by Judith Ivie
“It was a wonderful party,” I told her sincerely, “right up until midnight, and no one could have foreseen what happened then. The work involved must have been staggering, and nobody could have done a better job. I guess my mother was right.”
Maryellyn blew carefully on a spoonful of soup. “How so?”
“She always used to say that no good deed goes unpunished. I guess you can relate to that, huh?”
This time her laughter was genuine, and I was glad to see her more relaxed. Over cups of hot tea we got down to the reason for our meeting. She removed a list from the manila envelope and pushed it across the table to me, glancing at the surrounding tables, now filled with hungry patrons. No one paid us the slightest attention, and why would they? Nobody in the place was from Brewster, and even if they were, they’d have no interest in the class of 1978 or what had happened at our reunion last Saturday.
I scanned the pages, six of them, cataloging the names, mailing addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of perhaps a hundred people I had mostly passed in the hall between classes all those years ago. I could put faces to a few more of the names than I had at the reunion, but most were strange to me. Married names, I realized.
“This is great, but I’m going to need you to put maiden names to most of the women on this list.”
Wordlessly she leaned over and pointed to one of the alien names, after which appeared in parentheses a name I recognized. Sandy Schwartz, who rang no bells of memory whatever, popped right to the front of my mind when she became Sandy Leibowitz, the cut-up who’d sat next to me in geometry class. I grinned at Maryellyn. “Leave it to you to fill in the blanks.”
“Believe me, I would have been just as lost as everyone else without that information. Besides, we needed the maiden names for the tags we passed out at the check-in table.” She paused. “What are you going to do with all of this, Kate? Surely you don’t intend to talk with everyone who attended.”
“No,” I said slowly, “just the ones who might remember what I need to know.”
“Which is?”
“Who had reason enough to want Mindy Marchelewski dead after thirty-five years.” I looked up at her. “I need you to help me whittle this list down. You were class secretary, you knew everybody. Who should be at the top of my list, Maryellyn?”
“Me, for one,” she joked. “Mindy spent most of our senior year ruining the one accomplishment of my high school career. I was never going to be prom queen, but by heaven I got elected class secretary. You can’t imagine how much that meant to me, knowing I was liked well enough to be elected to a class office.” A rosy glow infused her face at the happy recollection, but it quickly faded. “Then Mindy started making it a point to put me down every chance she got. I became a pathetic little drudge, the nerd who got suckered into doing a job no one else wanted. She just sucked all the joy right out of it for me. The worst part was, up until then I really did enjoy the work, you know?”
I did know, and I told her so, filling her in on my years as an administrative assistant before launching Mack Realty with my partners. “I absolutely understand, but obviously you got over Mindy’s harassment and have kept on doing what you like to do,” I pointed out, indicating the pages before us. “So who do you know from our class who maybe didn’t get over similar treatment from Mindy?”
My question had the effect of silencing Maryellyn, which wasn’t what I had in mind. She stirred her tea pensively, her eyes flicking to the envelope that had contained the print-out while she collected her thoughts.
“Okay, here’s the thing. I’m perfectly willing to give you my list if it will help you along with your inquiries, but I’m afraid I’m not willing to give you my specific opinion. No, I’m just afraid, period. You see, a couple of days ago I found this in my mailbox.”
She extracted a familiar-looking sheet of folded paper from the envelope and opened it so I could read the message. “Don’t tell what you saw.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “You got one, too.”
Maryellyn gasped. “You didn’t!”
“I did, among others,” I said drily. “It’s not an exclusive club. Joan Haines and Ariel MacAfee got them, too.” I tapped the message with one finger. “Makes me wonder who else did. Anyway, what was it you saw that you’re not supposed to tell?”
“That’s just it, I don’t know, but someone out there was worried enough about it to send me this. What did the other notes say?”
I told her and added, “But who knows how many of these things are floating around? How about the other members of your committee? Did they get messages?”
Maryellyn’s eyes were wide. “If they did, they didn’t tell me. Of course, I didn’t tell them about mine either. In fact, we haven’t talked since Saturday night.”
She took a big gulp of tea, and again her eyes strayed to the envelope. “I hope you can understand how unnerved I’ve been. I feel as if we’re being watched right now, how silly is that? You’re probably used to this sort of thing.”
I snorted. “More so than I ever expected to be, as things have turned out, but I certainly understand your feelings.”
“Frankly, I don’t want to start speculating—and let’s face it, that’s all I’d be doing—and give our correspondent any more reason to focus on me. To tell you the truth, I was a little scared about meeting you today.” Her eyes scanned the lunch hour crowd, which was beginning to dwindle. “But as long as I’m here, I might as well give you these.”
She took a deep breath and upended the envelope, spilling a couple of dozen photos onto the table. They seemed to be candid photos of the reunion crowd taken from the vantage point of the check-in table. I remembered that Maryellyn, Jean and Joanne had been greeting people and passing out nametags when Armando and I arrived.
“Jean took most of these. We wanted a couple of snapshots for the class newsletter, that sort of thing. Several were taken during and after the last dance … you know, when you found Mindy.”
I spread out the photos, trying to find clues in what I was seeing, but nothing jumped out at me.
“This one struck me as peculiar.” Maryellyn centered one print before me. It showed the side of a woman from the shoulder down. She wore a party dress, and a clunky-looking handbag hung from her shoulder. Her face was obscured by a passer-by, but she seemed to be headed for the women’s room, the door of which was clearly visible. “I remember this one because Jean snapped it accidentally after Joanne jostled her elbow. She was trying to get a shot of someone else, I forget who. I thought she’d deleted it, but when I downloaded it from the camera’s memory card, there it was. Odd, don’t you think?”
I looked more closely but didn’t understand what she was driving at. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s the bag on her shoulder. She’s wearing chiffon, but that shoulder bag looks like something you’d use to carry your laptop or something, not what you’d select for an evening out.”
I saw what she meant. “Well, maybe she’d just come from work.”
“On a Saturday night?”
“Mmmm. You’re right, it is interesting. Do you know who it is?”
She shook her head. “It seems as if I should. There’s something familiar about the dress and even that ghastly satchel she’s carrying, but I can’t quite put a name to this woman. Of course, by the end of that night, I’d seen so many old schoolmates and their spouses and so on, almost anyone would have looked familiar to me. Still …” She fingered the photo thoughtfully, then looked up at me.
“What? Do you remember who it is?”
“No, but I’ve changed my mind about getting involved. Now that we’ve talked, I know I’m not going to be able to walk away from this, and I know a couple of other people who would be willing to help, too.”
I smiled at her. “Jean and Joanne?”
She grinned back. “They know as much as I do about the Brewster High School dramas and vendettas, not to mention that Jean was the one who snapped this picture. Gi
ve me a minute to get her on the phone. She can round up Joanne, and we can meet them both at my house.” She snatched her cell phone out of her purse and tapped a speed dial key. Within seconds, she’d outlined the situation to Jean Wetherbee and coordinated a meeting of the three of us at her house in twenty minutes. Maryellyn in full efficiency mode was a sight to see.
Suddenly, I felt very much better. I had a posse. As we scraped the photos back into their envelope and headed toward the cash register to settle our bill, I noticed a woman at the counter, staring at us curiously. She was without make-up and dressed in denims and a black down vest over a turtleneck. I didn’t recognize her, and she dropped her eyes back to her newspaper when I narrowed mine at her. Probably one of those people I see at the supermarket all the time, I concluded and followed Maryellyn to the parking lot.
Ten
By one-thirty the four of us had convened in Maryellyn’s comfortable kitchen and were poring over the reunion photos, intent on finding the owner of the incongruous shoulder bag. It somehow didn’t surprise me that Jean and Joanne were totally on board and willing to help. Not for the first time I found myself realizing I’d underestimated these women years ago and wished I’d gotten to know them better.
I explained that the task at hand was to identify the mystery woman in the chiffon dress who seemed about to enter the ladies room at the end of the evening, and they focused on doing that while I related what I’d learned from Detective Hagearty and Joan that morning. They passed photos back and forth, murmuring in a shorthand they’d obviously developed during their work on the reunion committee.
“So that’s the situation so far. Detective Hagearty made it clear that he’d prefer I not muddy the waters, but after Joan and Ariel and I got warning messages, and now Maryellyn has received one too, I started to take things personally. Considering how little the police have discovered so far, I felt it was in my best interest to try and get to the bottom of things myself.”
At the conclusion of my recitation, Jean and Joanne stopped passing photos and gazed fixedly at me, then at each other.
“Warning message?” Jean asked. I explained the circumstances and wording of each note as they listened in silence.
Joanne swallowed hard. “I got one of those.”
“So did I,” admitted Jean. After exchanging one more look with Joanne, she addressed Maryellyn apologetically. “It just seemed like some silly prank. We didn’t want to worry you.”
“We had no idea anyone else had gotten one,” Joanne explained.
I cut to the chase. “Okay, we forgive you. What did your notes say?”
“Let it alone,” said Joanne.
“Keep them to yourself,” said Jean.
“Block letters, computer printed?”
They both nodded.
“When did you get them? How were they delivered?”
“By mail on Tuesday,” Joanne said.
“By mail on Wednesday,” Jean said, “but that’s probably because I don’t check my mailbox every day.”
“How did the writer get all of your addresses?” I wondered out loud.
Maryellyn spoke up. “I guess that’s on me. On Monday I sent out the contact information for everyone who’d offered theirs to keep in touch with classmates. It went by e-mail. I suppose the good news about that is the note writer has to be someone who put contact information, including an e-mail address, on the list, so that should help us narrow things down. Frankly, these messages are more annoying than scary. They’re cryptic to the point of being coy. I mean, what is ‘it’? What does ‘them’ mean? It’s as if the writer is playing with us.”
I saw what she meant. “The tone is almost gloating, as in, ‘Look what I did right under all your noses, and you don’t have a shot in hell of identifying me because I’m too smart for you,’” I groused.
“Hmmm, yes,” Jean agreed, “except if there aren’t any clues, then why is the writer so worried someone’s going to find something out? And at first, the warnings were sort of general. See, all the rest of the messages refer to ‘it,’ like the whole incident. Mine mentions ‘them,’ which is more specific.”
The rest of us looked at each other blankly. “How do you figure that?” asked Maryellyn.
“What if the ‘them’ in my warning note refers to these pictures? I was sitting right there in plain sight at the end of the evening, snapping away as everyone filed by. Maybe this person realizes these photos could implicate him or her in some way.”
I looked at the array of prints doubtfully. “Well, it’s as good a theory as any, but I think we can focus on just women now. Remember, whatever happened to Mindy took place in the women’s room. I think one of you would have noticed a man going in or out.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. The punch was pretty heavily spiked,” Joanne giggled.
That reminded me of something else. “Joan says Mindy wasn’t diabetic in high school, but she may have developed the disease much later. If she did, and we surely know the punch was laced with vodka, doesn’t it seem odd to you that she was drinking it? There’s a lot of sugar in alcohol, not to mention the punch itself. Did any of you see her actually swallowing it?”
My three companions were quiet for a minute, reviewing Saturday evening in their minds. I did the same.
“I didn’t,” I offered at length, “but then, I really didn’t pay much attention to those women beyond their arrival, although come to think of it, Mindy blew right past me and went straight to the punch table. Joanie and Ariel stopped to talk for a minute and then joined her, but I didn’t see any of them drinking the stuff.”
“Ariel was pretty well lubricated when she walked in,” Maryellyn remembered.
Joanne rolled her eyes. “If Joanie hadn’t grabbed hold of her, she would have fallen right off her stilettos.”
“I would have paid to see that,” Jean wisecracked, prompting chuckles all around. “But to answer your question, Kate, I guess none of us actually saw Mindy take a drink. What makes you think she was tipsy?”
“The initial tox screen showed a high blood alcohol level. She might have overdone the cocktails at dinner, same as Ariel, but the tox screen was performed hours later. So how did so much alcohol get into her system? It’s just another odd thing.”
Maryellyn had returned to perusing the photos and now shoved one over to me. “Look at this woman, the one with the short hair, sitting by herself at a table near the entrance as if she’s waiting for someone. Look familiar, Kate?”
Something about the woman rang a dim bell, but it eluded me. The only remarkable thing about her was her unremarkableness. She wore a plain dark dress, and her hands, clasped on the table in front of her, were unadorned except for long, beautifully manicured nails. Her brown hair was short and severely cut, making her almost mannish in appearance.
“Oh!” I blurted as I remembered where I’d seen her before. “She was at the reunion with Pat Connelly, wasn’t she? I don’t see Pat in this picture, but I’m pretty sure this is the woman who was with her. I remember wondering if she was one of Pat’s nursing colleagues, since I didn’t recognize her from high school.”
“There’s one thing we don’t have to wonder about anymore, the identity of the woman in the chiffon dress and weird shoulder bag.” She placed that print next to the other one. “It just came to me. The woman heading for the loo is Patricia Connelly, and I think you’re right, the one sitting alone at the table is her companion. That’s who she’s waiting for.”
“Do you remember my telling you about Patricia Connelly?” Armando and I were side by side in the recliner, watching Gracie groom her whiskers in front of the fireplace. She was avoiding me because she had divined that I wanted to clip her claws. They were starting to tick on the floor tile when she walked down the hall, and I feared for our upholstery when she tore around the house, blowing off steam after breakfast in a maneuver known to cat owners everywhere as Crazy Cat.
“She was the one the Marchelewski woman calle
d fat, was she not?” He took a sip of the excellent shiraz we were enjoying.
“’Fatty Patty,’ that’s what Mindy used to call her every chance she got. The poor girl was maybe twenty pounds overweight, and Mindy tormented her right into a psychologist’s office. She developed a horrendous stammer. Mindy was really the most awful person, but of all the kids Mindy bullied in high school, Pat would have to be among the top three sufferers.”
I sipped at my own wine. Gracie looked wistfully at the cozy space between us on the recliner, sighed and curled up on the rug where she was.
“This lady was photographed going into the women’s room late in the evening?”
“That’s what it looks like,” I confirmed, “but if Mindy was lying unconscious on the floor in there, Pat would have helped her. She hated Mindy’s guts, but she was always a compassionate person. She’s a nurse now at John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington.”
Armando looked thoughtful, processing everything I’d spent forty minutes telling him about my day. “That may be, Cara, but her profession also would allow her access to insulin and morphine and whatever else the detective in Brewster mentioned to you.”
“Glue,” I said glumly, “probably a fast-acting epoxy, but I don’t think you need any special qualifications to get hold of that.”
“What about the woman who accompanied Patricia to the reunion. What is your conclusion about her?”
“No conclusion yet because nobody seems to know anything about her. I’ve arranged to meet Pat tomorrow, so I hope to find out more then. She’s working the swing shift tonight at the hospital, but she agreed to meet me for coffee around eight tomorrow morning. Ugh,” I added.