Tea-Totally Dead (25 page)

“Not necessarily in a moment,” I suggested. “Maybe someone’s been angry for a long time. A remembered wrong from childhood can grow as time goes on.”

He stood silent, considering.

“Then there’s always the possibility of blackmail,” I said quietly, not sure if Wayne was ready to think his mother capable of blackmail. “Or just plain lunacy, or unrequited love or—”

“Unrequited love?” he interrupted again, raising his eyebrows.

“Paulson said a man named Quaneri was an admirer of your mother’s,” I told him.

“But was this man in love with Harmony too? Or—”

The phone rang, cutting off the end of his sentence, but I knew what he meant. Unrequited love wouldn’t really work as a motive. I watched as Wayne answered the phone. But blackmail might work, I thought. Ace had told me how Vesta had tried to blackmail him. She might have tried it on someone else, someone less easygoing than Ace. And I could think of a number of Skeritts who were less easygoing. Gail, for instance. Or Trent. Or Ingrid—

“That was the coroner’s office,” Wayne said, putting the receiver down a few seconds after he had lifted it. “They want me to come up to the morgue at the Civic Center.”

“Did they say why?” I asked.

“No, just that they had information for me.” He was turning already and getting his keys. “You want to come?” he offered.

“No,” I said slowly, deciding as I spoke. “I guess not.” Assuming there were no Skeritts lurking at the coroner’s office, he didn’t really need my company. And I had work to do.

He gave me a kiss goodbye and left.

I was at my desk again, trying to decide which stack of paperwork to attack when I heard a rattling sound coming from the back deck. Was that someone at my back door?

“C.C.!” I called out.

She was usually the one responsible for strange sounds. But then I heard her sleepy meow from beneath my desk. It wasn’t C.C. at the back door.

I heard another rattle and then what sounded like footsteps. I walked cautiously through the kitchen and looked out through the glass in the door, but I couldn’t see anyone, only the covered hot tub. Maybe I had a hot tub poltergeist, I told myself as I walked back to my office.

By this time, C.C. had emerged from beneath the desk. She stood arched like a Halloween cat on my chair and stared in the direction of the back door. Then her ears went back, flattening against her skull. I hate it when she does that. I never know if she’s seeing a bug or a ghost… or an intruder.

I rubbed my arms, trying to rub away the disquiet I felt. I could almost feel my own ears flattening. Finally, I dialed Jest Gifts, telling myself I needed to call in sometime and it might as well be now.

Judy answered the phone.

“Oh, Kate,” she said without so much as a hello. “I got the cutest little dog at the pound! Her name is Rosy. But Jerry came over and he wasn’t fooled for a minute. Maybe he really does know the dogs. He says he loves them as much as I do….”

I listened to the flow of her words over the telephone line, still waiting for another rattle of the back door. But I never heard one.

“… another awfully cute dog, but she’s so thin. Do you think I should get her too?”

“What?” I asked absently.

“At the pound, Kate,” Judy said, her voice raised in annoyance. “Aren’t you listening? This other little dachshund—”

And then I heard the sound of footsteps on my front stairs. Loud, clattering footsteps.

“I gotta go,” I told Judy.

But she was still talking as the footsteps pounded up to the front door.

My heart gave one answering thud and the door burst open.

- Nineteen -

I dropped the telephone receiver, readying myself to face the intruder. Readying myself to fight. Or maybe to run. But before I could even take a breath, I saw who was galloping through the doorway. It was Wayne.

I felt all the little adrenaline couriers that had been speeding through my body execute simultaneous U-turns in relief.

“Marin County doesn’t have a morgue!” Wayne shouted.

And then he was throwing his arms around me. He was wet with perspiration. “The phone call was fake, Kate,” he told me. “Fake! Someone wanted you alone here.”

“Hic,” I said. I had meant to tell him about the knocking I’d heard, but something—maybe it was all of those little U-turns—had given me the hiccups. “Hic,” I said again. Then, “Hic—damn.”

I heard a sound like an insect trying to sing opera, and looked down. The telephone receiver was still dangling inches from the floor.

“Hic-Judy,” I said, pointing.

Wayne released me, but stood hovering less than a yard away as I painfully extricated myself from Judy’s telephone soliloquy. Apparently she hadn’t even noticed I’d dropped the phone, she had been so engrossed in the story she was now finishing up about a Santa Cruz Superior Court judge who had given a divorcing couple custody of their two German shepherds on alternate months.

“I don’t really think that’s fair to the dogs,” she said finally. “Do you, Kate?”

I murmured a “No” between hiccups and struggled to get out a final spasmodic “goodbye,” before hanging up.

Then I turned back to Wayne, glad to have had time to think before telling him about the knocking. He was already scared enough. That was made clear as he began to speak again.

“Was halfway to the Civic Center when I remembered someone from the coroner’s office telling me that they didn’t have a morgue,” he said. His voice was high and shaking, even now. “No morgue, that’s why Mom’s body was held at the mortuary. So I stopped the car and called from a phone booth. Coroner’s office said they hadn’t called me. I turned around and came back as fast as the car would go.”

He threw his arms around me again. “Was so afraid I’d be too late,” he groaned into my hair.

Had someone really been here to kill me? I thought of Harmony’s corpse and shivered in Wayne’s arms.

“Did you see anyone near the house?” I asked his chest. My hiccups were gone now, frightened away. “Any of your relatives’ cars in the driveway or on the street?”

He drew back from me and shook his head. His eyes were still round with panic.

“Should we tell the police?” I asked slowly. “Or will they just think we made it up?”

His mouth opened, then closed again. Finally, he let loose a big sigh and seemed to deflate. His eyes returned to their normal shape. “You’re right,” he admitted. “Wouldn’t do any good.”

His brows descended like curtains. “Gotta find the murderer,” he growled. Then he turned back to the living room and resumed pacing.

I never got a chance to tell him about the rattling. It was just as well. His spell of total panic seemed to be over. And I was scared enough for the two of us anyway.

I went back to my desk and tried to lose my fear in work. But my mind paced along with Wayne as I checked off orders. Two dozen Santas in gilded cages. Check. Had the person who called Wayne tried to open my back door? Six hollow-tooth cups. Check. And if so, why were they interested in me and not Wayne? Because I was the one asking questions, I supposed. Thirteen shrunken-head ornaments, eight “uh-huh” ties and three sets of chiro-crackers. Check. If we told the police everything, would they give us police protection? No, I was sure they wouldn’t. They didn’t have the personnel. Thirty-three shark mugs. Check. Wayne was right. We had to figure out who the murderer was ourselves. But how?

A few hours later, I still didn’t have an answer. But Wayne seemed to think he did.

“Dinner tonight with all of them,” he announced and picked up the telephone receiver. Then he turned to me, frowning. “Where?” he asked.

“Do we really have to feed them to get answers?” I asked back. My stomach churned out a nonverbal equivalent of a whine.

“Yes,” he replied succinctly.

I took a deep breath and thought for a moment. “How about the Laughing Mango Cafe?” I suggested finally. “It’s fun.”

“Fun,” Wayne repeated in a monotone and then started to punch in numbers.

It took him a while to get anyone. I listened as he tried Ace’s room and Dru’s room without success. Then he asked for Trent’s room. Five minutes later he was off the phone.

“Talked to Aunt Ingrid,” he told me. “Everyone else is out for a walk on the Golden Gate Bridge, but she says they’ll probably be happy to meet us at the Laughing Mango.” He paused. “Aunt Ingrid didn’t sound very happy.”

“Aunt Ingrid never sounds happy,” I assured him.

He shrugged.

“What about Clara?” I asked, thinking she might be of help in evaluating Wayne’s relatives, having worked with psychotics most of her life.

“Of course,” Wayne murmured. “Shouldn’t have forgotten Clara. She’s a suspect too.”

“I didn’t mean—” I began, but Wayne had already picked up the phone again to talk to Clara.

“Wayne Caruso,” he said. Then, “Wanted to know if you’d like to go to dinner…”

I wandered through the kitchen to the back door and peered through the glass. Was there evidence of an uninvited visitor out there? I listened for a moment. Wayne was still talking. I opened the door and stepped outside. I couldn’t see any footprints on the deck or beyond it on the hard ground. There were no carelessly dropped business cards or cigarette butts or gum wrappers. Or clubs or vials of poisons, for that matter. Should I call the police over, just in case? It wouldn’t prove much if they found evidence of the presence of any of the suspects. Most of the Skeritts had been on the deck the day before—

“Where are you, Kate?” Wayne shouted, panic in his voice again.

“In here,” I called back, hastily stepping into the kitchen and shutting the door behind me.

Wayne told me that Clara Kushiyama had accepted our dinner invitation. We would pick her up on the way. And Ace called later that afternoon to say that the whole family would be at the Laughing Mango Cafe at six. Wayne made reservations for twelve people. The stage was set. Now all that was needed was for one of the actors to confess. I didn’t have the heart to tell Wayne just how unlikely I thought that would be.

“So, how did you get into psychiatric work?” I asked Clara. She was sitting in the front seat of the Jaguar next to Wayne. We had picked her up at her apartment a few minutes earlier, on our way to the Laughing Mango Cafe.

She turned to look at me in the back seat. “I guess I’ve always been curious about people,” she answered, her words slow and soothing. “Especially people in institutions. I was interned at the Manzinar camp in Southern California during World War II.”

“Terrible thing,” Wayne growled.

“I wasn’t happy about it at the time,” Clara admitted. But there was no bitterness in her tone or her serene face. Her fingertips slowly brushed her dark hair back from her forehead. “It was pretty scary, with all of those armed soldiers determined to guard us ‘potential enemies of the United States.’ Being of Japanese ancestry was enough back then to count as a ‘potential enemy.’ And even after it stopped being quite so scary, it was still dreary. Especially for a teenager. I was fourteen when we were first interned.”

“I’m sorry,” Wayne said. “It should have never happened.”

“Well now,
you
don’t need to apologize,” Clara said kindly. “You probably weren’t even born at the time.”

“But still—” he began. Then he stopped. As he turned to her, I saw the edge of his sheepish grin. The expression warmed me, reminding me of the Wayne in waiting, the man I had known before his mother was killed. “Guess I was having delusions of grandeur,” he murmured. “Wanted to apologize on behalf of the United States.”

“Okey-dokey,” Clara answered with a soft chuckle. “Apology accepted.” Then she turned to face me again. “Anyway, as to your question, Kate. I was always interested in institutions. And in outsiders, especially the insane. The logic of the insane fascinates me because it always makes sense of their behavior. But first, one must understand the context from which it springs.”

I nodded eagerly, remembering. “I worked in a mental hospital too, about twenty years ago,” I told her. “There was this one woman who would begin screaming every time we tried to get her out of bed. Finally, I asked her why. It turned out that she thought the floors were electrified and would electrocute her. So I brought her some rubber-soled shoes. It was really exciting when she got out of bed and walked.”

“A perfect solution, my dear,” Clara said, smiling. “So few people even bother to figure out the motivation.”

“How about the motivation for murder?” Wayne asked. “Does that make sense if you know the context?”

Clara’s smile made way for a more serious expression. “I imagine most murderers have reasons for murder that make sense to them,” she replied slowly. “The reasons just don’t make sense to us.”

“But are reasons justifications for behavior?” Wayne went on. “Or just excuses?”

Clara didn’t have an answer for that one. At least, not one she was willing to share. Neither did I. The Jaguar purred along in silence until we got to the restaurant a few minutes later.

The Laughing Mango Cafe tried very hard to be a fun kind of place. It certainly had fun decor. Its white plaster walls were covered with Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig posters as well as various colorful representations of mangoes. And most of the mangoes were complete with cartoon arms, legs and laughing faces.