A Skeleton in the Closet (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (24 page)

“No, no, not at all,” I assured her, lightening my tone. “I’m just used to being able to move around more quickly than this ankle is allowing.”
Ooops
.
That sounded as if I blamed her for the accident.
I changed course hastily.
“What can I do for you,
Lavinia
?”

There was a brief pause. “Is it all right for me to be, uh, candid on this telephone line?”

I was startled. “No one but Jenny, our receptionist, can access this line, and she’s gone for the day, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

“Oh, good.
I do feel it’s best to be as discreet as possible,”
Lavinia
said, relieved. Despite my assurances, she lowered her voice, presumably to avoid being overheard at her end. “I found it. That is, I believe I found it … what that plumber must have been looking for all this time.”

My heartbeat quickened. “What did you find?”

“It’s a box of Papa’s old papers,” she almost whispered. “Well, more like a bag,
an old
leather pouch of some sort. It was locked in the bottom drawer of Papa’s desk, and it’s just stuffed with documents of all sorts. Some are trial records, I think.”

I was simultaneously elated and stunned. “It was in the bottom drawer of his desk all this time? In forty years, you and
Ada
never opened it?”

Lavinia
seemed shocked by my suggestion.
“Why, no!
Papa’s desk was strictly off limits to us as children. When he died, his solicitor had his will and bank account numbers and the deed to the house, just everything we needed. Frankly, until now, we had no reason to look any further. In fact, we had forgotten all about that locked drawer.”

As flummoxed as I was by the idea of the Judge’s desk remaining untouched for four decades, I could almost understand his daughters not wanting to invade their father’s privacy, even after his death. The Judge had been a formidable personality. I struggled to keep my tone even.

“After all this time, you still have a key?”

“Oh, no.
I don’t believe we ever had that.”

I stifled the urge to start tearing at my hair. “Then how did you get the drawer open?”

Lavinia
giggled conspiratorially. “We used a crowbar,
Dear
. It was one of the tools that dreadful plumber person left behind, so it seemed fitting. I know it was terrible of us to deface Papa’s desk that way, but we were so distraught about you being injured the other night, we were quite determined to put an end to this terrible situation. So when
Ada
remembered about the locked drawer, we just pried the damned thing open.”

I don’t know what astonished me more, hearing
Lavinia
curse or picturing the sisters having at their father’s sacrosanct desk with a crowbar. Clearly, there was more to these old ladies than met the eye. I decided to think more about that later. Right now, I was dying to know what they had discovered.

“What did the trial records reveal? Did you find any documentation that might relate to the skeleton in your father’s basement closet?”

“I believe we may have, but these papers are all so confusing. I do hate to impose on you yet again, particularly after what happened last time, but
Ada
and I were hoping that you might …”

I was already on my feet and shutting down my computer. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” I promised. “I think the best thing to do is to turn those documents over to the police and let them sift through them for leads, so just pack them all up again and wait for me. And whatever you do, keep all the doors locked until I get there.”

After gulping down two painkillers, I grabbed my tote bag and hurried to the back door. As the last person out of the building, I punched in the code on the wall panel that would activate the security alarm,
then
fumbled to shut the big door and turn my key in the outside lock.
The system gave you only thirty seconds to accomplish this. If you were not successful, as I knew from sad experience, automated klaxons went off and the outdoor lights flashed embarrassingly until you could get back inside and enter the deactivation code. I found the whole thing a huge nuisance and heaved a breath of relief when I heard the deadbolt slide into place.

Rhett’s pen was empty in the lingering dusk, and even the pesky squirrels seemed to have called it a day as I trudged to the gate that opened into the alley behind the Law Barn. Staff habitually parked there, leaving the spaces out front for the clients. At this hour, the only vehicles in the alley were my sedan and what seemed to be the blue painters’ van I had seen earlier in the day, which was parked right beside me. The Best Painters sign confirmed my guess, and I envied whoever it was in the neighborhood
who
was getting their kitchen or bedroom freshened up.

A toolbox sat on the ground between our vehicles, along with a couple of well-used buckets and a pile of plastic drop cloths. Several lengths of pipe leaned up against the van.
Looks like someone else is putting in a long day, too,
I thought, lowering my overloaded tote bag to the ground and fumbling in it for my car’s remote door opener.
How much easier life would be if we didn’t have to keep track of all these keys and lock everything up all the
time.

It was my last thought before a muscular arm went around my throat from the back, and something hard jabbed me in the back. “Open the car door, and keep your mouth shut,” hissed a male voice close to my ear. “One peep and yours will be the next body those nosey friends of yours will find. It won’t be pretty, either. A forty-four makes a big hole.” His laugh was humorless, and he punctuated his demand with more jabs.

He’s
lefthanded
,
I registered calmly,
because he’s using it to hold the gun, and his right arm is around my throat. I must make him let go of me, or I won’t be able to do anything at all before he shoots me.

Strangely, I felt no fear, just an odd detachment and abject weariness. My ankle hurt, and my elbow was beginning to throb again. I was fed up with this situation and the people who had created it. I was tired of pompous philanderers and crazed ex-husbands and religious fanatics. I was sick to death of trying to clean up other people’s messes. I had already had my life threatened twice in the last two years trying to do so, and the fact that yet another lunatic seemed to be holding me at gunpoint pushed me over the edge. A cold rage settled over me, and my mind cleared wonderfully. I knew quite clearly what I was going to do.

“Hurry up!” he hissed again. I slapped sharply at the arm around my throat and pointed toward my tote bag where it lay at my feet.

“Key’s in there,” I gasped, exaggerating my distress. “Can’t reach it like this.”

As I had hoped, he let go of my throat. Instead, he grabbed my right arm above the elbow and squeezed it for emphasis. “Get it! Make it quick!” Pain shot through that abused joint, and I saw stars. I grew even more furious.

I bent over the tote bag and made a show of pushing the contents around, ostensibly to find the opener. A glance to my left confirmed that he was indeed holding a weapon of some sort in his left hand. With my head bent over the tote bag, I raised my eyes enough to spot the lengths of pipe I had noticed leaning against the van. The split second it took me to calculate that they were within my reach was all it took me to decide to go for it. I fumbled in the bag for another moment as I focused on the nearest pipe and mentally rehearsed my move. Before I could lose my nerve, I grabbed the pipe and whirled to bring it crashing down on his gun hand with the full force of my pent-up rage.

My attacker howled in anguish. The weapon fell from his hand and skittered off beneath the van. He fell to his knees, clutching his left arm with his right. I grabbed my tote bag and ran around to the other side of the car, where I managed to let myself in and squirm over the gear shift into the driver’s seat. A few seconds
more,
and I tore recklessly out of the alley. I felt ten feet tall and bulletproof, so full of adrenalin I couldn’t have let up on the gas pedal if I had wanted to, which I didn’t.

I took

Old Main Street
at breakneck speed and didn’t stop until I reached the well-populated parking lot of the bank on the corner of the
Silas Deane Highway
. With the car doors locked, I retrieved my cell phone from my pocket and punched 911. When the police dispatcher answered, I gave her a brief summary of what had happened and a description of the van. I asked that Lieutenant
Harkness
be notified and announced that I would be pulling into the Police Department parking lot in less than five minutes. Then I drove circumspectly out of the lot and down the highway, careful to observe the posted speed limit.

It wasn’t until I had parked carefully within the lines of a visitor space in the Police Department lot that the reality of my near miss set in. Had I been out of my mind? Temporarily, most certainly, but what had my options been? To submit meekly to whatever the brute’s demands were with no assurance that he would then let me go? No, the role of victim wasn’t my style. Given any sort of choice, I would put up a fight every time, but frankly, I didn’t know how many more fights I had in me.

As I turned off the engine, my teeth began to chatter. I began to shake,
then
whimper. Not long afterward, for the second time in as many years, a nice, young officer found me sobbing hysterically in a police department parking lot and escorted me into the building.

 

* * *

Shortly before six, a war council of sorts had assembled at the big table in the
Henstocks
’ kitchen. To my left sat John
Harkness
, who had called this meeting and followed me to

Broad Street
in his unmarked sedan from the police station. Henry the dog sniffed madly at John’s shoes and cuffs, excited by this masculine presence in his kitchen. Occasionally, he yipped sharply in an attempt to get this new alpha male’s attention. John ignored him.

I had given my statement to young Sergeant Fletcher, who, unfortunately, was becoming quite accustomed to dealing with incidents involving me and my partners. Beyond expressing appropriate concern for the mother of one of his former schoolmates, he had barely raised an eyebrow to find me once again sitting beside his desk, just gotten right down to business. I was grateful for his matter-of-factness. It helped me get a grip, which John had already indicated I was going to need. The fact that my tormentor had gone to the trouble and expense of painting his van blue, changing the magnetic signs on its doors to “Best Painters,” and lurking in the vicinity of the Law Barn for the past several days before actually accosting me indicated premeditation and patience of frightening dimensions. My stalker was real, and he was serious.

“I can’t believe I walked right into his set-up. I even saw the pipes leaning against the van, and it never occurred to me to wonder what a painter would need with piping,” I groused to Margo, who sat next to me and carefully wrapped another ice pack around my injured elbow,
tsk-ing
with concern. Across from us was
Strutter
, hunched bleak-eyed and weary over a cup of tea.
Ada
and
Lavinia
alternately perched on either side of her or fluttered about, refilling cups and replenishing our plates with homemade pecan shortbread.

The document-filled leather pouch
Lavinia
had mentioned sat on the floor next to John, but we had other territory to cover first. “From the outset of this investigation, we have theorized that the individual who has been attempting to intimidate someone at MACK Realty with anonymous poison pen letters might be the same man who posed as a plumber to gain access to this house.” John had his small notebook open on the table in front of him. He had self-consciously taken a pair of reading glasses, obviously new, from the pocket of his blazer. They perched on the end of his nose as he referred to his notebook, frowning with concentration. “As of today, we have abandoned that theory.”

“But why?”
Strutter
exclaimed. I groaned in frustration. If only I knew.

Margo patted me absently, her eyes locked on John’s face. “Hush, now. We need to pay attention to what John is
sayin
’.” I raised my eyebrows but stayed quiet.