Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (16 page)

Margo smacked her on the shoulder and made hurry-up gestures. “Get to it!”

Strutter
rubbed her shoulder and frowned. “She said for about a year now, she’s been a member of something called the Center for Universal Truth. It’s a place run out of one of those old Victorian houses in Glastonbury, ostensibly to offer classes in meditation and bio-feedback and so on for people who are stressed out. She said Harold Karp told her about it when she was obsessing over her mother’s heart attack last summer. It’s set up as a nonprofit educational center, but there’s more going on there than meditation classes.”

“What makes you think so?” I asked.

“Their web site,”
Strutter
responded. “Go to universal truth dot org, and you’ll find some very interesting information, including the center’s mission statement. It talks about weird, quasi-religious stuff like raising levels of consciousness and each person’s connection to somebody they call Prime Creator.”

“Actually, that’s not so weird,” I put in. “Prime Creator is an entity embraced by many of the religions of the world. It’s a term, like Supreme Being, that stands for the central energy source of the universe.”

“Yes,” said Ingrid from the phone’s speaker. “Even Oprah Winfrey uses that term, and she’s one of the most down-to-earth people I’ve ever known.”

“You know Oprah Winfrey?” gasped
Strutter
.

“Not personally. I’ve just sort of gotten into her show on this involuntary vacation I seem to be on.”

“Oh,
lordy
,” sighed Margo. “She’s doing daytime television. This is bad.”

“Will you let me get to the point?”
Strutter
hissed, looking at her watch. “The mission statement also talks about the woman who runs the place. She goes by the name
Esme
, just the one name. Calls herself an intuitive, whatever that is, who helps each of her students find the truth about what their mission is in this life on earth. Now I ask you, does that sound like a cult, or what?”

“Oh, you’re watching too much terrorism news,” I snapped. “To me, it just sounds like some scam run by that phony clairvoyant on TV or one of Dionne Warwick’s pals.”

“Well, okay,”
Strutter
huffed, offended, “but whatever scam she’s running, she’s got quite a following, unless you think it’s just a coincidence that Shelby Carmichael belongs to the Center for Universal Truth, too.”

“No kidding!” said Ingrid. I looked at Margo, and she nodded.

“Yup,” she affirmed. “She told me so herself, all about the classes she goes to at this
Esme’s
house in Glastonbury, the group meditations that are attended by dozens of people, and get this, a monthly channeling session where
Esme
communicates to entities in some other dimension and asks them to answer people’s questions. Each person is called on one at a time and gets to ask the spirits why their husband left or how come they can’t get pregnant or whether they should take that job in Bullfrog, Missouri,” she finished, rolling her eyes.

We all digested this information in silence.

Then Ingrid piped up
tinnily
, “I think we ought to go check this
Esme
out. I don’t know what the connection between the Center for Universal Truth and Alain’s death is, but I know in my gut there is one. The hair on the back of my neck is standing up.”

I had to agree. “It’s got to be more than a coincidence that two of
Girouard’s
former girlfriends are members. I’m with Ingrid. We’ve got to check it out, but how?”

Strutter
looked smug. “That monthly channeling session is open to everyone. You pay twenty dollars at the door, and you’re in. The next one is this Thursday night. They’re usually held on Fridays, but because of the July fourth holiday this week, it’s going to be on Thursday.”

I looked at
Strutter
and Margo.

“Okay, I’m in,” I volunteered. I don’t think either Shelby or Suzanne knows me well enough to recognize me in a different setting, but Ingrid, I don’t think it would be smart for them to spot you there.”

Reluctantly, Ingrid agreed. “I’ve always been fascinated with the occult, but I suppose you’re right. Anyway, I’m spending the weekend at my sister’s in Rhode Island. She has a place on the shore, and I’m bored out of my wits. I’m going to go watch some fireworks and play auntie to her two boys.”

“Good,” I said. “
Strutter
and I will drop off our plant shots at the one-hour photo place on Farmington Avenue on Wednesday night, and you can pick them up Thursday on your way out of town. You can spend some time identifying them over the weekend.”

“Well, don’t be thinking that I’m going to go with you to any channeling session,”
Strutter
said, alarmed. “The idea of it scares me to death. I wouldn’t even use a Ouija board when I was a kid because I thought the forces of darkness would swallow me whole. Besides, my boy has a Cub Scouts meeting Thursday night.”

I looked at Margo. “Oh, you bet, Sugar! I wouldn’t miss this shindig for the world.”

“But won’t Shelby and Suzanne recognize you?”

“Not in a brown wig and dowdy clothes, they won’t,” she grinned. “By the time I get through
disguisin
’ myself, my own momma would have trouble
pickin
’ me out of the crowd.”

“Okay, that’s it, then,” I began, but
Strutter
flapped her hands wildly to shush me and tiptoed over to the door, which she put one ear against. After a second, she flapped her hands again and pointed at the door.

“What’s going on?” Ingrid complained, and I yanked the receiver off the cradle and punched off the speaker button, hissing at her to be quiet.

After perhaps thirty seconds
Strutter
unplastered
herself from the door and eased it open a crack. “Huh, nobody there now, but I was sure I heard paper rustling or somebody’s sleeve brushing against the door or something a minute ago.”

“We’re just all nervous,” I offered, speaking into the telephone to include Ingrid. “It’s probably all this talk about the paranormal. Anyway, is everybody straight about what we’re supposed to be doing over the next few days? We’ve got to get back downstairs.”

After hanging up the phone and turning off the lights in the little conference room, we exited one at a time through the boardroom and returned to our pods to spend the rest of the afternoon toiling diligently and innocently at our computers.

That evening I accessed the Center for Universal Truth’s website on my home computer and read the mission statement that had so unnerved
Strutter
. I could understand why a good Baptist might find “drawing upon the forces of energy at work in the universe” a rather foreign concept, but the website’s contents seemed entirely harmless to me, scam or not. Whether
Esme
really had psychic powers or merely affected them in order to lighten her students’ pocketbooks, her stated intention of helping people to discover paths to personal growth, inner strength and better health didn’t strike me as sinister. After printing out directions to the Center and making a note of the time of the Thursday night channeling session, I shut down the computer and went to give Oliver a break from babysitting Moses.

Later, I lay awake in the light of the full moon that was ushering out what had been the most astounding June of my life. I took comfort in knowing that thousands of miles away, Armando was bathed in the same light.

However slim, it was a connection, and I clung to it.

Nine

On Tuesday morning
Strutter
and I took turns leaving the pod for a few minutes carrying a clipboard and a disposable camera. At first, we limited ourselves to the public areas, snapping photos of potted plants located in the reception area and the rooms used for client conferences, but as time passed and we realized yet again that secretaries are invisible to lawyers, we became bolder. If a lawyer’s office was unoccupied, we stepped in and snapped any greenery. Whenever the coast was similarly clear around a secretarial workstation, we photographed it, too. I was asked what I was doing only once, and the floating secretary who inquired wasn’t even interested enough in my answer to pay attention.

“Oh, good,” she said absentmindedly and returned to the timesheets she was entering.

The top sheet on the clipboard
Strutter
and I carried around appeared to be a half-completed inventory of dictation and transcription equipment. It disguised the sheets underneath, which we slowly filled with employee names, film roll and frame numbers so that Ingrid would know whose plants she was identifying when she picked up the processed film.

Not wanting to risk being overheard, we kept each other and Margo apprised of our progress via e-mail. We could tap away at our keyboards and appear to be busily at work, when in reality we were sending each other progress reports and instructions. Several times a day, we carefully deleted all of our Sent messages and then emptied our computers’ Recycle bins in case Harold Karp or anyone in IT decided to monitor our exchanges for any reason.
 
If they were really interested, IT had the tools to find even our deleted messages, but why would they be?

Stealing a few minutes here and a few minutes there, we managed to cover all four floors, with the exception of Harold Karp’s office on the thirty-sixth floor, by lunchtime on Wednesday. We knew that Karp would never buy our equipment inventory cover story, since he was the one who would make any such assignment. We also knew that he kept a rigid schedule and lunched between 12:30 and 1:30 every day. Tuesdays and Thursdays, he ate soup and crackers in the Metro Building’s second-floor cafeteria. Mondays and Fridays, he dined at the salad bar on the main level. On Wednesday, the day we planned to photograph his office, he treated himself to lunch at one of the trendy little eateries on Pratt or Asylum Street.

Shortly after 12:30 on Wednesday
Strutter
e-mailed me. “Karp is probably checking out the menu at Black-eyed Sally’s by now, so the coast should be clear. Go on down. I’ll be right behind you.”

I read her message and hit Reply, adding Margo’s name in the Copy field and putting Karp’s name in the Subject field. “Okay,” I responded. Just give me a minute to check it out, and I’ll call you.” I hit Send and waited to hear the little bell tone signaling
Strutter’s
receipt of my message. It sounded, and she opened my e-mail. Then she turned as pale as it’s possible for a black woman to get.

“What is it?” I asked, seriously afraid that she might faint. She checked for passers-by and then waved me frantically to her terminal. My message was open on the screen, and she jabbed a finger at the fields on top. At first, I didn’t see it. Then my breathing stopped. I had accidentally reversed my entries, putting Karp’s name in the Copy field and Margo’s name as the Subject. I had just sent Karp a copy of our message, which left no doubt that
Strutter
and I were up to something we didn’t want him to know about.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” I babbled, clutching the back of
Strutter’s
chair for support. “What are we going to do? He’s probably down there right now reading his e-mails.”

Strutter
glanced at her watch. “Get a grip,” she said, struggling to follow her own advice. “He’s out to lunch, I’m almost sure of it, so we should have a little window here, but he’ll read it as soon as he gets back. That’s the first thing everybody does after lunch.” She chewed on a thumbnail. “We’ve got to go down there, find it on his computer and delete it.”

“How can we do that? We don’t know his password,” I protested, although I desperately wanted to believe it might be possible.

Strutter
thought for another moment. “Listen, he logs onto the network first thing in the morning and uses his password to access his mailbox. If he’s like everybody else, he leaves it open on his desktop until he quits for the day. It’s worth a shot. What other choices do we have?” Beginning to look more like herself, she turned our phones over to the receptionist and prodded me into action.