Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (25 page)

“Thank God,” she said simply.

“Amen, Sugar,” said Margo.

“Everybody out,” said one of the paramedics cheerfully.

Thirteen

By mid-afternoon I was pronounced fit to travel and released to
Strutter
and Margo. I was very lucky that I hadn’t been exposed to the smoke long enough to do serious damage, I was assured. Since none of us had our cars, we were put into a taxi at the emergency room entrance, and
Strutter
directed the driver to take us to the Metro Building, which looked amazingly normal, considering everything that had transpired there that day.

Margo’s car was where she had left it at the curb on Church Street, despite the fact that she had forgotten to lock it in her haste to get inside.
Strutter
was content to leave her aging Toyota on the street and offered to drive the Chrysler home for me, but I didn’t have the keys.

“My briefcase must still be up on thirty-six somewhere,” I said. My mind skittered away from the memory of the morning’s events, but I had to retrieve that case, which contained the telltale note from
Girouard
to Karp.

“Not to worry,”
Strutter
reassured me, climbing into the back seat, as usual. “Charles will get it and lock it up in the security office. If I ask him nicely, I’ll bet he’ll drive your car home for you, too.”

“He’s a good guy,” I said sincerely. “He reminds me a lot of my Joey.” Joey! I had almost forgotten that it was Sunday, and he must already be at the house, wondering where I was. Wait until I told him—and Emma, too, I thought almost smugly. Boring little secretarial job, was it? This ought to shut them up nicely, and Armando, too, once they all got through chewing me out for being so reckless.

A couple of hours and many glasses of iced tea later, I lay on the living room sofa with Jasmine on my stomach and looked around proudly at my extended family. Joey lay on his stomach on the floor, dragging a knotted shoelace around for Moses, and Emma sat next to him with her back propped against my sofa, Oliver in her lap. Margo and
Strutter
occupied two of the overstuffed chairs, and Mary hunched forward in the remaining one, hanging on every word as we recounted the story from our various perspectives.

Our conclusions about Karp, we now agreed, had been totally in error. Far from suffering the pangs of unrequited love for Vera and hating her philandering husband, he must have remained the trusted friend of them both, respecting the relationship they had worked out to their mutual satisfaction and helping each of them when he could. Once he had worked out Vera’s relationship to Grace, he had kept her secret loyally, never admitting even to her that he had guessed the truth. Because he loved her, he willingly assumed the role she had assigned him of her ever-hopeful swain, accompanying her when she needed an escort and appearing to accept Grace as the platonic friend Vera painted her to be. And because he understood Alain’s pain, perhaps better than anyone else, he did what he could to ease that pain by introducing him to nubile and willing young women, all of whom were well aware that Alain was married and likely to remain so, with whom Alain could spend a pleasant few months. When his interest inevitably waned, the women were gently relocated within or outside the firm, none the worse for their experience. Some might call that pimping. I call it friendship.

Late in the afternoon the doorbell rang, and after assuring the visitor that I was up to receiving guests, Emma showed
Leilani
Diaz into the living room. Joey scrambled to set a dining room chair next to the couch, and she sank into it gratefully. Lines of fatigue and tension were etched around her mouth, and I hastened to assure her once again that I would soon be good as new.

“You gave the good sergeant and me a very bad morning, you know,” she chided me gently. “Despite my words to Ms.
Torvaldson
earlier in the week, we had serious misgivings about her. I spent most of Saturday in Massachusetts, talking with her professors and her former roommate at UMass Amherst, looking at her records. She presents herself as a graduate, but the truth is, she had a nervous breakdown halfway through her junior year and had to leave school. She was institutionalized for several months for catatonia and severe depression following an unhappy love affair with an assistant professor who ultimately decided to return to his wife.”

“Oh, dear,” I said, knowing how I would have felt if some man had treated my Emma that way. “Did she return and graduate?”

“She did not,” Diaz went on. “When she was discharged she moved to Connecticut and applied for secretarial work at BGB. Apparently, they never checked that part of her background. She was attractive and capable, and they assigned her to support Alain
Girouard
after just a few weeks. She has been with him ever since. Unfortunately, in her extremely vulnerable state, she formed an obsessive attachment to him.”

“
Lordy
,” said Margo, “can you imagine how it chewed her up inside to watch him go through one woman after another? But he did finally become interested in her. At least, that’s what she told Kate. Remember that
mornin
’ in the women’s room?” I nodded.

“That was a lie,” Diaz said sorrowfully, “a story she made up to protect her wounded pride.
Girouard
never showed the slightest interest in her. She was too good a secretary to risk losing her over a personal relationship. So he just went on and on, taking up with one woman after another, usually introduced to him by Harold Karp. Finally, she threw herself at him, but he rejected her and told Karp to find her another position, as he had for other former girlfriends.”

I told Diaz about the note I had found on Karp’s desk and that it was still in my briefcase, which was somewhere at BGB. She nodded, then frowned. “You had a briefcase but not your cell phone? I must have tried to reach you fifty times.”

I explained to her about leaving it in the charger.

“Of all times,” she said, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Sergeant Donovan, who followed Ingrid all weekend and knew she was keeping tabs on Kate for some reason, followed her to The Birches this morning. He didn’t dare try to tail her with the car on these quiet streets, so he left his sedan on Prospect and walked in, carrying a newspaper under his arm. He spotted her car right around the corner from your place and stepped behind a convenient garage to observe her actions. He was terrified the whole time that he would be reported as a Peeping Tom, and the local police would come roaring in.”

We all chuckled. Poor, long-suffering Sergeant Donovan.

“When you pulled out of your garage, and Ingrid followed as soon as you turned onto Prospect, Donovan ran back to his car as fast as he could and radioed me, but both cars were out of his sight by then. He did not know where you were going, Kate, so we both started trying to reach you, and, well, you know the rest.” She rubbed her temples at the memory of my close call.

“What’s going to happen to Ingrid?”
Strutter
wanted to know, as we all did.

Diaz could only offer an opinion. “She is being held for observation in Hartford Hospital’s psychiatric ward. She is catatonic again, and they are watching her around the clock. The experts will have to give the court an opinion about her fitness for trial, but I have my doubts that she will ever be prosecuted. More likely, she will be committed. It is probably all for the best, as she will at least receive the medical attention she requires.”

“So why did she decide to kill
Girouard
with substances from all of those poisonous plants?” Joey piped up, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.

“Yes, what about that?” Emma joined in. “Why did Karp grow all of those things if he’s not involved in the murder?”

Diaz smiled at their questions. “You are like your mother, are you not? You must have the answers. It was just a quirk of his,” she announced, shrugging her shoulders. “Some people keep poisonous snakes. Some like tarantulas and spiders and other dangerous arachnids. Karp was intrigued by the combination of beauty and danger in these plants. After all, they are grown ornamentally all over the world and are not considered particularly hazardous. I myself have lily of the valley in my own yard and a dumb cane potted in my study. Both are very toxic, although I did not know that until this case,” she admitted. “The members of the horticultural society were well aware of Karp’s fascination. Ingrid, in her damaged state, simply chose to make use of it. Now I must leave you,” she said, rising to her feet.

Despite her protestations, I got off my sofa to walk her to the door.

“Who is the very attractive Latino?” she asked, spotting a photo of Armando on the mantelpiece, along with those of Emma and Joey.

“My absent man-friend,” I told her and filled her in on Armando’s visit to his native Colombia. Aware of the big ears of my friends and children around us, I told her about my plans to meet his plane the following evening but omitted any reference to my doubts about the future of our relationship. Diaz, however, wasn’t a detective for nothing.

“Do not worry about your Armando,” she said, smiling into my face as we reached the door. “Latin men are like children and puppies. If you love them and are good to them and do not try to tie them to you, they will always return to you, even if they occasionally stray. It is a matter of holding them with an open hand. Trust me, Sarah Kathryn Lawrence. About this, I know.” And with that, she departed.

As the shock of the day’s events receded, hunger hit us hard, and we realized we hadn’t eaten all day. Emma and Joey sprang into action, raiding my freezer for provisions, and Mary, despite my protestations, darted out the door with a shopping list in her hand. We heard the Chevy roar into life and crossed our fingers. Twenty minutes later, she reappeared triumphantly, staggering under her purchases, which included fresh corn and tomatoes from the farm stand and a half gallon of my favorite cherry vanilla ice cream.

“To hell with the calories tonight,” she ordered. “Almost dying in a fire qualifies you for at least one guilt-free dinner. It’s in the rule book.”

Joey fired up the gas grill, and by the time he had steaks and chicken done to a turn, Emma had produced a mouth-watering salad and corn on the cob, while Margo set out plates and silverware.
Strutter
plucked scrubbed russets from the microwave and topped them, still steaming, with pats of butter. The cats, roused from their naps by the wonderful aromas, were fed early to keep them from begging, and we all dug in. I can honestly say it was the best meal I’ve ever eaten.

Margo spoke reluctantly to
Strutter
from where she lay back in her chair, empty ice cream bowl in her hands. “If I’m
goin
’ to get you back to your car before my eyes slam shut, we have to get up and go right now.”

Strutter
groaned in agreement. “I know, I know. I just don’t know if I can move.” Stretching and yawning, they both stumbled to their feet.

Mary stirred herself as well. “I think I’ll just ring Roger’s doorbell and see if he wants to watch
The Sopranos
,” she grinned, “or maybe
Sex and the City
.”

“Listen, Sugar,” Margo said before following the others out the door, “the next time you talk to your friend Detective Diaz, do this little
ol
’ gal a favor and find out from her if that very attractive sergeant is married, will you?” She winked and departed.

Well
, I thought,
love is certainly in the air.

The kids and cats had succumbed to sleep where they lay in a pile on the floor, the unwatched television muttering in the background. Both Joey and Emma had announced their intentions of spending the night, and it seemed quite like old times. I saw my friends to the door and gave them heartfelt hugs all around. Mary left first, after extracting a promise from me to call her when I awakened in the morning.

“You’re not planning to go to work, are you?” I asked the other two, still coughing a little.

“You
betcha
,” Margo announced. “
Bellanfonte
has a departmental
meetin
’ scheduled bright and early. It’s bad enough that you won’t be around for him to try to bully. Those poor little associates of his won’t make it through that
meetin
’ alive without Mother Margo’s special brand of coffee.”