Murder on Old Main Street (Kate Lawrence Mysteries)

Mainly Murder Press

Copy Editor:
 
Jennafer K. Sprankle

Cover Designer:
 
Patricia L. Foltz

All rights reserved

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Mainly Murder Press

www.mainlymurderpress.com

Copyright © 2009 by Judith K. Ivie

ISBN 978-0-615-27167-5

Published in the United States of America

Mainly Murder Press

PO Box 290586

Wethersfield, CT 06109-0586

Dedicated with Appreciation to:

Laura, Ed, Jay, Heather, Emily and all of
the others who make Blades such
a joy to patronize

and

Janice, Sherri, Kathy, Marianna
and everyone else who makes
breakfast at the Town Line Diner

so much fun

Books by

Judith K. Ivie

In the Kate Lawrence Mystery Series:

Waiting for Armando
Murder on Old Main Street
A Skeleton in the Closet
Drowning in Christmas

Nonfiction
:

Calling It Quits:
Turning Career Setbacks to Success

Working It Out:

The Domestic Double Standard

Explanations and Acknowledgments

   
I have no fear that residents of Old Wethersfield will mistake my fictitious portrait of our town for the real thing, and those who live elsewhere won’t be troubled. Still, there are enough similarities to warrant an explanation, so here it is: While I have appropriated the geography of Wethersfield’s Historic District,
Murder on Old Main Street
is entirely a work of fiction. No character is based on a real individual, whether living or dead, known to me or unknown, and any likeness to a real individual is entirely coincidental.

   
Further, while I have shamelessly mentioned by name some of my favorite landmarks and business establishments along Old Main Street and elsewhere in Wethersfield, I have created others simply to facilitate the story.

   
Those of you who are familiar with the structure formerly known as the Law Barn may be disappointed to learn that the back story I’ve provided about it is also pure fiction. Sorry, but there is no secret room, to my knowledge. I did run across something like it years ago in an old brownstone on Beacon Street in Boston. The building had been turned into a rooming house, and a friend who rented space on the first floor showed me a hidden door in the parlor paneling that opened into a tiny powder room. I was enchanted with the idea of a hidey-hole, and the memory stuck with me.

   
I am most grateful to my daughter, Jennafer Sprankle, for her help with the details of real estate transactions, as well as for her advice throughout the writing of
Murder on Old Main Street.
Thanks for the crash course, Dearie.

   
Chief James Cetran of the Wethersfield Police was extraordinarily generous with his time while setting me straight on the department’s investigative procedures, as was Chief Thomas Sweeney of the Glastonbury Police Department. Gentlemen, I am indebted to you both and hope I have portrayed both departments with the respect and accuracy they deserve.

Judith K. Ivie

March, 2007

One

It’s not that I don’t understand why people smoke. I do. I myself enjoyed cigarettes for some twenty years, on an off. The “off” part was during the two pregnancies that had produced my son Joey and daughter Emma, so obviously, I always knew that smoking was an unhealthy indulgence. But it took the sudden and untimely deaths of my father and mother, both lifelong smokers, to get me to lay that lighter down for good.

First Dad, a pack-a-day man since World War II, suffered a massive coronary at the age of sixty-three. After lunch one day, he just fell to the floor of the warehouse he managed, and the paramedics abandoned their attempts to resuscitate him after half an hour. A few years later, Mother’s heart gave out as she was clearing snow from the sidewalk in front of the house where I grew up. The exertion triggered the attack, said the nice young resident whose job it had been to break the news that Mother hadn’t survived emergency surgery, but the real damage had been done over the previous decades, one cigarette at a time.

“That’s what people your mom’s age can’t seem to get,” he said sadly. “Every time she lit a cigarette, she was holding a gun to her head. It just takes longer for the bullet to kill you.”

   
My decision to quit wasn’t a conscious one. I simply holstered my lighter and never had another cigarette after that day. My habit had been moderate. I had smoked only half a dozen cigarettes a day, so quitting wasn’t really a big deal. I was one of the lucky ones who hadn’t become physically or psychologically addicted, which made it all the more incomprehensible that I had ever taken it up. But I did, and then I lost my parents, and then I stopped. End of story, right?

Fast forward seventeen years. It’s a new millennium, and the war between smokers and nonsmokers is in full spate. There’s no avoiding the issue; you have to choose a side. Because of the overlapping rights of both groups, there’s no middle ground to occupy, no way to live and let live. The obese woman shoveling down a banana split at the next table is endangering only her health, not yours, so it’s her life, her choice. The smoker who’s dangling his Marlborough out the window of the car in front of you is a different story, however. It’s his choice to inhale the deadly toxins, but the secondhand smoke he huffs out the window pollutes your air almost as lethally. His rights have to end where yours begin. That was at least part of the reason underlying the local business association’s recent proposal. Smoking inside eating establishments was already prohibited by law throughout Connecticut. The business association now proposed to ban smoking anywhere in the historic district of Old Wethersfield, indoors or out, as of October fifteenth.

“Why do smokers do that anyway?” choked my partner Margo, waving away the fumes emanating from the Bronco idling in front of us at the light.

I had collected Margo and her constant companion, a chocolate Labrador retriever named Rhett Butler, at the dealership where her ancient BMW had been left for servicing. Rhett accompanied Margo nearly everywhere, asking nothing more than to be allowed to walk adoringly by her side. He had been enjoying the morning breeze through an open window, but now Margo raised it. He whined in protest and flopped full-length across my back seat, which meant he took up all of it.

“I know, Sugar, but what can I do?” Margo told him. “If that silly Yankee wants to smell disgustin’, let him roll up his windows and keep the smoke all to himself, but I just had this suit dry-cleaned, thank you.”

I could understand Margo’s concern. The understated Donna Karan in shades of taupe and black set off her southern belle good looks to a fare-thee-well. Definitely worth not stinking up. I, on the other hand, could safely drop my easy-care Susan Gravers into the washer and dryer.

I’m Kate Lawrence … well, Sarah Katherine Lawrence, actually, but who wants to go through life tagged as an Ivy League institution? Margo Farnsworth is one of my business partners, as well as my dearest friend, and we were on our way to work on a crisp, late September Monday. In the year since we had opened our new real estate brokerage in historic Wethersfield Village, where we shared office space with my daughter Emma and her lawyer boss in a renovated barn on Old Main Street, business had grown steadily. It hadn’t been easy, but we hadn’t expected it to be, and the problems had been far outweighed by the excitement of launching a business of our own. That was the point, after all: to create something that was our own.

The temporary absence this month of our third partner, Charlene “Strutter” Tuttle Putnam, was a small setback. In a classic case of bad timing, from Margo’s and my perspective anyway, the Jamaican beauty had fallen madly in love with a mortgage broker who turned out to be wooing more than our referral business, but hey, what are you going to do? She and her young son Charlie deserved a good man like John Putnam in their lives, and things at the office would get back to normal as soon as they returned from their extended honeymoon.

Fortunately, the real estate market was red hot, and business was booming. Margo and Strutter had been on the road from one end of the day to the other, checking out new listings, showing properties, and holding open houses for the slow movers on weekends. For my part, it was all I could do to keep up with the phone, which rang constantly. I also managed all the sale documents, the preparation of which I was happy to hand off to Emma and her boss, real estate lawyer Jimmy Seidel, and coped with the myriad administrative details that were part and parcel of running any business.

Emma and Jimmy occupied the Law Barn’s loft area along with another young lawyer, Donatella Puccini, and two more paralegals. More often than not, Jimmy or “Pooch” represented our clients at the closings, and Emma and her assistants shepherded them through the maze of pre-closing paperwork. The entrance area of the building was presided over by pretty Jenny Morris, a law student by night and our receptionist by day. Jenny answered all of our phones when we could not, took prodigious messages, placated nervous clients, and somehow managed to get everything properly filed before dashing off to her evening classes.

The remaining Law Barn office was occupied by Millicent Haines, a middle-aged mortgage broker who had rented the small, first-floor room off the area where our copier and fax machine were housed. Having relocated from California this past July, Millie spent most of her days on the phone or out of the office, so the noise of the machines didn’t bother her. She seemed pleasant enough, on the few occasions our paths crossed, and the clients we referred to her for help with their financing seemed well pleased.