A Line To Murder (A Puget Sound Mystery) (17 page)

“Ma’am. I got your first call. I’ve been all over the area, both in and out of the park. I haven’t seen a thing.”

“Well, I can’t help it. Someone has been out there.”

“Have you seen any sign of an attempt at forced entry?”

“No.”

“Anything out of the ordinary at all?”

“Besides the pebbles on my window and lights bright enough to light up an airport runway, you mean? Well, something knocked over one of my flowerpots.”

“Where? On your deck, here?” He stood and looked out the window.

“No. On the fire escape outside my bedroom.”

I took him into the room, embarrassed at the rumpled covers. The cat didn’t move.

“Nice cat. Yours?” He nodded toward the sleeping feline.

A dumb question except that technically he wasn’t
.

“No. He’s a stray. I feed him when he shows up. He lives somewhere around the neighborhood.”

“Well, if it gets to be a bother, you know you can take him to the animal shelter.”

As if.

The officer opened the glass door. With a flashlight of considerably less beam than I’d been subjected to, he looked at the iron rungs crowded with pots.

“These shouldn’t be here, you know. They’re a fire hazard.”

I didn’t reply and he didn’t seem to expect a response. We went back to the living room.

“I’ll keep patrolling the area and pass your complaints on to the next watch. Other than that, all I can say is be careful, keep your doors and windows locked and let us know if there are further problems. You mentioned a gun. Do you have a license to carry a firearm?”

“I only have pepper spray.” From his look, I think he and I both knew why I’d said what I had on the phone.

He left. I locked the door after him and put the chain back in place.
A regular lock, a dead bolt and a chain—like living in New York.
Then, with one afghan wrapped around me, and another over me, I lay on the couch with the lights off and waited for dawn.

Chapter 15

The following morning spring returned. Sun drew water from the ground and turned it into vapor. The fog cloud drifted along the cement giving passersby a strange unanchored look. I half expected someone from the fair to call and say they needed me after all. Nothing seemed as scary when the sun was out, but my mama didn’t raise no fool. I called Dave and told him where I was going and with whom. Then I wandered around my balcony until my slippers were soaked with dew. Heavy moisture covered the outdoor furniture cushions and water weighted the plants. The sky had nary a cloud. Summer was on its way. There’d be more brunches out here, drinking wine and slapping mosquitoes. More sounds of children playing and dogs barking would come from the playground in the park. Six months of cold and rain and fog were almost over. Yea!

After a quick shower, I put on navy blue pants, a lime green shirt and some kick-ass earrings I bought at a rummage sale. I topped the ensemble off with what the flappers called a crimson gash of lipstick.

Jose happily attacked his fresh food while I set the radio on a jaunty Latin music station. I felt guilty about leaving him alone all day. The cat’s dishes were empty. I washed and refilled them and put them on the balcony. If he dropped by while I was gone, he wouldn’t be hungry. With the chores done, I sat at a table by the window to work with oil pastels on a large picture of broken clay pots. In a matter of seconds the project totally absorbed me, and my fingernails were soon ringed with the oily, crayon-like paint.

Andy’s knock brought me back to Tacoma from the Italian Villa, or perhaps Spanish Plaza I’d been mentally roaming. I opened the door with the palms of my hands. He grinned at my predicament, put his arms around me and pulled me to his chest, kissing my crimson gash thoroughly.

“Good morning.” His face was close to mine. He looked happy in spite of his trouble.

“Hi.” My voice sounded husky. “What a nice way to start the day.” I couldn’t put my hands on his shoulders, but I could and did return the kiss. Then I found a box of tissues and handed him one. Time spent with Andy was bringing back long-buried feelings. I didn’t know about a future with him, but a “now” sounded like a good idea, not to mention feeling like one, too, if you get my drift.

Intimacy with a man was so far in my past, I was unsure how to proceed. Fortunately, Andy took one of my hands and looked at it ruefully.

“Want to wash before we go?” The light spicy scent of his aftershave clashed with the smell of the mineral spirits I used to thin the medium.

“No, I like this look. If we break in a house, I can leave color-coordinated fingerprints.”

Reluctantly I moved away from the warmth of his embrace.

Most of the paint came off. Only a deep blue around the cuticles remained.
Too bad it isn’t lime green to match my shirt
. I checked the lock on the sliding glass door and put a wooden dowel in the floor track. Andy picked up my jacket and we were off.

His car gleamed. I slid in the front seat, wondering if it was slutty to be thinking so much about a man in whose car you’d never ridden. Andy caught a glimpse of my grin and gave me a questioning look.

“Don’t mind me. I’m so used to my own company I can actually hold two sides of a conversation.”

“Well, I guess you always know where you stand.”

“Plus I win every argument.”

Traffic headed north made it a fifty minute trip from my apartment to Seattle. The Seattle Center where the Psychic Showcase was being held was another ten minutes. Finding a convenient parking place anywhere in town added a good ten minutes more. I rarely made the thirty-odd-mile trip. However, we got lucky and found a place close enough to walk. Andy plugged a meter with a handful of quarters and opened my car door.

The sweet smell of waffle cones drifted to meet us as we made our way in. There were a lot more parents with strollers than had been at the Puyallup Fair. There were also more minorities. Tacoma had large Asian, Hispanic, Russian and black populations, but you’d never know it from fair attendance. I’d often wondered why.

“Do you know which building we’re looking for?”

We stopped by an announcement board.

“No. I figured it would be posted.”

However, the flyers were mostly outdated. We walked on, past the Space Needle and past green lawns dotted with children. I was in no hurry. Andy’s hand holding mine was too pleasant to want to let go.
And I’m in a safe place
.

Long ticket booth lines were a turnoff; we didn’t even consider stopping to ask for directions. Finally, at an intersection of sidewalks, we paused to look around. A golf cart came up from the right and its driver got out to empty a trash can.

I caught his eye. “Excuse me. Do you know where the Psychic Showcase is being held?”

“Psychics. Humph.” He tied a knot in the end of the trash bag and tossed onto the back of his cart.

“What’s the matter? Do psychics make a lot of garbage?”

He tucked a clean bag in the garbage can and looked at us. The sun gleamed on a gold crucifix hanging around his neck. “Psychic Fair. Channelers! I’ve got my own channel to God. I don’t need a channeler.”

Andy and I laughed at his reference to J. Z. Knight and Ramtha, her 35,000-year-old spirit-warrior. To his credit, the grounds man did too.

“You have a point, but we’re looking for someone. Can you point the way?”

“Just follow the sidewalk here to the building at the end. You’ll see the crowd going in.” He swung back into the cart and released the brake.

I smiled. “
Vaya con Dios
.”

“Gracias.”

“I don’t suppose he would have believed our reason for being here anyway.”

“No, I don’t suppose.”

“And I don’t suppose he would approve of a rebirthing session.”

“No, I don’t suppose he would either.
"

We followed the groundsman’s directions and, after a couple of hundred yards, a building appeared through the trees. As we approached, there was no denying it was the right place. A combined scent of sandalwood and incense wafted out and said “howdy.” Steady streams of people paid the admission price and disappeared inside. I flinched when Andy doled out $15 each for our tickets.

It was quickly apparent this was more than Tarot card readers and astrologers. Large banners announced it as a Total Health Fair.

“I wondered where all the hippies had gone.” Andy looked around.

“According to Dave, in Seattle they’ve infiltrated Broadway and Volunteer Park which are the gay neighborhoods.”

I, too, looked around. It had been years since I’d seen so many women without makeup, so many floor-length skirts and so much long straight hair. Of course, some of the hair had gray in it and some of the faces had lines around the eyes, but a certain timelessness remained. Had these Love Children found the promises of the sixties, or were they still looking? However, with so much competing for my attention, I forgot about Flower Power. The building was jammed to the rafters.

To our immediate right a hospital bed acted as a display table. Its top was covered with various-sized wooden balls with handles attached. “Massage Instruments,” a sign read. I ran one of the gizmos up and down Andy’s back and looked for a response. He grinned and shrugged.

We passed a young man demonstrating support cushions for office chairs and who tried to talk over the sounds two ponytailed men made while demonstrating drum rhythms for relaxation. “Hands on Percussion” said a poster behind them.

“Can you have hands off percussion?”

Andy nudged me and indicated another sign.

It advertised something called Solid Grooving. Solid groove. Was that an oxymoron
?
“Community drumming jam. Great for Church and Professional or Social Groups.” Enlarged photographs showed straggling lines of people in Conga lines and small groups of men sitting on a floor performing “ceremonial drumming.”

I picked up a pamphlet. “Grounding and energizing rhythms are important aids toward rites of passage, bonding and male awareness.” I wondered how many people bought some of the instruments as gifts for grandchildren, for bonding and male awareness, of course, ha ha. Andy handed me a long narrow piece of wood from which the sound of a swift moving stream emerged when he tipped it. A young woman in a tie-dyed tunic told me it was a rain stick.

“A rain stick is made from cactus. It’s essentially a hollow tube with thorns on the inside. Desert dwellers put pebbles in them. The noise you hear is the little stones hitting the thorns.”

“Hey. I like this.” I turned the piece of beige wood over and over.

“He who buys, carries.” Andy’s comment was laconic and regretfully I returned the implement.

Next to the rain sticks, a man played an organ. A sign above his head proclaimed “Light Works.” Near him, a middle-aged woman sat on a stool. Both wore headphones and seemed to be wired to the organ and to each other.

“What’s this?” I asked a salesperson.

“It’s an audio video. Everyone releases energy of different intensity and at different levels on an on-going basis. Shemaatoe,” she gestured toward the musician, “is tape recording this woman’s energy emissions. The tapes are fascinating and informative but can be quite frightening.”

Not as frightening as the $50 charge
.

“A great many of us are unaware of our pent-up hostilities. Shemaatoe is hoping to make tapes of violent criminals for psychiatrists to study.”

I smiled at her as we moved away.

“Sounds like something the government would do with the taxpayers’ dollars,” Andy said.

I had to agree but I was glad he whispered. If she believed, who were we to mock?

We continued up and down the aisles, talking to the booths’ proprietors and asking about the vicar. No one knew him. The room was hot and the air-conditioning inadequate. I spotted a stall that was momentarily empty and ducked in. Tables on three sides were covered with trays of crystals and colored stones. A man in a Nehru jacket told me about the psychic properties of each type of stone and said carrying certain stones reduced the effects of things such as nervous strain and stress. Stress or no, I liked the containers of rhodonites, agates, malachites and carnelians. As I so often did, I mentally began to visualize a painting:  choosing a perspective, deciding on the medium to use and debating sable versus bristle brushes. Caught up in my musings, I didn’t realize the high, excited voice coming down the aisle was directed toward Andy.

Several things seemed to happen at once. The crowd around us thinned, the noise abated and a figure in white swooped from out of nowhere. She embraced Andy in a swirl of garments and glad cries. Andy hugged her back.

“Andy, you’ve hardly changed. How are you? What are you doing here?” The woman continued hugging and exclaiming until Andy disentangled himself from her embrace.

“Umma Grace.” He sounded surprised and I noticed he didn’t answer her questions.

She brought a tissue out from somewhere within the voluminous white clothing and blew her nose.