Fat-Free and Fatal (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (10 page)

“Young man, behave yourself!” came a high, trembling voice from my side.

I opened my eyes. Arletta was speaking, her index finger extended and shaking.

“Whatever grief you are experiencing, you have no right to take it out on Kate,” she told him. “Kate is doing her best to help you.”

I could see the confusion in Dan Snyder’s face as he turned his eyes in Arletta’s direction. How was I supposed to be helping him? Arletta gave him no time to rally.

“Come along,” she said, leading the way out the door. “We’ll go elsewhere.”

I directed Edna to the Starship Cafe. Goofy as it was, the Starship had to be an improvement on the Good Thyme. Ten minutes later, the four of us stood at the Starship’s entrance, which was designed to resemble the
Star Trek
transporter.

“Far friggin’ out,” breathed Felix.

“My,” twittered Arletta. “They’ve made it very realistic.”

Edna just chuckled, then led the way into the transporter.

Our host was dressed in silver tights and a navy blue tunic. He had great legs, but a surly expression. He seated us at a table decked out in a metallic silver tablecloth and handed us menus. The menus were new, different from the last time I had visited the Starship. These were large round disks of laminated cardboard that pictured “Star Station, Planet Earth” on one side in blue seas and green continents, and listed dishes from the Asteroid Appetizer Platter to a Zodiacal Light Linzertorte on the other side.

“Our specials tonight are fresh Solar Salmon in Dill Sauce and Heavenly Halibut with homemade chutney,” the host rattled off in a monotone. I guess I wouldn’t think it was very cute anymore either if I had to do it every night.

“Three soups,” he continued. “Lunar Lentil, Klingon Clam Chowder and Jupiter Jambalaya.”

He finished off with a list of drinks, and a little sigh.

“Look up,” I ordered after our host had taken our drink orders and sullenly departed.

We all gazed up at the ceiling, painted in shades of midnight blue and purple with a universe full of pasted-on silver stars. What magic, I thought. I let my eyes wander among the heavenly constellations and forgot my troubles.

When I brought my eyes back down, Felix, Arletta and Edna were all staring in my direction.

“No more stalling, Kate,” hissed Felix. “Give.”

I gave.

I told them most of what I could remember of the events from the night before. Our drinks arrived midway. I sipped my Quantum Carrot Juice and told them the rest. I had just finished describing Dan Snyder’s arrival, when our waitress appeared. She was a slender woman who didn’t fill out her official tunic and tights as well as Lieutenant Uhura, but she was friendly.

“What’ll it be, folks?” she asked cheerfully.

Arletta and Edna ordered fish. I asked for a Venusian Vegie Burger. Then the waitress turned to Felix.

“What’s low fat and low protein?” he asked unhappily.

“We have Planetary Pasta with steamed vegetables—” she began.

“I’ll have two orders,” he cut in, stroking his mustache. “What else?”

The waitress let her mouth drop open for a moment, then continued.

Felix added a green salad with no dressing, a side order of rice and a fruit salad to his order. He was a small man but he still had a big appetite, gout or no gout.

“So what’s the poop, Kate?” he asked as soon as the waitress had left. He bent forward and looked into my eyes. “Who did it?” he whispered.

I bent forward and whispered back three words: “I don’t know.”

“Kate!” he yelped.

“Now, now,” chirped Arletta. She put a restraining hand on his arm. “We all need to work together if we’re going to solve this mystery.”

I turned to her. On the surface, she was a frail old woman with wispy white hair and thick glasses. But I knew that through those glasses she observed things I didn’t see. And she had been anything but frail when she had joined Edna to save my life.

“What do
you
think?” I asked her.

“I think we haven’t nearly enough information,” she replied. “And there are a good many questions to be answered.” She smiled encouragingly. “Have you asked yourself who benefits from this death?”

I looked up at the ceiling again and thought. “I suppose her husband inherits,” I said slowly. “But I don’t know what she had to leave.”

“Diddly, besides her community property share of the restaurant and its building,” Felix contributed with a smug smile. I kept forgetting that as a reporter he was a source of information as well as an information sucker.

“Her husband was the angry young man we met at the Good Thyme?” Arletta asked.

I nodded in confirmation.

“You said the woman hit one of her children,” Arletta continued. “Do you suppose that was an isolated incident? Or was there, perhaps, a pattern of abuse?”

“A pattern, I think,” I answered, remembering the incident Alice had described. “But the children couldn’t have…” I faltered.

“You’d be surprised,” Edna offered, her voice gruff.

I turned her way for a moment. Her jowly face was stern, her blue eyes sparkling cold. She had been a nurse for all of her working life. She must have seen things in that job I would never see in my lifetime. Goose bumps formed on my arms.

“I’d like to talk about the class members,” Arletta said. Her high, wavering voice brought me back to the present. “Did any of them have a previous relationship with the murdered woman?”

“Alice did,” I answered reluctantly. Should I tell them that I thought Alice was in love with Dan?

“And…” prodded Arletta.

I looked across the table and caught a glint of hungry curiosity in Felix’s eyes. No, I decided. I wouldn’t share any vague theories.

“And the cooking teacher, Meg Quilter, had met Sheila once,” I said instead.

“Kate,” rumbled Felix threateningly.

I tried to ignore him, a task about as easy as ignoring detonating nuclear warheads.

“What kind of chucklehead do you think I am?” he demanded shrilly. “I know what you’re doing. You’re sitting on something—”

“Solar Salmon,” our waitress interrupted, setting the dish down in front of Arletta. I smiled up at her gratefully. I’d leave a good tip no matter what the food was like.

“And Heavenly Halibut,” she continued, “Venusian Vegie Burger, two Planetary Pasta with steamed vegies, Sulu Salad, Far-Away Fruit Salad, and a side of rice.”

She plopped the last five items down in front of Felix. “Thought you’d want them all at once,” she said and left.

We discussed the vegetarian cooking class members as we ate. The Venusian Vegie Burger would have been tastier if I’d gotten a chance to swallow once in a while. But every time I took a bite someone asked me something. Arletta questioned me extensively about Leo’s apparent alcoholism and lechery. I wasn’t sure what she was hoping to learn. Edna was more interested in Paula’s protective attitude toward her husband, Gary. And Felix almost drove me crazy with questions about Iris. I had made the mistake of telling him about her photo of Ted Bundy’s hands.

By the time Edna dropped me back at my house I felt like three separate vampires had taken turns at my neck, sucking me dry of information.

I walked into my house alone, hoping Wayne would make it all better.

One look at his face told me Wayne might make it all worse. His eyebrows had dropped so low, I couldn’t see his eyes at all. His frown was as deep as the Grand Canyon, and just as stony. In an instant I remembered that I had never told Wayne about the murder. My stomach commenced churning.

“Wayne, I never got a chance to tell you—” I began.

“Where have you been?” he growled. It wasn’t a friendly growl. It was a growl of a wounded bear.

I saw Vesta smiling behind Wayne. What had she told him?

“Can we talk about this privately?” I asked softly.

“No,” he answered.

I blinked. Wayne didn’t play the role of a heavy husband. At least he never had before. As he glared at me, I felt the blood rise in my face. How dare he treat me like a…like a wife?

“Fine,” I said, keeping my voice even. “I’ll talk to you later.”

I walked past Wayne and Vesta into the bedroom. If anyone was going to sleep on the couch tonight, it wasn’t going to be me. This was my house, goddammit.

I felt Wayne silently slide into bed around midnight. I pretended to be asleep. Then, after a couple of hours of tossing and turning, I really was. By the time I woke up on Wednesday morning he was gone.

At nine o’clock I was on the phone to Barbara again.

“We can’t do any more snooping,” I told her. “It’s too dangerous.” My late-night ruminations had convinced me that Wayne had a right to be worried about my investigating. Of course that assumed he
was
worried about my investigating. I still wasn’t sure what Vesta had told him.

“Is Wayne giving you a hard time?” Barbara asked. She picked the damnedest times to exercise her psychic powers.

I grunted. I didn’t want to say anything. Vesta was probably lurking nearby.

“Listen, kiddo,” she said. “We’ve got to keep at it. The police have already been here this morning. They’re on my case.”

I sighed, then tried to think of an honorable way out.

“I’ve got to do a little electrical work,” she continued briskly. “I’ll be done before noon. Then I’ll pick you up and we can go visit Meg. She’s going to be home today. She’s expecting us.”

“Barbara!” I objected.

My doorbell rang.

“You’d better get that,” Barbara said. “I’ll see you later.” Then she hung up.

Sergeant Tom Feiffer of the Marin County Sheriff’s Department was at my door, six feet of masculinity under curly blond hair. And he was smiling, that faintly leering smile that I never quite knew how to interpret. Was he really flirting? Or did he just know that the smile would rattle me? I heard C.C. meowing behind me. Did she have the answer?

“Hi there,” Feiffer said, winking a clear blue eye at me. “I hear you got tangled up in another murder.”

I opened my mouth. I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that it was some other Kate Jasper who had stumbled over the body. But I couldn’t. I let my mouth close.

“Can I come in?” Feiffer asked, still smiling.

“I guess so,” I said unenthusiastically.

My tone didn’t faze him. He strolled into the living room and stopped at the two pinball machines against the wall, a legacy from my former marriage. C.C. peered up at Sergeant Feiffer, then streaked across the room and out her cat door. Sometimes she was a pretty smart animal.

“Still got Hayburners and Texan,” the sergeant commented approvingly. “Great games.”

“Wanna play?” I asked slyly.

I knew that pinballs were his weak spot. He was an addict. If he was playing, I just might be able to get some information out of him. I switched on Hayburners, the machine I remembered as his favorite. The back glass and playfield lit up in an enticing glow. I hit the reset button. The score reels turned back to zero with a clunk, and the six metal cut-out horses in the back glass raced in reverse to the starting gate.

Sergeant Feiffer stepped up to the machine and hit the reset button again.

“Double play,” he said. He looked at me, a challenge in his blue eyes.

“You first,” I said, accepting his challenge.

Hayburners didn’t have any bumpers, but it had back targets, high-point side lanes and jelly fish rollovers on its lime green, yellow, orange and red playfield. Hitting any of the six back targets moved a corresponding horse forward a notch along the back-glass race track. And with enough notches each horse came in, raising the stakes on the rollovers and the side lanes.

Feiffer pressed the center disk that launched the steel ball. The ball hit a back target, moving the number three horse up, and rolled lazily toward the top left flipper.

“So, how is the county sheriff’s office involved?” I asked softly.

He hit the flipper button easily despite my question, and the ball glided over a jelly fish rollover, netting him ten points, then rolled back.

“San Ricardo P. D. asked for assistance,” he answered briefly, slapping the flipper button again. The ball sailed up a side lane. Fifty points. It rolled back down toward the bottom right flipper.

“Who do they suspect?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.

“Your friend, Barbara Chu, looks kinda interesting,” he told me, sending the ball to hit another back target.

Damn. I hadn’t shaken him, but he had shaken me. I hadn’t really believed Barbara when she’d said the police were on her case.

“But then, so do a couple of other people,” Feiffer added.

“Who?” I asked eagerly.

He laughed as he hit the right-hand flipper button. “Why don’t you tell me?” he said, smiling. “You’re out there nosing around where you shouldn’t be.”

He glanced in my direction as the ball moseyed up a side lane. The smile left his face. He stared for a moment over my shoulder. It was a moment too long. The ball came rolling toward his left bottom flipper. Too late, he pressed the button. The ball skated on the flipper for an instant, then slid off the tip and down the drain hole.