Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries)

by Judith K Ivie

  The klaxons continued to blare unmercifully, but we were past knowing or caring. Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven. I wondered dully how many stairs were in seventy-four flights, how many times my thigh muscles were capable of making this repetitive motion before they buckled. And then on the tenth floor, with twenty flights still to go, we experienced the miracle of a breath of fresh air rising from the street-level door below. The door is passable. The air is breathable. The adrenaline rush was incredible as we now hurried, scampered down the remaining flights and rushed through the final corridor to the exit. I hit the street door and pushed the two young clerks through it ahead of me, sucking the hot but relatively fresh afternoon air deeply into my lungs. The girls burst into tears, and I patted their shoulders as we crossed Church Street and looked back toward the building.

  It’s all over now, all over,” I said as much for my benefit as theirs. “We’re all right.”

  Directly across the street Strutter and Margo clung to each other as they anxiously scanned the faces of the employees emerging from the fire exit. Grateful tears filled my eyes as I realized they were searching for me.

  “Strutter! Margo!” I screamed to them. “I’m here, over here!” Though they couldn’t yet find me in the crowd, Strutter recognized my voice and turned toward it, beaming when she saw me waving frantically. She grabbed Margo’s chin and turned her face toward me, too. We all hollered and waved at each other in relief, but I didn’t have the strength to buck the tide of evacuees to get to where they were.

  “Where’s Ingrid?” I yelled. Margo heard me and pointed toward Main Street, smiling reassuringly.

  As the crowd carried me along, I looked around, stunned. The scene was straight out of a disaster movie. The black smoke glimpsed earlier from the upper floors of the Metro Building continued to billow from the Civic Center. The plastic, yellow tape that I associated with murder scenes roped off Trumbull Street from Church to Asylum, and the intervening two blocks were filled with emergency equipment of every kind. Helmeted firefighters carrying hoses and hatchets swarmed everywhere, as did the police. News crews jostled each other just outside the tape, battling for position with the employees who continued to stumble from the building, looking as dazed as I felt. I still didn’t know what had happened, but I was unable to take one more minute of this.

  Unbelievably, I still had my shoulder bag, which even more unbelievably still contained my car keys. I turned my back on the Metro Building and stepped off the curb, smack into a large, black police officer.

  “Whoa, there, lady,” he said, not unkindly, steadying me with hands the size of hams on my shoulders. “Are you all right? Do you need medical attention?”

  I attempted to clear my throat and quavered, “No, no. I just need to get to my car. It’s in the lot up on the corner of Main Street. I’ll be fine.”

  He didn’t look convinced, but he let me continue across Trumbull, watching sharply until I cleared the curb on the other side. His few kind words were almost my undoing, and I stumbled the rest of the way to the parking lot, choking back sobs. When I finally fumbled the car door open, I fell into the driver’s seat and let them rip, not caring who saw or heard me.

  Half an hour later, I let myself into the condo. Mary met me in the living room, where the television was tuned to Channel 30. Newsreel footage showed the billowing smoke I had just survived. Mary pushed me onto the sofa and put a glass of neat bourbon into my hand. She wrapped my legs, which felt oddly light and numb, in a comforter and put Moses, who was allowed out of the guest room while Mary was in the house, in my lap. Then she sat down next to me and chafed my cold free hand in her two warm ones.

  “It was some old transformers in that restaurant that closed a year or so ago,” she said, “the one on the first floor of the Civic Center. They blew up and started a hell of a fire.”

  I searched her face. “It wasn’t a bomb, then? We thought it was a bomb.” The last of the stubborn tears trickled down my cheeks. Mary blotted them away gently with the edge of the comforter.

  “It was a fire, Katie girl, just a rotten, scary fire.” Then she grinned wickedly. “I could just picture you up in the top of that mother of a building,” she said, starting to giggle. “You must have peed your pants!” She howled with glee, and my tears disappeared as I joined in, spilling bourbon on myself helplessly. I caught Moses as he stepped off my lap into thin air and deposited him safely onto the carpet as Mary and I gasped and held our sides.

  “For your information,” I said primly, “it was nip and tuck there for a while, but I got through the whole ordeal with my power dry, so to speak. In fact, now that it’s all over, I’m feeling pretty fearless.”

  “Do you mean to say you’re going back tomorrow?” Mary blinked at me owlishly without her spectacles as she wiped her eyes. “I thought for sure this fire would put the kibosh on your career as Gal Friday.”

  “Not a chance. In fact, having to walk down seventy-four flights of stairs has made riding the Hellavators look good by comparison,” I pronounced, and for the next two days it was true. I rode the elevators calmly, able to focus on the closed-circuit TV that offered headline news and weather to passengers. I even took an extra ride down to street level on Tuesday to lunch with Ingrid, Strutter and Margo, who were becoming real friends.

  When Armando phoned that evening and spent twenty minutes raving between bursts of static about the weather, the scenery, the wonderful time he was having, I tried to summarize the events of the last few days, but the continual interference made it impossible. I gave up and said I was doing fine, just fine.

  On Thursday morning, I found Alain Girouard dead in his office.

  Four

  For days afterward people would say, “It must have been terrifying to find him dead like that,” but in all honesty, I’d have to say it really wasn’t. Surreal would be more accurate, the kind of thing where your brain refuses to accept the signals your eyes are sending it.

  In retrospect, it wasn’t finding Girouard dead that was all that surprising, now that I was up to speed on his romantic capers. God knows there were plenty of people who had good reason to stop his breathing, including a wife who must have reached her tolerance limit several of his girlfriends ago, the discarded paramours themselves, cuckolded husbands and boyfriends. But finding him dead in his office … now that was surprising.

  As the chief litigator and a major rainmaker for the firm, Girouard was held in the highest esteem, however grudging, by his legal colleagues at BGB. The fact that they benefitted directly from his reputed manipulation of the truth in moot situations, skating skillfully on the thin ice of potential disbarment, only enhanced their admiration. The name of the litigation game is conflict, and Girouard apparently could litigate the hell out of any conflict in the courtroom you could name, even if he created a few personal conflicts outside of it.

  So finding him dead in a hotel room wouldn’t have raised many eyebrows, but discovering his exquisitely barbered head face down in a puddle of cooling, amaretto-flavored decaf was a definite eye-opener on a workday morning.

  I was enjoying that peaceful interlude Thursday morning between my arrival at the office and Donatello’s, getting a jump on the day before he steamed in. I had collected the first batch of morning mail, stacked the day’s periodicals in the only clear space on top of his files, and was making a quick swing by Girouard’s office to drop off the intake paperwork for a new matter that might go to litigation. It required his signature before it could go up to the data processing department.

  As I approached the corner office, I saw that his door was half closed instead of standing wide open as it usually did before his arrival, but if the man wanted to get an early start on his preparation for today’s inevitable court appearance, it was none of my business. My only concern was entering quietly so as not to disturb him, as I had been instructed to do during my session on firm protocol. Don’t knock. Just enter and leave paperwork in the in-box on the corner of his vast, teakwoo
d desk. If he’s reading, on the telephone, or using the computer, don’t speak to him. Return at another time. Exit silently like a good little factotum.

  As I entered, shuffling through the papers in my hands to be sure they were in order, I glanced up briefly and saw Girouard slumped over in his chair, his head on his desk. Oh dear, was my first thought. He wasn’t expecting anyone else to be in this early, and I’ve caught him napping. He’s going to be embarrassed. Then I saw that not only was his head on his desk, he was face down in a puddle of what looked to be coffee with cream. It smelled faintly of the almond-flavored creamer that he preferred. Does he know he’s spilled his coffee? I wondered inanely. Finally, the synapses made contact. No, you idiot, thundered the inner voice. He doesn’t know he’s spilled his coffee. He’s dead.

  But dead seemed such an unlikely condition in which to find anyone on a Thursday morning, I continued to gaze calmly at Girouard, worried that he might find being discovered in such dishabille a bit awkward and wondering how to allow him to save face. Then shock took over, loosening my knees, and I sat down hard in the visitor’s chair next to the desk.

  At this interesting juncture, I heard Ingrid arrive in the corridor, humming cheerfully to herself as she plopped her lunch bag on her desk and clicked on her computer. Clearly, she had regained control of her emotions since our encounter of yesterday and felt good about her decision to abandon Girouard. Then Ingrid apparently noticed, as I had, that the door to the office of her soon-to-be-ex-boss was half closed, and she stuck her head inside to announce her arrival. From that vantage point all she could see was me, motionless in the chair next to Girouard’s desk. For a moment, a small, puzzled frown puckered her perfectly styled eyebrows, but all she said was, “Kate?”

  “Uhh,” I said.

  Later, Ingrid told me that she thought I must have felt ill for a moment and sat down until whatever it was passed. So she had pushed the door wide open and taken three paces into the room before she saw and assimilated the scene I had already taken in. Then she did what any normal person would do under the circumstances. She screamed bloody murder, a piercing, full-throated shriek, and clapped both hands over her eyes.

  Since there was nobody else on the floor, however, her scream went unacknowledged. After a few seconds she parted the fingers of one hand and peeked out to find me in precisely the same position, although her reaction had served to jolt me back into functionality.

  “Yeah,” I said in an unnaturally tight voice. “He’s dead,” although this last part seemed an unnecessary statement of the obvious. I don’t know why they always do that checking-the-carotid-pulse thing in the movies. Dead is dead, and it shows. “I found him like this a few minutes ago.”

  “You’ve been sitting here with Alain’s dead body?” said Ingrid disbelievingly. “Why haven’t you called security or 911 or something? Are you crazy?” And after a moment’s further consideration, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m all right,” I replied, and it was true. For some reason, all of a sudden I was just fine. I drew a deep breath and tried to answer her other questions. “I guess it didn’t seem as if there was anything anyone could do, you know? It’s not like there was a robbery in progress, or I smelled smoke. Whatever happened here was over. If I had come into the office and Girouard was sick or hurt or something, I would have known what to do, but who do you call when it’s already too late?”

  “The same people,” Ingrid said, pulling me to my feet and guiding me firmly out of the office. She pulled the door shut behind us, completely in charge of the situation. “We’ve got to call the police right away. You didn’t touch anything in there, did you? Go through his pockets? Handle anything on his desk?”

  “Good God, no,” I assured her. Even semi-conscious, I know enough about forensics not to disturb a crime scene, thanks to Jessica Fletcher and Mark Sloane. But why were we assuming that this was a crime scene? Maybe Girouard had a massive heart attack or a stroke. Maybe he choked on a sticky bun. Why had we jumped to the conclusion that someone had killed him?

  I voiced that thought to Ingrid, who had returned to her Nordic princess coolness and summoned the Hartford Police via the department’s non-emergency number. No sense complicating the commuter traffic with unnecessary emergency vehicles, she reasoned. For once, Girouard would wait without making a fuss.

  “Alain wasn’t the type to have a stroke or a heart attack,” she said, replacing the telephone receiver carefully. “He gave those to other people.” She gazed thoughtfully into space above my head. “You know, beyond the initial shock of finding him like this, I’m not all that surprised that Alain is dead. He used women and threw them away, and some of them were already attached to other men. Sooner or later, somebody was going to do him in. It was just a matter of when and where.”

  Having known the man only by reputation, and that for a mere two weeks, I had to take Ingrid’s word for it. Still, from what I had heard about him, I tended to agree with her. Alain Girouard had been a cad. But murder?

  As we waited for the police to arrive, Ingrid called down to the security desk to alert the guards to their arrival. Then she dialed Harold Karp’s home telephone number.

  “I hope I can catch Karp before he leaves home,” she said as she waited for him to pick up. “I don’t have his cell phone number, and I’d hate to have him be surprised by all of this when he gets here.”

  In another couple of seconds, Karp answered.

  “Mr. Karp? Ingrid Torvaldson calling. I’m here at the office. We have a situation here that’s going to be a shock to you, I’m afraid, but I felt that you should know at once.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Alain Girouard was found in his office a few minutes ago. He’s dead.”

  Five

  Later in the morning Quentina Barber, BGB’s receptionist, called to say that my presence was requested by Detective Leilani Diaz in one of the thirty-eighth-floor offices the firm maintained for visiting lawyers and their clients. I had already been questioned briefly by the Hartford police officers who had been first to arrive on the scene. They had taken my name and telephone extension and allowed me to return to my workstation. They also had warned me not to leave the building and to expect such a summons from the investigating detectives.

  Leilani Diaz was not what I expected. For openers, how many Latinas do you know named Leilani? Simply but stylishly outfitted in a well-cut suit, the skirt of which flared flatteringly at the top of smart, low-heeled pumps, the forty-something policewoman exhibited nothing of the hard nose or chip on her shoulder I would have expected from a woman who was scrambling to make it in a man’s world. Thanks perhaps to the precedents set by Cagney and Lacey, or more recently by Diane Russell and Jill Kirkendahl, the lady detective had come into her own in the testosterone-heavy landscape of police work. At any rate, Leilani Diaz seemed right at home in the role.

  Clasping my hand briefly in greeting, she ushered me into the visitor’s office that she and her partner, a morose young officer Diaz introduced as Sergeant Donovan, had appropriated in which to conduct their initial interviews. I sat warily in the visitor’s chair indicated. Instead of returning to the chair behind the desk, Diaz took the second visitor’s seat beside me, a gesture no doubt intended to put me more at ease. That left Donovan to assume the power chair, which he wisely decided would be inappropriate. Instead, he opted to hold up the wall while he took notes in a pocket-sized, spiral pad that had probably been issued to him with the navy blazer and gray slacks that seemed to be the uniform of the plain clothes policemen who had swarmed through the office following Ingrid’s call, judging from its state of dog-eared dilapidation.

  Despite Diaz’ efforts and my total blamelessness in this situation, I was dismayed to find my mouth dry and my hands clammy at the prospect of being interrogated.

  “I am sure this has all been very distressing for you,” Diaz began civilly enough, “but I hope you will be able to clear up one or two thin
gs for us.” She paused to give me an opportunity to volunteer anything I might feel inclined to get off my chest.

  I cleared my throat in an effort to work up some saliva. “Actually, it’s been more unbelievable than upsetting so far,” I replied, returning her gaze as levelly as possible. Never let ‘em see you sweat.

  “I understand. Perhaps you could just take us through the events of this morning, starting from the time you entered the building. What time was that, by the way?”

  The seemingly innocent question caught me off guard, and my knees, which I quickly pressed together, began to tremble. It was a perfectly reasonable place to start, I knew, and one that should not have given me any difficulty. Unfortunately, I was guilty, not of murder, no, but of a bit of chronic tomfoolery that was about to put me in the jackpot.

  I have always been a selective rule follower. While I completely understand the need for many regulations, following rules that I find irksome and unnecessary is not something I do willingly. Between BGB’s management and the administrators of the Metro Building, there are rafts of such rules. Now and again, when the rebellious spirit overtakes me, I find some harmless but satisfying way to fly under the radar.

  Building security is obviously a serious issue these days. However, this is an area in which I find the rules particularly galling because they are generally so spottily enforced, they have no point. In the Metro Building, anyone reporting to work before 7:00 a.m. must sign in, writing his or her name, office location, security badge number, and time of arrival in the log book at the guards’ desk in the first floor lobby. A select few, such as Harold Karp, had special keys for the elevators and office security doors that allowed them to ascend directly to the floors occupied by their firms, but everyone else had to participate in this annoying ritual. Instead of penalizing early arrivals in this way, why not simply require us to display our badges?