A Cry for Self-Help (A Kate Jasper Mystery) by Jaqueline Girdner Page A

his tone soft but insistent. “Not in the classic sense. He only fought back. They had a very hard time finding a common ground, those two. And she would lash out physically. And sometimes he’d hit her back. So the doctors had two reports on her, a black eye and a split lip. Two.” He stuck up two fingers to underscore his point. “But you should have seen Dad. He was completely beaten up. He was just too embarrassed to tell the doctor who did it. He went to the hospital both those times, claiming he’d been mugged.”
    He turned and looked at Diana. “He wasn’t a bad man. Maybe not perfect, but not bad.”
    Liz turned her head away from Diana and Nathan, her skin reddening as her daughter nodded energetically. I remembered that Liz had disliked Sam too. I wondered if Nathan’s words had changed her mind at all.
    “At least he doesn’t sound as bad as Dad,” Gary Atherton threw in unexpectedly.
    Liz swiveled around and looked at her son thoughtfully. I’d never considered Gary and Diana’s father. Somewhere, a memory surfaced of his dying young. That’s right, I remembered. Tessa Johnson had buried him. Liz had said so at the scuba wedding. I snuck a look at Tessa’s immobile mocha-brown features. Her expression was extremely somber as she watched Nathan talking. But was that unusually somber or just normally somber for a mortician?
    “And my father really did feel grief when Sally died,” Nathan went on in a near whisper. “Natural, deep grief. His book, Grief into Growth, came from his heart. From deep in his heart. He had to see a grief counselor. He was a wreck. But he found a way to channel that grief—”
    “And a way to make a lot of money with his seminars,” Ona cut in, still not satisfied. Maybe Persian cat was the wrong description, I decided. Bulldog was more like it. She wasn’t about to stop shaking Sam Skyler’s dead image by the neck any time soon, that was for sure.
    “And he hurt some people with those seminars,” Perry Kane added from Ona’s side. His dark, soulful East Indian eyes looked into Nathan’s spectacled ones. “He should have been compassionate, encouraging Ona as a proud person of size. But instead he tore her down, tried to make her change her essential nature.”
    He put his arm around Ona’s soft shoulders. Ona leaned into him. Was the size issue really the hurt that had made her so angry? If so, I’d have bet she would never admit it. Or maybe she would. By her own appraisal, she was no bullshitter.
    “Calling me fat was one thing,” Ona said. “And it hurt like hell after all the work I’d done on accepting my size. But that isn’t the point here. The man was a murderer. Insensitivity is one thing, but murder is another.”
    Nathan just shook his shaggy head and sighed. But Martina Monteil didn’t give up that easily. She stood up to her full, almost six-foot height, and looked down at Ona, plucked eyebrows raised, model’s face grim.
    “If you repeat that lie one more time, I assure you we will sue you for slander,” she said in a voice of authority that made me believe her without a doubt.
    “But—” Ona began.
    “Sam Skyler was a brilliantly empowered man who made a monumental difference in the world. His book and the Institute have changed more people’s lives than you can count. And we will find a way to stop you if you continue to spread these ugly lies about this great man.”
    “But Sam’s dead,” Ona said, her brows furrowed, probably trying to remember what she knew about slander. Fast. Could dead people be slandered?
    “The Institute isn’t dead,” Martina replied.
    But could the Institute sue for slander?
    I would have asked, but I was too uneasy watching the two women as they scowled at each other. Or maybe “scowled” wasn’t a strong enough word. There are scowls and there are scowls. These scowls made my scalp prickle, the way it does at the movies when I know there’s a man in a ski mask standing behind the door with a