A Stiff Critique (30 page)

“Do we know anything more than we did when we got here?” I asked Carrie on the way out to the car.

“Not to my knowledge,” she answered.

It never hurts to check.

Our visit to Donna’s house was even quicker than our visit to Mave’s. Donna was at home. But so were her two children. And either Dacia or Dustin had taken one of the four cats and dumped it into the fish tank. Donna was trying to dry the dripping cat as she opened the door.

“Dustin did it!” Dacia shouted. The wet cat screeched and jumped out of Donna’s grasp, leaving two bleeding stripes on her arms.

“Uh-uh,” protested Dustin. “I don’t even like the stupid cat—”

“The cats aren’t stupid!” Dacia roared.

“Now, what are we learning about truth and cooperation?” Donna asked, kneeling in front of the two children.

“Yeah, Dustin,” Dacia said, placing her chubby hands on her eight-year-old hips. “You lying little scumbag—”

“Am not! Am not!”

“Perhaps this isn’t a good time,” Carrie interjected.

“Oh no, it’s fine,” Donna said over her shoulder. Then she turned back to her children. “I want you both to go into the meditation room now and meditate on the karmic importance of telling the truth. And remember your affirmations. And then, when you’re ready, you can come and tell me what actually happened.”

The children glared at her for a moment, then marched into the meditation room and slammed the door shut. Donna stood up and motioned us through the front doorway.

“We wondered if you had any idea who murdered Nan and Slade,” I blurted right out. I figured there was no time for subtlety if we were going to get any answers before Donna’s kids came back in.

“Well, um, I—” Donna began.

Something crashed in the meditation room, something that sounded big and heavy. A body? Then we heard the screams. I listened carefully and was relieved to make out two separate voices. At least neither Dustin nor Dacia had been killed. Not yet anyway.

Donna sprinted to the door leading to the meditation room. She tripped over a pile of roller blades when she was almost there and hit the door with her head. The blow didn’t slow her down any, though.

“Mahatma Gandhi!” she shouted as she wrenched the door open. “Be like Mahatma Gandhi!” Then she disappeared into the room.

“Children are so incredibly spontaneous,” she said when she joined us a few minutes later.

She was smiling, so I didn’t bother to ask if her incredibly spontaneous children were all right. Or even which one of them had dumped the cat into the fish tank.

“Back to who killed Slade and Nan,” I prompted instead.

Not that it did us any good. Donna told us she thought it must be “incredibly traumatic” to have committed two murders and not be able to talk about it. Then she assured us that some good would come out of the murders, at least karmically speaking. And finally she let us know once more that her father and she were communicating really well now and that he had nothing to do with the two deaths.

“Do you think Donna’s trying to convince herself or us that her father’s not a murderer?” I asked Carrie on the way out to the car.

“Both.”

We went to my house after that and discussed murder theories while C.C. paced for us. If we didn’t solve the murder, it wouldn’t be for want of trying. Carrie had even brought a laptop computer for the exercise. She typed in four categories: suspect names, connections between suspects, notable facts and possible motives. The computer didn’t cough up the identity of the murderer at the end of the exercise. Maybe it needed a special program to do that.

We did reach one unanimous conclusion, however. Dacia had been the one to throw the cat into the fish tank.

“I give up,” I said finally. “Let’s get something to eat and then go see Russell.”

“Why Russell?” Carrie asked, her eyebrows going up. “Do you believe he’s our murderer?”

“No, no,” I said, squirming in my chair. “I don’t know if he’s our murderer or not. But he’s gotta stop following me—”

“I thought he
had
stopped following you.”

“Maybe.” I squirmed a little more, embarrassed to share my fears. “But maybe he’s just keeping out of my sight. Anyway, I have to tell him about Wayne, just in case he really does have a crush on me. And if he doesn’t have a crush on me, then why the hell is he following me? If he can’t explain himself, I’ll…I’ll…”

“You’ll what, Kate?”

- Twenty-Three -

“Tell the police?” I said. At least I tried to say it, but it came out more of a question than a statement.

Carrie nodded, though, as if satisfied, then asked, “And what will you do if Russell admits to having a crush on you?”

I worried about that question and worse all through dinner at Miranda’s Restaurant. I should have been paying attention to their Indonesian tofu and vegetables. But even the spicy peanut sauce couldn’t capture my full interest. It barely got a nod from my taste buds. Especially since Carrie had called from my house and made a date to interview Russell after we ate dinner.

“Hello again,” Russell greeted us at his apartment door.

I stared at his tinted glasses, which had turned completely opaque in the light of the doorway, and searched for the hidden meaning of his words. Did he said “again” because he had been following me all this time? Or was he making fun of my coming to see him? What if he thought I was interested in him? What if—

“Thank you for agreeing to speak to us this evening,” Carrie said as Russell motioned us through the doorway.

“Yeah, thanks,” I mumbled, following her in.

The same tiger-striped cat that we had met before was on Russell’s blue-and-white-checked sofa. I sat down on one side of her and Carrie sat down on the other. The cat sniffed me for a moment, then jumped into my lap and began purring. Great. Maybe she had a crush on me too.

Russell sat down across from us on a wooden chair, a hint of a smile tugging at his lips.

“What can I do for you, ladies?” he asked formally.

“We would like to discuss the murders with you,” Carrie replied after a moment had passed. “But Kate had some specific issues she wanted to address first.”

She turned to me, and I saw that she was wiggling her fingers, one by one. Maybe she was as nervous as I was. Though I doubted it.

“Listen, Russell,” I said, my voice far too loud. I modulated it as I stumbled on. “I…I want to thank you for not following me anymore. It was making me really…” My mind searched for the right word. Upset? Frightened? Frantic? Nuts? “…uncomfortable,” I finally finished.

He tilted his head gently downward. Was that a nod?

“Anyway,” I pressed on, looking down at my own lap. I’d never be able to finish if I were looking him in the eye. Or in tinted glasses, for that matter. “I’m living with a really wonderful man right now. His name’s Wayne. He’s been on vacation, but he’s coming back soon.”

I stopped to take a breath and looked back up. Russell didn’t look like he’d moved an inch, but his skin was pinker than it had been before. A lot pinker.

“So I won’t need your protection anymore,” I finished up as fast as I could. I was pretty sure I’d made my point. With a sledgehammer.

“I suppose I should explain,” Russell put in quickly. “I knew you’d confronted a murderer before and I thought that by following you, I might learn something.” He paused. “To use for my true-crime writing, that’s all.”

“Right, right,” I agreed, bouncing my head up and down like a ping pong ball on an elastic string. “Of course.”

Strangely enough, it was the plausibility of his alternative explanation that finally convinced me that he really had been infatuated with me. I was pretty sure he wasn’t infatuated anymore, though. I was trying to think of what I could say to relieve his embarrassment, and my embarrassment, when Carrie spoke up.

“We spoke to Mave Quentin earlier today,” she told Russell, her voice matter of fact. “Mave indicated that you and she had discussed the murders. We wondered if you had come to any conclusions.”

I turned to Carrie gratefully and listened as Russell discussed all the conclusions he hadn’t reached. He dismissed the idea of Donna’s father being involved in the murders for a number of reasons that I had a hard time hearing over the sound of my pulse celebrating a successful mission. However awkwardly, I
had
finally managed to tell Russell about Wayne.

Russell went on to discuss and dismiss each of the group members as suspects. No one had the expected psychological profile of a serial murderer.

“But of course, anyone can kill given the right circumstances,” he told us finally. He turned his head my way slowly. “Each and every one of us has that potential.”

Uh-oh. The hair prickled on my arms. I had a feeling I had gone from object of desire to object of suspicion sometime in the last half hour. Probably around the time I’d used the sledgehammer on Russell.

“Perhaps something will be revealed to us at tomorrow’s meeting,” Carrie concluded briskly. She stood up. “Thank you for your help, Russell.”

I jumped up after her, remembering the cat in my lap too late. The cat landed on her feet, though. I told myself Russell would do the same as we said our goodbyes.

Carrie didn’t comment on the way I’d handled Russell as we drove to Joyce’s place. She didn’t even tease me. She was a better person than I would have been in her position. Much better.

“Thanks,” I muttered once we got out of the car in front of Operation Soup Pot’s headquarters.

“Thank
you,
” she answered and gave me a one-armed hug before we climbed the long flight of stairs that took us past the headquarters to Joyce’s apartment.

Not that we ever got inside Joyce’s apartment. Joyce answered the door herself, but she didn’t invite us in. She stood blocking her doorway instead.

“I’m meditating now,” she whispered.

“Perhaps you could take a few minutes to talk,” Carrie suggested as I peeked around Joyce. I couldn’t see anyone or anything suspicious in her simply furnished living room.

As Joyce stared at Carrie, I noticed that her eyes were reddened behind her oversized glasses. I wondered if she had been crying. Or maybe she hadn’t been sleeping well. Worrying about murder can do that to a person. Not to mention overwork and a few other things.

“Just for a minute,” Joyce agreed finally, not moving from the doorway. She closed her reddened eyes and brushed the back of her hand across her forehead and over her permed black hair in a gesture that spoke of exhaustion. “I really do need to get back to my meditation.”

“We wondered if you had any idea about the murders—” Carrie began.

But Joyce was already shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any answers for you now,” she said softly. A faint blush stained her cheeks. “And I’m very tired.”

“We will see you tomorrow, won’t we?” Carrie asked.

Joyce nodded solemnly, then looked down at her feet.

We left her to her meditation.

“Do you think she was afraid of us?” I asked Carrie when we got back to the car.

“Probably. A visit from possible murderers could reasonably arouse fear in anyone.”

“In anyone but the killer. The killer’s the only one who knows we aren’t killers ourselves.”

“Yes,” Carrie agreed thoughtfully. “It makes one wonder why the others aren’t more afraid of us.”

That topic kept us busy until Carrie dropped me back at my house. Not that we ever came to any conclusions.

“Shall we ride together to the regular group meeting at Donna’s tomorrow?” Carrie asked me from her car window.

“Sure,” I answered, swallowing a groan. “I’ll drive.”

I picked up
Cool Fallout
once I was safe inside my house. Maybe there was a clue buried in the manuscript. But if there was, did that mean there might be a clue in Nan’s work too? Would I actually have to read Nan’s work?

I shrugged away the questions and settled down in my comfy chair to read. Peter Dahlgren was calling his detectives again. He tells them they have to find Warren Lee. Then he stands up and looks out his window. His eyes fix on a figure twenty stories below on the street—

The phone shrilled. My phone, not Peter Dahlgren’s. Though for a jarring instant, I wasn’t certain whose phone it was. Sherman Francis Skinner could write, no matter what his name was, I decided, and picked up the receiver.

“Kate,” a low, rough voice said.

“Wayne!” I whooped and jumped from my chair.

“Coming home Sunday night,” he told me. “If that’s okay with you—”

“Okay? Of course it’s okay!” I danced in circles, pretending that the receiver was Wayne’s shoulder, loving him long distance all the more for the misplaced humility that made him ask if it was okay to come home. We talked for two and a half hours. And I never mentioned the murders. In fact, I actually forgot about them.

Wayne was coming home.

And that was the only thing that mattered.

*

Unfortunately, I remembered the murders again as soon as I got up on Saturday morning. And I didn’t stop thinking about them as I fed the cat, did paperwork and fixed an olive, garlic and caper pâté to take to the afternoon meeting of the critique group.