Fat-Free and Fatal (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (22 page)

Two prim, stuffed tomatoes topped with bread crumbs sat next to a mound of green pasta covered in sautéed mushrooms. I sniffed and caught a whiff of wine and mustard.

Wayne was a good cook, much better than I was. I popped a bite of mushrooms and pasta into my mouth. Yum. Heaven clothed in a tart-and-sweet sauce with onions and red bell peppers. I savored the flavors, then reached over to pat Wayne’s thigh in recognition of his culinary skills. He looked pleased and cut a piece from his steak. I have often suspected that Wayne’s agreement to cook separate meals was based less on democratic principles than on the needs of his palate. I took another bite of pasta. And another.

I had gobbled all but the last mouthful of tomatoes, stuffed with minced vegetables, herbs and soy cheese, when the doorbell rang. I looked up from my plate. Vesta was still glaring. Her meal remained untouched in front of her.

The doorbell rang again. Wayne rose from the table to answer it. I shoved the last bite into my mouth and sat back in my chair, stuffed.

“Hey, Wayne,” came Barbara’s voice from the entryway. “How’s it going?”

As Wayne mumbled a reply, all the delicious food he had cooked for me congealed into one hard lump in my stomach. Barbara. I had forgotten Barbara.

“Hey, kiddo,” she said as she came into the kitchen. “Ready to go?”

“I guess so,” I mumbled, looking up at Wayne behind her. His eyebrows were down, his feelings closed off from view. “We’ll just be gone a little while,” I promised him as I stood up.

“Ask them where they’re going,” Vesta ordered Wayne quickly.

“Now, Mom,” he protested softly, but his face turned in my direction.

“They’re going to break into that restaurant, the place where the woman was killed,” Vesta informed him.

“We’re not—” I began.

“Kate?” said Wayne, his deep voice a question.

“We are not going to break in,” I told him evenly. “We’re just going to look for entrances—”

“Huh!” snorted Vesta.

“Why don’t you come with us?” I suggested to Wayne, pointedly ignoring Vesta.

“I’ll get my coat,” he agreed, and turned to leave the kitchen. I let out the breath I had been holding.

“Waynie!” Vesta called out.

He stopped in his tracks and turned back. I caught a glimpse of his eyes. They looked desperate.

“You’re not going to leave me here alone, are you?” she asked, her voice quavering like that of a woman at least twenty years her senior. She brought her hand up to her heart. “These palpitations…” She faltered.

Wayne stayed. Vesta smiled smugly at me from behind his back as I gave him a goodbye kiss. Then she cut into her steak.

“Jeez-Louise,” Barbara muttered when we were in the car. “What broomstick did your mother-in-law fly in on?”

“Mother-in-common-law,” I corrected automatically.

That about did it for conversation on the way up to the Good Thyme. Barbara’s psychic powers must have told her I wasn’t in the mood to talk.

Once we got there, things became a little more complicated. We had missed twilight by at least twenty minutes. It was dark now. Very dark.

But at least parking was no problem. I found a space right in front. The CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE sign was still up in the restaurant window.

“Do you think Dan Snyder’s here?” I whispered as I got out of the Toyota.

“Doesn’t matter,” Barbara assured me, pulling two flashlights out of her purse. “He’ll never see us.”

My body didn’t believe her. My hand was shaking as I reached for my flashlight.

“You go around the left, I’ll go around the right,” Barbara ordered. Her voice was vibrating with excitement. It was then that I remembered that one of her favorite TV shows had been
Mission Impossible
. “We’ll meet in the back,” she added in a whisper. The hair went up on the back of my neck.

Barbara’s flashlight didn’t stop me from tripping over the bags of garbage around the side of the building. I landed on my knees with a rubbery squish. The smell of rotting vegetables drifted up. I stifled a curse and made my way around to the back of the building, shaking as I went and hoping I didn’t have anything too disgusting on my pants now.

Sure enough, there was a door in the back. But Barbara was nowhere in sight. I shined the beam of my flashlight on the frosted glass set in the top of the door. A light was switched on somewhere inside, illuminating the glass. Then I heard the sound of footsteps. I looked behind me, hoping they belonged to Barbara. They didn’t. They were coming from inside the building.

I clicked off the flashlight and watched as the shadow of what looked like a man grew in the frosted glass. My shaking hands began to sweat. The shadow turned in profile. It was definitely a man. His hand reached up with something in it.

I gasped without thinking. The something in his hand looked very much like a gun.

THE SHADOW IN the frosted glass flickered at the sound of my gasp. Then it slowly moved, the profile changing into something that could have been either the front or the back of a man. Dan Snyder? Dread took hold of my chest and squeezed.

The doorknob squeaked as it turned.

“Barbara!” I screamed.

The door burst open, and still I couldn’t see anything but a shadowy figure standing in the doorway. I was blinded by the light behind him.

I screamed again and heard the sound of running footsteps somewhere near me.

“Freeze!” came a shout from the figure in front of me. “Police!”

Police? The word began to make sense to me when my eyesight returned. The man confronting me was in uniform. In uniform and holding a gun out in front of him with both hands. The dread vacated my chest and entered my stomach with a flare of nausea.

“Kate?” came a whispered voice from my side. Then, “Jeez-Louise!”

The officer turned the gun in Barbara’s direction.

“Don’t shoot—”

“We were just—”

Barbara and I babbled out pleas and explanations until we ran out of words. The uniformed man finally lowered his gun. I recognized him as the same Hispanic officer who had responded to Paula’s phone call the evening Sheila Snyder had been killed. Unfortunately, he recognized us too.

“You were there the night of the murder,” he accused, his voice deep and vibrating with suspicion.

That was the last thing he said, besides telling us to get in his squad car and accompany him to the San Ricardo police station. And telling us to be quiet.

The police station wasn’t any fun. Nor was my phone call to Wayne, explaining why I would be late getting home.

Barbara and I sat on the molded fiberglass chairs in the waiting room, dutifully silent. But my mind was racing. Were we under arrest? No one had read us our rights. Didn’t they have to do that if they were arresting us? And what would we be charged with, anyway? We hadn’t broken into the Good Thyme. But we probably had been trespassing on private property, my mind chipped in. My mouth went dry.

I turned and looked at Barbara. Her eyes were closed. Her lovely face looked peaceful. How the hell did she manage that? My own body felt weak and nauseated from the recent barrage of adrenaline, and I was sure my face didn’t look lovely or peaceful. I stared at her, wondering why she had taken so long to get to the back of the restaurant. What had she been doing?

The front door opened before I could come up with an answer. Wayne strode in, his face as cold and still as granite. I smiled up at him weakly. He didn’t return my smile. He was too busy marching up to the officer behind the bulletproof glass.

“What are the charges against Kate Jasper and Barbara Chu?” he demanded.

The officer looked startled.

“I don’t know—” he began.

New footsteps sounded from the doorway.

“We just want to have a little talk with them,” came Sergeant Oakley’s musical voice. She was wearing jeans and a pumpkin-colored sweatshirt that almost matched her red hair.

Wayne turned and glared. Oakley didn’t flinch.

“And you are?” she inquired, a warm smile on her freckled face.

“Wayne Caruso,” he answered. Then more softly he added, “Friend of Kate Jasper’s.”

“Well, why don’t you have a seat while I talk to Ms. Jasper?” she suggested.

Wayne sat down obediently. I wondered if he would have been so obedient if Sergeant Oakley had been a man. Then Sergeant Oakley nodded at me. I followed her into the interrogation room, adrenaline surging through my body once more.

I told her everything. She was still a good listener. A wave of annoyance passed over her good-natured face when I related what Barbara and I had been looking for at the back of the Good Thyme. I had a feeling the police had already checked for rear entrances. I also had a feeling that Sergeant Oakley had come in on her time off just to talk to us. I was glad to see her expression change to amusement when I described tripping over the garbage and seeing the gun in the frosted glass window.

“You’re not going to arrest us, are you?” I asked when I was finished with my story.

“Probably not,” she said and stood up. She walked around the table to stand next to me.

“‘Probably’?” I prodded anxiously, twisting my neck to look up into her face. Damn, she was tall. “What does ‘probably’ mean?”

Her smiled disappeared. She bent down and thrust her face into mine.

“
Probably
, you’re not a murderer,” she rapped out. Her hazel eyes narrowed. Her voice deepened. “But if you are, we’ll get you. That’s a promise.”

I bent my head back as far as it could go. My neck screamed with pain. Oakley bent her own head closer, all the time keeping her eyes on mine. I swallowed the lump of fear that came up in my throat.

“
Probably
, you won’t be a murder victim either,” she continued, her formerly musical voice now harsh and atonal. “But you’re sure trying hard enough. Do you really want to be strangled like Sheila Snyder?” She paused. A picture of Sheila’s dead body rose in my mind. Bile rose in my throat. I swallowed again. “Do you really think your little games are smart, Ms. Jasper?”

I shook my head. The gesture wasn’t enough for her.

“Answer me,” she ordered.

“They’re not smart,” I recited.

“Did you kill Sheila Snyder?” Oakley demanded abruptly.

“Huh?” I responded, startled. I looked into those hazel eyes and saw intelligence and curiosity there.

“No, I didn’t kill her,” I answered belatedly, my voice much too high and squeaky. “I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I…”

“You can go now,” she said quietly as I faltered. She straightened up to her full height, took two long steps and opened the door.

I left in a daze. Then it was Barbara’s turn.

Sergeant Oakley finished with Barbara in less than ten minutes. Wayne dropped me at my Toyota, still parked in front of the Good Thyme, and drove Barbara to her apartment. I felt sick with leftover fear as I guided the Toyota home. The officer with the gun had been all too real. And Sergeant Oakley. Did she really suspect me?

I was in the kitchen feeding C.C. when Wayne came in. His face was still stony as he looked at me.

“Please, don’t be mad,” I requested in a small voice. I didn’t want to beg. But I had no energy left to argue.

His face softened. He put his arm around me and led me into the bedroom. We took off our clothes and climbed under the covers of the bed silently. I felt his breath on my neck, then his lips. I moved my mouth to meet his.

Vesta banged on the wall. We sighed in unison and kissed each other goodnight.

Wayne and I slept late the next morning. It was Saturday, after all. When I finally opened my eyes, Wayne was smiling at me, his face pink and drowsy. I smiled back and pulled him closer.

“Hey in there!” Vesta shouted through the door. “You got a phone call!”

I put my robe on and stomped to the phone. Barbara was on the line. She wanted to know if I was coming to Sheila Snyder’s memorial service at one o’clock. Sergeant Oakley’s questions replayed themselves in my mind, but only faintly. A memorial service would be safe, I told myself. Especially if I took Wayne. I got directions to the Chapel of the Valley in San Ricardo and told Barbara I’d be there.

Wayne and I were late to the memorial service. We had been all dressed and ready to go at twelve-thirty, but as we headed toward the door, Vesta asked Wayne to stay. When he refused, she got heart palpitations. After those had run their course, she said she wanted to go with us. But she had to get dressed. We waited for over half an hour before finally leaving without her. Wayne’s expression was grim on the way to the chapel. I wondered what his stomach felt like. Mine was churning.

“I didn’t know Sheila Snyder personally,” the minister at the pulpit was saying as we slunk into the chapel. The minister was small in stature, but very well-groomed. The chapel was small too, with wood-paneled walls and long, thin, vertical windows. About half the seats were taken. “But I know there were many who loved her…”

“Excuse me,” I whispered and took a place in the back pew next to a young woman I didn’t recognize, whose eyes looked swollen with tears. Wayne squeezed in next to me. My heart thudded a little faster. There was no body here, but the presence of death and grief was palpable, betrayed by a sniffle here and a sigh there from the mourners, even an occasional hand raised to brush a tear from an eye.