Dirty Tricks: A Kate Lawrence Mystery (3 page)

“Wait a minute now. Are we talking
about the same
Maybelle
Farnsworth who just moved up
here from Atlanta and bought that little house on Wheeler Road, the one that’s
being updated with new kitchen cabinets and bathroom fixtures?”

“And
wirin
’
and
plumbin
’ and a gas fireplace log, not to mention
having a wall or two knocked out to open up the first floor. Yes, that’s my
Auntie May,” Margo confirmed. “I tried to tell her there was no way she was
going to be able to work there during the day with all the construction noise,
but she insisted she could just shut herself up in her bedroom with her laptop,
and she’d be fine.”

“But, but …”
Strutter
spluttered, “she’s over seventy years old, isn’t she? Are you seriously telling
me that a woman of her age is spending her days writing sexy novels?”

“Not
writin
’
them,
publishin
’ them. They’re written by other
people. It’s a very lucrative market these days, especially with the success of
Fifty Shades of Grey
and its sequels.
What with Kindles and Nooks and all sorts of other electronic
readin
’ devices, people can read whatever they want in
complete privacy with nobody the wiser. You can even read right on your desktop
computer without your boss
knowin
’ a thing about it.”

“Is that how you while away the
hours at Vista View?” I twitted her. “And all this time I thought you were
playing Solitaire while you warmed the chair at the sales desk.” Vista View was
a local retirement community represented by Mack Realty. My partners and I each
put in one six-hour stint a week at the sales desk in the lobby, fielding
inquiries and handing out promotional literature to visitors. Business isn’t
steady, so we all depend on our laptops for entertainment. That was especially
true now that our longtime friend, Ginny Preston, had retired as Vista View’s
business manager and moved south with her husband to be closer to their grown
son. Without Ginny to lunch with, the Vista View days had grown long and rather
dull.

“The chair hasn’t been the only
thing
gettin
’ warm, Sugar. If I weren’t already
havin
’ hot flashes, those Naughty Nannette titles would
sure do the trick,” Margo teased me right back. “Anyway, is May
takin
’ us up on the offer of the spare desk at the Law
Barn?”

“Sure is. I told her I needed to
be sure it was all right with both of you and the landlord, but I was fairly
certain it wouldn’t be a problem. She practically leaped at the opportunity,
poor thing. She looked absolutely frazzled. She’ll be with us tomorrow morning,
says all she needs is her laptop, internet access and her cell phone, and she
can do business anywhere.”

“Huh, shades of Millie Haines,”
Strutter
commented, referring to the mortgage broker who
had occupied that space before decamping to return to her native California. “I
guess it’s true that you can do business almost anywhere these days. When we
had to leave the Law Barn and work out of our houses for a couple of years, I
don’t think most people were even aware of the change.”
 
Her dimples reappeared suddenly, and she
threw her head back and guffawed.
“An erotic romance
publisher in Old Wethersfield!
The founding fathers will be spinning in
the churchyard for sure.”

“Not to mention a few of our
present day citizens,” I agreed. “Those puritanical instincts run deep, so if
we want to continue to attract customers, I think we’d best keep May’s
alternate job description to ourselves. By the way, I never got a chance to ask
you why your aunt moved to Connecticut. She was born and raised in the South,
wasn’t she?”

“Born and raised, yes, but she
hasn’t spent her whole life in Georgia,” Margo filled us in. “Uncle Douglas was
quite the economics guru and spent, oh, eight or ten years, I guess it was,
teaching at Yale University, when he wasn’t flying around the world to give
seminars in Tokyo or Abu Dhabi or some such, so Auntie May is no stranger to
Connecticut. That’s probably why her southern drawl isn’t as pronounced as
mine.”

“As if you don’t turn that on and
off like a faucet. Did they divorce, or is May a widow?”
Strutter
asked.

“My uncle died in 1995, very
suddenly of a major stroke right in the middle of a lecture he was
givin
’ to a graduate seminar. It was a fine way to go,
actually,
doin
’ what he loved to do, but May and I
were just devastated. He was the big brother I adored, and May was
somethin
’ between a mama and a big sister to me.”

“They didn’t have children of their
own?” I wanted to know.

“They didn’t, more by choice than
anything, since Uncle Doug was always
circumnavigatin
’
the
world,
and Auntie May enjoyed being the perfect
wife, hostess and companion when she wasn’t solving the social problems of
Atlanta as a volunteer dynamo, and she took me right along with her.” She
smiled fondly. “Why, I can remember her
climbin
’ up
into a big
ol
’ sycamore tree some developer was
threatening to cut down to make room for one more tacky condominium on his
parcel of land. She boosted me up ahead of her, and the two of us just sat
there on a comfy branch, singing songs and
watchin
’
the crowd gather until somebody got around to
callin
’
the local newspaper. When she saw the van pull up with a reporter and a
photographer, Auntie whipped a compact out of the pocket of her pedal
pushers—that’s what we called
capris
back then—and
fixed her face real quick before
givin
’ those folks
an earful about longevity and respect and the rights of other living things on
this planet. I remember thinking she was just about the finest woman I’d ever
known or would know.”

“What happened?”
Strutter
and I demanded simultaneously, snapping Margo back
into the present.

“Oh! She got a round of applause
and her picture in the
evenin
’ edition, and the developer
agreed to leave that old sycamore tree right where it was,” Margo reported
triumphantly, “and then we went home and cooked Uncle Doug’s supper.”

We all smiled at the story. “Well,
I think she’s absolutely charming. Obviously, she figured out another kind of
life for herself after your uncle’s death and has made a success of that, too,
however unconventional it may be. As far as the good folks of Wethersfield need
to know,
Maybelle
Farnsworth is the author of genteel
mystery novels, nothing more. Some things don’t need to be common knowledge,” I
concluded.

“Don’t worry, I don’t even plan to
tell J.D., and can you imagine how Charlie would take this news?”
Strutter
assured us, referring to her husband and teenage
son.

“It’ll be our dirty little secret,
Sugar, no pun intended,” Margo agreed, and we all turned our attention to the
pasta specials.

Despite our lengthy perusal of the
menu, we wound up ordering our usual favorites: cod fillets for me, pasta
primavera for
Strutter
, and
homestyle
lasagna for Margo, who, annoyingly
enough,
never
seemed to gain an ounce. After we placed our order, we continued sharing the
details of our day.

“How did things go at Vista View?”
I asked Margo, who had taken her shift at the sales desk. “Wasn’t today the
first day for Ginny’s replacement?”

“As a matter of fact, it was.
Isabelle
Marchand
is the name. I didn’t have an
opportunity to say more than hello and good luck, but I can tell this lady is
about as different from Ginny as she could possibly be.”

“In what way?
All young and perky and annoying, I suppose,” said
Strutter
.
“Even the optometrist I saw this morning looked about twelve years old.”

Margo chuckled. “That’s because
you just turned fifty. As I recall, that’s when even the new cops at the P.D.
started
lookin
’ too young to be trusted with
firearms, so get used to it.”

Margo’s husband John was the head
of the Wethersfield Police Department’s homicide division, so she knew whereof
she spoke.

“Anyway, this
Marchand
gal is definitely not young and perky. She’s probably a few years younger than
Ginny, but she doesn’t seem to have Ginny’s spark. All business, you know?
Kind of a loner.
I don’t think our relationship is going to
be warm and fuzzy. She’ll probably want a spreadsheet on her desk every
mornin
’ even if there aren’t any sales or rentals to
report.”

I was frankly disappointed. My
friendship with Ginny Preston had been a bright spot over the years at Vista
View, and I’d secretly hoped her replacement would be lively and personable, as
well. “That’s too bad, but maybe it was just first day jitters. Did you ever
have a first day on a new job that wasn’t terrible?” I commented hopefully.

“True enough,”
Strutter
agreed, and Margo nodded in sympathy. “Who could forget training week at BGB?”

At that we all burst out laughing,
remembering our days as legal assistants at
Bellanfonte
,
Girouard
&
Bolasevich
,
a
prestigious Hartford law firm with a name so
unpronounceable that it was known nationally as simply BGB. The first week on
the job had been known as Hell Week for good reason, as it was devoted to a
mind-boggling introduction to BGB’s word processing and document management
software, all of which had been customized to meet the specific needs of a
large law firm with offices in multiple states. It was a bond among the three
of us, rather like Marine boot camp, I imagined. At any rate, just the memory
of my law firm initiation was enough for me to give Isabelle
Marchand
the benefit of the doubt.

Two

By Friday we were so accustomed to
having May at the Law Barn, it was as if she had always occupied the little
office on the first floor. Margo made her a key to the big front doors so she
could come and go as she pleased, and she was the perfect guest, tidy and
unobtrusive but always ready to join us for a chat, if invited. Because she was
an early riser, or perhaps because the construction workers arrived at her home
promptly at seven o’clock each morning, she made it a point to learn how we all
liked our coffee and had mugs and napkins lined up in front of a fresh pot by the
time we arrived.

Unfortunately, I’d miss the coffee
room chat this morning. Margo and
Strutter
had
already done Vista View duty this week, so I needed to prepare to take my turn
at the sales desk. I was reluctant to leave my warm bed, and our ginger cat
Gracie was no help, pinning me snugly beneath the covers as I stole a little
extra doze time. Ultimately, the snooze alarm prodded me to my feet, but it was
already after 8:00 a.m.

I could hear Armando’s shower
running upstairs. His work schedule at
TeleCom
International required a good deal of international travel and lots of
overtime, so he could pretty well start and end his days in the office when he
chose. That suited my Colombian husband’s casual relationship with time very
well, although it was a continual adjustment for me. I was getting better at
letting his chronic lateness go, but it still made me a little nuts from time
to time.

I headed for my own downstairs
bathroom and hoped there was enough hot water left for my shower. I rinsed
shampoo out of my hair under a stinging spray and managed to rid myself of the
last of the suds just as the water temperature started dropping.

I toweled off and blew dry and
moisturized, then spent my customary two minutes with the mirror, applying the
workday amenities of mascara, lipstick and a little blusher. With one eye on
the clock, I wrestled myself into pantyhose and the pencil skirt and tunic that
would get me through the day in comfort, if not the height of elegance. Small
gold hoops in my ears, and I was done. At the last second, I dabbed a few drops
of firming serum onto my chin and neck. At the age of fifty-two, it couldn’t
hurt, and it might help.

“Good morning,
Cara
, did you sleep well?” said Armando
from the hall as I hastily made my bed. He stood in the doorway, impeccably
turned out for his work day, as always. Not especially tall, but undeniably
dark and handsome, he was fastidious about his personal appearance and always a
sight worth seeing. Unfortunately, that orderliness didn’t extend to his bedroom
and bathroom which were, to put it kindly, a perpetual mess.

I yanked the comforter smooth and
turned to give him a smile. The sight of him caused all the usual stirrings, so
evidently there was some life in the old girl yet. Gracie dropped the composed
persona she used around me and churned around his ankles, purring and chatting
as only ginger cats can do in order to get his attention.

“Apparently, your Latino appeal
extends to females of all species,” I noted, and he obliged her with an ear
scritch
. I inhaled his clean, soapy scent as I leaned in
for a kiss.

“I am very glad to hear that.” His
hand wandered from my waist, and I slapped it away lightly.

“Off to work with you. I’m running
late, and I haven’t even had my coffee. Since you and Gracie are such good
friends, you can feed her this morning.” I wiped a smudge of my lipstick from
the corner of his mouth and patted his butt. “Go.” He headed for the kitchen.

A few minutes later I hustled into
the
Jetta
and hit the road. Instead of following my
usual route to Old Wethersfield, where Mack Realty has its offices on Old Main
Street, I turned right out of our condo complex’s entrance road and made my way
down Prospect Street to Collier, where the Vista View complex was located.
 
The signs of autumn were everywhere, in the
gardens that were lush with fall blooms, in the property repairs being made in
preparation for a New England winter, and the pumpkins and pots of colorful
mums on every front stoop. Within half a mile I passed a painter on a ladder,
tending to the window trim on an already tidy looking Colonial; roofers
repairing shingles atop a sprawling ranch; a young man in earphones operating a
roaring leaf blower; and an elderly woman on her knees, energetically tidying
her perennial border.

I parked my car in a visitor slot
and hefted my computer bag, purse and briefcase stuffed with sales materials
and rental forms over the gearshift console. I didn’t usually bring my laptop
with me, but if things were slow today, I intended to visit the Romantic Nights
website. My primary mission, however, was to introduce myself to Isabelle
Marchand
, the new business manager, and find out what I
could about her.

By the time I reached the entrance
of Building One, which housed the administrative offices and dining facilities
for the complex, I was puffing.
 
As I
paused to catch my breath, I looked around at the other buildings. My friend
Ginny Preston’s contributions were evident everywhere. Several modestly sized
apartment buildings surrounded a tasteful green, and carefully meandering roads
led to groupings of smaller structures set farther from the road. From the
outside they all looked similar, like expensively constructed and maintained
residential housing, but I knew that each one served a specific purpose in the
hierarchy of caring for the elderly. The clusters farther removed were elegant
housing units of all configurations—garden apartments, townhouses and even
freestanding units—and were rented or owned by the not-yet-retired or newly
retired who still enjoyed good health and mobility. Phase One-
ers
, the developers labeled them.
 

Phase Two facilities were located
closer to the main road and consisted of units discreetly equipped with bells,
buzzers and other devices that allowed their residents to call for help, should
they require it. Housekeeping services were available to Phase Two-
ers
, as well as communal dining in Building One if they
wished to avail themselves of regularly provided group meals that were both
nourishing and appealing.

Phase Three residents were
essentially nursing home patients and enjoyed the best round-the-clock personal
care services that money could buy. It wasn’t anything to look forward to,
exactly, but it was the reason most residents signed up for a Vista View unit
to begin with. While enjoying the amenities of Phase One and Phase Two, they
knew Phase Three was waiting. One need do nothing but slip quietly into an
adjoining building to accomplish the transition. I imagined the advancing years
that might rob Armando and me of our mobility and independence, and I felt somehow
comforted. It wasn’t in either of our natures to burden our children with our
care, and it was good to know that Vista View was an option. It was attractive,
comfortable and extremely well run. At least it had been when Ginny was at the
helm. I wondered again about Isabelle
Marchand
as I
hefted my burdens and headed purposefully for the front door of Building One.
My first stop would be the dining room for coffee, and then I would see.

Having piled my various satchels
on the sales desk in a nook off the main lobby, I snatched up my purse and
followed the delicious aromas emanating from the dining hall straight ahead.

“How are you today, Gorgeous?” I
stopped in my tracks, startled, although I knew the voice well. A dapper, aging
elf hustled to overtake me—my favorite Vista View resident and good friend,
Bert Rosenthal. With his bow tie, thick lenses and unlit cigar, he bore a
marked resemblance to George Burns in his later years.

“Mind if I join you for a decaf?”
he grinned. “I need sustenance after my daily constitutional. My doctor says
these walks are good for me, but personally, I think they’re going to do me
in.”

I slowed my pace to allow Bert to
catch up and gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’ve been saying that for as long
as I’ve known you, yet here you still are,” I teased him gently. The memory of
an awful evening a couple of years ago when a heart attack had nearly taken him
from us was still fresh. I frankly couldn’t imagine Vista View without him.
“Heading for one or another of your many committee meetings?”

He grimaced, well aware, as was I,
that the annual Halloween costume ball was only a few weeks away. Vista View
social events were varied and many, the planning of which usually involved Bert
Rosenthal, but his annual masterpiece was the Halloween party.

“Not until this afternoon, thank
goodness. I’m not looking forward to it.”

Before I could ask him about his
uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm, he whisked me into the dining room and
hurried to claim one of the most popular tables by the big windows. That
accomplished, we joined the queue leading to the big coffee urns, sniffing the
aromas of freshly baked cinnamon rolls and orange coffee cake. Though they were
decadent in appearance, we knew the chef had made every effort to lower the
salt, fat and calories in his confections, mindful of the nutritional needs of
the residents. The food at Vista View was a continual delight and one of the
community’s greatest selling points.

The line moved briskly, and when
it was our turn, Bert dutifully filled his cup with decaf, while I chose the
fully leaded version, the one and only serving of caffeine I allowed myself
each day. After a few pleasurable moments debating the virtues of cinnamon roll
versus coffee cake, we agreed to split a piece of cake, and I plopped it onto
my tray with two napkins and some stirrers while Bert picked up the tab. It was
our habit to treat each other alternately.

Seated at our table, I picked up
the conversation where we’d left off.

“Problems among
the committee members?”
I prompted. I knew from long experience how
difficult it could be to arrive at a consensus among the varied personalities
that were inevitably present among the members of any board or committee on
which I’d ever participated, which is why I so seldom joined organizations
these days. The committee approach just wears me out. Give me a benign dictator
any day.

Bert wiped orange crumbs carefully
from his lips.
“Nope, not among the committee members.
We’ve run so many events together in this
joint,
we
can read each other’s minds. We jog along together pretty well for the most
part, and we would this time, too, if management would just keep their noses
out of it.”

I looked at him over the rim of my
cup, surprised. “What management? The residents always form their own
committees and run the social events. Management sets the budget, and the rules
never vary, but other than that, things have always been in the residents’
hands. What’s different this year?”

Bert harrumphed. “Busy
Izzy
Marchand
is what’s
different. Every time she makes an appearance, which isn’t often, I feel like I
should snap to attention and salute her.”

“Oh, dear,” I sympathized. “I’ve
yet to meet her, but I imagine I will at some point today. I was kind of hoping
we’d have the same kind of rapport I had with Ginny, but you aren’t boosting my
confidence about that.”

“Sorry, Gorgeous, but Ginny
Preston, she
ain’t
. This one’s all business and as
aloof as they come.”

I slugged down the rest of my
coffee and took Bert’s cup to drop into the recycling bin with my own on the
way out.

“In that case I’d better scurry to
my desk and make like a diligent real estate professional. Thanks for the heads
up.” I patted his cheek and made tracks for the lobby, knowing he wouldn’t be
left alone at the table for long. Bert was extremely popular with the female
residents, and I spotted a group of his regulars coming through the door as I
exited.

Within minutes I had promotional
literature and rental agreements lined up neatly near the visitors’ chairs, my
business cards displayed in a small rack, and my laptop fired up, ready for
anyone who might have a question about buying or renting a unit at Vista View.
Since it was still before ten in the morning, traffic in the lobby was light,
and the few people who came through were intent on a late breakfast or cup of
coffee.
 
It didn’t take long for me to
become bored and soon found myself Google-
ing
May
Farnsworth’s publishing site, Romantic Nights.
 

It popped right up, and I was
immediately absorbed into the world of the romance novel. It had never been a
genre I particularly enjoyed, although admittedly I hadn’t even picked up a
romance story in years, so the changes really jumped out at me. I looked
through the new releases (
Her Heart’s
Desire, Betrayed and Abandoned, Wild and Wanton
), reviewed the submission
guidelines (“Everyone has to be a consenting adult. Other than that, we’re
looking for smart, savvy heroines, fresh voices, and new
takes
on old favorite themes.”)
and
finally browsed by
subgenre (romantic suspense, contemporary, paranormal, historical, and spicy
romance). Naturally, the last category proved to be the most engrossing, which
was why I failed to notice the mature woman in a business suit and stylish, but
sensible, shoes standing in front of my desk until she cleared her throat. I
started guiltily and felt myself flush red to my hairline.

“Isabelle
Marchand
,
Business Manager of Vista View. I do hope I’m not interrupting anything
important,” she said. Her voice was cool. “I met the other members of Mack
Realty earlier in the week so I thought I’d stop by and introduce myself to
you, Ms. …” She extracted one of my business cards and studied it.