Death hits the fan (21 page)

Then the questioning began. I was surprised that he didn't separate Ivan, Wayne, and me, but it appeared that Captain Cal had no time left for ritual. Within minutes, he'd established Wayne's movements and my own after Yvette's party. And Ivan's.

Or at least Ivan told Captain Cal his version of what he'd done after the party. He said he'd gone to the health food store, only to find it closed, and then to the Chinese restaurant next to it. He had the greasy bag to prove his story. The mixed smells of garlic and ginger and oil drifted over from behind the counter, mingling with the overheated air. But

the smells that would usually make me salivate were making me queasy now. Because I wasn't sure that Ivan's tale was the truth. What if he'd killed Marcia first, then rushed out for food, with us as convenient almost-alibis? Or patsies, even.

". . . my son, Neil," Ivan was saying quietly, his voice as low as PMP's was high. "He was scheduled to work until Marcia came back, and then to hand the store over to her. They got along well—"

"Get the kid down here," Captain Cal interrupted. He wasn't smiling anymore, feral or otherwise. And the anger in his dark eyes wasn't an improvement. I shifted in my chair. Now he looked like his younger brother, Bob, good-looking ... and scary.

And his questions went on. And on. Like a medieval artist's patron, he had us draw the sketches of our movements with our own words first, then encouraged us to supply the colors and the finer shadings. And like those artists of old, we knew we were in trouble if we couldn't supply the exact pictures the captain wanted.

"... I think Yvette was still at her house when we left," I was telling Captain Xavier, about twenty PMP scree-scraws later. "But I couldn't say for sure. Anyway, she had plenty of time after we left to get here before us. Everyone did—"

The front door opened, with a whoosh of cool air that chilled my moist skin, and a bigger whoosh of verbiage.

"Hey, Dad!" Neil Nakagawa interrupted, his young voice shrill with excitement. "What's the deal here? These Five-0 recruits want to put a snitch jacket on me—"

"Neil," Ivan put in, his voice heavy with fatherhood. "This is very serious. This is not a game. Cooperate, please."

"But, Dad—" came the teenage lament.

"Neil, listen to me," Ivan went on, unheeding. His voice didn't waver and his face was unreadable, but his hands

were clasping and unclasping as if in interrupted prayer. "There's been a death—"

"That's enough," Captain Xavier told Ivan.

Ivan shut his mouth slowly, his hands still fluttering in his lap. He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked at his son, a plea on his face.

The captain looked at Neil too, but his eyes were the angry eyes of law enforcement.

"When did you last see Marcia Armeson?" Captain Cal Xavier demanded.

"Marcia?" Neil looked confused. "A little before eight, I think. She came in and I gave her the day's ledger and the keys, and then I went home." His eyes widened. "Marcia's okay, isn't she?"

The captain didn't answer him. He just questioned Neil as exhaustively as he'd questioned us. And listening to a teenager being interrogated wasn't any more fun than being interrogated myself. But Neil had been alone with Marcia. Of course, Wayne and I had been alone with Marcia too. True, she'd been dead at the time. But the police didn't know that. Only we did.

Had Ivan been alone with Marcia? I shook my head. I liked Ivan, damn it.

Someone else must have been alone with Marcia. Someone who'd followed and killed her after Neil had left and before we'd arrived.

Or maybe it just was an accident after all. But would the police ever be able to tell? I could imagine that precariously placed handcart falling. I even shivered when I saw it hit Marcia in my mind's eye. But still, my imagination had to ask what caused it to fall in the first place.

"I told Marcia to be careful with the handcart." Ivan had broken in now. "I tried to communicate with her, to let her know that she shouldn't put it on top of things. It was too big, too heavy. But she didn't always listen to me."

Neil snorted. "She never listened to you, Dad," he said. "No way."

"I saw it too," I put in. Captain Cal's eyes raced to mine in an instant. And in that instant I was sorry I'd spoken. But I had to tell the truth. "When I went to the bathroom," I finished up. "The handcart was on top of a stack of boxes. It could have fallen."

"Right," said the captain, smiling again. Maybe the plain old anger was better. "And wouldn't that be convenient for everyone?"

Unfortunately, Captain Xavier wanted me to explain why and when I'd been in the storeroom before. And then I was the artist again, shading here, adding color there as Captain Xavier prodded and probed. I told him what I could remember, leaving out the fact that I had been nosing around, looking for whatever I thought Marcia might have hidden back there. As far as the Verduras police needed to know, I'd just gone to the bathroom. And I didn't mention that the same Marcia who was lying dead in the storeroom had attacked me the day before. Wayne didn't either. Or Ivan. Should I?

"You can leave now," Captain Cal Xavier said as if in answer.

The captain's words jolted me out of my seat. And answered my unspoken question. He'd never asked me specifically about the day before. There was no reason to tell him. Not really. At least that's what I told myself.

Wayne kept one big gentle hand on my shoulder on the long drive back home, and around my waist as we passed In-grid's sleeping form in the living room and tiptoed down the hall to the bedroom.

"Tall enough for you?" I demanded, once we'd closed the door behind us. Gallows frivolity.

"Perfect," Wayne answered.

And then he proved it.

Death Hits the Fan 183

• • •

\Jn Thursday morning, Wayne left to catch up on restau-ranteuring, and I got back to work on Jest Gifts in my skunky, paper-littered office. I never wanted to see Fictional Pleasures again. Or any of its nonfictional inhabitants. Except Phyllis Oberman, maybe. I paused as my No. 1 pencil touched columnar tablet, thinking about the woman. She was the only one that I'd never really talked to. The elusive goddess of needles. My curiosity bubbled up. I tried to put a lid on it as I marked a number in a box.

A few hours and too many stray thoughts later, I'd waded through two months' worth of invoices, almost bringing that pile of paperwork into the current year, when the doorbell rang.

I went rigid in my chair. I didn't really have to answer, I told myself. If only my doorbell worked like an answering machine, I could screen my visitors. I would screen my visitors. Why not? I was just sneaking over to my office window to see if I could catch a glimpse of the person who'd rung my doorbell when Ingrid answered the door. I smacked my fist into my palm angrily. And painfully. How could I have forgotten about Ingrid?

Our visitor was none other than Captain Cal Xavier of the Verduras Police Department.

And Ingrid was all aflutter, grinning and wiggling in aerobics spandex. And looking all too good as she did so. I wondered if Captain Cal was single.

"Cal," she greeted the captain, her loud voice now husky with affection. My heart dipped down to stomach level. And it didn't like the ride.

"Why, Ingrid," Captain Cal greeted her, smiling pleasantly. "Looking good as ever. Bob told me you were staying here."

After a few more minutes of brotherly pleasantries, the captain turned my way.

"But it's really Ms. Jasper I've come to see," he told her apologetically, his smile changing from pleasant to predatory as his eyes met mine. "Gotta get the job done. You understand the situation."

Ingrid nodded, her eyes wide with admiration and understanding. But she didn't leave the room. She just lowered herself gracefully onto her futon—our futon—while the captain settled down in one of the swinging chairs and I took the other.

"Have a few more questions for you, Ms. Jasper," the captain announced. I'd hoped he'd shoo Ingrid out of the room, but he didn't. "About Marcia Armeson's death."

The captain was about ten minutes into his questions, and I was ten minutes into the hell of continued interrogation, when Ingrid jumped up suddenly.

"Marcia Armeson!" she yelped. "Kate, wasn't Marcia Armeson that really, really scary woman who you were fighting with the other day? You know, the one who came at you, but you pushed her over—"

"I didn't push her over," I objected. I wanted to explain that Marcia's own energy had pulled her over, but the subtleties of tai chi were wilting under the captain's suddenly rapt gaze. "She just missed," I finished.

"Oh no, Kate," Ingrid kept on. "You were really cool, you really pushed her around. It was like some karate movie or something—"

"Listen, Captain Xavier," I began. "Marcia Armeson did visit me two days ago. I guess she was mad at me because she was afraid I knew about her book scam—"

"Book scam?" the captain asked, his voice deep with something like pleasure. Or maybe greed. Or lust.

I'd wondered if Ivan had told the Verduras representative of law enforcement about Marcia's allegedly larcenous activities. I didn't have to wonder anymore. He hadn't. And that was going to look suspicious in itself.

So I took a big breath and started in, about Perkin Von-burstig's call, about Marcia's reaction, about Ivan's reaction. And about my bookseller friend's reticence to speak of Marcia's possible fraud and thievery once she'd been killed.

"Respect for the dead," I called it.

"Withholding information," the captain corrected me.

It went downhill from there, the captain pulling details from me like an exorcist yanking out bad spirits. It was more than half an hour before Captain Cal Xavier left, replete with the feast of incriminating information that Ingrid had helped to supply.

I listened to the captain of the Verduras Police Department drive off. Then I turned to Ingrid.

"Find another hotel," I told her.

"But Kate!" she objected. "I thought you were my friend..."

"Another hotel," I repeated and turned on my heel.

"But that's not nice!" Ingrid yelped as I found my purse. "It's . . . it's gross!"

I didn't reply as I slammed my own door behind me.

Somehow it seemed wrong that / was making the dramatic exit from my own house. But I had an acupuncture appointment to go to.

Phyllis Oberman's office was located not far from me in Mill Valley. And it was mellow. The sound of birds and flutes swam harmoniously in the air as I entered. The walls were tinted aqua, the furnishings a light peach. And the receptionist was blond and slight and spoke so quietly I could barely hear her voice.

"I'm here to see Dr. Oberman," I told her, muting my own tone. Phyllis was after all, as I could see from the diploma hanging behind the receptionist's desk between two art prints, a doctor of Chinese medicine.

"Please, sit down," the receptionist whispered as if sharing an important secret.

I sat. Unfortunately, I sat on some kind of box that let out a clanging of church bells. I jumped up. A New Age whoopee cushion? My heart was pounding like the church bells.

"Oh my!" the receptionist whispered as she ran toward me. "The Sound Soother. I wondered where it had gone."

Within moments, she flicked the proper switches and the box was silent. We were back to flutes and birds. And intimate whispers as she sat down on the couch next to me.

"My name is Juliet," the receptionist told me. "And I'm terribly, terribly sorry to have upset your balance."

"No problem," I assured her, sensing a possible point of entry as my pulse returned to normal. "Juliet, how long have you worked for Dr. Oberman?"

"Oh, my," Juliet answered. "Five years at least. It's so soothing here."

I was beginning to feel drowsy myself, even after the church bells. Was it the birds and flutes? Or a little something extra in the incense that filled the room? I roused myself to nosiness.

"I'm a little worried," I told Juliet. "I've only met the doctor once and she seems a little, well. . ."

"Brusque," Juliet filled in helpfully.

I nodded, trying to look scared. It wasn't hard. The doctor was going to stick needles into me, after all.

"Oh, she's much more compassionate than she seems," Juliet assured me. "She really cares. And she's really beautiful, isn't she?"

I nodded sincerely, remembering Phyllis Oberman's tall, lush body, a body that cried out to be painted in an age when large women were better appreciated. That along with her big hazel eyes and creamy white skin—

"I wish I could be that big and beautiful," Juliet went on. "And you should see her boyfriend. He's a huge man, over

Death Hits the Fan 187

six feet and three hundred pounds, but so sexy, so graceful. They're such a pair. He's a bail bondsman."

"Wow," I said, imagining the two together, on Mount Olympus. Then I got back to work.

"Did she see Shayla Greenfree much?" I asked innocently.

"Who?" Juliet asked and drew her head back from mine.

"Shayla was an author—"

"Oh, you mean that weird little woman who wears tinted glasses and looks like a leprechaun?" Juliet asked.

It was then that I remembered that Wayne and I were supposed to be watching out for Yvette Cassell. So far, neither of us had been doing much of a job on that assignment.

"When did the little woman come—" I began.

"Juliet?" came a questioning voice from above us. I flinched. The acupuncturist was in. And looming. At least there were no needles in her hands. Yet.

I swallowed and followed Dr. Phyllis Oberman into her office.

"Juliet tells me you have a sinus problem," she led off once we were seated.

"And a murder problem," I added. I wasn't going to put anything over on Phyllis. I was pretty sure of that.

Phyllis glared at me from those beautiful hazel eyes.

"Shayla was always difficult," she admitted.

All right! She was going to talk.

"You know that I was acquainted with Shayla in school, I suppose?" she said. "When she was still Shirley?"

I nodded.

"I will say this, and this only. Then I'll do your treatment," Phyllis announced. She stared into my eyes for agreement.

"All right," I conceded.

"In my view, which is many years old, since I've hardly seen Shirley since high school, Shirley was a woman of

great internal integrity, despite her apparent ruthlessness. She did what she felt she had to do to give her life meaning. It wasn't easy for women our age. I must be at least ten years older than you. And what a difference in culture those ten years meant. I went the traditional route: got married and had kids, worked as a nurse. Good work, but not my life's work. Once my children were grown, and my husband had left, I began to see the human potential in alternative medicine. I went to school while I did nursing, here first, and then, once I'd saved the money, in China."