A Stiff Critique

by Jaqueline Girdner

  Peter O’Donnell took his time walking past me. He opened the door, glared once more over his shoulder, and finally, he closed the door behind him. He was gone.

  My legs melted into quivering rubber. And then I heard an explosion from behind me. I jumped and turned at the same time. But the explosion was only the sound of Judy and Jean clapping their hands.

  “Thank you, Kate!” Jean shouted, a grin on her tear-streaked face. “You were incredible. Peter isn’t usually so crazy, but ever since he lost his job he’s been on this religious trip. Actually, it seemed to help him at first, to calm him down. But then when my parents decided to get a divorce, he really flipped. He keeps accusing everyone in the family of being bad Christians, and saying that we’ll all go to hell—”

  “And Jean goes to church and everything,” Judy broke in indignantly. “Hell’s bells, what a wacko he is!”

  “Judy asked him to leave, but he wouldn’t listen—”

  “And then I called you—”

  They kept talking and interrupting each other for a few minutes while I sucked in air and tried to calm my beating heart. To Judy and Jean I was a hero. Kate Rambo. If only they knew how Rambo’s legs were shaking. The only reason I’d stood up to Peter O’Donnell was that I was tired of being afraid. Afraid of Russell Wu. Afraid of whoever had murdered Slade Skinner. Afraid of crazy Christians—

  “Will your brother bother you at home?” I asked, suddenly afraid for Jean too.

  “No, he’s scared of my husband. He won’t bug me there.”

  I thought of Jean’s husband, a man who probably weighed all of a hundred and forty pounds, and I smiled. Peter O’Donnell was just a bully. And one who scared easily. I only wished I’d known that earlier.

  I spent the next couple of hours on Jest Gifts business. Earrings were still selling like hotcakes, Judy told me, and the manufacturer hadn’t delivered the new order on time. And there weren’t as many shark earrings in the boxes as there were on paper. And…

  Back home after a long hot drive, I treated myself to a late lunch of cold canned chili and rice crackers. Then I put in a call to Carrie. I wanted to talk to her about Russell. But all I got was her answering machine, which made sense since I’d called her at home during working hours. I’d forgotten the time in my anxiety.

  “This is Kate,” I recited for the machine. “Just wanted to talk. Nothing important.” Then I went back to my paperwork.

  *

  Carrie didn’t return my call until Tuesday evening. I should have been glad. I’d done a lot of Jest Gifts work in the meantime. The piles on my desk were even a little smaller than usual. But I hadn’t been able to rid my mind of Slade Skinner. Or Russell Wu. Apparently, Carrie had been mulling too.

  “I believe we should visit Nan Millard as soon as possible,” she told me, her voice deep and serious.

  “Why?”

  “I am beginning to wonder if Nan really did see someone or something at Slade’s house on the day of his murder. She insinuated as much at the last meeting, although she retracted it later.” Carrie paused for a moment. “I told you I didn’t think Nan was of the right character to murder, but I wonder if she might not be capable of blackmail—”

  “And blackmail is dangerous,” I finished for her, feeling a sudden pang. Even Nan wouldn’t be foolish enough to try to blackmail a murderer, would she?

  “Blackmail is dangerous indeed,” Carrie agreed. “Though I certainly have no evidence that Nan has planned or executed such an act. But blackmail or not, I need to know if she truly saw something. I hoped the two of us might convince her to speak.”

  “I’ll pick you up in ten minutes,” I said. And then, feeling a pang of a different kind, I added hopefully, “Maybe we can have dinner at The Bodhi-Tree afterwards.”

  Carrie was still dressed in her business suit when I got to her house. The navy blue didn’t do much for her caffe latte and cinnamon complexion, but it did seem to give her short body a certain authority. I wouldn’t argue with her while she was wearing that suit. Maybe Nan wouldn’t either.

  “Don’t you think we should tell the Hutton police what Nan said about seeing something?” I asked as Carrie climbed in my Toyota. Somehow her blue suit had reminded me of the Hutton authorities.

  “Nan didn’t really say she saw anything. She merely implied it.” Carrie frowned for a moment, looking even more formidable. “Why don’t we attempt to elicit the information first ourselves,” she suggested. “If Nan doesn’t respond, we can inform Police Chief Gilbert then.”

  “All right,” I agreed as I backed out of her driveway. I didn’t particularly want to see the Hutton police again myself.

  “Kate, did you notice the resemblance between Chief Gilbert and his two detectives?” Carrie asked a little further down the road.

  The memory of the chief and the murder scene at Slade Skinner’s house blossomed in my mind’s eye. I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter and tried to remember the faces of the three men instead of Slade’s mangled head.

  “That’s right,” I said once my brain obliged. “They all looked like British aristocracy.”

  “Including the African-American,” Carrie added.

  “Must be a job requirement.”

  She laughed. “Perhaps it is in Hutton. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Hey, what happens in the end of Cool Fallout?” I asked. I didn’t want to think about the Hutton police any longer.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve gotten to the section where the mysterious someone is calling all the old commune members. You know, the banker, the real estate agent, the nun and the guy dying of AIDS. But I still have two hundred pages to go. Is Warren Lee behind it all?”

  “You’ll have to keep reading,” Carrie said with a low chuckle. “The suspense is part of the enjoyment. I told you Slade Skinner was a good writer.”

  “But I don’t have time,” I insisted. “I want to know who’s behind the scheme. Is it Moslem Fundamentalists?” I glanced over at Carrie quickly, hoping to catch the answer in her eyes.

  But all I saw was a twinkle. “Why would you guess Moslem Fundamentalists?” Carrie asked.

  “Everyone else loves to blame them for conspiracies. Why not Slade?”

  “I’ll tell you this much,” Carrie gave in. “You’re on the wrong track with the Moslems.”

  “Is it environmentalists, then?” I tried.

  Carrie just chuckled again. That chuckle was beginning to sound sinister to me.

  “CIA? KGB?”

  “I hear the KGB is officially out of business these days,” Carrie offered.

  As far as I knew, I still hadn’t guessed who was behind the scheme in Cool Fallout by the time we got to Nan’s house. I pulled my keys from the ignition and turned to Carrie. Her eyes were crinkled in a smug, feline smile.

  “You’ll have more fun finding out for yourself,” she told me as she opened her door.

  I shrugged as I opened mine. I still had all of dinner and the ride back to ask questions. She was right. I would have more fun finding out for myself. But I was going to find out by pumping her.

  It was a great diversion. I was smiling as I got out of the car. But then I looked out across the street and saw Slade’s house. Its redwood facade looked so peaceful behind the trees, the embodiment of gracious living. The hair on the back of my neck rose in memory of the last time I’d been in that house.

  How could I have forgotten, even for a moment, that the author of Cool Fallout was dead?

  “Kate,” Carrie said sharply. I turned and saw a look of concern on her face.

  “I’m fine,” I told her.

  She nodded, then pointed to the BMW in front of Nan’s house. The real estate agent was in.

  We walked past Nan’s car to her front door. I looked at Carrie. She straightened her shoulders. I did the same. Between the two of us, we just might be able to convince Nan to speak.

  I rapped my knuckles hard on Nan’s front door. The door s
hifted open with a muted creak. That was weird. A still shot of Slade’s front door swinging wide open glanced across my mind. And with it a burst of nausea.

  That was then, this is now, I told myself. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open a little further. Far enough to peek into Nan’s tiny but tasteful living room. And then I saw Nan. She was sprawled against one of her perfectly matched vanilla-colored sofas.

  - Twenty -

  “What is it?” Carrie demanded impatiently.

  She pushed Nan’s door open even wider, wide enough so she could see into the living room. Then I heard the sharp rasp of her indrawn breath.

  I didn’t blame Carrie for the sound. I don’t know why I hadn’t made it myself. Maybe because I wasn’t breathing. Somehow, I didn’t have the energy. Because Nan Millard was dead.

  I couldn’t even find the strength to pull my eyes away. Nan lay splayed against her beautifully upholstered sofa as if she’d been thrown there. There was a bloody hole in her chest. It didn’t go well with her teal suit, not well at all. And the hole actually looked burnt around the edges. But it couldn’t be burnt, I told myself. There was a gun a few feet away from her on the floor. Guns didn’t burn, did they? I couldn’t seem to think straight.

  Carrie pushed past me and stepped into the room.

  “No,” I said. At least I tried to. But my voice wouldn’t work.

  I laid a restraining hand on Carrie’s arm and took a long, painful breath.

  “Don’t go in.” My words came out in a wheeze. “Don’t touch anything. We’ve got to call the police.”

  Carrie turned to look at me, her eyes wide.

  “My Lord,” she whispered. Then she shook her head hard. When she stopped shaking it, her eyes had contracted to normal size again. That was good, I supposed. Wasn’t it?

  “Are you okay, Kate?” Carrie asked, her low voice shaking.

  Was I okay? The room was shimmering with light. And something was buzzing in my ears. I had the feeling that I could float away from the doorway if I wanted, just float and float— No, I probably wasn’t okay, I decided. But I had to be. I took another breath. Then I tried Carrie’s method and shook my head hard. So hard, I almost fell over. Damn, I was dizzy.

  “Fine,” I answered a few moments later. “I’m fine. Let’s find a phone.”

  But I wasn’t really fine. I was chilled, outside and in. I looked over at Carrie once we were safe inside my Toyota again and I couldn’t stop my mind from wondering. Had she arranged for me to be with her when she found Nan’s body? Was it possible?

  Then I noticed the grayish cast of her skin. And the way she kept breathing in and out in convulsive bursts. And the way her hands were shaking. She was as frightened as I was. I couldn’t believe she’d known Nan’s body was going to be there. Her present shock was too real.

  “Do you know where the police station is?” I asked her finally.

  She shook her head, twisting her hands together.

  We sat a little longer. I had my voice back, but my brain still wasn’t working very well.

  “Perhaps a pay phone,” Carrie suggested.

  “With a phone book,” I agreed and started the car.

  But after fifteen minutes of speeding up and down the tree-lined streets of Hutton I was convinced the city didn’t have any pay phones. I didn’t even see any businesses. I was about to give up, when I turned another corner and Carrie pointed.

  I followed her finger. We had found the business district. I drove by a market, a flower shop and a cafe. And then finally, I saw a pay phone. Right next to the Hutton Police Department.

  The lobby of Hutton’s police station reminded me of a doctor’s office. White walls, institutional linoleum and a glassed-in counter. The only difference was that the man behind the counter was wearing a uniform and a gun.

  “We need to talk to Chief Gilbert,” I announced and then caught my breath. We had sprinted up the stairs and through the door.

  “Yes, ma’am?” he replied, raising his brows with an interrogatory emphasis that could have belonged to a butler.

  “We are here to report a crime,” Carrie specified from my side.

  The man shot her a glance and opened his mouth.

  “A murder.” I spelled it out for him. “We found the body.” That shut his mouth for a second.

  “Stay where you are,” he ordered and slid the glass window shut. I wondered if it was bulletproof glass.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have asked for Chief Gilbert. As we sat waiting for him on an uncomfortable Naugahyde couch, I realized the man behind the counter had probably called him in from home. And no one had asked us for any details, not even our names, so I assumed that nothing would happen until Gilbert arrived. And meanwhile, Nan…I shuddered, not even wanting to think about it.

  Twenty minutes later, Gilbert came bustling through the lobby to usher us politely into his well-furnished office. Even then, comfortably seated on real leather, it took us more frustrating minutes to make him understand that we weren’t there about Slade Skinner’s murder but about Nan Millard’s.

  “Nan Millard.” He pronounced the name judiciously after Carrie twice repeated our claim to have found Nan dead. “Who is Nan Millard?”

  “She lives—lived—across the street from Slade Skinner,” Carrie told him.

  “And she was a member of his critique group—”

  “And she is dead—”

  “Dead?” asked Chief Gilbert, furrowing his aristocratic brow. Finally, we had gotten through. “In Hutton?”

  “She was shot in her home, inside Hutton city limits,” I said impatiently. “And the gun’s still there.”

  Gilbert’s brow unwrinkled. “Ah, suicide,” he said. “How very sad.”

  Then he left the room, coming back before he’d even shut the door, to ask for Nan’s address. Luckily, Carrie had it in her purse.

  After that, we heard a lot of bustling and commanding, even a little muted shouting from somewhere outside Gilbert’s office. Then we were asked to wait in the lobby by the uniformed man we had spoken to before. It was at least an hour later before we saw Gilbert again. Carrie and I didn’t talk much in that hour. The only thing I wanted to talk about was Nan’s death. Had Nan really committed suicide? Somehow I doubted it. But being in a police station was enough to discourage me from asking Carrie what she thought.

  I had closed my eyes in an attempt to visualize a calming garden scene—actually any calming scene would have been nice—when I heard the sound of a man’s voice coming in through the lobby door. An angry man’s voice. I popped my eyes open and saw Chief Gilbert bearing down on our Naugahyde couch. The two other lean and aristocratically featured men who had accompanied him on the day of Slade’s death were trailing behind him, identically cowed looks on their black and white faces. Uh-oh.

  “Why in hell were you two there?” Gilbert demanded without preamble.

  “We thought Nan might know something about Slade’s murder—” I began.

  “Certain statements that Ms. Millard had made in the setting of our critique group seemed to indicate that she might have seen someone or something on the day that Slade Skinner was killed,” Carrie finished for me.

  It was a good thing she was a lawyer. I might have said the same thing in far fewer words. Not that Gilbert was happy with her explanation.

  “Why in hell didn’t you tell us if you thought this Millard woman knew something?” he shouted.

  “You were set in your belief that Slade Skinner’s death was the result of an interrupted burglary,” Carrie snapped back. “And Nan’s insinuation seemed directed at someone in the critique group.”

  Gilbert’s face flushed. “Separate ‘em,” he ordered. “I’ll take this one in my office.” He pointed to Carrie. “Zuleger, you watch the other one. Make sure she doesn’t leave.”

  But for all his bluster, Chief Gilbert didn’t have Carrie in his office for long. It couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes before she was escorted out and I was e
scorted in. The chief asked me what time we’d arrived at Nan’s, what we’d touched, whose idea it had been to visit Nan, if Nan and Slade had been lovers, and a few more fairly easy questions about Carrie and the other critique group members. Then he asked what Nan had said to make me believe she knew something about Slade’s murder.

  That was a hard one. Because I couldn’t remember exactly. And I had spent a lot of my time in the lobby trying to remember just that.

  “It was something about being able to see Slade’s house across the street that day,” I told him uneasily. “But then when she was challenged, she said she hadn’t really seen anything.”

  Surprisingly, Gilbert didn’t delve any further. Carrie had probably been more specific. He only had one more question for me. Well, actually two. Did I kill Slade Skinner? And did I kill Nan Millard?

  “No,” I answered emphatically to both questions.

  I just hoped I sounded believable. Even when I was a child, I’d always managed to sound guilty in the process of denying things that I really hadn’t done.

  But Gilbert didn’t clap me in handcuffs. He just blinked and stood up from his desk to deliver me to yet another uniformed officer who took my fingerprints. And finally, I was free to go.

  I was sure of one thing as Carrie and I left the police station into the darkening evening. If Nan had seen something, she would never tell us what it was now.

  “Kate, I’m sorry,” Carrie said to me when we got to the Toyota.

  “Sorry for what?” I asked, my heart pumping a little faster. I couldn’t make out her features in the waning light.

  “For getting you into this…this mess.”

  Then she put her arms around me and hugged. It felt good. I hugged back, releasing fear and anxiety as I did. Releasing suspicion. I could feel it flow from my tense body as belated tears flowed from my eyes. My friend Carrie was comforting me. And for a time, that was all that mattered.

  “Do you think Nan saw the murderer and blackmailed him?” I asked once we were back in the car rolling toward Carrie’s house.