,” Felix complained nasally. “I’m supposed to be the whiz-bang journalist, but every time I tried to scoop someone, they just went ‘I dunno.’ Might as well have been at a friggin agnostic’s convention, ‘I dunno, I dunno.’ Jeez Louise.”
“Tell them about Lisa’s therapist, tiger-muffin,” Barbara ordered.
Ugh. I hated it when Barbara called Felix “tiger-muffin,” but at least it got him on another subject.
“Lisa Orton’s therapist is gonna lose her ticket,” Felix obliged. “She was already under the medico Gestapo-watch, even before Lisa Orton. See, all of her patients believed they were molested as children. And none of them believed it before they let her woo-woo them. And get this, they all remembered the same details from their childhoods, every single one. The therapist took each of them through this whole friggin’ guided imagery trip, describing an identical, off-the-shelf scene of childhood molestation. And each of them was baked on enough legal drugs to remember anything she suggested, real or not.”
“But, hon,” Natalie Miner objected, her raspy voice sounding even more Southern today than usual. Maybe it was the sun. “Aren’t some of these poor gals really molested?”
Jean Watkins weighed in then.
“That’s the very sad thing.” Jean shook her head slowly. “With these false memories being implanted, who knows who the real victims are anymore?”
“Yeah, like that old wackhead who wanted me to say I did dirty things with my father,” Darcie threw in.
“Precisely,” her grandmother agreed. “It wasn’t true for Darcie, but how many other unfortunate women have lived through these experiences? And who will believe them now? Now that the whole issue of childhood memories is subject to such scrutiny.”
“I did a little undercover for Kate,” Xanthe threw in nonchalantly. She lowered her eyes modestly.
“You did?” I asked, stunned. I could feel my mouth hanging open. I shut it. There were too many insects around for open mouths.
“I always thought this Lisa person sounded pretty squirrelly, so I just called her therapist and got an appointment—”
“Wait a minute,” I objected. “How’d you even know who Lisa’s therapist was?”
“I called Lisa,” Xanthe answered simply.
She’d called Lisa. I hadn’t thought of that. But I hadn’t noticed Lisa was squirrelly either. And Xanthe had just picked it up from conversation.
“Anyway,” Xanthe resumed, “the first thing the therapist asked me is whether I’d ever been molested as a child.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded, slapping at a bug who’d landed on my forehead.
“You wouldn’t let me, Kate,” she snapped. Her mascaraed eyes opened wide as she put her hands on her hips. Whoa. Cursing time already?
“Oh, Xanthe,” I murmured and reached out to touch her shoulder. If only I’d listened to her.
Xanthe dropped her arms and smiled forgivingly. Then she took a deep breath that made the most of her Mae West figure. “See, I went to a therapist like that once. She was the one that taught me to curse people to get it out of my system. I don’t think I’ll curse people anymore.” She paused, frowning for a moment. “At least not as often.”
“Did you guess it was Lisa?” Maxwell Yang asked.
“Not really,” Xanthe admitted. “But Felix kept talking about Lisa, and I felt like I knew her. No one ever believes I’m psychic.”
Barbara chuckled wickedly.
“Maybe we should have you on the force,” Lieutenant Perez chimed in, his dark, sexy eyes on Xanthe. Incredibly, I felt a tug of jealousy.
“Maybe,” Xanthe purred and winked his way.
The lieutenant blushed and rushed headlong into speech. “We found the green pill in the doctor’s pocket, of course, but we just thought that a doctor was likely to carry pills. And no one said anything about Lisa taking a pill.” He turned to glare my way.
But the glare went right through me, because I had another piece of the puzzle.
“That’s what Dr. Sandstrom meant by ‘I’m a doctor,’“ I muttered. Then I took a breath and spoke louder. “He meant that he could figure out who hit him if he figured out who took the medication that was on the ground next to him.”
“And Lisa knew what he meant,” Howie Damon put in, his first words of the day. “I’d wondered about that; in fact I was worried. I never saw Lisa take her pill. But I recognized the one the doctor picked up from the ground. I’m on the same medication as Lisa. Antidepressant.” He looked at his feet. “I thought the doctor was talking to me. Maybe if Lisa had known, she wouldn’t have killed him.”
“No,” Jean Watkins told him, her hand raised, palm up. “Don’t even think that. Lisa was beyond reason.”
“Really?” Howie whispered.
Jean nodded her absolution.
Then Howie smiled. “If it weren’t such a tragedy, it’d make a great story.” His eyes went out of focus.
“Hey, wait a friggin’ nanosecond here,” Felix jumped i
n. “This is my story! Sheesh, Lucy, I’m the one who was there—”
“And you know,” Wayne cut him off easily, “Lisa was the only one to leave after Dr. Sandstrom. I’ve thought it out. Kate and Avis were talking and it seemed like everyone was watching. Then Reed and Avis went out, but not till later. So when Lisa went outside, she went alone, alone but for Dr. Sandstrom.”
“Lord, the poor man,” Natalie murmured.
But Lieutenant Perez reacted differently to Wayne’s words. “Why didn’t you tell us?” he demanded angrily.
“I didn’t put it together in my mind until I was driving back over the bridge,” Wayne admitted quietly. “I’d thought everyone had been moving around at random. But it was only the doctor and Lisa who actually left. Maybe it was the adrenaline that triggered the memory. But suddenly I could see it.”
I took his hand in mine and caressed it. “Not adrenaline,” I whispered in his ear. “Love.”
And then I remembered the tea I’d shared with Lisa at her mini-mansion. My sweat turned cold in the sunlight. I turned to Maxwell Yang, tasting bile.
“Maxwell, did you save my life when I…” I began. Then I tried to remember if I’d ever told Wayne about my tea party with Lisa. I looked up at Wayne. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Perhaps you saved my life,” Maxwell suggested, with an impish wink. Did he understand what I was trying to hide? “A conversational lag can be the death of my attention.” He laughed. I laughed with him, swallowing fear. He did understand. I stole another peep at Wayne. He just looked confused now. And then I reminded myself never, never again to have tea alone with a murder suspect.
“By the way m’dear,” Gilda broke into my thoughts. “Thought you might want to know I really was working when I delivered your post the other day. Know I got your tail in a twist. When we need a bit of money, we work overtime. Just replaced your regular carrier that day. Dashed sorry if I terrified the wits out of you.”
Murder, My Deer (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Page 25