A Skeleton in the Closet (Kate Lawrence Mysteries)

by Judith K Ivie

  I chatted with Armando briefly about halfway through my manicure, then checked my office voicemail and emails while my toenails dried. Margo would be spending the evening with John, I knew, and Strutter … frankly, I didn’t know what to do about Strutter. If she was pregnant, why wouldn’t she confide in us? And if she wasn’t, then what on earth was the matter with her? Of the three of us, it was always Strutter who was the de facto mom. She was a strong, centered, loving woman with uncommonly good sense and enormous tact. It was she upon whom we relied for sound advice, and in this situation, I could really use some. Unfortunately, I couldn’t ask Strutter for it.

  By nine p.m. I was sitting in front of the living room television pressing buttons at random on the remote control. For the umpteenth time I wondered how it was possible to have more than one hundred channels at my disposal but find nothing I wanted to watch. I was cheered briefly by a PBS special on James Taylor, one of my personal favorites; but as usual, ten minutes into the show, it was interrupted by a fundraising break. Commercial-free television, phooey, I thought bitterly and punched the television off. The silence was a blessed relief from the pitchman’s yammering.

  I leaned my head back against the sofa and turned out the light next to me, the better to enjoy the silence. Jasmine and Simon, unaccustomed to my company on a Saturday night, were packed on either side of me, and I soon found my eyelids drooping.

  With a start, I lurched out of my doze and wondered what had awakened me. The phone wasn’t ringing, but I realized that my heart was beating fast. The little hairs on the back of my neck were prickling an atavistic warning. I put my feet on the floor and listened intently. Hot water heater humming in the basement. Refrigerator motor. And a soft knocking on the front door. Knock knock knock, three times, almost furtive-sounding. Hesitantly, I walked down the hall in bare feet and put my eye to the peephole in the front door. The porch light was on. A man stood on the front porch with his back to me. Dark blue windbreaker, shaven head, jeans, running shoes of some sort. Hands jammed deeply into his pockets.

  I considered opening the door until I spotted the van in my driveway. Black, like the one that had been behind me on the road earlier. Instinctively, I drew back from the door and made my way soundlessly back into the living room, where I picked up the wireless phone, heart pounding.

  Thus armed for an emergency call to 911, if necessary, I tiptoed back down the hallway and up the three steps to the staircase landing. From the window there, I would have a clear view of the front porch and the driveway. I stood well to one side of the window and peeked cautiously through the slats of the vertical blinds. The porch was empty, but the van remained in the driveway. Where was the driver, and why was that van on my property at ten-thirty on a Saturday night?

  I sat down on the landing to ponder that question. Then I heard it—the sound of someone trying to turn the knob on the door at the back of the house. It led from the deck to the living room, and I wasn’t at all sure that it was locked. Years before, I had applied a window decal from Radio Shack proclaiming that this house was protected by the XYZ Security System or some such, but I was sure that wouldn’t fool anyone but an unsophisticated teenager.

  The living room drapes were wide open, so the intruder knew full well from the blazing lights and the pedicure paraphernalia that I was at home. I drew more deeply into the shadows of the staircase landing and tried to think clearly. I could dial 911 and have the Wethersfield police here within minutes, or I could lock myself into an upstairs bedroom with the phone and attempt to get a handle on the intruder’s intentions. To my own amazement, I opted to do the latter.

  The doorknob stopped rattling, and as relieved as I was to realize that it must indeed be locked, I knew I had only seconds to get a second look at Van Man before he left the deck. I flew up the remaining stairs into what soon would be Armando’s bedroom and dropped to my hands and knees to scrabble across the carpet below window height. Again keeping well to one side, I peered between the blinds down to the deck below. Nothing. Damn! I had missed him again. I held my breath and listened for whatever clues the house could give me about my visitor’s next move. If he broke a window pane, I would lock myself into the bedroom and punch in 911.

  All was silent for a full minute. I tiptoed warily to the door of the bedroom and stopped to listen again, every sense straining. Another minute and I heard the unmistakable sound of the van’s engine turning over. Racing back down the stairs to the landing, I was just in time to see the van back quietly out of my driveway and move slowly, slowly down The Birches’ access road to

  Prospect Street. I couldn’t see the license plate, but I noted that the plastic cover on one of the rear lights was broken. I sat down on the landing to try to make sense of this strange visitation. Should I call 911 and report the attempted intrusion? Or was it an attempted intrusion at all? The man had rattled the back doorknob. Maybe he was a neighbor attempting to stick a UPS package that had been wrongly delivered to him in my door. That could also explain why he had been driving the van in this neighborhood earlier in the day, if indeed it was the same van. That could just be my paranoia working overtime.

  Could the man have something to do with those crazy letters we had been receiving at MACK Realty about the stink of abomination or whatever the writer had been raving about? Those letters had seemed to be directed at all of us generally, and this man was following only me, if in fact he was following anybody. Could my visitor be involved in whatever was happening at the Henstocks’ house? Again, all of us had been in and out of the house in the last few days, so why was I being singled out?

  My feet were cold. I got up and returned to the living room sofa, although not before drawing the drapes tightly shut and turning on the floodlights over the back deck to discourage a repeat visit. Jasmine and Simon had altered their positions just far enough to glean maximum warmth from each other, since I had abandoned them. It was odd that the presence of a stranger on the back deck had apparently bothered them not at all. I pulled the afghan over me and resumed my musings.

  The only thing I felt fairly certain of was that the van in my driveway tonight had been the same one behind me on the road this afternoon. I couldn’t explain to myself why I believed that. It was just a gut feeling. I hadn’t seen the license plate earlier, nor the broken taillight cover. I hadn’t been able to see the driver, because the windshield was heavily tinted – more heavily than the law allowed, if I didn’t miss my guess. That left only instinct to guide me, but my instinct was screaming that the man standing on my front porch this evening was the driver of the van behind me this afternoon. Assuming that was true, what could I logically do with this information? Call the police? And report what … that a man I didn’t know had rattled my back doorknob, and he was driving a dark-colored van with a broken taillight cover?

  Briefly, I considered getting Armando’s advice, then discarded the idea. If I had learned anything about Armando, it was not to raise the alarm with him unless it was absolutely necessary. All I had to do was tell him some strange man was rattling my back doorknob, and he’d be having a bona fide security system installed in the condo tomorrow morning. No, I decided. Margo was the best one to consult on this. Southern belle she might be, but she could be counted upon not to overreact.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes after calling Margo, I found myself brewing coffee for the half-dozen people who now occupied my house. Margo and a young officer from the Wethersfield Police Department rattled around upstairs, checking windows and looking in closets to be sure no intruder lurked in the shadows, which I found a bit over the top. John Harkness stood in the living room barking orders into the telephone. Two additional officers, who had screeched into my driveway in a cruiser, lights blazing, were patrolling the outside circumference of the house for signs of attempted entry. And Mary Feeney, my elderly and eccentric next-door neighbor, sat in my kitchen, agog with interest.

  At something more than eighty years of age, Mary had retired more
than a decade ago and now spent her time annoying The Birches’ property manager by committing minor infractions of the association rules, zooming around town in her disreputable and ancient blue Chevy, and enjoying an unlikely dalliance with my neighbor on the other side, Roger Peterson.

  “Wow, with all of this hubbub, I thought you’d been strangled or knifed or at least were being held hostage,” she commented, eyes glittering with excitement behind thick spectacles. “We haven’t had this much hoo-ha since the water main broke a year ago last winter, remember, Kiddo?” I remembered it well, it having been the trigger for a serious quarrel between Armando and me.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” I said dryly, “but I’m alive and well and not being held at gunpoint just at the moment.” I transferred mugs from a cupboard onto a tray and added the sugar bowl and a small pitcher of milk.

  “Yeah, well, I sure thought you must be in big trouble, what with that police cruiser and all these good-looking young fellas in uniform prowling around in the bushes.” Mary jumped up to pour herself some coffee, then looked around. “This sure would be better with a shot of bourbon in it, and I’m not on duty like those cops skulking around your yard. Got any?”

  Resignedly, I fished the Jim Beam out of a lower cupboard. I added a generous dollop to her proffered mug, then shrugged and put a splash into my own. Maybe the alcohol would offset the caffeine, and I’d be able to sleep once all of these people went away, I reasoned. I carried the tray into the living room, Mary trotting behind me, and plunked it onto the coffee table in front of Margo.

  “I should have known better than to call you about something like this when you were with Lieutenant Hardnose here,” I sulked at her. “The idea was to avoid creating a scene like this, all totally unnecessary and a complete waste of the taxpayers’ money.” Rebelliously, I plopped into the double recliner and took a big swig of my doctored brew. Mary eeled into the seat next to me, clutching her mug to her scrawny chest.

  Margo grinned, refusing to take the bait. “Now you know perfectly well that John wasn’t about to take any chances with the safety of my very dearest friend. Besides, I’m the one who should be poutin’, don’t you think? It was my Saturday evenin’ ruined by whoever that nasty man was givin’ you the willies.” She gazed adoringly at John Harkness, who finished his call and charged out the back door to supervise his subordinates’ search of the back yard and adjacent marsh.

  “I don’t know why they’re doing all this,” I sighed. “As I told the officer who arrived first, the nasty man, as you put it, was long gone before I called you.”

  “Yes,” said John, reappearing through the back door, but under the circumstances, it’s not out of the realm of probability that he would come back, and this time, he might be on foot. The entire perimeter of The Birches is woods and marsh, as you know, and that would be great cover for somebody wanting to conceal himself. Best to be on the safe side.”

  I handed him a mug of coffee sans bourbon. If he was going to get all official on me, I could play by the rules, too. Margo patted the seat next to her invitingly, and he obediently went to join her.

  “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to go to all that trouble. That marsh is too soggy for anyone but the critters, and the mosquitoes are fearsome at this time of night. I can’t imagine why this man was here at all, frankly, so I simply don’t know what else to tell you.” I had already given a minute-by-minute account of the incident to a young officer who had arrived in a cruiser.

  “Well, let’s put our heads together, and maybe we can come up with something.” John jumped up again and stuck his head back out the door and spoke briefly to an officer on the deck. Within seconds, the squad of investigators evaporated into the night, taking the noise of their walkie-talkies with them. I noticed that John left the back floodlights on when he resumed his seat.

  Mary piped up again. “All I know is that I was watching a rerun of “Saturday Night Live” in my living room with Roger when all hell broke loose …” She gasped and put one hand over her mouth, eyes wide, and scrambled to her feet. “Roger! I forgot all about him in the excitement. Sorry, but I’ve got to scoot.” And she was gone, moving faster than I would have thought possible for a woman of her age.

  I rolled my eyes at Margo, who was familiar with Mary’s quirks, and gave John my attention. “Okay, what do you need to know?”

  * * *

  Half an hour later, we had reviewed everything we knew about the skeleton found in the Henstocks’ basement and could find absolutely no connection to that case and the man who appeared to be following me. Then Margo remembered the nasty mailings we had been receiving at MACK Realty from another person unknown. John perked up and sat forward as she described the two clippings we had gotten to date.

  “The writer uses words like ‘fornication,’” she elaborated. “That sounds like some sort of religious zealot to me. And the clippin’ was about that big, stinky flower they’re cultivatin’ up at the University of Connecticut, which looks like some sort of phallic symbol to me.”

  “But then, so many things do,” I couldn’t help from commenting. I noticed that John’s mouth twitched in that way he had when he was amused but too gentlemanly to let it show.

  Instead, he commented diplomatically, “I think you might be right about the religious nut. Hard to say if it’s a man or a woman, but the handwriting may give us a clue.”

  “I don’t think you could call it handwritin’ exactly,” Margo mused. “More like big block printin’ in some kind of marker. Blue, I think it was.” I nodded in agreement.

  “Let me have a look at those letters. You do still have them, right?”

  Margo and I looked at each other, trying to remember. “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “They were just crazy rantings. Nobody threatened our lives or anything. Jenny may have kept them. I’ll have to ask her Monday morning.”

  “Call her tomorrow and ask her,” John directed firmly. “I want to get a look at them just as quickly as possible. Envelopes, too. The sooner we can get a handle on whether the writer is a man or woman, the faster we can get someone working on identifying him or her. If there’s a connection, and the writer turns out to be this guy stalking Kate, we need to find him and question him before this thing escalates. From what you say, he sounds deranged. How dangerously, we can’t assess until we talk to him.”

  “Or her,” I reminded John. “We don’t know yet that there’s any connection between our penpal and my new shadow.”

  “Mmmmm. Point taken, but the odds are pretty good that they’re one and the same person. We’ll just have to see, but sooner would be better than later.” He snapped his notebook shut and turned to Margo. “Doesn’t seem to be anything more that can be done here. I’m going to make one more look around to make sure the house is secure, and then we can go.” He rose and headed for the stairs to check out the upstairs one more time.

  “Wow, and I thought my cautious Colombian was a security nut,” I whispered to Margo. We collected the coffee mugs and headed for the kitchen. John bounded down the stairs and made a quick tour of the first floor, then joined us in the front hall.

  “Are you coming with me?” he asked Margo.

  “I can only hope,” she said, and we watched him blush to the roots of his hair. “Is he cute, or what?” she said and patted his backside on the way out the door.

  Six

  On Sunday morning, I had trouble getting out of bed after my adventures of the previous evening, then decided to abandon the effort. Why not wallow in my last Sunday morning of single living, I reasoned as I leaned happily back against my pillows at ten o’clock with a mug of coffee and my address book. Microsoft Outlook was all well and good at the office, but it was hard to access from between the sheets unless you had I laptop. I didn’t, so I settled in as comfortably as possible with Jasmine at my feet and Simon draped over my legs like fourteen pounds of road kill to make the phone calls I had promised to make this morning. But first, I called Armando.<
br />
  “Wake-up call,” I announced in response to his mumbled hello. “Time to get out of bed and enjoy your last day of unencumbered debauchery.”

  “Unencumbered whaa …?” Some of the words I chose still confused him, since English was not his first language. “Oh.” He chuckled to himself. “Just wait until next Sunday morning, and I will show you some debauch-whatever. So how are you doing this morning, Cara? What are your plans for this day, while I am safely out of the way toiling away at this packing, packing, packing. I cannot think how I am going to get it all done before the movers arrive tomorrow.”

  “I have a suggestion for you. Hire a dumpster, and heave ninety percent of that junk over the deck railing. You should have done it weeks ago.” I had no sympathy for packrats, as he well knew. Saving his credit card statements was one thing, but saving the envelopes and the junk inserts that came with them?

  Predictably, he changed the subject. “So how did you spend your Saturday evening without me?”

  It was my turn to squirm. “Oh, girl stuff. Gave myself a pedicure and a facial, you know. We did have a little excitement, though.” The trick was how to word this without getting him into a total swivet. “A man driving a van through The Birches was apparently knocking on doors, trying to get directions or something. One of my neighbors saw him knocking on my door, assumed he was a vandal and called the police. Can you believe it? Then they had to send a cruiser over, and I had to give a statement. It was all a lot of nonsense, of course, but I know you will agree that it is better to be on the safe side, right?” I swallowed hard, trying not to feel too guilty about my edited report.

  There was a moment of silence. Then, “Why do I have the feeling that you are not telling me quite everything?”

  “Oh, Armando, it was nothing, and the best part is, it’s all over. Go have some coffee and call me later. I promise to be more sympathetic.”