Death hits the fan (6 page)

"Incident," I finished for Lou.

"Pee-yew," Yvette put in, stepping past us as if I'd asked her to. "It smells like shi—"

"Skunk," I finished for her.

"Oh, skunk," she said, removing the deerstalker to reveal mashed curly hair, and her all-too-inquisitive eyes behind her tinted glasses. "Have you tried ammonia?"

"Huh?" I answered.

"Then, there's always bright lights. The little mothers hate bright lights . . ." Yvette went on, stepping into the living room. She was in one of the swinging chairs, still giving me skunk advice before I could open my mouth again.

Lou threw his arms into the air, but I saw amusement and fondness in his face. Was it possible that he liked his intolerable wife? Even loved her? I sighed and motioned him in.

Lou sat next to Yvette in the swinging chair, then reached over to squeeze her tiny hand. He did like her! She turned to smile at him even as the words continued to pour out of her mouth. And she liked him back. I shook my head involuntarily. Amazing.

Ingrid sat in the other swinging chair, across from the happy couple, leaving me to sit on the floor since our only couch was still pushed up against the other wall.

". . . but probably you're best off calling the fuddin' skunk broker," Yvette finally finished.

"We already called the fu . . . the skunk man," I muttered. And needed to call him again, once we finished with our human pest problems. Like Yvette. And Ingrid.

C.C. jumped up into Lou's lap.

"Cute kitty," Lou purred, bending his own feline face over her.

C.C. was cute, if annoying, with those white splotches against her black fur, one shaped like a goatee on her chin and one like a beret rakishly balanced over her left ear. She

clawed Lou's thigh tentatively. He didn't flinch. Cute but annoying. No wonder he liked C.C. He liked Yvette.

"So, I thought we could toss around a few theories," Yvette announced. Her voice was like a bell, ringing at the beginning of class. "As far as I'm concerned, everyone's a suspect.. ."

"In what?" asked Ingrid.

Luckily, Yvette appeared not to hear her. Her mouth just kept on moving.

"Now. Quadrini, I've watched him for a long time. He's one hell of a nut case if I ever saw one .. ."

"Well. I guess you'd think so after what he said about your writing." I put in. instantly ashamed of my own spite. I shouldn't have worried. Yvette went on without paying any more attention to me than she had to Ingrid.

". . . and that Winona broad, what a shick-kicker she is." Yvette shook her head. "And Ted's been weird ever since his kid died—"

"Kid?" I heard from the other room. It sounded like Wayne had finished his conversation with Ivan.

"His boy got sick and died a few years ago," Lou put in, sadness tightening his face. "It's tough when a kid dies."

"Yeah, yeah." Yvette murmured, patting Lou's hand. "Lou's brother got hit by a car when he was nine. Car killed him."

Lou's expression turned from sad to fierce so quickly, it was scary. I was glad when Wayne sat down beside me on the floor.

"It's okay, hon." Yvette told her husband softly. Gently. But then her mouth was up and chiming again. "Though neither Ted nor I could have put the bracelet there." she declared. "We were in the back room."

"You weren't in the back room the whole time—" I began. It was useless. Tossing theories around seemed to be

a one-person game for Yvette. She rolled her mouth right over my interruption like a tank.

"But Marcia, the manager or whatever she calls herself, now she's interesting. She was there, on the spot, at the table. And she ran. Why did she run?"

That was a good question. But before I could wrap my mind around it, Ingrid intruded again.

"Hey, I'm in the room," she caroled. "What are you guys talking about?"

"Who are you?" Yvette demanded, glaring at the intruder through her tinted glasses.

"A houseguest," I put in quickly before Ingrid could explain herself. I didn't even want to think of the possibility of the name Xavier entering this conversation.

"Oh," Yvette said, apparently satisfied. She waved her hand, as if waving Ingrid away. I wished I could do that. "Last night—"

"An unfortunate incident," I interrupted, just as Lou interjected, "A little problem."

Yvette reared her head back and squinted at her husband. Then she turned her gaze on me.

"And you, Kate" she said. "Kate. Just what Shayla said before she cakked—"

"Cakked?" Ingrid murmured, her eyes widening. "You mean like, died?"

"Aren't you supposed to be at work?" I demanded of my houseguest.

She usually was out of the house by this hour. Owning my own business had the sometimes advantage of my being at home while being at work. I could do my design work, and paperwork, and supervise most of the activities of Jest Gifts from my house, only visiting the warehouse a couple of times a week to see that the gag-gifts were in order. Or usually, that they weren't. My employees called me daily. Only

once or twice a day, if I was lucky, usually more often when there was a crisis. And there almost always was a crisis.

And Wayne didn't usually go into the city to visit La Fete a L'Oiel, his restaurant-cum-art gallery till afternoon. But Ingrid—

"I called in sick," Ingrid murmured with a pout. "I want to know—"

It was time to change the conversation.

"So, Lou," I interjected, smiling at Yvette's impossibly beautiful husband. "How do you happen to know CPR?"

"CPR?" Ingrid asked.

"Cardiopulmonary resuscitation," Lou told her. "I work for a chain of hospitals—"

"I know what CPR is," Ingrid told him, her petulant voice rising. "I want to know why —"

"Hey," Yvette cut in, putting her hand out, palm forward. "Will you let him flickin' finish?"

Okay, Yvette wasn't all bad, maybe—

Lou cleared his throat and began again. "I work for a chain of hospitals. Emergency training is mandatory, even for accountants .. ."

I lost the rest of his words. The cold slap of astonishment had stunned me. This gorgeous hunk was not only married to Yvette, he was an accountant?

"Lou, may I ask you something?" Wayne's quiet voice came from my side. Lou nodded. "Why did you stop Dean from helping Shayla?"

Lou's brown skin pinkened. "People have fallen asleep before," he muttered softly.

"Yeah, yeah," Yvette agreed with apparent good nature. "It happens. Some people aren't good listeners, so what the fu-hell? Dean's the really interesting one, anyway. Do you know what his real relationship to Shayla was?"

I realized she was looking at me. And actually waiting for an answer.

"No, I don't," I admitted cautiously.

"Huh!" she snorted. Then she leaned forward. "Let's put it this way. He had more of a relationship with Shayla's husband than with Shayla." Then she leaned back, smiling.

"All right, I'm hooked," I told her. "What do you mean?"

"Come on, honey," Lou objected before Yvette could answer. "I think Dean and Scott's relationship is no one's business but theirs."

Suddenly I was on Yvette's side. Why was Lou getting in her way? Did she mean something sexual? Or something else?

"Not when murder's involved," she replied, still smiling.

"Murder!" Ingrid squeaked.

And then the phone rang again. I let the machine take it, but then I heard my warehousewoman's voice coming through the speaker.

I had to pick it up.

"Kate, this is Jade," Judy said. Judy was still searching for the name that really matched her spiritual essence. This week it was Jade. "You wouldn't believe what's happening here..."

I would, and did, believe what was happening. Another crisis. One box of shark earrings for the attorneys was missing and the new shipment had just arrived with half of the sharks hanging upside-down. Right in time for spring sales. (We always sold a lot of shark earrings in spring. I was never exactly sure why.) And that was just the beginning of Judy's news.

Twenty minutes and too many crises later, I got off the phone. Lou and Yvette were gone. But Ingrid still remained.

"Why are you guys acting so weird?" she was demanding of Wayne.

Wayne took my arm and hustled me down the hallway to our bedroom.

"Ivan wants us to look into this," he hissed, once the door

was locked behind him. "So I told him I'd call Ted Brown, maybe Mr. Quadrini—"

"I'll talk to Zoe and Winona," I offered eagerly.

"Kate," Wayne warned with a plea in his voice, "this is dangerous. It's not a game. Don't be like Yvette—"

"Like Yvette!" I yelped. "How can you—"

The doorbell rang again.

This time Ingrid beat me to the door. But when I saw who was standing there, I was just as glad. I turned to slink away. Too late.

"Ah, the lovely Ms. Jasper," Raoul Raymond sighed and slithered his way past Ingrid.

"*

Jh, mon amour,' 9 Raoul murmured, grabbing my right hand.

I snatched it back and executed a quick tai chi backstep. He was about to kiss my hand. I knew from experience. And it hadn't been a pleasant experience.

Raoul Raymond had looked good from a distance when he'd demonstrated the tango with Ramona. He was tall, lean, and lithe. A man who could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty, with wild curly black hair, an extravagant mustache, and large rolling eyes that reminded me more than anything of hard-boiled eggs with brown irises painted on.

But close up, his combination of lechery and lunacy was not as appealing. And his eyes kept changing color. Today the painted-on irises were green. Colored contact lenses? And I was beginning to doubt that he was even Latin-American. His accent changed as often as his eye color.

"Since when is mon amour Spanish?" I demanded when I'd stepped out of grabbing range. "I thought it was French."

"Ah," he replied, shrugging his shoulders in a fluid movement that might have been Continental or Latin-American, or Yonkers for all I knew. "I am a man of the world."

As Ingrid might have said, "Yuck."

But Ingrid wasn't saying "yuck" or anything else. She was staring at Raoul with the frank interest of a dog watching a package of hamburger go by. Could Raoul Raymond be super rich? He drove a new red Porsche, it was true. But could tango-teaching pay that well?

"I have waited so long to see you again," he declared, both hands crossed over his heart, eyes raised to heaven. All he needed was a lily and he would have been elegant in a silk-lined coffin. "I asked myself if my memory could even hold your image. Your spark, your verve, your—"

I squinted at him. His eyes were no longer rolled heavenward. What had stopped his recitation of my charms? Ingrid, of course. My houseguest had walked around from behind Raoul to stand at my side. I didn't think she was interested in protecting me, however.

"And who is your most dee-lightful friend, Ms. Jasper?" Raoul inquired politely after a moment of intense contemplation, an accent back in place. What accent, I couldn't have said.

"Ingrid Regnary," Wayne answered from behind me.

My jump was not nearly as graceful as Raoul's, but it wasn't nearly as high either. His eyes had been so fixed on Ingrid that he hadn't seen Wayne coming any more than I had.

"Think it's time for you to leave," Wayne added as my heart rate braked back to normal.

"Right," agreed Raoul, turning smoothly toward the doorway, his hands in the air.

"I'll walk you down," Ingrid offered sweetly.

• • •

"'I'll walk you down'?" I repeated incredulously to Wayne half an hour later as I steered my Toyota toward Ivan's. We had waited to make sure Raoul was truly and safely off the premises before taking off for Fictional Pleasures. "Do you believe it? As if Ingrid's not in enough trouble with Bob Xavier, she wants to get involved with Raoul Raymond?"

"He's a male, drives a Porsche—" Wayne pointed out.

"But what about his wife, Ramona?" I demanded.

"Are you sure Ramona is Raoul's wife?" Wayne asked.

"Well, isn't her last name Raymond too?"

"But are either of them necessarily using their real names?"

That stopped me. Raoul's eyes weren't real. His accent was phony. Why should his name be real? Or Ramona's? And, actually, they hadn't acted much like husband and wife, sensual tangoing aside.

"But still," I insisted. "One minute, he's telling me he loves me and the next minute he's practically kissing Ingrid's hand. He was just flirting!"

"Are you jealous?" Wayne inquired mildly.

"Jealous!" I protested, but, but... I would have been happy to never see Raoul Raymond again as long as I lived, even in future reincarnations, but still, his all so obvious and nimble transfer of affections had sparked something in me that, well, maybe bore a faint resemblance to jealousy.

I laughed aloud. Jealousy. I was jealous.

"You know, he might just take Ingrid off our hands," Wayne added, his voice hard with a ruthlessness I hadn't imagined he could muster. But then, I wouldn't have imagined I'd have been jealous of Raoul's wandering affections, either.

"Ingrid gone," I murmured blissfully as I turned onto the

tree-lined lane that would take us to downtown Verduras. "Damn, I do love you, Wayne."

I saw him blush out of the corner of my eye. But there was a little smile along with the painful blush. I reached over to squeeze his well-muscled thigh before parking in front of Fictional Pleasures, banishing the thought of all the unfinished Jest Gifts paperwork waiting on my desk at home. As well as the crises, waiting to spring. I wasn't letting Wayne do this alone. We were a team.

"Where's suspense?" PMP screamed as we opened the bookstore's door. "Cash or charge. Scree-scraw. I understand."

Ivan came out from behind the sales counter to greet us as we crossed the threshold, hugging Wayne first, and then me, with a grip that came close to squeezing the Whol-ios out of me. I was beginning to feel more like a life raft than a friend. One about to burst.

At least it was warm at Fictional Pleasures today. And quiet, except for PMP. I lifted my eyes to enjoy the play of sunlight on the rows of wooden bookshelves. It kept my gaze from the authors' table, still in place with its stacks of books, and surrounded with crime-scene tape from the night before. Though Shayla's body was mercifully gone.