Kage by John Donohue Read Free Book Online Page B

here.
    “And how are you enjoying this group?” she asked when I
    had finished.
    “Not a question of how I’m enjoying them,” I replied.
    “Mostly, I don’t think I’m what they expected.”
    She eyed me over the rim of her wine glass. “How so?”
    I thought for a minute. “I’m too… reality based.”
    She sat up a little straighter. “Excellent. So am I.” The
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    waiter came and we contemplated lunch. Westmann didn’t
    even look at the menu when she ordered. I had a chicken sand-
    wich. Burke, culinary adventurer. When the help had gone,
    Westmann got back to business.
    “I’m looking for someone with your research expertise to
    assist me,” she began. I raised my eyebrows questioningly to
    encourage her to continue. Lori Westmann took a deep breath
    as if preparing herself for something unpleasant. “A month ago,
    my father was found dead at home.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    She waved the sympathy away as irrelevant. “The cause of
    death was listed as an accidental fall. I disagree.”
    I thought I saw where this was going. “Ms. Westmann, I’m
    sorry for your loss,” I started, “but this is probably something
    you need to take to the police. I’m not a trained investigator.”
    This point was, in fact, a huge understatement. I’ve blundered
    around a few crime scenes to help my brother Micky, but, as he
    reminds me, my major talent is that I know obscure things that
    most people don’t care about. I also have a knack for getting in
    way over my head and clawing my way back out again.
    “I’m well aware of your background and qualifications,”
    Westmann commented. “I have a number of people working
    on this from the forensic angle.”
    “And?”
    “You know as well as I do that if a murder isn’t solved within
    forty-eight hours it’s probably not going to happen.” She waved
    a hand. “The police are overworked. They feel the evidence for
    a crime is shaky at best and that I’m a typical grieving child
    incapable of accepting the sudden death of a parent.”
    She didn’t look all that broken up to me, but she did seem
    like someone who didn’t take no for an answer. Our lunches
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    Kage
    came and I ordered another beer. Lori Westmann had been
    sipping at her wine since it arrived, but the glass seemed as full
    as ever.
    “And are the cops right?” I asked. “About you, I mean.”
    She looked at me directly. I didn’t think the cops were right.
    Her eyes had a hard glint to them. “I have very good reasons
    to think that my father’s death was not accidental, Dr. Burke.”
    “Such as?”
    I had picked up my glass to take a drink. Lori Westmann
    leaned across the table toward me. “Dr Burke,” she said
    intensely, “my father was Eliot Westmann.”
    I put down my beer.
    Eliot Westmann was a lunatic of the first order. He was
    notorious in Asian Studies circles for writing a series of books
    about his alleged adventures studying with a mysterious sect
    in Hokkaido, far to the north in Japan. Westmann and his
    publisher maintained that the books were true accounts; most
    scholars considered them a blend of personal fantasy and faulty
    scholarship.
    Westmann had been awarded a doctoral degree by an
    obscure little Midwestern university. As an undergraduate he
    had a double major in marketing and theater. Everyone should
    have seen it coming. His book, Inari-sama: Tales of a Warrior
    Mystic , hit the stands in the late sixties and made him a cult
    favorite. I had looked at it years ago. It seemed a weird first-
    person journey through a confusing mix of Tantric Buddhism,
    recycled Asian stereotypes, and fragments of martial arts sto-
    ries about ninja and samurai masters. He eventually published
    another five or so books on the same subject. Specialists scoffed
    and the public devoured them.
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    John Donohue
    Westmann had always maintained that by writing about the
    secret community of Inari-sama , the Fox Lord, he had put his
    life at risk. He claimed that the