Auld Lang Syne (3 page)

“It would seem that the police person who is moving so very casually toward us would like to speak with you,
Cara
,” Armando observed.

“Of course he does,” I said with resignation. “They always do.”

“But why?” he asked curiously.

Mitch, Agnes and I avoided looking at each other. We knew why, and so did most of the other people in the gymnasium. Agnes patted my arm in sympathy.

“It was such a long time ago,” she murmured. “Surely all of that can’t have any bearing on what’s happened here tonight.”

Armando frowned but held his tongue for the present. I knew there would be more questions when we got home, should that happy time ever come. I sighed in resignation.

“Ms. Lawrence?” inquired the young officer who now stood before us. I allowed that I was she. He consulted a small notebook and looked at my companions. “You would be the husband?” he said to Armando, giving him a squinty once-over.

“Armando Velasquez, yes.
I am married to Ms. Lawrence,” Armando acknowledged. I recognized the offended chill in his voice.

“Which makes you Mitchell and Agnes
Spivak
, nee
Gagliardi
,” the cop continued as if merely confirming what he already knew. Mitch and Agnes nodded mutely. Ariel and Joanie had certainly made a complete report of anyone present
who
might still harbor a grudge against Mindy, I fumed. Talk about an embarrassment of suspects. If he planned to question all of us this evening, we would never get out of here. That reminded me of Harold King. I looked around but didn’t see him anywhere.
Too bad.
I would have been glad to pass the time catching up with him.

I peered at the name tag on the policeman’s chest. “How can we help you, Officer McCarthy?” I volunteered in an attempt to get this moving. I was probably old enough to be this kid’s mother, and it was way past my bedtime.
Maybe his, too.

McCarthy’s eyes came back to me. “We’re just trying to get a baseline of everyone’s comings and goings tonight, especially those who had a history with the victim. I understand that you and Mr.
Spivak
did.”

“As did half the other people here this evening,” I informed him crisply, “but thirty-five years is a long time to hold an adolescent offense against someone, officer. Does this mean that Mindy’s, uh, condition isn’t a result of an accidental overdose of some kind?”

“I’m not at liberty to confirm or deny anything at this time, Ma’am. This is an unofficial inquiry. I’m asking you and Mr.
Spivak
to give us complete contact information in case we need to reach you later for a statement.” He nodded at Mitch, who looked annoyed.

“I don’t live here anymore. We’re just in town visiting relatives for the holiday and stayed for the reunion. We’ve got a flight back to St. Louis tomorrow morning. Can we get this over with?”

Agnes shook her head at him. “Of course, we’ll do everything possible to help, but quite frankly, we’re as mystified as everyone else is about what happened to Mindy,” she said in a more conciliatory tone. “All we know is that she was found unconscious in the women’s room by her friends, Joan Haines and Ariel MacAfee. There was apparently an empty syringe lying near her on the floor. Someone ran to get you, and the paramedics arrived shortly thereafter.” She shrugged. “That’s about it.”

McCarthy listened politely but remained impassive. To my surprise, Armando spoke up.

“We were told that this person accidentally overdosed on an illegal substance which reacted badly with the alcohol already in her system. She appeared to be inebriated when she arrived. Is this not what happened?”

McCarthy looked curious. “What illegal
substance would that be, sir, and how did you come
by that information?”

Armando looked from one of us to the other, but we had nothing to offer.

“Who told us that, do you remember?” I asked the
Spivaks
, but their blank expressions answered my question.

Armando turned his palms up. “I am afraid that I also cannot answer your questions
es
-specifically,” he said finally, his use of the Spanish “
es
” betraying his discomfort. “It seemed to be, how
do you
say it, common knowledge.”

“
Mmm
.
Well, give it some more thought. Let us know if you think of any details that might be helpful.” He distributed business cards printed with his name and direct telephone number. “I’d appreciate your coming over to the sign-in table now to write down your contact information.”

He nodded at us and headed to the next cluster of people sitting in the bleachers, clearly expecting us to do as he’d asked. Agnes and Mitch looked at me helplessly and got to their feet, dazed.

“This is just nuts,” was Mitch’s only comment as they trailed over to the sign-in table with obvious reluctance, and I had to agree as we did the same.

Having finally reclaimed our coats and made our way out of the building, Armando and I climbed wearily into the car and reached simultaneously for the seat warmer controls. The events of the evening had chilled us more than the temperature, which wasn’t exactly balmy anyway.
 
After a few miles the heater kicked in, and we began to thaw out.

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot and auld
lang
syne
,” I sang softly, the lyrics registering ironically. “Good times, huh? I think the reunion committee got it wrong. Some of these old acquaintances definitely should have stayed forgotten.”

“Perhaps now you will share with me the story of you and Mindy
Marchelewski
that everyone but me seems to know.”

I knew he would be relentless until I came clean, so I took a deep breath and dived in.

Two

As was our custom once a month or so, Margo,
Strutter
and I met at the Town Line Diner for a late morning breakfast. Sometimes our husbands accompanied us, but more often it was girls only. This was one of those times. Despite having worked together all week, we always had plenty to talk about, and we enjoyed doing it over cups of the diner’s excellent coffee.

“Unanswered prayers,”
Strutter
pronounced, sighing with satisfaction as she pushed her plate aside. A few toast crumbs were all that remained of her bacon
omelette
, which smelled delicious.

Margo smiled and nodded. “I was just
thinkin
’ the very same thing.” Her eyes had that amused, faraway look she got when she recalled some romantic entanglement or other of her youth. The Georgia-born former debutante had certainly had her share, both south and north of the Mason-Dixon
line
.

“I’m not following you.” I swallowed the last of my
eggwhite
sandwich on dry whole wheat toast and eyed the last sausage on her plate lustfully. She pushed the plate toward me, but I waved her off, mindful of Ariel’s snarky comment of the previous evening.

Strutter
snapped it up with gusto. “The old Garth Brooks song, you remember,” she prompted, dabbing sausage grease from her lips. “Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers, the guy who runs into his old squeeze years after he’s happily married to somebody else?”

“We’ve all been there,” Margo agreed, “and you got there last night, if I heard you correctly. Tell the truth, Sugar. You were a little fluttery
walkin
’ into that room,
wonderin
’ if you’d see your old sweetheart again and how you’d feel if you did, am I right?”

I smiled sadly and nodded, although in truth it was hard to remember exactly how I’d felt walking into the reunion. That felt as if it had happened weeks ago instead of just last night, but I surely remembered how I’d felt walking out of the gathering a few hours later with my extremely puzzled husband.

“It seems so silly now, all that anxiety, worrying about what to wear to conceal my hips, how I’d look to my old classmates after all these years.”

“You gained eight whole pounds in thirty-five years, wow. It’s a wonder anyone even recognized you under all that lard,”
Strutter
scoffed. An impossibly curvy Jamaican woman with milk chocolate skin and eyes the color of the Caribbean, she had been drop-dead gorgeous even nine months pregnant, so it was hard for her to relate.

Margo giggled. “Sugar, I gained three pounds last
week
.”

“No kidding?” I was amazed. I had never been aware of Margo gaining an ounce in all the years I had known her. “Where are you hiding them?”

“Hollow leg,” Margo answered without hesitation. “We Georgia gals keep one handy for holidays and other festive occasions right along with our pearls and sweater sets. Didn’t you ever read the debutante’s handbook?”

It was
Strutter’s
turn to chuckle. “Must have missed that one,” I said. “One of those leg thingies would sure come in handy right about now.”

“So how did it feel when Mitch showed up?” Margo persisted.

I thought back to the moment when I’d become aware of Mitch walking across the gym floor toward me along with his wife Agnes. He’d been a little thicker around the middle and had lost some hair, but I’d had no trouble at all recognizing
him, nor
him me.

“It felt fine, no flutters at all,” I said honestly and smiled, remembering the face-splitting grin that had spread across Mitch’s face when he spotted me in the crowd. “It was nice to see Agnes, too. When I saw her last night, I remembered that we’d sat across the aisle from each other in English lit. She was extremely smart academically, but she had a crazy, quirky streak that appealed to me. I always liked Agnes,” I said affectionately.

“Of course, it didn’t hurt a bit to have your gorgeous Latino hubby
standin
’ at your side last night,” observed Margo.

“Uh huh,”
Strutter
agreed. “That man just gets better looking with every passing year.”

“You’re right. Armando was a real confidence booster. I was reluctant to have him come along at first, preferring to confront my memories on my own, but as things turned out …” I let my words trail off. “At least this time I didn’t have to come home and tell him I’d found a body.” Oddly enough, that had happened before.
More than once, in fact.
My friends were well aware of the circumstances on those occasions, having become embroiled in the subsequent investigations.

Now they nodded philosophically. This time, poor Armando had been right there with me.

“What happens next?” Margo wanted to know.

“You’re asking me? You’re the one who’s married to a homicide detective,” I reminded her. Lieutenant John
Harkness
was the mainstay of the Wethersfield Police Department’s major crimes division and had succumbed to Margo’s charms a few years previously. The two die-hard singles had married and settled down blissfully together to everyone’s amazement, possibly even theirs.

A sappy smile spread across her face as it always did at the mention of her husband. “Don’t I know it?” she said smugly. “But it’s different from town to town
dependin
’ on the size of the police department and so on. I don’t know how it works in Brewster, and John isn’t around to make his usual discreet inquiries,” she pointed out. The husband in question had flown out this very morning to an intensive six-day training session in Quantico, Virginia.

“So you’re saying that size does matter, is that it?”
Strutter
sassed. Margo tossed her napkin at her.

“Well, I don’t know either,” I said, leaning down to retrieve the napkin from the floor. “Brewster seems to be one town in which we haven’t yet been involved in a major criminal investigation.
Oh, boy, a whole new group of emergency personnel to get to know.”

To no one’s surprise, Mindy had been pronounced dead on arrival at Backus Hospital shortly after her arrival the previous night, and her death had been labeled suspicious. Agnes
Spivak
had been kind enough to telephone that information to me earlier this morning as she and Mitch hustled to make their flight back to St. Louis. “Naturally, that meant they wanted a complete statement from us before we left town. We didn’t make it out of the building as quickly as you did, so we were stuck. I don’t think either one of us got ten minutes’ sleep last night,” she said wearily. “Do you know how long it takes to handwrite a statement? You would think they could at least have let us use a computer, but no.” She yawned audibly. “Sorry. They actually separated
us,
put us in different rooms like we were suspects or something.”

“What did they want to know?” I asked her.

“Who we talked to last night, if anything seemed out of the ordinary, what we knew about anyone else there who might have had it in for Mindy.”

I swallowed my dismay. “What did you say about me?”

“They already knew about you and Mitch and Mindy, probably from Joanie and Ariel,” Agnes summed up, “so Mitch had no choice but to go over that old business. He put the blame on himself, Kate, honestly. Said you behaved like a perfect lady and never once did anything vindictive. He’s pretty sure they believed him, so good luck with your statement. I’m sure they’ll be calling you for one. Let us know how it goes.” She rattled off their home phone number before breaking the connection.

I reported the gist of this conversation to
Strutter
and Margo.

“Well, that’s just crazy,”
Strutter
stated flatly. “If you hated somebody’s guts for more than thirty years and decided to remove them from this world, why on earth would you do it in the presence of a couple of hundred potential witnesses? That’s dumb.”

Margo frowned at a nick in one perfectly manicured fingernail and began digging through her Coach bag for an emery board. “Dumb like a fox, as my daddy used to say. What better place to do somebody in than at a public function attended by a whole bunch of likely suspects? From what Kate’s told us, there were at least a dozen people at that reunion who won’t exactly be
cryin
’ their eyes out over Mindy’s demise.”

I hadn’t thought about that, having been focused on my own situation, but Margo was right.

“It’s the perfect crime,” she went on, filing away the offending flaw.

“You mean one that never gets solved because there are too many suspects, and nobody gives a fig about the victim anyway?”
Strutter’s
eyebrows climbed her forehead.

“Maybe, or maybe because the wrong person gets set up and convicted. In a situation this
confusin
’, either one is a possibility.”

I warmed to Margo’s theme. “It might also be a classic case of misdirection. I’m sure Mindy
Marchelewski
didn’t graduate from high school and morph into a sterling human being. It’s a pretty good bet she made a few more enemies in the years since we all saw her last, and one of them could have decided to do away with her right in the middle of a crowd of fellow sufferers. Maybe the DJ had it in for her and overdosed her while the lights were lowered for the last dance.”

“In the ladies room?”
Strutter
demurred. “Unlikely, don’t you think?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time a man put on a wig and a skirt to commit a crime,” I pouted. Margo grinned at me consolingly.

“There, there, Sugar. Don’t take it so hard. Maybe he didn’t do the actual deed, but he could have been a dealer who supplied the deadly dose to the murderer.”

I brightened up at her farfetched scenario.
“Yeah!
I wonder what the drug in the syringe was. All Agnes said was that it wasn’t anything you’d expect to find a junkie mainlining in a public restroom, which I took to mean not heroin.”

Margo considered. “I asked John about that when we spoke this
mornin
’. He was kind of distracted, but he did speculate that since Mindy was so boozed up, it wouldn’t have taken much to finish her off, whatever was in that syringe.” She frowned. “Then he clammed up in that
irritatin
’ way he does just when the conversation about an investigation gets good.”

Strutter
looked thoughtful.
“The syringe, yes.
Now why do you suppose that was left on the floor next to Mindy? Why not tuck it away in a purse or a pocket?”

“Could be that someone else came in, and the killer got rattled and dropped it,” I offered.

Margo considered that possibility and shook her head. “You said that particular restroom is very small, only two stalls,” she reminded me. “If you walked in and saw two sets of feet under one stall door, what would you do?”

“Assume that something was going on I’d rather not know about and make a hasty exit,” I said promptly.

“Exactly, which is what anyone with any common sense would do under those circumstances,”
Strutter
agreed. “So the killer had plenty of time to collect that syringe, even if she did drop it, which brings me back to wondering why it was just sitting there on the floor, waiting for Joanie and Ariel to find it when they went looking for Mindy.

We all looked at each other. “It was meant to be found?” I ventured. “Maybe it was a message to make it clear that Mindy had been murdered.”

Margo blinked at me. “But who was the message for, Sugar, Joanie and Ariel?”

“Possibly.
Probably, in fact, since everyone at the reunion knew the three of them hung out together. It was a good bet that Joanie or Ariel would go looking for Mindy after a while, and sure enough, Ariel did, and Joanie followed very soon after that.” I remembered Joanie’s distraught face when she’d come crashing out of the women’s room. Despite myself, my heart twisted in sympathy. It must have been quite a shock to find Mindy, her fearless and formidable BFF, crumpled on the floor like that.

“So what was the message the killer was trying to send to Joanie and Ariel?”
Strutter
wanted to know.

I thought I knew the answer to that one. “Those three women were thick as thieves in high school, and they still seemed friendly thirty-five years later, even though Mindy didn’t live around here anymore. All for one, and one for all, partners in making life miserable for a goodly number of their classmates. Don’t you get it?”

My friends looked blank, so I spoke slowly and clearly. “One down, two to go. The killer was telling them, if I can take out Mindy
Marchelewski
, I can surely punish you, too.”