Murder Most Mellow (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (22 page)

“But Kate,” Barbara protested. The car moved crabwise toward oncoming traffic as she turned to me. “You don’t have to be so negative.”

“Eyes on the road!” I ordered. “I’m explaining.”

She looked ahead obediently and brought the Volkswagen back to center.

“I’ve been married,” I reminded her. “To a perfectly good human being. And it didn’t work out.”

“That was Craig,” she objected. “Wayne is different.”

“I was just as in love with Craig then as I am with Wayne now,” I shot back. That wasn’t quite true. There was a qualitative difference between the ways I cared for the two men. But I didn’t want to get into it.

“I was headed for law school when I met Craig,” I went on, remembering. “I fell for him and forgot all about my career. Craig seemed more important. Craig and his business. I put over a decade of my life into
his
business!” I was surprised by the anger in my own voice. It was like hearing someone else speak. Was I that angry?

“So marry Wayne and don’t depend on him financially,” Barbara suggested breezily.

“It’s not that simple,” I argued.

“Of course it’s not,” Barbara said. “I’ll tell you what really scares you. You cared for Craig and he left you. Now you’re afraid of any emotional commitment—”

“That’s enough,” I interrupted. I was tired of the subject.

Barbara turned to me with a searching look. The car wandered into the left lane.

“All right, all right!” I shouted. “I’ll think about it.”

Barbara didn’t press me. She began talking about Felix instead. Strangely enough, she adored the man. I allowed the happiness in her voice to flow over me and warm me as we oscillated home. She walked me to the door and gave me a quick hug. Then she veered off into the afternoon sun.

The light wasn’t blinking on my answering machine when I walked into my house. I took a deep breath in relief, then dialed Jerry’s phone number. But all I got was his answering machine again. I hung up and sat down to the stack of paperwork on my desk. Sarah’s smiling face popped into my mind.

“Do you want me to keep trying?” I whispered aloud.

The face in my mind nodded and disappeared. Damn. Now I was speaking to the dead. I rubbed the sudden crop of goose flesh on my arms vigorously and reminded myself that Sarah was only in my mind, subject to my control. But when I tried to get her face back, the image wouldn’t come. I grabbed a bunch of invoices angrily. I had been through enough spookiness for the day, thank you. I blocked out the world and wrote checks.

C.C. came wandering in a few hours later. She jumped up on my desk and batted my pencil. It slid across my neat ledger columns leaving a thin graphite trail. She let out a heartbreaking cry of starvation before I had a chance to yell at her. It was dinnertime.

I remembered my invitation to Ellen Quinn as I was scooping out KalKan.

I pawed through my cupboards frantically, looking for the ingredients of a meal. I pulled out a couple of cans of chili and a sack of cornmeal. There were some onions, garlic, peppers and a few vegetables in my refrigerator. I added them to the pile. It began to look like a tamale pie. I dug deeper and unearthed a package of tortillas and some salad greens. Fifteen minutes later, the tamale pie was in the oven.

The doorbell rang. I put the teakettle on the stove and sprinted for the front door as C.C. slunk off unsociably. I pulled the door open. Ellen Quinn stood in front of me with an unusually serious expression on her face. She wore the same navy blue suit she had worn at the funeral, but now carried a briefcase. She stared at me intently.

“Have you ever really considered your own death?” she asked quietly, unlocking her briefcase.

My body went rigid with fear. Then I remembered my tai chi training. I centered myself and lifted a defensive hand up in front of my chest. I was ready. But how helpful was my hand going to be if she had a gun in that briefcase? Now she was shouting at me. Slowly, I tuned into her words.

“Insurance, insurance!” she was screaming, her face thrust into mine. “I’m selling insurance, not trying to murder you!”

I stared at her until my mind finally processed the meaning of her words. Her face broke into the trademark Quinn Howdy Doody grin. She leaned back and laughed lustily. I managed a weak smile. At least she wasn’t angry. My body wasn’t rigid anymore. It was weak and trembling.

“God, I don’t believe it,” Ellen guffawed. “You thought I was going to kill you, right? You shoulda seen your face!”

“Shall I frisk you before I let you in?” I joked feebly.

“It’ll be a long wait if you take the time to frisk me,” she answered in a Mae West drawl. She wiggled her extensive bottom. “I’m a mighty big woman.”

“Come on in, then,” I invited, remembering my role as hostess. “Would you like some herbal tea?”

“Sure, what the hell,” she said, stepping into the hall. “I’m game.”

“What kind of game are you, venison?” I sallied as I led the way into the living room. It was one of Craig’s old lines.

She laughed raucously as she followed me.

“You’re okay,” she pronounced approvingly. “Better than your friend Peter. Sometimes I think that Sarah was the only one of you guys who had a sense of humor.” She lowered herself into one of the swinging chairs without missing a beat. “Though I’m never quite sure when people are joking out here. On the way over I saw this car with a bumper sticker that said ‘Inner Peace Now’ like it was a demand.”

“There’s nothing worse than a militant introspective,” I deadpanned as I sat down across from her. I studied her face. God, she looked like Sarah.

“Ain’t that the truth,” she boomed. She pushed off with her feet, setting the chair to swinging. “Take that Teala broad of the Trancenjoys. Man, I wouldn’t want to argue with her. Is she intense!”

“What’s the foundation about, anyway?” I asked. I had wondered all afternoon.

“Oh God, they’re about everything,” Ellen groaned. She shook her head, then laughed. “Anything you do can be turned into a spiritual experience, according to them. For thirty-five an hour one of the devotees will introduce you to shopping as a transformational experience! I kid you not. Or if you don’t wanna take novocaine when you go to the dentist, they’ll hypnotize you so you won’t need it. I told them they should call it Transcen
Dental
Meditation but no one got the joke.” She shook her head again, then pinched her brows together in a look of confusion. “They told me I was very fifth and second chakra, whatever that means.”

“I think the fifth is at the throat,” I said slowly, trying to remember the order like a musical scale. “It means you’re a good communicator.”

“How about the second?” she demanded.

“Sex,” I said brusquely, hoping I didn’t have to explain its location.

“Hey, let’s hear it for the second chakra!” she cheered. She sounded like Sarah, too, I realized with a pang.

Ellen tilted her head wistfully as the chair swung back and forth. She spoke more softly. “I haven’t had any of that for a while. I want a nice sweet honey who will be there when I want him and won’t pull any bullshit on me when I travel around. Someone who’ll keep the house clean, have dinner waiting and keep the bed warm.” She winked heavily. “Not necessarily in that order, either.”

“You want a housewife who’s male,” I concluded.

“That’s right, honey,” she agreed, nodding her head emphatically. “But I don’t think they exist.”

The teakettle screamed from the kitchen.

“I don’t know about the rest of it, but I’ll be glad to cook you dinner,” I said. I stood up. “Come on in the kitchen. I still need to do the salad and steam the tortillas. We’ll have some tea while I cook.”

She followed me to the kitchen and started up with the jokes. As I turned the teakettle off, she asked me if a dog wore more clothes in the summer or winter.

“Winter,” I guessed. I poured boiling water over Red Zinger tea bags. It seemed to be the right brand for Ellen.

“No, summer,” she shot back triumphantly. “In the winter he wears a coat, but in the summer he wears a coat and pants.”

“That’s terrible,” I said, grimacing. I looked closely at her. “Did you ever think of becoming a comedian?” I asked.

She took a seat at the kitchen table. “I didn’t only think of it, I was one for a while,” she told me. “I never made it big-time, though.” She sighed, then brightened. “I gotta tell you the one about the minister,” she began. “You’ll love it—”

“So why did you end up in insurance?” I asked quickly, averting her story. I put the tortillas in the steamer.

“When you’re selling life insurance you gotta have a sense of humor,” she explained. She took a sip of tea. “Everyone either makes fun of you, or gets mad at you, ‘cause life insurance makes them so nervous about death. So you laugh or drink or do drugs.” She grinned, reminding me of Sarah again. “I drink a little and laugh a lot. I’d probably do drugs too, if someone offered me some.”

Ellen stopped for a breath and stared up at me with wide-open eyes. Was she waiting for an offer? I didn’t make one. She sighed and continued. “I thought everyone in California smoked grass, but so far nobody’s so much as invited me to share a joint.”

“You’re dating yourself,” I told her. “We don’t smoke dope anymore. We’re health nut purists these days. Or else we snort coke.”

“I’m not dating myself,” she protested. “I never date older women.” She paused for the audience reaction. I obliged her with a halfhearted smile.

“I know all about Marin residents and their coke habits,” she informed me. “Did you hear there’s going to be a new game show in Marin called
Where’s My Line?
”

“Enough with the jokes,” I groaned. “I can’t stand it.”

“I always say if you can’t stand it, sit down,” she finished with another expansive wink.

I took her advice. I brought the salad and tortillas to the table and sat down.

Over salad I tried to extract Ellen’s feelings about Sarah. Ellen certainly had a compelling financial motive for murder, I thought as I watched her eat. Half of Sarah’s estate had to amount to something. A big something. And if Ellen had really wanted to murder Sarah for her inheritance, I was sure she was capable of orchestrating her sister’s death while providing herself with an unbreakable alibi. But subtle prods like “Sarah must have been an interesting sister,” and “a shame about Sarah” got nowhere.

Finally, I just asked, “How did you feel about Sarah?” outright.

“Sarah could be a real pain in the ass as an older sister, but I loved her,” Ellen said quietly, dipping a tortilla into the salad dressing.

“I thought she was your younger sister,” I said, then realized I had jammed my foot firmly in my mouth.

“You and everyone else,” Ellen replied lightly. It didn’t seem to bother her. “After that ‘youthing’ business Sarah got so much younger-looking that people assumed she was younger than me, right?” She shook her head. “No, she was three years older.” Ellen took a bite of tortilla, then continued seriously. “Sarah was always good at anything she took on. It didn’t matter if it was calculus or getting under people’s skins, she succeeded.”

I waited for Ellen to go on. But she didn’t. Her face was sad as she stared at her empty plate. I got up and brought the tamale pie to the table. I put a big scoop on Ellen’s plate and mine, then sat back down.

Ellen started up again. “I was kinda a screw-up as a kid,” she confessed. “Back then, I was so overwhelmed, watching Sarah take the world on, that I just took a seat in the audience. I couldn’t compete. I didn’t have much personality.” She sighed. “I got married right out of high school and had two babies. They’re okay kids, all grown up now.” She took a bite of tamale pie.

“What do they do?” I asked, genuinely curious. Ellen was a character in her own right, almost as mind-boggling as Sarah had been.

“The girl’s an auto mechanic,” she mumbled through her mouthful. “The boy’s in college, studying anthropology. Josie takes after her father. He was an auto mechanic before he turned into a full-time bum.” Her face brightened. “Did you ever meet Sarah’s ex-husband?” she asked.

I shook my head.

Ellen laughed. “You shoulda met the guy,” she said. “His name was Swami something-or-other, but he was really just Lew Fields, this asthmatic kid from New York.” She took another bite. “He’s a gofer for a porno film company now,” she mumbled. “I couldn’t believe she fell for his line of bull. Though it was kinda nice to see
her
screw up for a change.”

With that, Ellen stopped talking and ate in earnest. I gobbled up my own portion and wondered if she was as straightforward as she appeared to be. Ellen’s fork scraped her plate. She asked for more tamale pie.

“Not bad for health food,” was her grudging compliment.

“What were your parents like?” I asked as I put another scoop on her plate.

“My dad was kinda like me, I guess,” she said. She tilted her head and thought for a moment. “He was a big guy, always making jokes. But basically he was pretty conservative. He sold insurance too.” She took a bite and swallowed before going on. “Sarah drove him wild. She was real successful, but she always did crazy things, even as a kid.”

“Like what?” I prompted.

“Oh, she would get all A’s and then turn around and run away from home on summer vacation,” Ellen told me, smiling at the memory. “Not because she was unhappy or anything, just because she wanted some excitement. Or she would pour Jell-O in someone’s swimming pool, or let the air out of a police car’s tires.” She chuckled. But then her face grew serious again. “Her and my father were locked into a battle of wills till the day he died. In a way, I was even jealous of that. She got a lot of attention from him with all the stuff that she pulled.” She leaned back in her chair and laughed abruptly, asking, “Did you know she married a sailor when she was fourteen?”