Death hits the fan Read online

  "Shayla, oh Shayla!" he kept on as he rushed toward the authors' table.

  My brain felt sodden. The elegant and prolific S.X. Greenfree was tinted blue and unblinking in her seat, Ted Brown's hand frozen on her shoulder. The whole store was stone-still. Only the gray-bearded man seemed to be in motion.

  And then the black man leapt up to join him. And finally, Ted Brown stepped back to collapse into his chair as the other two men rushed around the table to pull S.X. Green-free away from her seat, away from the table with all of her books, and stretch her out in the small space left open on the floor. Kneeling, each man felt for her pulse, one at her neck and one at her wrist. The bearded man put his ear over

  Shayla's mouth, then lifted his head to stare down at her. The younger man pushed past him and put his own mouth over Shayla's as he pinched her nostrils, breathing slowly into her mouth. But even I wondered if the effort was futile. Could someone that color be alive?

  The bearded man seemed to agree with my unspoken opinion. He watched for a few more moments, shaking his head, then rose unsteadily to his feet, shuffling backwards until he bumped into the end of a bookshelf.

  "Dear God," he murmured. "Dear Lord." He didn't seem to know the rest of us were in the room. Maybe he didn't even know he was still in the room. He put his head into his hands for a moment, then pulled on a chain around his neck and freed the jade stone that had been hidden under his shirt. "What will I tell Scott?" he asked no one in particular as he held the green stone.

  There was a clatter a seat down from Wayne as the moonfaced woman in the oversized glasses sprang into action. She jumped from her seat and ran to the bearded man, averting her eyes as she detoured around the authors' table, Shayla, and her would-be resuscitator. When she reached the bearded man, she grabbed his arm, turning him toward her with a yank.

  "Dean!" she said loudly, looking him in the face.

  Dean just stared through her, still holding the jade in his hand.

  "Dean," she said more softly. "It's me, Zoe. Zoe Ingersoll, remember?"

  Dean's eyes focused on hers slowly.

  "Zoe?" he said, as if trying out the word on his tongue. Then he shook his head and tears appeared in his eyes.

  "Zoe," he murmured thickly. "It's Shayla. She's dead."

  "Are you sure?" Zoe asked, the blinking of her eyes speeding up under her glasses. Only then did she glance back where Shayla lay. And even at that, only for a moment.

  She shivered and punched her fist into her hand before quickly turning her head back, twitching her eyes at Dean's again.

  "Yes," Dean assured her. "Oh, Lord yes, I'm sure," and then he began to cry in earnest. Zoe put her arms around him, tentatively, not holding him close, but holding him all the same.

  Who were these two? I eyed Dean. He had weathered skin under his gray beard, a straight nose and dark eyebrows. He was of medium height and build, not handsome nor unhandsome. Other than the relative darkness of his brows compared to his gray beard, he was unnoticeable. Except for his tears.

  Zoe, on the other hand, was more striking, partly because of her rounded face atop her thin body. She might have been a "Miss Peach" cartoon character. And partly because of the exquisitely embroidered vest she wore over her sloppy jeans and turtleneck. But mostly because of her frenetic energy. She was still blinking rapidly behind her oversized glasses. Sadness, concern, confusion? I couldn't tell.

  What was the relationship between Zoe and Dean? Were they—

  "She's not dead!" shouted the statesmanlike man who had been in the front row from the beginning. He was standing now, waving his pinstriped arms. "It's the bracelet, can't you fools see? Take off her bracelet!"

  "Vince, Mr. Quadrini," Ivan murmured, advancing on the pinstriped man. "It's okay. Everything will be okay."

  "Okay!" Vince Quadrini whirled on Ivan. I updated my age calculation on Mr. Quadrini to late, not early, seventies as I looked into his face. It was a good-looking face, with a long, rounded nose and solid features under wavy gray hair, but still strained and showing its age as Mr. Quadrini turned on Ivan.

  "Okay, okay?" he demanded. "The greatest writer since Kornbluth might be dying, and everything's okay?"

  Mr. Quadrini was right. Everything was not okay. I could see it in the face of the man still working on Shayla. He was pressing on the author's chest with two hands now, hard and fast, his dark features desperate. Shayla, S.X. Greenfree, was dead. She had to be. And she had called me by name while she was falling asleep. Only, she hadn't been falling asleep. My heart lurched as if I were the one receiving CPR. Had Shayla been dying all that time? Dying and ignored as Yvette read on and on. I looked up at the ceiling, anywhere but at the woman on the floor. The white ceiling was luminous suddenly, shining—

  I felt Wayne's hand on mine, and realized my hands were shaking. I drew my head back down slowly. Why had Shayla called my name? Had she known she was dying? Had she been crying out for help? But why me? Unless someone else was named Kate ...

  I shivered and looked beyond Dean, where Marcia Arme-son stood as still as a photograph, holding her camera. Her delicate features looked tight and meager in their evident unhappiness, however fashionably framed in elaborately waved black hair. But then, Marcia always looked unhappy. She jerked her head to look at Shayla, then jerked it back toward Ivan, before whirling around to run down the center aisle toward the storeroom, her designer jeans nothing more than a flash as they disappeared.

  "Hey, you!" Yvette called out. "Where the fu-hell are you going?"

  It was a good question. A very loud, good question. But there was no answer from the back. Yvette looked past Shayla's empty seat at Ted Brown.

  "Shouldn't we stop her or something?" she demanded.

  Ted just shrugged his shoulders, keeping his eyes straight ahead, his morose face pale and immobile.

  "But what if she's, like . .." Yvette waved her small hands in the air. Leprechaun hands, I thought irrelevantly. No bigger than a child's. "Holy shi-shick, what if she's destroying evidence or something?"

  Ted made no response. Yvette looked down at the man still trying to resuscitate Shayla. Evidence? What did she mean by "evidence"?

  A gust of wind shook the glass doors at the front of the store. Then rain splattered their surface as if in answer.

  "Lou?" Yvette whispered urgently, looking down now in Shayla's direction, but the man who must have been Lou just kept pressing on Shayla's chest. Hard.

  Ivan put his hand on Mr. Quadrini's shoulder. And I disengaged my cold hand from Wayne's warmer one and got up slowly, very slowly, too dizzy to do otherwise, before bending over the folding chairs to question Ivan.

  "Ivan?" I hissed.

  The owner of Fictional Pleasures jumped in place, startled by my sudden whisper, then looked back at me.

  "Is she . .." Somehow, I couldn't say "dead."

  "I don't know, I don't know," Ivan groaned miserably. Why had I thought he'd know, anyway? Why couldn't my mind seem to function? "Maybe Lou can revive her—"

  "Take off the bracelet!" Mr. Quadrini yelled again.

  Ivan began to turn back to the pinstriped man.

  "Who's Lou?" I asked quickly before Ivan could complete the turn.

  "Lou Cassell, Yvette's husband," Ivan told me, putting his hand at the side of his mouth as if to shield his words from the others. "Lou comes to all her signings. A very supportive spouse. Very caring."

  I looked past Ivan at the man trying to save Shayla's life. He couldn't have been over thirty. He had to be at least fifteen years younger than Yvette. And he was gorgeous, with a body like Adonis and skin the rich brown of shiitake mush-

  rooms. This was Yvette Cassell's husband? A man with large golden-brown, tiger-shaped eyes and high cheekbones above a mustached, sensual mouth—

  He rose slowly as I was cataloging his physical attributes. But his sensual mouth wasn't smiling. He closed his golden-brown eyes for a moment, then shook his head.

  "No!" Mr. Quadrini objected. But his
voice was quavering now.

  And then that gorgeous younger man turned to Yvette.

  "She's gone," he said, his tone clear and high, astonished. He shook his head again, harder, took a breath, and reached out for Yvette's hand. Yvette grabbed his large dark hand with her small light one, eyebrows raised over the rims of her tinted glasses. Lou stood still for a moment, head bowed. Then he looked up again.

  "Someone needs to call the paramedics," he said.

  Til call," Wayne offered quietly. He stood up and patted my back gently, as if for permission.

  I nodded and he made his way down the row of chairs and turned toward the phone.

  "And the police," Lou added, his tone deepening. His gorgeous features looked angry now. Fierce.

  'The police?" Ivan said, looking as dazed as the rest of us. "The police?"

  Wayne picked up the phone by the cash register. I could hear the low rumble of his voice against the rhythmically pounding rain and Dean's quiet weeping. Mr. Quadrini let out a sob as the heater kicked in with a roar of hot air.

  I wanted to do something suddenly. Shayla had called out my name. And she was dead. But what could I do?

  "I don't know, I don't understand," Dean mumbled through his tears. He cradled the jade stone in his hand. "What will I tell Scott?"

  "Oh, jeez, Scott," Zoe muttered, pulling back abruptly from Dean. "Scott."

  I wondered who Scott was. And who was Dean to Shayla? And Zoe ...

  "Who's the man with the gray beard?" I whispered to Ivan.

  "Dean Frazier, a friend of Shayla's, I think. And the woman was her friend too, Zoe something," Ivan told me, his voice a whisper.

  His thug's face looked a little more relaxed now. Ivan liked to gossip. Maybe that was how I could help, engaging Ivan in his favorite pastime. Well, second favorite, next to reading. He had to be shaken, an author dying in his bookstore. An author who had called out my name. An author who— I wouldn't think about that, I told myself.

  "And what about Mr. Qua—" I began.

  But the voluptuous woman in the Mao pajamas rose from her chair, pushing it back emphatically and loudly, before I could finish my question.

  "Can't be," she stated brusquely. "Let me help, she can't be dead." She looked toward Lou.

  Lou just stared back at her, then shrugged.

  For a breath, she stood there, straight and tall, her head still turned toward Lou. All I could see from behind her was her large, lush body, and her salt-and-pepper hair in a French roll held together with carved ivory pins.

  The store heater let out another roar of hot air, and the woman marched forward to kneel by Shayla's body, taking the author's pulse, but differently than the two others who'd preceded her. Gently, she felt Shayla's right wrist at three places. And then her left wrist. She even felt Shayla's abdomen. Finally, she frowned and rubbed her own thumb against her forefinger before standing again and straightening her spine.

  "Can't be," she repeated, but more quietly now, as if to herself. She tapped her heels on the floor and turned back to-

  ward Ivan. She was a lovely woman with creamy white skin and large, hazel eyes. Large, worried hazel eyes.

  "Phyllis Oberman, she's an acupuncturist," Ivan whispered to me. "She's into romances."

  I felt a hand on my arm and whirled around, my heart pounding louder than the rain on the roof. But the hand was Wayne's.

  "Sorry," he said.

  I took his hand and squeezed it in a not-guilty verdict.

  "Made the calls," he added tersely.

  "Thanks," Ivan whispered and sighed.

  PMP echoed his sigh and we stood listening to the mixture of rain, heat, weeping, and the distant hum of traffic.

  "The bracelet!" Yvette exclaimed and the symphony of sound was shattered.

  She bent over, her fingertips almost touching the jewels gleaming around Shayla's wrist.

  But Lou leapt in front of his wife, blocking her, lifting her back into a standing position.

  He whispered something to Yvette, something I couldn't hear. But I could hear Yvette's comeback clearly enough.

  "Poisoned?" she sang out. "So, you think Shayla was poisoned?"

  "I sincerely hope not, but—" Lou stopped mid-sentence. "Yvette, keep out of this, please."

  Yvette looked around, eyeing each of us in turn. Did she think we were suspects in one of her books? Had Shayla been poisoned? Murdered? A familiar sick feeling began in my stomach and climbed into my chest. Please, I thought. Please, not another murder.

  "Who put the bracelet there?" Yvette demanded, hands on her tiny hips.

  But no one answered her. Not even PMP.

  "Honey, no one's going to 4 fess up,'" Lou told her, his words coming faster now. "This is no prank—"

  "Someone must have seen something," she insisted, patting his arm as if he was her size and she was his. His tall, well-built body was beginning to vibrate with frustration. I knew the phenomenon well, having observed Wayne in the same state more than once.

  "Did anyone see who put the bracelet on the table?" Yvette plowed on.

  Suddenly I didn't feel cold anymore. I was beginning to feel unbearably hot. I felt sweat bead on my brow and wondered if I looked guilty. And wondered once again why Shayla had called my name.

  "Perhaps we should all sit down," Ivan suggested. "A moment of harmony—"

  "No." Yvette cut him off without a glance. "Someone must have seen something. And once the fu-fuddin' police get here, we won't be able to share what we know. If Shayla was murdered—"

  "Maybe she just had a heart attack," Lou interjected reasonably.

  The shrill sound of a nearby siren seemed to spur Yvette on.

  "Maybe, maybe," Yvette conceded, speaking more quickly. "But maybe not. And we probably only have a few minutes . .."

  We had less than that. Yvette was in the middle of ordering us all to tell her exactly what we'd seen, when a wave of cold, wet air crashed through the doorway of the bookstore, carrying with it a uniformed man, a uniformed woman, and a load of medical equipment. The paramedics had arrived.

  An agony of efficient activity later and the paramedics had reached the same conclusion as Lou Cassell had. The same as Dean Frazier. The same as Phyllis Oberman. Shayla, S.X. Greenfree, was irretrievably, irrevocably dead.

  "Who owns the store?" one of the paramedics asked.

  Ivan raised his hand, hesitantly. I didn't blame him for the hesitation. I shivered in spite of myself.

  "Scree, police procedural, last row," PMP offered helpfully. "Oh, shut up."

  Maybe Ivan could claim the parrot owned the store.

  But the paramedic only glanced at PMP and then her eyes were back on Ivan.

  "Police been called?" she asked sternly.

  Ivan nodded.

  Dean turned his head away and moaned. Mr. Quadrini was not as quiet about his feelings, however.

  "Why are you asking about the police?" he demanded. "What is it that you're not saying?"

  The paramedic put up her hand, but Mr. Quadrini wasn't as easy to ignore as PMP.

  "Was it the bracelet? What. .."

  I opened my mouth to ask Ivan more about Mr. Quadrini. But he was way ahead of me.

  "Vince Quadrini, Shayla's super-fan," Ivan whispered my way, shielding his mouth with his hand again. "Bought all of her books. Came to all—"

  And then suddenly, a figure came flying out from behind the bookshelves, running toward the door, red hair streaming behind her. The young woman who'd been lurking. I'd forgotten all about her. I'd have bet we all had. Until now.

  "Not so fuddin' fast!" Yvette shouted and ran to block the redhead's trajectory.

  Yvette blocked her all right. The hard way. The two women went down in a heap and then I saw legs kicking. Long legs in knee-high boots and shorter legs in Reeboks. Lou was there a moment later, pulling the younger woman up off the floor by the collar of her flannel shirt. The redheaded woman couldn't have been too many years over

  twenty. And she
was clearly frightened, her oval eyes wide and off center in her freckled face. Frantic.

  The two paramedics moved toward the trio cautiously.

  "No, no," the young woman whimpered. "I gotta leave now."

  "Why, are you our murderer?" Yvette demanded calmly, on her feet now. Her tinted glasses were askew, but her tiny hands were firmly in place on her miniature hips. She peered up into the younger woman's face. "Go ahead, tell me why you killed her."

  "Me?" the woman said. Her full lips fell open for a moment; then she gulped as if swallowing the enormity of the accusation. "Me? No way! She was my hero. I read everything she wrote." She rubbed her flanneled arms convulsively.

  "Who?" I asked Ivan urgently.

  "Don't know her name," he whispered back, urgency in his tone, too. "But she's always in the store. I think my son, Neil, knows her." He brought his hand up to his temple. "No, I do know her name. It's Winona, Winona Eads—"

  And then another wave of cold air poured through the door. This one brought the police. At least I assumed they were the police. A woman and a man in uniforms different from those of the paramedics, and another man in a well-made gray wool suit. A man who was smiling widely.

  Ivan sighed and made his way to the smiling man in the gray suit while the uniformed officers glared at the rest of us, then shook the smiling man's hand before leading him back behind the sales counter where they whispered in frus-tratingly low tones.

  "I understand," PMP sighed. "Of course."

  "It was murder, you know," Yvette announced loudly.

  The smile didn't waver as the gray-suited newcomer turned toward Yvette.

  "And you are?" he inquired, his voice warm and obliging. Friendly even.

  Was it murder? I surveyed our group, wondering what this man saw to smile about. The two paramedics who remained halfway between Shayla and Yvette? Yvette herself, and Lou Cassell, standing side by side at the end of a set of shelves containing apocalypse fiction and horror, now seemingly completely fused into couplehood despite their differences? Winona Eads, her oval eyes still wide with fright? Ted Brown, morose and unmoving in his author's seat? Dean Frazier and Zoe Ingersoll, clearly not a couple but still somehow allied at the end of another set of shelves? Vince Quadrini, senior super-fan? Phyllis Oberman, voluptuous acupuncturist? Ivan, Wayne's old friend? Or maybe the one who wasn't visible, Marcia Armeson, Ivan's second in command, now missing in action?