Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (4 page)

As I waited for Mary, I wondered if I should tell her about my
nastygram
from the condo association in view of her ongoing vendetta with the association. For the most part, she employed guerilla tactics against
Philpott
, who lived two doors down from me. Mary delighted in zooming down the main access road at well above the posted speed limit, flipping the bird to
Philpott
whenever she passed her on her daily rounds.

Not ten minutes after my call, Mary squealed to a stop at the supermarket entrance and greeted me cheerfully.
“What’s
cookin
’,
Snookums
?”

I tossed my groceries into the back seat of the unlovely sedan and climbed in, then buckled my seatbelt and braced both feet flat on the floor. Mary executed an illegal U-turn and came breathtakingly close to scraping the paint on an
Altima
. Hanging grimly onto the armrest, I told her about my letter from the property management company as she careened through the streets of Wethersfield back to The Birches.

“
Sonsabitches
!” she exclaimed from time to time, pounding the steering wheel vigorously. “They’re all
sonsabitches
!”

When The Birches came into view, I breathed more easily, but my respite was short lived. As we turned into the complex, Mary spotted Edna
Philpott
getting her mail out of the box at the end of her driveway.

“
Philpott
sighting!”
Mary chortled. She was ready. In a well-rehearsed sequence, she punched a button on the CD player and advanced the machine to a song she had obviously pre-selected. She twirled the volume knob to its maximum and lowered the driver’s side window. The Latin rhythms of Stevie Wonder’s “For You,” heavy on the congas, poured forth.

Mary slowed down uncharacteristically. “For you there might be another song,” she warbled happily along with Stevie at the top of her lungs, strictly observing the speed limit as we crept past
Philpott
, “but all my heart can hear is your melody.” Drums thundered through the open window.
Philpott
flinched,
then
craned her scrawny neck to glare at Mary. I slunk slower in my seat and shaded my eyes with one hand.

“For you there might be another star, but the light of you is all I can see,” Mary shrieked.

Appalled though I was, I couldn’t keep from laughing. Slowly, slowly Mary rolled to the end of my driveway and stopped. I had no choice but to open the door and get out.

Roger Peterson, the dignified retiree who was my next door neighbor on the near side, opened his front door to locate the source of the din. He stared at Mary and me, perplexed, until he spotted
Philpott
scurrying toward her garage. Then he shook his head and closed the door.

As soon as
Philpott’s
garage door closed, Mary killed the music and grinned at me. “Music lovers, one,
Philpott
, zero,” she crowed. Despite my troubles I couldn’t help returning her grin as I waved goodbye and let myself in through my garage.

As I wearily stuffed groceries into freezer and cupboards, I was surprised to hear the garage door going up again. Only Joey, Emma and Armando had openers. It was Armando coming to say a proper goodbye, I thought, my heart lifting; but when I opened the connecting door from the kitchen, I saw not Armando but Joey coming through the garage. He was a day early for his weekly stopover. What could be up?

The tall twenty-seven-year-old wore my face under a buzz cut, a tentative grin, and a short-sleeved shirt tucked into his jeans. There was a largish lump under the shirt. The lump was meowing.

“Oh, you got a kitten! I exclaimed. “Let me see.” I held out my hands, and Joey deposited a tiny, ink-black pile of fur into them. I hustled into the kitchen and sat down on the mat I kept in front of the sink. As soon as its paws hit the nap, the kitten peed copiously. I looked up at Joey.

“Sorry, Ma, it’s been a while since he’s seen a litter box. I guess the drive from Taunton was too much for him. He’s usually very good about that.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I said wryly, throwing the mat into the sink until I could launder it.
And hang it over my back railing,
I added to myself mutinously. A choppy purr emanated from the relieved mite. “Do you mean to say that you have been driving this little creature around in that noisy rig?”

“I was in the queue at a truck stop in Charlotte, waiting my turn to be fueled up, when I saw a guy walking up and down the line, asking if any of the drivers would take this kitten. He’d found him all wet and shivering in the tall grass and figured that somehow, he had survived some creep’s tossing an unwanted litter into the brook that runs behind the place. I couldn’t just leave him there, so I rolled down my window, and the guy handed him up.”

It was my own fault for raising tender-hearted children, I supposed. To tell the truth, I was proud that Joey had stepped up. “Just like Moses in the bulrushes, eh?” I murmured to the kitten, now droopy eyed in my hand. He purred more loudly. Joey stroked the kitten’s head with the tip of one large, calloused finger. “I was wondering if I could leave him here with you while I run out and get some chow for him from the pet store. And a litter box,” he added hastily.

“Leave him here?” I asked, suddenly suspicious.

“It won’t be for long, Ma. I know Jasmine and Oliver are old and set in their ways. It’s only temporary,” Joey pleaded.

There was that word again. “It’s more than Jasmine and Oliver, Joey. I can’t have more than two cats in this unit. It’s against the regulations.”

“Who’s going to know unless they creep around shining flashlights into your windows, and since when do you give a flying fig about stupid regulations?”

“Since I got a
nastygram
from the condo police about my bath mats,” I growled.

“Bath mats? What are you talking about, Ma?”

“Oh, never mind,” I waved him off. “Just get over to the pet store and get some of the canned kitten formula. He’s too little for dry food.”

Deciding to leave well enough alone, Joey prudently backed out the door. “Back in a flash,” he said, thundering down the garage stairs at his customary breakneck pace, now that he was
sans
kitten.

“Don’t forget the litter box!” I yelled after him, startling my visitor awake. “Hello, there, Moses,” I named him on the spot. “How would you like to bunk here for a while? I could use the company,” I added, suddenly bereft.

I checked my watch. Instead of heading to my place for dinner, Armando would be en route to the airport with the rest of the
TeleCom
Plus installation team. Shortly thereafter, he would fly south to a reunion with the family, friends and country he had left more than twenty years earlier. It would be wonderful for him, I knew, but surely the United States was now his home. It was where I was. I had helped him pass his American citizenship test just a year ago. We might not choose to marry or even live together, but after all these years, weren’t we home to each other? All I could do now was wait and hope.

Carefully, I got to my feet and headed upstairs with Moses in one hand. I had learned how to introduce strange cats to each other during my volunteer days at the local adoption shelter. It’s important to let them get used to each other’s scents before they actually meet, so one simply shuts the new arrival into a separate room with food and litter box, then
lets
all concerned sniff curiously at both sides of the door.

Closing the guestroom door firmly behind me, I pulled a pillow from the bed and tucked Moses into a cozy corner of the room. Joey would be back any minute with healthy food and a litter pan. I tiptoed to the door and pulled it open quietly.

Jasmine lunged into the room. I caught her around the middle and dragged her, protesting, back through the door. Oliver sat stonily on the other side, tail bushy. I reclosed the door and dumped Jasmine to the floor, where she flattened herself, nose jammed against the crack at the bottom of the door, sniffing madly.

“Sit there until hell freezes over,” I told them both, “but you are not going to get that kitten.” I beat a hasty retreat.

Back in the kitchen, I resumed sifting through the mail. Bills, bills, and what was this?
Greetings from the Town of Wethersfield.
Oh, Lord, I had forgotten about the property tax on the Chrysler due the first of the month. Then there was the new battery that was even now being installed in the beast. I sighed. As dismal as my new role at BGB was, it was a paycheck. A quick review of my savings account balance confirmed that even temporary unemployment was to be avoided at all costs. I would have to tough it out for at least a month, I decided reluctantly. Anyway, now that Hell Week was over, how bad could things be? With
Strutter’s
help, I had finally mastered the intricacies of the telephone console, and it was a treat to watch her handle
Bolasevich
.
Bellanfonte
was on the road most of the time, so I didn’t have to deal with him directly very often.
Surely, the worst is over,
I thought.

Of course, that was before I discovered the body.

Three

Always an early riser, I preferred to avoid the bulk of Hartford’s commuter traffic by getting to the office around 7:00. I knew that I could accomplish more before the phones started ringing than I would be able to get done for the rest of the day. It was a secret shared by savvy associates, overwhelmed secretaries and other hard-pressed staff throughout the firm. On thirty-seven, however, most people started their day somewhat later, since evening work was often required. I learned that
Strutter
had after-school day care arrangements for her nine-year-old son, but she preferred to drive him to school herself each morning. She usually arrived, a little breathless, just minutes before 9:00.

On Monday morning I donned the summer uniform of the city worker—long cotton dress, short-sleeved sweater, sneakers, and black shoulder bag holding lunch and dressy sandals—and trudged mutinously into the Metro Building lobby at a few minutes before 7:00. Traffic had been heavy, so I was later than usual. I found myself behind a covey of bright-eyed youngsters headed for the floors occupied by Metro Insurance, from which the building derived its name. One of the oldest and biggest insurance companies in the country, Metro occupied most of the six floors below BGB and employed one of the youngest and most enthusiastic workforces I had ever encountered. I headed straight to the back corner of the first available “
Hellavator
,” my name for the six elevators that were express to the twentieth floor, and braced myself for the stomach-lurching ride up while listening to their animated chatter.

As usual, it was heavily punctuated with “Duh
!,
” “
Helloooo
!,” and “Whatever!” Was it possible that people under the age of twenty-five had lost the knack of speaking in complete sentences, or was this just another sign of my current crankiness? Whatever—oh, lord, it was catching—it was a relief when the doors opened on twenty-four, and the flock twittered out.

When the doors slid open on thirty-seven, my nostrils were assaulted immediately by the odor of fresh paint. It seemed that the ubiquitous painters had once again worked the night shift. Making my way to the hated pod, I snapped on half a dozen overhead lights en route,
then
paused to hang my sweater on the plastic hanger suspended from the paralegals’ partition that passed for closet space. July it might be, but the building’s cooling system was capricious and tended toward extremes. Before noon, when it was at its most lethargic, the temperature could hover in the high 70s, only to dip into the 60s by late afternoon, so sweaters were an office necessity.

Kicking off the sneakers that made my six-block hike from the Main Street parking lot more comfortable, I shoved them under my desk and donned the black leather sandals that met BGB’s dress code.

I decided to bring some check requests up to thirty-nine, where the accounting and data processing departments were housed, then stop in the kitchen off the partners’ conference room for a much-needed cup of coffee. After having supper with Joey, I had spent Sunday evening in the guest room with Moses, attempting to make sense of the weekend’s events with the help of an excellent Riesling, but I had had no success. Jas and Ollie remained the very definition of friends, i.e., two people made at the same third person, so I dared not spring Moses from solitary. Instead, I had recruited Mary to spend a half-hour morning and afternoon with him to give him some company, and Emma volunteered to check on the beasts at lunchtime.