Auld Lang Syne (9 page)

We were rewarded with a watery smile. It wasn’t one of
Strutter’s
dimpled best, but things were definitely improving.

“The worst part for J.D. and me
is knowing
this situation was totally preventable, and now it’s too late for us to help.”

“Is it all over
Facebook
?” I wanted to know.

“Not so far as I can tell, at least not yet, but I’m sure the little monsters are crippling their thumbs texting each other.”

“Have Charlie and Duane been in touch since New Year’s Eve?” Margo asked.

“I just don’t know. Charlie’s fingers haven’t stopped tapping on that damned phone in two days, but I don’t know if one of the people he’s messaging is Duane. I hope so. They really need to stick together on this.”

“That’s what Emma told Charlie when she saw him yesterday at the diner.” I repeated the gist of our conversation that morning.
Strutter
looked somewhat comforted.

“Good. At least he’s talking to someone, and your Emma is a smart young woman. She has good instincts. Let’s hope Charlie takes her advice.”

With that,
Strutter
got to her feet and went to survey the wreckage of her face in the wall-mounted mirror by the door. “Back in a flash,” she said and disappeared upstairs to our posh powder room to accomplish the necessary repairs.

When she returned she made a gallant attempt to change the subject, however unfortunate. “How are things on the reunion homicide front?” she asked.
“Any new developments?”

It was startling to hear it stated quite that baldly, but I kept my voice even. “If there are, they don’t involve me, thank goodness, and nobody official has labeled Mindy’s death a homicide,” I reminded her. “All we know for sure is she died in the wee hours of Sunday morning, and an empty syringe was lying next to her on the floor when she was found.”

“When who found her?”
Strutter
pressed.

“You know who, Joan Haines and Ariel MacAfee, Mindy’s best pals from Brewster High. They went looking for Mindy when she didn’t return from the
loo
and found her unconscious on the floor.”

“They came running out of the ladies room, yelling, ‘Quick, Mindy’s unconscious in there, and there’s an empty hypodermic needle next to her, she must have OD-d’ or something like that?”

I thought back. “Well, no. They were too busy waving their arms at me and fainting to make much sense. Why?”

“Who came out first, Joan or Ariel?”
Strutter
persisted, ignoring my question.

“Umm, let me think. Joanie almost knocked me over with the door, and Ariel was a few seconds behind her.”

“Neither one specifically mentioned the empty syringe?”

“Now that I think about it, no.”
I looked at her closely. “What are you getting at?”

“So you were the one who found it and told the paramedics, right?”

I was beginning to lose patience.
“Maybe.
I think we all did. So?”

Margo and I exchanged puzzled looks as
Strutter
started pacing back and forth across the office.

“I’ve been too preoccupied with Charlie and Duane to give your account of Saturday night’s drama, and then Joanie Haines’ visit two nights later, much thought, at least consciously. But the mind is a funny thing. I lay there last night, tossing and turning, my head about to bust wide open, so many things were churning around in there, and right in the middle of all that, the oddest feeling came over me,” she said.

I shivered in apprehension and hugged myself.
Strutter’s
odd feelings were not to be dismissed lightly. Even Margo looked worried, but we knew better than to interrupt
Strutter’s
train of thought. She stopped pacing and looked me straight in the eye.

“This isn’t over, Kate, not by a long shot. You’re being messed with. Don’t ask me how I know it, but I do. I haven’t got a clue
who
has it in for you, but someone does. Watch your back.”

I considered sharing
Strutter’s
strange pronouncement with Armando that evening but thought better of it when I saw how tired he looked. All hell had broken loose with a South American client at
TeleCom
, Inc., where Armando served officially as the comptroller. Unofficially, he also served as interpreter for Spanish conversations and written communications, as well as an off-site troubleshooter in various distant and inconvenient locations. Since going public,
TeleCom’s
clientele had become international, and some of its customers could be volatile and demanding.

Armando and I had met at
TeleCom
nearly ten years ago, when I was the fledgling company’s public relations manager, but my memories of coffee room camaraderie and lunches around an outdoor picnic table bore no relation to the current reality. Shortly after helping with the company’s initial public offering, I had left
TeleCom
to become what I daydreamed would be the esteemed aide de camp to a Hartford estate law guru, only to learn that esteem was not a concept routinely applied to support staff at a large law firm—at least not the one at which I was employed. The silver lining to that experience had been getting to know Margo and
Strutter
, fellow sufferers in the legal assistant biz, and going on to launch Mack Realty.

Armando, however, had stayed on at
TeleCom
and become a trusted member of the management team. His growing responsibilities took their toll, and like the rest of us, he wasn’t getting any younger. So when he fell asleep in our double recliner after dinner, as he had this evening, I was inclined to let him snooze.

I eased out of the seat next to him. I knew that as long as I didn’t attempt to remove the television remote control from his hand, he would sleep on undisturbed. I was restless and needed to sort out the thoughts circling malevolently in my head along with images of Charlie, Duane, Joanie and Ariel.

I tiptoed into our front hall, where I donned my hooded parka and gloves and shoved my feet into quilted UGGs. Dropping my house key into my pocket, I let myself out the front door and pulled it shut behind me. A lap or two around The Birches would do me good. Even if it didn’t entirely clear my head, a brisk walk might burn off a few calories, I reasoned.

As annoying as I sometimes found living in a condominium community, with its endless restrictions and regulations, I could no longer imagine living any other way. Our freestanding oversized Cape Cod-style house, facing the communal green and shielded along the back by a thick stretch of protected wetlands, offered the space and privacy we relished, and our reasonable monthly association fee took care of all the exterior drudgery, from mowing to raking to shoveling, in which we had no interest. Then, too, the covenants spared us from potentially inconsiderate neighbors such as the ones I had encountered from time to time in previous neighborhoods. Here there were no dogs chained outside to bark all night, no go-cart tracks in nearby back yards for pre-teen drivers, crying babies, all night parties and beer cans on the front lawn. In short, it was good to have some protection from my fellow human beings, I reflected as I strode along the well-shoveled sidewalks, admiring the last of the holiday decorations on front doors and windows.
Which brought me back to recent events.

I asked myself what had actually happened to get me so worked up—okay, to get me and
Strutter
so worked up. I had attended my thirty-fifth high school reunion. It was a hard number to get my head around, but there it was, and I’d sucked it up and dealt with it. To my amazement it had turned out to be far more enjoyable than I had anticipated, right up until the unfortunate business with Mindy. I reviewed the evening in my mind. It’s true that I’d put on a few pounds, but so what? Eight pounds hardly constituted an existential crisis, despite Ariel’s sniping. Hell, I’d put on more than thirty pounds with each pregnancy. They’d come off, and this excess baggage would come off, too.

I quickened my pace, enjoying the crunch of snow beneath my boots and inhaling great draughts of crisp air. Meeting up again with Mitch and Agnes had been another delight, stress free and totally enjoyable despite my initial misgivings. Beyond that, the music and dancing had been great fun, and I had actually savored catching up with Pam, Gail, Joanne,
Maryellyn
, Patty, Jean and the others. It was nice to discover that they, too, had put the rigors of good old Brewster High behind them and gone on to become productive human beings. Although we hadn’t had a chance to visit, it was evident that even Harold King had recovered sufficiently from his encounter with Mindy and the Mean Queens to face down his old nemesis.

What had happened later with Mindy had been upsetting, but it had nothing to do with me. At least it wouldn’t if Joanie Haines hadn’t decided to show up here two nights ago and lay some convoluted story about a mystery message and matching evening bags on Armando and me. Again, it had nothing to do with me. It had merely been my misfortune to decide to visit the ladies room at precisely the wrong time, so I had been marginally involved in the incident. Since I’d heard nothing further from Joanie, I assumed all was well with her and Ariel, and the crisis, real or imagined, had passed.

So what was really bugging me? I paused on the back side of the complex to catch my breath. It was probably the business with
Strutter
and her ominous warning, I mused. It wasn’t like her to make such pronouncements lightly, and when she did, it behooved us to pay attention. Still, she’d been extremely stressed herself for the past forty-eight hours over the situation with Charlie and Duane. We had all been fretting helplessly. For the tenth time in as many hours, I wondered how the day had gone for them.

Should I give
Strutter
a call when I got back to the house?
Probably not.
I would see her in the morning, and that would be soon enough to be nosy. I decided to skip a second lap around the complex and turned back on one of the intersecting paths that connected the main roads at the front and rear of The Birches. A few hundred yards from home I was annoyed to spot a bundled-up figure slipping something into our mailbox, which stood alongside a neighbor’s box at the foot of the driveway. It never failed to astound me how often the No Solicitation sign posted by The Birches’ entrance was ignored. Hardly a week passed without finding sales circulars, donation requests or political campaign literature illegally crammed into our mailboxes. Then there were the doorbell ringers who showed up regularly to try to sell me magazines or ask if I’d heard the good news about Jesus. More than one such uninvited visitor had found himself talking to the outside of a firmly shut door. I wondered what the message was this time.

My curiosity was further piqued when the delivery person scurried back toward the entrance to the complex without stopping to make similar deposits in other neighbors’ boxes. I squinted after him or her, trying to see if it might be someone I knew, but identification was impossible. With only front porch lights and the ground-level lighting on the green for illumination, one person in a puffy coat and scarf looks pretty much like another.

Made cautious by the events of the past few days, I approached the mailbox slowly and pulled open the metal door. Lying atop the junk mail and bills that we allowed to accumulate for a few days at a time was a small, folded sheet of white paper. The quickening of my pulse had nothing to do with my recent exercise. I pulled off my gloves and unfolded the sheet of paper, taking care to handle it only by the corners for some reason. “Don’t get involved,” read the message in block letters. They were just like the ones on Joanie Haines’ terse missive, except these were computer generated. I wasn’t even surprised. It was as if I’d been expecting it on some level.

I’d be delighted not to get involved, I fumed silently, trying in vain to catch another glimpse of my correspondent, now long gone, but you keep involving me, whoever you are. Sighing, I collected the rest of the mail and trudged up our front steps. Damn
Strutter
and her premonitions anyway.

By the time I’d cleaned up the kitchen and herded Armando and Gracie to his bedroom, I was more than ready for sleep myself. It was too late to call Joanie on a work
night,
I rationalized, and opted instead for a relaxing soak in a hot bubble bath. Half an hour later my eyelids were drooping over a crossword puzzle. I abandoned it to burrow more deeply beneath my down comforter and slipped into blessedly dreamless sleep.

Eight

I arrived at Mack Realty earlier than usual the next morning and dialed the number Joanie had given me Monday night. My plan was to catch her before she left for work, but she didn’t answer, and I had to leave a message. “Call me when you can,” was all I said, not wanting to unnerve her more than she already was, and recited my home and cell phone numbers to her answering machine.

In due course my partners arrived. Margo and I were pleased to note that
Strutter
seemed composed, even well rested, but we bided our time until we were gathered in the coffee room, waiting impatiently for our old drip machine to deliver the brew, to pounce on her.

“How did it go?” I inquired as casually as I could manage, keeping my hands busy with spoons and paper napkins.

“How did what go?” she responded innocently, but a smile played around the corners of her mouth.

Margo cuffed her lightly on one shoulder. “You know perfectly well what,” she accused, “so stop
playin
’ with us. What’s up with Charlie and Duane?”

“Oh, that,”
Strutter
scoffed, as if she had not been a complete train wreck just twenty-four hours ago.

“She’s
doin
’ it again,” Margo groused. “Shall I dump my coffee on her, or do you want to do it this time?”

“Okay, okay, I give,”
Strutter
chuckled. “Things are
fine,
at least I think they are. I don’t get much information from Charlie, but when I got home from work yesterday, I found him and Duane raiding the refrigerator just like they always did, even though they know perfectly well they’re not supposed to be eating that close to dinner time. I almost dropped my teeth right there on the floor, but they barely bothered to say hello before they grabbed two sandwiches big enough to choke horses and ran upstairs with them. Eating upstairs is something else they’re not supposed to do, but I was so happy to see them laughing and roughhousing in my kitchen again, I didn’t even make a fuss about the mess.”

“Wow,” was my insightful comment. “Then what happened?”

“Then I got busy making dinner for the rest of us and giving Olivia her bath and all that stuff. Olivia spilled her milk again—boy, do I miss
sippy
cups—and by the time I got that cleaned up, I was so tired I fell asleep before Olivia did, right in the middle of reading her
Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
That’s where J.D. found me an hour later and sent me off to bed.”

“Huh,” I said. “That was it? What did Charlie have to say this morning?”

“I didn’t see him this morning. He was gone at the crack of dawn, left a note on the refrigerator about having to get to school early today for some project.” She shrugged. “At least J.D. and I didn’t have to fight with him to make him go today.”

Margo looked thoughtful. “Well, I may not be a mom, but I surely was a teenager, and I’m just as certain as I can be that those two boys are
plottin
’ something. Don’t you think so?” She looked to me for confirmation.

“Oh, you can count on it,” I assured her, once again recalling similar incidents from my own kids’ school years, but
Strutter
just shook her head.

“Maybe they are, and maybe they aren’t, but I’m not going to worry about it. God knows, we’ll find out soon enough. I’ve never been lucky enough to be one of those parents whose children keep them in the dark. Sooner or later, Charlie tells me everything, even when I’d rather not know. I’ll just have to be patient and trust my boy.”

“
Mmmm
,” Margo said, unconvinced. “I guess he’s too big to spank. If he’s done
somethin
’ awful, what will you do to punish him?”

“Don’t you worry your
head.
He might be too big for me now, but J.D. can still take him. If all else fails, we’ll take away his car keys,”
Strutter
grinned. “Well, ladies, I’m off to do my duty at Vista View. What are your plans for this lovely day?”

Vista View was an assisted living community we’d
repped
for years. It wasn’t going to make us rich, but our commission from the occasional sale or rental certainly helped our cash flow.

Margo looked out the window at the sleety drizzle falling from the sky and raised her eyebrows at me. “She must really be in a good mood if she’s
smilin
’ about this weather and six hours
sittin
’ at the Vista View sales desk,
tryin
’ to look pleasant when she’s actually bored silly.”

Strutter
smiled, unfazed, and picked up her briefcase. “There’s always someone around to chat with, but if not, I’ve got my secret weapon right in here.” She patted the leather satchel.

“A racy novel on your Kindle?”
I teased.

“I hadn’t thought of that, but maybe next time. No, this is even better. J.D. got me one of those little notebook computers for Christmas. They’re made especially to go on line when you’re on the road and traveling light. I can sit there at the sales desk, all prim and proper, and nobody will have a clue that what I’m really doing is playing Literati and
Freecell
on line.” She blew us a kiss and whirled up the stairs.

“Try not to work too hard,” I hollered after her. “What about you?” I asked Margo, who appeared to be lost in thought on the sofa.
“Earth to Margo.”

She refocused with a start. “Sorry, Sugar. I’ll be
tryin
’ to get my files sorted out, and I have a
showin
’ late this afternoon. An out-of-town couple wants to take a peek at Dennis and Suzanne Flaherty’s place, but I’m not optimistic. They’re too hip and L.A. for that little house.”

“Why bother, then?”

“I could hardly refuse to show it to them. Besides, as long as people keep
askin
’ for a tour, it keeps the kids’ hopes up.”

“The kids?”
I chided her. “Suzanne and Dennis are nearly thirty years of age and are expecting a baby of their
own,
although I’m not sure Dennis knows it yet. For someone who claims to have no maternal instincts, you’re making a lot of motherly noises over there.”

“I can’t help it. They’re just so darn cute, and they’re in such a lot of trouble. I wish I could do more for them. Actually, I do have an idea, but I need to talk it over with John when he gets home on Saturday.”

“Somehow I don’t think talking is going to be at the top of your to-do list,” I leered as the phone began to ring.

In response she did a
Groucho
Marx eyebrow waggle and flicked ash off an imaginary cigar.

The rest of the day passed without incident. I spent most of it organizing paperwork for the tax accountant and packing up file boxes full of last year’s transactions to be moved to our storage locker. It wasn’t until mid-afternoon, when I took a cup of cranberry tea up to the lobby for a change of scene, that it occurred to me I hadn’t mentioned last night’s mystery message to either of my partners. No doubt Joanie would call me this evening, and I wondered how to word the question I most wanted to ask her: Where were you and Ariel last night around nine-thirty?

After eating my Lean Cuisine entrée that evening as slowly as possible, I wandered around the house at loose ends. Armando was working late yet again, and Emma’s cell phone went right to voice mail. I was still waiting for Joanie to return my call, but I remembered salons often stayed open late on Thursday evenings to accommodate their customers who had day jobs, so I decided to wait until after nine-thirty to phone her again.

I fixed myself a placating cup of herb tea and carried it into the living room to scour the bookshelves. In the very bottom row I spotted what I was after, the Brewster High School yearbook for the class of ’78.

Settling into a corner of the sofa with Gracie curled up next to me, I flipped the pages idly,
not
sure what I was looking for. In spite of myself, I smiled at all those hopeful young faces under terrible haircuts and the cheerful blurbs beneath the photos that encapsulated their high school years. I found my portrait and winced at the bangs swooping low on my forehead.
“Katie … lovely to look at … an accomplished actress and dancer … special interests in Massachusetts, Hartford and Sweden.
All-Connecticut Chorus, 4; Choir 2, 3, 4; Drama Club, 3
,4
.”

I smiled at the euphemisms and innuendoes. My accomplishments as an actress comprised a couple of bit parts in drama club productions, and my dancing expertise was limited to school functions. Those so-called special interests consisted of a two-week summer romance with a Boston University sophomore when Mitch and I had been quarreling, two dates with a Trinity College frat boy who annoyed me half to death, and one stultifying evening at the Swedish American Club with Brewster’s exchange student for that year.

Curiously, I flipped a few more pages to Mindy
Marchelewski’s
photo. What had the yearbook staffers had to say about her? There she was, blonde hair waving softly past her shoulders while framing steely green eyes and a self-satisfied smirk. “Mindy … sophisticated beyond her years … adores motorcycles, the scent of men’s cologne, cool jazz and hot guys … always seen with Ari and Joanie.
Drama Club 3, 4; Art Club 2.”

The description certainly matched my recollection, but the club memberships surprised me. I couldn’t imagine Mindy voluntarily participating in a group activity. I also couldn’t imagine the members of any Brewster High School club tolerating, much less inviting,
her
participation.

I was about to look up Mitch’s photo when I realized it was after nine-thirty, and Joanie still had not called. I put down the yearbook and dialed her number, but the call went to voicemail again. Now I was annoyed. After fuming for a while I decided personal appearances were called for at the Brewster Police Department and Shear Heaven the next day. Then I called Margo to let her know my plans and took myself to bed.

By Friday morning I’d grown seriously impatient with being kept in the dark and promised myself I would find out what was going on if it took all weekend to do it. Having cleared the decks with my partners for the day and dropped a distracted kiss on Armando’s slumbering cheek, I drove straight to the Brewster Police Department and asked to see someone assigned to the
Marchelewski
investigation.

The detective who joined me in the cramped conference room reminded me a little of my Uncle Bob, who had owned and operated a small service station next to the Central Connecticut State University administration building in New Britain until the construction of Interstate 84 diverted about ninety percent of the local traffic elsewhere. For more than thirty years Uncle Bob had been a happy man, pumping gas and fixing every American-made car that existed in his tiny, one-bay garage. He also employed dozens of college boys over the years, whose part-time wages helped pay their tuition.

The highway construction cut Bob’s business significantly, but he hung on until cars became computers on wheels and required complicated electronics to diagnose their equally complex maladies. After that Bob closed up shop in perplexity and retired to his big chair in front of the TV. Six months later he was dead of a massive coronary, quite literally a broken heart.

The stocky, gray-haired man sitting across from me in the dingy conference room of the Brewster Police Department wore the same bemused expression I remembered from the last time I’d seen Uncle Bob. “I don’t understand what happened,” Bob had said to my mother, his sister. “Everything was going along fine, and then
pfffft
.”

“I’m Detective
Hagearty
. Officer McCarthy said you have some information for us about the incident involving one of your former classmates at Brewster High School last weekend.” His tone indicated his expectations were low.

“I have some information, yes, but I also have a few questions,” I replied.

He remained unsurprised. “How can I help you?”

“First of all, I want to know if Mindy
Marchelewski’s
death has been officially ruled a suicide or a homicide. Nobody seems able, or at least willing, to tell me.”

Detective
Hagearty
smiled kindly at my indignation. “It’s not that we’re unwilling to share the information, Ms. Lawrence. It’s simply not available yet, even to us.” He gestured at our surroundings. “You may have noticed that we’re a very small department here. Our forensic resources are extremely limited. Sudden deaths of a suspicious nature are handled by the County Coroner’s office, which processes similar inquiries for a number of other small departments on a priority basis. As you might expect, they get overloaded from time to time, especially at this time of year.”