A Cry for Self-Help (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (3 page)
Read A Cry for Self-Help (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Online
Authors: Jaqueline Girdner
As I sat in the living room waiting for Wayne, I wondered if Woolsey actually believed that Sam Skyler had just fallen onto those rocks. And then I wondered why I didn’t.
For all the brevity of Woolsey’s interrogations, the sun was almost completely set by the time Wayne and I were back in my Toyota with me at the wheel, taking the newly blacktopped curves of the road home while heat blasted from the dashboard vents like a blessing. The scuba-wedding party seemed like a dream.
Wayne and I didn’t talk much on the way. I showed him my splintered hand. He bent over to kiss it. Not quite tweezers, but good. Definitely good.
Finally pulling into the driveway, we clumped up the front stairs, shut the front door behind us, and held each other again so closely you could almost hear the submicroscopic viruses being crushed between us.
A yowl from the rear broke it up. My cat, C.C. Death, murder? None of it mattered. Her dinner was late.
Wayne picked her up, burying his face in her silky fur. I wished I had gotten to her first. But Wayne was faster. C.C. let him indulge himself for a moment, then turned her spotted black and white face toward his, widened her eyes, and blasted him with another yowl. Maybe I didn’t wish I had gotten to her first.
“Cat food or splinters?” Wayne asked quietly as he set C.C. gently back on the floor. A lot more gently than I would have.
“Cat food,” I answered. “We’d never get the splinters out with C.C. bonking my legs for attention.”
We were finally sitting on the living room couch with an open bottle of alcohol (of the rubbing variety), tissues, and tweezers when the doorbell rang.
Wayne screwed the cap back on the bottle, stomped to the door, and reluctantly opened up. Even from where I sat, I could see who our visitors were. Diana Atherton, tantric yoga goddess, and her brother, Gary. For a moment, I studied the two, noting their similarities. Both graceful, erect, and slender, with perfectly symmetrical features and large blue saucer eyes. But at least Gary was balding.
And then I remembered that Sam Skyler was dead. How could I have forgotten, even for a moment? Diana Atherton was in mourning and I was—
I jumped up from the couch and marched over to express my sympathy.
But by the time I reached the doorway, my mouth just opening to speak, Diana had put up her hands as if for silence.
“I’ve had dreams of violence,” she announced softly.
- Three -
“What do you mean ‘dreams of violence’?” Wayne asked. His voice was low and serious. His face too. Diana’s words had tightened the skin over his scarred cheekbones and drawn his brows low over his eyes.
“I…I…” Diana began to sob, higher-than-Everest-pitched sobs that brought my hands up involuntarily to cover my ears.
But I dropped my hands and dived in conversationally before she could get any farther. I knew by now that this woman could cry or scream, or do both at once, endlessly if not diverted.
“Do you mean you’ve dreamt of killing Sam?” I asked.
That stopped her for a moment.
I took a breath as she raised her now reddened blue eyes to me and stared as if trying to figure out the meaning of my words.
“Is that what you’re worried about?” I tried again. “That you dreamt about killing Sam and then you did—”
“No, no!” she wailed and then began to sob in earnest. So much for diverting her.
All through this, Gary Atherton stood by his sister, his handsome face as serious as Wayne’s homely one. Without speaking. No “hiya,” no “how are you?” Nothing.
Impatiently, I stepped closer to the group standing in the doorway. Just why were the Athertons invading our home anyway? Not to confess anything like murder, I hoped. Were they just here for sympathy? Or for advice?
“Gary,” I greeted him.
He shot a quick nod my way and then his eyes bounced back to his sister. Of course.
I knew the two siblings fairly well. Or at least Wayne did. Gary Atherton worked for Wayne, managing his restaurant-cum-art gallery, La Fête à L’Oie. Gary was a good manager. And Wayne took good care of his employees, serving as psychologist, mediator, and mentor as often as boss. And I knew that Gary was very close to his younger sister, Diana. So Wayne was forever advising Gary about his sister, and Gary was forever advising his sister about her life. Their mother, Liz, got in there a lot with her advice too. And her hovering. Liz couldn’t stand Sam Skyler, but she still managed to accompany Diana to a good half of the meetings of the wedding seminar.
Everyone took care of Diana. There was something about her that seemed to suck up advice and protection like a well-designed vacuum cleaner. Not from me, though. I was too busy being jealous. Because I was forever watching Diana’s perfection, whether in tai chi, in simply walking, or in manipulating the world at large into taking care of her. All of which seemed to be unconscious on her part.
But the goddess’s fiancé was dead, I reminded myself once more. How could I keep forgetting?
“Come on in and sit down,” I said. I couldn’t not say it. The phrase is programmed into my genes.
Diana had never been in our house before, but she didn’t seem to take much notice of our living room as she followed us in, back still erect even while sobbing. And most people did notice, especially since Wayne and I had built two more four-by-nine bookshelves. Now the room was literally covered wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with bookcases. The only exceptions being the jungle of house plants stuck here and there in the crevices and the two pinball machines holding their own in the corner. And the center of the room. We hadn’t figured out how to put bookshelves there yet, only two swinging chairs that hung from the rafters, a futon, pillows, and a denim-covered couch that was a remnant of my former marriage. A remnant just like my antipathy to formal wedding ceremonies. Which was what got me into this mess in the first place, I decided as Diana and Gary took their places on the couch.
“So?” I said, lowering myself onto a swinging chair for two next to Wayne.
Three morose faces turned my way.
“Sam,” Diana whimpered. Gary patted her shoulder.
The gesture seemed to stanch her sniffles.
“He was a genius,” she declared, her voice a little stronger, though still trembling.
I noticed neither Wayne nor Gary threw in any words or nods of agreement. In fact, I got the distinct feeling that Wayne was rolling his eyes under his lowered brows. I nodded encouragingly for the two of them.
“Oh, Kate,” Diana sniffed, turning my way now. “Not everyone appreciated Sam, but he really was a genius at bringing out people’s essential selves, their lost selves, their higher selves.” She stuck out her ring finger. At first I thought she was showing me her ruby-encrusted engagement ring, but then she intoned, “Grief into growth,” and I remembered the puppets. I could almost hallucinate one on her fingertip.
Actually, I was more interested in the people who
didn’t
appreciate Sam Skyler, but Diana went on with her fingers before I could formulate the sensitive kind of question that seemed essential to ask someone like her.
“Control into cooperation,” she proclaimed, sticking out her thumb. “Denial into determination.” Her pinkie popped out. “Grief into growth,” she said again softly. Her eyes misted up precariously. But she went on. “I can feel Sam with me now, merging with me.” She pulled up her head, middle finger gracefully extended. “Anger into achievement.” And finally with her index finger, “Higher self into living grace.”
Then she smiled beatifically. Wayne and Gary sat stony-faced. What was wrong with these guys?
I
was beginning to feel protective toward Diana now.
“So that’s what Sam taught at his Institute?” I offered as the silence lengthened.
“That’s it,” she agreed, bobbing her head enthusiastically. “The Skyler Institute for Essential Manifestation.” Her round eyes teared up again. “Sam was such a creative, intuitive man. He…He…”
“Were any of Sam’s students in the Wedding Ritual class?” Wayne broke in. Finally, one of the questions I hadn’t yet formulated. And Wayne’s low voice was gentle enough to give it the sensitivity I’d been searching for.
“Ona Quimby took one of his seminars,” Diana answered after taking a trembling breath that seemed to last forever. It must have been all that yoga training that gave her the lung power. “Ona didn’t really, well, appreciate Sam, though. They were never really able to merge emotionally.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well.” Diana shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Ona is a big woman, ‘a woman of size,’ she calls herself, and Sam thought she ought to lose weight to self-actualize. We even argued about it. Ona was that size naturally, organically. But Sam thought she could change if she really wanted to. He always wanted people to push their limits.”
The word “push” brought up a picture in my mind of Ona pushing Sam. Pushing his limits right over the bluff. I shook the thought away.
“Anyone else?” I asked quickly.
“I think Perry Kane came to an introductory class,” she answered after a moment. “But he didn’t stay.”
“How about Emma?” Wayne pressed, his voice still gentle.
“I don’t think Emma took any classes, but he might have known her,” Diana answered, frowning. Her usually sweet voice had a touch of acidity. Had she been jealous of Emma? Could a woman like Diana feel jealousy? What a delightful thought. I quickly erased the smile from my face, forcing myself to heed the seriousness of the current situation. “And of course he knew me and Mom. And Yvonne, I think…”
“And his son, Nathan,” Gary threw in from the sidelines.
Diana’s perfect skin took on a blush with this information. What the hell was that about?
“And Martina Monteil,” she added after the blush faded. “Nathan and Martina both worked for the Institute.”
“So what happens at the Institute now that—” I began.
But the ringing of the telephone cut me off. I was just getting to the good part with Diana, so I let the answering machine deal with it.
“Pick up the phone, Kate,” the machine ordered in the voice of my friend Barbara Chu.
Barbara Chu. I looked down at my watch. It was after eight o’clock. And Wayne and I were supposed to have met Barbara and her boyfriend, Felix Byrne, for dinner at seven. We’d thought that would give us plenty of time after the scuba-wedding ceremony. I felt a flutter of panic in my chest. Social obligations clearly weren’t as vital as death, but my physiology didn’t seem to be clear about the distinction.
Nor did Wayne’s, obviously, as we both leapt from the swinging chair, leaving it careening haphazardly. I motioned him back down and trotted over to take the call myself.
“Jeez-Louise, what happened to you guys?” Barbara demanded when I picked up the phone as ordered. “We’re still at Mushrooms. You guys never showed.”
“You’re a psychic, you tell me,” I answered. I never could tell if Barbara really was psychic. But she did a damn good imitation of it if she wasn’t. Sometimes it drove me crazy— because she knew things, but they weren’t ever things that did you any good.
“You found another body?” she guessed after a moment.
I sighed. I should have known she’d know.
“Don’t tell Felix,” I added quickly. Felix was Barbara’s boyfriend, but he was also a vampire of a reporter. I didn’t want him over here with his fangs out.
“I won’t,” Barbara promised. Then she whispered, “But he’ll find out anyway.” She didn’t have to be psychic to tell me that. Felix always found out. And then interrogated unmercifully.
“Do you think it was murder?” I asked Barbara on impulse, keeping my voice as low as I could manage, hoping they wouldn’t hear me in the living room.
“Yes,” Barbara answered calmly after less than a second’s consideration. My body stiffened. I hadn’t wanted her to say yes.
By the time I’d heard about all the great mushroom appetizers she and Felix had consumed and hung up the phone, I was ready. Ready to ask the obvious question that no one had bothered Diana with yet.
The living room was silent when I walked back in. Then C.C. wandered in behind me and leapt gracefully into Diana’s lap. The little fink. A mini-bomb of forgotten jealousy exploded in my chest, flinging up the rubble of all my old feelings toward Diana. At least it wasn’t Wayne cuddling up in Diana’s lap, I told myself and asked the question.
“Do you think Sam was pushed?”
“I don’t know!” Diana wailed, her voice ringing off the rafters. C.C.’s ears flattened against her skull.
Whoops. I’d forgotten to be sensitive. Wayne sent me a look out of the corner of his lowered eyelid as I sat back down next to him.
And Diana began to sob again.
“That’s why we’re here,” Gary explained. “We know you two have investigated these things before. And Diana thought—”
“Oh, no,” I said loudly and clearly. “Not this time, not ever again—”
Diana turned her weeping eyes on Wayne. “That’s the awful part,” she cried. “Not knowing. I can’t…I just can’t believe he fell. He was a feeling man, physically as well as emotionally. And he would never jump. But I can’t imagine…I can’t imagine…”
“Anyone killing him,” I finished for her.
She turned back to me.
“You see, I have to know, Kate,” she told me, bending forward, wrapping herself around C.C. “And you and Wayne—”
I shook my head, opening my mouth to explain why neither Wayne nor I would ever presume to investigate a murder again. Not after the last time, when I’d almost lost Wayne. Not after—
“I’ll look into it,” Wayne announced from my side.
My mouth fell open even wider, empty of words.
And that was that. As I sat and seethed, Wayne asked Diana more questions. And C.C. purred and rubbed up against Diana’s face, licking away her tears. I told myself C.C. just liked the salty flavor. It wasn’t true love like the times she had licked away my own tears. Gary was the only one other than me who seemed uncomfortable with the situation. I watched his handsome face as Diana and Wayne made plans, and it was troubled. Did Gary think that asking for help investigating a murder was going just the tiniest bit over the line in employee benefit demands?
Wayne didn’t.
He made that clear once Gary and Diana had left.
“Gotta do it, Kate,” he told me once the door had closed behind them. “Gary’s my responsibility.”
Then he took me sputtering back to the couch and grabbed the tweezers and rubbing alcohol to remove the splinters from my hand.
“But Diana isn’t your responsibility!” I objected, withholding my splintered hand, a hand I was beginning to think I might withhold in marriage too. “And Sam Skyler certainly isn’t your responsibility—”
“No, not Sam Skyler,” he agreed, bitterness flavoring his low tone.
“What did you have against Sam Skyler, anyway?” I asked, anger replaced by curiosity suddenly. Because it wasn’t just Wayne. Sam had engendered antipathy in too many people. I’d seen it in their faces.
“Sam Skyler abused his wife,” Wayne answered quietly, looking away from my face.
“‘Skyler abused his wife,’“ I repeated. “What is that supposed to—”
Wayne looked back into my eyes.
“He murdered her, Kate,” he told me. “He murdered her.”
- Four -
Sam Skyler murdered his wife?” I breathed. “But—”
The doorbell rang, bouncing me out of my skin before I could get any farther. Diana and Gary again?
I yanked open the door. But it wasn’t Gary and Diana on our doorstep. It was Yvonne O’Reilley, still dressed in her cherry-red silk tunic and pants. And still smiling. Somehow, that smile seemed almost as bad as Diana’s sobs. It certainly didn’t hurt the ears as much, though.
“Just dropped by to make sure everything was copasetic,” she told us, her voice Tallulah Bankhead low. For her, this might have indicated seriousness, but I wasn’t sure. She was still smiling. She ran a hand through her crinkly blond hair, snagging a pink barrette. “Really, really cosmic events today.”
Cosmic, indeed.
“We’re fine,” I said, wishing her away.
It was Wayne who invited her in. Personally, I wanted to make Yvonne disappear so I could get Wayne into a hammerlock and interrogate him about Sam Skyler’s wife. His murdered wife? I still wasn’t sure I’d heard Wayne right. Or if he had meant the word “murder” literally.
Yvonne was sitting across from us in the other swinging chair before I really tuned in to what she was saying. And C.C. was long gone. She hated those swings. Not good for lap-sitting at all.
“…knew Sam through the seminar circuit,” Yvonne said, her voice still low. She pushed back with her feet and got her chair swaying. Faster and faster. I knew the woman was close to fifty, but she could have been eleven at that moment, swinging back and forth. “Sam Skyler, the man was moving at warp speed.” I winced, imagining his descent down the rocks. “His Institute was cosmically charged. You know all that grief stuff about his dead wife really worked. He really had it scanned.”
Dead wife? Did everyone but me know about this dead wife? I opened my mouth, but not fast enough.
“Like my Wedding Ritual seminars,” she went on. “I’ve been married three times so I really know what works. You gotta have a real sense of wonder in the ceremony. Intimate, sumptuous wonder.” Her eyes moved up to the ceiling. “David was really wonderful about setting up the scuba wedding—”
“David?” I asked.
“Oh.” She giggled. “I mean Park Ranger Yasuda. We worked together on creating the event. He’s very concerned about Sam Skyler’s death.” Her voice went low again, but this time it sounded more sexy than serious. Could Yvonne O’Reilley have a crush on Park Ranger Yasuda? “Very, very concerned. He takes his responsibilities super seriously.”
“Does he think Skyler was murdered?” I asked.
Yvonne’s gaze dropped from the ceiling to stare in our direction.
“Murdered?” she repeated, her voice up nearly an octave.
“Pushed,” I amplified.
Her eyes got wider.
“Wow,” she murmured. “I mean, I thought maybe it was, like, really bad karma about his wife and everything, but pushed?” Her eyes went back to the ceiling. “What a concept. I can almost see it, though. Someone with that kind of charisma, you know, they just throw out all this energy and sometimes it comes blasting back.”
“But who?” Wayne put in quietly.
“Wow,” Yvonne said, louder this time. “Maybe there’s, like, an illegitimate kid. Men like that—” She interrupted herself. “Or some kind of scam. Or something from his past life. Or an avenger. Or maybe something not even human. A force that pushed him. What goes around, comes around.”
My head was reeling. This woman had a wilder imagination than my friend Barbara, and that was saying a lot. I was still trying to work out what she meant by the first theory about the illegitimate kid, as she went on.
“Or the wind, you know,” she whispered. “Very powerful. Maybe it’s a spirit.”
I shivered in spite of myself. The wind had been wild out there. And Sam had been leaning his huge upper body over the railing—
“Who’d Sam know in your class?” Wayne asked and the picture disappeared. But not the idea. A nonhuman force sounded appealing about now, no matter how farfetched. You didn’t have to investigate nonhuman forces.
“Ona’s experienced Sam’s whole seminar,” Yvonne answered, landing back on earth. “But Perry wouldn’t. Didn’t like the puppet stuff. Too much like religious idols or something, he said. Those poor guys, Ona and Perry. They have a set of kids each. He’s got girls and she’s got boys and the kids hate each other. We’re trying to get the kids involved some way in the Wedding Ritual Class, so they’ll feel connected to the process, you know. But it isn’t easy. Well, you saw.”
I nodded. The kids had attended one of the meetings and spent it in separate corners glaring at each other. And that was before they’d started the spitting part.
“I’m on the City Planning Commission in Golden Valley,” Yvonne added. “And Perry’s on the City Council. And Golden Valley’s where Sam’s Institute is, but I don’t know if that could mean anything. And then there’s Diana and her mother. And Nathan and his girlfriend, Martina.”
Yvonne shook her head suddenly as if to clear it. Her face curved back into an easy smile as she stood up from the swinging chair.
“But everything’s fine,” she assured us. “More than fine. Wondrous.”
She moved toward the door. Wayne and I jumped up hastily, following her.
She gave us both big hugs before she trotted down the front stairs, shouting over her shoulder.
“Can’t say the same for everyone in the group, but Emma and Campbell really do love each other. The Universe will provide.”
Then she twirled all the way around to face us, raising her hand in goodbye.
“See you tomorrow at class!” she sang out.
An instant later, she’d jumped into her Saab and was gone.
I strong-armed Wayne back into the house the minute her car lights disappeared.
“Well?” I demanded.
“Well, what?” he muttered, looking at his feet.
“Well, what!” I shouted, grabbing his arm even harder, and abruptly remembering the splinters in my hand. “Did Sam Skyler really kill his wife?”
“Think so,” he mumbled. Now I knew he was upset. Full sentences were always the first to go when he was upset. “Might be wrong, though. Shouldn’t really say.”
“Just tell me, all right?” I said with false calm, resisting the urge to shake him. It’s not easy to shake a man as tall as Wayne, anyway. Especially a man with a black belt in karate. No matter how many years I’ve practiced tai chi.
But I didn’t have to shake him. He told me his story, Sam’s story, however reluctantly. Sitting on the couch, removing splinters from my hand as he talked.
“I was doing an internship with the Public Defenders Office when Sam Skyler went on trial,” he began.
“Ouch,” I bleated as a splinter came out.
“Sorry.”
“No, go on,” I told him as he wiped the spot with stinging alcohol. “Sam Skyler was on trial for murdering his wife?”
“Yeah.” He pulled another splinter. I restrained myself from further bleating. “About ten years ago. Sally Skyler, her name was. She fell from the balcony of their house onto the rocks overlooking the ocean in Eldora.”
“And Sam fell onto the rocks from a bluff in Quiero,” I murmured. Avenging spirits floated through my mind, prickling the hair on the back of my neck with their flight. This was getting too spooky.
“Everyone in the legal community thought the man did it, but people were placing bets that he’d get off.” The third splinter came out. Painfully. “Skyler married Sally not long after her first husband died. Her first, very rich husband. Then she was a very rich widow. And Sam became a very rich widower.”
“But it still could have been an accident,” I argued. “Rich wives can fall by accident, can’t they? Why were people so sure he did it?”
“There was a witness, but the defense discredited him, got him to say he wasn’t absolutely certain.”
“Ah,” I murmured. A witness. Then I noticed Wayne was looking down at his feet again. And he’d stopped torturing my hand. He was holding something back. I could tell.
“And?” I prodded.
Wayne sighed and squirmed in place awhile, his eyebrows low on the horizon of his eyeballs.
“Tell me,” I ordered, my voice deep with threat. Threat of what I’m not really sure. But it seemed to work.
Wayne turned to me, eyebrows rising. He sighed again.
“You have to promise to keep this part in confidence,” he said, his voice deepening, too.
“But what if it has a bearing on Sam Skyler’s death?” I asked. I don’t make promises lightly. Especially not to Wayne.
His brows dropped again.
“All right, all right,” I gave in. “This part in confidence. But the rest is public knowledge.”
“Shouldn’t even know this myself,” Wayne started off, grabbing my hand again. “Had a friend from law school, Joey—” He cut himself off and started over again. “Had a friend from law school who was interning in a prominent defense firm at the same time I was at the P.D.’s Office. He called me one day and we got together for lunch. At his house. He said he had to talk to someone and made me promise never to say anything to anyone.”
Wayne turned to me again, glaring. I nodded my understanding.
“He was an ethical guy, more ethical than most, and he was bugged. He’d been in the room when Skyler’s attorneys— Skyler had a whole team—were talking with him. For some reason, one of them asked the question you’re never supposed to ask: ‘Did you do it?’ And Skyler answered, ‘Does it matter? By the time I’m through with the jury, no one will believe I did it.’ Not an actual admission, but still. And my friend was supposed to work on the team defending this man. This man he was sure had murdered his wife.”
“So what’d your friend do?” I asked, now lost in his ethical dilemma myself.
“He got himself transferred to another case. But he never forgot the remark. Or Sam Skyler.”
And with that, Wayne pulled the last splinter from my hand. That hurt. And it brought me back to the case in point. Even as Wayne bent down to kiss my palm before dabbing on the last of the alcohol.
“But Sam Skyler got off,” I prompted.
“You’ve seen him, Kate,” Wayne growled. “He could charm anyone. Joey said he actually used hypnosis techniques when he got on the stand. By the time Skyler finished with the jury, they thought he was a grief-stricken widower, oppressed by an insensitive legal system, who deserved a medal for what he’d been through. Certainly not a man who had pushed his wife off the balcony.”
“So that’s why you kept glaring at him,” I murmured finally.
“Did I?” Wayne asked, brows rising. “Didn’t think it was that obvious. But the man gets to me—got to me. Seven months after the trial, his book
Grief into Growth
was published. It was an instant bestseller. He must have been writing it all through the trial. And then he started his seminars based on the book’s success.” He paused. “Guess maybe I did glare. And Gary. Gary was worried sick about Diana. This man who may have murdered his wife was going to marry his sister—”
“Did you tell Gary all this?” I asked.
Wayne shook his head. “Couldn’t decide what to tell him. Skyler had a fair trial. In fact, maybe he didn’t do it. Just because my friend thought so, doesn’t mean it was true. And Skyler did seem to have real affection for Diana.” Wayne stood up from the couch. “It’s been driving me nuts. Whether to tell Gary what I knew. He already hated Skyler. And he’d already made up his mind that Skyler killed his wife. Of course Diana didn’t believe it for a second.”
Wayne threw out his arms in frustration, then dropped them again slowly.
“And now the man’s dead,” he ended quietly.
“And you still feel you owe Gary,” I said just as quietly.
I wanted to scream at him to leave it alone. Sam Skyler was dead. Let the police take care of it. But I knew he never would. I probably wouldn’t either in his position.
“Oh, sweetie,” I sighed.
Then I just stood up and put my arms around him. And we held each other for a long, long time.
*
Sunday morning in bed, we were still holding onto each other. But I was having my doubts about Wayne’s investigating.
If Gary Atherton really believed his sister’s fiancé had killed his wife, then why did he even care who’d killed Sam Skyler? If Sam Skyler had even been killed. Or killed his wife. The words he’d uttered to his attorneys were subject to more than one interpretation. And Wayne hadn’t even heard them himself, for that matter. Sam Skyler might have fallen by accident, just as his wife might have fallen by accident. Despite my friend Barbara’s psychic opinion. In fact, it was lucky Gary hadn’t been on the scene. Assuming Sam
had
been murdered, Gary would be prime suspect material if he’d been there.
I moved my head higher onto Wayne’s warm shoulder, snuggling in. It wasn’t Gary who wanted to know who killed Sam Skyler. It was Diana. And as far as I was concerned, employee benefits didn’t extend to sisters, especially gorgeous, tantric yoga instructor sisters.
“You know,” I suggested softly, “I’m not so sure Gary really wants you to investigate this thing.”
Wayne’s warm body shifted abruptly. My head bounced lightly off his shoulder.