Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (11 page)

I had swallowed my pride and put in a call to Detective Diaz this afternoon to see if the police had any hot new leads on either the cause of death or suspects, but she had simply said that the results of the toxicology tests were not yet available and invited me to keep in touch. The obvious cause of death was the amaretto coffee, laced with some unspecified poison, and the obvious suspects were
Girouard’s
most recent lover/secretary and his long-suffering wife. Liking Ingrid as much as I was beginning to, and not knowing Vera
Girouard
at all, I hoped the murderer turned out to be the latter.

Lastly, there were my growing concerns about living in this condominium community. I was fairly certain I could continue to pay the bills on the place now, but did I want to stay? The rules and regulations had purportedly been drawn up to protect the value of everyone’s property, but if that was their sole purpose, they seemed unnecessarily restrictive. Was I prepared to accept my neighbors informing on me for hanging bath mats on my back railing? Was I willing to hide a two-pound kitten behind drawn curtains for fear of eviction? Not having to mow my lawn was nice, but I was sacrificing other aspects of my quality of life.

I realized that I had been dozing and snapped back to attention, fearful that Jasmine had made a snack of Moses while I napped. My concerns were unfounded. Oliver had changed position slightly and lay on his side, curled protectively around the kitten,
who
snored happily. Jasmine had abandoned guard duty in the hall and dozed next to me on the couch. Well, at least something was going right.

~

Joey arrived at The Birches on Saturday, a day earlier than usual. His schedule had been changed temporarily, and he planned to give the tractor portion of his rig, which served as a very comfortable little apartment on wheels during the week, a thorough cleaning and to spend some time with Moses. He arrived mid-afternoon, driving his red tractor circumspectly down the street.

With the fearlessness of youth, he backed the truck neatly into the visitor’s half of my double driveway. He was so close to the garage door that the vehicle practically touched the paint, but every last inch of it fit within my driveway, where, according to my careful review of The Birches’ rules and regulations, commercial vehicles could be parked “for extended periods of time.”

Once parked, the truck was silent. It blocked nothing and inconvenienced no one. Nevertheless, within five minutes of Joey’s arrival, traffic slowed to a crawl past the driveway as my fellow residents stared, aghast, at this affront to The Birches’ aesthetics. I was confident in my interpretation of the regulations, so I ignored them, and Joey amused himself by waving and smiling at the rubber-
neckers
as he energetically washed and vacuumed his pride and joy.

Behind the driver’s seat were bunk beds, narrow closets, and a small refrigerator. A heater separate from the truck’s engine kept the interior comfortable when he was stopped for the night. He even had a color television and a CD player. Mary, out for an afternoon constitutional, accepted Joey’s invitation to take a tour and gamely scrambled up the steep steps to the driver’s seat with Joey pulling from inside the cab and me pushing from below. She was enchanted with everything from the comfortable bunks to the miniature amenities and announced her intention to accompany Joey on a future trip. Patient soul that he is, Joey said merely, “You bet, Mary,” and winked cheerfully at me behind her back.

In the early evening Joey finished up, and I took a photo of him and Mary standing next to the gleaming behemoth. We sat down to sandwiches and Cokes, and Moses provided the entertainment. He might not have mastered the stairs just yet, but overnight he had learned how to scramble onto the kitchen window seat and spring from there into the laps of his victims, who were seated at the table. We were invariably startled by his appearing like a black bat out of nowhere, overshooting his target by a few inches, then belly-flopping onto our legs, tiny claws digging in sharply.

“
Yeow
!”
Joey protested for perhaps the fourth time as he unhooked Moses from his cut-off jeans and set him back on the floor. “You’d better quit that if you ever expect to find a permanent home, buster.” He looked at me questioningly.

I shrugged. As many problems as I had at the moment, the one of finding a new home for Moses didn’t even make the cut. I had shelved it for the time being.

Mary went home to her television shows, and Joey showered and went out with friends, an infrequent treat due to his Monday-to-Sunday driving schedule. I poured a glass of Shiraz and settled in with Garrison
Keillor’s
radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion,” to give myself a manicure and toss wads of crumpled paper for Moses. Fortunately, his earlier activities had pretty much worn him out, and he soon sought out Oliver, curled on his blanket under an end table, and plumped down on top of him. Ollie opened one eye and gazed at his uninvited companion resignedly, then closed it. Jasmine was nowhere to be seen.

I tried not to think about how Armando was spending his Saturday night and with whom, but it was impossible. Impatiently, I went into my solitary bedroom to pick out suitable clothes for
Girouard’s
memorial service the following morning. The phone rang, and I picked it up eagerly. “Hello?”

“Ms. Lawrence? This is Craig Saunders from Prestige Property Management.”

My heart sank. “Yes, Mr. Saunders.”

“I just reviewed my telephone messages, Ms. Lawrence, and I must say many of your neighbors are very upset about the commercial vehicle parked in front of your unit.

That’s because they don’t have anything more substantial to occupy their minds,
I thought and sighed. “The Association’s regulations seem very clear on that point, Mr. Saunders,” I hastened to point out. “Regulation number eight specifies that a truck can be parked for extended periods in designated parking areas, and my driveway is certainly a designated …”

“This has nothing to do with Association rules, Ms. Lawrence,” Saunders interrupted firmly. “There is a town ordinance that specifically prohibits overnight parking of commercial vehicles in plain sight in a residential zone. Naturally, that includes The Birches.”

Ooops
.
It had never occurred to me that the Town of Wethersfield could be even more restrictive than the condo association. In the few months that Joey had been driving a truck, we had never had occasion to have to check out town ordinances. Knowing by my silence that he had me, Saunders pressed his advantage. “The vehicle will have to be removed immediately, of course.”

I could manage a standard transmission, but a twenty-foot tractor with a dozen forward gears was a bit beyond my reach. “My son is out for the evening, Mr. Saunders, but I will attempt to locate him,” I said, struggling to keep my temper. Buffoon though he was, this wasn’t Saunders’ fault. He had merely drawn the short straw on weekend duty.

“I’d advise you to do your best, Ms. Lawrence. I understand that several calls have already been made to the Wethersfield Police Department about this matter, and this is a
ticketable
offense.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I said shortly and disconnected.
Damn
. Now I’d have to track Joey down and ruin his Saturday night. I thought fast,
then
dialed the non-emergency number for the Wethersfield PD.
 
For once, luck was with me. Young Rick Fletcher, who had been in Joey’s high school class, was on the desk. I identified myself and filled him in.

“Is it true that there’s a town ordinance prohibiting overnight parking of commercial vehicles at a residence?” I asked plaintively.

“Yeah, it’s on the books,” Rick confirmed. “It’s a seventy-five dollar ticket, too. It’s just one of those old ordinances we don’t bother to enforce unless somebody complains, and you’ve got to figure those fussbudgets at The Birches are going to complain. We get more calls from that place than from any other neighborhood in town.”

I could believe it. “Well, we certainly had no idea about the ordinance, and Joey’s out. I can call him on his cell phone and get him back here, but it will take a while, and he’s probably had a few beers. Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to move this thing tonight. Anyway, where is he going to put it? Practically the whole town is a residential community, and it’s too late to call any business owners for permission to leave it in their lot overnight.”

Rick thought for a minute. “When was Joey planning to leave your place?”

“He’ll be on the road by eight o’clock tomorrow morning,” I said. “How soon do you have to issue the ticket?”

“Gee,” Rick said with a smile in his voice, “I don’t think we’ll have the manpower available to get to that until at least eight-thirty tomorrow. You have a good night now, ma’am, and tell Joey I said hey.” He disconnected, and I went to take my shower in a much happier frame of mind. Then I turned the bedroom phone ringer off and went to sleep.

By 7:45 the next morning, my caller ID indicated that Prestige Property Management had called twice more. Joey and I stood in the driveway, giggling conspiratorially as the tractor’s diesel engine warmed up. Mary came out in her bathrobe to see what was going on, and her eyes gleamed with satisfaction as I recounted the events of the previous evening. Joey gave me a hug, climbed up into the driver’s seat and released the tractor’s brakes. Slowly, he eased the big truck into the street and up-shifted noisily several times en route to The Birches’ entrance. I had begged him to lean on the air horn just once, but he wouldn’t do it. Roger Peterson, my other neighbor, stood at his front door, sipping a mug of tea and looking interested but not a whit upset. In contrast, Edna
Philpott
had passed upset and gone directly to apoplectic. Clad in a chenille bathrobe, she stood rigidly on her front porch and watched in disbelief as Joey escaped into the morning, ticketless.

Mary and I high-fived in my driveway.
“Mom and trucker, one, condo police, zero,” I grinned. We waved to Edna and returned to our respective units to prepare for whatever the day might bring.

Seven

Although
Girouard’s
body had been autopsied, it had not been released pending receipt of the toxicology findings. Nevertheless, his family had decided, with the full support of his partners, to proceed posthaste with a memorial service open to all who wished to attend. They might not be able to get
Girouard
into the ground just yet, but they could dispense with the other rituals required following the death of a prominent local attorney.

Since
Girouard
was a lapsed Roman Catholic, and his status absolution-wise was more than a little iffy, it was thought best to avoid religious trappings for this occasion. Harold Karp and his staff worked feverishly to pull everything together on such short notice. They booked the spacious Connecticut Room on the second floor of the Hilton Hotel diagonally across Trumbull Street from the Metro Building. They requested a string quartet from the University of Hartford’s
Hartt
School of Music, and the players scrambled to prepare a few suitably somber pieces. They released announcements of the date and time to the press and ordered a dignified luncheon buffet to follow the service. Finally, they put the firm’s most talented associates to work writing the eulogies that both
Bellanfonte
and
Bolasevich
were obligated to deliver, deciding it was just too risky to invite attendees to offer spontaneous remembrances.

By Sunday morning the area in front of the Connecticut Room’s stage was banked with a nose-numbing assortment of floral tributes. Harold Karp, as befitted the president of BGB’s Horticultural Society, had personally prepared a dazzling arrangement for the foot of the speaker podium. Although the service wasn’t slated to begin until 10:00, a line of limos and town cars formed at the hotel’s entrance soon after 9:00 and never dwindled as everyone who was anyone arrived early to deliver their prepared platitudes to the assembled press. Politicians and legal colleagues joined family members, clients, and every single BGB staffer who could crawl or walk there for the best show in town.

Margo,
Strutter
and I clustered around Ingrid on a bench in the little park on the I-84 overpass across Church Street. Wearing drab dresses, sunglasses and hats, we were as unremarkable as we could make ourselves. Our view of the Hilton’s entrance was unobstructed. Peering discreetly through a pair of diminutive opera glasses,
Strutter
and Margo murmured the names of the people they recognized and offered general descriptions of those they didn’t. I wrote it all down in a little notebook that fit into my black leather clutch purse.