Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries)

by Judith K Ivie

  Strutter pointed to the “No Turn on Red” notice on a six-foot post at the corner. The traffic light changed from red to green, and the cars behind the Firebird started honking, which Strutter ignored.

  “No turn on red,” she read aloud slowly and clearly, then smiled engagingly at the driver once again. “That means it’s illegal to make a right turn when the traffic light is red. So my friend didn’t turn, because that would have been breaking the law. You wouldn’t want us to do that, would you?”

  At least six angry drivers leaned steadily on their horns, but Strutter appeared to be oblivious. Margo and I held our breath, sure that Pontiac Man would take a Saturday night special from beneath his seat and blow Strutter’s head off at any moment. The light changed back to red.

  “Aww, c’mon, Lady, what is your problem?” yelled a driver in the stalled queue.

  “Uhhh,” stammered the brute, clearly wanting only to escape. “Sure. I mean, no, I wouldn’t want you to do that.” He glanced frantically at his rearview mirror, then at the light, which would change to green any second, provoking a new cacophony of horns.

  “Good! I knew you’d understand, if somebody just explained it to you,” said Strutter, straightening from her crouch beside the window and giving the Firebird’s door a satisfied pat. “Maybe next time, you’ll give it just another moment’s thought before you start honking at somebody. They just might have a very good reason for doing what they’re doing, you know?”

  The light changed to green, and once more the chorus of horns rang out, this time accompanied by yelled curses and much arm waving from the vehicles behind.

  “You have a lovely day now.” And ever so deliberately, Strutter walked her walk back to the Chrysler, opened the rear door, and slid into the passenger seat just as the traffic light turned amber.

  “Hit it!” she hissed at me, and I obeyed, screeching through a hard right turn just before the signal again turned red, neatly trapping the Pontiac and its tail of steaming drivers once again.

  We sailed through the next intersection and sped another half-mile before I loosened my death grip on the wheel and glared at Strutter in the mirror.

  “You idiot!” I sputtered. “You could have gotten yourself killed. We might all have been hauled in …”

  “And the cops might have decided to search us for drugs while they were questioning us,” Margo picked up the thread. “That would not have been good, Sugar. I keep a little weed in my purse for medicinal purposes, don’t you know.”

  Strutter remained impassive as we ranted, crossing those curvy legs and gazing out the window as if enjoying the view. Then she looked directly into my mirror and crossed her eyes. I couldn’t help it. I fell apart laughing.

  “What’s she doing?” Margo demanded crossly, craning around to look. “Oh, for God’s sake! We’re planning a break-in, and you’re giving lessons in traffic etiquette to a three-hundred-pound goon,” she lectured Strutter, refusing to react to the crossed eyes.

  Strutter stuck out her tongue and slowly slid it up to touch the end of her own nose.

  For a count of five, Margo maintained an impressive deadpan. Then she crossed her own eyes, stuck her front teeth out over her lower jaw, and did an outstanding imitation of a deranged beaver. Strutter broke up. Margo faced front, satisfied.

  “Home, James,” she said, and I headed for The Birches at a decorous pace.

  I gave Strutter and Margo a glass of iced coffee apiece and sent them on their way. Strutter and I agreed to meet in the Metro Building’s main lobby at 9:00 the next morning. As secretaries to the firm’s senior partners, we might logically be putting in some overtime on a holiday weekend, but Margo would have no reason to be there. As it was, we risked having to explain our presence to an associate or two who might be slaving away on the weekend, but Strutter assured me that there was little likelihood of running into any of the firm’s administrators and IT staff who occupied the thirty-sixth-floor offices along with Karp.

  I telephoned the Hartford Police Department and left a voice mail for Diaz, telling her we had some new information about Karp but omitting the fact that we planned to break into his office the following morning. Time enough to explain that later if we found anything worth reporting. Otherwise, as far as anyone needed to know, we were just putting in a little overtime. Before putting down the phone, I checked my messages and was startled to find one from Esme.

  “I did not wish to alarm your friends, Ms. Lawrence,” she said, “and as I said earlier, I am aware that you have certain reservations about my intuitive abilities. Nevertheless, I must tell you that I had extremely strong premonitions of danger in your presence. You must take great care over the next few days. I suggest that you practice an elementary form of meditation by closing your eyes and visualizing yourself being surrounded in a protective wall of white light. It is a powerful tool that is available to you. Use it.” The message ended.

  Weary from the heat and unsettled by Esme’s message, I turned on the central air conditioning and flopped face down on my bed with the hope of catching a nap, but sleep eluded me. On the basis that it couldn’t hurt, and it might help, I closed my eyes and did as the clairvoyant had suggested, visualizing a curtain of white light and wrapping it around me. Within seconds, I dropped off to sleep.

  Predictably, no sooner had I done so than the bedside phone rang. I fumbled grubbily to pick up the receiver.

  “Hello? Hello?” I repeated hopefully, but all I heard was a prolonged burst of static. I replaced the receiver and rolled over onto my back, tears of frustration filling my eyes. I was almost certain it had been Armando calling, and I cursed the political upheaval in that part of the world that so often destroyed telephone communications. I wondered why he hadn’t brought a satellite phone with him. Then I wondered if it were the same time of day in Bogota, if he was still in Colombia. We hadn’t spoken in days, and my heart sank as I considered why he might be calling. Maybe he wasn’t coming back. Maybe he didn’t want to.

  I closed my eyes and was flooded with memories of previous Fourth of July mornings, drinking coffee and giggling under the cool sheets, touching luxuriously from shoulder to thigh as we lay side by side, planning our day. I thought of the delicious caramel color of his skin from the tip of his toes to his hairline and the coarse black fur of his belly. Would I ever rub it again or smell the clean, soapy fragrance that clung beneath his chin after he shaved? I hadn’t gone looking for this late-in-life love affair, but Armando had found me anyway. I missed everything about him.

  With a nap out of the question now, I hauled myself to my feet and seriously annoyed Jasmine and Oliver by getting the noisy old Hoover upright out of the hall closet. They huffed off to the relative peace of the upstairs guest room, but Moses stayed downstairs to chase the vacuum cleaner’s long cord, untroubled by the racket it made. Vacuuming was followed by dusting, and dusting was followed by laundry.

  After that I braved the last-minute holiday crowd at the supermarket and picked up the steaks I had promised to contribute to a cook-out hosted by Emma and Scotty that evening. Joey would still be on the road from Atlanta, but he was meeting buddies at a truck stop in South Carolina and going out to see the fireworks, so we knew he wouldn’t be lonely. A couple of Emma’s friends from work, Scotty’s brother and his girlfriend, and my neighbor Mary rounded out the guest list. What with one thing and another, I was grateful for the distraction the evening would provide.

  As we sat around the comfortable, screened-in deck on Emma’s rented bungalow after dinner, Mary and I entertained the other guests with our saga of run-ins with The Birches’ residents and property managers. They howled in disbelief over the affair of the bath mats and cheered Joey’s escape from a ticket right from under Edna Philpott’s nose. Then Mary brought us up to date on Philpott’s latest victim.

  “Poor Roger Peterson, he’s Kate’s neighbor on the other side, wouldn’t hurt a fly. Always a perfect gentleman.” Mary shook her head sadly. “Got a nastygram ju
st yesterday accusing him of hanging a potted plant from the gutter over his deck. Well, I’ve shared a toddy or two with Roger on that deck of an evening, and there’s nothing hanging from his gutter. He has a beautiful potted petunia that sits on top of a railing post next to the house, and the pot hanger kind of leans against the building, that’s all.

  I looked at Mary in surprise. Shared toddies were news to me.

  “Oh, I know,” she continued. “To look at him, you’d think he’s too meek and mild to put up a fuss, but whooeee!” She slapped her thigh. “That man got right in his car and drove over to the property manager’s office and raised holy hell. I know, because I went with him.”

  Well, well, I thought, more surprises. “By the time Roger got through with that Saunders fella, old Paul was leaning so far back in his chair, I thought it was going to tip over. The two girls in the office were backed up against a filing cabinet, hanging onto each other in fear for their lives. Then Roger ripped that letter into confetti and sprinkled it onto Saunders’ desk and stomped out. I could hardly keep up with him.” Mary laughed gleefully, and the rest of us joined her.

  That was a story I hadn’t heard. I wondered what else Mary hadn’t told me, then reminded myself to mind my own business. If she and Roger were keeping each other company, good for them. Loneliness could be very terrible, as I had reason to know.

  The sky darkened, and we heard the whoosh and pop of the first skyrocket soaring over the treetops from the neighborhood park. We took blankets out onto the front lawn and slathered each other with insect repellent. Then we lay flat on our backs to enjoy the spectacle. The mingled smells of cut grass and gunpowder brought me back to my very first fireworks display forty-something years ago, when, stuffed with hot dogs and potato salad, I had lain on a blanket between my parents at a park not far from where we were tonight. I had felt safe and secure and thrilled, all at the same time. What a different world it had been then.

  I gazed at the red, white and blue bursts and remembered the day last September when Emma and I had accompanied Armando to the federal courthouse in Hartford, where he had taken his oath of citizenship. How ironic, I thought, that he should choose to spend his first Fourth of July as an American citizen back in his native South America.

  After the grand finale Scotty surprised us with boxes of sparklers, the old-fashioned kind that burned brightly for a minute or two and prickled your hand with falling sparks. We lit them one at a time, admiring the cascade of sparks, then carefully deposited the spent ones in a bucket of water. Emma’s face in the light of them looked as joyous as it had at the age of three, when her father had put her very first sparkler into her hand. I was warmed by the memory.

  It was the perfect end to a perfect evening, Mary and I assured the kids sincerely. As we said our goodbyes and left them to their further revelry, Emma leaned into the car and hugged me around the neck.

  “You know, Ma, that business with Philpott on your case and the residents ratting each other out reminds me of when Erica and I moved into our first apartment. Remember? All the neighbors were fighting with each other and complaining to the landlord any time someone played a radio. It was awful.” She cocked her head. “Do you remember what you and Daddy told me to do?”

  I confessed that I didn’t. “You said that there’s always going to be somebody in a new neighborhood who bugs you, but it’s hard to stay mad at people you know and like. So you suggested inviting the whole building to a potluck get-acquainted dinner in the lobby, you know, where everybody brings something.”

  “And did you?’

  “We did,” she said, smiling at the memory. “We got the landlord’s permission and stuck invitations under all the apartment doors, and nearly everybody came. It was a total hoot. There were married couples and kids like us and old ladies and babies. We had every kind of food you can think of, and after a couple of hours, we were old friends. It was seriously amazing. And you know what?”

  “What?” I asked obediently.

  “The fighting stopped, just like that. If somebody was blaring music, and you were trying to sleep, you just knocked on their door and said hey, could you tone it down? And that was the end of that.”

  “So?”

  “So why don’t you throw a party at The Birches? Just invite everybody and see what happens. It couldn’t hurt.”

  “Or it could result in mass murder,” said Mary dubiously.

  “Thanks for the suggestion. We’ll give it some thought.” I pinched Emma’s cheek and started the engine. “So now it’s toddies with Roger, huh,” I couldn’t resist needling Mary on the ride home.

  “Keep your mind on your driving,” said Mary, but she was smiling.

  Eleven

  Armando and I were enjoying lunch at Wickham Park, something we often did during our days at TeleCom Plus, especially during the late spring and early autumn. We would take his car to the grinder shop on the Manchester border and order sandwiches and Cokes to go, then drive down the street to the park entrance. After a guard collected the nominal parking fee, we would drive slowly to the very highest part of the hill that dominated the park, once the estate of old Mrs. Wickham. We would park overlooking the slope and the trees beyond. There was rarely anyone else there, making it a perfect spot for midday lovers to steal kisses between bites of turkey and tomato grinder.

  As usual, I was enjoying Armando’s chiseled profile and pretending not to notice his admiring sidewise glances at my legs, displayed to advantage below a short summer frock. He was telling a funny story about our mutual boss, and I was giggling appreciatively. The sun was warm, and a light breeze flicked through the car’s open windows. We finished our sandwiches and turned toward each other, still talking. His warm hand strayed to my bare thigh, and I covered it with my own. I wouldn’t have needed much encouragement to jump into the back seat with him and take our chances with the park police. Just at that moment, a young deer stepped delicately from the edge of the woods beyond Armando’s shoulder, and I whispered to him excitedly. It was something of a phenomenon, the way wild animals showed themselves to us everywhere we went. They seemed to sense that they had nothing to fear from us, and we were often treated to just such a visit.

  The bedside telephone rang, waking me abruptly from my dream. I picked it up crankily. “Yes, what is it?” The clock on the table read 6:45.

  “Sorry, Kate,” said Ingrid, “but I couldn’t risk missing you this morning. Are you awake enough to listen to something? It’s really important.”

  I dragged myself into a sitting position, threw my legs over the side of the bed, and scrubbed at my eyes. “Uh huh,” I said unconvincingly. “Go ahead. What is it?”

  “Do you remember the book Diaz gave us to use in identifying all of the plants in the office? The one with all of the color plates of poisonous plants and shrubs in the Northeast?”

  “Of course. A pictorial guide to something-or-other.”

  “To poisonous flora of the northeastern United States,” Ingrid confirmed. “Well, there’s more than one copy of that floating around, it seems. I just saw one on a bookshelf in Karp’s office.”

  “Karp’s office? Where are you?”

  “I’m still in Rhode Island, reviewing all those snapshots you and Strutter took this week. You took a bunch of them in Karp’s office, remember?”

  I shuddered, remembering the errant e-mail and our close call. “I remember.”

  “Well, one of them shows the contents of a bookcase. It looks like the one on the wall between Karp’s office and Hannah Murphy’s, next to his filing cabinets. Right spang in the middle of the second shelf is that book. Trust me. I’ve spent enough time with the copy of A Pictorial Guide to Poisonous Flora of the Northeastern United States Diaz gave me to recognize it.”

  I struggled with the implications of this. “That’s interesting, but it doesn’t prove Karp is the murderer. He has hundreds of botanical reference books, and just like with the poisonous plants all over the place, anyone in the offi
ce could have helped themselves to that particular title out of Karp’s office.”

  “True,” agreed Ingrid, “but unlike the plants, books with glossy book jackets like this one hold fingerprints. If you can get that book to Diaz without disturbing them, the police might be able to lift prints from the cover and even the inside pages to learn who’s been leafing through it, whether it’s Karp or anybody else. Besides, if Karp wrote his name on the flyleaf or put a bookplate in the front, it would at least prove that he had the information at hand to mix Alain that lethal latte.

  “Good point. If I get it to Diaz today, maybe she can get it back to me before Karp misses it.”

  “I don’t want to take that chance. I’ll drive home tonight, and tomorrow morning you can slip back into Karp’s office and replace his copy with the one I’ve been using.”

  I approved the plan but had one more thing on my mind. “Ingrid, why was Alain in the office so early that morning anyway? Was he preparing for trial, or what?”

  “I don’t really know,” Ingrid replied. “As I told Detective Diaz, Alain was one of those people who doesn’t require a lot of sleep. He came into the office at all hours, and he was almost always there before me in the morning.” She thought for a minute. “Most of the other lawyers and administrators knew he came in very early, so if they needed to see him, they’d use the computerized meeting planner to put a crack-of-dawn appointment on his calendar. That way, when he logged onto Outlook, he’d see the appointment and know to expect someone. I checked Alain’s calendar for that morning,” she added, anticipating my next question, “and there was nothing on it before 9:30, when the Litigation Department had a meeting scheduled upstairs.”

  It was my turn to be thoughtful. “What if there was an appointment on his calendar, but someone deleted it? Someone computer savvy enough to delete it and then empty Alain’s recycle bin?”