A Cry for Self-Help (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (11 page)

As we left the seminar room and were walking back down the carpeted hallway, a massive man in a blue suit and a red tie came striding toward us, his face set in stone.

“Hey, Skyler,” he hissed. “You thought about our offer?”

“I’ve already told you no,” Nathan answered, his soothing voice far more firm than I would have expected. Maybe he had more confidence than I gave him credit for.

But then help was coming. Alicia popped up first.

“If you would please follow me—” she began.

“Yeah?” the man snarled. “Why should I?”

“Because she asked you to,” Wayne answered quietly from my side.

A glimmer of recognition flashed in the man’s eyes. Recognition of Wayne? Or of Wayne’s potential as an opponent? He opened his mouth to speak. And then our uniformed friend from security came striding down the hall.

“Don’t know how he got in, Mr. Skyler,” he apologized. “But he’ll be leaving now.”

Nathan nodded, and the man in the blue suit straightened his tie with a great deal of upper-body swiveling.

“Think about it,” he growled over his shoulder as he left, flanked by Alicia on one side and the uniformed security man on the other.

“Growth Imperatives, Unlimited,” Nathan muttered.

“What?” I asked, still trying to absorb what I had just seen.

“The guy’s from some organization called Growth Imperatives, Unlimited. They want to buy the Institute.” Abruptly, Nathan started walking down the hall again. Wayne and I bolted to catch up with him. “Not only the Institute but the publishing rights to my father’s works. They’ve even accused me of killing my father. Threatened to frame me for it.”

“Who are they exactly?” I asked as Nathan put a key into a brass panel next to the elevator.

He shrugged his perpetually slumped shoulders. “Martina’s looking into it. She was the one who hired the security guy.

I thought it seemed a little overreactive at the time. I thought we ought to be able to calm down and work this out without all the hostility. But…”

His words trailed off as we rode up in the elevator.

Except for the high ceilings and windows and plush carpet, Nathan’s office didn’t look anything like the seminar room we had just left. The furniture was like the furniture in any bureaucrat’s office. Metal desk and ancient office chair. A half dozen filing cabinets. And a couple of vinyl visitors’ chairs which Wayne and I settled into. The only thing out of place was the old Labrador retriever who came waddling out from under the desk to rest his graying muzzle on my hand. I patted his head. He reached up a paw and patted me back.

“Sigmund,” Nathan announced, flopping into his own ancient chair which squeaked dispiritedly.

“What?” I said.

“My dog’s name is Sigmund,” he clarified, his eyes on his desk. A desk cluttered with more paperwork than mine. That cheered me a little, whatever his dog’s name was.

“Sigmund Freud,” Wayne whispered in my ear.

“Ah,” I whispered back.

“Not very many people get the joke,” Nathan told us, smiling. His hearing was awfully good. Or else he read lips. I’d have to remember not to whisper anything important around him from now on.

“Anyway, I’m sure you’re here to talk about my father,” Nathan went on, looking down at the stacks of paper again. “And his death. First, let me say that my father wasn’t a great man. And he wasn’t a terrible man. All this guru stuff got everyone confused. He was just human.”

“Well, we did wonder…” Wayne began.

“If he really abused my stepmother,” Nathan finished for him, his voice still soft. “The answer is yes and no. He did hit her. But as I said before, she always threw the first punch. They had a difficult marriage. Though I think they actually cared for each other deeply. His grief over her death was real.” He paused as Sigmund trotted over to lay his head in Nathan’s lap with a long doggy sigh. I noticed Nathan hadn’t answered the real question. The real question wasn’t just about abuse, it was about murder. Had Nathan’s father murdered his stepmother?

“What Dad really was,” Nathan told us, petting the old dog gently, “was a narcissist with exhibitionist tendencies. Actually, he was a lot like Martina.”

It was then I remembered that Nathan had a B.A. in psychology.

“He was a man who needed the continuous admiration and adulation of his students. He was addicted to it. And that need grew and grew.” Nathan leaned back in his squeaking chair, obviously more comfortable in this abstract professorial mode than in any other. Sigmund repositioned his head. “The ultimate irony is that the more Dad’s narcissism grew, the more he lost touch with his true inner core. And manifesting that inner core is the essence of the Institute.”

“You’re able to analyze your father better than most people could,” I said, mostly to fill the ensuing silence.

“Yes, but I loved him too,” Nathan answered gently, his eyes misting under his glasses. “I just couldn’t help but see what was happening. The way he needed more and more to feed his sense of worth. I even tried to talk to him about it. But he was on his own path.” Nathan took off his glasses and scrubbed at them with the corner of his pullover. “I just wish…”

Then he rubbed his eyes and put his glasses back on. He sat up straight again.

“Now that Dad’s gone, I’ll probably go back and get my Ph.D. in psychology. I inherit the Institute jointly with my grandmother and Diana. But the Institute was Dad’s, not mine. I don’t want to run it. And I wonder if Martina wouldn’t do a better job. She has what it takes. I don’t.”

I found myself nodding, and wondered if Nathan expected an argument. But I didn’t see any manipulation in his face. At least in what I could see of it under all the fur.

“Martina reminds me of your father,” I said instead.

“Boy, have you got that right,” he responded, awe raising his usual volume. “Over the years, her voice and mannerisms have gotten more and more like his. They’d become almost interchangeable. Except that Dad was a real innocent. And Martina—”

He cut himself off, shaking his head ruefully.

“Anyway, old Sigmund, the human one, did say all boys want to marry their mothers,” he went on with a smile. “Somehow I ended up with my father.”

“You’re a good observer,” Wayne began slowly. “Does anyone in our wedding class look like a murderer to you?”

Nathan frowned and shook his head.

“I’ve certainly thought about it,” he answered. “And I have yet to come up with a single answer. Ona’s authoritarian and combative. But I don’t think she’s a killer. Yvonne and Emma are probably both manic-depressives, though all I’ve seen so far is their manic sides. Perry’s a classic co-dependent. He’s lucky he has Ona to straighten him out. I haven’t quite gotten a feel for Tessa yet. She’s rigid, but compassionate, I think.” He frowned again. “But to answer your question, no one’s personality cries out ‘murderer’ to me. I just wish it was that simple.”

“Me too,” I agreed.

“I can fill you in on a little family background, if that’ll help,” he offered.

“Go,” I ordered. Talk about your silver platter.

“Believe it or not, I had a fairly happy childhood,” Nathan began. “My parents divorced early on, when my mom, Helen, discovered she was a lesbian. And that, interestingly enough, worked out well, leaving the ‘Dad’ slot open for my father— no other man to usurp it. So Dad was always around. And Mom and Dad were really united in caring for me. Dad took me everywhere when I was a kid. And did all the stuff fathers are supposed to: camping and fishing and sailing and all that.” His voice thickened, and I saw that his eyes were misty again. If he was making all this up, he was doing a mighty good job of it. “So I was lucky. I even got Dad’s mother, Irene, thrown in for a granny.” He shook his head and rolled his eyes under his glasses. Suddenly, I wanted to meet this Irene.

“Would you give us your mother’s and grandmother’s phone numbers?” I asked.

“Sure,” he agreed easily and wrote the numbers down on a slip of paper torn from a pad somewhere beneath all the clutter on his desk. If he had family secrets to hide, he apparently wasn’t worried about our uncovering them.

“By the way,” he added, “Dad’s memorial service is Wednesday morning. Here at the Institute. I’m inviting everyone from the class. It seems right. Anyway, your visit saves me a call.”

There didn’t seem to be a lot left to say after that.

But Wayne wasn’t finished.

“What about Diana?” he asked.

Nathan’s phone rang at that point. And he grabbed it. But there wasn’t quite enough fur on his face to hide the blush underneath.

“Uh-huh,” he said to whoever was on the other end of the line. “That’ll be fine. Anyone who wants a refund—”

And then I smelled a familiar sweet scent and Alicia popped up again, ready to escort us from the building.

First, Wayne and I waved goodbye to Nathan. Minutes later, we were saying our farewells to Alicia and the security man as we exited via the automatic doors two floors down. Finally, we were out of Oz.

As we walked to the parking lot, I saw Martina Monteil slide into the passenger’s side of the Mercedes parked next to my Toyota. But it wasn’t until the car pulled away that I saw the face of the man driving. It was the man in the blue suit and red tie, the man from Growth Imperatives, Unlimited.