Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries)

Mainly Murder Press

Copy Editor:
 
Jennafer
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.

Copyright © 2009 by Judith K.
Ivie

ISBN 978-0-615-27168-2

Published in the United States of America

Mainly Murder Press

PO Box 290586

Wethersfield, CT 06129-0586

www.MainlyMurderPress.com

Dedicated with Appreciation

to
the many wonderful, egalitarian lawyers
with whom I have worked over the years …
the indomitable secretaries and paralegals who
work for the other sort … and to J.A.P.,
who is always worth waiting for

Praise for the Kate Lawrence Mysteries

by
Judith K.
Ivie

“More than an investigation of the crime,
A Skeleton in the Closet
is also an exploration of human interaction.”

-- John
Valeri
, examiner.com

 
“… delightful.
The straightforward plot has some clever twists … in this genuinely entertaining mystery.”

--Mysterious Reviews

 
“A delightful cozy mystery New England style.
 
…a densely packed little read that is both light and entertaining.”

--The Midwest Book Review

One of the things I love about
Ivie’s
characters is that they are not twenty-something Nancy
Drews
. They are mature, grown-up women with full lives and vivid pasts.

--Marlene Pyle,
The
Genreview.com

“One of the appeals of this series is the main character. … Middle-age adventures are more than a state of mind in this fast-paced mystery.”

--Dee Ann Ray, Clinton Daily News

“Ms.
Ivie’s
kicky turn of phrase made
Murder on Old Main Street
a fun read.”

--Mystery Lovers Corner

“An enjoyable ride through the streets where we live.”

--Joyce
Rossignol

“What a delight!
 
If you’re looking for a sassy mystery with suspense, great characters and some romance thrown in … grab the book now and sit back for a great adventure.”

--J.D. Webb, author, Shepherd’s Pie

 
“…a wonderful
mix
of characters … a real slice of life … a wonderful book to curl up with on a rainy day.”

--Lighthouse Literary Reviews

One

Have you ever wondered what your secretary really thinks of you? I’ll tell you what she thinks of you. If you would just get out of her way, she could run the office far better without you. And that’s on a good day.

On a bad day, her thoughts about you are probably homicidal, and that’s when being a legal secretary could work to her advantage. If you work for lawyers long enough, my new friends tell me, you can easily learn how to commit murder. Even better, you can learn how to get away with it. At least, that’s what everyone thought happened last summer at
Bellanfonte
,
Girouard
&
Bolasevich
,
three
names so unpronounceable that the Hartford law firm is known throughout New England simply as “BGB.”

Had I been less preoccupied with my own impending death on that steamy Thursday in June, I could have killed Donatello
Bellanfonte
. Following him reluctantly into the elevator, I tried unsuccessfully to distract my thoughts from the thirty-six stories of empty shaft Donatello had reminded me were beneath our feet.

“Actually, it’s a thirty-seven-story drop, counting the cathedral ceiling in the lobby,” he amended as the doors slid shut in front of us, “but anything over six stories, and we’re dead anyway.” He whistled cheerfully as the express car plummeted toward the street level, and I clung to the side rail, ears popping in the changing air pressure.

I reflected sourly that if I had suffered from a dread of arachnids instead of heights,
Bellanfonte
would have produced a rubber tarantula from his suit pocket and dropped it down the neck of my dress; but since I had made the mistake of making my new boss, an estate law guru, aware of my lifelong fear of heights, he made elevator jokes. Irrational fears were not to be tolerated in an adult human being, he maintained in true U.S. Army, Ret.,
fashion
. It was simply a matter of confronting one’s demons, and he had made desensitizing me his personal mission. So far, it wasn’t working.

As cloying as the heat and humidity of a Hartford summer were, I welcomed them as evidence of my survival as, wobbly kneed,
I
preceded
Bellanfonte
through the revolving door that spun us into the lunch-hour crowd on Trumbull Street. He lifted a hand briefly in farewell and charged off to his meeting with the editor of the New England Law Tribune, where they would review the periodical’s editorial calendar for the coming year and identify the topics Donatello would cover for them as one of their regular columnists. During the more than twenty years he had practiced estate law, he had written dozens of articles for legal and trade magazines. He had also untangled the snarl of tax regulations for some of the biggest names in the country. Whenever he got the chance, he indulged his appetites for golf and racquetball the way he did everything else, aggressively and to excess.

Despite the city’s blast furnace ambience, city workers strode purposefully in all directions as
Bellanfonte
disappeared down Church Street into the crowd. Although we had left the office just moments ago, he consulted his cell phone for effect, hoping for a message to prove how indispensable he was to his clients.

Relishing the free hour ahead of me, I considered my lunch options.
A little fish at No Fish Today?
Salad at Au Bon Pain?
But instead of growling happily in anticipation, my stomach roiled. It was barely noon, and my stress level was already over the top. I waited impatiently for a walk light and sympathized with the professional dog walker who was attempting to keep four leashed animals under control and untangled.
Maybe just a glass of iced tea, then.
No gastric protests followed this thought, so I headed down the block to where the food wagons habitually lined up, collected my tea, and took it with me into Bushnell Park, where I sagged onto a bench.

A couple of thirtyish eager beavers in pinstriped suits and rolled-up shirtsleeves passed by, earnestly trashing Hartford’s only daily newspaper, the
Courant
.
 
One of them waved a copy for emphasis as he attempted to impress his colleague with a badly thought-out diatribe on unnecessary sensationalism and the general incompetence of the paper’s publishers. That subject exhausted, he sniffed the air suspiciously and sneered,
“
Somebody’s smoking.”

I immediately wished for a cigarette.
Ah, the good old days.

I pulled a notepad from my purse, intending to organize the myriad projects and deadlines
Bellanfonte
had flung at me during our meeting that morning. Instead I found myself reflecting on the events that had led up to this moment on a park bench.

One month ago my business card had read, “Sarah Kathryn Lawrence, Manager of Marketing and Investor Relations,
TeleCom
Plus.” I had been recruited to
TeleCom
some three years earlier when the company was an up-and-coming telecommunications equipment distributor in a burgeoning market. Within a mere two years,
TeleCom’s
management had bungled every opportunity that came their way until the stockholders, weary of watching the value of their investments erode, openly rebelled. When the price per share dropped below half its original value with no bottom in sight, I resigned and went home to review my career options.

When I walked away from my mahogany-paneled office, I was looking at eighteen years to retirement. I had a hefty mortgage on my condominium at The Birches in Wethersfield and a car payment. My son Joey and daughter Emma were both self-supporting, but my two elderly cats, Jasmine and Oliver, expected to eat regularly and ran up astonishing vet bills fairly frequently. Since I had no intention of ruining my five-year relationship with Armando Velasquez—the sexy, Latino comptroller of
TeleCom
Plus—by marrying him, shared domestic expenses were not in my future. I still had to make ends meet, so the question was, how did I plan to do it?

I admitted to myself that I no longer enjoyed schmoozing clients or enticing prospective customers into buying some product or service they really didn’t need. Truth
be
told, marketing had never really appealed to me. It’s just where my skills had landed me in the booming economy of the ‘80s, but in the early days of my career, I had been one hell of a good secretary. What’s more, I enjoyed hands-on work far more than I did the meandering meetings, cocktail hours and client lunches of my ensuing marketing years.

With all of this in mind, I decided to bag the whole management track and return to my administrative roots as the esteemed
aide de camp
to a top gun. I would bask in reflected glory while avoiding the stresses of client handholding and personnel supervision.

On Sunday morning I snapped open the
Courant’s
employment section and saw BGB’s ad for a “seasoned executive assistant” to support a nationally acclaimed estate law expert on a temporary basis. In addition to a thriving law practice, he had a heavy speaking and writing schedule and needed a special assistant for the next six months. Perfect, I thought. I can get my feet wet and walk away with no hard feelings at the end of that time. My workday would be stress free, and at 5:00 p.m. I would leave it all behind.