A Stiff Critique

A Stiff Critique

by Jaqueline Girdner

Copyright © 1995 by Jaqueline Girdner

Published by E-Reads. All rights reserved.

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KATE JASPER MYSTERIES

by Jaqueline Girdner

Available from E-Reads

ADJUSTED TO DEATH

THE LAST RESORT

TEA-TOTALLY DEAD

A STIFF CRITIQUE

DEATH HITS THE FAN

MURDER, MY DEER

To my agent, Deborah Schneider, for her wise advice, encouragement and support.

And to my doctor, Anna Vertkin, for solving the real-life mystery.

Thank you both so much.

- Prologue -

It came back, as if in a dream.

Hands on the wheel of the Volkswagen van. Heart pumping. Mind racing. The sound of the engine roaring, the wind screaming through a crack in the side window.

And then he is there, in front of the van, his arms waving. His eyes widen with the realization that the van isn’t going to stop.

One last desperate yank at the wheel, to the left. But the man dives in the same direction. At the same instant.

And then the thud. A noise that was sound and feeling. Forever repeated.

Tears obscuring the windshield. Foot on the gas.

One more bump as the Volkswagen rolls over the dead body. The dead man. Dead. He had to be dead.

And then a whisper. “What have I done?”

-
One -

“‘“I shall not stay behind. I will dress as a man if I must, but I shall go with you,” Aurelia declared, her opal eyes sparkling with fresh determination.’“ Nan Millard paused in her reading to slap yet another white sheet of paper face down onto the stack on the glass-topped table in front of her. The stack had to be a quarter of an inch high. She went on. “‘“No, you must not!” Dalton cried. He reached out for her silken white hand…’“

Nan had been reading for at least half an hour on that Saturday afternoon in July. I resisted the urge to look at my watch. That would be rude. And it was my first time at this writers’ critique group. I didn’t want to embarrass my friend Carrie.

I snuck a look at Carrie. She at least appeared attentive. Carrie was a short, round, African-American woman with freckles scattered like cinnamon over her caffe latte skin. She was even shorter than I was, but unlike me she had a very tall personality. She had to. She was an appellate attorney. Her dark eyes were wide with what might have been intelligent interest in Nan’s reading. But when I looked at her hands, sure enough, she was wiggling her fingers, one by one. I recognized the habit from some twenty years ago when we had come fresh out of college to work together in a mental hospital. If Carrie was wiggling her fingers like that, it meant that she was either bored or worried or angry. Or all of them combined.

I tried and failed to catch her eye, then guiltily jerked my head back to Nan, promising myself to focus on what she had written and was so lovingly presenting to us.

“‘“It would be no life for you, my darling,” he said. “It’s still a frontier out there. No running water. No electricity. And nothing but men.”’“ Nan smiled widely, showing perfect white teeth. Maybe she was thinking of all those men. She recrossed her long, tan legs. “‘A bird called outside the window. The call seemed sad to Aurelia suddenly, infinitely sad. “Must you go?” she asked softly…’“

I let my eyes drift to the others sitting in Slade Skinner’s living room. I had been briefly introduced around when I came in with Carrie, but I had lost most of their names as Nan read on. And on.

There was the very thin woman perched on a carved wooden chair. Was her name Vicky? I wondered why she was so thin. Maybe she was sick. AIDS? I hoped not for her sake. And the woman sitting by her dressed in swirls of purple cotton was Donna. I remembered her. She had tripped over one of the coffee tables on the way in.

Those tables, made of curling wrought iron with glass tops, looked like incorrigible leg-biters to me. The whole room seemed aggressively Western. Red-tiled floors, with Indian scatter rugs, coppery leather sofas and tall, carved wooden chairs. At least it was cool in here, mercifully cool after the July heat outside.

Slade himself held a dumbbell in his fist, which he was rhythmically pumping up and down, inflating and deflating his biceps muscle. And he was staring at that muscle with unabashed admiration. It was his living room. I guessed he could do what he wanted. It didn’t seem to bother Nan. He switched the dumbbell to his other hand. Up, down. Up, down.

“‘“I wouldn’t have a poor man marry you, not even myself,” Dalton whispered. Aurelia tossed a stand of bronze-burnished hair from her fair face.’“ Nan tossed her own blond hair from her tanned face as she spoke. She had a model’s good looks, a California model’s. Good tan, good teeth, good legs. I could see most of her legs below the cream-colored miniskirt she was wearing. “‘“And I shall return, my darling. I promise you…”’“

It seemed to me he had already made this particular promise to Aurelia. More than a few times. But I might have been wrong. I continued my survey of the living room.

A woman with black, permed hair who looked like she should be a blonde sat on one of the leather sofas, her eyes half-closed, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth noisily. I hoped she wasn’t having an asthma attack. A well-built man with Asian features was on her left, staring through tinted glasses, his body and head completely still. It was kind of spooky to be that still, I decided with a little shiver. The elderly woman on the black-haired woman’s right side wasn’t still or spooky, though. Her eyes were bright and her face animated as she listened to Nan. She nodded as Nan slapped another sheet of paper facedown.

“Good golly, that’s mighty interesting stuff you’ve got there,” she put in quickly. Her raspy voice was a welcome contrast to Nan’s smooth tones. She took off her thick glasses and wiped them with the hem of her lavender jacket as she spoke. “Might want to skip to the chase, though. There’s a lot of good grub in the kitchen waiting to be eaten.”

“Only for you, Mave,” Nan said with a flash of white teeth. She blew the older woman a kiss and thumbed through the chunk of paper in her hand.

Right, I remembered, the older woman’s name was Mave Quentin. And then the others popped into my head. The woman with the black, permed hair was Joyce something-or-other. The Asian man was Russell, Russell Wu. And the drop-dead handsome man sitting next to Carrie on the other sofa was Trevor. No, Travis. God, he was gorgeous. He looked like a gypsy with his long black hair, swarthy skin and big brown eyes. I wondered why he was scowling, not that it detracted from his looks any. Was he angry with Nan? Or maybe—

“I’ll skip ahead to chapter thirteen,” Nan said, interrupting my speculation. She took a deep breath, then resumed. “‘“I haven’t heard from him in months,” Aurelia told Polly. Her eyes shone with impending tears. “Is he dead? Has he found someone else to love, someone else to caress as he once caressed me?” Polly shrugged her square shoulders. Then she bent forward, her cold blue eyes glinting. “Marry Harry,” she said. Aurelia put her face into her hands. A bird called nearby…’“

Maybe Polly could shoot the bird, I mused. She seemed pretty practical.

“‘“But I don’t love Harry…”’“

I leaned back in my chair and asked myself how the hell I had ended up at this critique group. It was all Wayne’s fault, I decided. My own eyes got misty. I had put Wayne on an airplane to visit his uncle for a couple of weeks the night before, and now I was suffering all the separation anxiety of…well, of Aurelia and Dalton. God, it was true, I realized. Disgusting but true. No wonder I was having such a hard time listening to Nan.

I sat up straighter until I felt the carved wood of my chair pressing against my shoulders. I pushed back, hoping the pressure would keep me alert. I was here for the critique group and I ought to listen. Of course, Wayne was the real writer. He wrote wonderful short stories, gentle dissections of human nature surprising from such a shy man. A couple of his stories had even been published. And then suddenly, in the midst of designing the gag gifts I made for a living, I had felt an urge to write something myself. Something besides silly slogans for the sides of coffee cups. Something like poetry.

Not that I would have ever shown the poems to anyone. I had only told two people of their existence, Wayne and Carrie. And when Carrie had suggested I come to this critique group to hear working writers discussing their work, I had agreed. But only after instructing her to tell people I wrote short stories if she was asked. Somehow, writing short stories seemed a lot less embarrassing to me than writing poetry.

I took a deep breath, clamped my eyeballs onto Nan Millard’s face and willed myself to listen.

“‘The man with the heavy brown beard looked somehow familiar,’“ Nan was reading. “‘The way his golden eyes folded at the edges. My God, it was Dalton!’“

What a surprise.

“‘She opened her arms, forgetting Harry. Forgetting everyone but the man who stood before her…’“

My mind drifted back to the design I had been working on before Carrie had come to take me to the critique group, a necktie in the shape of a computer with a matching tie tack in the shape of a computer bug. My ex-husband had convinced me there was money to be made in computer-nerd gag gifts. A vision of computer earrings danced into my mind.

“‘But Dalton did not return Aurelia’s embrace. “You’re a married woman now,” he hissed. His familiar eyes glittered with anger—’“

“No shit,” a voice muttered.

I looked around, afraid for an instant that my own mind had spoken out loud. But Nan was looking at Travis, her eyes narrowed with anger, if not glittering. Uh-oh.

I stiffened, waiting for the explosion. But then Nan bared her white teeth in a smile.

“I’ll take that as a compliment, Travis, dear,” she said, her voice high with false sweetness. “I’m so, so very glad you’re involved in the story sufficiently to identify with Dalton.”

“Me?!” Travis protested, leaping from the sofa. “Me? I don’t identify with that jerk. He’s a complete idiot!”

Carrie stood now too, putting a restraining hand on one of Travis’s oscillating arms. Travis muttered something under his breath. But he sat back down.

“Grow up,” Slade advised a beat later, his eyes still on his biceps.

Travis jumped back to his feet, his mouth open, his arms spread wide. But Carrie spoke before he had a chance.

“You will both stop this behavior right now,” she commanded. She straightened her back, seeming to grow a good three feet. “We are intelligent adults here, not squabbling children.”

Slade shrugged his shoulders as he passed the dumbbell from one hand to the other. Then he started pumping again. I could see why he chose his biceps to look at. The rest of him wasn’t as impressive: a tall, stringy body with a small but distinct pot belly for all his weight-lifting, and a weasely kind of face complete with close-set eyes and weak chin. His thin, graying hair was pulled back into a pony tail.

“But I—” Travis began.

Carrie glared at him. It was a good, laser kind of glare, born of years of practice with her two children. Not to mention numerous recalcitrant judges.

Travis shut his mouth and sat back down, scowling silently once more, looking even more handsome than he had before. The dark eyelashes shading his big brown eyes must have been nearly a full inch long. I wondered if Slade was jealous of the younger, better-looking man. That might explain the way he had goaded him.

“I suppose the reading portion of the afternoon is over,” drawled Nan. She reached her arms behind her and stretched before adding, “By popular demand.”

Smiles broke out on some faces. Mavis chuckled.

“Okay,” Nan said, all business now. “Most of you have read the whole manuscript anyhow. How about some feedback?”