A Cry for Self-Help (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (17 page)

- Eighteen -

“Alicia really adored Sam Skyler,” I muttered as I drove home.

“But did Nathan?” Wayne muttered back. A quick glance told me he was back in brooding mode. Better than leering, I supposed. Anything was better than leering. I shook the image out of my mind and tried not to think about singing or bridesmaids or frilled lamb chop costumes. Or Tessa’s bloodied head.

“Are you saying Nathan didn’t adore his father?” I asked slowly. “Because everything he’s said is consistent with a real affection, a real love, for Sam Skyler.” I waved the hand that wasn’t attached to my steering wheel, trying to explain. “It…it feels right.”

“Feels too right,” Wayne growled. “Too pat. Can you believe that being the son of Sam Skyler was really the wonderful experience Nathan described? Kate, you met the guru. How much attention do you think he was able to give his son with all that ego running through his veins?”

I didn’t have an answer, except that people usually do love their parents in spite of those parents’ deficiencies. Especially once death has ended all disputes.

But I had a lot of new questions. Like where Nathan was today. Why wasn’t he at the Institute? And then there were Helen Skyler’s comments. Why did she feel compelled to defend her son before anyone accused him of anything? And the biggie. How would a man, even a man as apparently kind and caring as Nathan Skyler, feel about his father if he was in love with his father’s fiancée, the beautiful Diana?

By the time we got home, Wayne and I were both in brooding mode. Too many suspects weighed on my brain like a too heavy meal on the stomach. And too many that I liked. Because I did like Nathan Skyler, a lot. For all the sweetness he hid under all the fur. For his compassion and his insights. For his openness. I didn’t want him to be a murderer, damn it. But who I wanted the murderer to be didn’t mean a whole lot. The person who’d pushed Sam Skyler over the bluff hadn’t consulted me first.

Wayne and I ate a quick lunch of leftover spicy black beans with polenta. All in thoughtful silence. And then Wayne got up to go. He had work to do at La Fête à L’Oie. At least that’s what he said. And since I wasn’t privy to his ever so thoughtful thoughts, I decided to suspend disbelief. To trust. Well, to try to trust.

I was still working on that resolve as I listened to Wayne open the front door and shut it behind him. Then I heard him roar.

I think I might have heard him if I’d been in the next county.

I ran to the front door and flung it open, nearly knocking Wayne over as I did. But he stepped back just in time. And pointed.

“What the…” I said, turning.

And then I saw it. A huge papier-mâché nose with a red bow and a “Big noses can be dangerous to the wearer” sign on it.

I yanked it off the door and stomped on it. So much for preserving evidence. And then Wayne stomped on it. And then we both went at it, sweating and growling as we did.

“They put it on while we were eating,” Wayne protested, his voice way too high as he crumbled the last of the papier-mâché chunks under the sole of his boot “While we were eating!”

A sacrilege in Wayne’s book. And pretty scary in mine. Because neither of us had heard a thing. The stealth artist had struck again. Was the papier-mâché bomber the murderer?

I had to convince Wayne that art didn’t equal murder, before he’d leave. Then I tried to convince myself of the same thing as I sat down at my desk. And wondered if he’d been convinced at all. Just where was he really going now?

The minute Wayne’s Jaguar pulled out of the driveway, I popped right back out of my office chair. The towering piles of paperwork on my desk would just have to tower, lonely and deserted, for a little while longer. I needed to talk to Tessa Johnson again, head injury or no head injury. I was tired of Tessa’s secrets. I was ready to browbeat her mercilessly. At least this time I left a note on the kitchen table for Wayne before heading out.

“Browbeat” might not have been the best choice of words, I realized as I strode into the reception area of the Olcott Johnson Funeral Home and saw Tessa with a tasteful white patch peeking out from under her gray curls. But niggling over semantics wasn’t about to stop me.

“Tell me,” I demanded as I reached her. “Tell me what you—”

“Shush,” Tessa hissed, pointing to the party of mourners viewing a body in the chapel. My mouth snapped shut. I hadn’t even noticed the funeral party.

“Can we talk somewhere in private?” I asked after a guilty moment, whispering respectfully now.

Tessa called one of her assistants to take over for her and then escorted me to a place of privacy. The embalming room.

She couldn’t have picked a better place. The smell of disinfectant and the slanting floor would have been disorienting enough. But the overlay of formaldehyde and the lab-coated woman doing something to a body mounted on the porcelain pedestal, something involving a trocar—

“Kate, are you all right?” came Tessa’s voice into the haze of my mind.

“Me, oh sure,” I squeaked, turning slowly, very slowly, away from the woman, and the body, to Tessa.

“You wanted to ask me something?” she enquired innocently, a glimmer of humor peeping through her serious demeanor.

That glimmer was enough to clear my mind. Tessa wasn’t the murderer. At least I didn’t think so. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have hit herself over the head with a brass candlestick. Couldn’t have hit herself. But she
was
laughing at me. That I had no doubt of. And she
had
chosen the embalming room purposely to distract me. I was sure of that too. Those two facts stoked just enough anger to remind me why I was here with her in the embalming room in the first place.

“You know something,” I accused, pointing my finger for emphasis.

“I know a lot of things,” she replied, the glimmer growing even brighter.

“Tessa,” I said, bringing my voice down to a lower register, “someone hit you over the head. They might have killed you.”

That statement shut down the glimmer, but it didn’t open the floodgates. Tessa only nodded.

“Last night you told me you thought it might have had to do with Sam Skyler’s murder—”

“Kate,” Tessa interrupted. “Please forget any strange things I might have said last night. Just the ramblings of an old woman whose brains were scrambled by a candlestick. Being hit on the head made me silly. I really prefer not to talk about it anymore.”

“But—”

“The attack had nothing to do with Sam Skyler. Probably just someone who wanted money. I always leave the door open as long as I’m here. People often feel the need of the chapel for a few days after their loved ones have passed on. An open door, a thief hoping the place was empty.” She shrugged, then smiled. “Whoever—whomever—hit me picked the wrong place to rob, that’s for certain. There’s no cash here. The poor guy was probably more scared then I was when he realized that someone was on the premises and it was a funeral parlor to boot.” She laughed.

I wasn’t laughing, though. Because I didn’t believe in her anecdotal thief for a second. And I didn’t think she did either.

“Tessa, tell me,” I begged.

But of course, she didn’t. No matter how many times I asked. Instead she told me stories. And more stories. There was the one seemingly endless tale about a woman who’d had her thighs reduced, her face lifted, her hair bleached, and her breasts enlarged—all as part of her burial request. A woman who’d wanted to go out like Dolly Parton instead of whatever her real name was, a name that Tessa didn’t share with me. And then there was the one about a man she’d buried who turned out to be a woman. His co-workers at the bank had never noticed. Even his friends hadn’t.

“Or maybe I should say ‘her—’“ Tessa continued relentlessly.

“Why did you call me?” I tried one more time.

Tessa hesitated for an instant, but only an instant. Then she took my hot hand in her cool ones.

“Kate, don’t worry anymore,” she told me, her dark eyes completely serious now. “There’s nothing to know, nothing I can tell you. That’s it.”

I was excused.

For a while on my brief ride back home, I even considered the possibility that Tessa had been telling me the truth. Maybe the candlestick had been wielded by a startled thief. After all, Tessa hadn’t been killed. Wouldn’t the murderer have made sure she was dead if she really knew anything?

But by the time I was back at my desk plowing through invoices, order forms, and payroll ledgers, with C.C. snoring delicately in my lap, I was sure that Tessa Johnson was keeping back something she knew about someone in the Wedding Ritual seminar. Though maybe that something was something that had no bearing on Sam Skyler’s murder. Why else would she keep quiet? She wouldn’t keep quiet if she’d seen the killer in the act. Unless it was…Ray Zappa. I erased a number I’d placed in the wrong column, swearing under my breath.

Or was it something connected with her profession, with someone she’d buried? I knew Tessa had buried Liz Atherton’s husband and Perry Kane’s father, and God knew who else. If her secret was related to the funeral home business, she’d probably keep it confidential. She was that kind of woman. Even in her endless stories she hadn’t told me the names of those involved, or probably the real stories for that matter. I put the same number in the same wrong column again. This time when I erased, I erased through the paper.

I decided to give up on Tessa as I strangled the paper with my bare hands and started over, cursing loud enough to wake C.C.

“There’s got to be another way to work this,” I told the cat earnestly. “A safe way. Forget Tessa. Forget Sam Skyler’s manuscript. What’s left?”

C.C. let out a yowl before abandoning the former comfort of my now wriggling lap.

Sam’s second wife going off the balcony, that was what was left, I decided as C.C.’s furry backside disappeared through the doorway.

I left Wayne another note and went to the library. I wanted to know more about Sam Skyler’s trial for the murder of Sally Skyler. But there was nothing on the city library’s newly installed microfiche replacement computer that Wayne hadn’t already told me. I scrolled past newspaper article after newspaper article. Sally Skyler had died. Sam Skyler had been found not guilty. Case closed.

Actually, the most interesting thing I found in the library was an advertisement in that week’s local throwaway newspaper left on the computer desk in front of me. An ad for Diana Atherton’s tantric yoga class that had been staring up at me unread the whole time I was scrolling through Sam Skyler’s life.

“Explore the realms of sacred sexuality,” it advised once my eyes landed on it. “Everyone deserves the ultimate orgasm, the divine orgasm.” A photo of Diana, gorgeous and serene, and clearly potentially divinely orgasmic was the clincher. I wondered what the ratio of men to women was in her classes and got up to leave the library, but not before throwing the throwaway in the trash.

I was just hoping that Sam had received his well-deserved divine orgasm before he went over the bluff when I pulled into my driveway for the third time that day.

But then I forgot all about tantric sexuality, sacred or otherwise. Because I had company. Emma Jett and Campbell Barnhill. And Wayne wasn’t home yet. Two against one, the programmed wuss in my brain pointed out helpfully. I considered backing out of the driveway, pretending I’d never seen them. They’d leave eventually, right? And then someone threw the wuss-override switch in my brain and I found myself walking up the stairs to greet the smiling couple. To greet the Quiero Police Department’s choice for Most Likely to Murder a Guru and his faithful sweetheart.

“Hey, Kate,” Emma sang out, jumping out of her porch chair like she was spring-loaded.

“Hello there,” Campbell’s musical voiced chimed in from behind her.

I paused at my front door, wondering if it would be better to talk with them out here on the deck, in full view of the neighborhood.

A window shot up on the left, next door, underscoring the thought. So far I’d avoided explaining the recent comings and goings to my neighbors. Mainly by running every time I saw one. Literally. Maybe I’d keep it that way.

“I understand you and Wayne are still—” Campbell began, belatedly rising from his own chair, stroking his ginger beard.

“—nosing around this Sam Skyler thing,” Emma finished for him, flipping the hank of her hair that wasn’t cut to the scalp out of her face with a neck-wrenching swivel.

I squinted at her suspiciously. “Nosing around” was a common enough expression, maybe even more common for someone who actually had a pierced nose, but brass studs aside—

I heard the sound of another window sliding open, from the house on our right.

“Might as well come on in,” I offered brusquely, unlocking the door. At least the neighbors would hear if I had to scream. Or would I need to open my own windows, too?

I didn’t have time to open any windows. Within a moment, Emma and Campbell were settled on my denim couch as if they lived there. I didn’t offer them tea. Instead I offered a question, as I lowered myself into one of the swinging chairs. My house, my question.

“Emma, did you know Sam Skyler before the Wedding Ritual class?” I threw out.

“Wow, you don’t waste any time bullshitting, do you?” she shot back. Was she temporizing to come up with an answer? A lie? She narrowed her eyes, reminding me of C.C. for a moment, then answered.

“Sam and his space-cadet girlfriend came to one of my Angie and the Angst shows, like, maybe a couple years ago. But I don’t think he probably remembered me. I just remembered him ‘cause of that weird body of his. He was way cool, you know, but kinda top-heavy.”

What a eulogy.

“Emma is a really multitalented person,” Campbell put in fondly. And irrelevantly. They still hadn’t told me the reason for their impromptu visit.

He put his arm around Emma and she snuggled up in his embrace, once more reminding me of C.C. I wondered if she’d jump free the moment he wriggled.

“Emma can do anything. You should see her Connie the Condom series—”

“Yeah, too bad nobody appreciates it,” the creator muttered.

“By Godfrey, lots of great artists weren’t appreciated in their own times,” Campbell assured her gently. I imagined he knew a lot about the past. Maybe he even lived there. But then there was Emma. She certainly wasn’t from the past.

“In fact,” he went on, “the more far-reaching the art, the less appreciation in the present—”

“Campbell’s a really cool musician himself,” Emma cut in. “He’s with this Irish band. They’re way cool, you know. He plays all these weird instruments—”

“Uilleann pipes, tin whistle, flute, fiddle, and bones,” he interrupted helpfully, the hint of a blush on his undistinguished face. And then he was back to his favorite subject, his sweetie. “Emma does performance art. Once she tied up her legs and rolled herself around in a wheelchair like a paraplegic, trying to bounce a basketball painted like the world. Then she was screaming, ‘Save the world! Save the world!’ while I videotaped the people who helped.”

“And the jerks who turned away,” Emma added.

“Listen, you guys,” I said, taking advantage of the microsecond of silence before the mutual admiration started up again. “Why did you—”

But Campbell was not so easily distracted from listing the contributions to world art by the object of his affections.

“And then once she went down to Golden Gate Park with the Angie and the Angst crew and held up implements of self-destruction and asked the crowd if the crew should kill themselves.”

“What did the crowd say?” I prompted, curious in spite of myself.

“The reviews were mixed,” Emma put in. “Some guys got real, like, excited and yelled, ‘Go, go!’ But most of them told us not to. Especially the women. It was a really cool gig. People left us a whole pile of money, even though we didn’t ask.”

“And then there was this son of a goat who came into the market and kept giving me a bad time—” Campbell said.

“An ex-boyfriend—” Emma explained, wriggling in the enclosure of Campbell’s arm.

“So she jury-rigged his revolving tie rack with all these insulting messages on little slips of paper tied to pink ribbons—”

“That was just a practical joke,” Emma said impatiently, twisting completely away from Campbell’s arm now.

A practical joke. An alarm was going off in my head. Faint, but getting louder as it blew.

“Emma even has some ideas for your gag gifts. Tell her, Emma.”

“Well.” Emma was blushing herself by now. “I thought of this really cool doll, Hygiene Hyena, for dentists, you know, with these really big teeth—”

“Performance art!” I yelped, my brain inventorying the papier-mâché catsup, red bows, and notes and putting them all together in the same category. “Like trocars?”