Auld Lang Syne (10 page)

I wondered how one went about prioritizing homicides. If Mindy had been done in by a serial killer who was terrorizing local citizens, would she get moved up the list? “Why at this time of year in particular?”

He shrugged. “The holidays seem to trigger a lot of aggressive behavior, stir up old hostilities.
People
who haven’t seen each other, sometimes for years, get thrown together in social situations and remember why they can’t stand each other. There’s a lot of alcohol and pills and other substances floating around. When something like this happens, and there are no clear leads, it takes time and patience to sort it out.”

I struggled mightily to keep a grip on my temper. “So what you’re telling me is that Mindy’s been dead for nearly a week, and the police don’t have any idea of how or why?”

He regarded me warily, sensing my rising ire. “The autopsy and initial toxicology screen gave us some information, but it’s inconclusive. We’re awaiting the results of further tests. We’ve questioned dozens of Brewster alumni who were at the reunion,
yourself
included, as you’ll recall. There’s no shortage of motives, although they all seem rooted in ancient
history,
and anyone who was at the reunion could conceivably have found an opportunity, but we haven’t turned up any strong suspects. We’re doing the best we can, but in the absence of relatives or anyone else bringing pressure to bear, other matters have taken precedence.”

I leaned across the table in disbelief. “Wait a minute. You mean Mindy’s family hasn’t been demanding answers?”

He looked quizzical. “What family? Her parents are deceased. She had one sibling, a brother, also deceased. There’s no husband, although there were a couple of early marriages, and no children. The two women who accompanied Ms.
Marchelewski
to the reunion have no knowledge of any living kin or even close friends. Apparently, they met her plane from Cincinnati late Saturday afternoon as pre-arranged by e-mail, but the three of them hadn’t been in close touch for years. Her employer, a fancy fitness center on the outskirts of Cincinnati, didn’t have an emergency contact on file for her. We placed an ad in several metropolitan newspapers, asking anyone with information to contact us, but so far no one has come forward. I’m sorry to sound uncaring, Ms. Lawrence, but frankly, you’re the first person who’s expressed the slightest interest in your friend’s death.”

My friend?
I was completely taken aback. For some reason I had assumed Mindy still lived in Connecticut, and the Queens of Mean still hung out on occasion. Now I saw that wasn’t true.

“Mindy wasn’t my friend,” I told
Hagearty
, trying to take in the new scenario he’d laid out. “From what you’ve just told me, I guess she wasn’t anybody’s friend.”

Hagearty
nodded. “It looks that way. So why are you here?”

“On a related matter.
At least, I think it’s related.” I pushed a Ziploc bag containing the message that had been left in my mailbox across the table. After filling him in on the details, I told him about the previous message to Joanie or maybe Ariel, we weren’t sure which. “They’re not threats exactly, more like warnings, but we wanted someone official to know about them.”

The detective examined the paper closely without opening the Ziploc. “Assuming this is, in fact, related to the
Marchelewski
incident, what reason would anyone have to think you’re involved in our investigation?”

“They don’t. I’m not, but I have a little history with similar inquiries in Wethersfield, totally unofficially, and this person seems to have made an assumption. I happened to be on the scene when Mindy was found, but as you’ve already pointed out, so were a couple of hundred other people, many of them with axes to grind. The only things that have happened since then are the anonymous message Joanie Haines found and her visit to me on New Year’s Eve. As far as I know, her friend Ariel MacAfee is the only person who knows about that, but now I get this message. It makes my interest more personal.”

He fingered the Ziploc thoughtfully. “What do you know about the MacAfee woman? Where was she when this was delivered? You said you saw the individual at your mailbox.”

“I don’t know, but I plan to find out. All I saw was a shapeless figure in a puffy coat and long scarf. I couldn’t tell you if it was a man or a woman.”

Hagearty
glanced at his watch none too discreetly. “I’ll have this message dusted on the off chance we can lift an identifiable print. Even if we do get lucky, the odds of it matching one in our databases aren’t good. Beyond that, there’s nothing more we can do here. Anonymous messages are annoying but not illegal.” He shrugged again, a gesture I was beginning to resent.

“Have you at least been able to identify the substance that killed Mindy?” I asked, exasperated.

“Not for certain, although we have some ideas.
The advanced toxicology testing will help pinpoint that. I can tell you the lady liked her chemicals. She was pretty boozed up, and some other stuff showed up in the initial
tox
screen. Plus, she appeared to be a diabetic, so that complicates matters.”

That took me by surprise, but it made sense when I considered Mindy’s lifelong zeal to stay slim and fit.

“What makes you think Mindy was a diabetic, and what was in the syringe? Surely that was identified,” I pressed.

“Traces of insulin,”
Hagearty
replied. “At first we figured she was so drunk she forgot she’d already taken a dose earlier and accidentally OD’d, but something else got her first.”

I frowned. “Even if she was as tipsy as you say, and frankly, she didn’t seem that far gone to me when I saw her around ten o’clock, I doubt that a longtime diabetic would accidentally overdose herself. Does insulin react badly with alcohol? Was something else in her bloodstream?”

He regarded me for a few seconds as if weighing the advisability of telling me anything further. Good grief, did the man actually consider me a suspect?

“There wasn’t any insulin,” he said at length. “There was a narcotic substance and something else, but whether it was enough to kill her, we don’t know yet. Unfortunately, the EMTs were unable to detect it at the scene.”

I was sincerely puzzled. As amateurish as my investigator status was, I did watch crime shows on television from time to time. “I can understand why the insulin syringe might have caused a little confusion at first, but insulin is injected under the skin. Heroin goes in a vein, doesn’t it? I would think if Mindy was shooting up, there must have been a puncture mark, and anyway, one look at her dilated pupils would have clued in the paramedics. They must have seen it about a thousand times before.”

“If they had been able to see her pupils, yes, but that wasn’t possible,” he said tersely, “and it wasn’t heroin that turned up.”

I wasn’t about to settle for half-answers now. “What was the narcotic, Detective, and why couldn’t the EMTs see Mindy’s eyes?” I persisted, not entirely sure I wanted to hear his answers.

After another long, assessing look, he let me have it with both barrels. “If the
tox
report confirms our suspicions, and I emphasize they are only suspicions at this time, Mindy
Marchelewski
died from a lethal dose of morphine. The paramedics’ initial evaluation was impeded by the fact that the victim’s eyelashes were glued shut. Because of the empty syringe on the floor, they proceeded on an assumption of insulin overdose. By the time the
tox
screen revealed the morphine, it had killed her.”

I was genuinely shocked. Her eyelids glued shut? Surely that took suicide off the table.

 
“You mean someone killed her,” I speculated aloud. “Detective
Hagearty
, is there any reason why I shouldn’t do a little unofficial investigating of my own, ask a few questions?”

He sighed heavily. “I had to figure that was coming,” he said with resignation. “From what your former classmates told us, you’ve become the Jane
Marple
of Wethersfield, a real amateur sleuth.” He could barely keep his lip from curling in a sneer.

“Jessica Fletcher,” I corrected him testily. “It’s not as though I go looking for these situations. They just seem to keep cropping up.”

“
Mmmmm
.
Well, I can think of one reason why you might want to stay out of it.” He waved the Ziploc bag at me. “Maybe this isn’t a threat. Maybe it’s just good advice from someone who knows more about this thing than you do.”

I wondered how much more
Hagearty
knew that he wasn’t telling me. “That’s a state of affairs I intend to correct, Detective. Mindy
Marchelewski
was not my friend, far from it, but she didn’t deserve to die on a bathroom floor with her eyes glued shut and have nobody give a damn.” I glared at him for emphasis. “The two women who cared about her even marginally are terrified, and now I feel threatened, as well. Self-preservation is a big interest of mine. I really feel I have no choice but to try to find some answers.”

Another irritating shrug.
“My professional advice is to let it alone, but it’s a free country. Keep in touch.”

Nine

I drove straight from Brewster to Shear Heaven in West Hartford to see what more, if anything, I could learn from Joanie and Ariel. It was unfortunate that I had to do it in the middle of a work day, but now that I knew they had been in touch with Mindy only sporadically over the last thirty-five years, it shouldn’t take long to glean what limited information they might have. Besides, I was annoyed that after dragging me into this thing, Joanie hadn’t even bothered to return my calls. What the heck, I decided while inspecting my hands, which were ravaged from days of transferring files. I could always use a manicure.

For all its la-di-dah reputation, Shear Heaven wasn’t nearly as posh as I’d expected. The custom awning over the entrance and the hand-painted lettering on the front window were a bit intimidating, but inside it could have been any salon anywhere. Even the patrons awaiting their appointments in a half-circle of vinyl chairs in front of the reception desk were standard issue: middle-aged women in overstuffed designer jeans, yapping on their cell phones instead of to each other.

I approached the young woman behind the desk and explained my need to have a word with Joanie and Ariel as best I could between interruptions from her phone. Apparently, business was good.

“Ariel is off for a few days. Death in the family or something,” she said, making it clear she had doubts about the veracity of Ariel’s excuse, “but Joanie’s due for a break in about fifteen minutes.” She glanced at the watch on her wrist. It was a utilitarian Timex, I noticed. “I’ll tell her you’re waiting.” She waved me to a seat, which I occupied obediently. How she managed to deliver my message was a mystery, since the salon phone never quit ringing, but in due course Joanie appeared, looking pale and worried above her blue nylon smock. Instead of being annoyed, as I’d expected, she actually seemed glad to see me.

“Thanks for stopping by, Kate. I guess you heard Ari isn’t in, but after what happened yesterday, she simply couldn’t face it.” Becoming aware of the half-dozen waiting clients and the receptionist, all of whose ears were turned toward us as they feigned elaborate indifference, she nodded at a door marked Employees Only on one side of the reception area. Wordlessly, I followed her and found myself in a small, windowless room with lockers lining the long walls on either side of us. A large mirror occupied the wall opposite the door, and a door to the right of it led into a small bathroom.

“We’re expected to look good for the customers, so we change into our smocks and check our hair and make-up in here before work and on breaks,” Joanie explained. “Each of us has a locker where we store our street clothes and handbags, that sort of thing.”

She walked over to the one marked Haines and slipped a key out of her pocket, which she used to open it. A weatherproof coat—not puffy, I noted—scarf and purse hung on hooks, and high-heeled boots stood neatly beneath them. From a small shelf at the top of the locker, she slid a folded sheet of white paper that I instantly recognized.

“You got another one,” I said, my heart sinking.

Joanie shook her head and pointed to a locker at the end of the opposite row, plainly labeled MacAfee. “Ari found this in her locker when we took our break yesterday morning. Someone pushed it through the air vent at the top, see?” She closed the door to her own locker and demonstrated.

“Was anyone else in here at the time?” I noticed Ariel’s locker was right next to the bathroom entrance. Anyone coming or going would have little trouble slipping the single sheet of paper through the air vent without being noticed.

“There could have been, I guess, but I don’t remember anyone in particular. We have to stagger our breaks according to the appointment schedule for the day, but a few people are generally coming in and out.”

As if to illustrate her point, a heavily made-up blonde with outrageously spiky hair blew into the locker room and headed for the bathroom. “Hey,” was all she said to Joanie. She looked at me curiously but was intent on her errand.

“Anyway, we came in around this time yesterday,” she continued, keeping her voice low. “Ari opened her locker to get her purse, and this fell out of the other side of the vent.”

She handed the note to me, and I opened it to confront familiar block lettering which read, “Don’t say anything.”

“She was so upset after that, she almost fainted. She does that when she’s really stressed.”

I remembered Ariel’s reaction to finding Mindy unconscious and nodded my understanding. “She told the owner she’d just gotten word of a death in the family and wouldn’t be in today. Then she took off. I had to finish my shift. I gave her a call last night, but it went to voicemail. I figure she took a couple of
Ambiens
and went to bed.”

“Well, at least this time we know the message was intended for Ariel, so that makes three of us who have been warned so far.”

“Three of us?”
Joanie asked, puzzled, as the spiky blonde rushed past us in the opposite direction, fumbling to get a cigarette out of a pack.

I realized I had not yet told her about my Wednesday night visitor or this morning’s visit with Detective
Hagearty
. I filled her in, keeping one eye on the locker room door in case we were interrupted again. Joanie looked flabbergasted.

“Wow,” she
said,
her eyes wide. “I could have told them Mindy wasn’t a diabetic. She didn’t eat sweets, I remember, but that was just a diet thing. She was always on a diet.”

Mindful of time ticking past, I pressed on. “The night of the reunion, you told me Mindy had had a roving eye for as long as you’d known her. I assumed at the time that meant she lived around here somewhere and you’d kept in touch, but
Hagearty
said she lived in Cincinnati and you’d arranged before the reunion to meet her flight.”

“Yes, that’s right. She found me on
Facebook
and asked us to, and we figured, what the heck?” She glanced at her watch and hustled me back through the door to the reception area. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

A rail-thin brunette eyed her impatiently between annoyed glances at her watch. “I’ll be right with you, Angela,” Joanie soothed her, but I grabbed her elbow to keep her from rushing off.

“Speaking of not answering calls, why didn’t you return mine yesterday?” I wanted to know.

She looked contrite. “I’m really sorry about that, especially after what you just told me, but Ari begged me not to. She’s terrified, Kate. I’ve never seen
her this
unglued.” She winced as she remembered what I’d told her about Mindy’s eyelids.

“Listen, I told her, “I’m not at all sure what I can do to help clear this up, probably nothing. But I do have a little history with this sort of thing, and people tend to cut me a little slack as a result. So I’m going to do some nosing around, ask a few questions from a different perspective. I don’t have any real hope of learning why Mindy died, but maybe I can get whoever’s writing these warnings to call off the poison pen campaign.” I looked her straight in the eye. “It isn’t you, is it?”

Her mouth made a big, round O. “Me?” she squealed, causing every head in the waiting area to swivel toward us yet again. “How could you … why would I … do you have any idea how upset I’ve been …?” She burst into tears. I fumbled in my purse for tissues and felt as rotten as I probably deserved to, but I had to ask, I consoled myself as I led Joanie outside.

“Just a little misunderstanding, ladies,” I threw over my shoulder to our avid audience, but nobody was buying it.

The blonde we’d seen earlier in the locker room huddled at the corner of the building, puffing furiously on her cigarette. As I steered Joanie past her, she ground out the butt under her shoe and dashed back inside. Apparently, histrionics among the staff weren’t all that uncommon.

“Joanie, hush now.
I’m sorry your feelings are hurt, but I had to be sure, and now I am. I believe you, and I’m going to try to help you, but I need your help in return.” I pressed tissues into her hand. Good thing I always kept plenty in my pocket. She blew her nose and stood shivering in the cold breeze.

“I have to get back inside, or I’ll lose my job.”

“I know, and I’ll be quick. I need to know how to get in touch with some of the other Brewster graduates who were at the reunion Saturday night. Who would know how to do that?”

She looked at me as if I’d lost my ability to reason.
“
Maryellyn
, Jean and Joanne, of course.
They organized the whole event, so they must know how to contact everybody who was there. Now honestly, I’ve got to go.” She made a run for it, leaving me with egg on my face.

Duh, Kate.
Some investigator you are, I chided myself as I trudged back to my car.

I recalled from her e-mails to me that
Maryellyn
lived in Rocky Hill, one town over from Wethersfield. She also had a listed telephone number, which made contacting her a simple matter. After hearing the reason for my call, she agreed to print out her reunion contact list and meet me at the Town Line Diner for a quick lunch.

Efficient as always,
Maryellyn
managed to arrive in the parking lot within a minute of my arrival. She pulled into the space next to me and got out of her no-nonsense sedan, waving a manila envelope at me in greeting. The print-out, I assumed.

We chose a booth at the rear of the restaurant, a discreet distance from other early
lunchers
. The Town Line was a popular eatery and would soon be filled with local business people in search of a quick bite. The nip in the air and threatening snow clouds insured that soup business would be brisk, and I was grateful to be able to place my order before the rush.
Maryellyn
had the same idea. In just a few minutes, steaming bowls of minestrone were placed before us.

“
Mmmm
,”
Maryellyn
sniffed appreciatively. “Thanks for suggesting that we meet here, Kate. I’ve been so busy with the holidays and the reunion, I can’t remember the last time I sat down to a meal cooked by someone else.”

“It’s a treat for me, too. Lunch on a work day is usually a mug of
microwaved
tea and some crackers. I just wish my reason for being here with you was less troubling.”

“It’s a nightmare,” she agreed. “Most people have no idea how much work goes into organizing this sort of an event. The alumni are scattered all over the country, and so many years have gone by, just locating most of them was a huge challenge. Jean and Joanne and some of the other girls were a lot of help, but even so, it was a big job. And then to have it turn out like this … well, we wanted it to be an evening to remember, but a mysterious death wasn’t what we had in mind.” Her laugh was hollow.

I smiled when she referred to her committee members, all over fifty years of age, as “girls” but found myself regarding her with respect. To be honest, I had always secretly sneered at the
Maryellyns
of this world, full of school spirit and enthusiasm; but looking at the weary, middle-aged woman across from me, who had devoted months of effort to pulling the reunion together in addition to coping with the holidays and everything else in her life, I felt new appreciation for her positive energy. She had wanted us all to have a pleasant evening, to relive happy memories, and to a large extent, she had accomplished that.

“It was a wonderful party,” I told her sincerely, “right up until midnight, and no one could have foreseen what happened then. The work involved must have been staggering, and nobody could have done a better job. I guess my mother was right.”

Maryellyn
blew carefully on a spoonful of soup.
“How so?”

“She always used to say that no good deed goes unpunished. I guess you can relate to that, huh?”

This time her laughter was genuine, and I was glad to see her more relaxed. Over cups of hot tea we got down to the reason for our meeting. She removed a list from the manila envelope and pushed it across the table to me, glancing at the surrounding tables, now filled with hungry patrons. No one paid us the slightest attention, and why would they? Nobody in the place was from Brewster, and even if they were, they’d have no interest in the class of 1978 or what had happened at our reunion last Saturday.

I scanned the pages, six of them, cataloging the names, mailing addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of perhaps a hundred people I had mostly passed in the hall between classes all those years ago. I could put faces to a few more of the names than I had at the reunion, but most were strange to me. Married names, I realized.

“This is great, but I’m going to need you to put maiden names to most of the women on this list.”

Wordlessly she leaned over and pointed to one of the alien names, after which appeared in parentheses a name I recognized. Sandy Schwartz, who rang no bells of memory whatever, popped right to the front of my mind when she became Sandy
Leibowitz
, the cut-up who’d sat next to me in geometry class. I grinned at
Maryellyn
. “Leave it to you to fill in the blanks.”