Porky? “Perky,” I corrected him automatically. Armando’s English is very good but not perfect. “Ah, yes, I remember those seminars. What was the subject of today’s unnecessary and annoying gathering?”
“How to use our time more productively,” he deadpanned, and we both howled. Once again I congratulated myself on having gone into business with Margo and Strutter. I didn’t miss corporate employment at all.
“Did you enjoy your time at the Vista View today, or did it make you dwell more upon the old age that is creeping up on you so fast?” he twitted me.
“It turns out that old age isn’t quite the carefree time of life it appears to be on the surface,” I told him. “Ginny Preston really opened my eyes.” I filled him in on my lunchtime conversation. “She may be exaggerating, of course, but I have to tell you, I was shocked.” I looked over at him.” Aren’t you?”
He patted my knee. “I am not, Cara, no. Americans have strangely conflicting views about sex. It seems that it either must be romantic and sacred and occur only between married people, or it must be wicked and dirty and occur in dark corners. In other cultures the hunger for sex is just a healthy appetite to be enjoyed and satisfied like the hunger for food. Sometimes you do that at home with a person you love, and sometimes you buy a sandwich.”
“A sandwich? I’ve never heard it called that before,” I scoffed. I thought about his frequent business trips. “Is that what you do when you’re traveling, Armando? Buy a sandwich?”
He smiled at me. “When I was a young man my appetites were, shall we say, more far-ranging. Now I am more discerning.”
It wasn’t a very satisfactory answer. “You mean tied down,” I pouted, fishing for reassurance.
He looked at me for a moment as he considered how best to reply. “An American actor, I think it was the appealing fellow with the very blue eyes, once said he had no desire to eat hamburger when he had steak at home.” His eyes twinkled, and I released the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“Paul Newman talking about Joanne Woodward,” I confirmed.
“Still, we must not judge others. If these ladies still have the hunger and are not so fortunate to have steak at home, we cannot expect them to resist a tasty Latino hamburger when it is offered to them, eh?”
I finished my wine and poked his leg with my toes. “Strangely enough, steak is just what I was thinking of for dinner,” I told him.
“I think that can be arranged.”
Five
Business had improved to the point where Strutter decided to rejoin us in the office on a part-time basis. At a little after two on Tuesday Margo and I left the office in her capable hands and walked down Old Main Street to The Cove Deli. The casual ambience and fresh, homemade offerings made it a popular spot for lunch. Even at this late hour we were lucky to snag a table at the edge of the outdoor seating area, out of earshot of the other patrons.
A dark blue Ford sedan slid into one of the few vacant parking spaces on the street, and Lt. John Harkness of the Wethersfield Police Department ambled over to where we sat. He was his usual spiffy self in a navy blue blazer and white shirt that set off his summer tan, graying blond hair and blue eyes to perfection.
“Hi, Kate. How are you doing, Mrs. Harkness?” He tugged Margo’s hair, which for him was an almost unbelievable public display of affection, and dropped into a chair beside her. “What looks good today, ladies?”
It was a straight line Margo couldn’t resist. “From where I sit, darlin’, you’re the most appetizing thing I’ve seen lately.” She loved to make her reserved husband blush, but after two years of marriage, it was getting harder to do.
“Damn straight,” was his serene response now. “Turkey and avocado sandwiches on multigrain all around?” We agreed enthusiastically, and he went inside to place our order. In five minutes he was back, laden with sandwiches and iced teas, and we got right down to the reason for our late lunch meeting.
With Margo nodding her encouragement from time to time, I recapped the recent events at Vista View and Ginny Preston’s nagging suspicions. John had been enormously helpful during a couple of previous investigations in which I’d been involuntarily involved, and he had become a good friend, as well. I trusted him completely.
“So that’s the situation. It’s complete speculation at this point, of course, but Ginny is one level-headed lady. It’s not like her to get the wind up for no reason. I trust her instincts, but what do you think we should do? Is there anything we can do?”
I grabbed a bite of my sandwich while John mulled over what I’d told him. It didn’t take him long.
“Do about what, a Vista View employee taking on a few residents as private massage clients? If that’s against the facility’s regulations, I guess Ginny can warn the kid or maybe even fire him, but her suspicions about his soliciting them for sex are just that, suspicions. No formal complaints have been filed by residents or staff. What happens between Garcia and his clients takes place behind closed doors in private residences between consenting adults. We don’t know that any money changes hands, and if it does, we don’t know what for. It’s nobody’s business.”
I sighed. “That’s what I said when Ginny told me about all this. I just had to be sure. Somehow she’s connected both untimely deaths to the fact that the two women were Tommy’s clients. At least, I think that’s a fact. We don’t even know that for certain.”
John drained his iced tea and gathered up a few scraps. He looked around, then shook his head. “That dog has me well trained. I always leave him a bite at the end of a meal. Where is Rhett, by the way?”
“In his lovely pen back at the office, renewin’ his acquaintance with the squirrels,” Margo answered, “or more likely gettin’ half of Strutter’s lunch fed to him.”
John grinned his understanding. “You’re probably right about that.” He turned to me. “Anyway, from what you’ve told me there is absolutely no reason to believe that either woman’s death was from other than natural causes, and there’s no evidence of any wrongdoing by Garcia or anyone else. I don’t suppose I’ve said anything that will ease your friend’s mind, Kate, but have I answered your questions?”
I smiled at him warmly. “You surely have, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your taking the time to talk this through with me. I know how busy you are.”
He wadded up his sandwich wrappings and got to his feet. “No problem at all. See you later, Honey.”
Margo blew him a kiss, and I blinked as he tossed his trash into a curbside receptacle and beeped open his car.
“Honey? Right out loud in public? My, my, you are bringing him out of his shell.”
Margo stretched herself like a tawny cat and gleamed with self-satisfaction. “He just needed a little positive reinforcement trainin’, that’s all. Let’s go see if Strutter has any new listings for us.”
We took our time on the return walk. When we got back into the office, we weren’t surprised to discover Strutter sitting on the back steps of the Law Barn, cooing at Rhett Butler while feeding him the last of a roast beef sandwich. She startled guiltily when we opened the back door and hastily crumpled up a napkin in her lap. The big dog panted happily at the sight of Margo, as he always did. A shred of roast beef clung to his muzzle. Margo shook her finger at the two miscreants.
“I can see that leavin’ you two alone together at lunchtime was a mistake.”
“It was just a crumb,” Strutter protested unconvincingly. “How could I enjoy my sandwich with those big, brown eyes following every bite?”
“Margo should have put money on this. She had you totally pegged,” I told her.
Margo snorted. “As if there were ever a moment’s doubt. Come on, you big mooch, let’s go find your toys.” She led Rhett back to his enclosure, and I plopped down on the top step next to Strutter, leaving the back door open a crack so we could hear the phone if it rang. We both tipped our faces up to the sun. From the sound of the leaves falling all around us, ther
e wouldn’t be many more afternoons like this one.
“Why do we bother with a land line at all?” Strutter wondered aloud. “We all have cell phones. Anyone can reach us whenever they want to.”
“You just answered your own question. We have an office line and voicemail so that just once in a while we can turn the damned cell phones off.”
Margo rejoined us. “Anything new while we were out?”
“Not new business, no,” Strutter answered somewhat evasively. She opened her eyes and looked at me. I knew that look well. It meant she was weighing my ability to hear what she was about to say without going ballistic. I cringed.
“Out with it,” I urged her.
“First of all, I wasn’t snooping.”
I looked at Margo, who turned her palms up and shrugged. “Okay, so what did you find while you weren’t snooping?”
“It was the paperwork on the Johansson sale. Emma said the good faith estimate was expected from the mortgage company this morning, but I didn’t see it anywhere, and the buyer was getting antsy. So I ran upstairs to see if she had just forgotten to bring it down before she went to lunch. Sure enough, there was the package on the corner of her desk, so I grabbed it. And then I saw them, piled up right out in the open next to her blotter.”
It wasn’t like Strutter to be so defensive. “I know you weren’t snooping, okay? What did you see piled up right out in the open?”
She wrinkled her nose apologetically. “A bunch of books on single motherhood, how to go about artificial insemination, what the legal ramifications are, surrogates, agencies, you know, everything.”
“Oh, good lord,” said Margo. “She’s got the fever. Armando was right.”
I frowned at both of them. “Yes, Armando apparently was right, and if I hear either of you say those words in his presence, I’ll deny it to my grave.”
Margo still looked stunned. “It would be risky enough if she knew the father and at least had some financial support from him for the child, but without even that …” her voice trailed off.
“Raising a child is plenty tough with an involved, loving partner. Doing it by yourself is …” Strutter, too, ran out of words. We sat in silence, contemplating the enormity of Emma’s intentions.
“What are you going to do?” Strutter asked me at length.
The sound of our office phone ringing saved me from having to say, “Damned if I know,” but that’s what I was thinking.
~
Once the phone started ringing it didn’t stop, and the rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of activity. I put in an extra hour on the paperwork, knowing I would be at Vista View for most of the following day. I heard Emma run up the stairs to her office in mid-afternoon. Sometime after five o’clock she ran back downstairs and stuck her head into our office. Margo and Strutter had both left for the day. Seeing me on the phone, Emma tapped her watch, blew me a kiss and vanished. Her tote bag was full of books. I guessed she had an evening of reading planned.
At half past six I switched on our voicemail system and tidied the stacks of documents on my desk. First law and now real estate, I mused, two of the most paper-clogged professions left on earth. Where are all those paper-free offices the computer salesmen promised us years ago? There’s more paper today than there was twenty years ago, primarily because computers enable us to produce more of it quickly and easily. Now we have all our emails to print out, too.
I wandered around the quiet building in the early twilight, my head filled with the people and events of the past few years. I remembered how Margo, Strutter and I had met at a Hartford law firm, then struck out on our own to open a realty office. It had been a constant struggle, and we had certainly had our share of good times and bad, but here we still were, the best of friends and hanging onto our little business for dear life. All three of us were married now—all for the second time, oddly enough, and very happily. I paused at the receptionist’s desk in the lobby and smiled, remembering Jenny, who had worked days for us in order to put herself through UConn Law School nights. She was a terrific young woman, and I hoped things were going well for her as a first-year associate at a firm in New Haven.
The door to the small office next to the copy room stood open. I paused on the threshold and pictured the mortgage broker who had occupied it briefly. She was a native Californian trying to experience different parts of the country, but one New England winter had been sufficient for her to pack up and return to the San Fernando Valley. “I can do what I do anywhere,” she told us as she cleaned out her desk. “It’s, like, the most portable occupation ever. Have cell phone, will travel,” and she was gone.
Now Joey and Emma were all grown up and apparently both on the verge of parenthood. I was about to become a grandmother, maybe twice. Well, what did I expect at the age of nearly fifty? Time and tide and all that. I shook myself out of my reverie, locked up and headed for home and Armando. Tomorrow would be another day.
My contemplative mood held as I drove slowly down the darkened street and remembered Prudence Crane, Abby Stoddard, Deenie Hewitt. I tooted and waved at Ephraim Marsh, who was just locking up the corner drugstore for the night. Friends, clients and colleagues tumbled through my mind like characters in a play in which Margo, Strutter and I played the parts of reluctant amateur sleuths—very reluctant, I smiled to myself, remembering Strutter’s first encounter with the Henstock sisters.
My smile faded as I looked ahead to my follow-up conversation with Ada on Thursday about the neurologist’s findings. What would Lavinia’s diagnosis be? I considered, then skittered away from, various worst case scenarios. Thursday would be soon enough to deal with all that, I told myself as I sat through the interminable traffic light at the Silas Deane Highway. In the meantime there was my Vista View stint to get through tomorrow, when I would report to Ginny Preston what John Harkness had said. I knew she would be frustrated at having her hands tied, but I was frankly relieved that I wouldn’t be dragged into yet another of the investigations that had cluttered my life for the last several years. Things were quite complicated enough at the moment, which brought me back to Emma and her sudden interest in motherhood. Whatever else tomorrow might bring, I promised myself it would include a nice, long heart-to-heart with my daughter during which I would persuade her to abandon the single motherhood whim.
Or not.
Six
After the stretch of glorious autumn weather we had been enjoying, Wednesday’s damp gloom came as an unwelcome surprise. Dark clouds spit rain on everyone intermittently as we scuttled about our business under our umbrellas, at least those of us who could find them. As usual, mine was wherever I was not, in the car when I was in the office and in the office when I was headed for Vista View. My waterproof parka with a pull-up rain hood had been my smartest wardrobe investment ever, I reflected as I hurried toward Building One from the parking lot.
As if to discourage further smugness on my part, a gust of wind snatched the hood from my head, leaving my hair exposed to the rain while I wrestled with my briefcase and the heavy door. As I muttered unattractive epithets, Bert Rosenthal appeared at my side like a benign elf and held his sturdy umbrella over me until I had safely negotiated the door, then followed me in. “Not Sir Galahad, but the next best thing, eh, Gorgeous?” He dug his spectacles out of his pocket and polished them with a handkerchief before popping them on.
“Better,” I assured him as I dripped water onto the newly placed weather mat just inside the entrance. Trust Ginny to be on top of the weather along with everything else. Rain, snow, sleet or mud, Vista Views’ floors would remain unsullied. “You went out for a walk in this?”
He buttoned his raincoat more firmly under his chin and prepared to return to the elements. “I made it from my building to this one before I decided to call it quits, and then I saw a lady in distress. Now that I’ve done my good deed for the day, I’ll head back to my lair.” He pointed in the direction of a Phase Two apartment building across the way. “At least I can tell t
he doc I gave it a try.”
I looked around at the silent lobby and put my hand on his sleeve. “I’ve got a better idea. Business won’t exactly be booming today. In fact, I’d be surprised to see a single prospect appear at the sales desk. How about having a cup of coffee with me in the dining room?”
He glanced outside at the dismal weather and promptly set his dripping umbrella to one side of the door. “So I won’t forget it on my way out,” he said, unbuttoning his coat again and offering me his arm. “Shall we?”
I dropped my briefcase and raincoat at the sales desk, and we were off to the dining room, giggling like two kids playing hooky from school. Although the appetizing aromas of freshly brewed coffee and warm cinnamon pastries greeted us at the door as usual, the hostess’s station was deserted, as was the residents’ seating area. A few members of the cleaning crew, whose shifts started very early in the morning, were clustered around a single staff table, hands wrapped around their coffee mugs.
“Looks like we’ve got the joint pretty much to ourselves. What are you having, Gorgeous?” Bert draped his coat over a chair at a table by the big windows and waggled his eyebrows at me. “Money is no object. I’ll even split one of those cinnamon thingies with you. The hell with the doctor’s orders.”
“My treat, I insist. I invited you, remember?” I protested. “How do you take your coffee?”
“That far down the road to cardiac arrest I cannot go, but some of that decaf would go down very nicely.”
The bored cashier looked startled to have a customer but rang up my order efficiently. I brought everything to the table on a small tray and carefully cut the warm pastry in half.
“Mmm,” Bert sniffed appreciatively. “Reminds me of my wife’s baking, God rest her soul.”
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