“Kate, finally you answer! Why haven’t you returned my calls?” As usual, my estranged husband’s timing was less than perfect.
I sighed in response to his question.
“Did you get my messages?” he asked impatiently.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been busy.”
“Oh.” His voice smoothed out. “Let’s go to dinner tonight. We can start working on the settlement. Pick you up at seven?” I sure was popular that night.
“I can’t, honey,” I said, instantly regretting the “honey.” Old habits die hard. “Too much work to do.”
“And you always said I worked too hard. Well, start thinking about it, anyway. You can do that, can’t you?”
“Give me a little breathing time,” I snapped. “It’s been less than a week since you decided to divorce me.” This was the man I had loved wholeheartedly for years. My faith in my own judgment began to sink.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice hurt. I could just imagine the look in his puppy-dog eyes. He probably was sorry.
“It’s all right. I’ll think about it.”
“Suzanne says—” he began. But the rest of his sentence was mercifully drowned out by the sound of my doorbell ringing.
“Got a date,” I said. “Talk to you later.” “A date? I thought you said you were working tonight!” “Sorry, got to go,” I said and hung up. I grinned at my own audacity as I walked to the door. I flung it open, ready to see Wayne’s smiling face, but he wasn’t there. Nobody was there.
- Twenty-Three -
I stared out the doorway into empty space and asked myself who the hell had rung the doorbell. Was it one of those overzealous UPS delivery men who ring, drop your package on the doormat and disappear before you can say, “I’ll sign for that, thank you”? I looked down. There was no package on the doormat.
I walked out onto the porch, but I still couldn’t see anyone. I had started down the stairs, when I heard a sudden mechanical coughing noise. I froze, one foot still in mid-step, suddenly alert. As my senses revived, my mind also woke up. If someone had wanted to lure me out into the open they had certainly done an effective job. But then the coughing noise turned to a roar, and a motorbike zoomed off somewhere nearby. I set my foot down and chided myself. What an imagination! I had thought the coughing noise was gunfire. I turned to go back in the house, wondering if I had imagined the sound of my doorbell as well. Anything to get Craig off the phone.
Then I saw it: FUCK OFF OR DIE! Spray-painted in slanting foot-high black letters across the redwood shingles on the front of my house. Next to the letters was a Rorschach-style black blob that I interpreted as a skull and crossbones. I felt the damage to the redwood shingles like a physical blow. My stomach cramped and I doubled over. My beautiful house!
I fought my nausea with concentrated deep-breathing as I walked back inside and dialed the Mill Valley Police Department. My hands were sweating. The cop on the other end was sympathetic, until I gave him my address. I was outside city limits.
“Is Sergeant Udel there?” I asked truculently. My fear and shock were quickly turning to anger. Maybe I wouldn’t throw up after all.
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered.
“Then please ask him to come to the phone. Tell him it’s connected to the Younger murder.”
What I got was Inspector Parker. He took down the information without much interest. He didn’t buy the connection to the murder. “Sounds like kids to me,” he said. Then he suggested I call the County Sheriff’s Department, since my house was in their jurisdiction. I asked him whether he would at least tell Sergeant Udel about the incident. He promised he would, and hung up.
I was trying unsuccessfully to remove the spray paint with solvent when Wayne drove up. The black letters were remaining aggressively in place. However, I was fairly certain I was removing all the sealant I had spent the summer applying shingle by shingle.
Wayne was halfway up the stairs when he saw the black message. His body was rigid. Then he looked at me. I felt instantly to blame for the whole mess. But before I could make an unwarranted apology, he marched the rest of the way up the stairs and took me into his arms. I buried my head in his down-jacketed chest, blocking the black letters from my sight and feeling a great affinity with the unjustly maligned ostrich.
“Did you tell the police?” he asked.
I whispered an affirmative from my downy refuge.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Half an hour later we were eating Chinese take-out in Wayne’s warm kitchen. By tacit agreement neither of us had said a word about the spray paint, or discussed the murder for that matter. In fact, neither of us was saying much at all. The only sound was the clicking of our efficient chopsticks across bright pottery plates, to deliver brown rice, garlic broccoli, spiced string beans and Szechuan bean curd to our hungry mouths. I found to my surprise that the most recent shock had sharpened my appetite instead of dulling it.
“Hot tub?” suggested Wayne after the last string bean had been consumed. His eyes were intense as they peered out from beneath his eyebrows.
“Sure,” I agreed. More decadence sounded good.
We walked to the spa in silence. Once there, I changed into the black and lilac bathing suit that still hung in the dressing room. I had considered leaving the bathing suit off, but years of misguided monogamy had left me too shy.
I joined Wayne in the tub, where he sat quietly emitting clouds of male pheromones into the steam. I lowered my body into the hot swirling water and closed my eyes. After a lifetime of effortless babbling, I suddenly found myself unable to form words. I leaned my body back and let my mind float. Then I felt the hesitant, soft pressure of his mouth upon mine. I laced my hands into his silky curls and pulled his head closer. The hesitancy vanished and we sank into a kiss which threatened to drown us both, literally.
“Bedroom,” I whispered, once our lips had untangled. Good God, woman! objected someone in my brain but I told her to butt out.
We passed a mirror on the way to his bedroom. He stopped me, put his hands on my shoulders and turned me toward the mirror.
“Beauty and the Beast,” he whispered.
I started guiltily, remembering how I had used those very words to describe Scott and him as a pair. Then I realized he meant us. I was the beauty. I laughed nervously.
“Are short, dark and A-line beauties in now?” I asked.
But he was serious. He pointed out my beauty, spot by spot. And I began to see myself through his eyes: cellulite-dimpled thighs, sagging breasts and pale yellow skin became, respectively, lush, sensual and creamy. And the Beast: Muscled shoulders gave way to a brown woolly chest, small waist and powerful thighs.
I turned to embrace him. We held each other for a long time. Then he picked me up and carried me the rest of the way to the bedroom.
I had forgotten what it meant to be made love to. I remembered sex, where foreplay consisted of, “You feel like it tonight?” “Yeah, I guess so.” But this was true lovemaking. Spells of gentle sweetness punctuated by flurries of passion carried us into the early morning hours. And in those early morning hours came the realization that I had, after all, become too involved. Before, I might have survived Wayne’s possible arrest and conviction. But, now, it was inconceivable to me that I could give him up.
Late the next morning, following a breakfast of fresh baked bread and blushing smiles, Wayne drove me back home. After a brief protest, I allowed him to search my house for intruders while I waited in his Jaguar. He didn’t find anyone lurking there and drove away with a promise to visit again in the evening, Mill Valley Police Department willing.
I walked up my stairs in the cool air and faced the ugly black lettering on the front of my house. I found that I could look at the message now without overwhelming nausea. Only a fleeting shiver and elevated pulse rate marked the event. So I allowed my mind to consider the words.
FUCK OFF OR DIE! Whose message this was? And what did it mean? It had to be a war
ning to stop looking into Younger’s murder. But I paused to evaluate Inspector Parker’s explanation of “kids.” There was that little girl down the block whose feelings had been hurt when I had shooed her basset hound out of my yard. She couldn’t understand that I didn’t hate her dog, only his excretory habits. But she was only seven years old. She probably couldn’t even spell the “f” word. I hadn’t offended any other kids as far as I knew. A random graffiti gang in Mill Valley? Not likely.
Hugo popped into my mind. He certainly enjoyed the use of the “f” word, but I wasn’t entirely certain he could spell it either. No, the Reagans had other methods of terrorism. Tanya? Somehow I couldn’t picture her wielding the black spray paint. But Renee’s kid, John. His shaved head and hostile blue eyes reared up in my mind. My pulse shot up a notch higher. There was no way of knowing for sure. I shook my head and walked into the house, reminding myself that if I unraveled the murder of Scott Younger I would probably find my graffiti artist tangled in there, too.
But the murder remained obstinately enmeshed in a rat’s nest of loops, snarls and knots. I changed my clothes, made a pot of Dr. Chang’s Long Life Tea, and knelt back down on the living room rug to move Scrabble pieces on my graph paper floor plan. After half an hour I was no further enlightened. I needed help. I rolled up the graph paper, put the Scrabble pieces in a Baggie and set out for Maggie’s office.
When I got there, I opened the front door cautiously. I knew Maggie would help me with my murder reconstruction if I could just get around Renee. But no such luck. Renee spotted me the minute I stepped over the threshold. Her eyes narrowed.
“You!” she shouted. She aimed a red-nailed finger at me. “Did you give my son a six-foot Snoopy dog?”
The head of every patient in the waiting room swiveled toward me. I allowed an expression of complete mystification to envelop my face.
“Why would I do that?” I asked innocently. Why indeed? my mind echoed sarcastically.
Renee’s finger wavered, then dropped. But she continued to stare at me, eyes still narrow with suspicion. I kept my own wide eyes on hers, unflinching, and wondered if her son had spray-painted my house.
“Never mind,” she muttered finally and lowered her gaze to her desk. I felt a surge of triumph. I decided to push my luck.
“I need to talk to Maggie for a moment,” I said. “Or Eileen, if Maggie’s busy.”
“They’re both busy,” she snapped, not moving her eyes from her desk. “This is a chiropractor’s office,” she added pointedly.
“So when can I talk to them?” I asked.
“Maggie takes her lunch in an hour. If you want to bug her then, that’s up to you.”
I decided I could wait the extra hour to see Maggie, but not in her office. I went back outside into the cold. At least the sun was shining. A definite improvement on the atmosphere in the waiting room. I knew I would have to straighten Renee out eventually, but right now murder was my top priority. My only question was how to use my spare hour. I glanced across the street and saw Nellie’s vintage clothing store. With a start, I remembered my dream of the day before.
I crossed the street eagerly, compelled by the hope that my dream had been prophetic. Had the police bothered to question the people at Nellie’s about what they might have observed on the day of the murder? I doubted it. And they could very well have seen something out the glass windows at the front of their store.
I stopped at one of the two-dollar bins on the sidewalk. A purchase would probably make my questions go down easier. And I could always add whatever I bought to my collection of nails and primroses. The bin was filled with a hodgepodge of belts, underwear, hair clips, scarves and knit hats. Nothing I would really want to wear. I dug deeper, not wanting to completely waste two dollars. I pulled out an attractive purple scarf. It looked familiar, especially the black yin-yang symbols embroidered on the ends.
I stared at it. Then I remembered where and when I had last seen it. It had been wrapped around Devi’s wispy neck the day of Scott Younger’s death. But that wasn’t right, was it? I could also remember her wearing a necklace of sparkling crystals that day.
That was what my unconscious had been nagging me about when I removed the hairdresser’s rubbery sheet from around my neck! Devi was wearing the purple scarf over the necklace before Scott’s death, but not afterwards. At some point in between she had removed the scarf. And presumably hidden it here in this bin. But why?
I took a closer look at the scarf in my hand. There was a small brown stain on one of the neatly stitched corners. I recoiled. Blood? Was this Scott Younger’s blood?
I rushed into Nellie’s, scarf in hand.
“I found this in your bin!” I shouted.
The woman at the counter looked up at me and smiled tentatively. I laid the scarf in front of her.
“Silk, very nice,” she said.
“Did you ever see this scarf before?” I asked.
“No.” Her smile looked strained.
“Look, I’m going to leave this with you, but I want you to keep it behind the desk. The police are going to be interested in it.”
“The police?” Her smile was gone now.
“It’s important that the police know this was found in your bin. Were you here last Wednesday?”
“No, I wasn’t,” she said, her voice suddenly hostile. “And about this scarf thing. I don’t think that’s one of our scarves, and I didn’t see you get it out of our bins. What are you trying to pull?”
“But…” I began. Then I realized she was right. She only had my word for it that the purple scarf came from her bin. And the police? Would they believe me? But it was Devi’s scarf, I assured myself. Someone else had to remember her wearing it. And it did have blood on it. At least I thought it had blood on it.
I ended up buying the scarf for two dollars. And even then I couldn’t talk the woman behind the counter into giving me a receipt describing it. All I got was a cash register slip showing two dollars plus tax. So much for documentation.
I started back across the street to the chiropractor’s office, hoping to find someone who remembered Devi wearing the scarf. But halfway across I stopped. For once, I needed to think before acting. I changed course and walked slowly to my car to drive home.
All the way home my mind buzzed. This proved Devi was a murderer, didn’t it? Not necessarily. If Scott’s blood was on the scarf it could have gotten there as innocently as my fingerprints on the murder weapon. But then, why hide it? To protect Tanya? Had Tanya killed Scott? No, I couldn’t believe that.
But there was something about Tanya. I remembered her dark hair, blue eyes and heart-shaped face. Then a picture of Scott Younger formed in my mind. Again, the contrast of dark hair and blue eyes. And the triangular face. Was Scott Tanya’s father after all? Had I been blind to the real motive for murder? Tanya was fifteen years old. How long ago had Scott and Devi known each other? I couldn’t remember. But, even if Scott was Tanya’s father, how did that add up to a credible murder motive?
I shook my head in frustration. There was only one person who could answer these questions, and that was Devi herself.
- Twenty-Four -
I phoned Wayne the moment I barreled through my front door. I didn’t even let the black letters on the face of my house slow me down. I was afraid he would never forgive me if I went to talk to Devi on my own. But he didn’t answer his phone. His answering machine did. So much for forgiveness.
“Devi might have killed Scott,” I blurted onto the tape. “I’m going to see her. I’ll call you later.”
I found the lavender slip of paper with Devi’s address and phone number still on my desk. She was close by, on the outskirts of downtown Mill Valley. On the way out the door I paused for all of a minute to consider the risk in visiting her. But the woman was so frail and indecisive. I remembered her wispy body, faltering requests and continual breathlessness. For a moment I even doubted her actual ability to kill Scott. Could she hit someone in the back of
the neck hard enough to kill them? Or even make the decision to do so?
It was up to me to find out. The police hadn’t ferreted out the truth. I was sure they would ignore the significance of the bloody scarf, if they even believed my story of finding it in the first place. I climbed into my car.
Whether or not Devi had killed Scott, I assured myself as I drove down Throckmorton Avenue, she wasn’t going to kill me. I wasn’t going to lie down on a table and expose the back of my neck. My body must be stronger than hers. And I practiced tai chi. By the time I had reached her house I was convinced that there was no way Devi could be a physical threat to me.
I issued a mental apology to Wayne as I opened Devi’s gate and strode up the bricked walkway to her front door. I kept my eyes and mind averted from her beautifully tended lawn and garden, alive with pansies, Iceland poppies and alyssum, and shaded by an elderly oak tree. No time to fuss over beauty. I rang the doorbell.
Devi answered the door, her stick-thin body clad in white from head to foot. She wore an exquisitely embroidered white-on-white silk kimono, over white stockings and white satin slippers. A white iris was pinned in her wispy blond hair. The only discordant note was the clunky steel-grey revolver she clasped tightly in her right hand. A gun. Damn.
I moved back a step. She raised the gun ever so slightly. That was enough for me. I stopped moving. Then she glanced down at the purple scarf I was carrying.
“Oh, did you find it?” she asked in a hoarse voice. Did she still have a cold? She took a breath. “I thought someone might. Please, come in,” She waved her gun airily in my direction. My heart kicked at my rib cage. So much for her physical frailty. I stayed where I was.
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