by Judith Ivie
Armando chuckled. “Who else did the committee ladies decide should be questioned?”
“Well, Harold King, of course, but that will have to be by phone. I thought you might be willing to let me use TeleCom’s Skype account at the office. I’d like to watch his face while I question him.” I tickled his knee, and Gracie opened her eyes, alert to the possibility for play.
“Did you now? I suppose you also thought this might be accomplished tomorrow?”
I gave him my best smile. “Tomorrow afternoon would be lovely, since I’m going to be up so early in the morning anyway.”
His eyes were speculative over his wine glass. “Am I allowed to be present during this interview, or am I merely the chauffeur and technician?”
“Of course you can sit in. I have no idea in the world how to Skype,” I teased.
“Thank you. Since you are, as you say, going to be up so early tomorrow morning, perhaps you should get to bed as soon as possible tonight.”
“All alone?” I pretended to pout.
“That was not my intention.”
I tickled his knee again. “Give me ten minutes to e-mail Harold and set up a time for tomorrow, and I’ll meet you at my place.” I winked at him and made a dash for the stairs and my office.
By the time I drove to Farmington the next morning, found a spot in the crowded visitors’ lot at John Dempsey Hospital and figured out where the cafeteria was, I was more than ready for some caffeine. I was grateful to see Pat Connelly, wearing blue scrubs and sipping a paper cup of coffee at a table near the door. A second cup with the lid still on waited next to her, I hoped for me.
“You look tired,” I said as I wrestled my coat off and dropped into a chair across from her. “Sorry. I hate when people say that to me.”
Pat’s grin was sardonic as the pushed the second coffee in my direction along with sugar packets and some creamer. “Yeah, I know. What you really mean is I look lousy, but after an eight-hour shift in the cardiac ICU, I’m entitled. So how the heck are you, Kate? We hardly exchanged two sentences at the reunion.”
I filled her in as succinctly as I could on the events of more than three decades, keeping my biography to marriages, kids and my present career as a realtor. She fingered the card I handed her as I grabbed a couple of gulps of coffee.
“Good for you,” was her comment, “although I doubt you’re here to sell me a house. My guess is you want to talk about Mindy Marchelewski, am I right?”
Despite her weariness Pat’s eyes twinkled over the rim of her paper cup. “Don’t look so surprised. Your reputation as an amateur investigator was all over the gym last Saturday, and when my least favorite BHS alumna met her maker under suspicious circumstances, I figured it wouldn’t be long before you paid me a visit. The cops questioned me briefly, but I believe they were inclined to cross me off their suspect list when they confirmed I hadn’t laid eyes on Mindy—or been in the same state with her, for that matter—since 1978.”
I nodded. “Yes, since Mindy’s death hasn’t even been officially labeled a homicide, your lack of proximity would certainly seem to keep you out of the picture.” I regretted my unfortunate choice of words, since a picture was precisely what had prompted this meeting. What was my problem with tacky plays on words? I sipped more coffee hastily.
For a moment Pat’s eyes hardened, but she recovered herself quickly. “Still, you aren’t entirely convinced, are you? There’s nothing like watching someone being systematically tortured over a period of years to give you a different frame of reference, eh?”
I felt my neck redden. “It was a hard thing to witness. You probably won’t believe it, but one of my greatest regrets in high school was not standing up to Mindy, not doing a thing to help out the people she bullied,” I told her. “It was shameful, but just like every other adolescent, my major goal back then was to fit into the crowd and not give Mindy and her pals any reason to pick on me.”
Pat cocked her head. “Yet she did pick on you in one of the cruelest ways possible. She deliberately hit on Mitch and ruined your relationship with him. I’m a little surprised you didn’t kill her yourself. You didn’t, did you?” Her laugh was merry.
Just like that the tables were turned, and I found myself on the defensive. “That was ancient history, as you well know, like yours with Mindy. I think we can agree that nobody sane holds a grudge for thirty-five years.”
“Ah, but that’s the central question, isn’t it, whether we’re dealing with someone sane. Now why don’t you tell me what you really want to know?”
My hands were trembling as I put down my coffee and told myself to pull it together. How do you ask someone if she did in the woman who had been responsible for sending her into therapy as a teenager?
“You used the word proximity. That’s actually why I’m here, Pat. I’m talking to the people I know had good reason to hate Mindy and who were seen near her around the time of the incident in the women’s room. I have a Skype appointment with Harold King this afternoon to get his thoughts. In the meantime, you happen to meet both criteria. I have personal knowledge of how Mindy humiliated you years ago, and a photograph taken at the reunion places you near the door of the women’s room at the end of the evening. So what I want to know is, did you see Mindy in there? Did something trigger a confrontation between the two of you?”
Pat leaned back in her chair and blew out a breath. “I surely wanted to kill her back in the day, and I can’t honestly say I regret her death now, but I didn’t do her in. She messed up my head pretty good, but driving me into a shrink’s office turned out to be the best thing she could have done for me. My therapist not only cured my stammer, she helped me figure out why I had the hots for Amy Brenner but not her brother Jason,” she grinned. Amy and Jason were twin siblings who had graduated from Brewster High a year ahead of us. “But the answers to your questions are ‘no’ and ‘no.’ I planned to make a quick stop in that bathroom, but there was such a crush of people in front of the door, I went down the hall to the main bathroom outside the cafeteria. About a dozen other women saw me in there. Would you like their names?”
I felt inexplicably buoyant, aware of how much I hadn’t wanted Pat to be involved. My relief was exquisite, and I gave her my first genuine smile of the morning.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that, Pat.” I took a steadying slug of coffee. “It was just your history with Mindy, together with your medical knowledge and the big shoulder bag you were carrying, that sent me down the wrong road here.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “Big bag? Oh, that. I carry it everywhere, since Carrie always makes me be the pack mule. I never was much into fashion.”
“Is Carrie the woman you were with at the reunion? I didn’t recognize her. Is she a colleague of yours?”
Pat laughed out loud. “You might say that, since she does work here in the admissions office, but she’s much more than a colleague, Kate. Carrie is my spouse. We’ve been together since nursing school. I thought sure you’d know that, what with all the tittle-tattle circulating at the reunion.”
“No one said a word about it to me, and I think that’s a very good thing. At least we’ve made some progress in the sexual orientation arena,” I responded, but thinking of Duane’s and Charlie’s recent contretemps, I wondered if that were really true.
Pat yawned and stretched. “So is this meeting over now? Nothing personal, but my feet are killing me, and Carrie will be waiting breakfast for me. She keeps me on a pretty short leash, and she might object to my having coffee with an attractive woman.” She grinned and reached behind her to unhook the notorious leather shoulder bag from the back of her chair.
“I’m sorry to have to ask, but can you give me a couple more minutes? I need some information about insulin and morphine and how somebody might go about getting hold of both.”
Eleven
By the time I had shared what I’d learned from Pat with Armando over a soup and sandwich lunch, I was worn out but determined to
keep my Skype appointment with Harold King that afternoon. As a gesture to the regular weekend chores that weren’t getting done, I tossed a load of laundry into the washing machine while Armando stashed our plates and cups in the dishwasher, and we went on our way to TeleCom.
After he had badged and fobbed his way through the security system, Armando led the way down the main corridor to the executive office wing. I barely recognized my old digs.
“Remember this?” Armando pointed to the door of the coffee room where he and I had shared many a stolen kiss in the old days.
“I do,” I said with a grin, “but the rest of this place is so sleek and shiny, I’m afraid to touch anything.”
He continued to a conference room adjoining the CEO’s office and flipped on the overhead lights. Another switch opened a section of wall paneling to reveal a state-of-the-art communications set-up, the center of which was a CPU I suspected could fly us to San Diego, if so instructed. I was impressed as Armando fired up the machine with the ease of long practice, logged on and accessed TeleCom’s Skype account. Within minutes he’d used the information Harold had e-mailed me last night to make the necessary connection, and Harold himself appeared on a huge flat screen above the credenza. Although he wore a disreputable sweatshirt, his hair was stylishly cut, and he was head-bopping to music coming through the electronic headset clapped over his ears.
I sat in the chair Armando indicated, and he fiddled with the webcam for a moment. “Okay, you’re on. Say something.”
“Harold?” I said tentatively and waved at him to get his attention. As soon as he noticed me, he smiled broadly and removed his headset.
“Kate Lawrence, it’s good to see you. I saw you from a distance at the reunion, but you were always busy pressing those business cards on one and all. This is a few light years from 1978, huh? Who would have thought back in the days when we were suffering through Mr. Biddle’s English class that this is how we’d be saying hello in 2013.”
“George Orwell, maybe, but certainly not me,” I agreed. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to catch up at the reunion, Harold, but you were having such a great time dancing with the ladies, I didn’t want to interrupt you. I’d like you to meet my husband, Armando Velasquez. He’s the comptroller of the company that’s hosting this get-together.”
I pulled Armando forward, and as he and Harold exchanged pleasantries, I felt like Alice after she stepped through the looking glass. Until the early 1980s I’d never operated a computer, and mobile phones were rarities for years after that. Now here we were, visiting via satellite. It was mind boggling.
“Rumor has it that you’ve been very successful in the application biz, Harold. Congratulations, and let me add that I’m not at all surprised.”
He gave me an aw shucks shrug and grinned wickedly. “Yeah, the revenge of the nerd, if you define success as having a home in Palm Beach, a penthouse apartment in New York, a villa in France and my own Lear jet. But from my perspective, it looks as if you’ve done well for yourself too, Katie, not only your own business, but you’re married to a guy you actually seem to like and have two great kids. I was never lucky in that way. Looks like we’ve both come a long way from Boring Biddle’s class. I hear you’ve also got an interesting sideline going, which I’m sure is the reason you wanted to talk today. Hell of a thing about Mindy Marchelewski. Have they officially labeled her death a murder?”
I gave him a bare bones outline of my conversations over the last forty-eight hours and watched his expression change from cordial to thoughtful. When I got to the part about the EMTs assuming Mindy had suffered an insulin overdose because of the empty syringe and the fact that they couldn’t see her eyes, he grimaced and interrupted me.
“Oh, come on, that’s crap. Where did the diabetic story come from? Mindy didn’t have diabetes. I should know. My dad was diabetic, and I know the drill. Even if she developed the disease fairly recently, she wouldn’t have been swilling sugary punch, spiked or not. And the glued eyelids thing, that’s grotesque. No, take it from me, the syringe had to be window dressing. Somebody wanted to throw the medical people off long enough for whatever the real drug was to kill her.”
“Morphine,” I said glumly, “or at least that’s what the Brewster police are expecting the tox screen to show. That brings us back to the question of who wanted to kill Mindy Marchelewski badly enough after thirty-five years to lurk around the reunion with a tube of Krazy Glue and a syringe loaded with morphine, not to mention the insulin prop.”
“Where would they get all that stuff?” Harold pointed out.
I told him about my chat with Pat Connelly earlier in the day. “She agrees with you that the insulin must be a red herring, but she sounded a little nervous about that for some reason. She also said morphine is tightly monitored in a hospital setting, but it’s so widely used for pain management these days in hospice and even home care settings, it wouldn’t be impossible to obtain. What’s really driving me nuts is why the killer would go to all that trouble? The staging, the timing, the warning notes to half a dozen people after the fact. It had to be timed to the split second under very risky circumstances. It would have been impossible to know when and if Mindy would use that bathroom, and how were others kept out when she finally did? The whole thing is nuts. Why not just shoot her one dark night or poison her coffee or something?”
Harold sat back and tented his fingers. “You’re right about that. This had to be planned like a secret military maneuver, and about a hundred things could have screwed it up. Somebody wanted Mindy to go down at that reunion in front of all her old classmates. Somebody wanted that very badly.”
“But who, Harold? You and Pat Connelly took the worst kind of abuse from her that I can remember, and you both survived it without turning into psychopaths. Maryellyn and Jean and Joanne and Pat and I have all racked our brains. Can you think of anyone else who hated Mindy enough to plan this bizarre execution?”
Harold tapped the ends of his fingers together. “Not another of her victims, no. Let’s face it, we were all too lame to contemplate revenge on this scale.” His smile was wry. “But maybe we’re going at this from the wrong angle. Maybe the person we’re looking for wasn’t one of Mindy’s targets. What about someone who wanted to be like her, you know, powerful, but always got overshadowed by her?”
“Can you possibly mean Ariel or Joan? You’re kidding. They’ve both received warning notes,” was all I could say to that, but Harold warmed to his theory.
“Are you sure? Maybe one or the other of them is the killer. Maybe they were in it together and are sending the notes themselves. I remember how things were at my cousin June’s fancy prep school. She used to tell me about a group of wanna-bes who were always plotting ways to trip up the reigning princess of popularity, who had a sadistic streak just as wide as Mindy’s. It struck me as odd at the time, but when I asked June why anybody else would want to be like this witch, I remember her saying, ‘The only thing a mean girl really wants is to rip out the jugular of an even meaner girl.’ It was like some sick competition, you know?”
I didn’t want to admit that he could be right, but I flashed back on similar situations I’d witnessed over the years—the college professors who endured years of academic torture to acquire PhDs and the ability to lord it over their lesser-credentialed colleagues, the fledgling attorneys who put in six or more years of indentured servitude to earn partnership in the firm and the right to make life miserable for the newer associates. Harold had a point.
“Other than Joan and Ariel, do you have any likely suspects? It would have to be someone who was at the reunion and still lives close enough to deliver all these warning notes,” I added for good measure. I could almost see the wheels turning in Harold’s analytical brain, but ultimately, he came up empty.
“Not at the moment, but let me chew on it for a while. If I think of anybody, I’ll e-mail you.” He glanced at his watch. “Oops, gotta run. Good to talk with you, Katie. Armando, try to keep her out of
trouble.”
“I will do my best,” Armando assured him and broke the connection.
We spent a few minutes returning the equipment to its rightful place, straightening up chairs and turning off lights, then left the building the same way we had entered it. Although it was barely 3:30 p.m., the thin January daylight was already fading. In another hour it would be dark. I felt chilled despite my parka and took Armando’s arm for comfort as we walked to the Jetta, which looked lonely in the otherwise empty parking lot. As he beeped open the doors, something white fluttered from beneath the passenger side windshield wiper, and I yanked it loose. I expected to find one of those ubiquitous announcements of a new take-out restaurant opening in the area, but I was wrong.
“You have to stop now,” I read aloud to Armando. “This is your last warning. Block letters, the usual.”
We both glared around the lot, straining to catch a glimpse of the anonymous correspondent, but there was nothing to see. We had been inside long enough for the message to be delivered at leisure, sight unseen. We climbed into the car, and Armando warmed up the engine while we sat lost in thought.
“Who knew you would be coming here this afternoon?” he asked finally.
I thought for a minute. “I didn’t even make arrangements with Harold until last night, so the answer would be you, me and Harold, period. No, wait. I mentioned it to Pat when I saw her this morning, but I didn’t say where I was going, and I didn’t mention a specific time, just this afternoon.” Suddenly weary, I let my head fall back against the seat and closed my eyes. “What you mean is someone must be following me. It’s the only way to have known exactly where and when I was going.”
Armando took my hand in his. I opened my eyes to find him scowling.
“Perhaps this is not the first time,” he stated flatly. “It may be that you have been followed all week. I think you must inform the police.”