Adjusted to Death Read online

  “The envelopes!” I said. I grabbed his arm. “You handed me your stories in manila envelopes. They thought you gave me the photos.”

  A smile crept across his face. “Of course,” he muttered. But the smile disappeared as he said, “How do I tell them they’ve made a mistake?”

  “First, a tofu burger to celebrate,” I said. Now that I knew what they were seeking, I was no longer terrified of the Reagans. Afraid, but not terrified. It was two o’clock and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I was starving.

  I led Wayne down the side of the main road, past fenced-off houses and gardens, to the neighborhood 7-Eleven. We walked single file to avoid the stream of cars cruising closely by, their tires spraying muddy water as they passed. When the path turned to sidewalk, I slipped my hand into the crook of Wayne’s arm to continue by his side. A sudden memory of a similar walk with Craig startled me with its pain. I walked faster.

  Wayne and I shared tofu burgers and carrot juice, sitting on a cement block in the cold damp air at the end of the 7-Eleven parking lot. We discussed the problem of the Reagans, the photos and the boss. The only solution we could come up with was to wait until the next approach and explain the situation clearly to them. And then hope to be believed.

  We walked back home in companionable silence, listening to the sound of our matched footsteps and the cars whooshing by. We were crunching back up my gravel driveway when Wayne broke the silence.

  “Wish this solved Scott’s murder. But it doesn’t, does it?”

  The gloom of the day came pouring down on my head. In unraveling the minor mystery, I had managed to forget the major one. And I had forgotten Renee’s claim. I stole a quick glance at Wayne’s face.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I don’t know whether to tell you,” I said.

  “Tell me.” His eyes were on mine, steady.

  “Renee claims to have told the police something that will convict you.”

  “What?” he asked, unblinking. His voice was pitched low.

  “She won’t say. Do you know what she means?” I asked, the last words wrung out of me in a painful yelp.

  “No,” he answered sadly. “All I know is that you’re afraid again.”

  - Fifteen -

  He was right. I was afraid again. But I went ahead and recounted what Maggie had told me about Renee’s claim. And then I described my fruitless telephone call to Renee herself.

  When I had finished speaking I waited for Wayne to answer me, to reassure me. But he just stood silently, staring in my direction without focus, his scarred face expressionless once more. My insides became as cold and dead as the grey day.

  “It’s okay,” he said finally, and left without another word. I watched his Jaguar crawl away.

  I spent the rest of the day and evening in concentrated paperwork. No hurt. No doubts. No fears. Only paper, pencil and ink. I moved my hands carefully as I worked, so as not to disturb my frozen body. I mouthed the numbers and words on my papers as if they formed a mantra which could block all thought. I had buried all feeling.

  At ten o’clock that night I knocked myself out with a large dose of NatuRest. But I awoke at midnight, my face wet with tears. The details of my nightmare dissolved into undefined fragments of fear and loneliness as consciousness returned.

  Consciousness brought a barrage of unresolved questions that banged against my drowsy mind. I squirmed under the covers, kicking and dodging, until one question engaged my attention. What if one of the people in the waiting room that day had been the boss’s kid, grown up, or the boss himself, for that matter? The faces of the suspects moved before me, mounted on a spinning carousel. The carousel turned slowly at first and then faster and faster until the faces blurred again into sleep.

  Monday morning was bright blue through the skylights. I blinked and then rolled out of bed, giving myself a pep talk. Time to move. Time to feel again. I jumped into a hot shower, enduring the return of sensation to my body. If Wayne was a murderer, so be it. My body tensed, not seeming to agree, but I continued the talk. If Wayne didn’t want to see me anymore, I would live. A sigh sneaked out of my mouth. I’d call him. If only to share my midnight inspiration. I toweled myself down and looked in the mirror.

  Multihued blotches of bruising decorated my arm where the stocky Reagan had squeezed it. Maybe I had the key to Scott’s murder, I reminded myself, and pulled my eyes away from the reflection.

  Ten minutes later, my bruises aptly covered by a black turtleneck and blue sweat shirt, I sat down at my desk and dialed the phone. My hands were ice cold. I watched C.C. enviously as she basked in the cat-sized patch of sunlight that came through her clear plastic cat-door. After two rings Wayne answered.

  “So what if the murderer is one of those kids, all grownup?” I asked, without further introduction.

  “Kate?” he said softly. The relief in his tone was unmistakable even in that one soft word. Somewhere in my chest ice began to thaw.

  “That’s me. Kate Jasper, office chair detective, reporting. The boss’s kids. What do you think?” I was attempting the bantering tone of Nora Charles.

  “Guess they’d be somewhere in their late thirties now,” Wayne answered slowly. I could picture his brows lowering over his eyes as he considered. “That would let out Ted or Tanya.”

  “Unless Ted was the boss,” I said.

  “He doesn’t look anything like the boss.” Wayne answered.

  “You mean you know what they look like!” The blood pumping through my body speeded up. We had a chance of identification.

  “Know what they looked like, past tense,” he corrected. “I saw Scott’s old pictures of him and the kids before I burned them. Mediterranean features, maybe Italian or Greek. Long strong faces, large noses, olive skin, black hair, big dark eyes.”

  “Hold on a minute,” I said. I shoved my stack of paperwork to the side and grabbed a pen and yellow legal pad. “I’m going to list every one that was there that day. For starters, I was there.” I wrote “Kate Jasper” on the pad. Wayne didn’t know I wasn’t one of the boss’s kids. Anyway, I like complete lists.

  Wayne was silent on the other end of the line. Was he thinking of my rather large nose?

  “Wayne?” I prompted.

  “No, your face isn’t quite right. Your eyes are too small, too close together.” I winced at his choice of words, but went on.

  “Then there’s you,” I said. As I wrote his name down I said “Caruso,” aloud. Damn. Caruso was an Italian name.

  “Birth certificate lists Enrico Caruso as my father,” he said, his voice so low I had to press my ear against the receiver to hear. “A joke on my mother’s part. She loved opera. Never would say who my father really was. She may not have known.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said simply, my face burning for his pain and my own blundering.

  “Just put a question mark beside my name,” he suggested. His voice had returned to normal, soft and low, but blessedly audible and cheerful once more.

  “All right,” I said, matching his cheerful nonchalance, while my mind tried to encompass the experience of growing up the illegitimate son of a crazy mother.

  “Check off Ted and Tanya,” he continued. I dutifully wrote down their names on my list, with an “X” next to each. “And Valerie. They weren’t black.” My pen scratched.

  “How about Devi?” I asked.

  “No, features are too delicate,” he said. I felt a tingle of jealousy. Devi’s features were “delicate.” My eyes were “too small, too close together.” I added her to my list and X’d her off reluctantly.

  “So who’s left?” I asked. Between my worries about Wayne’s childhood and my jealousy of his description of Devi I had lost track.

  “How can you forget Maggie?” he asked dryly. I smiled. How could I forget her? “But she’s all wrong, anyway. Big bones, red hair and freckles. Renee’s not even close, features too pinched. Eileen is the closest physically.” He paused. “No, don’t wash,” he
answered himself finally. “Face isn’t long enough. Eyes the wrong shape. Lips too full. Can’t be the same person.” But I still heard a hint of doubt in his voice. I wrote down Eileen’s name and put a question mark beside it.

  I looked down at my list, “But that’s everyone,” I said. My perfect theory was crumbling.

  “I appreciate the idea,” Wayne said gently. “But it won’t work. Too much risk in murdering Scott, for the boss or the kids. That was the purpose of the pictures in the first place. The threat of publication is still effective, witness the hoods the boss sent. And why wait to kill Scott? Has to be fifteen years ago at least, maybe twenty.”

  “How about the heat of the moment?” I insisted. “Say the daughter in the pictures suddenly recognizes Scott after all this time. Couldn’t she get angry enough to strike out at him without regard to the risk?” I wanted the theory to work.

  “Not the girl, none of them.” He said gently and firmly. But I remembered his hesitation about Eileen. I’d ask her about her parents at lunch, just to make sure.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “What if it’s not the boss or the kids, but someone who loves them—a wife, a husband, a friend?”

  I could hear his soft sigh. “I want it to work, too, Kate. But it won’t. If they knew about the pictures, they’d know about the risk of publication.”

  I crumpled up my list and threw it forcefully on top of the overflowing wastebasket. It rolled on to the floor, where C.C. leapt on it with murderous intent. But I wasn’t finished yet.

  “Did Scott ever blackmail anyone else?” I asked.

  “Never told me so,” Wayne answered, his voice slowing as he considered. “Probably would have told me if he had.”

  “Damn!” I said. I jabbed my pen into the pad of paper in front of me. “Shouldn’t we tell the police about all this?”

  “Do you think they’d believe us?” he responded.

  I could see his thoughtful look in my mind’s eye. And I knew what he meant. Sergeant Udel would be just as likely to believe the whole story was an elaborate red herring conceived, directed and produced by Wayne Caruso and Kate Jasper in an attempt to divert suspicion from Wayne. There were no witnesses, except possibly the unnamed narcs. And I never even got their badge numbers. Stupid, I told myself. And the pictures were gone, except from Wayne’s memory.

  “They probably wouldn’t,” I finally said reluctantly. Dead end. I slumped in my desk chair.

  “Got an idea,” said Wayne.

  “To catch the murderer?” I asked, my ears perking up.

  “No, to get the boss’s hoods off your back. Personal ads. ‘To the boss: The pictures have been burned. Your secrets are safe. Call off the Reagans.’ All the local papers. What do you think?”

  “Pretty good,” I said. “But your short stories are better.”

  Low, appreciative laughter floated over the line. “Thanks,” he said. “You’re a funny and beautiful woman.”

  “Even if my eyes are too close together?” I asked in a saccharin-flavored voice.

  “Should have said your eyes are perfect, theirs were too widely spaced,” he said quickly. Once he heard my answering chuckle he went on, but in a suddenly serious tone.

  “Kate, back out now if you need to. I tried to give you the chance yesterday. Didn’t think I’d hear from you again, but…” He sighed. “The police may arrest me.”

  I sat there holding the telephone to my ear and looking at the blank pad of paper on my cluttered desk. Telephones are such strange devices, separating the words from the physical beings who utter them. If only I could have seen his face or touched him, maybe I could have answered him with one hundred percent assurance. As it was, I had to settle for almost sure.

  “You told me you didn’t kill Scott. That’s enough,” I said firmly. I was grateful that he couldn’t see the tremor in my hands over the telephone. “Now, do you want to drive to guru-ville to see Valerie tonight or shall I?” I asked.

  He duplicated my no-nonsense tone. “I’ll pick you up at six o’clock. And I’ll call in the ads for tomorrow.” After a pause he added, “See you soon.” His last words were as soft as C.C.’s fur, and just as sensual.

  “Soon,” I answered and hung up.

  The moment the receiver went down, all of the air I had been holding in my lungs came whooshing out. I hadn’t realized until that moment just how tight I had been holding it in.

  I had twenty minutes left before I needed to leave for my monthly appointment to have my hair cut. Plenty of time to do paperwork, I told myself. But for once my body rebelled. I found myself opening the curtains of my dark office wide enough to allow in a large person-sized patch of sun. Then I lay down on the floor to bask in it.

  Half an hour later I entered the gilded doorway of the Golden Rose Beauty Salon. Although located in Marin County, the Golden Rose did not specialize in hair design consultations. It was an old-style salon, untouched by yuppie values, decorated in shades of pink and gold, and staffed by an all female troupe of gossips. You could get a good haircut there for twelve dollars, as opposed to the thirty dollars plus, charged by the more upwardly mobile establishments of Marin. The Golden Rose had not raised its prices in the three years I had been a customer. I appreciated the time warp.

  The receptionist directed a friendly pop of her gum my way and pointed me to the plush pink love seat to await my hairdresser. I nodded to the two elderly women sitting across from me and thought about Wayne’s mother. A single mother with a strange sense of humor. Only people didn’t talk about “single mothers” in those days, they talked about the shame of illegitimacy. Was that what had driven her mad?

  My thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of my hairdresser, Carol. Carol of the snapping scissors and perpetual motion mouth. She was a nervously thin woman who survived on cigarettes, Coca-Cola, and being right about everything. Politics, psychoanalysis, music theory, economics. You name it, she was an expert. And the more she opined during any given appointment, the shorter she cut my hair. That day, her own constantly changing hair was swept up in a mass of cascading blond curls that gave her bony face the look of a country-music singer.

  “Hiya, honey,” she greeted me, brushing her glossed lips lightly across my cheek. “Hear you’re acting crazy again, trying to find out who killed that drug dealer. Jesus Christ, you must be nuts! Though, if you ask me, drug dealers deserve everything they get. Let them kill each other off, do the world some good.” The two older women across from me looked up curiously. The receptionist stopped popping her gum to listen.

  “He wasn’t really a drug dealer. He just used to be,” I whispered as I stood up to follow her to my chair.

  “Crack, it’s more addictive than heroin, you know, a terrible business.” She shook her finger. “My kids had better just say no, if they know what’s good for them.”

  I climbed up into the pink vinyl barber chair as she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Everyone’s jealous I get to do you. Finding the body like that, you’re a celebrity. Look at old radar-ears over there.”

  Carol waved her scissors in the direction of a young woman who had stopped buffing the nails of her silver-haired customer long enough to stare our way, open-eyed and slack-jawed. I recognized her pink and blond head. She was Tiffany, the manicurist. She had been trying without success to take charge of my stubby, unkempt nails for the last three years.

  Carol draped a gold, rubbery sheet around my neck and turned me to the mirror, now reflecting a scenic panorama of interested faces. “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera,” she said, her voice once again loud enough to carry to all present, except those whose heads were encased in the sound-muffling hoods of their dryers.

  “How’d you find out about Younger’s murder?” I whispered.

  “Renee Mickle recommended you to me, remember?” I nodded. Renee had had a great haircut before her permanent. “That woman always wants too tight a perm. I keep telling her, tight perms are out, soft curls are in.” Carol care
ssed her own curls briefly before grabbing her scissors. “Renee ought to go back to her husband,” she continued. “She still loves him. She just won’t admit it.” I wondered if she was right. That might explain Renee’s ultimate abandonment of Scott Younger. Carol trimmed some hair from the top of my head.

  “So, Renee told you about the murder,” I hazarded.

  “No, no. Bonnie told me. Renee wouldn’t tell me if my ass was on fire.” She cut a path down to my ear.

  “Who is Bonnie?” I asked, turning my head toward Carol’s face.

  “Don’t move,” she said. “Ted Reisner’s wife, Bonnie.”

  “You mean Ted, who was there the day—”

  “The day the drug dealer got it. Yeah.” Her scissors snipped at the back of my head.

  “He wasn’t really a drug dealer,” I said once more. Creep that Scott Younger was, he was a man, an individual, not just a “drug dealer.”

  “Bonnie’s too young for Ted. But who am I to judge? They seem happy, even if she is young enough to be his daughter… or granddaughter. You know old men.” She rolled her eyes without missing a beat with her scissors. “Bonnie knew the drug dealer, you know.”

  “He wasn’t…” I began. “Oh, never mind. How did Bonnie know Younger?”

  “Some art committee together. She’s a good artist. I’ve seen her work. Good sense of style. Had a graphic-design business before she married Ted. They both work at the hardware store now, and she paints on the side, New Wave naturalism.”

  I remembered Ted saying something about an art committee.

  I felt a tingle in my chest. Was this a motive? Insecure older man. Young wife.

  “I’m a better judge of art than you’d think,” Carol was saying. “Never painted myself, though. Never had the time. But I know quality.” Younger was probably richer than Ted. Did that pose a threat? Did Bonnie marry an older man for money? Would she prefer a younger one with even more money?

  “Excuse me,” came a voice from behind me. I looked up. It was Tiffany, the manicurist, her blue eyes roundly staring.