Dirty Tricks: A Kate Lawrence Mystery (16 page)

John and J.D. looked at each other
and shook their heads.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,”
replied the young officer. “Evening, Lieutenant. Do you know these ladies?”

“Two of them are our wives,” John
said darkly without further clarification. J.D. kept silent but glowered in
Strutter’s
direction. The officer wisely decided to
redirect his attention to the injured boy on the ground.

John held out one arm in an “after
you” gesture as another siren wailed in our vicinity. We got the message and
trooped through the back door in time to see Emma, along with what seemed to be
the entire neighborhood, outside the dining room window. Emma and the second
officer were leading a team of paramedics around the house to the back.
Apparently, she’d been unsuccessful in her attempt to catch up with T.J.

“The gang’s all here, I see,” J.D.
commented in a neutral tone, which didn’t fool any of us, especially
Strutter
.

“Thank goodness Armando is off
bonding with his colleagues in Southbury, or I’d never hear the end of this,” I
quipped in an effort to lighten the mood.

“A fate Margo and I aren’t likely
to escape,”
Strutter
muttered. She plucked a dry leaf
from my hair,
then
brushed at her skirt in annoyance.
“What gets out grass stains?”

Margo, who had been
uncharacteristically quiet until now, plopped down on May’s sofa. A hank of
blonde hair dangled into one eye, and she fussed over a huge run in her
stocking, acquired when she’d run into the back yard without her shoes. She
licked the tip of one finger and dabbed at it ineffectually. Her eyes met mine,
and she snorted.
Strutter
tried without success to
smother a giggle, and it was all over for me. I cracked up as I fell onto the
sofa beside Margo.
Strutter
collapsed on the other
side of her, and the three of us howled with laughter.

“If you could have seen yourself
flappin
’ around under that boy,
yellin
’
Jamaican cuss words,” Margo sputtered.

“Oh, yeah?”
I defended
Strutter
. “You didn’t look so cool and
collected sitting on that kid’s back in your stocking feet. I’m starting to
feel a little sorry for him.” I wiped my eyes on my sleeve.

“Whoever he turns out to be, I’ll
bet his account of tonight’s events won’t include being tackled by Charlie
Putnam’s mama,”
Strutter
choked. She fumbled in her
pocket for a tissue and blew her nose.
Then, “Charlie!
Where’s Charlie, J.D.?”

“Home minding his little sister,
where we abandoned him after hearing about Emma’s contact with him earlier
today, and boy, is he mad about being left behind.”

“Oops, busted,” I apologized to my
partners, and we all got another fit of the giggles.

Emma, who had seen variations of
our group giggles before, just grinned to herself, but May regarded us warily
from where she stood by the stairs. “Do they do this often?” she asked John and
J.D.

“More often than you’d think,”
J.D. answered with resignation.

The doorbell rang.

“Perfect,” May sighed, “because
what we really need at this moment is more visitors. John, would you be a dear
and see who that is? I believe I’m going to put on a pot of coffee.” She headed
for the kitchen.

“I don’t know about you,
Harkness
, but I can wait to hear the rest of this story
until another time,” said J.D. “It looks like your officers have this situation
well in hand. What do you say?” He frowned at
Strutter
.

John sent a similar scowl in
Margo’s direction, but I noticed the corners of his mouth twitching. “I’m right
behind you,” was his only comment as he went to answer the door and let himself
and J.D. out.

Thirteen

Emma’s intuitive assessment of
May’s predicament had been right-on. After the paramedics had carted off the
wounded intruder, and most of the neighbors had dispersed to their homes, the
two young officers joined us in May’s badly overcrowded living room to get our
preliminary reports. Complete statements would need to be given at the police department
in the morning, but my partners and I were getting to be old hands at that
process. I almost looked forward to introducing May to the PD’s administrative
staff, with
whom
I was on a first-name basis.

In addition to May, Margo,
Strutter
, Emma, me and the two police officers, Carla
Peterson and her children were present. They were the late-night visitors John
and J.D. had admitted on their way out the front door. Carla sat stiffly in
May’s big recliner while Rudy and Beth perched fearfully on each arm. They
stared, round-eyed, at the policemen.

“I’m sure the hospital staff will
identify your roof walker for us,” said Officer Johansson, a lanky, blond cop,
“but it would be helpful to know the full name of the runner the roof guy
called T.J.
 
If you don’t know it, the
initials aren’t much to go on, but we shouldn’t have much trouble tracking him
down. The hurt one will probably give him up anyway. There isn’t a lot of honor
among thieves and vandals at their age.”

“Anybody have any other ideas for
us?” Officer
MacNamara
, a muscular redhead, asked.
For the first time, I noticed that he was exactly Emma’s type—not too tall but
well-built. She had enjoyed a brief relationship with a Wethersfield police
officer a few years back. I had a flash of hope that
MacNamara
might distract her from her Oregon love interest, but she was fixated on her
smart phone, a sappy smile on her face, thumbs working madly. So much for that,
I despaired.

MacNamara
and his partner focused on Carla. She had been the neighbor who beat Margo to
the punch getting through to the police department. Carla, in turn, eyed her
son.

“It’s time to step up and do the
right thing, Rudy,” she told him. Her voice was firm but not unkind. One hand
rested lightly on his shoulder. With the other arm, she
snugged
her little girl against her.

“We didn’t mean to!” Beth blurted.
“Rudy never would have helped those big boys, but they said they’d tell lies
about Duke if he didn’t, and the police would take him away from us.” Here she
burst into tears and flung herself around her mother’s neck. Carla patted her
back.

“Like I told you before,
Bethie
, once the policemen hear the truth, they’ll know
Duke didn’t hurt anyone, and Rudy didn’t either, not really. It will be all
right.” She gave her son’s arm an encouraging squeeze. “Come on now, Rudy, tell
the officers what happened.”

I threw
Strutter
a sympathetic look.
Strutter’s
daughter Olivia was
just about Beth’s age, and I knew she was longing to comfort this child, who
clearly adored her big brother, as Olivia did Charlie.

Rudy’s voice broke just a little
at first, but he stuck his chin out manfully and managed to tell a fairly
cohesive story. It was pretty close to Emma’s theory and involved a loosely
knit group of high school tyrants who routinely recruited younger kids to do
their nefarious bidding. The ringleader’s name was Myron
Lifschitz
,
improbably enough, and he lived two blocks from Wheeler Road on Brimfield
Street. Tonight’s sidekick, the phantom T.J., was unknown to Rudy by name, “but
I’d know him again if I saw him,” he said bravely.

“Myron
Lifschitz
, huh?”
Emma couldn’t repress a giggle. “
Lifschitz
wasn’t bad
enough,
his
parents had to hang Myron on him? The poor kid almost had to act out. The
future punks of America, we used to call his type.” I couldn’t help being
impressed that she was able to keep up with her text messages while still
paying attention to the conversation in May’s living room. “Every high school
has them. They’re usually male, not good at sports, not academic standouts, not
much of anything but bullies who think
it’s
fun to use
younger kids to prank people, because they’re the only ones they can
intimidate.
 
Sad but true.” She returned
her attention to the device in her hand.

“But why me?”
May wanted to know after listening to Rudy’s story and Emma’s comments. “What
did I do to make myself a target?”

Officer Johansson had been busy
making notes during Rudy’s recital but looked up now.
“Any
particular reason that you know of, Rudy?”

The boy shook his head. “They
never said why, but I think it’s just because this house was empty lots of
times while it was being fixed up, and Mrs. Farnsworth wouldn’t know them by
sight. There were a bunch of carpenters and painters and stuff coming and
going. They locked up at night, but everybody knew where Mrs. Abernathy, the
lady who used to live here, hid the spare key. Lots of people on this street
have keys to each other’s houses.” He shrugged. “So it was just easy to prank Mrs.
Farnsworth.”

Here Carla spoke up. “That’s true.
We’re all aware that we live in a different world today than the one we grew up
in, and we should be more careful about security, but a lot of the older folks
have a 1950s mindset about that sort of thing. Mrs. Abernathy was an elderly
widow. She’d lived in this neighborhood for years and
years,
raised her family here. The local kids seemed to gravitate to her. She baked
cookies and let them plant carrots and radishes in her garden, that sort of
thing. In her later years she often visited relatives in other parts of the
country, so she was forever asking one or another of us to water her plants,
feed her cat,
collect
her newspaper and mail, that
sort of thing. I think half the neighborhood had keys to her house,” she
laughed, “not that we needed them. Everyone knew she kept a spare under the
planter on her porch. Apparently Myron
Lifschitz
knew
that, too, and he decided to impress his so-called friends by tormenting poor
May.”

We were quiet as we confronted the
bleakness of the situation. May offered her opinion.

“Myron
Lifschitz
sounds like a very sad young man,” she said. “What do you suppose makes him
sad, Rudy?” She
scooched
me closer to Margo and sat
on the end of the sofa, inviting Beth to leave her mother’s side and accept a
small peppermint she held out to her. “Good for the digestion,” May
assured
Carla. Beth approached with caution but in the end
was unable to resist the candy.

Rudy had nothing to say. As the
mother of a teenage boy,
Strutter
offered her
opinion. “Young people want so badly to be accepted and liked, to have a group
of friends.” She looked at Rudy. “Some kids don’t have trouble with that.
They’re funny or smart or good at a sport like soccer, and friends come easily
to them. Am I right so far?”

Rudy nodded solemnly.

“But a few kids just don’t seem to
fit in. As Emma said, they’re kind of outsiders, don’t belong to any school
clubs, aren’t good at sports. It’s a funny thing, but sometimes those kids band
together, and that only makes things worse, of course. Then they’re known
collectively as nerds or losers. Pretty soon the other kids taunt them, call
them names and stuff. Sooner or later they get so mad about it, they decide to
teach the others a lesson, show them how clever and powerful they really are.
Does that sound like Myron and T.J. at all?”

Rudy was hanging on
Strutter’s
every word, his eyes wide, and he nodded again.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw May crook a finger at little Beth and pat
her lap invitingly. Beth crawled into it without hesitation and promptly stuck
her thumb in her mouth, her eyes drooping. May rocked her gently and smiled at
Carla, who smiled back.

“How do you know Myron?” Rudy
asked
Strutter
, amazed.

Strutter
smiled kindly at him. “I don’t, but I’ve known other boys—and girls—like him.
They were in my school in Jamaica, where I grew up. They were in Margo’s school
and Kate’s school and Emma’s school, too.”

“Got that right,” Emma agreed, and
we all nodded.

The two young police officers, who
had wisely remained silent as the story unfolded, now exchanged glances.
MacNamara
cleared his throat.

“I think we’ve heard all we need
to for tonight. We won’t be pressing any charges against your son, Mrs.
Peterson, since it’s pretty clear to us that he was coerced into cooperating
with
Lifschitz
and his pal T.J., unless you want to
do that, Mrs. Farnsworth?”

May shook her head no and shifted
slightly in her cramped seat to make the sleeping child in her lap more
comfortable. “I just want the pranks to stop,” she said quietly.

Johansson spoke up. “I’m pretty
sure you won’t be having any more trouble once we finish with Myron and T.J. A
sit-down at the station with pranksters and their parents, along with a tour of
our lock-up, usually does the trick. If they still want to be tough guys after
that, they know what the consequences will be.”

He walked over to Rudy and
squatted so he could look him in the eye. “But if anything like this ever
happens again, if someone tries to make you do something you don’t want to do
or threatens your dog or anything at all, you’ll know to come to us for help,
right? That’s what we’re here for.” He got to his feet and extracted a business
card from his pocket, which he handed to Carla. Then he and
MacNamara
headed for the door. “Keep in touch. Good night, Ma’am.” This last to May, who
smiled her gratitude as the officers made their exit.

Before long the rest of us
followed. After Rudy made a full and heartfelt apology to May, prompted by his
mother, Carla retrieved Beth from May’s lap and hefted the little girl over her
shoulder.
“
Oooph
!
She’s
getting too big for me to manage. Rudy, get the door for me, and let’s be on
our way. There’s work, school and soccer tomorrow, no matter how little sleep
we get.” After thanking us all for our trouble and bidding us goodnight, the
little family trailed out.

That left Emma to drive
Strutter
, Margo and me back to The Birches. We cleaned up
the remnants of our take-out dinner and May’s coffee service and put the living
room back into order. May looked as exhausted as I felt.

“It’s a good kind of tired,
though, don’t you think?” I asked her as we revisited the events of the
evening. “I mean, all’s well that ends well and so on. It was surprising and
annoying and even a little scary, but at least this is the end of it. When you
think about it, nobody was seriously hurt except that fool kid who fell off
your roof, and if his leg is broken, it serves him right.”

“
Hoo
,
boy, you’re tough,” May teased me. “I hope I never get on your wrong side.”

“Just
stay off
my roof, and we’ll be fine,” I assured her.

Strutter
and Margo exchanged sour looks. “Easy for you two to kid around,” said
Strutter
. “You don’t have husbands waiting at home for you
to explain yourselves.”

Margo picked up her handbag
wearily. “I have a feeling John might be tempted to do a little leg-breaking of
his own tonight, so don’t be surprised if I hobble in tomorrow in a cast.”

Emma laughed at their dilemma, her
good humor undimmed by having failed to run the elusive T.J. to ground. “Come
on,
ladies,
let’s get this show on the road. We have a
little
walk
to get back to my car, remember.”

The three of us groaned in unison
and followed her to the door.

“I am forever in your debt,” May
told us from her heart as we all stepped out onto her front porch.

“Oh, don’t you worry,” said Emma.
“These three are always in one pickle or another. You’ll have plenty of
opportunities to return the favor.”

I shot her a mom look, but I
really couldn’t disagree with her, so I kept quiet as we trooped down May’s
driveway to the street.