A Skeleton in the Closet (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (3 page)

“I’ve got showings scheduled from nine-thirty on at Vista Views,” she began, referring to the new active adult community for which we served as rental agents. “Then a quick manicure at one o’clock.”
She
tsk-ed
over the state of her fingertips. They looked fine to me, but when it came to the fine points of personal grooming, Margo’s standards were higher than mine. “After that, it’s paperwork and more paperwork unless …” hope brightened her expertly made-up face, “
Strutter
comes in with a new
listin
’, as I frankly expect she will.”
Strutter
was the nickname of our third partner, Charlene Putnam. Recently remarried and the mother of a young son from her first, long-ago marriage,
Strutter
was a drop-dead gorgeous native of Jamaica. Soft curls fell to her shoulders, and eyes the color of the Caribbean sparkled in her beautiful, brown face, which topped a figure to die for and legs up to here. No one who had ever seen Charlene strut her stuff ever questioned the sobriquet.

“Where is
Strutter
anyway?” I questioned, filling Margo’s mug and then my own. I pointed at the dog treats and raised an eyebrow. Margo shook her head, and we carried our coffee down three steps to the MACK Realty office off the lobby at the rear of the Law Barn. I sat at the desk, and Margo arranged herself on the comfortable sofa and fired up her laptop. Rhett flopped at her feet, sighed once, and fell instantly asleep. He wasn’t as young as he once was, and he needed his naps so that he could keep a properly watchful eye on the back yard when Margo took him out to his spacious pen.

“I saw her
checkin
’ the phone messages earlier,” she said now,
squinting
a little as she scrolled through her emails. She resisted wearing her stylish computer glasses, even though I had pointed out the little frown line forming between her exquisitely groomed eyebrows. “There was one from
Ada
Henstock
—you know, one of those
darlin
’ little
ol
’ gals who live over on the Broad Street Green. She wanted our advice on
somethin
’ to do with that enormous house
she
and her sister own near the Anderson Farm … the French Second Empire with the mansard roof.”

Known locally as The
Henstock
Girls at the age of eighty plus, the Misses
Ada
and
Lavinia
Henstock
were fixtures in Old Wethersfield. The story went that although both sisters had been quite appealing in their youth, they were spinsters by choice. They had spurned the advances of many a prospective suitor upon the advice of their dear papa, who had never felt that any of the local gents were quite good enough for his little girls.

The Honorable Reuben
Henstock
, Esq., widowed shortly after his second daughter was born, had been a tartar of a man who had first served in the Connecticut State Legislature, then been appointed to the bench. He had never remarried, leaving the day-to-day care of his children to a succession of housekeepers, and had presided over trials right up until the day of his death in the late 1960s, when he had gaveled the day’s court business to a close and collapsed untidily across his bench.

Since then, the sisters, who were known for their ability to stretch a dollar, had shared their home with a scrawny cat or two, but men seeking their company had been unilaterally turned away.

“Huh!” Emma and I just walked right by that house. What kind of advice?”

“Frankly, we couldn’t make much sense of
Ada
’s
message. You know how reserved she is, how reserved they both are, when they aren’t
finishin
’ each other’s sentences, but
Ada
was practically
pleadin
’ for one of us to come by and let her know how
somethin
’ or other might affect the value of their property. She seemed real upset, and you know how tenderhearted
Strutter
is. She picked up her purse and ran right on over there to put Miss
Ada’s
mind at ease.”

I couldn’t help smiling as I imagined
Strutter
walking her distinctive walk up to the front door of the
Henstock
house and lifting the big brass knocker. The ladies would be peeking from behind the lace curtains at one or the other of the big front windows. They knew Margo and me by sight, since we had sold a house in that neighborhood while
Strutter
and John were on their honeymoon, but what they would make of
Strutter
was anybody’s guess. It was safe to say that the elderly sisters’ experience of black women had been limited to peremptory exchanges with their dear papa’s kitchen help when they were growing up. What they would make of a stylishly clad black businesswoman rapping on their front door, I could not think.

“Well, this has been some Thursday morning so far. I saw the baby swans about an hour ago. They look rather like vultures at this stage, did you know that? Emma is taking off this afternoon for six weeks in Boston, and I’m not at all sure how I feel about that. Some religious fanatic seems to have taken exception to the way we conduct our personal lives, and the
Henstock
girls are having the vapors.
Anything else?”
I grinned at Margo as I picked up my phone.

I had learned over the past year that once the phone started ringing, it rarely stopped, and by nine o’clock, the day was officially launched. One call followed another, and I did my best to field inquiries about listed properties, refer buyers to the back-up law firm that was covering while Emma and Isabel got ready to open their doors, and soothe jittery sellers who were anxious to move their properties. A major advantage of having a real estate brokerage in Old Wethersfield is that all of the property that can be developed under current zoning ordinances has pretty much been developed. It’s an extremely desirable community, located west of the Connecticut River and south of
Hartford
,
and almost any residential property that comes on the market generates a flurry of interest. Even a house with an in-ground swimming pool and no garage will sell in this community, despite our short summers and long winters. I know, because we’ve done it. As we tell people over and over again, it’s just a matter of matching the right buyer with the right property, and if it takes a little time, well, the deal will be that much sweeter when it’s done.

As Margo was preparing to leave for her first appointment, we heard the front doors of the Law Barn crash open.
Strutter
rushed through the lobby and skittered down the half-staircase to the office, almost falling in her haste. She burst through the doorway looking about as pale as it’s possible for a black woman to look. “The
Henstock
sisters have a skeleton in their closet,” she announced.

“Don’t they always?” murmured Margo, still focused on her computer screen, “and it’s the primmest old gals that usually have the wickedest secrets.” She giggled delightedly. “I can hardly wait. Let’s hear it.” She punched
Save
, crossed one elegant leg over the other, and gave MACK Realty’s third partner her full attention. I stopped making notes to myself at my desk and did the same.

“No, really,” insisted
Strutter
. She collapsed onto the sofa next to Margo and looked from one to the other of us wildly. “Kate, Margo, listen to me. There’s a skeleton behind a false wall in an old closet in the
Henstock
sisters’ basement.
Literally.
It had clothes on, or at least, it used to.” She clutched her briefcase to her chest and swallowed hard. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Instinctively, Margo leaned away and pulled her Jimmy
Choos
out of harm’s way. I leaped up, wastebasket at the ready, but
Strutter
waved me away.

“No, no, I’m not really going to hurl. I just feel queasy, and so would you, if you’d seen what I just saw.” She flopped back on the sofa and stuck her legs out in front of her. “I need coffee. No,” she amended hastily, holding one hand to her stomach, “make that water. Please,” she added feebly, eyes closed.

“You bet, Sugar.” Margo practically leaped to her feet, causing Rhett Butler to snap to attention. She hurried out to the water cooler and returned in seconds with a filled paper cup.
Strutter
sat up and sipped carefully, holding the cup between hands that trembled.

I could stand it no longer. “Charlene Putnam, I love you like a sister, but I’m going to walk over there and shake you if you don’t tell us what you are talking about right now.”

“Don’t make me turn Rhett Butler on you,” Margo threatened for good measure. The dog panted happily at the mention of his name. He might lick
Strutter
to death, I knew, but that was about the extent of her peril.

With an effort,
Strutter
pulled herself together. “As soon as I parked in front of that big, spooky house, I knew it was a mistake to go inside. There were those crazy old ladies peeking out at me from behind the front curtains, plain as day. Did they imagine I was there to rob them at nine o’clock on a Friday morning? You’d think they’d never seen a black woman on their front porch before.” She stopped shaking and took another noisy sip of water, irked by the memory. Margo and I exchanged glances.

“They were raised in another era,” I soothed, “and they don’t get out much these days either. They probably aren’t used to women being business owners, never mind black women.”

“Huh! Probably don’t know we can vote and own property now and everything,”
Strutter
fumed. Margo
snorted,
an unattractive habit of hers when something tickled her. “Anyway, I announced who I was, and Miss
Ada
let me in. At least, I think it was
Ada
.
The bigger one with the kinky permanent wave and the sensible shoes.”
I nodded. “The wispy one,
Lavinia
, just kind of fluttered around, waving a hankie and moaning to
herself
. We went into the front room, the one they’d been using to check me out, and sat on the sofa, and I asked as delicately as I could what had them in such a
swivet
. I didn’t want to be too pushy, them still being in shock at having a sister sitting right there on their sofa and all.”
Another snort from Margo.

“And what did
Ada
say?” I prodded in an effort to move this along. Margo checked her watch none too discreetly.

Finally,
Strutter
kicked it into high gear. “She said they’d about run through all the money from their papa’s trust fund, and they were considering selling the house, but some pipes running to the old boiler needed serious repairs, and they’d had a fellow banging around in the basement tearing out walls and bricks, and he found something even worse than the leak, and they needed to know how it might affect the value of the property.” She sucked in a breath. We waited.

“It was a skeleton! He found it right there in a closet that had been built next to where the pipes come down next to the furnace. He had to break through the back wall, which was apparently false, because there was another one behind it. He completely freaked, said he didn’t want to be involved in any investigation or questioned by the police, and he packed up his tools and ran out of there. For some reason,
Ada
called us. Naturally, I thought she was hallucinating or seeing shadows, so I had her get me a big
ol
’ flashlight and dragged her down there to show her it had just been some moth-eaten clothes on a hanger or something, and, well,” she gulped, “there was a skeleton, or sort of a skeleton. It was more like a dried-up old mummy with scraps of cloth clinging to parts of it.” She shuddered.

Margo looked at me and back at
Strutter
. “But why on earth did
Ada
call us instead of the police? Did she want to know if they should include the thing in their
askin
’ price?”
Strutter
was not amused.

“Where are
Ada
and
Lavinia
now?” I inserted hastily.

“They’re right where I left them in their front parlor, drinking cups of strong, hot tea with lots of sugar. I told them I’d come back here and consult with my partners. I didn’t know what else to do, and I surely wanted to get out of there.”

I sat on the couch next to her and patted her arm. “Well, of course you did. The question is
,
what do we do now?”

Margo promptly took charge. “I’m going to call John and ask him to meet you—unofficially, of course—over at the
Henstocks
,” she said, punching numbers into her cell phone, “and then I’m going over to Vista Views for my first showing. I’m already late. Don’t worry,” she comforted
Strutter
, who looked stricken at the thought of returning to the
Henstock
house. “John will take very good care of you. He’s the head of the detective division, remember, and very reliable. I have reason to know that he’s also the soul of discretion.” She winked broadly, trying to get
Strutter
to smile, but she wouldn’t.