Death hits the fan (10 page)

We were halfway undressed, and I was tugging Wayne toward the bed, when we heard a door slam. The front door. And then the sound of footsteps passing our bedroom. I pulled on the bedroom doorknob, just a little, and peeked out. It was Ingrid, of course, heading toward the guest bathroom.

Pheromones gave way to old skunk smells, and Wayne and I finished undressing with old-fashioned decorum, lay on our backs, and closed our eyes. I fell asleep hours later, cursing the name of Ingrid Regnary, and then remembered it was never good to curse anyone. The curse could rebound. My last clear thought was, it already had.

1 woke up the next morning and turned to Wayne's side of the bed, my eyes still closed, my mind floating on amatory hallucinations. But all I felt when I reached out was the coolness of bare cotton sheets. No bare flesh. My eyes popped open. Wayne was already gone. The only trace of him was his faint scent on his pillow. I pressed my face into the cotton pillowcase for a moment, then pushed my way out of bed, feeling old, cold, and cranky.

Wayne had probably already gone to La Fete a L'Oiel in the city. Saturday was a workday for him at his restaurant-cum-art gallery. A workday for me too, actually. Everyday is

a workday when you work for yourself, especially if you've spent your previous working hours in unskilled attempts at suspect interrogation instead of the prison of paperwork. I put on my old velour robe and headed toward the kitchen. C.C. yowled the minute the bedroom door opened and nagged me all the way down the hall in her ritual morning welcome.

As I walked past my answering machine, I noticed the blinking red light. In all the excitement the night before, I'd forgotten to check my messages. I turned to the machine and pressed buttons.

Most of the messages were from Judy, or Jade, or whatever her name was, from the Jest Gifts warehouse. The work week had ended for her in the normalcy of multiple crises. But then another voice boomed out over the line.

"Hello, Ms. Jasper. This is Perkin Vonburstig. I have some information that might be of interest to you." Did I detect a German accent there? All right, maybe not German, but some kind of accent, one as hard to place as Raoul Raymond's. "Ivan Nakagawa suggested I speak to you."

Then Mr. Vonburstig left his phone number.

I tapped out his number eagerly, but the only one answering it was a machine, one of those equipped with an android speaking each syllable of nonavailability clearly and distinctly.

I slammed the phone down. I'd be seeing Ivan later for the group get-together. But I wanted to know who Perkin Vonburstig was now. My fingers moved toward the telephone keypad again.

"So who was that, Kate?" Ingrid sang out from the kitchen. "He sounded really gross."

Ingrid. I withdrew my hand from the telephone and went to share more Whol-ios and soy milk with my houseguest.

"Don't you guys ever eat anything else?" she demanded once I was seated with my bowl of cereal in front of me.

"Never," I assured her, keeping my face dead serious. "Whol-ios are good for you. Three times a day. At least." Then I dug in.

"Well, I'm outa here," she told me and rose from the kitchen table with one graceful movement and was out the front door with a few more. My Whol-ios started tasting a lot better. Especially followed by a few slices of Wayne's homemade blueberry pound cake out of the freezer with some well-hidden strawberry conserves from the very back of the refrigerator.

Once I was properly fueled, I got dressed and did paperwork. Serious paperwork. Even then, every hour or so, I called Perkin Vonburstig's number, but only managed to develop a relationship with his android for my trouble.

The doorbell rang just as I'd demolished one stack of paper and was ready to start on the next one. The next one of nine. I wondered if this Vonburstig guy had important information about Shayla Greenfree as I walked to the door, ready to do battle with* one of the usual Saturday solicitors for a "really good cause."

But the man at the door wasn't a solicitor. He was a good-looking man in a gray wool suit. He smiled widely, dark eyes bright and friendly.

For a moment, at the door, I thought he was Bob Xavier and got ready to yell. Then I realized I was looking at Bob's older brother, Captain Cal Xavier of the Verduras Police Department, and prepared myself to cringe instead. With good reason.

"So have you figured out why Ms. Greenfree shouted out your name yet, Ms. Jasper?" he asked politely, benevolently.

"Um, no," I answered, feeling my throat tighten.

That was just the beginning of his courteous interrogation. I led him into the living room, wondering how much he knew about the missing occupant who had spent the previous night on the now empty futon. There was no way to tell

from the captain's smiling face. And Captain Xavier kept smiling for nearly an hour as he asked question upon question. It seemed he knew Wayne and I were talking to other suspects, and wanted to know why. And he wanted to know why we'd been on the scene so often at previous murders. And why ... And why ... I almost choked when he asked why we'd gone out to the signing on such a stormy night, anyway. Choking was better than telling him it was because of Ingrid. Because of his brother.

The only high point of the interview was his concession that no one remembered either me or Wayne going near the authors' table the night of the murder. All right! I hadn't thought about that. We had something like—well, maybe something close to—an alibi.

Still, by the time he left, I was ready for fetal-ball bowling again.

Wayne came home minutes after Captain Cal's departure, but he got to hear all about it. Misery shared is misery doubled. He patted my hand, mumbling sympathy, checked once more to see that Ingrid was truly gone, and then baked us a simple focaccia with artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, and olives, along with a mixture of herbs I couldn't identify but whose aroma and taste mingled with the yeasty pizza bread to cheer me up. For a while anyway. Until it was time to visit Fictional Pleasures. I would have liked to stay with the gustatory pleasures a while longer. A long while longer.

"Captain Cal's going to frame us," I predicted morosely as half an hour later I drove down the now too familiar tree-lined lane to the bookstore for the suspect-think-tank Ivan had promised us.

"Pretty bird, stooo-pid bird," PMP greeted us as we walked in. Was the poor bird having an identity crisis? Or was I projecting? "Anything with cats in it? Scree. I understand. Oh, shut up!"

I looked around. Ivan had arranged the teak folding chairs in a lopsided circle eerily like the one set up on the night Shay la had died, but at least the authors' table was gone now. Yvette Cassell was already seated in the circle, along with her husband, Lou, on one side, and Ted Brown on the other. None of them was speaking, not even Yvette. Her little eyes darted here and there from behind her tinted glasses, though, and every once in a while she squinted them as if in thought.

Phyllis and Zoe were talking by the tea urn, too softly to be heard at the door. Zoe slapped the side of her head, whether from amazement or in self-abuse or for some other reason entirely, it was impossible to tell. Phyllis kept on speaking, her large hazel eyes serious and intent as she bent toward Zoe.

"Wayne, Kate," Ivan greeted us, striding around the counter, his arms extended in hugging readiness at odds with the deadpan expression on his bulldog face.

"Who's Perkin Vonburstig?" I demanded quickly before I was enveloped.

Ivan's eyes widened ever so slightly. His arms dropped. He swiveled his head for a quick glance over his shoulder.

"He called me yesterday," Ivan whispered, once he brought his head back around. "A very cooperative man. About the missing books—"

"Who called you?" a voice interrupted sharply. I hopped in place, in sync with my heart. It was Marcia Armeson, her meager features as melancholic as ever under her flamboyant, wavy black hair. How had she snuck up on us like that? Had years of working at Ivan's store made her invisible?

"You just don't understand!" PMP squawked.

Ivan looked at his bird gratefully.

Then Dean Frazier came in the door to join us, and PMP let out another volley of greetings.

"Dean," Ivan said eagerly, hastily disengaging himself from Marcia. "How are you?"

"Better," Dean answered quietly. And he looked better, his weathered face almost serene beneath his gray beard and dark brows.

Wayne and I hurried to take our seats in the circle, putting as much space between ourselves and Marcia as possible. Though of course, we were closer to Yvette now. She tilted her head as she eyed us. But then her interest moved to the odd couple ambling up the aisle from behind the Westerns. Vince Quadrini, as statesmanlike as ever in another pinstriped suit, and Winona Eads, her red hair as disheveled as ever, her youthful eyes still skewed in her oval, freckled face.

And then everyone still outside the circle seated themselves as if by psychic order, and Ivan opened his mouth to welcome us. But Yvette's mouth was in the lead before the starting gun was even fired.

"Okay, listen up, you guys," she declared. "One of you is a murderer." She paused and surveyed us all as Lou looked up at the ceiling, a slight blush staining his beautiful mushroom-brown skin.

"Where were you on the night of February twenty-ninth?" she demanded abruptly, leaning forward to glare at me.

"Huh?" I said, startled, struggling to remember. February twenty-ninth, I realized. The night of the murder.

"Urn, here, I guess," I finally answered.

"They were all here, honey," Lou whispered in his wife's ear.

"I know that," she hissed back. "I'm not fu-fuddin' stupid."

I shook my head to clear it. I had my own set of questions to ask. I wanted to know about S.X. Greenfree.

"I know some of you here today knew Shayla Greenfree

better than others," I began. "Maybe if we could each talk a little about our impressions—"

But no one got a chance to talk about their impressions of Shayla or anyone else. Yvette whipped her head around toward Ted Brown, seated conveniently next to her. Conveniently for her, that was.

"Yeah, Ted!" she snapped at her fellow author. "Just how well did you know Shayla?"

Ted didn't even have to say "huh?"

"Yvette, perhaps if we acted in the spirit of harmony here," Ivan interjected as Ted blinked his heavy-lidded eyes in his long face, the biggest reaction I'd seen from him since the night of the murder. "We might—"

"And just how the hell far would you go to keep harmony?" Yvette challenged. "Hmm, Ivan?"

Ivan reared back in his chair, mouth open but unspeaking.

Yvette dug in then, lobbing questions from her chair like bricks. But her technique needed work. Ivan and Ted had both remained silent. Marcia did too, smoldering, arms crossed, when asked why she'd run out to the storeroom. And Zoe had punched her own hand and told Yvette to "stop it" when Yvette asked Dean if he was happier now that Shayla was dead. I was glad Zoe had objected to the question. I would have been tempted to punch Yvette herself. And Winona just squirmed and looked at the floor when Yvette demanded to know why she'd tried to run the night of the murder. The only one to actually answer Yvette was Phyllis Oberman, who used Yvette's inquiries about the availability of poisons to acupuncturists to somehow segue into a lecture about the deficiencies of Western medicine.

". . . And the use of shock treatments on disturbed patients," Phyllis expounded, leaning her magnificent body forward. So far, even Yvette hadn't been able to wrest the conversational floor away from her. "Yes, shock treatments.

A so-called treatment that exemplifies the lack of integrity in traditional Western medicine. Can you imagine, being electrocuted repeatedly like that and being unable to move?"

Unfortunately, I could. In fact, I was still shivering with the images the question had brought to my mind, and the feelings to my body, when Vince Quadrini cleared his throat.

Everyone turned his way, even Phyllis. Even Yvette.

"If I may beg to differ," he began politely. "What you are calling Western medicine helped my late wife to live two full years longer than she might have when she was diagnosed with cancer. And with far less pain, I might add—"

"Well, Western medicine has some valid uses," Phyllis conceded and took a breath.

Ivan grabbed the opening.

"Perhaps if we could return to the question of Shayla Greenfree's death," he suggested.

Yvette sat up in her chair, ready to lob another brick, but I cut her off at the mouth before it even opened.

"Dean, could you talk to us a little bit about Shayla?" I asked. "What was she really like?"

"That's not a simple question," Dean answered quietly. He stroked his beard and his eyes went out of focus. "I'd have to think on it to really paint a picture of Shayla. I could say she was a kind woman most of the time, a curious woman. And a bright one—"

And then Vince Quadrini interrupted again, but not so politely.

"How can you be so calm?" he demanded. "S.X. Green-free wasn't just kind and curious and bright." His voice rose suddenly in pitch. "She was brilliant! Don't you understand? She was brilliant. And now she's dead!"

Hhen Vincent Quadrini began to cry. The rest of the circle went silent as the formerly statesmanlike Mr. Quadrini wept in great desolate heaves like a child who finally understands that a favorite toy has been irretrievably broken.

Had he been in love with Shayla Greenfree? Or was he really crying about his wife, dead of cancer? Or were we all watching the reaction of a man whose guilt over murder had just overwhelmed him? That guess brought up all the little hairs on the back of my neck.

The Fictional Pleasures heater let out a fiery roar as if expressing its own opinion, then went silent again.

I looked over at Wayne, pulling at my turtleneck. It was too hot in here. Wayne's face was impassive, but there was a tilt to his head that indicated he was doing some wondering about Mr. Quadrini himself.

A high-pitched wail stopped me mid-thought. Whatever the reason, the man in the pinstriped suit was really suffering. Why wasn't anyone attempting to comfort him? Why