Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery) (18 page)

- Eighteen -

“No!” Barbara yelped in frustration. “It’s me. Computers are always breaking down when I use them. It’s so weird. It’s like they sense I’m an electrician, so it fritzes them. Jeez-Louise, it drives me batty.”

I nodded, wondering if computers were just
afraid
of Barbara. What if computers were psychic, too? Would I be afraid of Barbara if I were a psychic computer?

“Nah,” she said, replying to my thought no doubt. “Anyway, I’m just anthropomorphizing. But computers do seem to break down on me a lot.” She looked at her own graceful hands for a moment under the crystalline light of the room, spreading them out, palm up, in front of her face as if to read them. “Maybe my fingers have just absorbed too much electricity over the years.”

Then she brought her hands back down and jabbed at a few buttons. But the computer’s vital signs were gone. No flash of color graced the screen. Nothing buzzed. Nothing vibrated. Diagnosis: clinically dead.

“Oh, well, that’s the way the circuits break,” Barbara murmured finally and then turned away from the computer toward me.

“You know how my intuition always fritzes when someone gets murdered?” she asked.

I nodded so energetically my neck hurt.

“Well, I think this computer stuff is the same. Like I give it some kind of overload of energy. D’ya think I need a surge protector?” she asked me seriously.

“I think you need an imagination protector,” I answered just as seriously, rubbing my sore neck. I hoped I hadn’t slipped a disk or something, nodding so hard.

“Your neck will be fine,” Barbara pronounced. Then she tilted her head at me and grinned. “So, kiddo, I’ve got a big surprise for you tomorrow.”

I groaned, sore neck forgotten. “No,” I told her. “No more surprises, please.”

“Oh, you’ll like this one,” she assured me.

I opened my mouth to object again. Whether Barbara was psychic or not, I felt at least ninety percent certain I wasn’t going to like any surprise she brought me right now. Especially if it had to do with the murders. Her surprises were beginning to resemble the surprises C. C. occasionally brought me: squirming, heart-rending, and disgusting.

“No mice, no birds, no snakes. I swear,” Barbara promised me. And then, before I could stage a full-scale rebellion, she added, “Hungry?”

It took a few instants for the last half of her message to get through to the proper synapses. But when it did, my incipient rebellion was quelled. I
was
hungry. Somehow, dinner had gotten away from me. My stomach gurgled hopefully.

“Well, I really don’t need—” didn’t get me very far.

Barbara dragged me into her kitchen and sat me down at her new faux marble table. Then she went diving into her refrigerator, waving away all help. The first dive produced a tray of avocado sushi. How did she do that? I knew she didn’t cook.

“You don’t have to—” I began.

“Of course, I don’t
have
to,” Barbara interrupted and made a second dive, returning with a platter of tofu balls. At least one mystery was solved. I recognized the tofu balls. They came from the local health food store. “I
want
to feed you.”

I’d stopped objecting when she brought out a big bowl of tabouli salad and added sliced fresh fruit and a couple of glasses of fizzy water to the feast.

“Did you know I was coming?” I demanded.

Barbara just laughed and started in with the side dish, a side dish much like those overcooked vegetables you never wanted as a child. Only Barbara’s was a side dish of shared whodunit scenarios. All of them.

“So who is Silk’s father, anyway?” she dug in, waving a piece of sushi and scattering rice like fairy dust as she spoke. “What if he’s someone else’s father, and they lose their inheritance unless she’s dead?”

“Huh?” I said, or something like that. My mouth was full of tabouli, my mind full of prospective surprise anxiety.

“And how about lovers scorned?”

“But Silk was always coming on to people,” I tried. “She didn’t have to scorn anyone. She scared them all off. Look at Zarathustra—”

“Hah! And what if Silk is really Zarathustra’s mother? What if he found out he was adopted?” Barbara bulldozed on.

I choked on a tofu ball at that one. But Barbara was undeterred. By my choking, by reason, by anything.

“Or maybe Gil Nesbit is her illegitimate child,” she added, thumping my back absently. Absently, but hard.

I stopped choking. I wasn’t sure if it was the thumping or Gil Nesbit’s name.

“Ugh, Barbara,” I croaked. “That’s disgusting. Worse than dead mice. Not Mr. Lotto, please. Anything else—”

“Okay, okay. So what if Silk’s mother’s not really dead? What if she’s”—Barbara leaned forward, her eyes on mine, pausing dramatically, then finished with a flourish of her tabouli-filled spoon—”Elsa Oberg?”

“But Elsa—”

“And what did she and Denise Parnell really do in college, huh?”

“But Denise—”

“And Rich McGowan, what if he recognized her from his less conservative days? What if he was a warlock or something? Do government agencies hire warlocks?”

“Barbara!” I objected, plugging my ears with my fingers. Something I should have done when she first mentioned visiting Justine, actually.

But that didn’t deter her either.

“…alienating the affections of Tory’s angel,” came through my fingers.

“…usurping Justine’s role…”

I wondered if Craig and Felix and Gil had left my house yet. Even if they hadn’t, home was beginning to look good again. It’s all relative. In fact…I looked at Barbara’s rapt face as she continued to rattle off theories. Maybe Barbara was my long-lost sister. That would explain why I still liked her. Now,
that
was a scenario.

“…mean to Linda’s animals…”

Yes, home was looking very good. Good concept, good idea, good destination. I pictured the rooms of my house in my mind. The gently swinging chairs in the living room. C. C. curled in the corner. The kitchen table. Wayne in bed, snoring angelically. I didn’t put any little details like undone paperwork or dishes in the picture. Or arguments.

My legs lifted me from my chair magically. Home, no place like home.

“…messing with Artemisia’s spells…” followed me out Barbara’s door.

“See you later, you goof-bag,” I muttered with unconscious affection as I turned back to her. She trotted past the fortune-telling machine to enfold me in a hug.

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow for sure,” Barbara answered, grinning as she let me go. “You’ll love the surprise.”

My affection froze in place.

I drove home, reflecting on how much can happen in a short amount of time. My body was groaning that it had to be midnight by now, but midnight wasn’t even near. And then I reflected on the nature of surprises. But a few minutes later, I decided that was too scary a subject to reflect on. I told myself I’d be better off reading Anne Rice if I wanted to scare myself.

I climbed my front stairs cautiously once I reached home. There was no one on my deck, no one pressed up against my paint-splattered door. In fact, the door wasn’t even locked. It was wide open.

I tiptoed inside and peeked in the living room. It was empty. I wondered how long it had taken the boys to notice I’d left. Had Gil, Craig, and Felix left separately, or as a group? And who’d left my door wide open? I slammed it behind me.

“Kate?” Wayne’s voice called out.

My body went rigid. Because suddenly I remembered one of the parts I’d left out of my picture of home. Wayne
knew.
I couldn’t tell him I was shopping with Barbara anymore. I couldn’t tell him I was having dinner for five hours. I couldn’t tell him we were just out playing. I’d have to tell the truth from now on. That was a terrible thought. Or else, I’d have to learn to lie more effectively.

I erected my blast shields before entering the bedroom, ready for what Wayne had to say about my investigating. Ready and guilty.

But Wayne wasn’t yelling when I stepped into the bedroom. The room was warm and smelled of Vicks and apple juice. Wayne was lying in bed, p.j.ed and propped up against a stack of pillows, reading. And the book he was reading was Silk Sokoloff’s
Looked at Lust from Both Sides Now.

“Oh, Wayne,” I murmured in disbelief. “You don’t have to do that.”

“But, Kate,” Wayne answered earnestly, his eyes still on the page. “This is really good. The woman who died was an excellent novelist, did you know that?”

My mouth hung open, and I reconsidered my opinion of Wayne as an aspiring writer. Then I shut my mouth even more guiltily. Was it possible that Wayne saw something in Silk’s writing that I didn’t? Something that I was incapable of understanding?

“She was funny, but she was dealing with serious issues,” Wayne pointed out. “Sexual identity, prejudice, women’s experience—”

“She was?”

“Kate,” Wayne growled, looking up at me now. “Haven’t you read her?”

“Um, I just read a little of the first book,” I admitted defensively. Maybe her skills had improved in the second.

“You might want to read this one,” he suggested, his eyes traveling back to the pages of
Looked at Lust from Both Sides Now.
And his eyes were hungry. Hungry for excellence.

I had missed something about Silk Sokoloff, I realized. And Wayne had found it.

“Can see why you and Barbara feel you have to find her murderer,” Wayne added brusquely.

I had no answer to that. I had no answer for the man lying in bed, reading so solemnly. No answer for the man whose anger I’d expected. No answer but to throw my arms around him and hold him to me, squashing Silk’s book between us, then returning the book to him with respect, once I’d let go.

“Thank you,” I whispered finally and left him in the bedroom in peace to read an excellent writer.

Because I had some sanding to do. There was no other way that red paint was going to come off. And my mind was too tired to work on Jest Gifts. I didn’t even look at the paperwork on my desk. I assembled the electric sander instead, connected it to an extension cord, put on my work goggles, and marched out on the deck to sand in the dark.

Actually, it was very soothing, sanding in the dark. It wasn’t really completely dark. The deck light threw ghostly shapes onto the door as my body weaved back and forth in rhythm with the sanding. Pretty soon, I was floating on sawdust. I was alone. Wayne wasn’t mad at me. I was at peace with the world and my front door.

My phone rang. Ugh. I shut off the sander and went to answer it. I shouldn’t have. The caller was Artemisia and she wanted my help. Not to find out who murdered Silk Sokoloff and Isabelle Viseu, but to assist her the same way Silk had, whatever that had been. I could almost smell the eucalyptus smoldering over the line. My fingers felt odd, light, as if they didn’t belong to me. I told myself it was just a sensation left over from sanding.

“Kate,” Artemisia hissed urgently. “I figured it out.

Silk left the same day you appeared she went out of my life, and you came into it. You see?”

I shook my head, then remembered I was on the phone. “No, I don’t see,” I told her.

“You can help me.”

“Help you what?” I asked tentatively.

Wrong question.

“Help me scare away the spirits,” she answered. “We can do a ritual.”

“It’s too late to visit” I began.

“Please, Kate,” Artemisia begged. “You don’t have to come over. “Just be there for me on the line while I paint the turtle”

“You’re not going to hurt the turtle, are you?” I demanded, worried now. Hadn’t she said something about animal sacrifices when we’d left? Was I going to have to visit her to save the turtle? I wondered how quickly I could get to her house.

“No,” she assured me, her voice almost calm for a moment. “I just paint its shell and let it wander.”

“Do you feed it?” I asked. I still wasn’t convinced of the turtle’s safety in this operation.

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Artemisia answered impatiently.

“If you don’t, the ritual might not work,” I threw in.

There was silence on the line for a few minutes, then Artemisia’s voice kicked back in.

“Wow, Kate,” she breathed. “You
know
,”

“Wait a minute—” I began.

But a minute was too long.

“I knew you would help me,” she interrupted. “I have laurel leaves too.”

“Oh, good,” I said. She couldn’t hurt laurel leaves.

It was a little over a half-hour later when I hung up the phone. Somehow my presence on the line had facilitated Artemisia’s ritual. I just hoped this was the last one. I told myself I’d sic her on Barbara if she called again, and went back to my own ritual. Sanding. Sanding and trying to forget phone calls about rituals.

Under the deck light, red flakes of paint shimmered like jewels in the sawdust. But still, even in the dark, I could see that the red stain had seeped deep into the grain of the wooden door. How much sanding would it take? There was only one way I was going to find out. I switched on the sander and began again.