A Skeleton in the Closet (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (4 page)

“Getting tangled up with you, he’d have to be,” was her only comment.

 
 
 
 

Two

 

A dark blue Ford sedan was just pulling into the
Henstocks
’ driveway as I crossed from

Old Main Street
to the Broad Street Green on
Garden Street
. The car was so remarkable in its
unremarkableness
that it practically screamed “cop.” I parked behind it, and
Strutter
and I joined Lieutenant John
Harkness
on the front walk. “
John,
thanks for coming.” For the hundredth time, I noticed how beautifully turned out the lieutenant was, his barbered good looks set off by an immaculate navy blue blazer and pinstriped shirt. A gray silk tie was knotted neatly under his collar, and his cordovan loafers shone with polish. Fair, blue-eyed men sometimes didn’t age well, but John
Harkness
was clearly going to be the exception to the rule.

“Morning, Kate, Mrs. Putnam.” No matter how often Margo urged him to do so, John refused to use
Strutter’s
nickname. I had heard him call her Charlene once or twice on a social occasion, but that was as far as his natural reserve would allow him to go. Since this was an official visit, I didn’t tease him. “Why don’t you bring me up to
speed.
”

Strutter
completed a more coherent version of her previous breathless recap just as we reached the front porch of

185 Broad Street
. The exotic balustrades and slender columns rising three stories were in a state of genteel dishabille, as was the rest of the imposing structure. Although it had doubtless been grand back in the day, the place now had
money pit
written all over it.
I hope the
Henstock
sisters aren’t about to ask MACK Realty to list it for sale,
I thought distractedly, then pulled my mind back to the problem at hand.

John scribbled a few notes in a leather-bound pocket notebook, nodded once,
then
bestowed one of his rare smiles on
Strutter
. “Nothing to worry about, I’m sure. This house dates back to, what, the late 1800s?” He looked to me for confirmation, and I nodded. “You’d be surprised how often a skeleton, or even a partial skeleton, falls out of the walls of these old places or gets dug up in the basement when the owners do major renovations or repairs.” Not finding a doorbell, he lifted the ornate knocker on the front door and let it drop.

“Can’t say that makes me much happier,”
Strutter
grumbled, but she tucked her handbag firmly under her arm and braced herself to revisit the scene.

The door creaked open two inches, and
Ada
Henstock
peered out at us. John displayed his badge and introduced himself. At first,
Ada
looked uncertain, but when she spotted us behind him, she threw the door open widely and all but dragged John across the
threshhold
and into the front parlor.
Strutter
and I followed.
Lavinia
Henstock
slumped in the corner of a rather musty settee, a damp cloth pressed to her forehead. She opened her eyes and smiled weakly.

“
Lavinia
, dear, do pull yourself together,”
Ada
urged. “This is Lieutenant John
Harkness
of the Wethersfield Police Department and Kate Lawrence of MACK Realty. She’s Mrs. Putnam’s partner along with, oh, what is that flirty southern woman’s name?” She frowned at her own forgetfulness. I sneaked a peek at John, whose mouth twitched in amusement.

“Margo Farnsworth,” I supplied quickly. “Why don’t we all sit down, and you can tell Lieutenant
Harkness
just what happened.”

“Of course, of course.”
She waved at an assortment of overstuffed furniture that had seen better days, and we all perched uncomfortably on the edges of various pieces.
Ada
recounted essentially the same story that we had heard from
Strutter
.
Lavinia
recovered enough to sit up and embellish her sister’s narration with a detail from time to time. “And there it was, a skeleton, right there in that old closet in our basement,”
Ada
finished almost triumphantly. “I saw it with my own eyes, and so did Mrs. Putnam!”

“From what you told me,
Dear
, it was more of a mummy, really,”
Lavinia
offered diffidently, ineffectually tucking wisps of gray hair behind her ears, “but of course, I didn’t actually see it like
Ada
did.” She deferred to her older sister’s judgment on the matter. It occurred to me that she had probably been deferring to
Ada
for most of her life.

John nodded solemnly,
then
stood. “Thank you. I’m sure this will all be very helpful. And now, I believe I’ll just have a look for myself. No, there’s no need for you to upset yourselves,” he reassured the ladies. “In fact, it would be better if we disturbed the scene as little as possible until I can get a crew in here to investigate things properly.” At the mention of an investigation,
Lavinia
fell back against the cushions and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes once again. “I’ll just ask Kate and Mrs. Putnam to come with me as witnesses for the record.” He beckoned to us to join him, but
Strutter
demurred.

“I’ve seen it once. I don’t need to see it again,” she begged, and after gazing at her thoughtfully for a second or two, John wisely let her off the hook.

“I’m sure your statement will be sufficient. If you’ll stop by the Department sometime today, we’ll get that taken care of.”

“I’ll do that. Now you go right down the hall there past the stairs leading to the second floor. You’ll see the door to the basement on the left just before you get to the kitchen.”
Strutter
waved us into the hall and sank back onto a tufted ottoman. She still looked queasy to me, and who could blame her?

I was surprised to find myself a bit jittery as I joined John in the hall. It wasn’t as if I had never seen a dead body before. In fact, it was safe to say that over the past couple of years, I had seen more than my share, what with one unexpected development or another. The first had been a murder at the law firm where
Strutter
, Margo and I had all worked. The second murder had been right here in Old Wethersfield not a year ago. And now here I was again with a Wethersfield police officer at the scene of a grisly death.
So much for the peaceful life of small-town New England.

Just as
Strutter
had said, we passed a wide staircase leading upstairs, then spotted the door to the basement. It was ajar. John paused long enough to snap a thin latex glove on his right hand,
then
used two fingers to pull the door open. He flipped an ancient-looking switch on the wall inside, and the stairs were weakly illuminated by a bulb hanging from a cord. “How very
Psycho
,” I murmured, peering past John. “Do you suppose we’ll find the mummified Mrs. Bates rocking in her chair?”

He grinned and led the way into the gloom. We descended the stairs with care, made cautious by thoughts of what we were about to see, as well as by the questionable condition of the steps beneath our feet. At the bottom, the smell of long-established dampness wrinkled my nose and, I admit it, raised a few hairs on the back of my neck. John fished a flashlight out of his pocket and clicked it on. It produced a surprisingly powerful beam, which he panned back and forth slowly across the floor and wall to the right of the stairs. I was glad for the comfort of the light, not to mention the solid police officer standing between me and whatever lurked in the corners.

A pile of old bricks, mortar, splintered wood and other debris attested to the recent demolition of a narrow section of wall at the back of a closet next to a huge, ancient furnace. The new opening revealed a narrow space. John’s flashlight shone on the pipes leading to the ancient boiler, one of which was leaking visibly.
On the floor at the rear of the closet next to the pipes lay something that looked like a rag along with more bits of mortar and brick.
I thought the cloth was dark blue, but I couldn’t be certain. Except for some shelving filled with books and files along the back wall of the closet-like space, it was empty. I blinked and looked again. No body, no bones, nothing.

“Well, do you see it?”
Strutter
, unable to sit still, had followed us to the top of the stairs. “How long do you think that nasty thing has been behind that wall?” The
Henstock
ladies craned their necks behind her.

“Hard to say,” said John, stalling for time and flashing his beam around the remaining walls to augment the meager light from the overhead bulb. The floor seemed to be poured concrete. Both it and the stone walls appeared
unbreached
and blank. John and I exchanged shrugs and retraced our steps. We peered up at the little group huddled at the top of the stairs. “How long ago did you say you discovered the, uh, remains?”

“It couldn’t have been much more than two hours ago,”
Strutter
replied, looking to
Ada
for confirmation. “Wouldn’t you say so?”

Ada
nodded vigorously. “Oh, no, it couldn’t have been longer than that. The plumber started yelling and clanking around down there, and I went to see what in blazes the trouble was.” She swayed a little, and
Strutter
grabbed hold of her arm. “And then he went tearing up the stairs and out of here, and I climbed back up to tell
Lavinia
, and then, well, we called you. Isn’t that right, Sister?”

“Yes, yes, that’s right,”
Lavinia
affirmed. “And then Mrs. Putnam came right over and saw it for herself. She told us to sit tight while she ran back to your offices, and we made ourselves a nice cup of tea …”

“ …
and here you all are,”
Ada
finished up. “We didn’t even have time to drink it,” she added a bit reproachfully, I felt.

“Well, you may want to make yourselves another cup,” said John as we climbed carefully to the top of the stairs and rejoined the trio, “because I’m afraid that what I have to say will surprise you.”

“Oh, no!
Not more than finding a corpse in the basement,”
Lavinia
gasped, hanging onto her sister for support.

“I believe I would classify it more as a skeleton,
Dear
, than a corpse. Not
so
gruesome as a really fresh body, I should imagine.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t have to imagine, but I was impressed by
Ada
’s
zeal for accuracy. Again, John suppressed a smile. “Corpse or skeleton or mummy, it doesn’t really matter. The thing is, Ladies, none of those things is in your basement. At least not now,” he added hastily as he took note of the shocked and mutinous expressions confronting him. He switched off the light and shepherded us into the kitchen off the hall.

Ada
promptly filled the kettle and set it to boil on the front burner of a gas stove,
circa
1950. I was willing to bet I wouldn’t find a microwave oven in this kitchen, and a quick glance around confirmed it. We all took seats at the vast, scrubbed oak table that occupied fully half of the room. I shivered and found myself looking forward to the tea that
Lavinia
measured carefully into an old-fashioned tea ball as John reported on our findings, or lack thereof, in the basement.

Ada
came to sit by
Strutter
, bound by their common knowledge of what they had seen. “That simply cannot be, Lieutenant
Harkness
,” she asserted firmly. “I know what I saw, and Mrs. Putnam knows what she saw. Why else did that plumber take to his heels, I’d like to know?”

“That’s right,”
Strutter
backed her up. “Miss
Henstock
saw a body in the basement, and I saw it, too.
And what about that plumber?
Why don’t you ask him what sent
him
running out of this house?”

John hastened to ease their rising agitation. “I plan to do just that. I’ll just need his name and a phone number, if you have it handy. Thank you,” he added as
Ada
placed a steaming cup of tea before him before serving the rest of us, and
Lavinia
pushed a bone china creamer and sugar bowl a bit nearer. I imagined the sisters serving the Judge the same way in this very room some forty years ago. It probably gave them comfort to be pouring tea for a man at this table once again.