Auld Lang Syne (15 page)

“And this Dave had a girlfriend? Why can’t I think who you’re talking about?”

Joanie chewed and swallowed before answering.
“Probably because he wasn’t at Brewster all that long.
He was an Army brat, I think.
Transferred in during our junior year.
He was gone by Christmas the next year, and it was all because of Mindy.” She picked up a fry and looked at it but returned it to her plate uneaten.

“Why, what happened?” I wasn’t entirely certain I wanted to know.

Sadness,
or perhaps it was regret, flickered across Joanie’s face as she dredged up the details. “Like I said, Dave had a steady girlfriend in the junior class. She worshipped the mud on his sneakers, and he seemed totally devoted to her, too. But as you have reason to know, sexual opportunity trumps devotion every time when it comes to teenage boys. The poor little buggers are complete pushovers for a predator like Mindy. Dave never knew what hit him. Mindy dangled the bait, and Dave’s girlfriend was history. It should have turned out just like all the other boyfriend-
nabbings
, but this particular episode ended very badly.”

She pushed her plate away entirely, and I found myself holding my breath.

“The girlfriend committed suicide, hanged herself in her bedroom about a week later. She said she didn’t want to live without him, and get this: She wished him and Mindy
every happiness
in her suicide note. How’s that for laying a guilt trip on somebody?”

I realized my mouth had fallen open and snapped it shut. “How is it possible I never knew any of this?” I managed to get out.

Joanie finished her Bloody Mary. “You said it before. You were all wrapped up in Mitch and your own life that year. I’m sure you heard rumors; you’ve just forgotten. Luckily, when Mindy got around to preying on Mitch, you were a lot tougher than … Kathy? Nancy? I can’t remember. Anyway, Dave left Brewster very soon after that. Went to a private school in Massachusetts, I think it was, so he wouldn’t even be in our yearbook. Why is this important now? It’s not as if he was at the reunion, so he couldn’t be a suspect.” She signaled the waitress for a check and glanced at her watch.”

I took the hint and reached for my purse. “I’m not sure, but something tells me there’s a connection. It’s nothing concrete, just a feeling I have. You don’t remember the girlfriend’s name either?”

“Just that she was a year behind us when we were seniors. Listen, I’ll get this check. I want to try Ari again. What are you going to do next?

For once in this bizarre investigation, I knew exactly what I was going to do—call Mitch and Agnes.

Having successfully resisted the siren call of Max’s food, I delayed my chat with Mitch and Agnes until I’d consumed a very small, skinless chicken breast, a tossed salad and fresh green beans. I chewed slowly, savoring every bite, and rewarded myself with a small glass of postprandial Pinot
Grigio
. As I ate I went over Joanie’s story of Dave and Kathy, or maybe Nancy, in my mind. It was a tawdry little tale, and while my compassionate self sympathized with the heartbroken girl, a part of me was disgusted with her for doing such an awful thing to herself, her parents, even poor Dave. Because of what, I
snarked
, the Queen of Mean and what had probably taken ten minutes in the back seat of a car? Mindy had done the very same thing to me, and I can honestly say suicide never once crossed my mind—homicide, for sure, but not for long and never seriously. I had been enraged and sick with disappointment, but I’d gotten over both. What had prevented Dave’s girlfriend from doing the same?

I posed that question to Mitch and Agnes after asking what they remembered about the high school tragedy. Agnes spoke to me on their kitchen phone, while Mitch chimed in on an upstairs extension. In the background I heard the sounds of youngsters roughhousing to the accompaniment of the TV.

“Grandkids,” Mitch explained, and I laughed.

“They make all this adolescent angst
seem
very long ago and far away, as it should be. Yet here we are, lo these many years later, trying to make sense of it,” Agnes mused.

“Do either of you remember Dave’s last name or who his girlfriend was?”

“Engle,” Mitch said promptly.

“That’s right, Dave Engle, and his girlfriend was Kathy Schuyler. She was a junior when I was, and she was in my fourth period geometry class. We were all so impressed that her boyfriend was a senior,” Agnes remembered.

“What else can you tell me about them?”

“Dave was kind of a loner,” Mitch explained, “nice enough and all, but he kept pretty much to himself. I guess being dragged from school to school your whole life will do that to you.”

I remembered what Joanie had told me. “That’s
right,
his father was Army, wasn’t he?”

“Air Force,” said Mitch, “but that’s close enough. It’s the same drill, a new base every couple of years. I seem to recall that Dave wanted to be a doctor, but I don’t know if that ever happened.”

Agnes spoke up. “Well, I didn’t know Dave at all, but I saw him around school with Kathy. She was a quiet little thing, almost prim, and she dressed kind of oddly. Her clothes were very modest, all buttoned up, no
bare
arms, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds like her family belonged to one of those ultra-conservative religious sects like the Amish or Mennonites. Schuyler is a Germanic name, isn’t it? So that would fit. Was Kathy from around here?”

Agnes considered for a minute. “I don’t think she was, now that you mention it, at least not originally. I can’t remember her being in our elementary school like I can most of the rest of us. She must have transferred here from somewhere else. Maybe that’s what she and Dave had in common.”

A sudden uproar erupted in the background. “Uh oh, World War III just broke out up here, Kate. I’d better go mediate. Let us know if you come up with anything else. ‘Bye.” Mitch disconnected, and the sound of battling children receded.

“Some things never change,” Agnes groused. “Why we ever thought taking care of grandchildren would be easier than children, I can’t imagine. At least tomorrow morning, we can give them back to their parents.”

“That’s a big plus,” I agreed. “My only grandchild is still a tot, so we don’t have to deal with overnights yet.”

“On that happy note I’d better go give Mitch a hand,” Agnes sighed. “I don’t know if we helped you, but feel free to pick our aging brains anytime, Kate. I confess
,
I’m very curious to know how this all turns out.”

“Me, too,” I said wryly, “and if I ever find out, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

As I put down my phone, I wondered yet again why the heretofore unknown-to-me saga of Dave Engle and Kathy Schuyler had grabbed my attention. After all, Dave had not even graduated from Brewster High School and of course had not attended the reunion. There was no way he could be connected to Mindy’s death, and yet …

Before I had a chance to sort out my thoughts, the phone rang. Expecting to hear Armando letting me know he was on his way home, I was startled to find Pat Connelly on the line.

“Sorry to bother you, Kate, but you asked me to call if something else came up about Mindy
Marchelewski’s
death.” She laughed without mirth. “Well, it has.”

My heart started racing, but I was careful to keep my voice even. “No problem at all, Pat. What’s up? Did you think of something new?”

“Not exactly.
It’s my partner Carrie. I should have insisted she call you herself, because boy, does she have that coming, but what could I do?” She sighed heavily. “The thing is, she … we … need to speak with you confidentially as soon as possible. Carrie,” she clarified with dour emphasis on the name, “has a confession to make.”

“A confession?”
I repeated stupidly. “What could she possibly want to confess to me?” I was terribly afraid I knew the answer, but Pat headed me off.

“Not what you think, or we’d be on our way to the Brewster P.D. right now instead of calling you. Listen, it’s complicated, and I’d rather do this in person than on the phone. I know you’re in the middle of your work week, but could we drive up to Wethersfield tomorrow and grab half an hour of your time? We would really appreciate your advice.”

I tried to remember what was on the Mack Realty schedule for the next day. Just another Tuesday, as far as I knew, and
Strutter
and Margo would both
be
in the office.

“Sure thing,” I agreed. Questions churned in my head, but Pat had already made it clear that she preferred to talk in person. “Come in around noon, and we’ll commandeer the conference room we use for closings. It’s small and private.
But how about you?
Tomorrow’s a work day for you, as well, isn’t it?”

Another mirthless chuckle.
“That’s why God gave us sick days, and heaven knows I feel pretty ill at the moment.
 
See you then.”

Fourteen

“A confession, oh my.”
Margo’s eyes were wide. I was sharing coffee with my partners in the Mack office on Tuesday morning. “Whatever do you think they have to tell you?”

Strutter
wore that Obeah woman expression she got when she was about to make a prediction. Her Jamaican ancestors would have been proud.

“Whatever it is, it’s connected to your old classmate’s death,” she pronounced. Margo and I blinked at each other. Well, duh. What other connection had I had with Patricia Connelly in the last thirty-five years?

“When are they
stoppin
’ by? I’ve never met a real lesbian couple.” Margo’s fascination was unabashed, as if she were about to see some strange new strain of
homo
sapiens. I frowned at her.

“You won’t be meeting one today either. I promised Pat and Carrie a private chat. Emma said we can use the upstairs conference room.”

“Oh.” Margo was clearly disappointed.

“What is it you find so interesting about lesbians?”
Strutter
wanted to know. Margo now had her compact open and was making invisible adjustments to her lip gloss. She snapped it shut and gave
Strutter
a wink.

“It’s not some kinky, voyeuristic thing, if that’s what you’re
thinkin
’. I’ve never had the slightest interest in anyone’s sex life but my own, thank you very much.”

“That would be more than enough for anyone,”
Strutter
agreed, and I laughed.

Margo gazed at us tolerantly. “Now you know perfectly well I haven’t got a biased bone in my body. Just think of all the gay men we know, like that perfectly
darlin
’ young police officer who works with John, and Henry the caterer, and my hairdresser. Why even when I was
growin
’ up in Georgia, it seemed as if everybody had an uncle or two who never married. The reason just wasn’t discussed, but now gay men are everywhere.”

“Gay men have always been everywhere,” I pointed out. “They just weren’t openly acknowledged except in crude jokes.”

“And I think it’s wonderful that they can be who they are today and to hell with the silly bigots who are still in denial.”

“So?”
Strutter
persisted.

“So we’ve all pretty much adjusted to
havin
’ gay men in our midst.”

“My best friend in college was a gay man,” I remembered wistfully. He was the perfect escort, a great dancer and funny as all get out. I still miss him.”

“See, you just said it—him. You miss him.
But what about gay women?
Statistically, there must be as many of them in the general population as there are gay men, but do either of you know any? Did you ever have a gay girlfriend?”

Strutter
shook her head slowly. “Not that I know of, but as you say, I might not have known.”

I thought hard but came up empty, too. “Now that I think about it, I must have. There have always been plenty among us, but it’s only recently they seem to have become at all mainstream, starting with celebrities like Rosie O’Donnell, Wanda Sykes, Ellen
Degeneres
,
Suze
Orman
.”

“There you go,” said Margo triumphantly. “So I want to meet some real-life gay women, see what all the fuss is about.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.
The only one making a fuss here is you. I went through high school with Pat Connelly, and I never had a clue that she preferred girls to boys.”

“From what you’ve told us, she didn’t either, at least not until a little later on,”
Strutter
reminded me. A light bulb seemed to go on over her head. “Maybe that’s how it was with Charlie and Duane, too.”

“Exactly,” I agreed, “the point being that people are complex critters, and there’s a lot more to know about us than our gender preferences.”

The office phone started ringing, and
Strutter
reluctantly moved to answer it. “Did you two remember to reactivate your
Facebook
accounts?” she asked, her hand hovering over the console.

“Huh, as if I would ever have such a
revoltin
’ thing.”
Margo looked at her watch and snatched up her briefcase.
“
Gotta
run.”

“Tonight,” I promised and turned my attention to my accumulated e-mails. I hoped my meeting with Pat and her partner wouldn’t change my plans.

At a few minutes past noon I heard the big front door to the Law Barn open and hurried to meet Pat and Carrie in the lobby. Both women were casually outfitted beneath their heavy winter parkas in stylish jeans, blazers and boots, as befitted a day off in January, but their facial expressions were far from relaxed. As we trudged upstairs and filed past Emma, busy on the phone as usual, she threw us a curious look and waved a greeting but didn’t miss a beat of her conversation.

“My daughter,” I explained and led the way into the small conference room we used for closings and other business meetings. I flicked on the lights and shut the door behind us to assure privacy. “Have a seat.”

I chose a chair for myself midway down the long table. Pat selected a seat on the same side. Carrie hesitated until Pat waved her to the other side of the table,
then
moved slowly to a place opposite us. Pat’s irritation with her partner was evident, and Carrie’s cowed demeanor told me she was very aware of being in the doghouse.

I attempted to lighten things up with a little small talk. “Pat tells me you work at the hospital, too, in admissions, I believe she said. Have I got that right?” I beamed brightly across the table, but Carrie’s downcast expression remained unchanged.

“For the moment, but I don’t know how much longer that will last,” she murmured. Her eyes sought Pat’s briefly before dropping back to her hands, which were clasped tightly on the table before her.

Beside me Pat huffed in annoyance. “My guess is not long at all,” she snapped. “Listen, Kate, you’re in the middle of your day, and we don’t want to waste any more of your time than necessary, so we’ll get right to the point. Carrie is the one who glued Mindy
Marchelewski’s
eyelashes together, but she didn’t kill her. She swears to that, and I believe her. I didn’t know about it when you and I met Saturday morning, or I would have told you then. She’s been running around half the state for the past week, delivering anonymous notes warning people not to look into Mindy’s death any further, if you can believe it, but she finally realized she was getting herself in deeper and deeper. She
fessed
up last night, and I haven’t an idea in hell what to do about it. There’s a lot at stake, and we’re hoping you can advise us.”

She glared across the table once again, and Carrie met her eyes gratefully. “At least you’re still saying ‘we,’” she joked tremulously.

“Of course I am. What do you think I’m doing here trying to save your sorry tail? You’re not a murderer, you’re an idiot, but I don’t think they can put you away for too many years on account of that.” Her tone softened fractionally as she added, “We’ll figure it out.”

I followed this exchange as best I could while struggling not to look shocked. The truth was
,
I couldn’t have been more astonished at this revelation if both women had sprouted wings and flapped around the room.

“But why would anybody do a thing like that?” I blurted before I managed to get a grip.

“It’s a long story,” Carrie sighed.

 
“It would almost have to be. Maybe you’d better start from the beginning.”

By the time Carrie had given me a blow-by-blow account of her part in the events of December 29
^th
, I felt like that character in
The Exorcist
whose head spins alarmingly. It was evidently a relief for her to be able to tell somebody the truth, and she apologized repeatedly for behaving like a stalker.

“I know the anonymous letters were a big mistake. They only made everybody more interested in finding out what happened.”

“And following Kate around was just plain dumb,” Pat added, showing no mercy. “It was Carrie you saw at the diner the day you had lunch with
Maryellyn
Deschler
,” she said to me in an aside before redirecting her ire to her partner across the table. “What did you have planned next, bugging her car?”

If possible, Carrie looked even more shamefaced than she had when they’d arrived. “I didn’t know what else to do when I heard she was looking into Mindy’s death. I had to get her to stop. The other notes were just misdirection.”

Pat rolled her eyes at me. “She reads a lot of whodunits, in case you hadn’t figured that out.”

“You won’t tell the others it was me, will you?” Carrie pleaded. “I’ll be a complete laughing stock.”

“If we’re lucky, that’s all you’ll be,” Pat interrupted. “Anyway, you’ll never see those people again. You didn’t go to Brewster High, I did. If anybody gets laughed out of Connecticut, it will be me for having brought an obviously demented person to the reunion. They’ll probably write about it in the class newsletter.”

She paused for breath before clearing her throat nervously. “There’s one more thing, Kate. The empty insulin syringe was Carrie’s. It fell out of her purse when she was trying to find the glue. It had nothing at all to do with Mindy’s death. I should have said something when we talked on Saturday morning, but I couldn’t believe it might belong to Carrie, so I kept quiet. I apologize.”

I couldn’t help but sympathize, but I was torn. “I know you only wanted to make Mindy look stupid. You didn’t know she was going to die when you did the thing with her eyelashes, but she did. I’ll try to keep your name out of this, but I don’t know if that will be possible. At the very least, I have to let the others know they’re in no danger from the letter writer. Ariel MacAfee is so freaked out that she hasn’t been to the salon she works at in nearly a week. How did you get that last one into her locker at Shear Heaven, by the way?”

Carrie looked blank. “The only message I sent Ariel MacAfee was the hand-printed note I stuck in her evening bag at the reunion after the policeman started asking questions. I was terrified that she’d seen me leaving the women’s room. I don’t even know where Shear Heaven is.”

Great, I thought, another unexplained mystery. Pat glanced at her watch and got to her feet, motioning to Carrie to do the same. “I know you’ve got to get back to work. I’m on the swing shift myself today. I can’t thank you enough for hearing us out, and we’ll do whatever you think best, even if you can’t keep Carrie’s name out of it.”

“Let me sleep on it,” I begged. “At the moment this is about the only piece of the mystery that’s become clear. I need a little time to put it into context.” An understatement if I’d ever made one. “I’ll give it my best shot and call you in a day or two.”

We filed back downstairs, and I ushered them out the front door of the Law Barn, feeling like a fraud. More than a week had passed since Mindy’s death, and I was more in the dark than ever, with the single exception of Carrie’s confession. On the other hand, I comforted
myself,
I now had more information than the annoying Detective
Hagearty
.

It was after five o’clock before I had an opportunity to fill in my partners and my daughter.

“That is about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of a grown woman
doin
’,” Margo said after listening to my account of Carrie’s story. She passed a bottle of
Côtes
du Rhône to
Strutter
, who splashed a little into her paper cup before handing it to Emma, who did the same. With the addition of Emma to our little group, we were ending the day as we had begun it, but red wine had replaced the coffee.

“I pulled some wacky stunts in high school, but I never heard of anything like this, and I sure can’t see myself doing them at the age of fifty-plus.” Emma was clearly awed.

“Scratch the surface of an angry middle-aged woman, and you’ll find a berserk teenager in there who’ll do almost anything to exact revenge. Boy, just when you think you’ve heard it all,”
Strutter
clucked.

I nodded. “The part that really gets me is the revenge was for the things Mindy did to Pat all those years ago. Carrie didn’t even attend Brewster. She and Pat met at the hospital maybe ten years ago and fell hard for each other. They’ve been together ever since. They know each other’s
histories,
fight each other’s battles, just like any other couple.”