A Sensitive Kind of Murder (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (16 page)

- Seventeen -

“Well, Mr. Caruso, how do you rate your life span these days?” Captain Wooster began conversationally, a Halloween pumpkin smile carved above his outsized jaw.

Wayne looked up at him woozily.

“What do you mean?” he finally asked, slowly.

Wayne shouldn’t have ever asked that question because Captain Wooster had an answer—a long answer.

“Mary’s handbag!” Wooster bellowed, his smile gone now. He threw out his arms. “Haven’t you noticed that you and Ted Kimmochi are the only two husbands left standing? Hell’s bells, these women are killing off their husbands. First Laura Summers, and then Helen Herrick. If they can’t divorce you, they kill you. Women hate men, it’s as simple as that. Only Peter at the Gate knows what we ever did to deserve it, but they’re out for our blood.”

“I’m not out for Wayne’s blood,” I put in cautiously.

He turned my way, his chin in full assault mode.

“Huh! That’s what you say now. Holy Christmas, that’s what they all say at first. Look at that Helen Herrick; she was already divorcing the poor sucker, but nooo, that wasn’t enough, she had to put out his lights for him, too.”

“Are you accusing Helen Herrick of murder, Captain Wooster?” Aunt Dorothy demanded, raising herself to nearly five feet in her barely restrained indignation.

The captain pulled his head back. He’d obviously forgotten my aunt in his excitement.

“Not necessarily accusing, ma’am,” he floundered. He looked upward for inspiration. “Um, suggesting a theory. Yeah, that’s it.” He looked back at us and enunciated carefully, “One of the many possibilities we’re pursuing, ma’am.”

“I have known Helen Herrick for longer than you’ve been alive, Captain,” Dorothy informed Wooster, her voice cold with anger. “And Helen is grieving for a man she loved. Don’t you dare bully her.”

“We don’t bully people at the Cortadura Police Department,” he tried, adding “ma’am” once more as an afterthought. “For Joseph’s sake, we have to get them sandwiches if they want them. Or ‘wraps.’ It used to be croissants—”

“Well, I’ll save you a wrap,” Dorothy told him. “Helen didn’t do it.”

“But—” the captain started. Then he seemed to deflate. For a moment anyway, his chin went back to where most people’s chins are. Then he opened his mouth again.

“Felix Byrne,” he hissed.

I flinched.

“You know that little Judas weasel, don’t you?” he demanded. “Friends like—”

“Yeah, but we didn’t tell him anything,” I cut in, guessing what was coming. “He already knew. He told
us
that Isaac was suffocated for sure.”

“That little blood sucker!” the captain roared. “I don’t know who leaked it, but now the whole world knows how Isaac Herrick died. No chance of surprising the guilty party with withheld information—”

“The
Marin Mind
?” I guessed.

He nodded. “If I get my hands on that boy, I’ll—”

“Deny him a wrap?” my aunt suggested.

The captain’s complexion turned an unhealthy shade of maroon.

“Was the coroner female?” I asked before he started in on Aunt Dorothy.

“What?” he said. “What kind of question is that?”

“Felix has a way of weaseling information out of female officers that I don’t understand,” I explained. “Maybe he’s more attractive before you get to know him very well.”

“Well, if the coroner has been talking out of turn, I’ll have her hide,” Captain Wooster promised. So, we
were
talking about a female officer here. I just hoped the captain didn’t really have the power to make trouble for her. As far as I knew, the coroners worked for the county, not the city. “She should have known better than to talk to a reporter without my okay.”

“Did you give her explicit instructions to the contrary, Captain?” my aunt asked sweetly. “I thought these details were routinely given to the press.”

“No, I didn’t give her explicit instructions,” Wooster whined. “Mary, Joseph, and the baby, you’d think I was the only one with any sense.”

There was a moment of relative silence as Captain Wooster squinted his eyes. Was he thinking of the good old days of rubber hoses?

“Sir,” Wayne tried respectfully. “When will I be able to pick up my car?”

“When the bodies stop piling up,” the captain shot back. “If you live long enough to see it, that is.”

We were obviously back to the captain’s original theory.

Then suddenly Captain Wooster shoved his chin my way. “Do you know something you’re not telling me?” he asked.

I shook my head so hard I nearly slipped a disk.

“If you know something, you’d better tell me,” he finally threatened. “That goes for all of you. Or I’ll assume you dunnit, see?”

“But—”

“No buts,” he corrected me. “Anything you know, you tell me
now.
”

But jutting chin in my face or not, I didn’t know anything. I searched what was left of my mind and couldn’t find one important tidbit to pass on. At least, I hoped that nothing I knew was important. Wayne and Aunt Dorothy didn’t do any better than I did. Even C. C, who’d wandered out for the show, had nothing to offer.

The captain left, fuming. I hoped it was an act, but I didn’t think it was—not any more than my thudding pulse was an act.

After he’d gone, the three of us made it up the stairs, staggered into the house, and threw ourselves into the living room: Dorothy on the denim sofa and Wayne and I in the double hanging chair. C. C. brought up the rear, complaining about something—maybe it was Captain Wooster’s demeanor, but it was more likely food deprivation.

“That man should learn to control his temper,” Dorothy commented mildly. “He might have a heart attack.”

“We won’t get that lucky,” I replied gloomily.

My aunt laughed. I looked up, surprised by the sound.

“I wonder if he’ll ever catch up to your friend Felix?” she asked.

“Now you’re really trying to cheer us up,” I said, beginning to smile again. “Can you see it—”

But the doorbell cut off my imagined Wooster/Byrne interrogation.

Wayne got up and opened the door. I would have just left it shut.

Jerry Urban came through the doorway. He gave Wayne a brief one-armed hug, his round face smiling. But I could see tension in the hug.

“Hey, Kate. Hey, Dorothy,” he greeted us.

Then he just stood for a moment. He crossed his arms briefly, then uncrossed them. He began to whistle. The three of us stared at him. Finally, he broke.

“Okay, I’m here about Garrett,” he told us.

As if we couldn’t have guessed, I thought. My aunt was more gracious than I was.

“Please sit down, Jerry,” she offered, pointing to the hanging chair for one.

Once Jerry was seated, Dorothy started in. Captain Wooster might have been the master of interrogation, but my aunt was the mistress of polite inquiry.

“Is Garrett in some sort of distress?” she asked Jerry ever-so-gently.

“Whoa, have you been mind-reading or what?” he exclaimed. Then his face grew more serious. “See, Garrett is a great caretaker for everyone but himself. Everyone depends on Garrett, but who does Garrett depend on?”

“You,” Dorothy answered him.

“I wish,” was all Jerry said, and then I saw the real hurt in his eyes. “Garrett won’t lean on me, but then he won’t lean on anyone. And when he gets depressed, I…I just don’t know what to do.”

“Is he depressed now?” my aunt continued in therapist mode.

“He’s so depressed, I’m worried he’ll just go into his shell and never come back out,” Jerry replied. “I can’t even talk to him. You know I’ve got this diabetes thing going on. I don’t even dare tell him when I’m afraid. He’ll just try to take on all my fear for me. He’s like that, always taking on everyone else’s stuff, never dealing with his own.”

“And then there’re the murders,” Wayne put in.

Jerry sighed, long and deep. Finally, he nodded.

“And then there are the murders. I was hoping you guys would have this all wrapped up. Not that there’s any reason you should; it’s just that I’m desperate. It was bad enough when that kid committed suicide.” He shook his head. “And that thing with his sister.” Jerry sighed again.

“His sister?” I prompted, propelled by a tiny squirt of adrenaline. Did his sister have something to do with all of this?

“Oh, you didn’t know about that?” he asked. Then he answered his own question. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. Garrett never talks about his
own
problems…His sister was killed by a hit-and-run driver when he was a kid. He never got over it. And this thing with Steve is bringing up all the bad memories. It was a big newspaper thing when Garrett’s sister was killed. She was just seventeen, and she was pregnant. None of the family had known about the pregnancy. It wasn’t like her. She got good grades, wanted to be a nurse, all of that stuff. And then, bam! It was all over. And to top it all off, reporters hounded Garrett’s mother while she was still grieving. It was a really bad scene.”

It sounded like a bad scene. And then I wondered, could Steve Summers have been one of those reporters on that bad scene? Garrett was a good fifteen years younger than Steve. It was possible.

“How old was Garrett when this all happened?” I asked.

“Thirteen years old. He calls it his unlucky year.”

Yep, it was possible.

“Did Garrett ever say anything to you about Steve Summers?” I asked.

“Just general stuff. He liked him. Thought he was ethical.”

My mouth wanted to ask if Garrett had recognized Steve Summers as one of the reporters that had made his mother’s life miserable, or if Garrett had even stalked Steve Summers (all the way to Heartlink?), or—the biggie—had Garrett killed Steve for the pain he’d caused. But my brain told me that you don’t ask someone’s lover those questions.

“Did they ever find the hit-and-run driver?” I asked instead.

Jerry shook his head. “White man, black neighborhood. That’s what all the newspaper fuss was about. But no one ever got any further than that on figuring out who the driver was.”

“Did Garrett ever try to find out?” my aunt asked.

“Yeah, he asked around. But no one really saw anything but a big, expensive car.”

“Speaking of cars,” I began slowly. “I heard you used to drive race cars.”

Jerry smiled, and the smile looked genuine. “Whoa, those were the days,” he said. “Racing was my life—well, besides sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, that is. It was the late Sixties. You know, they say that if you can remember the Sixties, you probably weren’t there.” Then he guffawed, and I felt like I was seeing the real Jerry Urban again.

“Sometimes, I think it’s just because Garrett is so young that he’s so damn earnest,” he added. “He didn’t have fun during the Sixties like the rest of us.”

“Hey,” I plunged in again, trying to stop my mind from doing a roll call of all the people who
didn’t
have fun in the Sixties, most of them in Vietnam. “We have a friend in common, Barbara Chu. She says you’re a real practical joker.”

“You know Barbara?” he asked, his voice squeaking. He slapped his knee. “That woman’s a hoot! Helped me wire up the talking drinking fountain. You shoulda seen the people spit out the water in their mouths. Now,
she
knows how to have fun.”

I nodded. I should have known that Barbara would have helped with Jerry’s jokes.

“Jerry?” Aunt Dorothy asked quietly. “Do you think that Garrett’s depression might have something to do with these murders? Perhaps he might have some idea of the murderer’s identity.”

My heart seemed to stop. Was that it? Had my aunt stumbled on the reason for Garrett’s mood change?

Jerry’s good-natured face wrinkled in concentration as he stared at the floor.

“He hasn’t said anything like that,” he muttered, as if to himself. “He would have told me…I think.”

“Are you really sure?” Dorothy persisted.

Jerry looked up again and met her eyes.

“No, I’m not,” he declared, standing abruptly. “But I’m gonna find out, right now.”

And then he strode back to the front door.

“Let us know!” my aunt called after him as he took the stairs.

“You’ll be the first!” he promised. And then he walked down the driveway, climbed into his BMW, and disappeared in a low hum of precision engineering. I thought of Wayne’s Jaguar and sighed.

“We all need to cheer up,” Aunt Dorothy announced.

“It would be nice to know who the murderer was,” I put in hopefully. For all I knew, she had it figured out already.

“You really think Garrett might know?” Wayne added, his face as hopeful as mine.

But Dorothy just shook her head.

“Garrett would be upset if he suspected the murderer’s identity, but that’s no proof that he does,” she reminded us.

“Oh,” I said. Then I remembered Garrett’s sister. “What if Steve was one of the reporters who covered the hit-and-run?” I asked. “Would that be enough motive?”