A Skeleton in the Closet (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) Page 5

  Margo gazed at me thoughtfully. “Well, Sugar, remind me never to come to your house for dinner. But the only thing I can’t understand is how you managed to hold down demandin’ jobs and raise Emma and Joey to be two reasonably socialized adults, considerin’ your need for large doses of solitude. Did you always feel that way?”

  I thought about it. “Yes. No. Well, not to the same extent, although I was always happy in my own company. As a kid, I lived mostly inside my head, but that changed when the hormones kicked in. I hated school, but I dated and went to dances and fell in love once a week just like most of the other girls. Hell, I was even a cheerleader briefly.”

  “You were not!” Margo feigned horror, and I paused in my pacing to make a face at her.

  “I was too, at least until I quarreled with my boyfriend, who was the captain of the soccer team. He scored a goal during the next game, and it was my turn to do an individual cheer for the scorer. I refused to do it because I was still mad at him, and they kicked me off the squad,” I reminisced. Margo threw her head back and howled with laughter.

  “Drummed out of the cheerleading squad! Oh, the shame of it.”

  “And then there was school in Boston, and my first jobs. After that, getting married seemed like a good idea. Wayne and I got along so well, and then Joey and Emma came along, and the days were so full. I always had a full-time job, and there was the house to take care of. Wayne helped when he could, but his job took over his life. Let’s face it. I was too tired at the end of each day to think about whether I was happy, whatever that is.” I grinned at my friend to lighten my words.

  She grinned back, relieved by my attempt at levity. “But then the kids grew up, and you did think about it.”

  “Yes, I did, more and more as the years went by. When I realized that I no longer wanted to be married, I felt bad, because I knew that would hurt Wayne. So I stuck it out much longer than I probably should have, and when we finally made the break, it was terrible. Still, I knew it was the right thing to do. Wayne deserved to be happy, and so did I.” I ran down, remembering the pain of that long-ago time.

  “And you have been. Both of you,” Margo reminded me gently. She was right. After our divorce, it had taken Wayne only months to meet a terrific woman he would ultimately marry, and the two made a very successful match while I lived, manless, in blissful solitude.

  “I didn’t even date for more than six years, Margo. Not so much as dinner with a man. I simply wasn’t interested.”

  That got Margo’s full attention. “You didn’t go out on a date for six years? No handholding, no kissin,’ no …” She wiggled her eyebrows meaningfully.

  “No nothing,” I said flatly, “and I was perfectly content. If Armando hadn’t come straight at me when we both worked at TelCom, I’m quite sure I would have been contentedly celibate to this day.”

  Margo digested this information in incredulous silence. “Whew, that’s some dry spell, Sugar. Thank heaven for Latino cuties who won’t take no for an answer.”

  “He didn’t exactly jump me in the office supplies closet. We just happened to hit it off,” I frowned and returned to the subject at hand. “The point is, we’ve been together ever since, and now we’re moving in together, and despite months of dithering, I’m still not sure it’s a good idea. It’s a really big step for me.”

  “Oh, pooh. It’s a really big step for him, too, and you don’t see Armando sittin’ around wringin’ his hands, do you? He’s been on his own for years and years too, don’t forget. But he’s made up his mind that you’re the one, and vice versa. So just take the plunge and see how it goes. Remember, the movers can get him out of there even quicker than they move him in,” she finished lightly. She slumped back on the sofa and resumed filing her nails.

  “Maybe that’s it. Maybe I just can’t face the possibility of having to go through all of that awfulness a second time if this sharing a house thing doesn’t work out.” I cringed at the thought. “Really. I couldn’t.”

  Margo looked up, understanding at last. “Ahhh. Now I get it.” She dropped her nail file back into her capacious purse and leaned forward to grab my hand. “Listen to me. You and Armando are two of the prickliest little devils I’ve ever met. Total pisspots, the two of you, but somehow you found each other. You know as well as I do, Sugar, that the only thing that matters in a relationship is that you can stand his quirks, and he can stand yours. You have both had years to decide that you can. I think it’s goin’ to be just fine.”

  For Margo, that was quite a speech, and she didn’t give speeches very often. “You do?” I asked finally.

  “I do,” she said firmly, “no pun intended. Now, what can we do to get the knot out of Strutter’s tail?”

  Four

  Twenty minutes later, we decided that since we were just assuming that Strutter was expecting, and it was possible that we were wrong, it was probably best to respect her obvious wish to keep her secret for the time being. We got on with the business of the day. Margo left to show a house, and I went to visit the Henstock ladies to see how they were bearing up under all the excitement.

  As I waited once again on the sagging front porch of

  185 Broad Street for one of the sisters to answer my knock, I gazed around me and thought how truly splendid the French Second Empire-style house must have been in its heyday. Constructed in the late 1800s by Henstock ancestors, it had been home to Judge and Mrs. Henstock in the early years of their marriage, I knew. I did some hasty calculations and concluded that the sisters, now something over eighty years of age, would have been born in the 1920s. I smiled, imagining the two little girls playing among the now overgrown hedges and shrubbery. Perhaps they had tea parties for their dollies, much like those my Emma had hosted for her Barbies years ago. A tapping on the front window interrupted my reverie. Lavinia and Ada Henstock peered out at me from the front parlor window. Ada jabbed a finger to her right and mouthed words I couldn’t quite make out. Was someone else in the room with them? No, Lavinia wanted me to go somewhere. But where? Then I remembered the side entrance and nodded to show I understood. She smiled, and the sisters trotted out of sight to let me in.

  Later, seated at the capacious kitchen table with another cup of excellent tea before me, I broached the subject of the remains retrieved that morning from the Spring Street Pond. “You’ve had quite a couple of days, haven’t you?”

  Ada rolled her eyes in agreement and sipped thirstily at her tea, but to my surprise, Lavinia’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “Oh, my, yes! Such a lot of coming and going, what with the plumber and you and your partners, and then the police. That nice Lieutenant came by again this morning to give us the news about finding the, um, body.” She slid her eyes sideways to Ada, but receiving no rebuke for her boldness, she continued. “I don’t suppose we’ve had this many people in the house since poor Papa’s funeral. My, wasn’t that a day, though.” Her face glowed at the memory.

  Mention of the corpse hadn’t drawn a response from Ada, but mention of their father’s demise did. “For heaven’s sake, Lavinia, that was nearly forty years ago. We have certainly entertained guests since then. Why, don’t you remember that Christmas open house we had in celebration of the Bicentennial in ’96?” She was positively bristling at the implication that she and her sister were antisocial.

  “I’m sure it was a lovely occasion,” I intervened hastily. “Tell me, have you had any further thoughts on the identity of the body? I’m sure the police have already questioned you about that, but I confess that I’m curious.”

  “Mmmm, yes, we have.” Ada stirred her tea thoughtfully. At first, we thought it might be from the Civil War era, perhaps a runaway slave who had been hidden here by one of our ancestors. That would have been just like a Henstock. The Underground Railroad was quite active in these parts, you know.”

  I hadn’t known, but I was appropriately impressed.

  “But it wasn’t a slave, no,” Lavinia chimed in. “The authorities who first viewed th
e remains were quite clear about that, the Lieutenant told us. Not old enough, and that blue fabric she was wearing was certainly not Civil War era.”

  I was becoming interested in spite of my vow not to get caught up in another intrigue. “They know for certain it was a woman?”

  “Oh, yes, Dear. But as I say, she was of much more recent vintage than the Civil War. World War II perhaps.”

  “Don’t speak of the wretched woman as if she were a bottle of Papa’s claret, Lavinia!” Ada tsk-ed her sister and made an effort to mask her irritation. “All we know is it’s a woman who must have died sometime after 1945.”

  “Goodness! However did they date the remains that quickly?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “Oh, it had nothing to do with the body,” Lavinia assured me. “Much too soon for that. But Ada and I did some research last night in Papa’s ledgers and so on, and we founds records showing that that old closet in the basement had been constructed in 1945. So the body couldn’t have been hidden there before that time. It was right there in Papa’s handwriting. He was so meticulous about his papers,” she concluded with satisfaction. Ada nodded wearily in agreement, and my heart went out to her. Both sisters must be exhausted after the doings of the past twenty-four hours, but Ada seemed to be the only one feeling the strain. Lavinia appeared to be thriving on the unexpected excitement.

  “Why was the closet or whatever you want to call that enclosure next to the furnace built in the first place?” I couldn’t help but ask. “It seems only logical that those pipes would have needed maintenance from time to time, and it must have been very inconvenient to have them right next to a brick wall. By the way, was there a door to the closet? It was so demolished, I couldn’t tell.”

  Ada paused mid-sip to consider my question and knit her brows in consternation. “Why, I don’t recall, do you, Sister? We were young women at that time, and the house always seemed to be full of workers of one sort or another and people from dear Papa’s office. I can’t say I ever paid any of them much attention.”

  Lavinia explained more fully. “Our mother died when Ada and I were just girls. Influenza took her when we were nine and ten years old, and Papa was just devastated. For simply years, he spent every evening alone in his study, lost in his work. I believe he just about forgot he had children, he was so sorrowful about losing precious Mama. If it hadn’t been for Clara and Agnes …”

  “… the cook and the housekeeper who came to live with us after Mama’s death,” Ada interjected.

  “… we probably would have gone off to school looking like ragamuffins,” Lavinia continued without missing a beat. “But those two good ladies saw to it that we were properly turned out for every occasion. And there was always bread and jam and cold milk after school. Why, we would sit right here at this very table, chattering about our day, while Clara got the supper started and Agnes oversaw our homework. How I miss those dear souls.” A misty smile played about her mouth as she recalled her old friends.

  Ada brought her sharply back to the question at hand. “Yes, they were wonderful to us, Dear, but that doesn’t get us any closer to knowing why that closet was built ten years later. Do you have any ideas, Lavinia? It might shed some light on who that poor woman was.” She shuddered. “To think that we have been living all these years with that dreadful … thing … right under our feet the whole time.”

  Reluctantly, Lavinia dragged herself away from her childhood memories and gave Ada’s question her attention. “Why, yes, I believe I do,” was her surprising response. “At least, I know what Papa said it was for at the time.” A sly smile played with the corners of her mouth.

  Judging from Ada’s expression, the implication that the Judge may have invented a cover story was not lost on her, although I pretended not to notice. “Whatever do you mean, Sister? It seems odd that Papa would have told you about this and not me, and I don’t remember anything.”

  “Oh, you were far too taken with young Robert Sloane and your parties and dances and tennis games to be aware of anything as mundane as a closet being constructed in the basement. Ada was always the social butterfly, far prettier than I was,” Lavinia confided, and Ada colored. “It was for his personal papers, Papa said, so they could be locked up away from prying eyes. A vault, I guess you’d call it. He had letters and diaries and trial records of cases dating back to the beginning of his career as a lawyer… oh, all sorts of things. He always said he would write his memoirs when he retired from the bench, but in the meantime, he wanted to protect the innocent. At least, that’s what he said.” Again, I ignored the implication of her words.

  “But surely those things would be kept in his study or a file cabinet or something,” I said. “Whose prying eyes did he mean?”

  “I assumed at the time that he meant Clara and Agnes, which was complete nonsense. My goodness, they would never pry. But now, I’m not so sure that was it.”

  It was Ada’s turn to question her sister. “What do you mean, Lavinia? For heaven’s sake, just spit it out!”

  Lavinia regarded her for a moment before deciding to answer. “I think he meant us. Now I think he built that closet to lock those papers away from us. As children, we wouldn’t have been the least bit interested in looking at his old files, and we wouldn’t have understood anything in them even if we had snooped through them. But as young women …” she shrugged.

  Ada stared at her sister, clearly confounded. “If I’m understanding you correctly, Lavinia, our father, a grieving widower and a respected member of this community for decades, had secrets to keep. Whether they were his or other people’s, we don’t know, but he was certainly determined to keep them.”

  “But wouldn’t any closet with a lock on the door have been sufficient?” I was still mystified by the enclosure in the basement.

  “I guess that would depend on how big the secrets were … and about whom,” Lavinia commented, doing more damage to her image as a doddering airhead. I was beginning to suspect that had been carefully cultivated over the years as protective coloration. Nobody expected much of a ditz, especially when she had an exceptionally capable, not to say domineering, older sister to manage things. She shifted her gaze pointedly from Ada to me and then back again.

  Ada addressed her sister. “Lavinia, Mrs. Lawrence is here to help us resolve this dreadful situation. If you know something that might help us do that, just go ahead and tell us. It has been my experience that secrets always come out sooner or later anyway, and Mrs. Lawrence can be trusted with ours, isn’t that right?” She looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded mutely. As a rule, I hated being the repository of other people’s secrets, but this time, I had an avid interest in what Lavinia might have to say. “There now. What more can you tell us?”

  Lavinia rose to replenish the teapot, whether to hide her face or give herself time to choose her words, I couldn’t be sure. Her hand trembled as she poured more hot water over the tea ball inside the pot, and she replaced the lid carefully before turning back to us.

  “For one thing, Papa wasn’t quite the grieving widower you remember, Ada. Oh, for a few years, perhaps, when we were still young. It was only decent in those days that a few years elapsed between our mother’s death and, well, Papa’s renewed interest in socializing.”

  “Renewed interest in … oh, do stop pussyfooting around, Lavinia. Say what you mean!”

  “Women,” Lavinia said firmly. “Rather a lot of them, as I recall. You were always out and about with one or another of your young men, but I spent a lot of evenings right here in this house with little to amuse me but the comings and goings of Papa’s, um, guests.”

  At this, my eyebrows climbed higher than Ada’s, but I kept silent.

  “Do you mean that Papa entertained lady friends right here in the house, and I didn’t know about it?”

  “As I said, Dear, you were preoccupied, and Papa’s visitors usually arrived after you had gone out for the evening and Clara and Agnes had retired to their rooms on the third floor.
Came to the side entrance and left the same way through the kitchen after spending several hours with Papa in his study. He always told me they were clients, but if that were true, why did he keep his study door locked, I wonder?”

  Ada placed her teacup carefully in its saucer and clasped her hands on top of the table for support. “What makes you believe that he locked it?”

  “I tapped on his door one evening to see if he and his, er, client would like some tea. He didn’t answer, and when I turned the knob to poke my head in, it was locked. I took my own tea straight up to my bedroom, and the next morning, neither Papa nor I mentioned it. It was right after that when he arranged to have the vault built in the basement.”

  I didn’t dare look at Ada and busied myself pouring more tea.

  “And you never mentioned any of this to me,” Ada said. “Why not?”

  “Why, I suppose because it stopped,” Lavinia stated flatly. “All of it, the women and the late-night visits and the closed-door meetings just stopped. I never knew Papa to see a woman socially again, in this house or elsewhere, until the day he died. And after a few years, I decided I must have been mistaken, and the whole matter left my mind. Until now,” she added.

  I cleared my throat. “When did the Judge pass away? I know he had a long and distinguished career on the bench.”

  The ladies consulted each other silently. “It was the year that nice Mr. Kennedy was assassinated,” Lavinia asserted.

  “The President was assassinated in 1963,” I said.

  “Not President Kennedy, the other one, the brother,” Ada put forward. “It was at that hotel in California. Bobby, I believe it was, which I always thought was a rather silly name for a grown man, and him the Attorney General.”