THE WITCH AND THE TEA PARTY (A Rachael Penzra Mystery) (25 page)

“You can figure anybody who said something nice about the bitch was lying.” His restless eyes searched the kitchen, no doubt looking for clues to where I hid the liquor supply. “Old Nicky will be one happy camper once this mess is cleared up… that is
if he’s not arrested for murder. He’ll be rolling in clover. Well, I can’t blame him. He earned every penny of it.”

“The spouse is always suspect,” I said
, lecturing. “But she seems to have made a lot of enemies. It’s a good thing she had her relatives around her.”

“Her relatives!” He leaped at the bait. “I’d hardly call distant cousins, probably not even blood kin, her loving relatives. Have you talked with them yet? Those sisters are a couple of Harpies and Rita hears voices in her head. With relatives like that you’re better off an orphan.”

“She must have liked them if she invited them to dinners and things,” I poked some more.

“Oh, she was probably fine with Rita. They had the same interest in your crap, or at least Rita was smart enough to pretend an interest. I doubt the other two had any
real interest, except to sweeten Frances up.”

“She must have been lonely if she felt she had to buy friends,” I said, sanctimoniously. He fell for it. Drugs must have been affecting his brain.

“People like that aren’t lonely,” he laughed without humor. “They’re
hungry
. She ate the souls of her victims.”

“Surely not!” I gasped dramatically, urging him on to prove his point.

“Did you ever meet her?” I shook my head. “She could be perfectly charming when she wanted something, but the minute she had control over you, she turned into a bitch. She had my stupid sister scared stiff she’d be fired. Karen hadn’t a clue that of course Frances knew all about her silly crush on Nicholas. A child could have figured it out.

“Even our noble captain—a
nd by the way he’s not really a captain—treaded carefully around her. If she turned mean about him I doubt if his old school buddy could have overridden her order to get rid of him.

“The
Mandrells hated having to put in social appearances. I think she invited them just to watch him sulk and her writhe in agony, trying to please. Brandon must be good at his job or she’d have gotten rid of him. Only one person was allowed to be a spoiled brat in the company, and he wasn’t it.”

“That hardly narrows the field,” I complained, hoping to urge him on to greater indiscretion. He hadn’t really done more than sling a little slander around, with nothing new to add.

“Well, that’s your problem,” He stood up jerkily. “I’ve done my duty. You can tell Lucky Nick and my whining sister that I cooperated fully.”

He raced to his car, but I noticed it took him a few minutes
to actually leave.

David joined me to peek through the curtains. “Getting a fix of some kind,” he said.

I agreed. “I think he is eating up his profits. He couldn’t sit still.”

“He looks okay for the most part. He can’t have been on them too long. You’d think that a dealer, if he wasn’t already using, would shy away from that sort of thing. All he’d have to do is see how his clients live.
And like most of them he’s kidding himself about it.”

“Nothing new from him,” I groaned. “I’m getting sick of hearing all this negative talk about Mrs. B-H, and about all the people she kept around her. They certainly didn’t have any love for each other, either
, not even for Nicholas.”

“Always excepting
the foolish Karen,” he agreed. “And even with her we can’t be sure she was contented with worship from afar. She might have decided it was time to clear away Nicholas’ excuse for not making an honest woman of her.”

“Two more to go,” I sighed. “And I
still have to figure out what the terrible trio is up to.”

He looked surprised. “I think they’re behaving quite well. It must be difficult for them to be parted when they’re so used to being together.”

I kissed him with great affection, and lots of tongue. That was enough to take his mind off older women. It was hard to believe that he could remain that ignorant about them, but it was sweet and it possibly provided an answer to why he found me so wonderful. He had his blind spots.

He was just suggesting that as long as it was early, we should take a run out to the privacy of his house, when a knock sounded at the door. We both jumped guiltily, more from our thoughts and plans than from our current actions. I peeked through the curtains.

“It’s Rita Jasper,” I hissed. The suspects had had their pictures in the papers, so I recognized her. “Quick, back on the stairs.” I’d have asked if my lipstick was smeared, except that any I might have retained throughout the day and evening, had certainly been devoured during our short make-out session.

“Your face is a little red from my stubble,” he whispered. Men are such jerks sometimes. That, since I had no way to remedy it, was best left unmentioned. He disappeared, unaware that he’d completely destroyed any calm I might have had.

I opened the door and tried to pretend I didn’t feel millions of little needle-like pokes from David’s five-o’clock shadow. I hadn’t been aware of them before he spoke, but I could feel each and every one of them now. “Hello,” I said, pleasantly, reminding myself that I supposedly didn’t know who she was. I, at least, had enough tact not to say something about recognizing her as a murder suspect.

“I’m sorry to barge in like this,” she said, in her little girl’s
gaspy voice. “But I had to come. The stars told me this was the right moment.”

I grunted something.

“Oh, of course! You don’t know me. I’m Rita Jasper. I’m one of the ones who was present when Helen Brown-Hendricks died. You are Rachael Penzra, aren’t you? This is the right place?”

“Come in,” I stepped aside for her to enter. “Yes, I’m Rachael. I just wasn’t expecting you to show up this evening.”

“Nicholas said you wanted to talk to each of us, and today I knew that it was my turn. My horoscope made it quite clear. But of course I knew you’d probably be talking to one of the others, so I just parked down the street and waited. I saw Quentin go in, and then when he left, I thought I’d give you a few moments to pull your thoughts together and cleanse your mind of him before I approached you.”

We had made our way into the kitchen by then, and I’d automatically poured her a cup of coffee and replenished the goodies plate. There was no sense in telling her that I had not only cleansed my mind, I’d forgotten about Quentin completely for the moment. “If you feel this is the rig
ht time to visit me, then it is,” I assured her, keeping my grumbling body’s irritation from showing in my voice, or so I hoped.

“The stars are never wrong,” she explained.

Maybe not, but their sense of timing could be improved. “I’ve never studied astrology,” I told her. “Do you find it useful at times like this? Has it given you any sense of who did the murder?”

“Murder is such an awful term, don’t you think
?” she asked. I don’t. I think it has a wonderful ring to it, quite fitting to the deed.
Murrrrderrr. Kind of a purr with a bite to it.
She didn’t wait for my opinion. “There must be some deep need that causes that much upheaval in the Universe. Think of the powerful waves of fury thrown into the atmosphere. Even after the deed is done, the fury still remains floating around.”

“Sort of like road rage,” I suggested, facetiously.

“Exactly!” She was delighted with my apparent understanding. “Why do people suddenly get hit with these aberrant surges of anger? It’s out there, in the very air we breathe, and sometimes we get too much in our lungs at once and rage flows out of us.”

Well, it was a theory.
Maybe a crackpot one, but there are a lot of those floating around out there, too, perhaps alongside the waves of anger. “The trouble with that idea is that someone came to the dinner prepared to kill, to murder one particular person.”

She frowned at me. I felt like a student in a poetry class who had dared to
offer a different meaning to a poem than the teacher held. I lowered my head, properly rebuked. I’d have to keep my big mouth shut about theories if I wanted any information out of her.

“
Murder is a sad commentary on today’s society,” she declared, obviously not aware of the old Cain/Abel conflict that took place way before our generation started killing. “We should be far advanced from evil, more involved in learning our place in the universal plan of peace.”

“
It would be nice if we were,” I said. “And of course her husband is working toward closure through me.”

“
Him!
” she jeered, forgetting, or maybe not caring, that she was whipping a little anger of her own out into space. “He never loved her, never understood the breadth of her soul. He will be glad she’s dead. Now it’s all his. I doubt he’ll even give me what she wanted me to have. She always promised that I wouldn’t be forgotten when…
if
she died first.”

“I’m sure he plans to honor her wishes,” I said.

“How will I ever know that I got the full amount?” she demanded. I couldn’t answer that, but again she didn’t wait for me to try. “And he’s told me that she left something to Stella and Martha, too. I know it’s just a bit for them, but they don’t deserve anything. I’m sure they made fun of her behind her back. Of course they wouldn’t dare do it to her face like they do with me.”

“At least she seems to have had some loyal employees,” I
hinted.

“Why not? She paid them well. Nicholas mentioned that Frances left that deplorable
Mandrell man something. She always said he was good with the books and had managed to save her a lot with the IRS.

“But you can bet she didn’t leave a penny to that slut, Karen Powell. She’s supposedly good at her job, too. I think the real reason Frances left anything to Brandon
Mandrell was just to let Ms Powell know she wasn’t fooling anybody with her blatant pursuit of Nicholas.”

Maybe it was a good thing she was working on approval from the universe. She seemed to have a lot of improving to do, a lot of anger to change into love and kindness.

“I have come to realize that we weren’t meant to know who killed my cousin,” she regained her ‘good girl’ voice. “So perhaps you should just let the whole thing drop. The stars say that it will never be fully solved, everything is clouded and muddled. There was, naturally, a reason for her death, but perhaps we weren’t meant to ever know it, not on this realm.”

“That happens sometimes,” I agreed. I was suddenly ready for her to go away. I was tired of hearing these people tear each other apart. Would I be like that about my friends and family if I were ever in danger of being accused of murder? I couldn’t imagine it, but we humans are a strange lot.
Survival is a powerful need, but I’ve always felt that the idea of individual survival, such as we see on the television reality shows, has nothing to do with real life. Survival is the family, the tribe, not just the individual. Parents, even strangers, willingly risk—and many times give up—their lives to save children. That is the sort of drive I would like to think Mankind has in its heart. There’s not always a lot to back up my theory, but then we often don’t hear of the everyday sacrifices people make for their loved ones.

“I knew you’d understand,” she stood, sounding relieved. “I’ll be on my way now, and let you inform Nicholas that you can no longer help him.”

“Wait, I didn’t say that,” I exclaimed. “I’ve given my word. You should understand that I would be judged harshly by the gods if I went back on it.”

She thought that over. “I suppose you can’t actually quit,” she decided. “But that’s all right as long as you understand that there’s no need for you to pursue things too hard.”

We left it at that. I didn’t contradict her ideas of what I would do.

As soon as she was out of sight, I told David that the stars might be better occupied trying to get a message through to her that she needed an attitude change.

“The stars tell the truth,” he said. “But they can’t make some people listen to them properly. It’s like learning a foreign language. Sometimes a lot gets lost or twisted in the translation.”

“I guess we see what we want to see,” I agreed.

Aunt Myrtle came in. “I was on my way home when I saw that woman heading for the door. It was the Jasper woman, wasn’t it? I couldn’t tell for sure.”

I explained that she’d felt compelled to come that night. “Oh, David,” I suddenly recalled the tape recorder. We’d turned it off after Quentin left. “We forgot the recorder.”

“No, I remembered,” he said. “I’d better be off and give my poor animals some quality time. One more night and we can get back to normal. Since it’s now done, it worked out okay to have her show up. Quentin’s stay was pretty short. So was hers.”

Aunt Myrtle had to listen to the tape right away after he left. “
We have a list of conflicting and condemning things they’ve all said,” she said. “I’ll get tonight’s copied and then just add tomorrow night’s recording. After that we should be able to sit down and figure out which one of them did it.”

“I haven’t a clue,” I confessed. “I’ve been so busy listening to them that I haven’t sat down and really absorbed anything. I still think the one to gain the most was Nicholas.”