Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries)

by Judith K Ivie

  “I think we can do better than that,” I said, raising an eyebrow at Ingrid. She nodded. We filled Diaz in on Margo, Strutter, and our desire to help the investigation along unofficially. She listened closely and nodded her approval.

  “So long as everybody understands that your role in this investigation is both voluntary and unofficial. Just make up whatever excuse seems plausible for you to be walking around with a clipboard, and list the plants that you see. It doesn’t matter whose desks they’re on, because anyone in the firm would have access to everyone else’s desk. The office doors aren’t locked, and people move about freely all day. However, it would be useful to know if anyone seems particularly knowledgeable about, or interested in, poisonous plants. Whatever you do, be discreet and careful. We will not be making specifics of the toxicology report generally available, and it’s essential that you keep your detailed knowledge to yourselves. This isn’t television. You’re dealing with a real murderer, and it’s probably someone you already know and would never suspect. That’s how these things go.”

  She stood up to usher us out, picking up a book from her desk. Sergeant Donovan also rose, tucking his notebook into his shirt pocket. At the door Diaz handed me the book and each of us a business card. The book was entitled A Pictorial Guide to Poisonous Flora of the Northeastern United States. To the printed information on the business cards, she had added two handwritten telephone numbers.

  “Keep these with you at all times. This top number is my cell phone. The other one is my home phone. Use them whenever you need them. Don’t even stop to think about it.” She gestured with her head to Donovan. “If you can’t reach me, call the desk and tell them to page the sergeant. And if all else fails, call 911,” she finished somberly.

  Ingrid and I looked at each other, alarmed.

  “You seem to be taking this very seriously,” I said.

  “Murder is something I take very seriously. I urge you to do the same.”

  ~

  On the way out of the police station, we were startled to see Vera Girouard getting out of the passenger seat of a late model Honda, which was pulled up to the curb outside the main entrance. Dressed simply and elegantly in a navy silk shirt and patio trousers that complemented her well-cut graying hair and subtle make-up, Vera bent briefly and spoke through the open window to the driver, then stepped back and waved goodbye. The car made a tight U-turn and headed out of the lot. I recognized Harold Karp.

  We were directly in Vera’s path as she turned toward the door. After a moment’s hesitation she remembered where she had seen us before. She removed her sunglasses carefully so as not to disturb her hair and spoke to us by name.

  “Ingrid,” she said, extending a slim hand. “And Kate, isn’t it?” I accepted her brief handclasp in my turn. “Being grilled once again by the good detective, I presume, as I am about to be. How are you holding up, Ingrid?”

  “Other than being a little angry, I’m fine,” Ingrid replied levelly. “I’m sure you’ve heard that I’ve been sent home for an involuntary vacation until this situation is cleared up. I seem to be a suspect.”

  “I didn’t know. Harold didn’t mention it this morning.”

  “Was that Harold dropping you off?” I inquired, taking advantage of the opening. I felt Ingrid stiffen beside me.

  Vera glanced in the direction in which the car had departed. “Yes, dear Harold,” she smiled, perfectly at ease. “Always such a good friend to Alain and me. He’s been a real help to me during this trying time. We were all at school together years ago in Boston, you know.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Ingrid blurted in surprise. “I never saw Harold and Alain together unless it was at a firm business meeting. I had no idea they were friends.”

  “No,” Vera said sadly. “I’m afraid that Harold was more my friend than Alain’s. You see, Harold always had something of a crush on me, I’m afraid,” she confided. “When we were at Boston University, it was Harold I kept company with first. You wouldn’t think it to look at him now,” she said matter-of-factly, “but Harold was quite dashing in those days and a lot of fun to be around, so bright and interested in the issues of our time. I’m afraid he took it rather badly when Alain came along, all charm and boyish good looks, and quite swept me off my feet. Still, to his credit, he kept a stiff upper lip at the wedding and has never appeared to hold my decision against me.”

  Again I allowed my curiosity to triumph over tact. “Forgive me, Vera, but anyone who saw you and Grace together as Ingrid and I did the other day has to wonder why you did marry Alain—or any man.”

  Far from being angry, Vera seemed to welcome the opportunity to tell her side of the story. An elderly couple approached the door from the parking lot, and she waited for them to enter the building before continuing.

  “We have taken great care not to let anyone see us together as anything but platonic friends.” She paused to gather her thoughts. “I know it must seem incomprehensible to you. The truth is that I was very inexperienced in college, a fifties throwback lost in that sexually liberated era. I was a virgin when I married Alain, if you can believe it.” She chuckled ruefully. “Poor Alain. At first, we both believed that my passions, having been repressed for so long, simply needed awakening. God knows he tried his best, and judging from his success with other women, his best must be more than adequate. But eventually, nature took its course. I drank too much champagne at a New Year’s Eve party, and Alain discovered me in an upstairs bedroom with the hostess. It was then that we realized that my sexual appetite lay in an entirely different direction.”

  If Ingrid’s expression was any indication of my own, our amazement must have been plainly visible to Vera.

  “That’s when Alain began his notorious streak of affairs with other women,” Ingrid said slowly. “Everyone was certain that you were the one being treated badly, but all the time it was …” She blushed and stopped, too late.

  Vera remained unoffended. “Yes, all the time it was my fault.” Her smile twisted. “No one ever knew, not even poor Harold. We kept our secret well.”

  “But why stay married?” I pressed, unable to keep from asking. “Why not just divorce quietly and go your separate ways?”

  Vera gazed over my shoulder for a moment, searching for the right words. To my surprise, and I’m sure to Ingrid’s, her eyes filled with tears. “It’s difficult to understand, I know, but Alain and I were truly very fond of one another. We had been friends for a long time and husband and wife for several years after that. I helped to support him through law school. We built a life together that we both enjoyed very much. Neither of us ever wanted to have children. I was the proper little hostess and accompanied him to all of his dreary business functions.

  “In return, he gave me a beautiful home and clothes and the freedom to pursue my political and humanitarian interests.” She paused and looked from one to the other of us. “Most of all, he was the one person who knew the truth about me and who could be relied upon not to reveal it. After Grace and I met I was free to be with her whenever I wanted, and Alain was free to be with whichever woman he favored at the moment. It all worked beautifully, really.”

  Vera removed a tissue from her neat, black bag and dabbed beneath her eyes, careful not to smudge her mascara. “I’ll miss him,” she said finally. She made a visible effort to compose herself. “Now I must once again face my interrogator, so I’ll say goodbye.” She moved toward the door but turned back, one hand on the handle. “I hope for all our sakes,” she said to us both, but clearly addressing Ingrid, “that the real murderer will be found soon. Oh, I’m sure you didn’t do it, dear,” she said and sounded sincere. “I also know that you weren’t sleeping with my husband,” she reassured Ingrid. “I told the good detective that the very first time we spoke. Alain was many things, but he was not a liar, nor was he inconsiderate of my feelings. He was always careful to warn me about his latest bed partner so that I wouldn’t find myself in an awkward situation at a business function.
” With that, she disappeared inside the station.

  It was barely 10:30 in the morning, and I felt exhausted, yet strangely exhilarated at the same time. It had been a surprising couple of hours, but for the most part, the surprises had been good ones. Ingrid appeared to be all but off the hook, and if Diaz had entrusted me with this mission to identify BGB’s flora, she had apparently decided to overlook my idiotic stunt with security.

  Ingrid and I climbed into the car and sat for a minute, trying to digest all that we had learned from Diaz and Vera Girouard. For one thing, Alain had not been quite the reptile we had imagined. He had remained loyal to his wife even after being rejected by her in the most humiliating fashion possible for a man who so obviously prided himself on his sexual prowess. He kept his mouth shut and took the heat for all these years. I wondered if Harold Karp even suspected the truth.

  That brought us to Karp himself and his longstanding relationship with both of the Girouards. Why had he and Alain made such a secret of their friendship, and having done so for this long, why was Karp publicly squiring Vera around now?

  With our heads still spinning from those revelations, we tried to make sense of the toxicology test results Diaz and Donovan had shared with us. If you planned to murder someone, why not just pick your time and shoot him in the head with an untraceable weapon? Why would you use something riskier and more time consuming like poison? What if it didn’t work? We could understand using poison accessible by many people from many sources within the firm to confuse investigators, but why so many different poisons? Maybe there was more than one murderer. Perhaps it was a cabal like the one in Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, only instead of each person stabbing Girouard, each one had added something lethal to his coffee.

  We arrived back at Ingrid’s without answering a single question between us. We agreed that, since Margo, Strutter and I still could move about the firm, we would seize every opportunity to photograph the office plants clandestinely. I would stop on my way to work and pick up several disposable cameras to give to the others when we met that afternoon. We would drop off our exposed film at a local one-hour photo place. Ingrid would pick up the film and identify each plant with the help of Diaz’ reference book. We parted in Ingrid’s driveway, and I promised to call her later when I met with Margo and Strutter to report on developments.

  By the time I arrived at my pod, Bellanfonte had left three increasingly irritated messages in my voice mail, wanting status reports on one project or another. They were joined by half a dozen other messages from editors, conference organizers and clients; and the mail, which was always overwhelming on Mondays, covered the entire surface of my desk in untidy piles. Strutter’s face was one big question mark, but both of our phones rang simultaneously.

  “Later,” I promised as we reached for them, and she had to settle for that.

  Raucous laughter poured from Bolasevich’s open door, and I recognized the backs of several BGB partners standing just inside his office.

  “What’s that about?” I asked Strutter as we completed our calls and scribbled on phone message slips.

  “Oh, that,” she said, rolling her eyes in disgust. “That’s the level of respect you get from your five-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer when your back is turned. One of Victor’s clients is in a major pissing match with the West Shoreham zoning commission. They won’t let him and his wife build a little addition on the side of their house because the structure wouldn’t conform, they say. The client has a big temper and a big mouth, so he paid a local contractor double-time over the weekend to paint his entire house neon red—trim, windows, everything. Then he invited the local TV stations to come on down to see how the West Shoreham commissioners liked them apples. He and his wife said a lot of stupid, petulant things on camera that will only escalate the situation, and of course, Victor taped the interview and is replaying it for the enjoyment of his little friends.”

  More laughter pealed forth.

  “He’ll probably bill the client for this time and call it an office conference.” She strolled over to Bolasevich’s office and pointedly pulled the door shut. “So how did it go this morning?”

  “Interesting,” I said. “We have to talk this afternoon. Get Margo to meet us in the thirty-ninth-floor kitchen at 3:30. We’ll go into the little conference room and call Ingrid on the speaker phone. There’s a lot to tell you, but right now, I have got to get things under control before Bellanfonte drop-kicks me out the door along with Ingrid.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Margo and I have some stuff to report, too.”

  By the appointed hour, I had e-mailed status reports to Bellanfonte, dealt with my other telephone messages, plucked the few business-related pieces of mail from the mountain of junk mail and periodicals and distributed them to the appropriate associates, and relegated three-quarters of the remainder to various trash bins around the floor, including the ever-present painters’ barrel in the freight elevator lobby. I even managed to get caught up on entering Bellanfonte’s time into the computerized billing system. First Strutter, then I, turned our phones over to the receptionist for answering during our absence and raced up the stairs to thirty-nine, where Margo waited for us. Checking to be sure all was clear, we slipped into the big boardroom and then continued through a connecting door into a much smaller, more private conference room behind it.

  “Don’t worry, I checked the sign-up calendar, and neither of these rooms is booked for anything until tomorrow mornin’,” Margo reassured us, pulling the door to the smaller room shut. We left the boardroom doors open, as they customarily were when the room was not in use, so as not to draw attention to it. “What’s up?”

  As quickly as I could I brought the others up to speed on the events of that morning, shushing questions because of time constraints. “We can talk more on the phone tonight, but we have to be back at our desks in fifteen minutes, or our absence will be noticed,” I whispered. “Quick, get Ingrid on the phone so she can hear what you have to report.”

  Strutter stepped over to the phone on the credenza that ran along the wall adjoining the two rooms and dialed Ingrid’s cell phone. She answered on the first ring. I explained that I had already covered the events of our morning, but Margo and Strutter had some information for us, as well. Margo cracked open the door into the main boardroom to make sure the cost was clear. I put Ingrid on the speaker, the volume set very low, and we all clustered around it.

  “Okay, here’s Strutter. Keep your voices down.”

  “I’ll get right to the point. Margo and I took every opportunity we could find this morning to chat up Girouard’s former girlfriends. They’re not people we usually hang out with, so we had to invent a reason to wander down to their desks. We decided we’d say that the partners had asked us to survey the staff about community organizations they belong to. We said it was connected to a new business initiative, and we needed to know where the firm already had contacts in place. It was pretty thin, but it seemed to work. Since Suzanne Southerland and Gail McDermott both work in Trusts and Estates, and it’s a pretty small department, I went down there, and Margo went to see Shelby Carmichael in Real Estate. I stood there writing down the names of Suzanne’s health club and her flower arranging class, which she said she had gotten into after participating in Karp’s horticultural society here at the office, and her church and so on. Believe me, the woman couldn’t be more boring. Then I talked with Gail, and things got livelier.”

  “How so?” Ingrid interrupted eagerly, and we shushed her into silence.

  “She mentioned that she has belonged to BGB’s horticultural society for a number of years now, but other than that, she didn’t really belong to any clubs or organizations, at least not any that would interest the firm. Naturally, I was very interested, but I just smiled and smiled and said oh, why not just give me the names of everything so I’d have a complete list. Guess what she said?”

  Margo smacked her on the shoulder and made hurry-up gestures. “Get to it!”


  Strutter rubbed her shoulder and frowned. “She said for about a year now, she’s been a member of something called the Center for Universal Truth. It’s a place run out of one of those old Victorian houses in Glastonbury, ostensibly to offer classes in meditation and bio-feedback and so on for people who are stressed out. She said Harold Karp told her about it when she was obsessing over her mother’s heart attack last summer. It’s set up as a nonprofit educational center, but there’s more going on there than meditation classes.”

  “What makes you think so?” I asked.

  “Their web site,” Strutter responded. “Go to universal truth dot org, and you’ll find some very interesting information, including the center’s mission statement. It talks about weird, quasi-religious stuff like raising levels of consciousness and each person’s connection to somebody they call Prime Creator.”

  “Actually, that’s not so weird,” I put in. “Prime Creator is an entity embraced by many of the religions of the world. It’s a term, like Supreme Being, that stands for the central energy source of the universe.”

  “Yes,” said Ingrid from the phone’s speaker. “Even Oprah Winfrey uses that term, and she’s one of the most down-to-earth people I’ve ever known.”

  “You know Oprah Winfrey?” gasped Strutter.

  “Not personally. I’ve just sort of gotten into her show on this involuntary vacation I seem to be on.”

  “Oh, lordy,” sighed Margo. “She’s doing daytime television. This is bad.”

  “Will you let me get to the point?” Strutter hissed, looking at her watch. “The mission statement also talks about the woman who runs the place. She goes by the name Esme, just the one name. Calls herself an intuitive, whatever that is, who helps each of her students find the truth about what their mission is in this life on earth. Now I ask you, does that sound like a cult, or what?”

  “Oh, you’re watching too much terrorism news,” I snapped. “To me, it just sounds like some scam run by that phony clairvoyant on TV or one of Dionne Warwick’s pals.”