Fat-Free and Fatal (A Kate Jasper Mystery) by Jaqueline Girdner Read Free Book Online Page A

murder. I fell asleep with my head on his chest and dreamed of strangled bodies rising like Lazarus.
     
    I didn’t get a chance to tell him the next morning either. Wayne got up, cooked Vesta breakfast and told her she would have to leave. Vesta began to cry in long heart-rending sobs.
    I sat at my desk, paying Jest Gifts bills, and listened to Wayne’s gruff voice get progressively higher and more defensive in the kitchen. He didn’t look me in the eye when he kissed me goodbye. He growled “business downtown,” and left.
    Vesta looked me in the eye, though. I was lucky she didn’t spit in it. She flounced into my ex-dining room, now my home office, and gave me a big smile.
    “You’ll never win,” she told me.
    I wondered if she was right. If this was a game, the score was about forty-five to zero, her favor. But I smiled back steadily until she left my office to sit in the living room, where she complained loudly that I had to be crazy not to own a television set.
    Once she was gone, I grabbed my Safeguard check ledger, a calculator and the stack of bills on my desk and threw them all into a box. I added payroll cards and some tax forms. I knew Wayne probably did have business downtown at one of the string of restaurants he owned and managed. But if he wasn’t going to stick around, I wasn’t going to either. I didn’t have to work at home today. I didn’t have any designing to do, only paperwork. I could visit the Jest Gifts warehouse across the bay and work in that closet we called the office. Or I could go to the library and work there. I could even go to Barbara’s if she was home today. As a free-lance electrician, she made her own hours. I dialed her apartment number, betting she’d be there.
    “Hey, kiddo, I was waiting for your call,” Barbara told me as she picked up the phone. Maybe her psychic powers had returned. “You can work over here if you like,” she added, confirming my guess.
    I was halfway out the door when the phone rang. Vesta pounced on it. I heard her talking in a low voice. Wayne? I wondered. Or maybe a pesky salesman?
    Shrugging, I picked up my box of paperwork and started down the stairs.
    “Oh, Kate,” Vesta called out cheerily.
    Why was her voice so friendly? I dropped the box and walked back up the stairs.
    “Your husband, Craig, is on the phone,” she said.
    “My ex-husband!” I snapped and reached for the receiver, remembering how Vesta’s eyes had lit up when she had met Craig. My ex-husband would have liked to be my husband again. He wasn’t pushy about it, but his desire was obvious. Vesta was only too delighted to encourage him.
    “What do you want?” I greeted him curtly.
    “Just to see how things are with you,” Craig answered cheerfully. “Vesta tells me you and Wayne aren’t getting along.”
    “Goddamm it!” I shouted. “That is not true!” I saw Vesta’s rapt face watching me and modulated my tone.
    It took me another ten minutes to convince Craig that Wayne and I were doing fine. Just fine, thank you. Then I left for Barbara’s, wishing it were true.
    Barbara met me at her apartment door wearing a ratty turquoise T-shirt under farmer’s overalls. She still looked like a fashion model. But it was the piece of paper in her hand that caught my attention, the sign-up sheet for last night’s class.
    “Hey!” she greeted me, smiling into my worried face. “Don’t worry. We’re just gonna talk to a few folks.”
    “Barbara,” I said, holding my box of paperwork out in front of me. “I’ve got work to do.”
    Her face grew more serious. “So do I,” she told me. “I turned down two possible gigs today. But settling this murder is far more important.”
    She motioned me through the doorway. I sighed and walked in. Barbara’s living room was furnished with a couple of blue futons folded into couch position, an old arcade fortune-teller machine featuring a woman’s head in a gypsy scarf that lit up and nodded and cackled when you put in