Murder on the Eightfold Path Read online

  That was putting it mildly. Still, it was a shock to think of her father . . . in fact it seemed wiser to set that aside for later examination. A.J. had asked. Now she knew. It certainly explained that while Elysia could forgive A.J.’s father, she still felt strong enmity for Stella. Elysia had never been of the forgive and forget philosophy.

  “Good night, Mother.”

  “Nightie-night, lovie.”

  Returning to her bedroom, A.J. lay down on the large canopied bed and cautiously attempted her evening asanas. She did some very careful stretching, then, tucking her knees into her chest in Happy Baby pose, she inhaled and spread her knees, gently pulling her flexed legs toward her underarms. She could feel the tug on her lower back and across her shoulders but there was no pain, just slight discomfort.

  Shins perpendicular to the mattress, A.J. contracted her feet, pulling gently and creating resistance as she drew her knees toward the sheets. So far, so good.

  Pressing her buttocks into the mattress, A.J. lengthened her spine. She relaxed her neck and the base of her skull. Holding the pose, she breathed deeply and evenly for one full minute.

  When A.J. finally relaxed in the sheets, she felt triumphant. She’d done it. She had finally managed to successfully complete a full series of asanas for the first time since injuring her back. Yes, these were by far the easiest of the asanas, but she was healing. All her previous work had not been in vain. It was simply a matter of patience and care. Body and mind at peace, she closed her eyes and let herself drift to sleep.

  “ Wake up!” a voice hissed against her ear. A.J.’s eyes jerked open. She was confusedly aware that she was in an unfamiliar bedroom, that it was very late, and that her mother was whispering to her.

  “Wha—?”

  “Shhhh! There’s someone in the garden!”

  A.J. sat up fast, biting back the exclamation of pain at her unwary movement. Elysia was already over at the window, peering through a crack in the heavy draperies.

  A.J. joined her, her own eyes searching the wooded darkness below. “Is he still there?”

  “I think so.” Elysia shifted so that A.J. could peer out, too.

  “Where?”

  “By that far wall.”

  A.J. stared but it was impossible to discern one distinct shadow among so many. “Are you sure?”

  Elysia nodded. Her own gaze seemed glued to the yard below.

  Long seconds passed. A.J. became aware of how cold the wooden floor was beneath her bare feet, how much her back hurt, how tired she was. “Are you sure you weren’t dreaming? I don’t see anyone out there.”

  Her mother reminded her of a bristling terrier, tense and pointy profile silhouetted by starlight. She didn’t say anything.

  “Are you sure you weren’t—?”

  Elysia made an exasperated noise. “I’m going down to check.”

  A.J. grabbed her wrist. “What do you mean, you’re going down to check? You’re not going out there! If you really think someone is lurking in the garden, we’ll call the police.”

  Elysia tried to free herself. “That’s the last thing we want to do. We need to follow this person, whoever he—or she—is.”

  “You’re not on an episode of 221B Baker Street now. If someone really is down there, they could be dangerous. This could have something to do with Dicky’s death.”

  “If someone is down there?” Elysia said dangerously.

  “I haven’t seen anyone so far.”

  “He probably sneaked off while we stood here debating it!”

  “If you’re sure someone is—or was—down there, I’ll call the police.” A.J. turned away and this time Elysia grabbed her wrist.

  “You can’t call the police without talking to Maddie.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “It’s . . . bad form. Bad etiquette.”

  “Says who?”

  “It simply is. It’s up to one’s host or hostess—”

  “Mother, this is ridiculous. If there’s a prowler, we need to call the police. I can’t believe we’re even discussing this. You can go wake Maddie up while I phone.”

  “No, no,” Elysia insisted. “We’ll need to ask her first.”

  “I thought you were worried about this possible prowler getting away?”

  Elysia’s shoulders relaxed as she glanced back at the window. “I think it’s moot at this point. I think he’s gone.”

  “You’re not making any sense.” A.J. stared at her mother’s shadowed face. “You don’t want the police to know about Maddie.”

  “She’s the only lead I have,” Elysia said fiercely. “If the plods come barging in here and start interrogating her, she’ll clam up. I know her. She doesn’t like or trust coppers. And if that happens we’ll lose the only connection we have to Dicky’s blackmailing history.”

  A.J. couldn’t believe they were truly having this debate. “We can’t conceal a witness.”

  “She’s not a witness.”

  “A suspect. Whatever she is, we can’t conceal her.”

  “But we don’t have to hand her over to the coppers.”

  A.J. looked worriedly from the window to her mother’s rigid form. “We’re not detectives. We don’t know what we’re doing. We might make things worse for you.”

  “This prowler probably had nothing to do with Dicky. He’s probably just an ordinary, garden variety burglar.”

  “Well, he’s certainly been in the garden long enough.” A.J. grabbed her bathrobe from the foot of the bed. “Okay, let’s wake Maddie and she can decide if she wants to call the police or not.”

  They hurried out into the hall, feeling their way in the dark. Something warm and alive scurried out from under A.J.’s foot. She stifled a yell.

  She gasped, “That ferret!”

  A small narrow form glimmered palely along the floorboard and then darted down the staircase ahead of them.

  They reached the top of the stairs, groping cautiously for the railing. A.J. asked, “Where is Maddie’s room in relation to ours?”

  “I’m not sure.” Elysia brushed past her, moving swiftly down the staircase. “You have a look for it while I check out the garden.”

  “What? We’ve already been through this!” But A.J. was talking to the empty darkness. She swore and made her halting way down the stairs in pursuit of Elysia, who had fled like a ghost through the uncertain light.

  There was no sign of her on the ground floor. A.J. stumbled through the squares of moonlight and shadow until she found the dining room. She snatched the poker from the fireplace and continued through the empty rooms and out onto the sun porch. She closed the door softly behind her to keep the ferret from getting out.

  A few yards ahead, she could see the spectral form of Elysia moving along the pet graveyard. Granted, most specters could not afford vintage Olga peignoir sets. The garden was damp, the leaves glistening in the faint starlight. The night smelled of wet earth and moldering leaves; it smelled creepy, like fresh graves.

  A.J. caught up to Elysia. “For the record? That was not cool.”

  “It’s all right,” Elysia told her. “There’s no one here.” She was peering at the wet grass. “Do you see anything? Footprints? I can’t tell in this light.”

  A.J. glanced at the grass. The lawn was of the thick and durable variety. They’d have to get down on their hands and knees with a magnifying glass to examine it for crushed blades, and that was not about to happen.

  “Maybe it was the ghost of Angus the cat,” she said sourly.

  “Now don’t be shrewish, pumpkin,” Elysia said vaguely, moving through the overhanging tree limbs. The long, pale skirt of her nightgown trailed along the lawn as she moved away. “You were simply outmaneuvered.”

  “Outmaneuvered? This isn’t a game.”

  “There’s a gate back here,” Elysia’s voice floated back, sounding surprised.

  A.J. followed her through the trees, still giving vent to her feelings. “You have no idea who was out here. It could have
been some kid taking a shortcut home after a party or it could have been a serial rapist trying to get into the house. You didn’t know what you were going to find when you came out here.”

  She fell silent, staring at the wooden gate in the back wall. Hinge creaking, it swung gently in the breeze.

  Twelve

  A.J. woke to sunshine and birdsong. Despite the disturbed night she’d spent, she felt refreshed, energized—and brave enough to try the Marjariasana again. That particular asana, the Cat Stretch, was especially good for easing and preventing back pain.

  She knelt on her hands and knees, forcing herself to breathe normally, to stay relaxed, and to keep her spine straight. She looked straight ahead, focusing on her breathing, her muscles.

  Crouching inward, she exhaled and arched her spine upward like a frightened cat. She held the pose for a few seconds, breathing softly and evenly.

  Her back twinged, but it seemed to be the stiffness that came from disuse rather than actual pain. She moved very carefully, very slowly as she returned to her original position and exhaled.

  A.J. knelt for a second or two simply listening to what her body was telling her, and what her body seemed to be saying was, it was okay to move forward into the next asana.

  Still on her hands and knees, A.J. dropped her back and raised her head as high as she could, extending her neck like a curious cow.

  Both these asanas were very popular with the young students in the Yoga for Kids and Itsy Bitsy Yoga courses she taught—though they were usually performed accompanied by appropriate sound effects. However she could imagine what her mother would make of her mooing next door.

  A.J. returned to her original position, relaxed with slow, even breaths, then lowered herself to the floor to lie in Corpse Pose.

  Her patience and care were paying off. Her back was definitely improving.

  As A.J. studied the artfully draped cobwebs overhead, she thought about the talk she’d had with her mother the previous evening and the disturbing news that her father had apparently had an affair with Stella Borin.

  Apparently being a key word. As far as A.J. was concerned there was still some doubt that any affair had taken place since the two offending parties had never admitted their guilt. But maybe it was more comfortable, safer, for her to believe that?

  Still . . . it was hard to give credence to such an idea when she vividly remembered how very much her father had loved her mother.

  Men tended to do that: love Elysia. A.J. thought of Bradley Meagher. If half the things Medea and Elysia had said last night at dinner were true, poor Mr. Meagher had been waiting loyally, patiently, in the wings all these years only for Elysia to turn around and have an affair with an unprincipled young man half her age.

  A.J. had a sudden, unpleasant notion. What if the investigation into Dicky’s death was not so much about Dicky’s romances as Elysia’s relationships with the men in her life?

  After showering and dressing, A.J. tapped softly on the door of Elysia’s bedroom. There was no answer. She poked her head inside, but the room was empty.

  She went downstairs, following the sound of voices to the kitchen.

  “There you are, sleepyhead,” Elysia greeted her. She and Medea sat at the oval table drinking coffee and eating slices of frosted pound cake. “Maddie was telling me about her prowler. It’s a good thing we didn’t call the police.”

  “Och, the puir man is harmless. His name is Bill Zemda. He lives with his parents. He was in a car crash a few years ago.” Medea touched the side of her head to indicate non compos mentis. “He uses the gate at the back of the garden to visit the statues at night.”

  Elysia was looking unbearably smug. A.J. contented herself with a crisp, “Well, we didn’t know he was harmless at the time, did we?” She took the cup Medea handed her and fixed herself coffee.

  “Someone seems to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed,” Elysia remarked.

  A.J. jumped as the ferret, Morag, suddenly poked her head around a canister of tea. The other two women laughed heartily at this sign of nerves.

  A.J. began to long heartily for her own home and hearth.

  Carrying her coffee cup to the table, she took a place across the table from her mother. Medea cut a thick slice of cake, ignoring A.J.’s request for a sliver.

  A.J. resigned herself to her fate and sampled the cake. It was very good: lemon flavored with a hint of thyme.

  “Maddie and I’ve been chatting about old times,” Elysia remarked.

  What else? A.J. managed a polite, “Oh yes?”

  “And for more than long enough,” Medea said briskly. “We don’t want to waste the entire weekend chin-wagging. What shall we do? I wouldn’t mind a wee game of golf, myself.”

  A.J. bit her lip to keep from grinning at Elysia’s expression as her plans for further interrogation were gently thwarted. Not that she was thrilled at the idea of golf herself; her back was better, but a round or two of golf seemed like pushing her luck even if she liked golf, which, frankly, she didn’t. She’d always left the golf course deal making to Andy.

  Besides, as she had been showering that morning, A.J. had discovered her own clue, which she wanted to follow up. She suggested, “I was sort of hoping I could work in getting my hair cut this weekend, if I can squeeze in somewhere.”

  Elysia opened her mouth in protest, and A.J. added, “And maybe we could have lunch out?” That would kill two birds with one stone and still allow her mother the opportunity to question Medea.

  Elysia, catching A.J.’s gaze, subsided, saying mildly, “I suppose I could use a trim myself. We could make an afternoon of it. Girls’ Day Out?”

  “I could see if they’ll take you at the place I go,” Medea remarked, clearly a little puzzled by all this urgently required grooming.

  A.J. and Elysia gave this idea a thumbs up and Medea went to phone her hairdresser. The minute she was out of the room, Elysia leaned forward and said softly, “What are you up to? What’s this sudden desire for a haircut? You usually wait till the birds abandon their nest to fly south for the winter.”

  “Ha. I do need a haircut,” A.J. said. “But when I was taking my shower this morning I happened to notice that all the soaps and shampoos in the bathroom are from The Salon.”

  “We all spend too much on hair product,” Elysia conceded, disappointed. “I thought perhaps you were on to something. You had that gleam in your eye.”

  “You’re not following me. I’m not talking about salon products, I’m talking about products from The Salon. That’s where you go, right? And those are the products you use?”

  Elysia assented, cutting herself another slice of cake.

  “Isn’t everything geared to women over fifty?”

  “I believe so, pumpkin. No need to rub it in.”

  “It’s probably just a coincidence, but Dicky had products from The Salon at his town house.”

  Elysia looked up—and now there was a gleam in her eye.

  A.J. asked, “Were they yours? Did you ever spend the night over there?”

  Elysia said gently, “Are you sure you want to hear this? You didn’t enjoy last night’s show-and-tell session, I know.”

  A.J. thought she had hidden her reaction better than she seemingly must have. She said sturdily, “I’m a big girl, Mother. I can handle the fact that you have a . . . social life.”

  “Can you?” Elysia seemed amused at some thought she didn’t share. “In any case, you can relax. I never spent the night at Dicky’s, and I certainly never brought my own grooming products.”

  “Then Dicky was definitely entertaining another lady guest; someone about your age and probably in your income bracket. We’re narrowing in on her. The Salon isn’t a national company. You don’t find its products in every beauty parlor or in grocery stores or even on the web except through their own website. I know because I tried to find some of that royal jelly skin cream I borrowed from you. You have to purchase directly from The Salon or from their website.” />
  Elysia considered this without comment.

  “And The Salon is locally based, which means it’s likely that so is this woman—whoever she is.”

  Elysia said reluctantly, “It does look that way.”

  “It has to be that. There is no other explanation. Unless Maddie is lying—and neither of us thinks she is—Dicky was seeing someone else. And this woman is probably the woman who killed him.”

  “The shampoo could have been left by an earlier girlfriend,” Elysia pointed out. “Someone no longer in his life.”

  “I suppose so . . .” A.J. put her fork down. “No. No, that won’t fly because The Salon’s packaging changed recently. That’s something I noticed when I was searching their website for the royal jelly. I couldn’t remember exactly what it was called and I kept looking for bottles and jars that resembled yours. The bottles that I saw had the new packaging and logo.”

  Elysia said unhappily, “Maddie could be lying about the last time she saw Dicky.”

  A.J. didn’t want to believe that; she really did like Medea and didn’t want to believe she was a murderer. “I think it’s more likely there was a third woman. Madame X.”

  “Or,” Elysia said suddenly, “Dicky was using the products himself.”

  A.J. blinked. It wasn’t impossible. True, The Salon products were not geared toward the twenty-something male demographic, but that didn’t mean a twenty-something male might not use them. Although she had only seen him briefly, Dicky appeared to be very well-groomed. Nearly as well-groomed as Andy, A.J.’s ex.

  Perhaps one of Dicky’s lady friends had introduced him to the products?

  “I guess that’s possible,” she admitted, reluctantly. “I don’t think it’s likely, but I’m not sure how to rule it out.”

  Elysia ran a thoughtful hand through her dark waves. “We could always ask.”

  “It’s possible someone might remember him. I doubt if they have a lot of young men buying blue rinse conditioner.”

  Medea returned to the kitchen and announced that they had appointments at The Salon for after lunch. Since golf was now out, she seemed less enthusiastic about leaving her mausoleum and suggested A.J. and Elysia drive into Newton on their own, browse the shops, have lunch, and then head over to have their hair done.