Read Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery) for Free Online Page B

a cat. Romping around all the time. Pushing her nose into people’s faces.” Her voice was almost inaudible when she finished, “We’re gonna miss her.”
    Zarathustra turned his head to the wall. Was he mourning Silk’s passing or remembering old grievances? Everyone else looked frozen.
    “Who killed her?” Wenger asked, all business now.
    “We don’t know,” Justine answered, hesitating for a moment. “I told the woman at the police station. None of us knows. Most of us were masked, and the rest were outside the room.”
    “Doing a psychic experiment?” Kettering demanded eagerly.
    Justine nodded.
    “Most of you were actually wearing masks when she was killed?” Wenger demanded, his voice not so gentle anymore. “Masks without eye holes?”
    We nodded as a group.
    “Fer Pete’s sake!” Wenger boomed. “You expect me to believe that?”
    Then Wenger got down to the real interrogation. Times, places, reasons for being there, relationships to the deceased, etc. He even inspected one of the sleep masks. Kettering took out a notebook and drew diagrams and made lists while his chief grumbled at the answers he was getting. My mouth felt drier, the floor felt colder and harder, and the air warmer and stickier as Wenger pressed on. Finally, he ran to a stop. As far as I could tell, he had covered every fact possible. Would he let us go now? A picture of Wayne flashed into my mind. Damn. I shouldn’t have left Wayne alone so long. I hoped he was all right. I opened my mouth to ask if I could call him, but Kettering was already talking.
    “Shall I take it from here, sir?” he asked.
    Wenger nodded with a loud, weary sigh. I wondered how long it had taken him to perfect that sigh.
    “As you realize, there has probably been a murder here,” Kettering began with a big smile. “And a murderer is by definition pathological. And of a certain type. There are many systems of organizing personality types: astrology, enneagram, numerology, Myers-Briggs…”
    I had a feeling I was supposed to be taking notes as he droned on. I might have been in college again, the college of pop psychology. And just like in any college class, some of the students were letting out little whimpers of desperation. Including Wenger.
    I leaned back against a kitchen cabinet, avoiding the handle, and let Kettering’s words float over me as I tried to center myself. Calm , I told myself, I needed to be calm.
    Because I was in the presence of murder, which implied a murderer. I resisted the impulse to scan the faces around me once more. And if the presence of murder wasn’t bad enough, someone, somewhere, was going to tell Wenger or Kettering that I was the Typhoid Mary of Murder. If that wasn’t a type, I didn’t know what was. I reminded myself I was trying to be calm and took a long cleansing breath in.
    “Psst!” Barbara whispered in my ear.
    The breath stuck for a moment.
    “I think he’s winding down,” Barbara went on, her voice still low as I coughed and sputtered out my cleansing breath. “Look interested,” she ordered.
    I breathed in through my nose and fixed my watering eyes on Lieutenant Kettering’s eager face.
    “…so, we’re looking for a personality type. The personality type of a murderer.” He paused. “You all know your astrological signs and birth dates, don’t you?”
    “Fer Pete’s sake, look at their driver’s licenses,” Wenger muttered.
    “So, who would like to begin?” Kettering asked, oblivious to his chief’s words.
    Elsa Oberg cleared her throat. “Well,” she rasped. “Age before beauty and all of that. I’d go first, but then, maybe you should take Isabelle. She doesn’t look so hot.”
    I glanced at Isabelle Viseu. Elsa was right. Isabelle didn’t look good. Her skin was grayed in the bright kitchen light, an unhealthy contrast to her wide golden eyes. But she merely nodded when Elsa mentioned her name.
    “Thank you, Ms. Oberg,” Kettering said. And he sounded like he really