A Skeleton in the Closet (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (2 page)

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 geese and ducks who 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,
then
turned 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.

I leaned over Jenny’s shoulder to have a look at the accompanying photo of the botanical phenomenon, which resembled a tightly closed, three-foot-tall lily bud. “Now there’s something only a botanist could love.” I yielded my spot to Margo, who had joined us on her way to refill her coffee mug. Incredibly, she had risked wearing white linen to the office, but I had to admit that the fitted sheath complemented her fair coloring and blonde chignon exquisitely. Rhett Butler, the chocolate Labrador
Retriever
who was Margo’s constant companion, nuzzled my ankle, and I obliged with a head
scritch
while his mistress gazed, awestruck, at the corpse flower bud.

“Oh, my,” Margo gasped. “That is the most phallic flower I have ever seen, Sugar. Why, it’s absolutely
disgustin
’!” She winked at me behind Jenny’s back.

“Since when do you use the words ‘phallic’ and ‘disgusting’ in the same comment?” I countered. Southern belle though she was, Margo’s avid interest in men made her resemble Samantha Jones more closely than Scarlett O’Hara. Since last fall, she had been focusing on Lieutenant John
Harkness
, who headed the Wethersfield Police Department’s detective division. He was also Ron Chapman’s boss. To everyone’s amazement, John had abandoned his dour professional persona and was thriving under the attentions of my libidinous partner. “Who sent us the clipping, and what’s that scribbling down there on the corner?”

Jenny handed me the clipping, which was actually a computer print-out of an article from an internet news website, and took a closer look at the envelope. “There’s no return address, but it’s postmarked Storrs,” she noted. Do you have a friend at
UConn
, Kate?”

The University of Connecticut was located in Storrs. “Not that I’m aware of. Why? Was it addressed to me?”

Jenny inspected the address again. It had been block printed in blue felt pen. “
Mmmm
, no, it wasn’t. It just says Mack Realty in upper and lower case, as if the person who sent it doesn’t know that M-A-C-K is an acronym of the first letters of Margo, Charlene and Kate.” She handed the envelope to Margo and looked at us expectantly. “What do you think?”

I held the print-out closer to the lamp on Jenny’s desk. The Law Barn’s loft had windows and skylights, but downstairs, only the offices at the rear of the first floor enjoyed natural light. The lobby, which occupied the center of that level, was always a bit dim, so we kept a variety of table lamps on during the day to brighten things up. I turned the sheet of paper sideways and peered at the scribbles in the margin, apparently made with the same blue felt pen that was used on the envelope. “It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you,” I read with difficulty and looked up. “A Bible verse maybe?” I had been raised as a Lutheran, but my adult attitude toward organized religion was distinctly agnostic, and my remembrance of Bible verses was sketchy.

Margo took a look. “Sure sounds like one to me, Sugar, if I’m
rememberin
’ all those Sunday
mornins
’ I spent
yawnin
’ at the First Baptist Church of Atlanta correctly. And what’s this last part? ‘And it shall come to pass that instead of sweat … no, make that sweet … smell there shall be stink.’ Is that a reference to the absolutely
revoltin
’ plant in this news article?”

“I guess,” I responded doubtfully, “but what does one thing have to do with the other? And why does someone want to bring fornication and large, smelly plants to our attention?” We looked blankly at each other,
then
back to Jenny.

“My guess would be some religious zealot has it in for one of you,” she announced. “He or she probably doesn’t like the fact that all of us unmarried females are breaking at least one of the Commandments on a regular basis.” She smiled
sunnily
. “You know, Kate and Armando … Margo and John … Emma and Ron … oops! Sorry, Kate. I keep forgetting that you’re Emma’s mom.”

My smile was thin. “I believe you said ‘all of us,’ which would include you, would it not?” I said tartly. Margo giggled, and Jenny started to squirm. The telephone rang, and she snatched it off the hook gratefully.

Momentarily stumped, we left the article and its envelope on Jenny’s desk and headed for the coffeemaker. Along with the photocopier, it stood in a little alcove to the left of the lobby. Rhett Butler kept us company, no doubt hoping for a handout from the jar of dog treats that sat next to the coffeemaker. “So what’s on everybody’s agendas today?” I inquired as I slid a pre-measured filter pack into the plastic basket and poured water into the top of the machine. Making coffee for the junior associates had been one of Margo’s duties at the Hartford law firm where she, Charlene and I had worked before we joined forces to open the realty office, and she flatly refused to do it again outside of her own kitchen. I didn’t blame her.