Fat-Free and Fatal (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (5 page)

The first man was big and burly in a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. A diamond stud glistened in his left earlobe. He might have been good-looking with his curly black hair, mustache and strong jaw, but his eyes squinted. They looked mean. The second guy was tall and thin, except for his pot belly. His face was friendlier, clean-shaven with protuberant eyeballs and a big smile. A big stoned smile. I smelled the not-so-faint odor of marijuana wafting from their direction. Policemen?

“Whoa,” said the man in the Hawaiian shirt jovially. “What’s happening?”

The thin man’s eyes drifted to Officer Tate in his police uniform, and he nudged the burly guy.

“Who are—” the policeman began.

“Dan!” interrupted Alice. She ran to the husky man, her arms outstretched. “Oh, Dan,” she wailed. “Sheila’s dead. She was killed, murdered—”

“You, sit down!” commanded Officer Tate, glaring at Alice. “Sir,” he said, bringing his gaze back to the burly man. “If you will identify yourself…”

The man didn’t so much as glance at Tate. After a moment of slack-jawed blankness, he grabbed Alice by her shoulders and pulled her toward him. “What do you mean, Sheila’s dead!” he shouted.

Officer Tate tapped the man on the back. The man took his hands away from Alice’s shoulders and whirled around.

“What the fuck is going on here!” he demanded of the officer. Tate winced. I didn’t blame him. The question had blasted my ears, a couple of yards away.

“Who are you?” the policeman demanded in turn, his voice quiet but firm, and reinforced by his hand on his gun.

The big man stared at him for a moment, looked down at the gun, then answered. “Dan Snyder,” he said. “This is my restaurant. Who the fuck are
you
?”

Dan Snyder. My stomach lurched as I realized this was Sheila’s husband.

“I’m Officer Tate of the San Ricardo Police Department. I’m going to have to ask you to—”

“Where’s Sheila?” Dan asked, his voice lower now, fearful.

“Listen,” said Tate. “If you’ll just follow me—”

“Where’s Sheila!” Dan roared.

Officer Tate gripped his gun and looked around for help. It came from an unexpected source. The thin man who had arrived with Dan put an arm around his friend.

“Hey, buddy,” he said. “Everything’s cool. Let’s hear what the man has to say.”

Dan’s shoulders slumped. He looked at Tate. “Is Sheila really dead?”

Officer Tate looked him in the eye and nodded.

Dan screamed, “No!” as the door to the Good Thyme swung open again. “I don’t buy it! What the fuck—”

This time it was a plump older woman with permed gray hair who walked through the door. Her soft, doughy face was stretched into contours of panic. Dan looked at her and went silent.

Officer Tate turned to the newcomer. “And who are you?” he asked. Good question.

The woman’s eyes darted around the room, then came back to Officer Tate and Dan Snyder.

“I’m their grandmother,” she answered. “Are Opal and Topaz okay? They called me. They said they were scared—”

“Who are Opal and Topaz?” Officer Tate asked mildly.

“Sheila and Dan’s children,” Alice answered when it became obvious that Topaz and Opal’s grandmother wasn’t going to.

“Are the children all right?” the older woman asked again. “Where are they?”

“I’ll find out, ma’am,” promised Officer Tate.

“Where’s Sheila?” growled Dan ominously.

I hoped no one would tell him. He didn’t need to see her body.

“Where’s Sheila!” he shouted.

Detective Utzinger and Sergeant Oakley emerged from the hallway just as the echoes of Dan’s shout died away. Barbara trailed behind them, her eyes wide with curiosity.

“Husband,” Tate mouthed and Oakley took over.

She laid a gentle hand on Dan’s arm. “Let me help you,” she said and led him unprotesting down the hall to the kitchen, with Utzinger taking up the rear.

By the time Barbara and I walked out the door of the Good Thyme Cafe five minutes later, everything was calm. Relatively calm, anyway. Topaz and Opal’s grandmother had eventually identified herself as Rose Snyder and had been allowed to join her grandchildren and the police officer babysitting them. Zach, the thin man who had arrived with Dan Snyder, was excitedly telling Officer Tate how he had spent the evening. Sergeant Oakley and Dan Snyder himself were still in the kitchen. And the cooking-class murder suspects were all sitting quietly at their tables. I took one glance back, then let the door swing closed. I resisted the urge to run to my Toyota, keeping pace with Barbara’s slow steps instead.

Not all of the suspects were left in the dining room, I reminded myself as I unlocked my car door for Barbara. My stomach churned unhappily as I stared at my friend’s beautiful Asian face. Damn. I wished I could wipe the memory of her yelling at Sheila out of my mind. I wished she hadn’t left me for an ice cream cone. I wished—

“Don’t worry, kiddo,” she assured me as she slid into the car. “It wasn’t me.”

A wave of relief calmed my churning stomach. Of course it wasn’t Barbara. I felt light with new energy as I climbed into the driver’s seat. How could I have even imagined her a murderer?

“But Sergeant Oakley thinks it might have been me,” Barbara added cheerfully. “So we’ll just have to find out who really killed Sheila. Then everything will be fine.”

We argued all the way home. I said I wasn’t going to investigate. She said if I didn’t want to help, she’d do it herself. I said that could be dangerous to her health. She said it would be more dangerous to her health to be convicted of murder. I said I didn’t believe that Sergeant Oakley thought she was any more likely a murderer than the rest of us. Barbara reminded me that she was a psychic. She knew Oakley suspected her. I asked her why she didn’t just figure out who the killer was with her psychic powers.

She turned to me, her eyes pinched with unhappiness.

“Kate, I think I’ve lost them,” she whispered.

“Your psychic powers?” I asked.

She nodded, then took a deep breath and went on. “I tried to tune in to the murderer, to anyone really. And all I got was a garble of voices that didn’t connect to the people in the room.” Her voice grew fainter as she put a hand over her face. “Kate, I’m worried. I don’t think I’ve lost the ability completely, but it’s all screwed up. It’s not working.”

“Maybe the voices were spirit guides,” I suggested glibly. I wouldn’t have recognized a spirit guide if one had shaken my hand, but Barbara had mentioned them often enough. In fact, I was never quite sure if Barbara was actually psychic, or just very sensitive to nonverbal cues. But Barbara’s belief in her own psychic powers was at her core. The belief in their loss had to have shaken her.

“Maybe they were spirit guides,” she repeated slowly, but her face was still troubled. “No, it won’t wash,” she said after a moment. “Something is seriously out of whack. Maybe the body…” Her voice trailed off.

Poor Barbara. I had to distract her somehow.

“I guess we could talk to some of the people from the class,” I offered. “Find out what they saw—”

I stopped myself as I heard my own words. What was I saying?

Barbara grinned at me and I remembered that I had wanted to distract her. Well, I had.

“When we call them,” she said eagerly, “we can find out who knew who, and how they feel—”

“Actually, I don’t think we can contact the people in the class,” I interrupted, backpedaling as fast as I could. “We don’t know most of these guys’ last names, much less their addresses and phone numbers. How could we even find them?”

“Easy,” she said, her grin deepening. She drew a folded, lined sheet of paper from her jumpsuit pocket. “I’ve got the sign-up list,” she told me.

Damn.

By the time we arrived at Barbara’s apartment building, I had uneasily agreed to make a few calls. Nothing more, I told her. She laughed and planted a kiss on my cheek before departing. Then she was gone in a blur of hot pink.

I felt a hundred years older, but not any wiser, when I walked into my dark house five minutes later. My hands were shaking as I shut the door behind me. I leaned up against it, my forehead pressed to its wooden surface as my mind played reruns of Sheila’s dead body.

Then I heard a faint sound close behind me in the dark. It was the sound of someone breathing very quietly. I listened for movement. There was none. Only the sinister, quiet breathing. I slid my hand toward the doorknob, then turned it slowly. The squeaking of the doorknob as it turned sounded like a scream in the quiet. I yanked at the door, pulling it open all of six inches before I felt the hand on my shoulder.

“Gotcha,” a voice whispered.

TAI CHI MOVES came to me instantly. I centered myself, then whirled around to face the whisperer, my knees bent, my arms positioned to protect my body.

It took me a moment to recognize the malicious face smiling in the dark. Vesta Caruso. Of course, it was Vesta. Reluctantly, I let my arms drop. My body was still tingling. When I took the time to think, I realized it couldn’t have been anyone else. But my head had been too full of images of Sheila’s dead body to think. I had forgotten all about Wayne’s mother. I had been prepared to fight.

“What’s the matter, little Miss High-and-Mighty?” hissed Vesta, clearly pleased with the sensation she had created. “Got a guilty conscience?”

My body was still ready to fight. Fueled by leftover adrenaline, my arms rose again without permission. I stared at Vesta’s tall, skinny body. Just one little shove, my arms pleaded, and she’d topple right over.

I forced my arms back down, horrified at my own thoughts, my hands suddenly cold and shaking.

A light blazed on, momentarily blinding me. As my vision returned, I saw Wayne at the light switch.

I took one look at his homely, scarred face and felt a surge of warmth rising from my abdomen and spreading through my torso and down my arms toward my cold fingertips. I had grown conditioned to his heavy eyebrows, cauliflower nose, and curly brown hair. Conditioned to his tall, muscular body. The sight of Wayne stimulated a response of love in me as instantly as the sound of an electric can opener stimulates hunger in a cat.

“Everything okay?” he asked, his voice low and gruff. I could see only the bottom halves of his eyes under the low, heavy brows, and they looked worried.

Why was he worried? Was I late? I looked down at my watch. It was a little after nine-thirty, not much later than the time I would have come home if the class had proceeded normally. Past nine-thirty, and time to tell all.

“Something happened at the class tonight—” I began in a whisper.

“Look at her,” Vesta cut in, her tone high and triumphant. She squinted her eyes at me. “She’s acting funny. You ask me, she’s hiding something.”

I shut my mouth abruptly. I wanted to tell Wayne every detail of my evening, and then weep in his arms. But I wasn’t going to make a move until Vesta left us alone.

I stared at the woman, with the absurd hope that she’d take the hint. Her face was a fairy-tale witch’s, with small navy blue eyes under low brows, a long, crooked nose and a thin, malicious mouth, all topped by a long tangle of dyed black hair. The only thing that was missing was the pointed hat. Wayne’s homeliness filled me with love. Vesta’s didn’t. Not that I have anything against witches. Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, had been my personal hero when I was a child. Unfortunately, Vesta had more in common with the Wicked Witch of the West.

“Ask her what she’s been doing,” she commanded Wayne. She pointed an accusing finger in my direction.

“Mom, don’t,” Wayne begged softly. He held out a hand. Was it for me?

Vesta strode toward him and laid claim to the hand before I had a chance. Wayne gazed at me over her shoulder, his rough face a study in frustration. Maybe I wouldn’t wait for Vesta to leave.

“The woman who owned the restaurant—” I began again.

“Waynie,” interrupted Vesta, her voice suddenly quavering. “I had a chest pain just now. Do you think it was a heart attack?”

He looked into her face. “Are you serious, Mom?”

“Oh, yes,” she answered. “I hate to trouble you, but it scared me a little.”

“I’ll call the doctor,” he said brusquely.

“No, no,” she whispered. “I’ll talk to a doctor tomorrow…”

Wayne sighed, then put an arm around his mother and led her down the hall to the back room, now her bedroom. Another round to Vesta. I believed her report of chest pain about as much as I believed politicians who said they just wanted to be of service.

I waited for a few minutes, still standing there in the entryway, hoping that Wayne would be back. Then I stomped into the bedroom alone, changed into a bathing suit and stomped out onto the back deck to soak in the hot tub.

My cat, C.C., joined me after I had climbed into the tub. She sat in a chair a safe foot away and complained. I slid in deeper, letting the hot water boil away the tension in my muscles. If C.C. was meowing about Vesta Caruso, I was in complete agreement.

Vesta hadn’t been born a Caruso, or even married one. She had been born Vesta Skeritt, but had changed her name to Mrs. Caruso when Wayne was born, listing the father as Enrico Caruso. Wayne didn’t know exactly why she had chosen the opera singer’s name. A joke? Defiance? Wishful thinking? I had felt such pity for Vesta, starting off at eighteen as a single mother in the days when single mothers were identified by far less positive descriptions. I still felt for her occasionally, at least when I wasn’t in her malign presence.