A couple of hours and many glasses of iced tea later, I lay on the living room sofa with Jasmine on my stomach and looked around proudly at my extended family. Joey lay on his stomach on the floor, dragging a knotted shoelace around for Moses, and Emma sat next to him with her back propped against my sofa, Oliver in her lap. Margo and Strutter occupied two of the overstuffed chairs, and Mary hunched forward in the remaining one, hanging on every word as we recounted the story from our various perspectives.
Our conclusions about Karp, we now agreed, had been totally in error. Far from suffering the pangs of unrequited love for Vera and hating her philandering husband, he must have remained the trusted friend of them both, respecting the relationship they had worked out to their mutual satisfaction and helping each of them when he could. Once he had worked out Vera’s relationship to Grace, he had kept her secret loyally, never admitting even to her that he had guessed the truth. Because he loved her, he willingly assumed the role she had assigned him of her ever-hopeful swain, accompanying her when she needed an escort and appearing to accept Grace as the platonic friend Vera painted her to be. And because he understood Alain’s pain, perhaps better than anyone else, he did what he could to ease that pain by introducing him to nubile and willing young women, all of whom were well aware that Alain was married and likely to remain so, with whom Alain could spend a pleasant few months. When his interest inevitably waned, the women were gently relocated within or outside the firm, none the worse for their experience. Some might call that pimping. I call it friendship.
Late in the afternoon the doorbell rang, and after assuring the visitor that I was up to receiving guests, Emma showed Leilani Diaz into the living room. Joey scrambled to set a dining room chair next to the couch, and she sank into it gratefully. Lines of fatigue and tension were etched around her mouth, and I hastened to assure her once again that I would soon be good as new.
“You gave the good sergeant and me a very bad morning, you know,” she chided me gently. “Despite my words to Ms. Torvaldson earlier in the week, we had serious misgivings about her. I spent most of Saturday in Massachusetts, talking with her professors and her former roommate at UMass Amherst, looking at her records. She presents herself as a graduate, but the truth is, she had a nervous breakdown halfway through her junior year and had to leave school. She was institutionalized for several months for catatonia and severe depression following an unhappy love affair with an assistant professor who ultimately decided to return to his wife.”
“Oh, dear,” I said, knowing how I would have felt if some man had treated my Emma that way. “Did she return and graduate?”
“She did not,” Diaz went on. “When she was discharged she moved to Connecticut and applied for secretarial work at BGB. Apparently, they never checked that part of her background. She was attractive and capable, and they assigned her to support Alain Girouard after just a few weeks. She has been with him ever since. Unfortunately, in her extremely vulnerable state, she formed an obsessive attachment to him.”
“Lordy,” said Margo, “can you imagine how it chewed her up inside to watch him go through one woman after another? But he did finally become interested in her. At least, that’s what she told Kate. Remember that mornin’ in the women’s room?” I nodded.
“That was a lie,” Diaz said sorrowfully, “a story she made up to protect her wounded pride. Girouard never showed the slightest interest in her. She was too good a secretary to risk losing her over a personal relationship. So he just went on and on, taking up with one woman after another, usually introduced to him by Harold Karp. Finally, she threw herself at him, but he rejected her and told Karp to find her another position, as he had for other former girlfriends.”
I told Diaz about the note I had found on Karp’s desk and that it was still in my briefcase, which was somewhere at BGB. She nodded, then frowned. “You had a briefcase but not your cell phone? I must have tried to reach you fifty times.”
I explained to her about leaving it in the charger.
“Of all times,” she said, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Sergeant Donovan, who followed Ingrid all weekend and knew she was keeping tabs on Kate for some reason, followed her to The Birches this morning. He didn’t dare try to tail her with the car on these quiet streets, so he left his sedan on Prospect and walked in, carrying a newspaper under his arm. He spotted her car right around the corner from your place and stepped behind a convenient garage to observe her actions. He was terrified the whole time that he would be reported as a Peeping Tom, and the local police would come roaring in.”
We all chuckled. Poor, long-suffering Sergeant Donovan.
“When you pulled out of your garage, and Ingrid followed as soon as you turned onto Prospect, Donovan ran back to his car as fast as he could and radioed me, but both cars were out of his sight by then. He did not know where you were going, Kate, so we both started trying to reach you, and, well, you know the rest.” She rubbed her temples at the memory of my close call.
“What’s going to happen to Ingrid?” Strutter wanted to know, as we all did.
Diaz could only offer an opinion. “She is being held for observation in Hartford Hospital’s psychiatric ward. She is catatonic again, and they are watching her around the clock. The experts will have to give the court an opinion about her fitness for trial, but I have my doubts that she will ever be prosecuted. More likely, she will be committed. It is probably all for the best, as she will at least receive the medical attention she requires.”
“So why did she decide to kill Girouard with substances from all of those poisonous plants?” Joey piped up, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.
“Yes, what about that?” Emma joined in. “Why did Karp grow all of those things if he’s not involved in the murder?”
Diaz smiled at their questions. “You are like your mother, are you not? You must have the answers. It was just a quirk of his,” she announced, shrugging her shoulders. “Some people keep poisonous snakes. Some like tarantulas and spiders and other dangerous arachnids. Karp was intrigued by the combination of beauty and danger in these plants. After all, they are grown ornamentally all over the world and are not considered particularly hazardous. I myself have lily of the valley in my own yard and a dumb cane potted in my study. Both are very toxic, although I did not know that until this case,” she admitted. “The members of the horticultural society were well aware of Karp’s fascination. Ingrid, in her damaged state, simply chose to make use of it. Now I must leave you,” she said, rising to her feet.
Despite her protestations, I got off my sofa to walk her to the door.
“Who is the very attractive Latino?” she asked, spotting a photo of Armando on the mantelpiece, along with those of Emma and Joey.
“My absent man-friend,” I told her and filled her in on Armando’s visit to his native Colombia. Aware of the big ears of my friends and children around us, I told her about my plans to meet his plane the following evening but omitted any reference to my doubts about the future of our relationship. Diaz, however, wasn’t a detective for nothing.
“Do not worry about your Armando,” she said, smiling into my face as we reached the door. “Latin men are like children and puppies. If you love them and are good to them and do not try to tie them to you, they will always return to you, even if they occasionally stray. It is a matter of holding them with an open hand. Trust me, Sarah Kathryn Lawrence. About this, I know.” And with that, she departed.
As the shock of the day’s events receded, hunger hit us hard, and we realized we hadn’t eaten all day. Emma and Joey sprang into action, raiding my freezer for provisions, and Mary, despite my protestations, darted out the door with a shopping list in her hand. We heard the Chevy roar into life and crossed our fingers. Twenty minutes later, she reappeared triumphantly, staggering under her purchases, which included fresh corn and tomatoes from the farm stand and a half gallon of my favorite cherry vanilla ice cream.
“To hell with the calories tonight,”
she ordered. “Almost dying in a fire qualifies you for at least one guilt-free dinner. It’s in the rule book.”
Joey fired up the gas grill, and by the time he had steaks and chicken done to a turn, Emma had produced a mouth-watering salad and corn on the cob, while Margo set out plates and silverware. Strutter plucked scrubbed russets from the microwave and topped them, still steaming, with pats of butter. The cats, roused from their naps by the wonderful aromas, were fed early to keep them from begging, and we all dug in. I can honestly say it was the best meal I’ve ever eaten.
Margo spoke reluctantly to Strutter from where she lay back in her chair, empty ice cream bowl in her hands. “If I’m goin’ to get you back to your car before my eyes slam shut, we have to get up and go right now.”
Strutter groaned in agreement. “I know, I know. I just don’t know if I can move.” Stretching and yawning, they both stumbled to their feet.
Mary stirred herself as well. “I think I’ll just ring Roger’s doorbell and see if he wants to watch The Sopranos,” she grinned, “or maybe Sex and the City.”
“Listen, Sugar,” Margo said before following the others out the door, “the next time you talk to your friend Detective Diaz, do this little ol’ gal a favor and find out from her if that very attractive sergeant is married, will you?” She winked and departed.
Well, I thought, love is certainly in the air.
The kids and cats had succumbed to sleep where they lay in a pile on the floor, the unwatched television muttering in the background. Both Joey and Emma had announced their intentions of spending the night, and it seemed quite like old times. I saw my friends to the door and gave them heartfelt hugs all around. Mary left first, after extracting a promise from me to call her when I awakened in the morning.
“You’re not planning to go to work, are you?” I asked the other two, still coughing a little.
“You betcha,” Margo announced. “Bellanfonte has a departmental meetin’ scheduled bright and early. It’s bad enough that you won’t be around for him to try to bully. Those poor little associates of his won’t make it through that meetin’ alive without Mother Margo’s special brand of coffee.”
I stopped coughing long enough to laugh. “Yes, I remember that brand. When do they generally wise up and start bringing their own brew to those meetings?”
“Oh, the sharper ones start carryin’ Thermos jugs right quick, but the others, what can I say? They must think it’s part of the six years of misery they have to put in before they can get even by torturin’ the younger ones,” Margo chuckled.
“And Belasovich will have a busy day lined up bragging to everyone within earshot how he was right about Ingrid all along,” Strutter commented. “God forbid I’m not among those paying homage, at least for a few more weeks.”
She winked and hugged me briefly, and the two went out the door.
I returned to the living room and looked at the tangle of arms and legs, hirsute and otherwise, reluctant to wake anyone. In the end, I pulled pillows and comforters out of the hall closet and tucked them in the appropriate places. I left the TV on low and switched off the room lights. No one stirred, and I took myself to bed.
~
Early the next evening, far too nervous to eat dinner, I soaked my bumps and bruises in a tepid bubble bath, wondering what the evening would bring. Then I dressed carefully in a red sink blouse with a big, open collar, a flared black skirt, and high-heeled black sandals. I clasped a gold chain-link belt around my waist and added tiny gold hoops to my ears. Armando had given them to me for Christmas one year. Our sartorial preferences have always varied widely. He prefers skirts, cinched belts, and small earrings on women, and I like to wear pants, big shirts, and dangly earrings. Predictably, I have a little of everything in my closet.
Checking myself out in the full-length mirror behind my bedroom door, I felt as fluttery as a teenager awaiting a blind date. Except for the teenager part, it wasn’t a bad analogy. Who would get off the plane tonight, the Armando I knew or someone changed by this trip into a man I didn’t know? Even to my own eyes, I looked worried. After considering the array of perfume bottles on my dresser, I finally wet the stopper in the Shalimar bottle and touched it to the inside of my wrists and the back of my knees. It had always been his favorite. I wondered if I still was.
“Wish me luck,” I urged the cats on my way out of the bedroom. They sprawled indolently on my damask bedspread and gave no sign of wishing me anything, except perhaps good riddance. Their bellies were full, and a nice breeze flicked across the bed from the open window. I left them to their post-dinner nap.
Before bathing and dressing I had gone online to check the status of the Avianca and United flights Armando had mentioned in his message. All seemed to be well. I tucked the slip of paper with the flight numbers into my purse and headed out through the garage.
As I drove north on Interstate 91 through the summer dusk, I remembered the Hartford-Springfield airport of the 1960s, before it had become Bradley International. With exactly two runways laid out amid the tobacco fields, the airport had been large enough to serve the region’s needs but small enough to be uncomplicated and comfortable. It was rarely necessary, in those days, to park more than a hundred yards from the main entrance of the single terminal. Inside, excited children flattened themselves against the windows in the waiting areas, thrilled by the sights and sounds of the big birds as they came and went before their eyes. The arriving flights would slow and turn at the end of the runway, then bump slowly to within a hundred feet of the terminal, where stairs would be wheeled beneath the passenger hatch.
After what seemed an agonizingly long time, the hatch would be opened by a pretty, uniformed stewardess, who stepped onto the platform at the top of the stairs to bid departing passengers farewell. Those unsteady on their feet or burdened with belongings would be offered a helping hand by an officer as they descended to the tarmac. If it was raining, umbrellas were passed out to shelter the passengers as they made a dash for it. I had been one of them on more than one occasion.
Now, travelers waited until their air-conditioned plane was securely hooked up to an air-conditioned tunnel that emptied directly into an air-conditioned terminal. After making their way through the security area, they moved in herds toward the baggage claim, searching the crowd of waiting friends and relatives for familiar faces. I preferred the old way, a sure sign of advancing age.
It being a Monday evening, I was able to locate a parking space in the short-term lot, close enough to the international arrivals terminal to be walkable in my high-heeled sandals. Halfway to the entrance, I turned back to memorize the location of the car, something I had been known to forget on previous trips—also a sign of advancing age, I felt sure. With the row number firmly in my mind, I took a deep breath and walked on, trying to calm myself. If I looked as jittery as I felt, I would probably raise the suspicion of the security guards that seemed to be everywhere.
Once inside the terminal I located an arrivals monitor. It confirmed that the flight was on schedule. I followed signs to the B Concourse and descended an escalator to the baggage claim and ground transportation area. Perhaps a dozen other women and children were already waiting, dressed casually in jeans and shorts. Suddenly, I felt out of place in my girly clothes. I wondered if we were all meeting passengers on the same flight. If so, these must be the families of the crew Armando had been traveling with, a thought that made me even more uncomfortable than I already was. Damn. Not only did I have to suffer through this iffy reunion scene without throwing up, I had to do it in front of his co-workers and their families.
Too restless to sit still, I paced up and down in front of the big windows overlooking the pick-up area, where weary travelers from a previous flight stood surrounded by their luggage, awaiting shuttle buses to the many parking facilities that circled the airport. As usual, I had arrived punctually, so now I had to wait. I tried to picture Armando strapped into his seat in the second-class diner that had miracul
ously been propelled thousands of miles through the air and was now descending slowly, slowly through the summer dusk toward the runway. What was he thinking about? Or was he sleeping, something I had always envied his ability to do on planes? Would he be tender and apologetic as he told me that our years together had been wonderful but now were at an end, because he had come to realize that South America was his true home? Perhaps he would be polite but aloof, hoping that I would see the way things were and spare him the need to put it into words.
I looked at my watch for the twentieth time. Several minutes still remained before the official arrival time. I stared out the window and remembered one of the first flights Armando and I had taken together. We had been returning from an all-too-brief winter vacation in Florida, during which we had spent every minute of five days and nights together. We had experienced a record-breaking heat wave, walked our feet into blisters, danced all one night to a traveling Glenn Miller orchestra, made love like teenagers, seen the Cirque du Soleil, and eaten and drunk our way through a dozen restaurants in the area. We had been exhausted when we finally boarded our return flight and taxied onto the runway in preparation for take-off. At that point, the captain announced that the flight would be delayed until thunderstorms cleared out of Atlanta, our interim destination.
Had I been traveling alone, I probably would have been on my knees in the aisle within ten minutes, begging the attendants to open the hatch and let me out; but Armando held my hand and found a crossword puzzle for us to do together and teased and tickled and otherwise distracted me until we were finally cleared for take-off. We soared through the darkening sky above the clouds, watching the stars come out above us and the lights come on below us. When at last we circled Bradley prior to landing, tears slipped down my cheeks. He hadn’t said a word, just brought my hand to his lips and let his eyes say it all. That had been the first of many vacations we had shared, and they always ended with a wrench of separation.
Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) Page 17
