A Sensitive Kind of Murder (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (4 page)

- Five -

“Huh?” I replied.

When Wayne uses that special, quiet tone, my brain loses it. I act like someone caught robbing a convenience store in broad daylight. No, worse than that—I act like an environmentalist who’s been embezzling ocean water from the whales. Guilty as charged, sir. I’m still not sure why. Maybe that quiet tone resonates with a guilt neuron pathway in my cerebellum. Anyway, I took a deep breath and tried to explain Aunt Dorothy.

“Aunt Dorothy is my father’s brother’s widow,” I said. “She used to be a teacher. And then she was a nurse. Now she does good works—”

“Maybe I should rephrase my question,” Wayne interrupted, reaching across the table to hold my hand. Had he noticed I was losing it? “Not ‘who is Aunt Dorothy?’ but why are we picking her up at the airport?”

I gulped down another “huh?” unpronounced and once again attempted an explanation.

“Oh, it’s my mother,” I began.

Wayne’s eyebrows lowered a little more. He removed his hand. I talked faster.

“My mother sent Aunt Dorothy. See, Aunt Dorothy’s big in her church, does all kinds of things—”

“I thought your mother didn’t go to church,” Wayne put in, confused.

“She doesn’t. But see, Aunt Dorothy is a wedding coordinator for
her
church.”

Wayne smiled, understanding dawning on his beloved, homely face. Damn, that looked good. Then I realized
why
he was smiling. He still wanted a formal wedding almost as much as my mother did. I had a feeling that my opinion of a formal wedding as an unusual form of torture was not in the majority anymore, if it ever had been.

“So your mother is sending out Aunt Dorothy to plan our ‘real’ wedding,” Wayne guessed. I suppose it was obvious.

I slumped in my chair, only able to nod.

Wayne reached out his hand for mine again.

“Don’t worry,” he assured me. “No one can
make
you plan your wedding, Kate.”

“You don’t know Aunt Dorothy,” I replied. “But thanks, sweetie.” I squeezed his hand back. What a good man.

“Does your Aunt Dorothy carry a whip?” Wayne asked innocently.

“No, no!” I objected, shaking my head back and forth violently. “It’s just that she’s so, well, nice—”

The phone rang just as sharp claws dug into my shoulder. C.C.!

C. C. had a new game, besides singing opera. She would climb stealthily to a spot above her victim and then swoop down, claws extended. This particular flight path had taken her from the top of the refrigerator to my waiting shoulder. An amazing feat, to be sure, but I definitely preferred the opera trick.

I shot out of my chair, rocket-powered by unbearable tension and slightly more bearable pain. C. C. had disappeared. That was the smart part of her game; I had yet to catch her after one of her stealth attacks.

“Hey, kiddo,” my friend Barbara greeted me over the phone. “Don’t worry about your aunt. She’s a benign force.”

Have I mentioned that my friend Barbara is psychic? Her intuitions are amazing…except when it comes to murder.

Then her brain “fritzes,” as she likes to call it. She is, after all, an electrician as well as a psychic.

“But I really called about Felix,” she went on, before I had a chance to demand that she tell me once and for all how she always knows this stuff about me. I hadn’t told
anyone
about Aunt Dorothy, aside from Wayne. I certainly hadn’t told Felix, Barbara’s boyfriend.

“Felix is trying to find his spiritual path,” Barbara continued. She didn’t need a response from me; she was probably channeling it. “And you know Felix, he’s too antsy to take the slow road. He sees me meditating and reading and talking to my guides, and he goes crazy. You know my path is a pretty straightforward one.”

I nodded. From Barbara’s mind to the astral plane. Who needs an intercessor?

She took my unseen nod as an affirmative and resumed.

“Felix finally realized that my spiritual path makes me happy. Monkey see, monkey do. Only my path isn’t his, so he has to find a guru. But he’ll find the experience that he needs.” She paused and added, “Just like you, Kate.”

I opened my mouth to ask what she meant, but I wasn’t fast enough.

“I know you feel the power of spiritual presence,” she finished up.

I closed my mouth. Had she been peeking into
my
meditation practices, or had she just taken the short route and asked her guides? I was still speculating when she changed the subject.

“Don’t get too excited about the murder,” she told me.

“How’d you know—” was as far as I got. At least I got in three words.

“I figured it out, kiddo. Your finding the bodies is really a marvelous form of karma—”

“Marvelous?” I broke in. “Marvelous? How’d you like to—”

“See, I finally got it, Kate. You were a resurrectionist in a past life—”

“You mean a body snatcher?” I demanded indignantly.

“No, Kate.” Barbara’s laughter tinkled across the phone lines like the sound of shining silver. “I mean someone who resurrected dead people.”

Barbara paused, but I had nothing to say in the interval. I was still trying to process her words, and my brain was really tired.

“Isn’t that cool, kiddo?” she asked. “You brought people back from the dead.”

I was beginning to understand. And the hair on the back of my neck was standing up.

“So, let me get his straight,” I began slowly. “I used to bring people back from the dead, so now I’m karmically impaired and get to stumble over dead bodies?”

“Yeah,” she agreed enthusiastically.

“And this is marvelous?”

“Yeah!”

“Did one of your spirit guides tell you this?” I asked my friend.

“Nah.”

“What, did you just channel it?” I probed.

“Nah.”

“Barbara!” I bawled.

“I just thought it sounded neat,” she finally admitted.

“You made it up?”

“I thought it would make you feel better,” she insisted.

Some psychic. I didn’t feel better. I felt totally and absolutely aggravated. But somehow my guilt over Steve Summers’ death seemed to be gone—guilt I hadn’t even known I was feeling.

“Told ya,” Barbara said. “Bye, kiddo.”

And then she hung up.

I said goodbye to the dial tone. I was sure Barbara would hear me, anyway. Then I went back to sit with Wayne at the kitchen table.

“Barbara?” he said.

“Are you psychic, too?” I snapped.

“You yelled ‘Barbara,’” he explained.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” I whispered. “But Barbara thinks I’m a resurrectionist, and—”

The doorbell rang then. It was probably just as well. Trying to interpret Barbara was a task that made me crazy—almost as crazy as listening to her.

Wayne and I rose together as the bell rang again. We would face whoever was at the door in tandem.

Wayne did the honors, turning the knob and yanking the door back. Then we both stared out onto the deck.

Two pairs of eyes stared back—Sergeant Marge Abbott’s and Captain Yale Wooster’s.

Sergeant Abbott’s eyes were crinkled with good humor. Captain Wooster’s were not.

“How are you two doing, then?” Marge greeted us.

I tried to frame a reply, but Captain Wooster was faster with his mouth than I was.

“Typhoid Mary of Murder!” he yapped. His jaw jutted into the entryway.

Whoa. I stepped back from the doorway. The captain wasn’t having a good day—not that any of us were. And I certainly hadn’t wanted to hear that phrase from a policeman’s lips. His mean eyes glinted.

“Now, Captain,” Marge admonished. “They can probably hear you all the way back in Cortadura.”

“Burning bushes!” the captain erupted. “You could have told us you find bodies as a hobby!”

“My wife does not find bodies as a hobby,” Wayne stated, his voice as expressionless as his face. But I could feel the anger vibrating from him.

“Yeah?” Captain Wooster swiveled his jaw in Wayne’s direction. “Well, how come every time there’s a death in Marin County, she’s there?”

“It’s not my fault,” I threw in, drawing his attention away from Wayne. If the men came to blows, I was pretty sure I knew who would end up in jail—Wayne—and who would end up in a body cast—Captain Wooster. “It’s a karmic thing. I was a resurrectionist in a past life.”

“You were a body snatcher?” Marge asked, her voice high with amazement.

“No, I raised people from the dead, so now I find them dead.” I knew I was babbling, but at least the captain had stopped yelling. Now he was staring at me, his mouth hanging open. Not a pretty sight. “You’ll have to ask my friend Barbara for more details,” I finished up.

“Hell’s bells,” the captain finally said. “You going for an insanity plea or what?”

Marge threw her head back and laughed.

The captain turned to her angrily. “I hate Marin, Marge,” he whined. “I hate this karmic caboodle, you know I do. I hate all the channeling and crystals and wussy men in their wussy support groups. I hate—”

“Didn’t you want to ask Ms. Jasper and Mr. Caruso some questions, sir?” Marge cut him off.

“Right,” he answered, straightening his shoulders. He pulled his chin back a notch. “May we come in to talk?”

I looked at Wayne. The Captain had asked permission. I guessed that meant he didn’t have the right to just barge in. Was the captain better as a friend than an enemy? Wayne asked with his eyebrows. I gave a tentative nod. Wayne blinked and stepped back from the doorway.

“Come in and have a seat, Captain Wooster and…”

I couldn’t believe it. I’d forgotten Marge’s rank and last name.

“Oh, just call me Marge, honey,” she advised, walking past me in a lilac-scented cloud. “Or Sergeant Marge; lots of folks like to call me that.”

If the two of them were playing good cop and bad cop, they certainly had their roles straight.

We sat Sergeant Marge and Captain Wooster down on the wood-and-denim couch where Felix had been before. The captain’s nostrils flared. Could he smell the absent reporter? Or was he smelling our recent feast? Or Marge’s ever-present lilac scent?

“Right,” he repeated once he was seated. “Ms. Jasper, how come you were so quick to mention the other group members and—” he paused and rolled his eyes “—and their ‘significant others’?”

I glanced at Wayne again. Shouldn’t I tell the captain about the key and the potluck? Wayne might as well have had “no” printed on his forehead. I thought maybe I was getting as psychic as Barbara.

“Just logical,” I answered, keeping my voice even. Wayne and I both lowered ourselves into the double hanging chair. “They all knew about the group and when it ended.”

“Okay, let’s go over the timing of these groups,” Captain Wooster suggested, sounding almost human for a moment.

Wayne and I nodded like good puppies.

“Okay, Mr. Caruso, you guys had a group meeting today, right?” he asked.

Wayne nodded again.

“When was the previous meeting of your group?”

“Two Wednesdays ago,” Wayne answered. His voice was slow and careful. “Heartlink meets every other Wednesday.”

The captain bent forward. “What did you talk about at the meeting two Wednesdays ago?”

My body stiffened next to Wayne’s—someone from the group had talked to the captain besides us. The way he asked his question made it clear to me that he knew they’d discussed something out of the ordinary two weeks ago. Did he know they’d talked about their worst secrets?

“I can’t tell you that,” Wayne replied predictably. “Confidentiality.”

Wooster turned to me.

“I wasn’t there,” I stated honestly. I honestly hadn’t been there; never mind that Wayne’s confidentiality had spread to include me in its confines.

“And Scheherazade told good stories, too!” the captain snapped. He didn’t seem human anymore. “You two know plenty—”

‘They’ll tell us in their own way, sir,” Marge interrupted. “Lord, sometimes you’re enough to make a gal wanna wear earplugs.”

I looked at her gratefully, wanting to tell Marge everything. But maybe that was how it was supposed to work. Marge’s crinkly blue eyes were friendly but intent as she searched our faces. I kept quiet.

Finally, the captain began again. “Okay, so your Heartlink group had a meeting today and a meeting two weeks ago. And in between those meetings, the members of the group and their ‘significant others’ went to a potluck?”

“Potluck was last weekend,” Wayne confirmed quickly. He didn’t say anything about the missing key.

I wondered once more who’d been talking to the captain. I squirmed in my chair. How much had the captain heard?

“How about you two?” he hissed. “What are your worst secrets?”

My heart rammed itself against my ribs like it was trying to escape. The captain had heard too much, that was for sure. Someone had told him, but who? And what, exactly?