Most Likely to Die (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (21 page)

- Twenty-One -

“What to do you mean, what haven’t I told you?” I sputtered as I pulled back onto the main road. “Nothing, nothing at all.”

Except for that little old death threat, it was pretty much the truth.

I drove a few miles in silence, looking at Wayne out of the corner of my eye, hoping he wouldn’t see me do it. His brows were pulled three quarters of the way over his eyes, his face set in gargoyle mode. All he needed was a fountain of water spouting out of his mouth and they could clamp him onto the wall of a castle alongside the drawbridge.

“Nothing important anyway,” I amended. Wayne usually knew when I was lying anyway.

He didn’t move a hair.

“You know,” I followed up, finding myself suddenly more than defensive. Finding myself angry. “I don’t have to tell you everything. You could give me credit for being able to assess what’s important and what’s not. For being able to decide what you need to know and what you don’t.” Self-righteousness was pumping into my bloodstream now, obliterating that pesky old rationality.

“What am I supposed to do?” I finished up in full snit. “Give you a complete written report every time I come home?”

I tromped out my anger on the gas pedal, taking the curves like I was in Wayne’s Jaguar instead of my own Toyota. Kate-io Andretti at the wheel.

“Is this why you want a traditional marriage, so I’ll be a good little traditional wife—”

“Sorry,” came a whisper from my side.

I wasn’t actually sure I’d heard it at first. I risked another quick sideways glance as the car zoomed ahead. Wayne’s face was no longer made of stone. It was made of soft vulnerable flesh again. Soft, white, vulnerable flesh.

“Kate?” he requested, his voice low and quiet. “Could you slow down a little? Not that there’s anything wrong with the way you’re driving,” he assured me quickly. “But just because it would make me feel more comfortable?”

Those brown hills were whizzing by pretty fast. Actually, they were a complete blur, along with most of the road. I squinted at the speedometer and eased up on the gas pedal immediately. Jeez, no wonder Wayne was white. I eased up on my snit too as the Toyota slowed to a more reasonable speed.

“I know you don’t really want a traditional wife,” I told him. Then I let out a long sigh made up of righteousness leaking away. “If you did, you’d be asking someone else to marry you. But, Wayne, really, that’s what I’m so afraid of. I like living with you. Most of the time I love living with you. I love you! I just don’t want to screw it up.”

“You’re right,” he murmured, and a wave of guilt carried away the last prickles of my self-righteousness with it.

By the time I saw Aurora’s Illuminations Bookstore, we were both insisting that whatever the other one had been saying all along was probably absolutely correct. Ethically, practically, and emotionally.

I braked, cutting short Wayne’s admission that his insecurity was at the root of any and all the problems we had and would ever have, and parked under the rainbow glow of the illuminations bookstore sign. Some people are just impossible to fight with.

Aurora’s bookstore was packed, and not just with books. The smell of incense vied with the scent of aromatherapy oils. Celestial strings and Tibetan bells played in the background as a number of customers browsed and talked. And there were crystals everywhere, catching the light and refracting it in competing illuminations across books and jewelry and artifacts. Maybe these rainbow flashes were the illuminations that had inspired the bookstore’s name, though I had a feeling something a little less physical and more metaphysical was probably the source.

“Do you have singing bowls?” a gray-haired woman was asking a larger red-haired woman behind the counter. A red-haired woman who was not Aurora. Damn. What if Aurora wasn’t here? Everything and everyone else was.

I looked down one row of bookshelves, neatly labeled, “Astrology, Enneagram, Kabbalah, Tarot, Shamanism,” and didn’t catch a glimpse of Aurora. Though I did see one of Lillian’s bronze busts, staring back regally. I looked down another row, “Recovery-Continued, Tantric Yoga, Sacred Languages, Ayurveda,” and finally at the end, near “Buddhism,” I saw Aurora listening earnestly to a young woman with a long blond braid that snaked down past her waist.

“But isn’t that just attachment too?” the young woman was asking her. Demanding of her. “Thinking that one individual’s oppression is important enough to worry about. I mean just look at Tibet…”

Aurora took that moment to look instead over the young woman’s shoulder at Wayne and myself. A flutter of concern traveled over her serene face. I gave her a quick wave, hoping she’d abandon the young woman in favor of us and feeling guilty at the same time. The young woman was probably a paying customer. Then again, maybe she wasn’t.

“Excuse me, dear,” Aurora said, placing a gentle hand on the young woman’s arm. “I must take care of something.”

The young woman stopped talking mid-sentence and then began looking around for another victim as Aurora left her. An older bearded man came walking innocently down the row of books.

“Have you studied Buddhism?” the young woman asked him.

I would have advised a firm “no” as an answer, but of course he didn’t receive the benefit of my psychic warning.

“Well, a little—”

The young woman interrupted, demanding to know whether the man had read
Zen in America
just as Aurora reached us. When he admitted that he had, she began to quiz him about the tenth chapter of the book.

“The Gravendale police called me a few minutes ago about Elaine Timmons’s death,” Aurora announced quietly without any other greeting. “Did you know?”

“Uh-huh,” I answered her briefly, not telling her yet that we’d found the body. I was relieved to hear that the Gravendale police were finally moving on Elaine’s death. I’d wondered why they hadn’t contacted Charlie or Mark yet. And then I took a brief moment to ask myself if Sergeant Gonzales would be angry that Wayne and I were the first to speak to the two men about the murder. I clenched my teeth. Of course, he’d be—

“Kate needs to use your telephone,” Wayne greeted Aurora just as brusquely as she’d greeted him.

“About Elaine’s death?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

Aurora stood stock-still for a moment, peering through her thick glasses into Wayne’s eyes, seeking something. The truth about Elaine’s death? The truth of the universe? A more polite request?

“I’ll explain while Kate phones,” Wayne promised.

Aurora just nodded then and took me by the arm to a tiny room in the back with a desk stacked with paperwork. It looked like my desk at home except for the crystal paperweights and incense bowls. And another of Lillian’s statues staring down at us from its niche in the wall.

“Feel free to make any calls you need to,” Aurora told me, pointing at the edge of a lavender phone sticking out from under a tipped-over pile of ledgers. Yeah, a lot like my desk. Then she left and closed the door behind her.

I sat down at the desk, if sitting is the term for leaning forward on a chair that supports your knees more than your bottom, set my purse on top of the least precarious set of papers, and found Pam’s business card. I dialed her number eagerly, ready to ask her what she’d seen at Elaine’s, even ready to ask her if she’d known the memorial singer before, but instead of hearing her lively voice on the other end of the line I ended up in the seemingly endless maze of voice mail. In the midst of punching random digits and pound signs, I looked at my watch. It was almost one o’clock. Pam was probably out to lunch. I hung up without leaving a message, unwilling to run the maze any longer. I’d try Pam again later and hope that I could catch her in real time.

I got up to leave, then looked back down at the desk, considering rifling Aurora’s papers for some clue of a link to Sid or Elaine’s death, but the impulse died of its own will in less than a moment. There was nothing here but business. I walked out of her tiny office to enter metaphysical wonderland again.

Wayne and Aurora were huddled together, still standing, in a far corner of the store devoted to some of the larger items. Meditation cushions, Buddhas, altars, gongs, and shamanic drums, among other things. It was relatively quiet there, the celestial strings, bells, and customer conversation a muted backdrop for the sound of Aurora’s firm, deep voice.

“Jack and I left the memorial service together in his truck,” she was saying. “We talked on the ride back to Gravendale. Really talked. I truly believe Jack’s beginning to heal now. The shock of Sid’s death has made the preciousness of Jack’s own life awaken in his consciousness. How this lightness can come from such darkness is truly amazing, but it has. Still, the darkness must be addressed. We must figure out who’s doing these terrible things.”

“Where did you go once you got back to Gravendale?” Wayne asked, skipping the more philosophical issues, however much they might have tempted him. And I was sure they did. Wayne was a sucker for a philosophical conundrum.

I joined them silently, waiting for her answer.

“Jack dropped me off here at the store,” Aurora said, nodding brusquely to note my arrival at the same time. “I believe he went to Karma-Kanick then to meet Lillian.”

“Was Lillian there?” Wayne pressed.

“I assume she was.” Aurora peered at him again. “Was that when Elaine was murdered?” she asked. “After the memorial?”

Wayne opened his mouth to answer. I elbowed him gently in the ribs. I wasn’t sure that we should be giving out information so freely anymore. I didn’t want to hear from Sergeant Gonzales, or Chief Irick for that matter, about interfering in an official police investigation. It was a little late for discretion, but still.

“Sergeant Gonzales didn’t give me any details except to say Elaine Timmons had been murdered,” Aurora went on. “And to demand my presence at his office.” She looked down at her watch. “In approximately an hour.”

“Yes, it was after the memorial,” Wayne told her. “We found her body.” So much for discretion. Maybe I should have elbowed him harder.

Aurora paled slightly, looking older now.

“But why?” she muttered, looking around her absently. “Why Elaine? Because she was Elaine? Or because she knew something about Sid’s death?”

Or both, I thought as she pulled out three meditation cushions and set them on the floor, taking her place cross-legged on one and motioning us to the other two.

Wayne and I took our places on the remaining cushions, not quite so gracefully as Aurora had. She looked at me for a few heartbeats, then at Wayne.

“I have no answers,” she declared finally. “Do you have answers?”

We shook our heads as one. If we had answers, we would be talking to the police, not here in Illuminations, overdosing on incense and metaphysics.

Aurora bent forward. “I’ll be honest,” she said, her voice hushed. “I don’t believe anyone in my family is involved in these two deaths. I didn’t kill either Sid or Elaine. And I truly believe neither Lillian nor Jack is capable of such an act.” She closed her eyes for a moment before going on. “Though I do feel I must tell you something that you may find out anyway. Jack’s father killed himself. A year after you all graduated Gravendale High.”

A tiny shock buzzed up my spine. Poor Aurora. No wonder she hovered over Jack. I reached over and patted her hand impulsively. No wonder she was searching so hard for answers to the human condition.

She smiled at my touch and held my hand in her cool, dry ones for a moment before going on. “Manic Kanick, they used to call my husband.” Her eyes softened. “He was an incredible man, full of energy. An architect. Alive and loving. But when the despair would overwhelm him, it really overwhelmed him. The pain was too much for him. He took an overdose of pills in 1969. That was when Jack began having real problems.” She straightened her spine, her posture yoga-perfect. “But my husband turned it inward, you see. Jack turns it inward too. Not outward.”

Wayne nodded sagely. He was the one who read all the pop psychology books. I wondered if he was nodding in real agreement or just being polite. I also wondered if despair turned inward necessarily precluded anger turned outward.

“And if I rule out my own family, then who?” Aurora went on. “You kids all had your own challenges to face. All of you. Becky, Pam, Natalie, Charlie, and Mark. And you, Kate. None of you came from completely functional families as far as I could see.” She bent forward and whispered, “Of course after all my reading, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a fully functional family in any case.”

I looked around furtively, remembering once again that we were in a bookstore and hoping that no one in the recovery section had heard her. But no one seemed to be listening to us anyway.

“Do you remember the order in which people left the memorial?” Wayne asked, cutting back to the chase.

Aurora frowned in thought. “I was talking to Pam and that singer, Anna May, a little before they left—”

“Did they mention visiting Elaine’s?” I cut in.

“Yes!” Aurora’s head jerked up. “They did. Or at least the singer did. Something about something she’d left. Oh, I wish I could recall more clearly.” She closed her eyes, her face tight with concentration. “I believe she said, ‘If we have time, do you mind dropping by Elaine’s? I left some of my songbooks there.’“ She opened her eyes again. That sounded pretty damn clear to me.