Death hits the fan (7 page)

Ivan had set up a few of the folding chairs near the tea urn, along with a little table holding a tray of pastries. He motioned us to sit.

"I bought them fresh from the health food store's bakery," he assured me. "No white flour, no white sugar, no dairy."

He didn't have to convince me. I could smell the raspberry filling oozing fructose into the ozone. And the rich whole-wheat crust. Whol-ios were just a memory as my bottom touched the familiar slats of teak and I reached toward the tray.

"I thought they might provide a little harmony while we

talked," Ivan said softly, taking his own seat and handing me a cup of herb tea to accompany the pastry.

The carob-almond tea was a perfect contrast to the sweet-and-sour fruit flavor of the raspberry filling. And I could taste almond in the crust too. Vegetarianism at its most decadent. I forgave Ivan for his too-tight hug instantly.

"So ..." Wayne prompted, untouched by gluttony, a lone cup of tea in his hand.

Ivan sighed.

PMP sighed.

I was ready to sigh too, despite the pastries, when Ivan finally leaned forward and began to speak. Quietly.

"Captain Xavier believes Shayla's death was murder," he began. He took a deep breath.

Suddenly the pastry didn't feel so harmonious inside me anymore. I'd guessed that Shayla had been murdered, but hearing it confirmed was still a shock. Or an aftershock, at least. Especially hot from the lips of Captain Cal Xavier.

"How?" asked Wayne.

Ivan sighed again, looking down at the floor.

"Captain Xavier asked me to consider the details confidential," he replied. "I'm not really supposed to share."

Wayne and I waited. I figured it wouldn't be long. Ivan's need to confide was as palpable as the oversweet smell of raspberry.

Ivan sighed again. Then he raised his head to look around him. No one was here but us and the bird.

"Apparently there was some kind of mechanism in the jeweled bracelet," he whispered. "When Shayla closed the clasp, it triggered a series of poisonous injections from the syringes inside."

I remembered the way Shayla's face had pinched when she'd snapped the bracelet closed. And her one word. Kate.

Raspberry jam began oozing its way back up my digestive tract.

"And the captain and I agreed whoever placed it on the authors' table had to have been one of the people present that night—"

"Who has access to syringes?" asked Wayne. Clearly, he'd already figured out that the bracelet was the murder weapon. Mr. Quadrini had been right. Shayla had put on the bracelet, and then she was dead.

Ivan looked down at the floor again. I couldn't see his face, but his shoulders were radiating evasion. And something that looked like guilt. What was he hiding?

"Well, lots of people have access to syringes," he mumbled. He lifted his head, but then I saw the evasion in his flat, round features too. A sick little butterfly fluttered in my stomach right below the pastry. Ivan was Wayne's friend. I hadn't even thought of him as a suspect, but that look—

"I mean, Marcia's ex was a doctor, and Phyllis Oberman is an acupuncturist," the bookseller went on, his voice going faster and higher. "And Dean's an anesthesiologist."

"Who had motive?" Wayne demanded brusquely. I shot a quick glance his way. Wayne's face was cold now, angry. He'd noticed Ivan's obvious dissimulation, too. When a friend asks for help, it's better if that friend shares his information with his would-be helpers. And Ivan wasn't sharing well.

In fact, Ivan looked like he was going to sigh again, but PMP interjected with a shrill whistle.

"I just don't know," Ivan groaned miserably. The misery, at least, was real. I was sure of that. He clasped his hands together. "I feel like I should know, of all people. The only strange thing that's been going on is, well. . ." He stopped and looked around again. It was still just us and the bird. And we were all getting impatient. "I've wondered if Marcia's been stealing books," he finally whispered, so low it took me a moment to realize what he'd said.

But PMP picked it up right away.

"Stealing books, stealing books!" she screamed. Ivan whirled around to glare at the bird. She whistled and chirped, "Stooo-pid bird, shut up." Was it my imagination, or was there a real apology in her chirp?

"Go on," Wayne told Ivan, his interest evident in the tilt of his body.

"First editions, from my special collection," Ivan whispered, his voice even lower. "Too many to be a random thief. At first, I thought I'd just remembered incorrectly, but the inventory kept coming up wrong. I even tried hiding the more valuable ones, but they're still disappearing." He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head, eyes glazed. "But still, I can't believe it's connected with Shayla's ... oh dear, you know what I mean. I've asked myself how it could be. And Marcia. Well, Marcia, she's not all that bad."

Only bad enough to make life a misery, I thought, especially for a man like Ivan who most of all wanted everyone to agree, everyone to be comfortable, everything to be in harmony. Thievery and murder wouldn't fit into his well-constructed escape into fiction.

"Anybody besides you know where you hid them?" Wayne kept on inexorably.

Ivan got that evasive look again. But then he shrugged his shoulders and the look was gone. "My son, Neil, but you know Neil. He's a good kid. He can't. He wouldn't—"

"Who else had a motive to murder Shayla?" I asked, unable to bear Ivan's misery any longer. I could even smell it in the air, over the scent of raspberry and books.

"Well," he said, a welcome gleam of gossip in his eyes again. "There were the other two authors. And Ted did do the alien psychic routine first—"

"Did Shayla steal his idea?" I asked. "Did it make him mad?"

Ivan wrinkled his forehead. A gossip he was, but not easy with serious accusations.

"No, I don't think so," he finally replied. "No to either question." He shook his head. "They were similar ideas, but people come up with similar ideas all the time. How could Ted be angry? All ideas arise from the same life source, the same archetypes. And Adams and Smith did their alien sleuths before either Shayla or Ted. Though Shayla was more successful than any of them. But still, I just can't believe—"

"How about Yvette?" I demanded. It was too hard to listen to Ivan arguing with himself. I knew neither side would ever win. "Is she nuts or what?"

Ivan smiled gently. Affection, for Yvette? "Nuts, maybe," he agreed. "But in a highly creative way. And very prolific. She and Lou are a wonderful pair. He supports her all the way."

Lou—there'd been something about Lou. Then I remembered. It'd been nudging my subconscious all the way over.

"Wasn't Lou's brother killed in a car crash or something?" What if the driver had been Shayla? My pulse beat a little faster. It was far-fetched, but what if—

"That's right," Ivan told me, his head tilted, wondering why I was asking. "Lou still gets upset about it. They were both kids when it happened."

"Did they ever catch the driver?"

"They didn't have to," Ivan answered. "The driver was killed too. He was drunk. Very, very sad."

"Any relation to Shayla?" I tried desperately.

Ivan shook his head. "I doubt it. He was a German tourist."

So much for that idea. I settled back into my chair and sipped tea, thinking.

Wayne took over. "How about Mr. Quadrini?"

"Quadrini's an odd one. all right," Ivan said. "He's rich, but deeply unhappy. No inner peace. His wife died of cancer a few years back. That's when he became obsessed with Shayla, I think. But in a perfectly gentlemanly way."

"Obsessed?"

"No, no. Not really obsessed. I used the wrong word." Ivan shook his head again, thinking. "Just a real fan. He loved her work more than he loved her, maybe that's the best way to put it. He's certainly not some kind of stalker."

He took a sip of his own tea before going on.

"Now Winona is the one who seems the oddest," he told us. "She's always here in the shop. She buys a few books, but not many. I think she really reads most of them here in the aisles so she won't have to buy them. But I expect she's just poor," he finished up. "And that's certainly no crime."

Damn. Ivan could just about handle the prosecution and the defense of any suspect. What a loss to the legal world.

"How about Phyllis Oberman?" Wayne suggested.

"She doesn't come in very often," Ivan said, looking serious again. "I know she's never attended an authors' signing before. And all she ever reads are romances. At least, that's all I've ever sold her." He shook his head. "But once again, that's certainly no crime."

"No crime! No crime?" I heard from behind me.

At first I thought it was PMP. But it was Marcia Armeson, her thin lips stretched into a grimace as tight as her designer jeans. "Ivan doesn't want to believe anyone could have done something as unharmonious, as uncouth, as real-life murder. But someone did, and I'm not gonna get hung for it, that's for sure—"

"So, who do you think—" I began.

"I don't think, I know," Marcia said with a sudden enigmatic smile. "And—"

But a customer entered the store before she could finish. A mild-looking woman of about my age who was interested in something with "real literary merit."

Ivan took his place behind the sales counter.

"Who?" Wayne challenged Marcia as Ivan suggested literarily correct books in a suitably subdued tone.

Marcia only smiled back at Wayne. "It's just an idea. And

I'm not setting myself up for a slander charge until I'm sure/' she told him. Then she turned away pointedly and left to rearrange some books a few aisles over. I looked at Wayne's frustrated face sympathetically. It would be hard to question a head of wavy black hair or the rear end of a pair of tight jeans.

But I followed her anyway, quietly.

"Is it okay if I use the restroom?" I hissed into her ear once I was by her side. I wanted to see her unrehearsed reaction. I did.

She whirled around, arms flailing, then dropped them to look into my eyes suspiciously. But finally, she just nodded. There was no way she was going to bar my access to the storeroom. I'd been there many times before. But her eyes tightened before she turned back to her books. Was I her suspect? A shiver ran up my arms. I hoped not. She was not a woman I wanted to tangle with.

But she was a woman I was incredibly curious about. That's why I was heading for the storeroom, full bladder notwithstanding. What had she been in such a hurry to hide back there the night before? If anything. She'd probably just run to the restroom to be sick.

I scooted down the main aisle to the back before she could change her mind.

But all I saw is what I always saw in the storeroom of Fictional Pleasures. Books. In carts, in stacks, in boxes. And atop the highest stack of boxes, a large, precariously balanced two-wheeled handcart with a wicked-looking metal scoop-end. I found the door to the little office Ivan and Mar-cia shared. I jiggled the doorknob. Locked. I longed for burglary skills, but had to settle for a trip to the restroom and an empty bladder.

The literary customer was gone when I returned, and Marcia was talking, her fragile features lit up with pure malice.

"... Zoe and Shayla weren't all the good friends they pretended to be," she was finishing up. "I'm not as stooo-pid as some of the rest of the folks around here."

Was Zoe the one she suspected?

"And Dean and Scott and Shayla were in some kind of weird threesome—"

"Now, Marcia," Ivan objected, butting in at exactly the wrong time. Why did he have to be confrontational now? No wonder he never made it as an attorney. No sense of timing. "I never quite understood their relationship, but Shayla, Dean, and Scott were all genuinely fond of one another. You could see it in the way they treated each other. Almost like a family."

"Huh!" Marcia snorted, turning on her heel. "Some people never see what's in front of their faces."

"So what's in front of your face?" Wayne asked gently.

"Wouldn't you like to know." was her only answer, and then Marcia disappeared down another aisle. Just as another customer came in, a young man this time.

Ivan motioned us to stay where we were as he got up to wait on the man.

I looked at PMP, willing her to ask, "Where's Marcia?" but the bird remained silent. Well, it was certainly no crime, as Ivan would say.

After Ivan had loaded the young man up with an unexpected armful of Mary Higgins Clark, he sat back down with us again.

"Do you really think Marcia has an idea who the murderer is?" I whispered to Ivan. I didn't like Ivan's manager much, but still, if she kept talking the way she was, her health was going to be in serious danger.

"Probably not," Ivan answered slowly. He closed his eyes for a minute. "You see, Marcia likes to think of herself as unique. Special." He could have been speaking about one of

his kids. Maybe that's how he saw her, I realized. "And with all this, this ... you know, she's getting a lot of attention."

As long as she didn't get the wrong kind of attention, I thought.

But then Ivan was talking again.

"I think we might be able to reach some consensus about dealing with this situation if we were all to get together tomorrow," he suggested.

I groaned inwardly. Sharing the experience of murder was not an exercise I was fond of.

But Ivan pointed out that the next day was Saturday. If we were going to gather a group, it probably was the best time. So, reluctantly, Wayne and I agreed, and then escaped into the weak February sunlight, but not before Ivan had slipped me a typed list with the address and phone number of each and every member in the group. But it was Shayla I couldn't get out of my mind as I pulled the Toyota back onto the street. She was the one person we really hadn't talked about. What was her relationship with her husband, Scott? And with Dean? And Zoe? And who was she, besides the famous writer, S.X. Greenfree?

"I wonder what Shayla was really—" I began, a few blocks later.

"Kate," Wayne announced quietly, "I think we're being followed."