Adjusted to Death Read online

  The ringing of the phone interrupted my lurid vision of Maggie’s confession under hot lights. It was Valerie.

  “I need to speak to you,” she said. “I’ve got some explaining to do.”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me,” I answered, twirling the phone cord nervously. Did “explaining” mean confessing to murder? If it did, I wished she’d go to the police.

  “But I do,” she said, her voice full of calm certainty. “I feel guided to you. Next Monday evening our ashram has a visitors’ night. Would you join me for dinner?”

  “Monday,” I temporized, as if looking at my calendar. Actually I couldn’t even see my calendar under the spread of current paperwork. But I knew Monday was free.

  “The dinner is a vegetarian feast,” she said. I licked my lips. “And afterwards, a video of Guru Illumananda’s last visit.” I groaned to myself. She should have closed the deal with the feast.

  I was afraid to meet her on her turf, and not for the obvious rational reasons. I had not been raised religiously. When I had occasionally been dragged to other people’s churches, mostly by guilty grandparents, the grandeur and power of all that unified spiritual belief had only frightened me, made me feel all the more a despised outcast. Now I imagined crazed disciples of the Guru brainwashing me, their eyes fixed, their grasping hands long and sinewy. Or even murdering me, the fragrance of incense masking the smell of death. Long periods of solitary paperwork had obviously bolstered my imagination’s powers.

  I asked if I could bring Wayne along. She graciously agreed, and we set the time and place. As I replaced the telephone receiver I realized I was planning to investigate. And I couldn’t blame Maggie. I could only blame my need to know that the murderer was someone other than Wayne Caruso.

  The rain and wind continued their assault on the house as I did paperwork. Water seeped in under the sliding glass doors. Broken branches danced across the yard. C.C. paced back and forth, occasionally jumping in place, her black ears flattened back against her skull. Suddenly, the minutiae of Jest Gifts held no more allure. I wanted to tackle Maggie.

  I wasted no more time. I zipped up my down jacket, pulled up the hood and raced through the cold rain, ready to do battle with the storm from the heated womb of my Toyota. Great gusts of wind tugged at my car as I drove toward Maggie’s house. I blasted rock ‘n’ roll from the radio speakers in defense. Rain slapped the windshield to blind me. I turned up the heat and the speed of the wipers. I was high on the battle by the time I reached Maggie’s.

  Her brick walkway was drowned in a whirlpool of murky water, dead leaves and bougainvillea blossoms. I splashed through and knocked on her door. The sound of dachshunds yipping and skittering could be heard over the noise of the storm, and then heavier, human footsteps approached.

  “Who’s there?” came Maggie’s muffled voice from behind the door.

  “It’s Kate.”

  “Hold on.” She opened the door the two inches allowed by the chain lock. The slice I could see of her face was set in an uncharacteristic frown. Doc and Hound clamored for a chance at my ankles.

  “Are you alone?” she asked in a lowered voice. Her eyes moved behind me and to my sides.

  “Yes, I’m alone. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Is Wayne with you?”

  “No!” I was getting wetter by the minute. I could feel the rain pouring into my Reeboks. “Will you let me in, already?”

  She removed the chain and opened the door. Doc and Hound flew out, whirling and leaping at my corduroy-clad legs in an ecstatic frenzy. I walked carefully through the minefield of moving dachshunds into Maggie’s brightly colored living room and took off my muddy shoes.

  “Jeez, Kate you’re soaked,” said Maggie. “I’ll get you some dry socks!” She rushed out of the room. I sat down on an orange pillow and submitted to an attack of wet tongues, cold noses and hard toenails.

  The socks Maggie brought me were bright yellow. They provided an interesting contrast to my black corduroys and Reeboks. While I put them on she hovered over me, twisting a clump of her frizzy red hair around her finger.

  “Are you sleeping with Wayne?” she burst out mid-twist.

  “No,” I answered. “Are you sleeping with Eileen?”

  “Of course,” she said, her eyebrows rising. “I thought you knew. Didn’t you say Renee had told you?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I answered inanely. Of course; that was Renee’s secret about Maggie and Eileen, the one that I had pretended to know. I blushed, remembering my bluff. Maggie sat down on the green sofa.

  “Does it bother you?” she asked, her expression serious and concerned.

  “I don’t think so,” I answered. “I hadn’t really thought about it much, except in terms of motive.”

  “Motive?” she said. She straightened up, her eyes widening with disbelief. “You mean a murder motive?”

  “It is a secret,” I said defensively. “People kill to protect secrets. And you never told me in all this time.”

  “Sheesh, it never came up. Should I announce my sexual preference while I’m giving treatments? Or put it on a bulletin board? That’s what Eileen would like to do. She’s committed to pride, claiming our power, openness, all of that stuff. Personally, I don’t think it’s anyone’s beeswax but ours. How the heck can you get a murder motive out of me and Eileen?” She looked at me with hurt in her eyes.

  “I’m not sure,” I mumbled. “Blackmail? I mean, wouldn’t it hurt your business?”

  “Oh boy, Kate. Some motive! Eileen says it wouldn’t hurt the business anyway. She says we’d get a whole raft of neat new lesbian/feminist clients. She’s probably right.”

  “I’m sorry, Maggie. It was just an idea.”

  “At least you’re trying,” she said, brightening. “I guess I asked for it. But you can stop investigating me. I’ve got it figured out.” She bent forward and whispered. “Wayne is the murderer. “

  “Not you too. Welcome to the lynch mob,” I said bitterly.

  “But listen, Kate, it all works.” She jumped up from the sofa and began to pace, twirling her hair as she moved. “I didn’t think it could be him because he was so gentle, but when I saw him with you yesterday, it came to me. He killed Scott to be free to marry you!” She turned and pointed at me in triumph. Her smile faded as she saw my stunned face.

  “Oh boy, I’m sorry, Kate. Are you in love with him?”

  “How on earth did you come to the conclusion that he killed Scott to marry me?” I asked.

  “Remember Wednesday morning, when you told me Craig had left you?” I nodded. How could I forget the morning of the murder? Maggie began pacing and twirling again. “Wayne was there, listening. He had loved you from afar, watching you in my office, but he knew you were married and held back. Kinda like Eileen and me, before I left my husband. Then he heard you were free and he knew he had a chance.” She paused dramatically and looked at me. “But Scott stood in his way, so Scott had to die.”

  “How the hell did Scott stand in his way?” I exploded.

  “Blackmail,” Maggie whispered. “Why else would Wayne have stayed with him all those years?”

  “How about friendships?” I suggested. “How come no one is able to accept that Wayne really cared about Scott?”

  “Jeez, I’ll bet they weren’t even lovers. Eileen doesn’t think so either.”

  “People can love each other without being lovers.”

  “Love, maybe. But live with him, and go everywhere with him for all those years. It’s too bizarre, Kate.” I shifted uncomfortably on my pillow. It was bizarre. Maggie sat back down on the couch, her case almost finished.

  “I saw the way he looked at you. He’d loved you all that time. It’s kinda romantic when you think about it.” She smiled dreamily at me, inviting my agreement. I bet myself she had a whole slew of romance novels tucked away somewhere in her vividly colored house. So much for my stereotypes about lesbians.

  “It is not romantic, Maggie.
It’s fiction,” I said with all the force and reasonableness I could muster. I looked her straight in the eye and began the defense. “In the first place Wayne is incapable of murder. You’ve said so yourself—”

  “But that was before I saw him having a fit yesterday. Jeez, did you see the way he jumped on me? He wanted to kill me, I’m sure of it.” She squirmed on the couch, remembering.

  “Maggie, no offense, but there are times that I’d like to kill you, too. I just don’t look as scary as Wayne when I have murder on my mind.”

  “You don’t mean that,” she said, blinking. I ignored her and continued.

  “In the second place, I doubt that Scott had any nefarious hold over Wayne. If Wayne had wanted to see me he would have. And, in the third place, if Wayne had wanted to kill Scott I’m sure he could have found a way to do it without being suspected.”

  “Like what?” asked Maggie, her tone turned sullen.

  “Like an accident, or a drug overdose. Considering Scott’s history, a drug overdose would have worked. Wayne could have killed him any number of ways, at his leisure. No, someone else had to kill him, that day in your office. Someone with no other choices.” I was convincing myself, as well as Maggie, as I talked.

  “But Kate,” Maggie said. “If Wayne didn’t do it, who did?”

  Believe me, I thought about the question on my drive home through the storm. Then I began to think of food. I had missed breakfast and it was nearly lunch time. The image of a large bowl of brown rice, shredded cabbage and green onions, topped with tofu sauce, floated on the rain before my windshield. I was salivating as I turned the key in my front door.

  My hunger dissolved instantly when I pushed the door open. I knew an intruder had been in my house. It wasn’t intuition; it was the rain and mud-soaked carpet in the entry hall. Not even C.C. could have produced that. And then I asked myself if the intruder was still there. I stood very still, listening for movement, my heart beating loudly against the drumming of the rain.

  - Eleven -

  I don’t know how long I stood there, straining to pick up the sound of a human presence. Five minutes? An hour? I was unaware of time, locked into the focus of listening. I could hear, as if from a distance, the beating heart, ringing ears and shallow breathing of my own body competing with the sound of the storm outdoors, and no more.

  C.C.’s sleepy mewing broke into my concentration. She came from the kitchen and dropped into her china-cat pose at my feet, her paws curled delicately underneath her, her eyes opening and closing. Would she be napping if the trespasser were still here?

  I turned toward the living room to find a weapon. I was still in an altered state of consciousness, my hearing and sight acute, my body vibrating with adrenalin. I saw signs of intrusion all through the room. The piles of junk I had left on the pinball machines were now neatly ordered. My books were rearranged (alphabetically, I discovered later). Magazines and pillows were straightened. The room had not been so much ransacked as tidied. Had my mother been here? I laughed aloud at the thought and then immediately stilled my body again. If there were intruders present, they were now alerted by that foolish laugh.

  After listening quietly for any reaction to my laugh, and hearing none, I crept to the fireplace and picked a poker off the rack. I hefted it and practiced a blow, suddenly wishing I had found time in my schedule for the tai chi sword class. I told myself that there was no one in the house anyway. I was right.

  As I moved warily from room to room, I noted signs of trespass everywhere. Nothing was gone, only displaced. The papers on my desk had been unscrambled and stacked with military precision. My bed looked as if it had been picked up and then remade. Wayne’s stories had been moved from the floor by the bed to the bedroom bookshelf, the manila envelopes disposed of. Even the books in the bathroom were positioned differently on the top of the toilet tank.

  The final insult awaited me in the kitchen. There, I found C.C.’s bowl heaped with an amount of cat food it would have taken at least one of her nine lives to consume. No wonder the little glutton had greeted me so sweetly.

  Only when I had completed my tour of inspection down to the last reorganized closet, did I believe that the trespasser was really gone. No one skulked in a corner or jumped at me from behind furniture. I was alone in the house.

  My fear and quiet focus turned to anger. My home had been invaded! I clenched my fists uselessly in an effort to stem the violent trembling of my body. Quick tears burned my eyes as I dropped into the naugahyde embrace of my comfy chair.

  My limbs were weak now. I told myself this was a reasonable reaction to adrenalin aftermath, as well as simple hunger. I didn’t admit to fear. My mind wandered in speculation. Who had searched my house? What did they want? I couldn’t seem to focus. I told myself I just needed some food.

  I considered calling the police as I walked into the kitchen. A menacing thought stopped me in my tracks. What if it was the police themselves who had searched my house? Of course, Felix had said they were only considering Wayne. But maybe that wasn’t true. What if they were searching for a clue to a relationship between me and Scott Younger? I tried to dismiss the idea as unduly paranoid, but it lingered.

  At least the trespasser hadn’t rearranged the refrigerator. Moving on automatic pilot, I pulled out leftover brown rice, vegetables and onions. What was the object of the search? Something that might be under a bed? On a bookshelf? In among my papers or under a pillow? As I poured tofu sauce on my veggies an unnerving possibility slammed into my mind. Craig. But what would he have been looking for? Hidden assets, in preparation for divorce proceedings? No. It didn’t make sense. I didn’t even take the time to heat my concoction, and took a bite without tasting it. A random prowler? I chewed and swallowed with difficulty. My throat was constricted. The murderer. The words came unbidden into my mind. My hands resumed trembling. I couldn’t take a second bite. I pushed the dish away violently.

  My house had been locked. The intruder had managed to get in without a sign of forced entry. If “intruder” equaled “murderer…” My mind refused to finish the thought. Calling the police was clearly the next move, but something in me balked. What were they going to do for me? First, I would have to convince them my house had been invaded. Then I would have to convince them the invasion was related to the murder. And how could it be? What could the murderer have been looking for? And what could the police do for me, at that? Warn me to be careful? I doubted that the intruder had left any telltale fingerprints or other calling cards.

  I put my uneaten meal into the refrigerator and cleaned up slowly. I found myself unable to make a decision about calling the police. My adrenalin had burned me up. My fear had immobilized my brain. I wanted a drink, but I didn’t drink anymore. I decided to further numb my brain with bookkeeping. For two hours I scribbled and calculated in a trance, allowing nothing to come into my mind but numbers.

  Even that refuge was limited. The doorbell broke into my paper retreat at two o’clock. I assumed it was not the intruder. He or she wouldn’t find it necessary to ring a bell for admittance. However, I still pushed my face to the cold glass sliding door in my office to see who was on my doorstep.

  Wayne stood there in the rain, his green goose-down parka zipped up to his chin, his hair curling out from under a water-beaded knit cap. At that distance he looked frightening, the classic nightmare prowler. I went to the hallway and opened the door.

  “For you,” he said, thrusting a dripping bouquet of white gladioli, blue irises and yellow daffodils toward me.

  “Any more of these and this place will look like a funeral parlor,” I replied. The words were out of my mouth before I could engage my brain. “Sorry,” I mumbled and hastily took the flowers from him, sprinkling myself with water in the process.

  “That’s okay,” he replied, his eyes crinkling in a smile. “Interesting, how repressed material pops up.”

  I stood there looking at him. He wasn’t frightening up close, especially when he smiled.
In the five days in which I’d known him his face had become familiar to me, no longer ugly. Like the features of a battered but treasured teddy bear. The low-hanging eyebrows seemed necessary to guard the warm and expressive eyes from rude attention. The outsize mashed nose and scarred cheeks appeared comfortably worn.

  “Don’t let me bother you,” he said, breaking into my silence and turning to leave. I had lost track of the minutes as I stared at him soaking in the downpour.

  “No, come back,” I called, as he headed down the stairs.

  I got him into the house, took his cap and parka, and offered him a seat at my kitchen table for a cup of tea. I put the flowers into a water pitcher, having used my only real vase on the last bunch, and fired up the teakettle on the stove. As I fussed with the teacups, I considered telling him about the invasion of my house. His kind face invited confidence. Perversely, I limited myself to naming the seven kinds of herbal tea I had available. He chose Red Zinger. Then we fell into a silence filled inadequately by the sound of rain.

  “I read your stories last night,” I said finally.

  “Didn’t have to,” he replied. His response made me want to take him by the shoulders and shake some self-worth into him. But I didn’t know how effective that would be against a black belt in karate.

  “I didn’t read them because I had to. I read them because they’re good.” My irritation sounded in my voice. I poured the tea into the pot to steep and brought it to the table.

  “Oh.” His eyes were lowered and his cheeks were pink. I sat across from him.

  “Have you tried to get them published?” I asked, and warned quickly, “and don’t tell me they’re not good enough.”

  “No, not yet. And thanks for keeping me in line.” He raised his head. He was smiling tentatively.

  “That reminds me, Felix wants to interview you,” I said.

  “Who’s Felix?”

  “He’s a newspaper reporter, a friend. Actually, he’s my best friend’s sweetie. Anyway, I said I’d mention it to you.”