Read Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Online
Authors: Jaqueline Girdner
Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (13 page)
Linda was almost to me with the cookies when Rich turned to Denise, panic distorting his weaselly face.
“I forgot you do a radio show,” he whispered.
“And?” Denise replied, her girlish face aged by a deep frown, though her voice was as smooth and soothing as always.
“You’re not going to talk about me on your show, are you?” Rich demanded. He tugged at his curly hair. “I took a risk admitting the truth tonight. I could be fired—”
“Good grief, I wouldn’t do that,” Denise assured him. Her face seemed to soften. She smoothed the sleeves of her neat little blouse, patting the Peter Pan collar. “Privacy is important to me, Mr. McGowan. Very important. I don’t peek into the corners of other people’s lives. The show isn’t about that. My guests come on my show to air their own views. I just listen. The things they say, well, you just wouldn’t believe it sometimes.” She pursed her lips, then let her voice flow on. No wonder she was in radio. No camera would record her lips pursing or her hands clasping. Only her velvet voice would come through the speakers. “I wouldn’t air my own dirty laundry like that, believe me,” she told Rich. “Or yours.”
“Well, thank you,” Rich said. “Thank you for your ethics.”
Denise looked as if she was going to reply to Rich’s words of gratitude, but Gil spoke up before she could.
“So, what’s the use of all this psychic stuff if you can’t figure out Lotto numbers?” he asked.
“Mr. Nesbit?” Justine inquired, in a low voice I would never have argued with. “Did you hear one word my nephew had to say to you?”
“But he was—”
“Angry, Mr. Nesbit,” Justine finished for him. “And justifiably so, no matter what language he is using to express himself at seventeen years of age.”
“Oh,” Gil sighed, apparently defeated.
Linda finally got to me with the cookies. I took one and bit in, the homey taste of almond and vanilla dispelling some of the heaviness in the room. But not all of it.
“Could I have a cookie?” Gil asked.
Linda gave him a cookie…and a lecture.
“Have you ever thought how neat it would be to be able to transcend the mundane emotionally and spiritually?”
Gil shook his head, biting into the cookie.
“Forget the Lotto, Gil,” Linda advised him. “Think about all the neat possibilities. Infinite possibilities. Suppose you could talk directly to the body and find out what was wrong with it? Suppose you could talk to the psyche? And suppose you could heal those wounds, too?”
Rich’s shoulders jerked. He was probably hearing just the kind of words he’d been sent to investigate. If he’d had a notebook, I’m sure he would have reached for it. But Justine gave him a look, and his shoulders slumped again.
“Think as simply as a cat, Gil,” Linda went on. “Cats don’t worry about the Lotto.”
They might if they thought it would buy them better cat food, I reflected.
“Linda,” Barbara said eagerly. “I know Justine’s cats couldn’t tell you who killed Silk because they were confused, but maybe Kate’s cat could talk to them.”
My cat, I thought, my cat. C. C. would just have Tibia and Femur for lunch.
“Oooh, that’s a great idea, Barbara,” Linda agreed. She turned to Justine. “Would that be okay, honeybunch?”
Justine nodded, but I had a feeling she had about as much enthusiasm as I did for the project. Linda was a clairvoyant veterinarian, however. She and Barbara were both purring now, discussing the possibilities.
“And then the kitties will talk—”
“And then Kate can talk to C. C.—”
Kate talk to C. C?
That’d be a first.
“And then, maybe they’ll be able to tell us—”
“Is it okay if we adjourn now?” Justine asked suddenly, her voice breaking into the kitty lovefest. Linda was by her side in a minute, patting her shoulder, stroking her arm. “I’m getting a lot of fear and anger and guilt from the group. And I can’t blame you. We’re all freaked by recent events. But it’s somewhat overwhelming.”
“Sounds good to me,” I agreed quickly. The heaviness of the room was still tugging at me. Or was it the heaviness of a particular individual in the room?
And then I took a good look at Justine. There was a gray tinge to her beautiful brown skin. I realized she must be feeling that heaviness far more than I was.
“We’ll go now,” I said and turned to Barbara. And then I saw that Barbara didn’t look well either, for all of her talk of kitties.
I grabbed Barbara by the hand, compelled to drag her out of this room, with all of its smoke and fear.
But even then, as we walked to the door, Barbara stopped to ask Artemisia if we could talk to her in the next day or two. Artemisia lifted her ravaged face and grudgingly agreed to meet us any day after four o’clock, maybe.
And then we were out the door into the fresh, clean air, walking down Justine’s stone path as fast as we could go without actually running. It was twilight now, usually my favorite time of the day, when the sky turns colors that seem otherworldly. But that evening, otherworldly didn’t appeal. I just wanted to go home. Even if I had to ride in Barbara’s Volkswagen bug.
But I didn’t even make it into the bug before Barbara grabbed me by the elbow and brought me to a halt.
“What?” I said.
“It’s up to us to visit Isabelle,” she told me.
“No, Barbara,” I begged. “Don’t do this to me.”
Her face was set like a stone Buddha’s.
“Why us?” I pleaded.
“What if she’s hurt or something?” Barbara said.
“Call the police,” I replied desperately. “Ask someone else—”
“Kate, I think that’s why we’re here,” Barbara broke in. And her eyes were serious.
“What, for predestined suffering?” I asked.
Barbara laughed, but tightly. Way too tightly. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like Barbara’s mood. I didn’t like what it implied. I wanted to go home.
“We need to find out why she’s silent,” Barbara told me, as if her opinion were a fact.
“I can’t do this to Wayne,” I tried.
“Do what to Wayne?” she came back. Her voice was as reasonable as her request was not.
“I can’t be involved in this,” I said, keeping my own voice even, forcing the panic out. “It’s dangerous.”
“You’re scared,” she accused.
“No, I’m not. All right, I am.” I sighed. “I’m scared by things I don’t understand. And I don’t understand this psychic thing at all. I don’t understand the feelings I get when I’m in your little group. I don’t understand cording. I don’t understand why someone was murdered. It’s all too spooky for me, Barbara, way too spooky. I feel…I feel—”
I stopped as a light breeze rose up. Spirits, cording, murder. I shivered and held myself. Held myself away from the darkness I felt growing around me.
“Listen, kiddo,” Barbara replied gently, “I’m afraid too. But I’m calling on everything I know to help me.”
“But you can do that!” I exploded. “I can’t. I’m out of my depth here. The murder on top of everything else is too much—”
“Kate, how is your tai chi?” Barbara asked me.
Before I could question the change in subject, I realized I’d probably miss my tai chi class this evening. I should have gone. I imagined myself doing the form in moments: breathing in balance, finding my center, sinking, turning, shifting…
I barely heard Barbara when she spoke again.
“Good,” she told me. “You’re ready. You have your protection. I have mine.”
“You mean, for Isabelle’s house?” I asked like a child.
“For everything,” she pronounced, hugging me with a sincerity that felt like a blessing.
Sometimes Barbara reminded me of Glinda the Good Witch, at least when she didn’t remind me of the Wicked Witch of the West.
So we drove to Isabelle’s house.
We opened Isabelle’s little gate in a dreamlike silence and walked up the pansy-lined cement path to her front door. Deja vu, without a view. The sky had darkened to a navy blue now. The walk up the path seemed sinister in the dark, pansies or not. Barbara rang the doorbell and no one answered.
My hand reached for the doorknob without my permission.
It turned. I looked at Barbara. She nodded, her face grim.
I pushed the door open and walked into a dark room. The smell should have warned me that something was wrong. It
did
warn me. But I ran anyway, toward Isabelle.
Isabelle Viseu sat in an easy chair, her head slumped forward, dry rust stains on her salt-and-pepper hair. Only they weren’t rust. Suddenly the colors in the darkened room were intensely clear, even shimmering.
Dried blood, I realized, my thoughts shimmering as well. How long? my mind asked. Had she been dead and alone every time we’d visited? I heard the thrumming of passing cars filtering through the still-open front door, sounds so incongruous with the sight in front of us.
Because there was no question in my mind that Isabelle was good and dead now. No question at all. After a time that might have been a minute or an hour, I turned, centered myself, and stepped toward the open door with Barbara at my side.
Barbara was right. I’d needed my tai chi. And I was going to need it even more as we stepped back out into the world.
- Thirteen -
Barbara and I walked slowly and silently back across the street and stepped up onto the sidewalk next to her Volkswagen.
“I should…” she began, but her voice drizzled away into the cool night air.
“We could…” I tried. But I didn’t know how to finish the sentence any better than Barbara had.
I looked into her eyes, usually so different from my own, and saw a mirrored reflection of my own shock and confusion. And then suddenly we were both hugging and crying and sniffling all over each other. Once we were all cried out, we released each other as tentatively as new lovers.
“We have to call the police,” I said finally.
Barbara didn’t answer me, though I know she heard me. We
did
have to call the police. But where would we call them from? Isabelle Viseu’s living room? I’d seen a phone there. But…My mind reviewed Isabelle’s body, slumped in her easy chair, the rust-colored stains on her salt-and-pepper hair. I clenched my teeth, grinding them to banish the image. But it wasn’t that easy. The image was too vivid, too new.
Then Barbara looked back toward the house, her damp face losing color as she did.
“No,” I said automatically.
“Right, as usual, kiddo,” she replied and turned back to me.
“Can I have that in writing?” I asked.
“Huh?” she answered.
I laughed. Here we were outside a murdered woman’s house, a woman who’d probably been dead for days, and I was laughing. Laughing, because for once my psychic friend wasn’t on top of it. For once my friend wasn’t following my thoughts. I might have been the one laughing, I realized, but Barbara was as hysterical as I was in her own way.
“I want you to sign a paper saying I am quote, right, as usual, unquote,” I explained, gentling my voice. Actually, I wanted to get her joking again. For her sake, as well as mine.
Barbara smiled back wanly. But she didn’t look for a pen and paper.
Instead, she started down the dark street where Isabelle Viseu had lived. On foot. Joke time was over.
“Wait a minute,” I called to her, after a couple of steps. “How about your car phone?”
“I left it at home,” she said.
I followed her without any more questions.
It took only three blocks to find a convenience store. And the store had a phone outside. Barbara made the call to the Paloma Police Department. If Isabelle had to die, I was glad it was in Paloma. We wouldn’t have to explain about Silk Sokoloff, and how Isabelle Viseu’s death might be tied into the psychic soiree. All we had to do was report finding the body. Simple. Chief Wenger could take it from there.
I guess my brains were still scrambled by the shock of finding Isabelle. Because the only thing that was simple about our next two hours with the Paloma Police Department was my naiveté in believing that it
would
be simple.
Within minutes of our phone call, a squad car showed up, siren blaring, where Barbara and I still stood at the pay phone.
The car screamed to a stop, bleating the final siren notes as a door opened. Officer Yuki jumped out of the car, leaving Officer O’Dwyer at the wheel.
For a moment, I felt relief at their familiar faces. But Yuki’s familiar face wasn’t smiling.
“Get in the back of the car,” she ordered.
“But—” I began.
“In the back,” she repeated, patting the gun on her belt. It looked like a bazooka strapped to her small body. A bazooka she could use efficiently.
Barbara and I got in the back of the car.
“I just thought we could walk—” I began again.
“No talking till the chief arrives,” O’Dwyer advised, his voice a little gentler than Yuki’s.
My heart got better exercise riding those three short blocks back to Isabelle Viseu’s house than it would have walking. Heart calisthenics. Hup, one, into the throat. Hup, two, down into the stomach. Hup, three, jumping jacks in the chest.
And it was still practicing its new exercises when we arrived.
Yuki stayed with us in the police car. I guess the mesh screen between her and the two of us was enough to make her feel safe. And her bazooka.
Meanwhile, Officer O’Dwyer opened the little gate to Isabelle’s house and disappeared up the path that led to her front door.
When he returned a few minutes later, his round face was pale and grim.
“Call for backup,” he ordered, and turned to retrace his steps up the path to the house.
Yuki called for backup.
And then we sat. I thought about the dead woman. I remembered Isabelle Viseu’s round, golden eyes. Sad eyes. I realized I’d never seen her really smile. Isabelle had been a widow. A widow who saw auras. I just hoped she was with her husband now. But who had killed her? I wondered why it had taken me so long to think of the question. Because someone had killed Isabelle. Brutally. Had it been because of an aura she’d seen? She’d mentioned something the day that Silk was killed, something about colors. Had her second sight gotten Isabelle murdered? Had she been the one psychic who’d actually seen something?
My mouth went dry. Two women dead now. Silk and Isabelle. Two women whose only apparent association was their presence at the soiree. I heard the car door opening and tried to bring myself back to the ugly present. I got some help. A booming voice practically blasted me into the ceiling.
“You two!” Chief Wenger shouted, his head thrust into the car. “Okay, didya kill her?”
“What?” Barbara and I replied together. Uh-oh, Barbara was still as dazed as I was. I reached out for her hand and received a reassuring grip, though her flesh was cold as the night air around us.
Chief Wenger shook his head in disgust. His intelligent, gaunt face looked more sour than ever. His cheeks were so hollow he might have been sucking on a clogged straw. For a moment, I wondered if he was ill. But only for a moment. Because I knew he was still waiting for a sensible answer from me. From us.
“No,” I told him calmly. At least that’s how I wanted it to sound. “Neither Barbara nor I killed Isabelle Viseu.” My voice wasn’t as calm when I added, “Do you think we’d call you if we killed her?”
“Why not?” he shot back. “For Pete’s sake, you could be playing any kind of game here. Isn’t one body enough! I’m sick to death of this whole twinkie case. Psychics, paah!”
He turned to the two larger figures looming behind him.
“Secure the house,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir,” two voices replied as one, and the figures went tramping up the path.
Officer O’Dwyer came back down the path in a few minutes and closed the little gate behind him. I was glad he didn’t have to stay with the dead woman. He seemed like a nice man. At least in comparison with the rest of his police department.
“Okay, take ‘em to the station,” Chief Wenger commanded.
“Us?” I said stupidly.
“ ‘Us?’ “ he mimicked. “Who do you think? Maybe your spirit guides wanna take your places for interrogation?”
Interrogation? He really thought we were suspects. Just because we’d found a body. Now the sickness over Isabelle was giving away to armpit-drenching fear. Did Chief Wenger really think we’d killed Isabelle Viseu?
Yuki and O’Dwyer didn’t give us any clues on the short drive to the Paloma station house. For once, I wished I had Barbara’s psychic abilities. It would have been nice to have had a little subvocal conversation about then. A nice cheery one, about flowers or movies or even Felix. Anything.
The Paloma police station was a vinyl kind of place: green vinyl couches and an orange vinyl chair in the cramped waiting room; a blue-uniformed vinyl officer behind the glassed-in counter, or maybe he just looked that way under the artificial light; and something that looked like matching green-and orange-checked vinyl covering the floor. I wondered if it was easy to clean. I wondered if a lot of people threw up in here. In fact, I wondered if maybe I was going to throw up in here as Officer Yuki shepherded Barbara and me to the green vinyl couch. Because it didn’t smell good in this vinyl waiting room. Years of sweat had imbued the room with a gymlike aroma. No, that wasn’t quite right. Actually, the old sweat smelled of fear. Maybe a gym for unwilling gladiators? Unwilling gladiators about to be interrogated.