Dirty Tricks: A Kate Lawrence Mystery (23 page)

Whatever the
genre, she strives to provide lively, entertaining reading that takes her
readers away from their work and worries for a few hours, stimulates thought on
a variety of contemporary issues and gives them a laugh along the way.

Learn
more about Judi and her Kate Lawrence Mysteries at
www.JudithIvie.com
or contact her at
[email protected].

Sample another great mystery in the

Kate Lawrence series.

A Skeleton in the Closet

by
Judith K.
Ivie

The long, wet
spring had finally turned the corner into a Connecticut summer so glorious that
the residents of Old Wethersfield decided among
ourselves
it had probably been worth the wait. Now that we were into June, the houses on
both sides of the Broad Street Green boasted lush lawns and flower beds glowing
with every color imaginable under canopies of trees in full leaf. The fields
behind the farmhouses showed promising signs of the sweet corn to come, and
although I knew very well that I had another month to wait, I was already
salivating at the thought of wolfing down a tomato so fresh it was still warm
from the sun.

The grand old
specimens of oak, elm and beech that anchored the green itself dozed in the
morning sunshine, no doubt congratulating themselves on having survived yet
another New England winter. Property was proudly maintained here, and nearly
every Cape Cod, Colonial, Victorian and farmhouse along our route shone with
fresh paint and liberally applied elbow grease.

Usually, my
daughter Emma and I hiked the loop from the Law Barn on Old Main Street, where
our respective businesses were housed, to the Wethersfield Cove and back, but
we varied our route occasionally to check out properties for sale in different
neighborhoods. It’s not everyone’s idea of a good time, but we both have reason
to be interested in local real estate. Along with my partners, Margo Farnsworth
and Charlene Putnam, I own Mack Realty. Emma, a paralegal, and her boss Jimmy
Seidel, who had just passed the bar exam, were launching a real estate law
practice in the Law Barn’s spacious loft. House sales were booming in what had
to be the last of a sustained hot market, and our morning constitutionals gave
us an opportunity to mix a little business with pleasure before the workday
claimed us.

We slowed our
pace as we approached the little pond on the corner of Spring Street, where a
dozen geese and a sprinkling of ducks habitually summered. Emma, her older
brother Joey, and I shared a fondness for all types of critters, and we liked
to follow the progress of the fuzzy ducklings and goslings as they morphed into
sleek adulthood, ready for their fall migration to more hospitable winter
quarters. For the past few years, a pair of black-legged mute swans had also
selected our little pond as their summer home. Since swans are both bossy and
territorial, their presence didn’t please the rest of the feathered
inhabitants, but the human visitors were delighted. This year’s hatch had
produced four splendid cygnets.

This morning, the
elegant twosome seemed to be sleeping late, as they were nowhere in sight. I
hadn’t visited the pond in several weeks, and I was eager to see the babies and
be sure that all were present and accounted for. The few Canadian geese who had
not been run off, plus a small number of sturdy mallards, were taking advantage
of the swans’ absence by preening their feathers on the grass near us.

“
Eeuuuww
, what’s that?” Emma stood on the bank and twisted
her long, ash blonde hair into a high ponytail as she scanned the bank on the
far side of the pond, squinting in the bright sunlight. She leaned forward and
frowned. “It looks like a hairy chicken.”

I peered in the
direction she was pointing. Though my eyes aren’t as young as my daughter’s, I
could make out what did indeed look something like a chicken covered in dryer
lint wriggling in the tall grass. One scrawny, unattractive wing stretched out
briefly. Instinctively, Emma shrank away, but the sight made me smile. “Maybe
it’s a baby buzzard,” she ventured. “Do buzzards live around here?” The
creature in question now unfolded a long, wobbly neck and lifted its head. Emma
looked at me in bewilderment. “What in the world?”

 
Before I could speak, her question was
answered. Out of the marsh grasses to the left of the mysterious specimen
strutted two magnificent swans, herding three more of their babies. When the
adults had their four hideous offspring satisfactorily corralled, they all
filed into the water. First
came
Dad, gliding slowly
across the still surface. The four youngsters paddled after him furiously. I
noticed that one of them was a bit smaller than the others, but he or she
seemed to be able to keep up just fine. Mom brought up the rear. “Baby swans!”
Emma crowed in disbelief. “Hans Christian Andersen sure had that ugly duckling
thing right. I’ve never seen one before, have you,
Mamacita
?
It’s kind of like with pigeons. You know there must be babies, but I don’t know
anyone who has actually seen one.”

Emma’s nickname
for me was a hangover from a long-ago semester of high school Spanish. After
ten years, it had almost stopped annoying me. “They’re cygnets, technically
speaking, and yes, I’ve seen them before. They’re absolutely adorable when
they’re first hatched, just like ducklings. This is their awkward adolescence,
but they’ll morph into beauties in a few more weeks.” We stared at the gawky
youngsters as their proud parents continued their circuit of the pond,
oblivious to our opinions. I checked my watch. It was only 7:15, still too
early for the dog walkers and the baby strollers.

I scanned the
neighboring apartment buildings to be sure we wouldn’t be disturbed for a while
longer, then eased open the trunk of my
Altima
and
extracted the digital camera I kept handy. I wanted to be able to get a closer
look at these fascinating babies when I got back to my computer.

I rejoined Emma
at the water’s edge next to the sign that read, “Don’t Feed the Animals” and
hoped once again that it was keeping people from tossing bread, crackers and
the other awful stuff they had been taught by their misguided parents to throw
into the pond for the water fowl that summered there. They meant it kindly, of
course, but the truth was that the starchy stuff swelled the birds’ bellies,
spread avian botulism through the excessive droppings that resulted, and kept
the birds from foraging for the seeds, aquatic grasses and submerged pond weeds
that constituted their ideal diet, supplemented with a few invertebrates, fish
eggs and small fish.

I took two
careful photos of the little family and checked the results in my viewer before
turning the camera off. “There. Now I have proof that baby swans are ugly. I
wonder when they’ll get pretty this year?”

“I hope it’s not
before I get back.” Emma looked a bit wistful as she smoothed her hair out of
her hazel eyes, so much like my own. She was a slightly shorter, sturdier
version of me at the same age, and her smile lit up any room she entered. Her
brother Joey had dipped equally into both sides of his gene pool and wore my
face atop his father’s frame. On him, I had to admit the combination looked
good, and more than a few young women seemed to agree.

“When is that
again?” I asked as we headed back toward the Broad Street Green, where our cars
were parked.

“Six weeks from Saturday, the end of July.”

Today’s walk
would be our last for several weeks, I reflected. This afternoon Emma would
leave for Boston, about one hundred miles northeast of Wethersfield, to study
in preparation for the National Federation of Paralegal Associations advanced
competency exam. The designation of Registered Paralegal would enhance her new
business’s credentials, which was a good idea for a pair of
twenty-eight-year-olds striking out on their own.

“How is Officer
Ron taking your impending separation?” I twitted her. Ron Chapman of the
Wethersfield Police Department was Emma’s latest beau.

“Not well, but
that’s okay. It will be good for him to miss me. He’s coming up for the Fourth
of July concert by the Charles River. A little absence will make for a hot
reunion,” she teased back, digging an elbow into my ribs.

“That’s way too
much information for your mother,” I complained. “Knock it off, or I’ll force
you to listen to the lurid details of my sex life.” I did a
Groucho
Marx eyebrow wiggle.

She feigned
shock. “You and Armando
have
a sex
life?
At your advanced ages?
Amazing.”
Armando Velasquez was my steady man, a handsome South American transplant who
could still make my middle-aged heart flutter like a teenager’s after eight
years together—when we weren’t bickering, that is. Unfortunately, at present,
we were. The topic was moving in together, which we were days from doing. As
devoted as we were to each other, and as much as we loved being together, we
were both reluctant to give up the freedom of solo living we had enjoyed since
our respective divorces many years ago. Armando seemed to think we would be
fine under the same roof. I wasn’t as confident.

I sighed as we
approached our cars and tried to ignore the anxiety that nibbled at my
midsection. “I’ll come by and take baby swan pictures once a week or so. I can
e-mail them to you so you can keep up with the little
uglies
’
progress.”

“Great! You can
send them right to my cell phone.” Emma owned every electronic gadget on the
market, which I realized was age appropriate, but it astounded me that she
operated all of them with ease. I could barely manage to place a call on my
cell phone, and I seriously doubted my ability to send digital photos to hers,
but I decided to let her keep her illusions about her mother’s technical
ability for a while longer.

“I’m going home
to pack. I’ll call you later to say goodbye.” Emma was quite aware of my angst
and opted not to drag out our farewell. She hugged my neck, climbed into her
Saturn and zoomed off, leaving me gazing after her with mixed feelings. Officer
Ron might be okay with Emma’s newfound independence, but I wasn’t sure I was.

Emma and her
brother Joey, seventeen months older than she, had both preferred to stay close
to home until recently, content to live within a tight circle of friends and
family. About two years ago, Joey had suddenly become restless, acquired a
commercial driver’s license, and now led the gypsy existence of a long distance
trucker.

To everyone’s
amazement, he loved it. Six nights a week, he lived in his surprisingly
comfortable tractor, which, when hooked up to a trailer, formed the
seventy-three-foot rig in which he moved back and forth across the country. The
space behind the driver’s seat resembled a very small apartment and contained
bunk beds, a small refrigerator, cupboards and shelves, a television/DVD
player, laptop computer, and a satellite radio dish. The truck stops he
frequented offered shower rooms and power hook-ups and even air conditioning or
heat, depending upon the season, which was provided through a window vent.

One night a week,
he turned up from Denver or San Diego or Atlanta to spend the night at my
Wethersfield condominium, wolf down a home-cooked meal, and play with Simon and
Jasmine, my aged housecats. The rest of the time, he was seeing more of the
United States, Canada, and even Mexico than I ever would, and I had a wall map
full of push-pins to prove it.

Now Emma was
heading for the big city, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I was proud of
her, certainly, but there was something more.
Fear?
No. I chuckled as I unlaced my
Avias
and stuck my
feet into the sandals I wore to work these warm summer days. Emma was nobody’s
fool. Her father and I had raised her to take care of
herself
.
She would be gone for only a few weeks. More likely, I was a little envious. My
own school days in Boston, a city I continue to love, had ended more than
thirty years ago, but the spirit of the perpetual teenager that still inhabited
my middle-aged body remembered the sounds and scents of summer evenings by the
Charles River, enjoying the Boston Pops concerts with beaux of my own. It had
been pretty heady stuff then. For Emma’s sake, I hoped it still was.

“
Eeeuuwww
, what’s that?” This time the comment came from
Jenny, the pretty youngster who worked as our receptionist, as I entered the
Law Barn’s lobby through the back door. Frowning, she scanned the newspaper
clipping she held in one hand before turning it sideways to examine something
written in the margin. An envelope dangled from her other hand. She wrinkled
her nose in disgust, but on her, it was merely cute. No one looking at Jenny
for the first time would guess that the petite brunette was a second-year law
student at the University of Connecticut, working days to earn the tuition for
her night classes, in which she ranked solidly among the top ten percent.
“Listen to this, Kate.” She read aloud:

June
14 / 3:05 p.m. US/Eastern, STORRS, Conn. (AP)
Within the next few weeks, New Englanders will have the opportunity to
see and smell one of the strangest productions of the vegetable kingdom: the
titan arum, which features a gigantic bloom—and a mighty stench akin to that of
decaying flesh—is expected to open sometime near the end of June at the
University of Connecticut’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Conservatory.

Currently, the flower bud is more than three
feet high and growing by several inches each day. The plant growth facilities
manager estimates the plant will flower between June 28 and July 2. Mature
flowers are about 6 feet high and 3 feet across, shaped like an urn, with a
tall spike rising from the center. The colors of the corpse flower—a sickly
yellow and blackish purple—imitate a pot roast that sat out in the sun for a
week. The fragrance is universally described as being powerful and revolting,
with elements of old socks, dead bodies and rotten vegetables. As if that isn’t
weird enough, the corpse flower is actually warm-blooded, heating itself up at
the height of flowering, probably to help spread its putrid odor and attract
the flies that will pollinate the plant.