A Stiff Critique Read online

  “Anyway,” I went on quickly. “Now my ex-husband’s heard that we might get married, and he’s trying to win me over again. He thinks he’s being subtle, but he’s not—”

  “But Craig instigated the divorce!” Carrie interrupted indignantly. It was just as well Craig wasn’t in the car with us subject to that indignation, I decided.

  “Craig left me all right. But then he decided he shouldn’t have. Which was too bad. We were actually friends for a while after we separated. But now he’s determined to get romantic again.” I stuck my finger down my throat and made gagging sounds.

  Carrie threw her head back and laughed. The conversation got lighter after that. By the time she pulled into my driveway, she was talking about her kids again, bragging really, not that she’d ever admit it.

  I gave her shoulder a quick squeeze and climbed out of the car.

  “See you at six-forty,” I told her.

  She shot me a grin and a salute before backing out of the driveway, popping gravel.

  I clumped up my front stairs, smiling.

  My cat, C.C., greeted me with a deep-throated yowl of displeasure when I opened the front door. Then she tilted her head to stare at me. C.C. was a black, overstuffed sausage of a cat with beret-and goatee-shaped white spots that gave her face a certain rakish charm. Especially when she tilted her head. She untilted it and began yowling even louder. So much for charm.

  I picked C.C. up with one hand and with the other dropped my purse and Slade’s manuscript on the nearest pinball machine. Then I crossed the entryway to the dining room, which served as my office, rubbing my chin against C.C.’s silky fur on the way.

  At least there was nothing on my answering machine from the Jest Gifts crew. Saturday or not, I had expected another call. We were having an employee crisis at Jest Gifts. The parents of my second warehousewoman, Jean, were getting a divorce. That might not sound like an employee crisis, but it was. Jean wasn’t upset about the divorce, she was devastated. On Friday, she had cried all day and sent out two dozen hollow-tooth mugs to an opthalmologist instead of the eyeball mugs he had ordered. Among other things.

  I gave silent thanks that there were no messages, then sat down at my desk and let C.C. get comfortable in my lap. Once she was blissfully purring and clawing my thighs, I took a deep breath and pulled out the file folder of poetry I had hidden beneath my desk blotter.

  “‘We return home like magpies,’“ I read. “‘Each of us bearing a brightly colored scrap of conversation. He said, she said, I said—’“

  Damn. That was awful! And I wasn’t even sure if magpies were the right kind of birds. Why had I believed I could write poetry? I could just imagine Slade Skinner’s sneering critique. I shoved the folder back under the blotter with a shiver. It was time to get back to gag gifts.

  Design or paperwork? I ran my eye over the towering stacks of paperwork on my desk. Then I got out a pencil and began to sketch.

  It was just six-thirty when I remembered my promise to interrupt Carrie and Slade’s tête-à-tête.

  I hurried down the stairs, hopped into my Toyota and drove to Hutton, rehearsing my excuse for Slade on the way.

  But when I got to Slade Skinner’s doorstep, the thick redwood door was swinging wide open. And there was no one in sight to listen to my well-prepared excuse.

  “Slade,” I called out softly. “Carrie.”

  No one answered.

  I rang the doorbell and called their names more loudly, but still no one answered. Had they gone out somewhere and left the door open?

  I walked into the living room, trying to make a lot of noise, clearing my throat and scuffling my feet. I wasn’t too worried about intruding, though. After all, that was the plan.

  The living room was empty. I just hoped they weren’t in the bedroom. Maybe they’re in the garden, I told myself, and made my scuffling, coughing way toward the glass doors.

  But then I heard a noise from down the hall. A sob. Carrie’s sob, I was certain. And then another one.

  I sprinted down the hall toward the noise, picturing Carrie in Slade’s muscular grip. She was strong, but she was so damn small. If he had done anything to her, I’d—

  I was through the first doorway off the hall before I could finish the thought, my heart pounding from the sprint. And Carrie was there too, standing in front of a long wooden desk, her back to me. Her shoulders jerked in uneven sync with her sobs.

  “Carrie,” I called gently.

  “Kate?” she cried and swiveled around to face me, her eyes wide with fright. My mouth went dry. I had never seen fear like that on her face, not in all the years I had worked with her. Not in all the years since.

  “He’s meat and bone,” she whispered.

  “What—” I began.

  Carrie stepped away from the desk and pointed.

  My eyes followed the direction of her finger.

  And then I saw it, saw what was left of someone’s head resting on a computer keyboard, a bloody dumbbell next to it. Slade’s head, I realized. That red-stained hank of hair was his ponytail. My heart stopped, and for an instant the vision was bathed in light like an overexposed photo.

  “Meat and bone,” Carrie whispered again.

  But she was wrong.

  Slade Skinner wasn’t just meat and bone.

  He was meat and bone. And blood.

  - Three -

  I closed my eyes, but I could still see the wreckage of Slade Skinner’s head against the darkness of my eyelids. Gravity sucked at me, telling me to lie down. Ordering me to lie down.

  I drew in a breath so sharp it cut at my lungs, then forced my eyes back open. I didn’t want to fall, didn’t want to land on the rug. There was blood on the rug.

  There was blood everywhere. Even without looking at what was left of Slade’s head, I could see the bright red splatters on the desk. And on the crystal inkwell and pen sitting there. One end of the dumbbell was covered in blood. There was even a splash of red on the computer screen.

  That wasn’t all there was on that computer screen. A few amber lines of text glimmered against the black background as well. I took another sharp breath and stepped closer, refocusing my eyes. The lines became words.

  “I never thought that someone in my own group—”

  And then the amber words disappeared.

  For a stunned instant, I couldn’t figure out what had happened. Then I saw Carrie’s hand pull back from the side of the computer.

  I swiveled around to face her, shouting as I did. “You turned it off! Why the hell did you do that?”

  When she didn’t answer me, I peered angrily into her face. Her eyes were still wide and her mouth was slack. Slack with fear. And with shock, I realized. My anger dissolved, leaving me weak and dizzy.

  “Carrie, why did you turn off the computer?” I asked her again. This time I didn’t shout.

  “Slade is dead,” she answered, her voice as lifeless as Slade’s body.

  “Oh, Carrie,” I whispered. I felt cold dampness on my cheeks and realized I was crying.

  She threw her arms around me and held on. I could feel her small body tremble.

  “Did you kill him?” I whispered. I had to know.

  She pushed away and stared at me, still slack-jawed. Then slowly she closed her mouth. Intelligence returned to her eyes.

  “I did not kill Slade Skinner,” she stated, her voice low and clear. “You must believe me, Kate.”

  I told her I did believe her, and together we went to call the police.

  Minutes after Carrie made the call—she insisted it was her responsibility—two uniformed officers burst through the still open front door. Carrie and I were in the living room, sitting silently on one of the coppery leather couches. The larger of the two officers came to a halt in front of us.

  “Excuse us, ma’am, um, ma’am,” the officer said quietly, nodding at each of us. “Did one of you call the police?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. On top of the shock of finding
a dead body, a polite police officer was just too much. Was it because we were in Hutton? Carrie didn’t have any trouble answering, though.

  “Yes, Officer,” she said crisply. “I made the call. Let me show you the…” Then her crisp voice faltered.

  “The deceased, ma’am?” the officer offered helpfully.

  Carrie jerked her head in a curt nod and rose to lead the two officers down the hall, returning to the living room minus one of them minutes later.

  Three more men arrived not long after that. But these men were dressed in business suits instead of uniforms.

  “Police Chief Gilbert,” said the gray-haired one. He stuck out a hand to be shaken by both Carrie and myself. “I’ll be taking personal charge of this case,” he assured us, his voice as hushed and respectful as a funeral director’s. “Please let us know if you need anything.”

  We both shook our heads. As Gilbert and the other two men in suits disappeared down the hall, I wondered if Carrie was as dazed by the police chief’s performance as I was. The whole scene was taking on a dreamlike quality. And when the men walked back into the living room some time later, I noticed something else strange. All three men looked alike. They all had lean, aristocratic features with long noses and high foreheads. They could have been brothers, including the African-American among them.

  “Ms. Yates,” Police Chief Gilbert said to Carrie. “If you wouldn’t mind, we’d like to ask you a few questions in the kitchen.” He gave me a pleasant nod, assuring me he’d speak to me very soon.

  Carrie left with the police chief, her back straight and head held high. For some reason, the sight of her small erect body made me want to cry.

  I closed my eyes instead and leaned my head back against the leather cushions, willing my mind to think of anything but Slade Skinner’s death.

  My mind began to drift, and pretty soon the memories came floating on by, memories of the mental hospital where Carrie and I had worked some twenty years ago. I caught glimpses of the faces of my favorite patients. And heard their voices too. George, who used to march the halls chanting “Johnny get up, Jimmy get up, Peter get up!” all the time staring at his crotch. And Marion, who whispered wide-eyed for days at a time, “I was there when Egypt burned, in the body of a priest. I was in Atlantis too, as it sank. And in Greece…” All the way up the reincarnational scale. And old Simon who always pretended we were on a cruise ship, danced like Fred Astaire and asked me to marry him. He had actually escaped the hospital. I always liked to think that he just swam away.

  And then I remembered the time that Carrie had saved my life. Or so I had believed.

  I’d been working on the residential ward of the hospital all of two days when Rosie had picked me up and squeezed. That might not sound too bad. But Rosie was over six feet tall. And she had the muscles of a football player. Her real name was Roslyn, but we called her Rosie in honor of Rosie Greer. And when she picked you up and squeezed, she didn’t squeeze you like someone testing the freshness of a loaf of bread, she squeezed you like she was making lemonade and you were the lemon. I tried to tell her to stop, but she was squeezing me so hard I couldn’t get the words out. And then I began to pass out. Words buzzed around my head, and pretty soon the room joined in.

  It was then that Carrie trotted up.

  She had said, “Rosie, put that girl down right now,” in a deep, calm voice.

  And Rosie put me down.

  I never forgot it. Even when I got good at handling the violent patients myself. Even when I realized that Rosie always put the people back down, even the cop she picked up one day—

  “Ms. Jasper,” came a voice into my consciousness. I opened my eyes and Police Chief Gilbert’s lean, aristocratic face replaced the rounded face of the cop in my memory. “If you wouldn’t mind following me?” he said, waving me ahead of him. A gentleman of the old school.

  The police chief’s questions must have taken me all of five minutes to answer.

  “Probably an interrupted burglary,” he assured me as he stood up from the kitchen table. “Please feel free to go. I believe your friend is waiting for you.”

  That was it, I realized as I left the kitchen. No one asked me anything about the computer. No one even asked if I’d been with Carrie when she discovered Slade’s body. As opposed to coming in later. They just seemed to assume we had found him together. I was glad. I didn’t want to tell them any of that. Or to tell them about the desperation I had seen in Carrie’s eyes when she’d talked about Slade’s agent. What if Slade had only been teasing her? What if—

  But then a happy thought intruded. If Carrie had bludgeoned Slade Skinner to death, wouldn’t she have been splattered with blood? And she wasn’t. But she could have covered herself, a voice within me argued. She could have—

  “Are you ready to leave?” Carrie asked from my side.

  I jumped a little in place, then nodded and followed her out of Slade Skinner’s house.

  I sucked in the fresh air gratefully once we were back on the other side of Slade’s front door. I heard children laughing somewhere, a mother calling, and then, for a moment, only the hum of distant traffic and insects.

  “We need to discuss what has happened,” Carrie said.

  “Not here,” I warned with a nod toward the house.

  We walked in silence to the curb, where our cars were parked. I looked over my shoulder. There didn’t seem to be any Hutton police within earshot.

  “Why did you turn off the word processor?” I asked Carrie for the third time. This time she answered me.

  “If we assume that Slade typed the message on the screen, the message would seem to indicate that Slade had found out something about someone in the critique group, some secret.” She sighed. “The words didn’t specify who that someone was or what Slade had found out. They didn’t even specify whether that someone was male or female. Still, I didn’t want the police to see the reference to our group. I’m afraid I panicked. I’m sorry, Kate.” She turned back toward Slade’s house. “I’ll go back and inform the police—”

  “No, don’t do that!” I whispered urgently. “It’ll just look suspicious now.”

  She turned back to me, her mouth opening to speak, but I beat her to it.

  “Did you tell them that you found Slade’s body by yourself before I got there?” I asked.

  “No,” she answered, looking straight into my eyes. “Do you think I should have?”

  “No, I guess not,” I answered, looking down at my feet. It was probably best if the police assumed Carrie and I found Slade’s body together, though I wished—

  “Kate, I am not a murderer,” Carrie said sharply.

  Warmth flooded my cold hands as something inside of me decided to accept her words.

  “But I think someone in our critique group is,” she went on.

  I felt like putting my newly warmed hands over my ears then. As long as Carrie hadn’t killed Slade, I didn’t want to hear any more about it.

  “First, there is the message on the computer,” Carrie pointed out. She stuck out a finger. “Second, Slade stated that he had a secret meeting with someone from the group.” A second finger popped out. “That meeting was scheduled for five o’clock. I found his body at six-thirty.”

  She didn’t have to stick out a third finger. I got the idea.

  “The police believe the dumbbell is the murder weapon,” she added more quietly.

  I felt a new surge of nausea as I saw the bloody dumbbell in my mind.

  “Kate, will you help me figure this thing out?” Carrie asked.

  “Of course I will,” I agreed without thinking.

  Carrie’s eyebrows shot up. Was she surprised by my easy capitulation? I certainly was. What had I agreed to?

  “I don’t mean I’ll actually investigate or—” I began.

  “You have before.”

  “I don’t really know much about investigating,” I told her. “All I know is blundering around into dangerous situations and practically get
ting myself killed. In fact, now that I’ve thought about it, we shouldn’t—”

  Her steady gaze pinned me. I remembered Rosie again.

  “Well, it can’t hurt to talk,” I conceded.

  “Good, follow me to my house,” she ordered.

  So I followed her, glad for the short time I had alone in my Toyota.

  It was still light out as we walked up the path to Carrie’s house a little before eight. And warm. A tenuous breeze rustled the leaves of a nearby apple tree before moving on, leaving a sweet scent in the air. I took a deep breath. Then Carrie stuck her key in the door.

  An explosion of yips, howls and yowls erupted as if detonated.

  The sounds quickly converged on the other side of the door and I heard Yipper’s claws stripping the paint from the wood. Yipper was a young schnauzer, an aptly named animal. The howler was an old basset hound named Basta. And the yowl belonged to Sinbad, an ink-black cat with neon-green eyes. At least the animals were all guarding the door, more than my own cat, C.C., would ever consider doing.

  Carrie opened the door and yelled, “CEASE AND DESIST!”

  Taking orders is another thing C.C. would never do. But Carrie’s animals did. The cacophony ceased within seconds of her shout.

  “After you,” Carrie said.

  I tried to lead the way to the living room, but the animals were all vying for the honor. Sinbad won. He was settled on a couch licking a black paw by the time I walked through the doorway.

  Carrie’s living room was a pleasant collage of well-organized chaos. In the center, a rose-colored easy chair and two cornflower blue couches loaded with colorful throw pillows were arranged around a wooden coffee table. The walls were almost invisible under shelves of books, art prints, paintings, and photos of Carrie’s children and her late husband, Cyril. More tables and chairs were scattered around the room, the tables loaded with books, seashells, rocks and vases. And more framed prints and photos.

  My eyes stopped at a photo of Cyril taken in the years before cancer had fastened onto him, changed him and finally killed him. I looked at that kind, smiling face and my chest hurt.