A Skeleton in the Closet (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (11 page)

* * *

Twenty minutes after calling Margo, I found myself brewing coffee for the half-dozen people who now occupied my house. Margo and a young officer from the Wethersfield Police Department rattled around upstairs, checking windows and looking in closets to be sure no intruder lurked in the shadows, which I found a bit over the top. John
Harkness
stood in the living room barking orders into the telephone. Two additional officers, who had screeched into my driveway in a cruiser, lights blazing, were patrolling the outside circumference of the house for signs of attempted entry. And Mary Feeney, my elderly and eccentric next-door neighbor, sat in my kitchen, agog with interest.

At something more than eighty years of age, Mary had retired more than a decade ago and now spent her time annoying The Birches’ property manager by committing minor infractions of the association rules, zooming around town in her disreputable and ancient blue Chevy, and enjoying an unlikely dalliance with my neighbor on the other side, Roger Peterson.

“Wow, with
all of this
hubbub, I thought you’d been strangled or knifed or at least were being held hostage,” she commented, eyes glittering with excitement behind thick spectacles. “We haven’t had this much hoo-ha since the water main broke a year ago last winter, remember, Kiddo?” I remembered it well, it having been the trigger for a serious quarrel between Armando and me.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said dryly, “but I’m alive and well and not being held at gunpoint just at the moment.” I transferred mugs from a cupboard onto a tray and added the sugar bowl and a small pitcher of milk.

“Yeah, well, I sure thought you must be in big trouble, what with that police cruiser and all these good-looking young
fellas
in uniform prowling around in the bushes.” Mary jumped up to pour herself some coffee,
then
looked around. “This sure would be better with a shot of bourbon in it, and I’m not on duty like those cops skulking around your yard. Got any?”

Resignedly, I fished the Jim Beam out of a lower cupboard. I added a generous dollop to her proffered mug, then shrugged and put a splash into my own. Maybe the alcohol would offset the caffeine, and I’d be able to sleep once all of these people went away, I reasoned. I carried the tray into the living room, Mary trotting behind me, and plunked it onto the coffee table in front of Margo.

“I should have known better than to call you about something like this when you were with Lieutenant
Hardnose
here,” I sulked at her. “The idea was to
avoid
creating a scene like this, all totally unnecessary and a complete waste of the taxpayers’ money.” Rebelliously, I plopped into the double recliner and took a big swig of my doctored brew.
Mary
eeled
into the seat next to me, clutching her mug to her scrawny chest.

Margo grinned, refusing to take the bait. “Now you know perfectly well that John wasn’t about to take any chances with the safety of my very dearest friend. Besides, I’m the one who should be
poutin
’, don’t you think? It was my Saturday
evenin
’ ruined by
whoever
that nasty man was
givin
’ you the willies.” She gazed adoringly at John
Harkness
, who finished his call and charged out the back door to supervise his subordinates’ search of the back yard and adjacent marsh.

“I don’t know why they’re doing all this,” I sighed. “As I told the officer who arrived first, the nasty man, as you put it, was long gone before I called you.”

“Yes,” said John, reappearing through the back door, but under the circumstances, it’s not out of the realm of probability that he would come back, and this time, he might be on foot. The entire perimeter of The Birches is woods and marsh, as you know, and that would be great cover for somebody wanting to conceal himself.
Best to be on the safe side.”

I handed him a mug of coffee
sans
bourbon. If he was going to get all official on me, I could play by the rules, too. Margo patted the seat next to her invitingly, and he obediently went to join her.

“I can’t imagine why anyone would want to go to all that trouble. That marsh is too soggy for anyone but the
critters,
and the mosquitoes are fearsome at this time of night. I can’t imagine why this man was here
at all
, frankly, so I simply don’t know what else to tell you.” I had already given a minute-by-minute account of the incident to a young officer who had arrived in a cruiser.

“Well, let’s put our heads together, and maybe we can come up with something.” John jumped up again and stuck his head back out the door and spoke briefly to an officer on the deck. Within seconds, the squad of investigators evaporated into the night, taking the noise of their walkie-talkies with them. I noticed that John left the back floodlights on when he resumed his seat.

Mary piped up again. “All I know is that I was watching a rerun of “Saturday Night Live” in my living room with Roger when all hell broke loose …” She gasped and put one hand over her mouth, eyes wide, and scrambled to her feet. “Roger! I forgot all about him in the excitement. Sorry, but I’ve got to scoot.” And she was gone, moving faster than I would have thought possible for a woman of her age.

I rolled my eyes at Margo, who was familiar with Mary’s quirks, and gave John my attention. “Okay, what do you need to know?”

* * *

Half an hour later, we had reviewed everything we knew about the skeleton found in the
Henstocks
’ basement and could find absolutely no connection to that case and the man who appeared to be following me. Then Margo remembered the nasty mailings we had been receiving at MACK Realty from another person unknown. John perked up and sat forward as she described the two clippings we had gotten to date.

“The writer uses words like ‘fornication,’” she elaborated. “That sounds like some sort of religious zealot to me. And the
clippin
’ was about that big, stinky flower they’re
cultivatin
’ up at the University of Connecticut, which looks like some sort of phallic symbol to me.”

“But then, so many things do,” I couldn’t help from commenting. I noticed that John’s mouth twitched in that way he had when he was amused but too gentlemanly to let it show.

Instead, he commented diplomatically, “I think you might be right about the religious nut. Hard to say if it’s a man or a woman, but the handwriting may give us a clue.”

“I don’t think you could call it
handwritin
’ exactly,” Margo mused. “More like big block
printin
’ in some kind of marker. Blue, I think it was.” I nodded in agreement.

“Let me have a look at those letters. You do still have them, right?”

Margo and I looked at each other, trying to remember. “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “They were just crazy
rantings
. Nobody threatened our lives or anything. Jenny may have kept them. I’ll have to ask her Monday morning.”

“Call her tomorrow and ask her,” John directed firmly. “I want to get a look at them just as quickly as possible.
Envelopes, too.
The sooner we can get a handle on whether the writer is a man or woman, the faster we can get someone working on identifying him or her. If there’s a connection, and the writer turns out to be this guy stalking Kate, we need to find him and question him before this thing escalates. From what you say, he sounds deranged. How dangerously, we can’t assess until we talk to him.”

“Or her,” I reminded John. “We don’t know yet that there’s any connection between our
penpal
and my new shadow.”

“
Mmmmm
. Point taken, but the odds are pretty good that they’re one and the same person. We’ll just have to see, but sooner would be better than later.” He snapped his notebook shut and turned to Margo.
“Doesn’t seem to be anything more that can be done here.
I’m going to make one more look around to make sure the house is secure, and then we can go.” He rose and headed for the stairs to check out the upstairs one more time.

“Wow, and I thought my cautious Colombian was a security nut,” I whispered to Margo. We collected the coffee mugs and headed for the kitchen. John bounded down the stairs and made a quick tour of the first floor, then joined us in the front hall.

“Are you coming with me?” he asked Margo.

“I can only hope,” she said, and we watched him blush to the roots of his hair. “Is he cute, or what?” she said and patted his backside on the way out the door.

Six

On Sunday morning, I had trouble getting out of bed after my adventures of the previous evening, then decided to abandon the effort. Why not wallow in my last Sunday morning of single living, I reasoned as I leaned happily back against my pillows at ten o’clock with a mug of coffee and my address book. Microsoft Outlook was all well and good at the office, but it was hard to access from between the sheets unless you had I laptop. I didn’t, so I settled in as
comfortably
as possible with Jasmine at my feet and Simon draped over my legs like fourteen pounds of road kill to make the phone calls I had promised to make this morning. But first, I called Armando.

“Wake-up call,” I announced in response to his mumbled hello.
“Time to get out of bed and enjoy your last day of unencumbered debauchery.”

“Unencumbered
whaa
…?” Some of the words I chose still confused him, since English was not his first language. “Oh.” He chuckled to himself. “Just wait until next Sunday morning, and I will show you some debauch-whatever. So how are you doing this morning,
Cara
? What are your plans for this day, while I am safely out of the way toiling away at this packing, packing,
packing
. I cannot think how I am going to get it all done before the movers arrive tomorrow.”

“I have a suggestion for you. Hire a dumpster, and heave ninety percent of that junk over the deck railing. You should have done it weeks ago.” I had no sympathy for packrats, as he well knew. Saving his credit card statements was one thing, but saving the envelopes and the junk inserts that came with them?

Predictably, he changed the subject. “So how did you spend your Saturday evening without me?”

It was my turn to squirm. “Oh, girl stuff. Gave myself a pedicure and a facial, you know. We did have a little excitement, though.” The trick was how to word this without getting him into a total
swivet
. “A man driving a van through The Birches was apparently knocking on doors, trying to get directions or something. One of my neighbors saw him knocking on my door, assumed he was a vandal and called the police. Can you believe it? Then they had to send a cruiser over, and I had to give a statement. It was all a lot of nonsense, of course, but I know you will agree that it is better to be on the safe side, right?” I swallowed hard, trying not to feel too guilty about my edited report.

There was a moment of silence. Then, “Why do I have the feeling that you are not telling me quite everything?”

“Oh, Armando, it was nothing, and the best part is, it’s all over. Go have some coffee and call me later. I promise to be more sympathetic.”

“And that you are in a big hurry to get rid of me.”

“You’re being very silly. I’ll talk to you later. ‘
bye
!” I finished brightly and disconnected. Quickly, I flipped through the pages in my address book to find Jenny’s home number. Her mumbled “hello” brought me right back to my own misspent youth, when calling a friend before noon on a Sunday would have been unthinkable. I apologized for bothering her and asked if she had kept the strange mailings we had been receiving at the office. She was quiet for so long, I thought she had fallen back to sleep. “Jenny?” I prodded gently.

“
Mmmm
, yes, I heard you. I’m just trying to think. There were two of them, right? And the envelopes were hand printed in blue felt pen. Yes, I think I stuck them in the middle drawer of my desk. I was going to look up those crazy quotations on the Internet when I had a minute, but then I got busy and forgot about it. Why do you need them? Has something else happened?” She was sounding dangerously more alert every second. I had no interest in getting into an elaborate explanation of the previous day’s events.

“Yes, but I can get them from you tomorrow morning. I just needed to know if you still had them. Don’t give it another thought. See you tomorrow!” Once again, I disconnected hastily and moved on to my next call, but Emma’s phone went right to voice mail. Officer Ron must still be on the premises, I reflected.
“Hi,
Em
, me again.
Kind of a flap here last night.
Call me when you get a sec.”