Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  “What did the doctor say?”

  Michael shrugged, but there was a gleam in his eye. “The usual—take it easy and make love often.”

  I brought a hand up to sock him in the shoulder and Michael winced again, before I’d even touched him. “No fair,” he said.

  I dropped my arm and smiled at him.

  He smiled back, a slow, sweet smile that sent a prickly sensation across my shoulders and down my back. “You have no idea what you do to me,” he said after a moment.

  “Tell me.”

  “Here?” he mocked. “Are you crazy?”

  “Tell me why you like me then.”

  “You’re kind, funny, clever, brave . . .”

  “Sounds like a Boy Scout.”

  “And you make me feel happy. Incredibly, wonderfully, indescribably happy.”

  “Likewise,” I said, kissing him soundly on the mouth. Then I dropped down in one of the gray vinyl chairs across from his desk and stared hard at the carpet for several moments. “I’m glad you showed up last night when you did.”

  “I don’t know; seems to me you handled things just fine. I couldn’t even get my wrists loose until it was all over.”

  “But if you hadn’t been there . . . well, I’m not sure what I would have done. I’d like to think I would have turned Daria in, but I’m not certain I would have.” I raised my head and looked at him. “That’s pretty disgusting, isn’t it?”

  “Listen, Kate, what’s done is done. There’s no point beating yourself up over it.”

  I bit my lip. No point maybe, but that didn’t make it any easier. “How is she?”

  “Still on the critical list.”

  “It’s funny how you can think you know a person, and be so wrong.”

  Michael pulled a chair close to mine and sat also, hunching so that his bad arm was nestled against his chest. His shirt was fresh, but he hadn’t shaved and the hair by his temples sprang outward with a life of its own.

  “If she lives,” I asked finally, “what will happen then?”

  “I can’t say for sure, it’s out of my hands. But even if she isn’t convicted of Pepper’s murder, there’s still last night.”

  “Will I have to testify?”

  “Probably, if there’s a trial.”

  “And this morning, what do I have to do now?”

  “Just read over the statement you made last night, make any corrections and sign it.”

  The wail of a passing siren from outside sent a shiver down my back. It was a sound I would never again be able to ignore. “She would have done almost anything for me, you know. And she isn’t a bad person really, somehow she just slipped over the edge.”

  He must have read the uncertainty in my voice, because he picked up my hands and held them with his own. “Daria killed Pepper. It was premeditated, coldblooded murder. Last night she tried to kill me, and she would have killed you given the chance.”

  I shivered, although the office was quite warm. “Is there any coffee around here?”

  “It’s pretty terrible stuff.”

  “I don’t care, just so it’s hot.”

  Michael left, returning in no time with two Styrofoam cups and a package of fig newtons. “The only thing left in the machine,” he explained, dropping the cookies in my lap with an apologetic laugh, “It was a long night around here.”

  I took a sip of coffee, feeling its heat work its way down my throat. It tasted flat and bitter, but the effect was instantly soothing.

  “Kate?”

  I looked up. Michael was watching me, his soft gray eyes unusually serious.

  “Last night,” he said, “when I saw you and Daria struggling with that gun and I couldn’t do a blessed thing to help . . .”

  I squeezed his hand. “It’s okay, it’s over.”

  “But when I heard it go off, I thought . . .” He traced his finger along my bare arm. “I thought I would never have the chance to tell you what I feel for you.”

  “Don’t, Michael. Not now.”

  Just as he started to say something more, the door opened. A youngish cop with short, close-cropped hair poked his head in. “We’re ready for you, Mrs. Austen,” he said. “Sorry it took so long.”

  He led me down the hall to a room with four desks lined in a row and pointed to a gray metal chair just inside the door. Then he seated himself at the desk opposite and handed me a clump of papers.

  “Just read through these and make any changes you want. Feel free to take as long as you’d like.”

  Quickly, I scanned the pages. They were my words; I recognized them. And they seemed to cover all the main points. But I couldn’t tell if they made sense. It was like trying to read Balzac in the original after only one year of high-school French. I handed the papers back to him.

  “Done already?”

  “Everything seems to be in order.”

  “Nothing you want to add?”

  I shook my head and signed at the bottom, where he showed me.

  “Guess you’ll have quite a story to tell your friends,” he said, flashing me a tight smile. “Claim your fifteen minutes of fame while you can.”

  My stomach suddenly felt scrambled, and I turned away. “Am I finished?” I asked.

  “Just a minute while I check.” The young officer scratched something on the back of my statement and then picked up the phone. Before he’d finished punching the number, Michael walked in and the young man dropped the phone back down. “Hey, Lieutenant, you want anything more from Mrs. Austen?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Michael said, sounding remarkably casual, “as a matter of fact, I do. Show her to my office. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “You free tonight?” he asked a moment later, when we were again alone.

  “I am, and I believe I owe you dinner.” Michael grinned and started playing with the hair at the back of my neck. “There’s something else,” I told him. “I’d like to see Daria.”

  He stopped his playing. “She’s in ICU, under armed guard.”

  “But you can arrange it, can’t you?”

  “Kate, there’s nothing to be gained.”

  “Please?”

  He looked at me for a long, quiet moment, then sighed. “All right. I’ll take you myself.” Grabbing the phone, he punched the buttons hard and then barked into the receiver. It took less than a minute.

  “Thank you,” I said as we walked to his car.

  “I still think it’s a lousy idea.”

  The invitation to the previous night’s retirement dinner was on the seat. I tucked it into the pocket under the dash. “You never told me, how did you know it wasn’t Jim who killed Pepper?”

  “He plays poker on Tuesday nights,” Michael said, pulling out of the parking lot and across four lanes of intersecting traffic. A move destined to end the rest of us up in traffic court. “And the game on the night she was killed didn’t break up until the wee hours of the morning.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Jim said so, at the Wine Festival.”

  I was impressed. “My God, what a memory.”

  He basked for a moment in my wide-eyed admiration, then laughed. “I only remembered because I was envious. There I was putting in sixteen-hour days while some rich dentist lolled around all night playing poker.”

  “Jim could have left for an hour and then come back.”

  “Maybe, but he wasn’t driving the loaner that night; he had the BMW.” Michael paused and glanced pointedly in my direction. “Another point of envy. That left Daria as the most likely candidate.”

  “Impressive,” I told him with a pat on the knee. “But what about the bruises? That wasn’t Daria, was it?”

  “No, that was Jim. We questioned him at some length this morning.”

  “Jim hit Pepper?”

  “Apparently she was a real ice queen, started taunting him with stories of other men, and then when he begged her to divorce Robert, she laughed in his face. He struck her and she fell. His story, any
way. I never saw the bruises, maybe he struck her more than once.”

  I couldn’t imagine Jim hitting a woman, but then a lot of things had happened that I could never have imagined.

  “The irony of the whole thing,” Michael continued, “is that Daria didn’t have to kill Pepper. She and Jim were history by that point. I imagine Daria might have looked pretty good to him after what Pepper had put him through.”

  “I’m not sure Pepper was as heartless as you think,” I told Michael. “It might have been a tough decision for her, choosing Robert over Jim. A number of people, including Robert himself, have mentioned that she seemed agitated and upset during the last few weeks.”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking directly at me. “I imagine having a nice guy madly in love with you can be pretty upsetting.” He smiled, but without humor.

  I turned my head and looked out the window at the green foothills in the distance.

  We drove in silence for several moments, until Michael cleared his throat and said, “The other day you mentioned something about a call from Andy.”

  I nodded.

  “He’s coming home?”

  I nodded again, keeping my eyes fixed on the hills.

  “When?”

  “A week or so. He didn’t know exactly.”

  “And then?”

  I thought of Anna, wide-eyed and hopeful, eagerly marking off the days to Andy’s return. I pictured him swinging her through the air and regaling her with stories of his adventures. My place in this picture wasn’t so clear.

  Shifting my position, I tucked one leg up under me and turned to meet Michael’s eyes. “I have to see what happens, I owe Andy that much.”

  “Owe him. For Christ’s sake!” Michael’s tone was explosive. “The guy walked out on you. I don’t see that you owe him anything.”

  “He didn’t exactly walk out”

  “Close enough.” Michael looked straight ahead, his mouth tight, his jaw rigid.

  Why was I defending Andy? It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, even to me. Maybe I was simply afraid to let go; afraid to relinquish my hold on the last vestiges of the cozy, picture-perfect life I’d thought we had. Or maybe I wanted to be able to tell myself that I’d tried, that I wasn’t the one turning my back on seven years of building togetherness. There was also, I suppose, the possibility that somewhere deep inside, part of me still loved him.

  “I’m just not ready to make any decisions,” I said. “But that doesn’t affect what I feel for you.”

  Michael turned his head, but not his eyes. “So where does that leave us?”

  “How about lunches? I just love your lunches.” I tried for a light, playful tone, but it came out uneven and squeaky instead. Hardly the voice of a seductress.

  “That’s not what I want.”

  Nor I, I wanted to tell him. But I couldn’t, not just yet. So instead I nodded and said, “I know, but I can’t promise anything more at the moment.”

  He smiled weakly, and we drove the rest of the way to the hospital in silence.

  ~*~

  ICU was on the fifth floor, behind double glass doors. There was a cop standing in the hallway just outside, and another by the nurses’ desk at the front of the ward. Michael pulled out his ID, mumbled something I couldn’t understand, and we went in. He repeated the exercise for the guy inside, and then left, saying he’d wait for me in the hallway.

  The room was stuffy, filled with the heavy rankness of hospital routine and stale bodies. I felt the sourness from my stomach rise into my throat. Hesitantly, I looked once again at the guard, who nodded but didn’t smile. Then I took a deep breath and headed for the far corner he had indicated.

  Daria was almost lost in the huge bed and the equipment surrounding her. There were tubes in her nose and arms, others snaking under the covers. Machines whirred, lights blinked, screens flashed zigzag patterns like abstract neon billboards. And in their midst lay Daria, her skin white and pasty, her hair tangled and flattened against her head.

  I stood quietly by the bed for a moment, then leaned forward and touched her arm. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at me impassively, as though she could see right through me.

  “I’m so sorry, Daria,” I whispered under my breath. “I wish things had turned out differently.” I blinked, but she didn’t “And I am your friend, even now.”

  Her eyes closed again, and remained closed. I brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead and stood a moment longer, listening to the blips and pings. Waiting, maybe, for some sign of the Daria I had known. But there was no acknowledgment at all, not a trace. Her body remained motionless, like an abandoned rag doll’s. Finally I turned and left.

  Michael was waiting in the hallway, just as he’d promised. He draped an arm around my shoulder, wincing with the pain of extended movement. “You okay?” he asked.

  I nodded, feeling curiously at peace. Maybe that’s what happens when you begin to let go. Things were never going to be what they had been, but then they were never what I imagined them to be in the first place.

  “We still on for tonight?” I asked.

  “I hope so. What shall I bring?”

  “Just your toothbrush.”

  A strained smile flickered across his face. “I was hoping there would be a day I might leave it there permanently. Along with my slippers and books, and my collection of gourmet spices.”

  “Who knows, there may be.”

  He looked surprised. “Want to give me odds?”

  “No promises, but I’d say the odds are in your favor.”

  He grinned and kissed the tip of my nose. “Be forewarned, I’ve picked up quite a collection of dirty tricks over the years, and I’m not above using them.”

  We locked hands. “I’m not so sure you’ll need them,” I said.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Murder Among Friends, Jonnie Jacobs’ next Kate Austen Suburban Mystery.

  Murder Among Friends

  A Kate Austen Suburban Mystery, Book Two

  ONE

  Mixing business and friendship is always something of an iffy proposition, even when you expect things to go smoothly. I had no such expectation where Mona Sterling was concerned. Not that Mona wasn’t wonderfully sincere and warm-hearted, because she was, in spades. But she was also opinionated, self-centered, and sometimes downright insensitive.

  Although Mona and I had been drawn together initially by the bond of divorce, we’d soon moved beyond discussion of marital termination agreements and child support guidelines to more cheery subjects such as dieting, age lines, and PMS. Whatever the subject, Mona would invariably carry on at length and with mind-numbing conviction. As fond as I was of the woman, I sometimes found her a daunting companion.

  When she called and insisted we simply had to meet that Monday, which happened also to be a holiday at my daughter’s school, and then announced that she was available only between the hours of 11:00 A.M. and 1:00 P.M., I managed to shrug off my initial irritation. After all, I’d known that working for Mona was going to tax my patience. I was hoping it would also bring me a slew of new clients flush with money. Mona was, among other things, well connected with the moneyed elite of Walnut Hills—and as a fledgling entrepreneur, I needed all the help I could get.

  I reminded myself of this as I stood at Mona’s massive front door and rang the bell. A sharp, wet, February wind whipped strands of hair across my face and tunneled down the neck of my old raincoat. After seven years of drought, El Nino or the hole in the ozone or whatever other mysterious force was responsible had finally shifted, and we were having one of the coldest, wettest winters in California history. Like cod liver oil, it might be good for us but it wasn’t pleasant.

  Shivering, I tried the bell again, poking it several times in quick succession the way my five-year-old, Anna, does when I don’t answer instantly. I waited for a minute, which is something Anna never does, then sighed, brushed the hair out of my eyes and reached into my purse for the keys Mona had given me.

>   “I might be a few minutes late,” she’d told me. “Just go on in and get started. I shouldn’t be too long.” Mona was invariably late so I’d planned for the fact and arrived almost twenty minutes after the appointed hour. Apparently I’d still beat her there.

  I fumbled around in my bag, stabbing my finger on one of Anna’s stray jacks before finding the keys under the phone bill I’d forgotten to mail. There were two keys. The rounded one for the top lock, the narrow one for the bottom. Or was it the other way around? I’d been dashing off to drive the afternoon carpool when Mona had gone over it, so I’d only listened with half an ear.

  I tried the narrow key in the bottom lock. Wonder of wonders, it worked. I stuck the other in the top lock, preparing to turn it with my left hand while using my right to depress the latch, the way Mona had showed me. But the door opened immediately. All those instructions and she hadn’t even bothered with the deadbolt!

  I pushed open the door and called out in case she simply hadn’t heard the bell. No answer. No sound of running water or footsteps either. Propping the door open with my purse (Mona had warned me that it locked automatically when shut), I went back to the car to retrieve the lithographs, which were the primary reason for my being there that morning. I’m an art consultant, a business I’d sort of back-stepped into when Andy and I separated and a friend offered me a job in her gallery. I’m an artist, too, but that’s an endeavor which provides more pleasure than profit. Not that I make such a killing from my consulting business. I’m counting on the fact that things will pick up over time.

  I had two pieces with me that morning. One was a monochromatic abstract which Mona had purchased, with my help, several weeks earlier. It was back now from the framers and ready to be hung. The other was something I’d stumbled across at a new gallery in Berkeley. I was pretty sure Mona would like it, but I didn’t know if the colors were right for the room.

  The pictures were large (which is what Mona wanted) and heavy (which sort of comes with the territory when you’re talking large). With the ground damp and the wind gusting about the way it was, I decided it would be best if I carried them to the house one at a time. You drop a fifteen hundred dollar painting and you’re liable to spend the rest of your life cursing your stupidity.