A Skeleton in the Closet (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (18 page)

“Lovely,” I agreed, but my attention had been captured by the final words of the Wikipedia account. “Only Jezebel’s skull, feet, and hands remained,” I repeated. “Remind you of anything?”

“Oh, wow!
The skeleton in the
Henstock
house.
That clinches it. These letters are definitely connected to the body in their basement.”

I remembered the newspaper clipping. “I suppose this is more about that smelly corpse flower.” I nudged it around on the desk so we could both read it.

The “corpse flower has the odor of three-day-old road kill, and
UConn
botanists couldn’t be more excited. Once open, the spiked, bright red bloom even resembles rotting meat, a veritable welcome mat for the insects that pollinate it—flies and carrion beetles.

“It looks like something has died. It smells like something has died. It has some of the same chemicals that dead bodies produce,”
a
UConn
research assistant said today.

The plant is expected to blossom in the next five to six days. Already at 4 feet high, the flower could reach more than 6 feet high and at least that wide when it opens up. The stinky botanical curiosity is expected to attract visitors like … well, flies. It will last just two days, and
UConn
plans to extend visiting hours at the research greenhouse to accommodate the nosy. A Web cam on the
UConn
Internet site provides odorless footage of the flower.

“Huh,” I said, perplexed. For the umpteenth time this week, I felt a prickle of fear. “All I know is that something about this corpse flower has our friend all whooped up. It seems connected in his warped brain to whatever transgression he believes one of us has committed—or something that poor woman in the
Henstocks
’ basement did. Maybe it’s both, I don’t know, but unless I miss my guess, he’s also linking the time this thing achieves its full glory to when he plans to punish us.” I plucked a tissue from the box on Jenny’s desk and used it to scoop the envelope and its contents into a
manilla
folder. “That means we had all better be especially careful over the next few days. I’ll take these to the Police Department this morning. Maybe this time they’ll be able to lift some prints off the letter.”

I retreated to the Mack office and sat brooding over a mug of coffee as I considered the events of the previous evening. Interestingly, I found the prospect of being eaten by dogs only slightly more alarming that that of entering into a second marriage. I loved Armando with all my heart and was completely committed to our relationship for the long term, but my views on voluntary
versus
legal commitment had not changed since I shared them with Margo. I had been shocked to discover yesterday that apparently, Armando’s had.

“Think about it,
Mia
,” he had persisted over glasses of port as the last of the fire hissed in the grate. “The children will be happy. It is time. I don’t want to be, how
do you
call it, roommates. I want to be married to you.”

Idiotically, my mind had latched onto his reference to Emma and Joey.
Some children,
I scoffed inwardly. Emma was twenty-eight, and Joey had reached thirty last November. Both had active, adult lives of their own … so much so that Emma was a hundred miles away, and I hadn’t heard from Joey in more than a week. Where was he anyway? I dropped my aching head into my hands.
Too many mysteries,
I decided.
Do what you can with the information you have.
I dug two
Advils
out of my purse and washed them down with coffee.

While the ibuprofen worked its magic, I punched on my computer and began to respond to inquiries about one or another of Mack’s property listings. Margo came in at nine, the ever-faithful Rhett at her heels, and joined me on phone duty. Just as I was about to ask if she had heard from
Strutter
, the Jamaican beauty herself strolled down the
stairs.
She had never looked better, and she walked her old walk into the office as if she had never been absent. She struck a pose, hands on hips, and waited.

Mercifully, the phones stayed silent, since
Strutter
was obviously bursting with news. “What?” we said simultaneously. I held my breath, and I had a feeling that Margo did, too.

A huge grin split
Strutter’s
face from ear to ear. “I told John I was pregnant, that’s what. Furthermore, I told him I had decided to have the baby, and if he didn’t like it, he would be forcing me to choose between him and the baby, and he really didn’t want to go there.” She paused for dramatic effect.

Margo and I exchanged dumbfounded looks.
“And?”
I prompted obediently.

“He looked at me as if I had totally taken leave of my senses. Then he called me a whole string of names I can’t remember, except they all seemed to be synonyms for world’s biggest fool. And then he said, ‘
Let’s
go tell Charlie he’s about to have a little brother or sister to boss around.’” She did a little wiggle and a hip bump. “That man is not just happy about this, he’s thrilled. I don’t know who acted like the bigger kid last night, him or Charlie, but both my guys are officially over the moon, and now I can be, too. I can never thank you enough,” she finished, looking from one to the other of us. “You are the best friends I ever had.”

That did it. The room exploded into celebratory hugs and laughter, causing Jenny to come to the top of the stairs to ask what all the excitement was about. We told her, tripping over each other’s words, and she screamed and clapped both hands to her head. After another round of hugs, she said, “This is the best news ever. I just thought you’d figured out who our unwelcome correspondent is.”

Questioning looks from
Strutter
and Margo prompted me to share the latest missive with my partners, and our mood quickly sobered. “I don’t like the sound of this one,”
Strutter
offered. “Up until now, the letters have been the usual crackpot ramblings of some self-righteous fool, although there was always something about that stink blossom …”

“Corpse flower,” I corrected automatically.

“
Ooooh
, that name,” Margo shivered. “Can you imagine how hideous? And people are just
linin
’ up to be disgusted by it.”

“
Mmmmm
, just like rubberneckers at the scene of a car accident,” I agreed. “I can’t understand it myself, but there’s some two-day-old
roadkill
on Prospect that’s getting pretty ripe. Maybe we can sell tickets, a buck a whiff.”

Strutter
made a face and clutched her stomach. “Please! My stomach is touchy enough.”

“He said something about a Web cam, or at least the newspaper did,” Jenny remembered. “Let’s take a look.”

Before we could get on line, my cell phone rang, and I glanced at the display.
Probably a wrong number.
Most of my friends know better than to call my cell phone during the workday. Then I recognized the phone number of my long-lost son. “Sorry. I’ve got to take this,” I apologized and took my phone closer to the back windows to get a better signal. “Joey!” I answered as my colleagues trooped up the stairs to investigate the
UConn
Web cam site on Jenny’s computer. “I was beginning to think you were a figment of my imagination and Emma was really an only child.”

“Yeah, yeah.
I’m sorry, Ma. I’ve just been really busy.”

“So I understand. What’s her name?”

Obviously, I had taken him by surprise. “What’s whose name? Oh!” He laughed sheepishly, and imagined him squirming, just as he had at the age of twelve when I’d caught him on the phone with his first girlfriend. “Justine,” he said finally.
Might as well get it over with.

“Tell me.”

“She’s the night manager at a grocery store on my Monday-Wednesday-Friday route. We’d talk whenever I ran into her on the loading dock. It was part of her job to check in deliveries,” he added in explanation. “Anyway, we just hit it off, and I asked her out.”

“Uh huh.
More,
please.”

He took an extra beat, then sucked in a big breath and blurted, “We’ve been seeing each other exclusively for more than a month now, and the lease was up on her apartment, and Armando was moving in with you anyway, so I needed to find a place of my own for the nights I’m off. That’s why I’m calling, to give you my new address.” He paused again.
“And to tell you that Justine’s my new roommate.”

I was a trifle taken aback, but not shocked. Actually, I was secretly tickled that my nomadic son was sufficiently smitten to have a serious lady friend. He was well over twenty-one, and presumably, so was Justine. I put him out of his misery.

“Think we could meet her before the wedding?” I twitted him, then instantly regretted it. Who was I to be joking about roommates and weddings at this interesting moment in my life?

“I’ll try to arrange it,” he responded in his old smart-aleck fashion, clearly relieved to have the Telling of the News behind him. So what’s new with you?

I told him, leaving out the more alarming parts. Why was it that I could never seem to trust the men in my life with such information? Part of it was that I had been cursed with an independent streak. Another part was my deeply held beliefs about the nature of women versus the nature of men. My daughter and my women friends could be concerned about me and help me out from time to time without smothering me with over-protectiveness. Men just had to step in and take over as if I were a complete idiot. It was beyond annoying. Besides, I really believe men enjoy an opportunity to kick a little butt. It’s the nature of the beast.

“Call your sister,” was my parting shot to Joey before I disconnected, although it was probably unnecessary. He and Emma had scrapped their way through childhood, always at odds, but maturity had brought them close together. That was as it should be. Well, at least one of my mysteries had been solved, and her name was Justine.

By late morning, things had pretty much returned to normal at Mack Realty. After spending a few minutes ogling the ghastly corpse flower on
UConn’s
Web cam, as well as the dozens of eager spectators queued up to see it, we marveled at the public’s insatiable appetite for the grotesque. This corpse flower thing had all the trappings of a freak show, but in this case, the freak was botanical.

“How would you like to be that poor guard who has to stand next to that smelly thing all day and monitor the crowd?” I pointed out a burly black man standing to one side of the exhibit. Occasionally, he would step forward and move whoever was at the head of the line along. Two minutes seemed to be the limit, according to the clock that ticked along at the upper right of the screen. I couldn’t imagine wanting to be in that hideous flora’s presence for even one minute. The Web cam image was enough for me.

Nestled in its huge, hothouse pot, the three-foot-wide
titan arum
was a sickly green. The open blossom, if you could call it that, was nearly black. Protruding obscenely was the
spadex
, a cylindrical column of the same, sickly green as the blossom. It extended fully four feet into the air and had Margo and Jenny giggling at the obvious parallels to male genitalia. Only
Strutter
remained silent.

“That’s not a guard. That’s just a lab employee. See the
UConn
identification badge on his shirt pocket?” She leaned closer to the screen for a few seconds, frowning. An odd expression came over her face.

“Feeling okay?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m fine. It’s just that there’s something familiar …” she turned back to the screen and pointed to the guard. At that moment, the website switched to another camera, and the guard was blocked by a spectator.

Margo looked at her watch.
“Time to get
movin
,’ ladies.”
We were all shocked to discover how much of the morning had evaporated and quickly dispersed to our various duties.
Strutter
took off to open the rental office at Vista View. Margo had an eleven-thirty appointment to show a house over on