A Sensitive Kind of Murder (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Read online

  I heard voices from the other room. Garrett’s, I thought, and Jerry Urban’s. And maybe Van Eisner’s.

  Did Laura hear them, too?

  Suddenly, she pushed her way out of Marge’s arms and turned to face Captain Wooster, eyes still glittering.

  “Who did it?” she demanded.

  “We don’t know,” the captain replied, and I almost felt sorry for him.

  “I will expect you to find out,” Laura told him.

  “Expect away, then,” the captain challenged, whatever gentleness he’d been exercising gone now. “Eve’s apples, for all we know it might have been you, Assemblywoman.” He made fists with his hands. “It’s the wife every other time. If they can’t divorce you, they kill you.”

  Laura Summers seemed to grow taller in front of us.

  “I am a member of the California State Assembly,” she pronounced.

  “Well, I’m a member of the royal donkey society,” the captain countered. “I’m trying to be fair here, so don’t pull rank on me. I don’t care if you’re the president. You’re a suspect.”

  Laura didn’t even flinch. Maybe this rude treatment was what she needed to keep her sane. “Are you courting a lawsuit?” she asked.

  “Nah,” the captain answered. “I’m courting an early retirement.”

  “Ma’am, I’m Sergeant Marge Abbott,” Marge intervened. “Ya gotta forgive the captain. His mouth’s enough to make ya wanna wear earplugs sometimes, but he’s going through a rough time.”

  And Laura Summers wasn’t going through a rough time?

  Marge must have caught my thought.

  “Ma’am,” she said, her voice tender now. “You aren’t going to get over this easy, I know. And you’re angry now. That’s good. Real good. But the captain isn’t the one to take it out on. We’ll find your husband’s killer. Make it easy for us.”

  Laura shrunk back down to normal size.

  “Is there someone who can take care of you?” Marge asked.

  “I called my personal assistant,” Laura mumbled, her head down. “She should be here by now. Our son is away at college.”

  The captain nodded at Officer Quesada. The officer went to the other room and brought in a well-dressed young woman with a frightened look on her face.

  “Ms. Summers?” she asked.

  “Julie, take me home,” Laura Summers ordered.

  Julie took her arm to lead her out of the room. Laura Summers didn’t look like an assemblywoman anymore. She looked like a widow.

  “One last thing, Assemblywoman Summers,” the captain interjected. “Where have you been for the last hour?”

  “Shopping,” she mumbled, her voice sounding drugged. “And then I went home to wait for Steve.”

  Now my chest really hurt. I glared at the captain as Laura’s assistant led her from the room.

  Wayne stood up then. “May we leave, sir?” he asked.

  “Siddown!” the captain thundered. “Women!” he snorted.

  Wayne sat back down as Captain Wooster gave his orders. “Bring in the others, one by one, or in couples.”

  Van Eisner was next. I knew from the potluck gossip that Eisner had a reputation as a lady’s man, but it was hard to believe, looking at him. Van was slight, short and balding, with sharp little features that could have been drawn by a cartoonist—sharp, pointy little chin, sharp nose, and nasty little eyes.

  “Look,” he whined as he was escorted in. “Whatever happened, it wasn’t me, okay?”

  It was not okay. Van Eisner shifted and turned in his seat as Wooster prodded and probed. The best Eisner had was an alibi of sorts. He had met with a client some time after the group broke up, but he still would have had time to hit Steve with Wayne’s car and make it to the appointment.

  After even more questions than my mother had asked me about Wayne that morning, Captain Wooster finally got to a good one for Eisner.

  “How come you haven’t asked what happened?”

  Van looked up, his little eyes squinting.

  “I don’t wanna know,” he cried, and that was that. The captain let him go.

  Why Captain Wooster kept Wayne and me there was a mystery. Maybe he did it because he realized we really were blameless witnesses? Nah, not likely, I decided. So we were still there as Garrett Peterson and Jerry Urban were led into the room. Garrett was a handsome man with cinnamon-colored skin and a bullet-shaped skull, offset by wide, friendly features and wide-set, gentle eyes. This was in contrast to his lover, Jerry Urban, who was older and molded more along the lines of a benign bear, with a round face, full cheeks, and a constant smile. Well, almost constant. It wasn’t on his face now.

  “Are you two all right?” Garrett asked Wayne and me as he entered the room. This was typical of Garrett. He was a psychiatrist, after all.

  “Never mind about those two,” the captain advised, getting right to the point. “Where were you two for the past hour?” Jerry had been at work at his robotic golf caddie start-up company, and Garrett had driven to visit him after the group meeting. But still, the gap in time was not enough for a perfect alibi.

  “Is Steve all right?” Garrett asked after his round of interrogation.

  “No,” the captain answered.

  “But—”

  “Why did you ask?” the captain prodded, leaning forward.

  “I saw Laura Summers on her way out,” Garrett answered solemnly.

  They were dismissed.

  Before the next interrogatees came in, Wayne had a question of his own.

  “Sir, when can I have my car back?”

  Well, at least that brightened the captain’s day. He sat back in his chair and roared with laughter.

  “Your car is evidence, now, boy,” he finally answered. “Wanna clue? Think Armageddon.”

  Then Ted Kimmochi and his wife came in. Ted’s perfect oval face was blessed with a round nose and expressive eyes under dark brows. Unfortunately, his expression was usually tragic. Today, at least, it was appropriate. Janet McKinnon-Kimmochi looked a lot like Ted, except that she wasn’t Asian, and her round nose was scattered with freckles, her oval face topped with red hair. Her expression was not tragic, however—it was irritated.

  “We have clients waiting,” she announced as she sailed into the room with Ted in tow. “What’s this all about?”

  “I’ll ask the questions,” Captain Wooster assured her. And he did, at length. Ted’s alibi was driving to the office (and Janet’s, being at the office), but still that wasn’t a real alibi because he arrived there after Steve Summers had already been hit by Wayne’s car.

  “This is awful,” Ted murmured. “Just awful. Something terrible has happened, hasn’t it?”

  “Yep,” the captain agreed and let them go.

  I had a feeling that even Captain Wooster’s energy had its limits, and those limits were sorely tried by the arrival of a drunken Isaac Herrick, accompanied by his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Helen. He had visited her after the group, but, of course, not soon enough to let him off the hook for Steve Summers’ death.

  The captain’s interrogation was interrupted by Isaac’s jokes, guffaws, and scatological references. Helen might have been mute. But Isaac, even in his drunken state, was worried. I could tell by the unease with which he delivered his jokes, and by the worry in his weathered red face, its redness accented by his white, wavy hair. He took off his black-rimmed glasses and polished them, and I saw even more worry in his bleary eyes, a look that was reflected on Helen’s plump, no-nonsense face.

  “Bad?” he asked finally.

  Helen looked at the captain, her intelligent eyes searching…and finding.

  But the captain didn’t answer. Marge did.

  “Bad,” she confirmed.

  Carl Russo was the last one to be escorted in. His son Mike wasn’t with him. If you wanted to go by looks alone, Carl would be your man for murder. He was a broad man with fleshy features and a habitual, guarded look of disinterest. He squirmed through all of the captain’s questio
ns. Carl had no particular alibi. He had driven down to the beach to think after the group. He wouldn’t say what he was thinking about, but I would have bet it was his absent son, Mike.

  After Wooster had finished with Carl, he turned to Wayne and me with one word: “Go!”

  We went. As fast as we could stumble out of the room.

  None of the group members were left in the main room of the library. I was initially surprised, but then I saw the policeman who had probably chased them away.

  On the way home in my Toyota, I prodded Wayne about Laura. Was Captain Wooster right? Was it usually the wife? I thought of her slumped shoulders and graying skin; but still…

  “Did Steve want a divorce?” I asked Wayne, not really expecting an answer.

  “No, he adored her,” he told me, his voice gruff with tears.

  “This was her day off,” I reminded him. I remembered her talking about it at the potluck, how she had to have one day out of the public eye, one day alone with her husband when the legislature wasn’t in session. “Wasn’t that awfully convenient for her?”

  “She took the day off to be with Steve,” Wayne murmured. “You know Laura and Steve, they were Frick and Frack. They agreed on politics, on ethics, on everything.” His voice faltered.

  “All right,” I conceded. “Not Laura Summers. But who else would want to kill Steve Summers?”

  “Journalist,” Wayne muttered.

  “He made someone angry with his articles?”

  Wayne made a sound that was somewhere between a cry and a whimper.

  “We talked about our worst secrets,” he whispered.

  - Three -

  “What?” I yelped, my Toyota swerving to the left. I righted it, the hairs raising on my arms, just thinking of the damage a car could do.

  “Well…it’s all confidential—”

  “Wayne, there isn’t any more confidentiality. Steve is dead. And your worst secrets—”

  “You’re right,” he mumbled.

  Whoa. Did he really say that? Did he mean it? If he did, I wasn’t going to waste an opportunity to ask questions. We were almost to the highway entrance, and I wanted to know as much as possible before I had to concentrate on helping my car onto the ramp.

  “What happened?” I asked softly, adding, “Tell me everything,” a little less softly.

  Wayne was silent for a moment, and I thought he’d changed his mind already, but then he began to speak. When he did, his words came faster than usual, as if they’d been waiting at the door to tumble out.

  “It was Isaac’s idea,” he explained. “He thought we should all tell our very worst secrets to test the bonds of the group. So he pressured everyone until they did.”

  “That sounds like Isaac,” I muttered, picturing the elder man’s drunken smile. “The man always has been an accident looking for a place to happen.” I regretted my choice of words the moment they were out, but luckily Wayne didn’t seem to notice.

  “Exactly. Isaac just wanted to stir the pot. You know how he always watched everyone. Or maybe you didn’t,” Wayne amended, remembering suddenly that I wasn’t a member of the group. He was silent again.

  I quickly glanced his way. His eyebrows were at half-mast, covering a good portion of his eyes. Did he already think he’d said too much?

  “What were the secrets?” I prodded, keeping my voice calmer than my tingling body felt.

  “Kate, I’m not sure I should say,” Wayne objected, his face reddening. Was that heat or shame? Or something else entirely? “What if these secrets have nothing to do with the murder? What if the murderer was somebody who had nothing to do with the group?”

  “What do you think the chances of that are?” I shot back, as the entrance sign for the highway loomed.

  Wayne sighed in answer.

  I urged my car onto the highway gently, realizing I had to handle Wayne the same way.

  “Did everyone tell their secrets?”

  “Yes,” Wayne answered, as if enduring Gestapo interrogation.

  And then the Toyota was skimming along in the slow lane, just like Wayne. Warm air whooshed in through the half-open windows.

  “Van Eisner’s secret was about drugs, I’ll bet,” I hazarded.

  I could feel Wayne stiffen in his seat.

  “You noticed?” he asked.

  “I guessed.”

  He sighed again. “Well, you were right,” he finally admitted. “Van keeps talking about being a sex addict. All those women. But when Isaac asked him his worst secret, he said he did cocaine with a lot of those women and then went on a long spiel about how great it was. I think it took him a while to realize that no one else was as entranced as he was. Then he begged us all not to tell.”

  “Cocaine use is illegal,” I murmured over the groan of the Toyota’s engine. “Blackmail material.”

  “I know,” was all that Wayne said in reply. He didn’t have to say that Steve wasn’t the blackmailing type.

  Poor Wayne, my Dudley-Do-Right with confidentiality issues. He’d probably been trying to get Eisner into rehab.

  “Have you suggested that Van get some help for his drug problem?” I enquired.

  “I even got him the names and numbers of clinics, but it’s no use,” Wayne replied. My suspicions were confirmed.

  I may not have understood the other group members, but I understood my sweetie. In fact, I understood him well enough to know that I should change the subject before he imploded from guilt.

  “How about Isaac?” I asked.

  “His wife wrote parts of his book,” Wayne answered, not even bothering to resist anymore, probably because he considered the whole thing Isaac’s fault anyway.

  “Helen?” I asked stupidly, my brain slack with shock. Isaac’s claim to fame was his raft of books about dyslexia and other developmental disabilities.

  Wayne nodded. “From what Isaac said, Helen did the bulk of the research and writing of his books—”

  “And he took credit?” I demanded, outraged.

  “Isaac claims it was a mutual agreement. Claims that men were more likely to be taken seriously than women when he first began writing, that Helen would have lacked credibility on her own.”

  I could feel Wayne turning to me. I glanced and saw that his eyes were pleading for forgiveness for a man who he didn’t even like very much. I gripped the steering wheel tight enough to whiten my knuckles, but I kept my mouth shut about Isaac. If Wayne was in a pleading mood, he just might answer all of my questions.

  “What about Ted?” I probed.

  Wayne took a deep breath and dived into further betrayal.

  “Ted meditates. Feels he’s very spiritual. But he admitted that he thinks of food a lot when he meditates.”

  I chuckled. “Is his mantra ‘chocolate’?”

  Wayne didn’t share my amusement.

  “We laughed, too,” he announced solemnly. “Until he told us that his real worst secret was his affair with some woman he met at Spirit Rock.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said slowly.

  I could feel Wayne’s nod. “If Janet ever found out, Ted would have to meditate on broken bones,” he predicted.

  I thought about Ted’s wife, Janet McKinnon-Kimmochi. She was a strong woman, a woman with children (including Ted, I thought sometimes), a woman who ruled the financial advice firm they owned jointly with an iron hand. Nope, I wouldn’t want to risk exposure to that iron hand, and I was sure Ted didn’t want to, either.

  “So what’s he gonna do?” I asked.

  “He cut off the affair with the woman from Spirit Rock. Told her his spirit guides advised him to.”

  I bristled, but kept it internal. No wonder Wayne hadn’t told me this stuff. Now I wanted to punch out Isaac and Ted. I felt the blood run to my face. Spirit guide consultation, the Marin excuse for anything. And who was this poor woman who’d been attracted to the king of self-tragedy, anyway? A needy woman, I answered myself. It was time to move on. We were almost to our exit.

  “Ru
sso’s worried about his kid, right?” I guessed.

  “How’d you know?” Wayne replied.

  “My spirit guides told me.”

  “Kate!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said and reached over to pat his thigh. “I can just tell, sweetie. Carl Russo’s worried sick over Mike. He’s always watching him like he’ll explode or something. And Mike seems like a perfectly nice kid, for a sixteen-year-old.”

  “It’s sad, Kate,” Wayne began slowly. I could tell he was weighing how much he should divulge. And then he just let it spill. “Carl’s wife had a big drug and alcohol problem, but Carl left Mike with her anyway when he went to work. One day, when Mike was a toddler, he came home to find that his wife was passed out, and Mike had a big lump on his head. Carl was afraid to take Mike to the doctor, was trying to protect his wife. And then it happened again. Carl finally left her, but not until he was really afraid for Mike. He’s sure that Mike’s a problem now because of the head injuries and general abuse. Isaac agrees with him.”

  “But Mike doesn’t seem like a problem to me,” I protested.

  “He’s not, really. You’ve seen the kid. He can be a clown, make people laugh. Still…” Wayne paused and took a deep breath. “Mike and his friends stole a car and went joy-riding recently. Luckily, they didn’t get caught. And he’s vandalized things. Done all the stuff a troubled teenager does. Carl’s worried it’ll get worse.”

  I shook my head. What constituted a “normal” teenager? I couldn’t help but think that Mike would make it through his teenage years without major mishap, but then I wasn’t his parent.

  “How about Garrett?” I asked as I aimed the Toyota toward the highway exit. “What could he have possibly done that he thinks was wrong?”

  Wayne’s voice slowed as the Toyota pulled onto the road that would lead us home.

  “You know Garrett, how much he cares for his patients?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There was this kid, six years ago. Garrett was his psychiatrist. The kid told Garrett he was going to commit suicide, but Garrett thought he was bluffing. He wasn’t. He killed himself that night.”

  Damn. Poor Garrett. I was sure the group had assured him that it wasn’t his fault. Patient suicide had to be a professional risk for any psychiatrist. But Garrett would feel guilty. He was like Wayne that way.