Dirty Tricks: A Kate Lawrence Mystery

by Judith Ivie

  “Unlike Desirée L’Amour,” May murmured, looking suddenly wan. Judy threw her a confused look.

  “Heck, at least that would have been hot. Anyway, to cut to the chase, I fulfilled my contractual obligations and walked away without looking back. At that point I didn’t care if I ever wrote another book. It was such a relief to extricate myself from that meat grinder.”

  “I can believe it. So what made you change your mind?” I was determined to hear the end of the story.

  Here Judy reached across the table to squeeze May’s hand. “This one here. She’s what made me change my mind. Tell them, May.”

  Obligingly, May picked up the story. “It was at one of those writers’ conferences I attended a couple of times where all the wanna-be and newly published writers go to swan around being Authors with a capital A, give each other awards that mean nothing to the reading public, and spout platitudes during cookie-cutter panel discussions. Years ago I actually participated in one called “Putting the Fun in Funerals,” if you can believe it.”

  Margo couldn’t help emitting one of her trademark snorts.

  “Anyway, I was toyin’ with the idea of launching my own small press and looking to meet some talented newcomers, but I wasn’t having much luck. I’d set myself up in a corner of the main exhibition hall, not as the author of the Ariadne Merriwether mysteries but as M. Farnsworth, freelance editor … you know, bring me your work in progress, and I’ll edit two pages while you wait at no charge.” She laughed.

  “What’s funny about that?” I wanted to know. “Offering free samples seems like a pretty good gimmick to me.”

  May dabbed her lips for the final time and pushed her empty plate away. “Let’s just say it was a real learning experience—for me, not for any potential clients. The first thing I learned was that most writers think their work is already flawless. Heaven forbid anyone should mess with their deathless prose. Never mind that most of ‘em couldn’t tell a phrase from a compound sentence, let alone punctuate either one correctly, poor things.”

  “So I gather business wasn’t brisk,” Strutter summed up.

  “I felt like the lonely little petunia in the onion patch until Judy took pity on me. She watched me for a while, sitting all by myself behind my brave little sign, and came over and sat down at my table. I read two pages of her work in progress and couldn’t find a single comma out of place. We became friends and colleagues right then and there.”

  The two women grinned at each other, and my partners and I did the same.

  “Just like the three of us did back at BGB,” Margo recalled fondly, referring to our days at the Hartford law firm where we’d first met.

  “What a great story. I’m so glad we all got a chance to meet,” I told Judy. “Tell us, how does your husband feel about your unusual new hobby?”

  “Hobby, nothing,” May corrected me with amusement. “Judy here makes more in royalties than the rest of my authors put together.”

  “I’m glad we got the chance to become acquainted, too,” said Judy. “As for my husband’s feelings about the books I write, I couldn’t tell you, because he doesn’t read them.” She winked at May. “As far as I’m concerned, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. If he assumes I’m writing the fluffy little bodice rippers they called romances twenty years ago, that’s his problem. I don’t wave my books in his face and demand that he read them, but I’ve never hidden them, either. Frankly, as long as the royalty checks keep rolling in, and I’ve stopped complaining about all the time he spends on the golf course, he’s happy with our arrangement.”

  “What husband wouldn’t be? My husband J.D. would be over the moon,” Strutter joked.

  Judy pulled her cell phone from her shoulder bag and scanned through her messages, then frowned and slid out of the booth. “Speaking of husbands, I haven’t heard from Bob since I left our house in the wee hours of yesterday morning to make the drive here before traffic got heavy. I know he’s probably just out on the golf course, but I’m a little concerned. Be right back.” She headed for the diner’s exit.

  “Has everything been okay at the house?” Margo asked May in Judy’s absence.

  “All quiet,” she confirmed. “There haven’t been any further incidents since Duke was removed from the premises, and the deadbolts were installed.”

  “That’s a relief. Did you ever hear anything from Carla Peterson?”

  May nodded. “She called Friday evening to say she grilled her son about how the dog could have gotten out of his pen and wound up in my dining room, but he seemed completely clueless. He confessed that he’d delegated the responsibility of putting Duke in his pen to his little sister, so all Carla could figure is that Beth couldn’t get the padlock in place correctly. It doesn’t explain how Duke got into my house, but it’s a partial answer. At least she tried, and one way or another, I’m now acquainted with one of my neighbors.”

  “How much longer will Judy be with you?” Strutter asked.

  “She’s supposed to drive back tomorrow evening, which is fine,” May told her, “but I have a feeling she might start back a little early, depending on what’s going on with Bob. I love her dearly, but you know what they say about houseguests and fish. We’re having a great time, but Judy’s smart enough to know when to leave.”

  “I need to get a move on, too.” I signaled our waitress for a check. “I want to spend a few hours with Armando and get him properly packed before he has to leave for some corporate retreat thing in Southbury after work tomorrow. Poor thing, he’s really bummed about it.” I purposely omitted any reference to the pending acquisition of TeleCom by OmniFutures as I put a ten-dollar bill on the table and bid my partners goodbye. As I left the diner, I scanned the parking lot, but Judy was nowhere to be seen.

  Eleven

  I spent the rest of Sunday helping Armando with his laundry and packing, then making him paella for dinner. After we spent a few hours with Gracie in front of the fireplace, we departed from our normal sleeping arrangements and shared my bedroom for the night.

  By the time we were both showered and dressed on Monday morning, I felt I had done my best to send him off to his corporate ordeal in reasonably good spirits. Mine, however, were flagging. Staff team-building, my arse, I thought with deep skepticism, but I hid my misgivings behind a smile as I waved goodbye. I might not know precisely what the hidden agenda was for the TeleCom face-to-face with OmniFutures’ managers, but I knew there was one.

  Worse, my gentlemanly Colombian, who didn’t have an unethical bone in his body, probably didn’t even suspect that he might well be a casualty of whatever plot was afoot. I seethed with equal parts of defensiveness and frustration on his behalf, but in truth, not all of my worrying was for him. My future was at stake here, too.

  In this edgy state of mind I let myself into the Law Barn at a few minutes after nine. Monday was May’s weekly teleconference with her editors, webmistress and cover designer, but that didn’t usually happen until early afternoon in order to accommodate “the West Coast crew,” as she called them, so I was surprised to hear raised voices emanating from her office at this hour.

  “It’s not run-of-the-mill vandalism any more. This is just plain dangerous. What if there had been a fire, and you’d both been trapped inside, Auntie May? We have to put a stop to it.”

  I was surprised to hear Margo’s voice, since it was her scheduled day at Vista View, and the anger coloring it was something I’d rarely heard in all the years I’d known her.

  “What’s got you riled up? And good morning to you all,” I added as I came to stand in the doorway of May’s office, although from May’s haggard demeanor and Margo’s scowl, it looked like anything but a good one. Strutter perched on the back windowsill, grimly silent. “Could somebody fill me in here?”

  “Someone besides me, please,” May implored. “I’m too tired to talk.”

  I looked from Margo to Strutter, who decided to take the lead.

  “May’s friend Judy decided
to take off early this morning; but when she went to bring her suitcase out to her car, which was parked in the street in front of May’s yard, she couldn’t get out of the house. The inside door opened, but the storm door wouldn’t budge. They tried the back door, and the same thing happened. Then they tried to get out through the connecting door to the garage. No dice.”

  “The prankster strikes again,” I surmised, going over to give May a quick hug. “Margo’s right, this is a nasty one. How did you manage to get out of the house, through a window?”

  Margo picked up the story. “That was a possibility, but not bein’ a helpless ninny, Auntie May figured out how to remove the screen insert from the bottom of the front storm door, and Judy literally crawled out of the house after shovin’ her bag through. Luckily, it fit.” She directed a pleading look at her aunt. “I really think it’s time to get John involved,” she told her, apparently not for the first time. “What good is havin’ a good-lookin’ police officer in the family if you won’t let him put the fear of the law into this malicious little stinker?” she added with forced levity.

  “I’m not so sure we’re dealing with a kid,” Strutter put in thoughtfully.“Bats through an open window, maybe. Pumpkins piled in the driveway, sure. But deliberately sealing shut the exits to a woman’s home, a lady who’s known to live alone? That sounds like an adult nut case to me.”

  “What were the doors sealed with?” I asked, curious to know how it was done.

  May answered this time, her voice husky with emotion, lack of sleep or both. “As best I could tell, the storm doors were glued shut with some super strength epoxy. I’m always careful to lock all the inside doors and throw the deadbolts, but I never secure the storm doors. Whoever did this opened them enough to smear globs of stickum all along the edges, then shut them and walked away. They had more than enough time to dry.”

  “What about the connecting door to the garage?” I persisted. “How did that get sealed? It doesn’t have a storm door, and how could somebody get into the garage anyway with the outside door down?”

  “Yes, that was a bit more complicated,” May agreed. “My tormentor popped out a pane of glass in the window in the back wall of the garage, reached in to unlatch it and pulled himself in over the sill. Then he smeared glue all over strips of wide duct tape, applied them to the outside of the connecting door and left the way he came, through the window. Not terribly imaginative, but effective.” Her tone was listless. “I called Tommy after Judy left, and he drove right over and got me out. He’s the one who figured out all of this. It’s an awful mess. It will take him all day to get the storm doors functional, and the connecting door will have to be sanded and repainted. I wonder if it’s even worth it?”

  My partners and I exchanged alarmed glances.

  “Auntie May, what do you mean? Of course, you need to be able to get in and out of your lovely new house,” Margo almost wailed. “This is just some kids who think they’re clever. Let me get John on it, and he’ll get them sorted out right quick.”

  Strutter returned to her original theme. “I’m still not convinced this is the work of kids. For one thing, the timing coincides with the submission period you just had for Romantic Nights. From what you’ve told us, you’ve turned down manuscripts from a whole bunch of folks who don’t deal with rejection well. Were any of them from around here? These days there are crackpots behind every bush.”

  May laughed for the first time that morning. “I’ve given that a lot of thought, but it simply doesn’t make sense. There are far easier ways to exact vengeance.”

  “Such as?” I asked.

  May shrugged. “I’m an author as well as a publisher, remember, and all published authors are wide open to having our work trashed on review websites. There’s not a thing in the world we can do about it.”

  I didn’t get it and said so. “What do you mean?”

  She smiled kindly at me. “I’m sure such a thing would never occur to you, but as I’ve said before, hell hath no fury like a writer scorned, and what easier way to get even with another writer than to post a godawful, nitpicky review of one of my titles on one or more of the major review websites?”

  “Doesn’t that make them look awfully petty and mean spirited, doing something like that just because you rejected their manuscripts?”

  “Darlin’, I know that’s why they’re doing it, but the other three or four million people who are scanning through reviews at any given time don’t know it. They just think somebody thought my book was terrible and posted a review saying so. Besides, reviewers don’t have to post their opinions under their real names. These websites conveniently offer them the option of hiding behind aliases.”

  “Wow, have you ever taken one of these cowards to task, posted a rebuttal or something like that?”

  “Just once, and believe me, I never will again. The worst thing you can do is engage publicly with a weasel who’s already riled up. Every other scavenger hiding in the underbrush will rise up in a snarling pack to defend one of their own. I had to take down my post just to stop the backlash.”

  “But that’s so unfair! What about the website managers? Couldn’t you explain the circumstances to them and ask them to delete the unflattering post about your book?”

  “Tried that, too. Their position is, it’s a free country, and people can say whatever they damn well choose as long as they aren’t profane. Injustice is perfectly fine, but heaven forbid you use a cussword while you’re inflicting it.” Her grin was wry.

  “All while hiding behind fake names,” I murmured. Then a thought struck me. “If these people aren’t using their real names, how do you know who they are?”

  May sipped at her coffee and grimaced when she found it cold. “Fortunately, there have been only a few, and their snarky comments are totally outweighed by the positive reviews of my books. But you’d be amazed at how consistent writers are in their bad habits. They aren’t any more careful about spelling or grammar, for example, and they use some of the same phrases and expressions that they used in their cover letters to me. They also usually neglect to black out their state and town,” she laughed, “which does make it easier for me to pinpoint them.”

  I was amazed at the cheer with which she delivered this news. “Then what do you do about it?”

  “Suck it up and deal, that’s what I do. It comes with the territory. So you see why I find it difficult to imagine a spurned writer sneakin’ around my neighborhood with a pocketful of bats and Super Glue or a trunk full of pumpkins.”

  “What we need is a plan,” said Emma firmly, startling us all, and we turned around to stare at her. We’d been so engrossed in May’s latest drama that we’d been unaware of her arrival. She stood behind me in the door to May’s office. “Hi, Momma,” she said as I whirled around, giving me a quick smile that held the hint of an apology.

  My surprise must have been evident. Emma was the last person I expected to see, especially after she’d been dodging my phone calls all weekend. There followed a flurry of hi’s and hugs from Margo and Strutter, followed by the appropriate introduction to May.

  “There’s no question she’s yours, is there, Kate?” she commented. “Just look at those light brown eyes flecked with green, and the color of her hair. I’ve heard a lot about you, Emma. These women seem to think you have it all, good looks and a fine brain, which I could use about now. I assume you’ve heard about my little problem over on Wheeler Road. So what do you suggest?”

  She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest, calmly awaiting a proposal from my daughter. Truthfully, we all were. Over the years we’d shared work space in the Law Barn, we had all come to rely on Emma’s sharp analytical mind and on-the-money instincts. Chances were she’d have some useful insights here, too. I realized I was holding my breath and exhaled through my nose, willing myself to relax.

  Emma leaned a haunch on May’s desk and regarded the older woman thoughtfully. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the consensu
s here seems to be harassment by neighborhood kids for reason or reasons unknown. At first the pranks were fairly childish, but this latest one has escalated from annoying to scary. How am I doing so far?”

  May nodded solemnly.

  “So now the question is, who’s really behind this, kids or someone else?” She got to her feet to look out the back window. “If you ask me, I think it’s both.”

  We looked at each other. “How could that be?” asked Strutter.

  Emma considered the possibilities. “Well, you could have a couple of youngsters just messing around, followed by an unrelated act of harassment by an adult, but that seems totally unlikely. The incidents are too similar and too close together. So it could be one bunch of meanies that includes kids and adults, like a whole family that wants to get even with May for something, but what are the odds? She doesn’t even know the families on Wheeler yet.”

  She paused to make her point. “I’m thinking you have some little kids who are acting on orders from older kids. First they do something relatively harmless, like the bats and the pumpkins. Then they move up to putting a potentially dangerous dog in May’s house, and now they’ve graduated to the big time, effectively trapping May and her visitor inside the house. That sounds like a ridiculous stunt for an adult, but a couple of teenagers who are eager to make names for themselves as local bad-asses, for whatever reason, might think it would be a hoot to get the neighbor kids to help them do it. Speaking as one who’s not all that far removed from my misspent adolescence, it’s plausible, believe me.”

  Strutter was the first to speak, perhaps because her son Charlie was a senior at Wethersfield High School. “Sounds like a good theory, Emma. Maybe I should ask Charlie who the current troublemakers are at school.”

  Margo and I nodded agreement, but May still looked doubtful. “I’m following your logic, but the big question in my mind is still why? Why me? I’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve this.”