Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (12 page)
Read Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Online
Authors: Jaqueline Girdner
longing to be more
but asking so little, really
garlic, wine
and your lips.
I looked up at our waitress, suddenly pitying her as she plopped Barbara’s plate on the circle that had been Elsa Oberg and dived into her recitation of tofu. I had to read for my meal once. She had to sing suppers all night long.
My plate landed on Gil Nesbit.
Barbara was right. The food was good. The honey-mustard sauce on the tofu was perfect, rolled in the blue tortillas with olives and sweet peppers and a few more ingredients that hadn’t made it into the poem.
We stuffed our faces and moved our plates around as necessary to make more notes on the chart. I ate my meal carefully, avoiding honey-mustard spills. Justine had been the closest to Silk, at least on the surface. And she had arranged the soiree. But I don’t think either Barbara or I really wanted to suspect Justine. And Linda had been almost as close to Silk, and twice as spacey. Now, Zarathustra was a case. Silk had taunted him, a young man caught up in the throes of angst and possible violence that teenaged hormones can trigger. But Barbara pronounced him sweet. All right, I agreed, he was sweet. But still…We both agreed that Tory was suspiciously cheerful, and Artemisia was suspiciously depressed. I asked Barbara if the two women were friends. Should there be a line between their circles? Gil Nesbit—”
“Another one we have to visit, kiddo,” Barbara put in. “He’s a jerk—”
“But does jerk mean murderous?” I asked through a mouthful of tofu and olives.
Barbara threw up her hands. “Whaddaya think I am, psychic?”
“Mrmph,” I muttered through another bite. The joke was no longer funny.
“And don’t forget Denise, Kate,” Barbara moved on. “She knew Silk before.”
“And Isabelle and Elsa and almost everyone else knew her after,” I replied in frustration. I slapped my hand on the paper tablecloth. “So what are we looking for?”
“A connection.”
I looked down at the chart.
“I see too many connections.”
“A secret connection,” Barbara went on.
“But how do we find out if there’s a secret connection?” I could barely keep from screaming.
“Okay, kiddo,” Barbara conceded. “Let’s look at this from another angle. There are plenty of methods we haven’t tried.”
“The rack,” I suggested. Barbara thought for a moment, furrowing her brow ever so slightly.
“I was kidding, Barbara,” I told her slowly.
“Still…” she said.
“What other methods?” I asked, changing the subject quickly. I didn’t know if electricians had access to racks, and I didn’t want to know.
“Okay, make a drawing of the room and then place rocks where everyone was sitting—”
“Yeah?”
“And then we see which one moves.”
“Which one of the rocks moves? By itself?”
“Okay, okay,” Barbara went on. “There’s still the cat toy. We take it and put it around your neck—”
“Not that idea again!” I objected, raising my hand to my neck protectively. “Why don’t we put the cat toy around
your
neck?”
“Because if you put the cat toy around
my
neck, you’ll probably actually strangle me.”
I smiled. The idea had its appeal.
“Kate!” Barbara shouted, and I came out of my reverie.
“What?” I asked.
She looked at her watch.
“It’s time to go to Justine’s,” she told me.
The drive to Justine’s was a long one, or maybe it just seemed that way, with all the honking and swerving. By the time we got out of the Volkswagen, I was holding my stomach to keep its contents in place.
But when we walked up the stone path to Justine’s redwood-shingled cottage, I felt a new sense of strength entering me. Something would happen tonight. I could just tell.
Justine’s living room was filled with people and the smell of incense when we arrived. Linda stood by Justine’s side, patting her shoulder. I wondered why. Zarathustra was staring at the wood paneling on the wall. Artemisia had the stunned look of a politician caught by a photographer’s camera. Tory smiled cozily. Denise stood quietly to the side of the room, surveying us with the detachment of the professional observer. Rich stood near her, his face only slightly less gray than it had been earlier in the day. And Elsa was across from Rich.
“Sure, hon,” Elsa was saying to Rich. “I know this spook stuff doesn’t set well with you, but take it from this ole lady, you ain’t seen nothing yet!”
The thought didn’t seem to cheer Rich any. He stepped back from Elsa as if pushed.
Gil Nesbit, on the other hand, sidled up to Elsa with a smile on his smarmy lips. “Got any hot Lotto tips?” he asked.
“Yeah, save your money in a bank,” she replied and guffawed. “You’d be amazed at the interest.”
But my eyes were on Justine and Linda. Something was wrong. I could see it in the tightness of Justine’s dark eyes. And in Linda’s worried glances at Justine and her accompanying pats.
Finally Justine spoke. “Well, we’re all here,” she began. “Except for one of us.”
At first, I thought she meant Silk. But she didn’t.
“I’m worried,” she explained. “I can’t get hold of Isabelle Viseu.”
- Twelve -
It’s not good when a psychic is worried, especially one as powerful as Justine Howe. Even I knew that.
The whole room had gone silent with Justine’s pronouncement. Justine stood straight and tall in fuchsia leggings and a long beaded turquoise sweater. Her hair as usual was tightly braided to the back of her head where it exploded into tight curls. But the expression on her broad-boned face was not festive. Her large, dark eyes looked like they were in mourning. She took a deep, yogic breath. What did she mean, she couldn’t get hold of Isabelle Viseu?
I rubbed my arms, suddenly cold. I wanted to be somewhere else, out of this room. I looked at the now-familiar walls of knotty pine and grass cloth and wished myself through the fluffy white-curtained windows. Wished myself into an uncomplicated world. But wishing didn’t take me out of the room or away from its discomforting inhabitants. And they were discomforting, or at least discomforted. The scent of uneasiness permeated the room along with the incense.
Apparently Artemisia wasn’t pleased with the aroma either. She stepped to a table and loaded a plate with what looked like dried leaves, lighting them with a swift flick of a long kitchen match before anyone had a chance to question her, much less to stop her. The leaves burned and smoldered and smoked, as she carried the plate ceremonially around the room until the space was filled to choking with the scent of what I now recognized as eucalyptus leaves. The good news was that all the other smells were erased. The bad news was that the air was now unbreathable. Rich McGowan began coughing first. And then Gil. I’d joined in the hacking when Artemisia began to speak.
“Curse Be Lifted,” she intoned, her pinched eyes pinpoints through the smoke. “Spirits Be Gone.”
Now I was chilled and coughing. Because a further heaviness descended on our group with her words. I couldn’t have named the heaviness. Fear, despair, anger? Or something else entirely. But it was as choking as the eucalyptus leaves.
“Silk Be Gone!” Artemisia shouted, flicking her hand toward a window. Artemisia was still dressed for Wall Street in an expensive wool suit, her styled hair in place, but suddenly I imagined her as an ancient priestess. One I wouldn’t want to argue with.
“Any of you guys ever go to Las Vegas to try your luck?” Gil Nesbit rasped out and then began to cough again.
Artemisia didn’t answer him. I don’t think she even heard him.
“There is One here who Murders,” she announced prophetically. Her voice deepened. “And that One will Suffer. There are Spells, but Spells may be Countered.”
“This is too weird,” Gil put in. He’d finally said something I agreed with. Way too weird. I looked longingly toward the door, trying to catch Barbara’s eye. “Is this some kinda voodoo?” he asked.
“Is it?” Artemisia returned his question. She turned her ravaged face on him, a modern mummy come to life, lipstick chewed from her lips, her eye makeup running. “What do you know of voodoo?”
“Hey, hey. Listen, lady,” Gil protested. “All I want is some hot tips. Okay? It doesn’t have to be Lotto. Blackjack would be fine. Any of you guys play blackjack?”
I wondered for a moment if Gil was for real. His all-American face with those symmetrical features. The aviator glasses. Central casting for a nice young man. A nice young man with the sensitivity of a lizard. Maybe even less.
“I once knew a good ole boy named Black Jack,” Elsa wheezed through the smoke. “But I guess you wouldn’t be interested in him. He rode the rodeo circuit.”
Gil turned to Elsa, confusion on his all-American face now.
“Hey, hon,” she told him gently. “Just trying for some common sense here.”
“You can joke, but the Spirits are Here,” Artemisia warned. I wasn’t sure if the warning was directed at Elsa or Gil, but both of them were temporarily silenced.
Linda moved toward Artemisia and took the plate of smoldering eucalyptus from her hands.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Linda said, her high voice belonging to another world also, but one I liked much better than Artemisia’s. Artemisia didn’t seem comforted, however.
“There is a murderer in this room!” she insisted, her priestess voice lapsing into a wail. Linda put an arm around the woman’s shoulders as Artemisia began to cry.
I looked at Barbara. She ignored me, and ignored my unspoken plea to leave.
“Wait,” Tory ordered, tilting her head. “Rogerio wants to speak.”
So we waited.
And moments later, Rogerio delivered his verdict in Tory’s lowered voice. “Artemisia is right. The murderer is here.”
I felt a rush of frantic energy like I’d put my foot out and missed a stair. I had a feeling it was a metaphysical stair I’d missed, but I didn’t have a clue which one. For an instant, I was glad I was in a room of psychics. They had to be able to sort this out. They just had to.
“Then ask Rogerio who—” Rich McGowan began as I willed my frantic energy into something approaching relaxation. Something approaching it from a great distance.
“Someone is cording me at the fifth,” Justine interrupted. She surveyed our group solemnly. The room reeked of eucalyptus and paranoia.
“What’s cording?” I asked, tired of the mystification, tired of all the games that were being played. Anyway, what are a bunch of psychics worth if they can’t answer a few simple questions?
“Oh, cordings are kinda like an emotional attachment that another person sends to you energetically,” Linda explained. Or at least she tried to. “You know, something you don’t want, but someone else wants to put on you, emotionally I mean. Or maybe spiritually…” Her high voice drifted off into the ether.
“Like a curse or something?” I asked, still not understanding.
“No, no. Not a curse,” Linda assured me. “Sometimes there’s no bad intent at all, um—”
“Like at the throat, the fifth chakra, when someone wants you to stop talking,” Tory threw in helpfully. She had a bright, sunny smile on her face, and three guardian angel pins on the scarf wound around her black hair. “People try to cord me all the time. They want me to stop talking.” Somehow, that didn’t surprise me. I even managed a return smile.
But then I felt a pressure, not unlike a cord, pressing on my own throat. I ran my finger around the inside of my turtleneck to get some air.
“Yeah, kiddo,” Barbara whispered in my ear. “Like that. I feel it too.” Oh great. Barbara felt it too. Was this supposed to make me feel better?
“See,” Linda tried again, her broad, weathered face compressed in concentration. “There can be all kinds of reasons for cords. Like mothers may unintentionally cord their children when they want them to keep family secrets, that kinda stuff.”
Linda wrapped her arms around herself, looking like a child. Was she talking about her own mother? I took a closer look at Linda, plump and sweet, her face loaded with laugh lines and freckles and too many teeth. Could anyone with a face like that be something other than what they seemed?
“Or husbands,” Elsa put in. “Whooee, husbands lay it on their wives. Not that it ever stopped this ole lady any. If they cord me, I just tell ‘em to take it back.”
“And of course, there’s always the possibility of cords from murderers to stop those who speak of murder,” Justine suggested gently, quietly.
There was a short silence as we digested this. Damn. The whole room felt spooky now. I’m sure I would have felt more comfortable visiting the Addams Family mansion. Give me a physical cobweb rather than a metaphysical one any day. And this place was forebrain deep in metaphysical cobwebs. Someone swallowed loudly. I whipped my head around, wondering who it was. Rich? Or Denise? I couldn’t tell.
“But who’s cording you, Justine?” Barbara asked suddenly, looking around the room. “Who?”
A cat yowled from the kitchen. I didn’t think it was a confession.
“I don’t know, girlfriend,” Justine murmured. “I just don’t know. And it’s scaring me. All of what I know feels useless to me right now.”
“No, honey,” Linda said softly, rubbing Justine’s back with the palm of her hand. “It’s not useless. You’re not useless.”
“Listen to Linda,” Elsa ordered Justine, her rasping voice filled with the weight of her years now. “She loves you and she’s right. You know how to heal. You’ve got common sense. I like that in a girl.” She coughed in her hand. “This murder thing’s beyond all of us. You can’t clear the soul of someone who’s battier than an attic. You can’t even find them. They’re out of your range if their mind’s that far gone.”
“Maybe Rogerio can find the murderer,” Tory suggested.
Then I heard a sigh, but I couldn’t place its origin any more than I had been able to place the swallow. Or than Justine had been able to place the psychic corder. Or the murderer, assuming they were one and the same.
Tory tilted her head again. If I’d known how to cord her, I would have. Linda left the room quietly as Tory opened her mouth.
“Rogerio would like to speak,” Tory informed us.
“So let the boy talk,” Elsa put in impatiently.
Tory narrowed her eyes, but then complied. “Rogerio says he doesn’t know who’s cording people. But he says to be careful.”
Elsa began to laugh. Tory turned to her.
“Whooee, that boy sure hasn’t learned much in angel school, has he, hon?” Elsa laughed again.
“I fail to see—” Tory began, but Elsa clearly hadn’t had her say yet.
“Don’t know why we’d expect any more common sense outta that guardian angel of yours than anyone else,” she continued. “Far as I can tell, these angels might even be retarded, sticking around on this plane anyway. I mean, aren’t they supposed to be moving on to their next lifetime or something?”
“Rogerio is finished speaking,” Tory told us. She didn’t have to add that Rogerio was miffed. Her glare at Elsa was enough.
“We need to talk about Silk,” Justine reminded us. “What, if any, information can we share that might help us find her murderer?”
No one spoke up.
“Look, the woman’s dead,” Gil finally said. “So I say move on with the living—”
Zarathustra turned away from the wall and pinned Gil with his angry gaze. In fact, he silenced us all, six feet of teenaged rage in black leather, chains, and studs.
“Man, you are a scrub,” he began, his voice deceptively soft. But then it rose, and he rose with it, seeming even taller as he went on. His raisin-black skin stretched taut across his high cheekbones. “You want to be a player, but all you got swinging for you is bread, man. And you don’t even have that. You’re punkin’ everyone here and dissin’ Silk on top of it. You be movin’ on death row, man. Don’t you have any pride?”
“I just—” Gil began.
“You just been sippin and brown-nosin’ everyone here, man. You think they’d give you the skit even if they cared? Silk was killed, man, killed. And you be jawsin’ about nothin’. Silk was a grinder, but at least she had some pride. She was cool. You, man, you’re less than Silk ever was.”
Gil didn’t even try to answer. His jaw hung open like someone had cut the strings that usually held it in place.
“Zara,” Justine said gently.
“I love you, Aunt Justine,” Zarathustra returned, his voice soft again. “But I can’t take this jawsin’ anymore. Silk was real, man. She was alive. She was making her stand. You just find her murderer, okay?”
And with that last sentence, he was out the door, slamming it so hard that a faint dusting of plaster drifted down from the ceiling.
In the silence that followed his departure, I thought I heard the sound of a motorcycle being kick-started. Then Gil closed his mouth.
Linda came back through the kitchen door with a plate of cookies. At least it wasn’t eucalyptus leaves.
“Zara will be okay,” she assured us all. “He’s just sacred.”
Well, I was scared too.
“I just—” Gil began again.
“Cookies, anyone?” Linda cut him off. Just the slightest scent of almond leavened the eucalyptus still overloading the air. Had she baked those cookies herself? Despite the spookiness of the occasion, my salivary glands seemed to be functioning.
“But Zara was right on one thing,” Linda continued. “The truth is important here.” She turned to Rich McGowan and looked into his face. “Have a cookie?” she offered.
Rich took a cookie and stared at it like he didn’t know what it was. Then he straightened his thin shoulders.
“I have to tell the truth,” he announced, raising the cookie in his hand like a banner.
The communal gaze of all those present turned to Rich McGowan. Was he going to confess to Silk’s murder?
“I came to your group under false pretenses,” he said, his voice gaining speed and volume as he went. “I was here as an investigator. I can’t tell you what agency. But it was about a charge of practicing medicine without a license.”
No one answered him. No one even looked surprised.
“So?” Gil said.
Rich turned to Gil. “So, I’m sorry,” he replied simply.
“Of course you are,” Linda told him. “You’re a good, kind person.”
Rich blushed now.
Linda turned to Elsa and offered her a cookie. But Elsa didn’t confess to anything.