A Skeleton in the Closet (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (5 page)

“Now where did I put that young man’s card,”
Ada
asked herself, fumbling through a stack of junk mail and bills on the counter. “I know I have it here somewhere. He gave it to me a few days ago when he was in the neighborhood drumming up business. Ah, here it is.” Triumphantly, she presented a white business card to John, which he read aloud.

“Handy Plumber of Connecticut.
Licensed, bonded and insured.
Eight six oh, six nine oh, fifteen
fifteen
.”
He looked questioningly at
Ada
. “No name, no address. Did he give you a name, Miss
Henstock
?”

Ada
looked flustered. “Why I was almost sure he did … but now that I think of it, he just knocked on the door here by the kitchen,” she waved at the side entrance that was reserved for family members and service people, “and said something like, ‘Handy Plumber. You called for service.’ And of course I had, so I let him in. He was wearing one of those tool belts filled with things that jangle, and he carried a toolbox. Well, at least there’s a telephone number. I spoke to him myself on it, or at least I left a message on his answering machine. You can find him that way, surely?”

John looked again at the card and slowly shook his head. “Doubtful. That’s a cell phone number. A cellular phone is portable, you see, not tied to one address. May I use your phone?”
Ada
nodded at an ancient wall phone by the stove, and John made use of it, checking the number on the card as he pressed the keys. He listened for a few moments and hung up. “No answer. Just a canned message saying that the user is unavailable.”
Ada
and
Strutter
exchanged crestfallen glances.

“But there must be a billing address for the phone
, ”
Strutter
offered.

“ …
and a name on the account,” I chimed in.

“…
all
of which are traceable, I believe is the expression,”
Lavinia
contributed surprisingly.

John smiled kindly at us all, then finished his tea in a gulp and pocketed the business card along with his notebook. “We’re certainly going to try to trace it. In the meantime, I’m going to take a look around outside before I head back to the station. I’ll send a forensics team over later to take a closer look at the basement to see what they can turn up. I’d appreciate it if you would keep the door to the basement shut and have everyone stay clear of the area until the team gets here.”

“Well, that’s certainly fine with me,”
Ada
assured him. “I’ve had quite enough of that basement and vanishing bodies for the time being.”

Lavinia
smiled tremulously at John and patted at her rebellious hair once more. “I do hope we haven’t been any trouble, Lieutenant. You must be a very busy man.”

“That’s what the police are here for,” he reassured her.
Another conquest,
I thought, amused.

John led the way through the short hallway to the side entrance. “Is this door kept locked?”

The sisters looked at each other for a moment. “Why, no, not during the day,”
Ada
said slowly. “We generally go out this way for the newspaper and the mail and so forth. Of course, we lock up before retiring for the night.”

John thanked her for the information and let himself out, but before
Strutter
and I could follow,
Ada
put a trembling hand on my arm. Obviously, she was more shaken than she had let on, and my heart went out to her. The morning could not have been an easy one, and even though she was only a year older than her sister, she clearly felt obliged to put on a stoic front for
Lavinia
, who hovered at her elbow.

“We are so very grateful to you for coming … grateful to you both,” she stressed, including
Strutter
in her thanks. “If Mrs. Putnam hadn’t come so promptly and seen that awful body in the basement …”

“…
why
, that nice lieutenant would think we were both as crazy as bedbugs,”
Lavinia
completed the thought. I didn’t say so, but I thought they might just be right. Two old ladies living by themselves in that cavernous old house might well be susceptible to an imaginative turn or two.

“I hope I’m not being too inquisitive, but I would have thought that a smaller house would be a lot easier for the two of you to keep up. Why do you prefer to go on living here?” I couldn’t help asking.

“Yes, why not move into one of those snug little places they’re building over near

This time,
Lavinia
answered first. “This is our home. Always has been. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Can you,
Dear
?” She looked confidently at her sister.

“It’s true that I believed that Papa’s trust fund would allow us to live out our lives here,”
Ada
hedged uncharacteristically, “but I had no idea how expenses would rise and rise.
That hideous war in the Middle East, and the cost of home heating oil.
Our taxes …” She glanced at
Lavinia
,
then
quickly averted her eyes. “Well, I guess I don’t have to tell you.” She cleared her throat. “But we have to face the fact that there simply isn’t enough money to keep this place going, and there are major repairs that cannot be ignored any longer. This leak in the boiler pipes is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Lavinia’s
eyes clouded over, and her expression turned sulky. “
Ada
! You can’t mean that you’re thinking of selling our home!”

Ada
threw us an apologetic glance at
Strutter
and me for having involved us in this personal conversation, but she held her ground. “Now,
Lavinia
, you know we’ve had this conversation before. We’re not as young as we once were, and we need to consider the future. Selling this house is our only reasonable alternative, if anyone will have it, that is.” She patted her sister’s shoulder and shooed her off toward the kitchen. “Why don’t you get started clearing away the tea things, and I’ll come help in just a moment.”

Strutter
and I watched
Lavinia
trudge off, stricken. “We’ll do everything we can to help, Ms.
Henstock
,”
Strutter
offered rashly.

Ada
beamed at her. “It’s
Ada
, please, and I felt certain you would.”

“Please call me Charlene or
Strutter
, as my friends do. I answer to either,”
Strutter
smiled back.

I sighed. Selling this monstrosity would be difficult enough. Selling a monstrosity that had recently had a body walled up in the basement might well be impossible.

* * *

“What do you mean, impossible?” Margo and I sat on the back stoop of the Law Barn in the long twilight, alternating swigs from a shared can of Diet Coke. We had already locked up but were sharing a few minutes before heading out. “This is
gettin
’ really
interestin
’.” Mindful of her white linen and her dinner date with John, Margo had centered her svelte haunches on a magazine from our reception area. I wasn’t worried enough about my washable
Citiknits
to bother. “That old mausoleum needs some panache. A body in the basement might be just what the doctor ordered. Remember how many people turned up at the open house we held where that murdered waitress used to live?”

I stared at her. Although I had encountered it before, Margo’s tolerance for gore never failed to surprise me. I tended to get woozy when confronted with blood, which Margo found amusing. But she did have a point. “Yes, I do remember. But we don’t really know that a body was in the
Henstocks
’ basement at all. It certainly wasn’t anywhere in sight when John and I took a look around.”

“Don’t you let
Strutter
catch you
sayin
’ that,” Margo warned. “As far as she’s concerned, she saw a skeleton or a mummy or some other kind of dead body, and you’ll never convince her it was a pile of old rags or a discarded Halloween costume.” She snorted into the Coke can. “So if we’re
goin
’ to get stuck
tryin
’ to sell the
Henstock
house, a nice, tawdry murder works for me.” She changed the subject and handed me the soda. “
Seein
’ Armando tonight, Sugar?”

“Nope.
End of the month closing at
Telcom
. Everybody in the department works late tonight.” Armando was the controller of a small, but growing,
telecommunications company
headquartered in East Hartford. We had met there seven years ago when I managed public and investor relations for the company, and our relationship had endured through my mid-life career crisis. I had spurned my management position to return to my roots as an administrative assistant to a noted Hartford lawyer. That had lasted only a few months, and then I had opened MACK Realty with Margo and
Strutter
.

“We’re having dinner together tomorrow, though, if I can stay awake. He keeps the strangest hours. I’m starving by six o’clock, but he’s not ready to eat until about nine. I’m ready for sleep by ten and up again at five-thirty in the morning. He stays up half the night and strolls out to work sometime after nine-thirty.” I shook my head.

“It’s cultural,
Darlin
’. He was raised in a hot climate where they take siestas, then eat dinner at some ungodly hour of the night.” She waggled her polished fingernails at me for the Coke. “It could work in your favor, though.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Think about it. You’re worried that after all these years of independence, neither of you is
goin
’ to be able to stand
sharin
’ your space with someone else.” Armando and I had been divorced from our respective spouses for a dozen years or more, and both of us had enjoyed our solitude and privacy. “But from what you’re
tellin
’ me, you won’t actually
be
in the same space a lot of the time during the work week. And you’re already used to
spendin
’ the weekends together.”

Again, she had a point. We sat in companionable silence. “Interesting day today,” I commented after a while. “First Emma
leaving,
and that weird newspaper clipping.
Then that business with the
Henstock
sisters and a disappearing corpse.
If
Strutter
hadn’t seen it too, I’d think the ladies had been into the cooking sherry. By the way, have you ever seen a baby swan?” I told her about the little family Emma and I had seen on the Spring Street Pond. “I’ll show you the pictures after I download them tonight. I promised Emma I’d send her updates.”

Margo grimaced.
“Doesn’t sound all that
appealin
’, frankly.
Why don’t you just keep them for
Emma.
Will you be all right without your little girl?” Her question was wry, since my little girl was pushing twenty-eight, but her pat on my knee was sympathetic.

“Oh, I’ll get by,” I assured her. “I just hope she’ll have some fun and not study herself into a nervous breakdown or something.”

Margo stared at me in disbelief, and we both broke out laughing. There had never been a time when Emma wasn’t ready to party, and the chance of her
overstudying
, I knew well from her high-school years, was slim to none.

“What do you suppose was the matter with
Strutter
?” I asked, changing the subject once again. “It’s not like her to get queasy over a little thing like a corpse.”

“
Mmmmm
,” Margo agreed. “And I’ve seen her digest Jamaican jerk lunches that sent me
runnin
’ for the Tums after just a couple of bites, so I don’t think it was indigestion. In fact, I remember her
tellin
’ me once that the only time she had ever lost her breakfast was when she was
expectin
’ Charlie.” Charlie was
Strutter’s
twelve-year-old son. We were quiet for a minute, considering. Then we faced each other with open mouths.