Death hits the fan (9 page)

"Little space cadet," Zoe's daughter muttered. "All he cares about is his art projects."

"Now, Zelda," Zoe objected, but there wasn't a lot of force behind her words.

"Yeah, yeah, he's 'creative,'" Zelda mimicked, rolling her eyes. "A creative pain in the butt."

"I heard that," a thin voice replied from somewhere beyond the hangings. A voice that didn't have much more force than Zoe's.

"We're looking into Shayla's death for Ivan," I inserted. It was time to steer this conversation back on track. "I know she was your friend."

I heard Zelda mutter something behind her mother. It might have been "bitch," but I wasn't sure.

Zoe shook her head, pulled on her ear, and scratched behind it like a cat. Then I remembered Marcia talking at the bookstore earlier, doubting the friendship between the two women. What had she said exactly?

"Actually, I'm not sure Shayla and I were still friends,"

Zoe told us, with another little twitch of her shoulders. 'That's really why I went to the signing, to find out, but. .." She shook her head. Were those tears behind her thick glasses? "I guess I'll never know."

There was a short silence, the parakeets chirped, and I heard a funny humming noise. I turned and saw a hamster on the end table, spinning his exercise wheel as he climbed earnestly and endlessly to nowhere. Some of the cats were watching him too, but the cage looked cat-proof.

"Why?" I asked finally. "Why did you think Shayla—"

"'Cause of Crohn's," she interrupted.

Another cat jumped on her lap. She arranged them side by side to accommodate both. "Now I'm Noah's ark," she commented.

"Crones?" I prodded. Maybe we were in an enchanted kingdom after all. With fair maidens and crones and ... I was beginning to feel dizzy with the swirling hangings and moving animals. And Zoe.

"Crohn's," she repeated. "It's an inflammatory autoimmune disease, they think, that attacks certain parts of the body and trashes them completely." She stopped and rubbed the back of her neck. "You don't want to hear the details, believe me."

"But you don't die from Crohn's," her daughter declared fiercely from behind her.

"Yeah, but you're not a happy camper either, I'm telling you," Zoe went on. "You can bleed to death, but only if you're not careful. If you're careful, you get a nice, long, uncomfortable life, with constant flare-ups and a whole sidebar of complications from the medications and from malabsorption of nutrients." She rolled her shoulders impatiently. "At least it's good practice if I want to become a junkie. I have to give myself B 12 shots—"

"But why would Shayla stop being your friend because

you're sick?" I demanded. So far, I still felt like Alice in Wonderland.

"Because she was a bitch," Zelda answered, loud and clear. Yep, I had heard her right the first time.

The dog looked up mournfully at Zoe's daughter.

"Look, you've hurt Kali's feelings now," Zoe said and laughed. "A bitch, get it?"

"Oh, yeah," I said and attempted a smile.

"Okay," Zoe went on. "Here's the thing. People don't like illness. They don't like death. And they especially don't like chronic illness. Even doctors don't like it. Makes them feel like failures. My husband sure didn't. He left me, six months after I was diagnosed."

"That's 'cause he's an asshole," Zelda explained helpfully.

"No," Zoe disagreed, playing with her ponytail now. "It's not that simple. See, people don't spurn you when you're sick if they know that you'll get well in a given amount of time. Then they help you. They want to help. But chronic illness is a different story. Good, kind, loving people want you to get well. And if you don't, it's just too uncomfortable for them. Just some people, not everyone, mind you."

"But it's not your fault!" I argued.

"Lots of people think it is, though," Zoe said seriously. "Consciously or subconsciously. They tell you that you could get well if you really wanted to. They tell you there must be a reason you're holding on to your illness. It doesn't occur to them that it's genetic, chemical. Sure, I can do symptom relief with self-hypnosis and all that jazz, but I'm no yogi. I can't just change my whole body and walk away."

"And Shayla?" I prompted. I was getting lost again.

"Oh, Shayla," Zoe murmured, real sadness in her tone now. Even grief. She looked at the floor, but I saw the moisture on her cheeks. "She really believed I could get well. She believed she could will me to get well. If anyone could have,

it would have been her. She told me to surround myself with white light. I did." She barked in laughter. "But I was really surrounding myself in white lies. Creative denial, it's an art form."

"Shayla was an idiot," Zelda put in. Better than "bitch" at least. But probably less accurate.

"And then I didn't want to tell Shayla I wasn't getting better," Zoe went on. "I didn't want to disappoint her. It's forever, you see. There are remissions, but then there're the flare-ups, the constant inflammations, irritations, infections. And the complications. Cataracts, faux arthritis, rashes. It never ends."

She stood up, disaccommodating the two cats to their noisy distress, and began pacing the room, touching her silken hangings, one by one, as she paced.

"Then Shayla wanted me to give up my medications. 'Steroids are deadly,' she told me. As if I didn't know. But if I'm not in remission, they're what keep me from bleeding to death . . ." She pounded a fist into her palm. "I had to tell her I couldn't risk it. I'd risked it once before. There's nothing like a hospital stay to straighten out your thinking processes about creative visualization as a real solution to a serious medical condition. I wasn't going to try it again."

Her eyes glazed over as she paced. Was she reliving the near-death experience or the argument with Shayla?

"So what did Shayla say when you refused?" I asked finally.

"First it was an idea a day. Self-actualization tapes, psychotherapy, coffee enemas, you name it. And then finally the calls stopped."

"Some friend," Zelda offered.

"Oh, honey," Zoe objected. "I know you love me, but you don't understand Shayla. She really wanted me to be well. That's the irony. Her intentions were good. Of course, I'm just as tired of being sick as she was of me being sick. Only

I can't leave. It's like you're in a hotel and the only way to really check out is to really check out—"

"Mom!" Zelda objected. "Don't you dare say that."

"Honey, I didn't say I was going to check out, you know that. We've talked about it." Zoe sat back down, still wiggling her shoulders. Another cat jumped in her lap. "Anyway, the upshot is that other people can leave, so they do. And I think that's what happened with Shayla. She finally got fed up. I called her, but she didn't return my calls. I was pretty sure she wanted to end our friendship. I mean, duh, it wasn't like her phone wasn't working. But I wanted to be sure, so I went to the signing to talk to her."

"Oh," I said and waited for more. It came.

"See, it's hard to explain Shayla," Zoe murmured. Again there was sadness in her voice. "Some people might call her self-actualized; on the other hand you might just call her self-absorbed."

I laughed. Self-absorption did seem to go hand in hand with self-actualization. At least among those who loved to talk about it.

Zoe looked up at me and laughed, too. It was a good sound to hear.

"So when's dinner?" Zack asked, wandering back into the room, the turquoise paper still in his hands.

Zoe jumped. "When I get to it!" she snapped.

Zack looked up, clearly taken aback.

"Oh phooey!" Zoe said, hitting the side of her head. "I'm sorry. It's these damn steroids. I haven't been myself since I've been on them."

"Tell them about the lady in Safeway, Mom," Zelda said, smiling.

Zoe laughed and complied. "God, you wouldn't believe it. Here I am, walking through Safeway, telling myself to concentrate on loving kindness and this woman puts her stuff in my cart. That was fine, I told myself. I let her know

about her mistake . . . with loving kindness. Then she looks in my cart and sees the yogurt with aspartame I'm gonna buy. You see. there are about five substances in the universe left that I can eat, and that's one of them. Anyway, this lady pulls out one of the containers of yogurt and shoves it in my face." Zoe got up, cat sliding from her lap, and began pacing again. "She says. 'Did you know this contains aspartame?' I pleaded guilty. Then she pushes it even farther in my face and tells me all about how aspartame causes brain tumors. I wanted to kill her. I swear, I could see her blood-bathed head in the broccoli. It was the first time I ever really wanted to kill someone—"

Suddenly, her story came to a halt. She stopped pacing too, her finger just touching one of the silk hangings. Did she realize only now that the story wasn't funny under the circumstances?

Her daughter did.

"But that happens all the time with people on steroids," Zelda intervened quickly. "All the people in the Crohn's support group have stories about wanting to kill people when they're on steroids." Her face reddened. "But of course, they never do it."

Damn, if I didn't want to believe her. Zoe wouldn't have told us that story if she'd killed Shayla. Would she?

"Who was Shayla, anyway?" I asked, wanting to end Zoe's misery. Wanting to cure her Crohn's too, just like she'd said.

"Ah, Shayla," Zoe replied. "She was a member of a magic circle. She. Scott, and Dean—"

"Dean was Scott's lover," Zelda threw in.

"Zelda!" her mother objected.

"Mom—I know about these things," her daughter told her. "Anyway, I like Dean. It was Shayla who was—"

She didn't have to finish her sentence.

"I like Dean too." Zoe agreed. "And Scott. And Shayla. I

wanted to be part of that loving circle." She sat back down in her chair and buried her face in her hands, tears streaming from her eyes.

Her daughter knelt beside her and put her arm around her shoulder.

I knew it was time to leave. If I hadn't known, there was a definite clue in Zelda's glare.

But I couldn't resist one more line as I left.

"Zoe, when all this is over, I'd like to know you better," I told her softly. "And I promise the words 'creative visualization' will never cross my lips."

She lifted her face, laughing through her tears.

"Thanks, Kate," she said. "I might just take you up on that."

Wayne and I were quiet on the short drive home.

Somehow, Zoe's chronic illness seemed worse than Shayla's instant death. But still, a hard voice nagged me: opportunity—when she walked around the authors' table the night of the murder; means—B 12 shots meant access to syringes; and temperament—steroid-induced rage. Damn. Still, I certainly hadn't seen her put a bracelet on the authors' table that night, and I'd been watching her.

I looked at Wayne as I drove. His expression was unfathomable. But I guessed that his sympathy was stirred by Zoe's illness. Or was he more concerned about her susceptibility to murderous rage?

We were climbing the front stairs, both lost in our own thoughts, when we saw a man walking around the side of our house.

"Hey!" I shouted.

And then the figure began to run.

Seven

Wayne and I turned and bolted down the stairs simultaneously. But we were both too late.

The man we'd seen coming around the side of the house was sprinting down the driveway now, a large figure in a trench coat and hat. Large and fast. It wasn't Bob Xavier. Too tall. And it wasn't Raoul Raymond. Too bulky. So who the hell was it?

We reached the end of the driveway just in time to see the flash of an old red VW bus, and then, even that was gone.

"But who—"

"Why—"

"What—"

We asked, and didn't answer, each other's half-formed questions all the way up the stairs to the front door.

But we stopped talking when I actually opened the door and stepped inside. Was Ingrid still here? Wayne followed

me over the threshold, and we peered into the living room together.

The good news was that Ingrid was gone. The bad news was that her belongings were still present, spread all over the futon and the surrounding expanse of carpet. Still, it was nice to see C.C. nestled in Ingrid's suitcase, clawing and purring.

"Who?" Wayne began again.

We explored the possibilities. And even the impossibilities. Was the figure we'd seen running one of the people who'd been at the fatal signing? His back hadn't looked like any one of them, though. Were we even sure it was a man? Or a human, for that matter? Which led to the thought of Bob Xavier. What if he had hired the man, or whatever he or she or it was? But why? Then a worse idea dropped into the discussion. What if the running figure had been a policeman?

Exhausted, I dropped onto our old couch, careful not to bump my head on the bookcase it was shoved into. A frond from a nearby plant brushed my face affectionately.

"We have to find out who did it," I said.

"Right," Wayne agreed, dropping onto the couch next to me.

I looked into his face. Was there sarcasm lurking there? And why wasn't he arguing with me?

"Damn," I said, one last spurt of adrenaline galvanizing my exhausted brain.

"What?" Wayne asked.

"I thought I'd know more about Shayla once I'd talked to Zoe," I explained. "I thought I'd have a fix on S.X. Green-free. That was the whole point. Who was she?"

Wayne shrugged.

"And how does her murder relate to the guy running around our house?" I added.

He shrugged again. Was he even listening?

"And what's the meaning of life?" I tested.

This time he didn't shrug. He actually opened his mouth. And then he laughed.

"What?" I asked.

"I was going to attempt an answer," he told me, shaking his head. "Third question seemed easier, by comparison."

Then we were both laughing. Hysteria, my mind diagnosed, but I didn't care. It felt good. And I was breathing again.

We snuggled and bumped and tickled each other all the way down the hall, and began pulling off clothing.