Auld Lang Syne (16 page)

Margo and
Strutter
simply looked smug, but Emma wore a wistful expression. “At least that’s what we all hope for, a partner who will stand up for us, but Ma, this was above and beyond. I can understand how Carrie would hate Mindy’s guts for tormenting Pat the way she did in high school, but gluing her eyelashes together? How did she even get her to hold still long enough to do that?”

“I asked her that. She said it was pure impulse, fueled by rage on Pat’s behalf. She couldn’t stand watching Mindy parade around at the reunion, feeling superior because of her slim figure and chic clothes, when she knew what a living hell Mindy had made Pat’s high school years. When she saw Mindy lurching drunkenly toward the restroom during the last dance, she powered after her, intending to give her an earful, but when she pushed on the door, something was blocking it. She shoved harder and found Mindy passed out on the floor. Carrie said she was so frustrated at not being able to tell Mindy off, she had to find some other way to humiliate her. She scrabbled through her handbag to find lipstick, intending to scrawl something foul on the mirror. Then she saw the tube of glue and decided to smear some on Mindy’s eyelashes so she’d have to have them cut off, a little painful but mostly ugly. Then she came to her senses, dragged Mindy into a stall and got out of there fast.”

“Who carries glue in her purse?” Emma wondered aloud.

“A woman who wears press-on fingernails, which Carrie does.”

“It’s also handy for
stoppin
’ runs in pantyhose,” Margo observed. “What about the insulin syringe? Did she see that on the floor?”

“Worse. She dropped it while she was playing her insane practical joke. It must have fallen out of her bag when she was looking through it. Mindy wasn’t a diabetic, but Carrie is. Pat should have told me that the last time we spoke, but she was afraid to.”

All three women groaned.

“Bad luck,” said Emma. “Where does that leave you? If you believe Carrie didn’t kill Mindy, then who did? And after the police hear about this, are they really going to look any further? I mean, both Carrie and Pat work at a hospital. Either of them conceivably had access to morphine, and Carrie had a supply of syringes.”

I stalled for time with a sip of wine. “See, that’s the thing. If the police hear this part before I can put the rest of it together, Carrie’s in big trouble. She knows that, which is why she’s been sending all these anonymous warnings to anyone who was in the vicinity of that women’s room during the last dance, not to mention stalking me. She’s been terrified that one of us would remember seeing her and report it.”

The groans were louder this time.

“I know, I know, bad move, but she’s been distraught. That’s why the first note was hand printed instead of generated on a computer. She stuck that one in Joanie’s handbag, thinking it was Ariel’s, during the hubbub after the paramedics arrived.”

Strutter
looked at me closely. “Oh,
lordy
, this isn’t going to be pretty,” she said as if to herself. “She’s got that stubborn look on her face.”

Margo’s expression mirrored
Strutter’s
consternation. “Yes, we know that look, and it’s never good news.” She sighed. “So what’s it going to be, Sugar?”

Emma chewed on a thumbnail and stayed quiet, but her eyes were on mine. I smiled at my three companions in an effort to ease their minds.

“The way I see it, I need only two more pieces of this puzzle before I can give the police enough information to motivate them to look for another suspect.”

“Only two?”
Strutter
asked before draining her wine.

“Well, two major pieces. There may be others. The first is
,
how did Mindy wind up so drunk that she passed out in the bathroom? And the second
is,
who besides Pat and Carrie had access to morphine and the opportunity to overdose Mindy before the EMTs arrived?”

“Piece of cake,” Emma joked, but Margo didn’t look amused.

“What?” I snapped. I was really, really tired.

“Maybe it’s because I haven’t been up to my ears in this investigation right along with you like I usually am, I don’t know. I don’t want to go all
fuddy
duddy
on you here, but I feel funny not
tellin
’ John about Carrie.”

“As well you should,” approved
Strutter
.

“Why wouldn’t you tell John? I’ve been completely candid with him about my findings—or more accurately, my lack of findings—so far. He knows I count on him for advice in these matters, since they seem to keep cropping up.”

I felt confused and showed it as I looked from one to the other of my friends.

“She cannot be this dense,” Margo muttered.

“Normally, she’s very bright,”
Strutter
agreed, but she has this blind spot about communications between husbands and wives.”

I felt as if they were ganging up on me and turned to Emma for support.

“She’s just having an off day. Give her a minute, and she’ll see it,” Emma came to my defense, sort of.

I gritted my teeth. “Somebody had better tell me right now why Margo can’t tell John about my conversation with Carrie. I’m not kidding.”

Margo looked at
Strutter
and made an after-you gesture. “Because he’d have to tell the Brewster PD …”
Strutter
began.

“ …
since cops always stick together on these things. It’s professional courtesy or something,” Emma added.

“Then they would almost have to haul Carrie in as a person of interest, don’t you see?” Margo finished up.

I did see, finally, but I still had trouble understanding Margo’s dilemma. “So don’t tell him, then. You never used to balk at holding back a little information about our investigations from time to time, as I recall.”

Margo had the grace to squirm. “That was before John and I were married.”

Strutter
piped up. “Oh, no, it wasn’t. During that whole ugly thing at Vista View last year, you both kept your
husbands
completely in the dark, even after those young employees spray-painted the Law Barn door, remember?”

She sounded distinctly sanctimonious. The dynamics of our quarrel changed as Margo and I directed glares at her. The definition of friends, after all, is two people mad at the same third person.

“So much for the collegial happy hour.”
Emma jumped to her feet and headed out. “Momma, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.
Strutter
, tell Charlie I said hey. Margo, why not just hold off for a day or two and give Mom a chance to put the whole thing together before involving the police? See you all tomorrow.”

She dropped her paper cup into the wastebasket and trotted briskly up the six stairs to the main floor. We sat listening as she crossed the lobby and galloped up the long flight to her office on her young legs. As quickly as it had erupted, our disagreement faded as we each considered the truth of the others’ comments. Almost shyly, we resumed conversation.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to get preachy,”
Strutter
was the first to apologize.

“Why not?
You do it so well,” Margo grinned. “Anyway, you were right. I have been known to conceal a thing or two from John, but I just don’t feel right
doin
’ that anymore. You can understand, can’t you, Sugar?” Her voice was pleading.

“Of course I can. I’m
filling
Armando in much more than I used to. He doesn’t get so
pissy
about things anymore, and he’s actually been very helpful this past week,” I told her. “So what are you going to say to John about all this?”

The same question was in
Strutter’s
eyes. “Emma had a pretty good suggestion. There’s no reason to betray Carrie’s confidence until you have a little more information,” she allowed.

That sounded a lot more helpful. “It’s not as if I have to discover who the actual murderer is. I simply need to identify some others who may have played a part in Mindy’s death to prevent Carrie’s becoming the sole suspect,
then
point the police in their direction. If I work fast and get lucky, that shouldn’t take too much longer.
Maybe a couple of days?

Margo struggled briefly with her conscience before she nodded. “But Friday
mornin
’ I’m
tellin
’ John every word.”

“You won’t have to,” I told her gratefully. “I’ll tell him myself.”

We beamed at each other, happy to be friends again.

“What’s your plan?”
Strutter
asked, crumpling up her paper cup. “I’ve got kids at home to cook for, you know.”

I thought fast. “I still have a couple of leads to follow up, and now that I know more than one person was definitely involved in what happened the night of the twenty-ninth, I can get my posse together and figure out who that might be.”

Margo looked a little hurt. “I thought we were your posse.”

I hastened to elaborate. “You and
Strutter
and Emma are absolutely my posse over the long haul, but in this case I’m talking about the reunion committee, you know, the
women
who put the event together, and Harold King and maybe Mitch and Agnes. They were all there. If we put our heads together, we should be able to recreate the entire evening, especially the part after Mindy arrived with Ariel and Joanie. I certainly wasn’t watching Mindy every minute, but maybe one of the others saw her tick somebody off.”

“Enough to poison her drink?
Sugar, plenty of people
have
ticked me off enough over the years to make that more than a
passin
’ fancy, but I don’t keep arsenic tucked into my
evenin
’ bag as a rule.”

“Mindy died of a morphine overdose,” I reminded her.
“Much tougher to administer.”

Strutter
looked thoughtful. “I don’t think you’re looking for a
poisoner
here. Remember what Carrie said about planning to humiliate Mindy, make her look foolish? There were a lot of people at that party who would have taken great satisfaction in seeing that happen, and maybe somebody else had the very same thing in mind. Mindy had already had a lot to drink by the time she arrived. It wouldn’t have taken much to push her over the edge and make her look like a sloppy drunk.”

“The right substance dropped into her punch cup might even have made her fall on her face in the middle of the floor,” Margo agreed. “It was just lousy
timin
’ that she made it into the
loo
before she passed out.” She and
Strutter
exchanged satisfied smiles. “Sugar, somebody slipped your Queen of Mean a
mickey
.”

“You get your witnesses together and find out
who
. We’ll hold the fort here for a couple of days,”
Strutter
directed. She looked at her watch and gasped. “And that, ladies, concludes our meeting.

Fifteen

First thing Wednesday morning I brought a mug of coffee upstairs to my office and settled into the computer chair. Gracie sat on my desk, enjoying the birds at the neighbors’ feeder, while I sent out two e-mails. The first, to Mitch and Agnes, asked for their help in constructing a timeline from 10:00 p.m. through midnight, placing special emphasis on Mindy’s whereabouts and who she talked to, if anyone. If they could remember seeing her drink anything, that would be helpful, too.

The second e-mail, to Harold King, asked him to research the whereabouts of Dave Engle, formerly of Brewster High. I figured if Harold didn’t have the Internet search expertise to do this, he would know someone who did.

Once Armando was safely in the shower and out of earshot, I placed a call to
Maryellyn
. “You’re going to think I’m obsessed with this Mindy situation, and you’re probably right,” I told her, “but could Jean and Joanne meet with us one more time? I have some good news and some bad news.”

Maryellyn
readily agreed. “I’m a little obsessed about this myself, and I’m sure Jean and Joanne would be glad to help us. What’s going on?”

“I’ve got a couple of leads to follow up, but I need to put together an accurate sequence of events between the hours of ten o’clock and midnight on the twenty-ninth, who was where and talking to whom and so forth. I thought four memories could do a better job than just one.”

“You’ve got it. Let’s say eleven o’clock at my place unless you hear differently from me.”

“I really appreciate it. Oh, and bring those photos we were looking at the other day, will you? If we lay them out pretty close to the order in which they were taken, they might help us visualize and get the timing of everyone’s
movements
right.”

Shortly after eleven the members of the reunion committee had once again joined me around
Maryellyn’s
kitchen table. The candid photos snapped at the party were dumped in a pile. Joanne and
Maryellyn
had each added a few photos taken earlier in the evening to the ones Jean had already shown us, taken during the last dance.

Slowly and with great care we looked at each one and identified as many people in them as we could.
Maryellyn
wrote the names on Post-its stuck on the bottom edges. After that we started lining them up in chronological order as best we could.

“Here’s one I took right after Mindy, Ariel and Joanie signed in,” said Joanne. “I’ve told my sister so many stories about those three
witches,
I couldn’t resist taking a picture of them to show her.” She tapped it with her forefinger. “See the dirty look Mindy’s giving me? She must have been afraid I wasn’t shooting her best angle.” She wrinkled her nose at her own poor taste. “Sorry, sniping at Mindy is just a bad habit. It’s not nearly as much fun as it was in high school. Looking at this photo now, I feel almost sorry for her, knowing she had only a couple more hours to live.”

“Our lives turn on a dime for sure,” Jean agreed.

“What time should I write on the Post-it?”
Maryellyn
asked. “I was sitting right there with you when you took it, but I was pretty tired by the time they showed up. Frankly, I was flabbergasted they would even want to.”

Joanne thought about it, turning the photo around in her fingers, then gasped. “Look at this! There’s a time and date stamp right on the side.” She waved it at us excitedly, and
Maryellyn
snatched it out of her hand.

“Would you look at that,” she marveled. “It’s tiny, but it’s there. I wonder if they’re all like
that?
We were using different digital cameras, but all the programs work about the same way,
don’t
they?”

We each grabbed a handful of prints and examined the edges. Sure enough, each print bore a small but readable time and date code. We started laying them out in order.

“So what’s the good news and bad news you mentioned on the phone?”
Maryellyn
asked, and Jean and Joanne looked up from their task, all ears.

Knowing I would have to answer this question, I’d
given
it some thought on the ride over. I wanted to ease their minds about the letter writer while allowing her to remain anonymous. It was going to be tricky, but I knew these women well enough now to believe they would be decent about it.

“I know who’s been writing the letters, and we don’t need to be concerned about her any longer,” I began carefully. “They were written by a woman who did a foolish and impulsive thing the night of the reunion. She found Mindy passed out in the women’s room, figured she was dead drunk and glued her eyelashes together with fingernail glue as a crazy prank. After the paramedics arrived and didn’t seem able to revive Mindy, the woman became terrified she would be suspected of doing something far worse, so she started littering Connecticut with those idiotic warning letters.”

Three pairs of eyes gazed at me expectantly.

“The thing is
,
she didn’t murder Mindy. When she finally realized what a dumb thing she’d done, and then compounded it with the letters, she came to me and made a full confession.”

“Which the police know about, of course,” said Joanne. It was more a question than a statement.

Ah, the tricky part. “Not yet. It’s my hope that I can identify one or more other solid leads before I give this information to the police, which is why I’ve asked for your help again.”

Joanne looked at Jean, who looked at
Maryellyn
, who by tacit agreement was elected spokesperson.

“Umm, how can you be certain this woman didn’t cause Mindy’s death, and if you’re wrong, couldn’t we be accused of aiding and abetting or something like that?”

“Obstructing justice would be the charge, I think, but you don’t have to worry about that either. Since you don’t know who the woman is, and you didn’t hear what she told me directly, it’s all hearsay as far as you’re concerned. You’re entirely in the clear here.”

Another round of silent communication ensued.

“If that’s the good news, I’m not sure I want to know what the bad news is, but perhaps you’d better tell us,” Jean said.

“It’s not all that bad,” I chuckled, trying to lighten the mood around the table, but nobody cracked a smile. “It’s just that over the past few days, it’s become clear to me that what happened to Mindy on the twenty-ninth wasn’t the result of a single individual’s actions. It was a kind of bad chain reaction. One unlikely thing led to another, most of them involving an old grudge and a chemical of some kind, until Mindy expired from the combination.”

Joanne goggled at me. “Do you mean to say there was more than one killer, and you don’t consider that bad news?”

Across the table from me
Maryellyn’s
eyes were filled with questions, many of them centering
around
my mental health. I hurried to repair the damage to my credibility.

“Not more than one intentional murderer, no. My best guess right now is a number of elements combined in Mindy’s system and resulted in her passing out. That made her irresistibly vulnerable to the murderer, who finished her off.”

The three digested this theory in silence.
Then, “Like what kinds of elements?”
Jean asked. I took this as a good sign. Curiosity had replaced concerns about my sanity.

“That’s a great question.” I rewarded her with my best smile. “The
tox
screens showed a very high alcohol level. We know Mindy was tipsy when she arrived, but she wasn’t falling down drunk. So at some point she had to ingest a lot more alcohol and maybe something else that reacted badly with the liquor already in her system, like an opiate.”

“You mean opium?” asked Joanne.

“Probably more like a sleeping pill or two,” supplied
Maryellyn
. “What about the insulin syringe? How does that factor into this?”

“The syringe found on the floor turned out to be unrelated. The woman who glued Mindy’s eyelashes together is a diabetic and dropped the used syringe by accident. That contributed to the EMTs looking in the wrong direction for the cause of Mindy’s unconsciousness, but it had nothing to do with her death.”

Jean put her head in her hands. “I’m confused. It wasn’t the liquor or the sleeping pills or insulin that killed her or any combination of the three. So what actually did do her in?”

“Morphine, way too much of it administered by a person still unknown,” I told her.

“Remind me again what we’re trying to do here?” Joanne asked.

Before I could answer,
Maryellyn
sighed and resumed sorting through the photos. “We’re trying to figure out who had the opportunity to slip Mindy
Marchelewski
a
mickey
on the evening of December twenty-ninth,” she summarized, efficient as always. “Is that about it, Kate?”

“Bingo,” I told her with genuine admiration, and we all got back to work.

“That was very lucky, was it not?” Armando and I were enjoying a glass of wine while our dinner—boneless, skinless chicken breasts marinated in a balsamic vinaigrette—simmered on the stove. Gracie was curled up between us, waiting patiently for the inevitable handout from her master’s hand.

“You bet it was. Without those time codes, we could have sat there for hours, trying to figure out the sequence, and even then we would have been guessing.
 
With the codes, we had the photos laid out in order in ten minutes flat.”

“And they revealed what to you?” He tugged gently on Gracie’s ear. She batted his hand away without opening her eyes and didn’t budge. A good heat source was worth a little annoyance.

“It was interesting to see the last part of the evening
laid
out in front of us like that, but mostly the pictures simply confirmed what I already knew. Mindy was with Ariel and Joanie at a table, and then toward the end she wasn’t. That would have been when she lurched to the women’s room and passed out. A little later Pat Connelly looked as if she was headed for the restroom but changed direction and went down the hall, just like she told me. Carrie seemed to be waiting for her at a table near the exit, but a couple of minutes later the table was unoccupied. That had to be when she followed Mindy into the restroom and did her thing with the glue.”

“As you say, you surmised these things already. Did you learn nothing new?”

“One thing jumped out at me from a photo taken earlier, maybe half an hour after Mindy, Ariel and Joanie came in together. They were sitting at their table and had punch cups in front of them, but Mindy had a Poland Springs water bottle, too. Now why would she be drinking water if she already had punch?”

“You will remember she had already had a lot to drink, and you believed the punch to have liquor added to it, did you not? Perhaps she was simply trying to slow down.”

“Hmm, maybe, or maybe it wasn’t really water in that bottle.”

He arched an eyebrow at me. “That would explain why she was so very drunk. Are you quite certain the bottle belonged to her?”

“Fairly sure.
It was between her and Ariel but close to Mindy’s right hand. Besides, Joanie and Ariel had teeny tiny evening bags. They were exactly alike, remember? Mindy was the only one with a purse big enough to hold a bottle.”

“So she may have been adding vodka to punch already spiked with it and gone too far.”

“
Which isn’t to say someone couldn’t have dropped a couple of
Ambien
tablets into her punch cup, as well.
”

“Why do I believe you have a theory about who may have done that?” he asked, smiling.

I returned the smile. “As a matter of fact, I do, and it explains a couple of odd things, such as why Ariel has gone missing after supposedly finding an anonymous letter in her locker at work. Carrie couldn’t possibly have delivered that one.”

“You are thinking that Miss Ariel added the sleeping pills to Mindy’s punch and later put a note in her own locker to direct suspicion elsewhere,” he said, totally stealing my thunder. “I am sorry,
Cara
, but I do remember what your friend Harold told us about the sad competition that can occur between young women.”

“Mean girls,” I told him sourly. “Yes, I remembered that, too, although not as quickly as you did.”

Prudently, he didn’t gloat. “Does this mean you have identified the killer?”

“Not at all.
I don’t believe Ariel killed Mindy any more than Carrie did. She was just one more contributing factor, and at this point, my ideas about what she may have done that night are entirely unproven. Somehow, I have to find Ariel and get the truth out of her.”