Spackled and Spooked

18

The teak dresser was still in the window of Nickerson’s Antiques the next morning when Derek pulled the truck to a stop outside. He pointed to it. “That it?”

“That’s the one. And that’s Mr. Nickerson.” I indicated the man who was wielding a broom to sweep a handful of yellow leaves off the sidewalk in front of his store. Today, he was wearing a denim suit, western style, with wide-legged jeans that looked like something Elvis might have worn in his heyday. On his feet were black snakeskin cowboy boots with high heels.

Derek nodded. “So I see.”

“Everyone knows everyone in Waterfield, don’t they?”

“Pretty much,” Derek said. “At least until Melissa and the Stenhams starting going wild and strangers started moving in.”

Mr. Nickerson heard this last statement. He looked up and nodded, although it was difficult to be sure whether the nod was agreement or just a general greeting. “Derek.”

“John.” He put out a hand, and they shook. “Avery’s been telling me about the Danish Modern dresser.” Derek glanced at the display window. “She’d like to use it for a sink base in a house we’re renovating. Mind if I go take a look?”

“Knock yourself out,” John Nickerson said. Derek headed for the store while the two of us stayed where we were, on the sidewalk. Downtown Waterfield was just waking up; blinds were lifted in the shop windows along Main Street, those of the shop owners who had sandwich boards or outdoor displays had put them out, and front doors were propped open with doorstops or tied with twine. The temperature would reach an estimated sixty-five degrees or so today, nice and crisp, but at the moment it was in the fifties, and I was glad I had a jacket on over my T-shirt and jeans.

“You told me that Peggy Murphy used to work for you, right?” I ventured, when the silence became uncomfortable. In the display window, Derek was examining the Danish dresser, pulling out the drawers and peering at the sides and back.

Mr. Nickerson nodded, his eyes on Derek, as well. “For six or eight months before she died.”

“Did you know Patrick, too? Her little boy?”

His silvered brows drew together slightly. “Met him. He’d come over after school sometimes, do his home-work or sit and draw in the back room. Why?”

“I’m just curious,” I said with a shrug. “I told you we’re renovating the old Murphy house. I saw pictures of Brian and Peggy in the newspaper archives, but I haven’t seen a picture of Patrick.”

John Nickerson leaned the broom up against the front of the store. “Looked like his mother. Brian had red hair and freckles. Like me, before I turned gray.” He smoothed a freckled hand over his ducktail. “But Peggy and Patrick were Black Irish, with dark hair and blue eyes.”

“Are you Irish, too, then?”

He shook his head. “Scots.”

“Nickerson doesn’t sound Scottish.” Although the only time I’d come across the name was when I was reading Nancy Drew as a girl, so what did I know? Still, in my mind, all Scottish names started with “mac,” which I knew meant “son of.” MacDonald would be the son of Donald and MacEwen the son of Ewen, and so on. Although MacNicker didn’t sound right. Nickerson was better.

“Nickerson and Nicholson are from the MacNicol clan,” John Nickerson explained. “Along with MacNicoll, Nichols, Nickells, and MacNeacail.” He helpfully spelled the different variants of the name.

“How about MacNiachail?” I wanted to know. He wrinkled his brows.

“Haven’t come across that one. Where d’you hear it?”

“Read it somewhere. So if you were in Scotland, your name would be Ian MacNicol? John is Ian, right?”

“More likely it would be Iain MacNeacail, but that’s close enough.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“For clearing it up for me.” I smiled. It seemed to worry him, because he peered intently at me. But before he could say anything, Derek came out of the shop again. “What did you think?” I asked, happy for an excuse to change the subject.

“I think I can make it work.” He turned to John Nickerson. “Will you take three hundred fifty dollars for it?”

They went into the age-old dance of buyer and seller, and I left them to it and turned my mind to what I had just learned. So John Nickerson was for all intents and purposes an Americanization, or Anglicization, of Iain MacNiachail-which had been the name of the dashing hero in Peggy Murphy’s unfinished bodice-ripper manuscript, Tied Up in Tartan. Did that coincidence prove that Peggy had had an affair with her boss?

“Not necessarily,” Derek said ten minutes later, after the purchase of the dresser was a fait accompli at four hundred dollars and I had told him what John Nickerson had said. “All it proves is that she had a crush on him. Or maybe not even; maybe she just liked the name.”

“It’s interesting, though, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” Derek said with a shrug. Apparently he didn’t find it as interesting as I did. “Why do you care so much, Avery? Not to be insensitive or anything, but they’re just as dead either way.”

“I know that,” I answered. “I know it doesn’t make any difference. I’d just like to know what happened.”

He glanced over at me. “No doubt about what happened, is there? Brian killed them.”

“I know that. But why?”

Derek shrugged. “He must have had a reason. There’s always a reason, whether we understand it or not. She could have been having an affair. She could have been thinking about leaving him. Or he could simply have thought she did. He could have felt threatened because she started working and having fun without him. We’ll never really know.”

“I guess. It’s just interesting to me, is all.”

Derek didn’t answer.

“I’ll get Wayne to help me unload the dresser,” he said when we pulled up outside the house on Becklea. For a wonder, it was nice and quiet here today. Maybe it was too early in the morning, or maybe the TV crew and the nosy neighbors had had their fill. Maybe they figured the excitement was over. Whatever the reason, it was nice to have the place to ourselves for a bit. The black and white cruiser was still here, though, parked outside Venetia’s house, so Wayne -or somebody-was doing something in the neighborhood. “Why don’t you go open the door,” Derek added, handing over the keys.

I trudged off across the grass toward our front door while he headed right, to Venetia ’s backyard and the back door. Two minutes later he came back. “Nobody there. Maybe they parked the car there to deter gawkers, or maybe Wayne ’s just didn’t hear the knock.”

“Maybe he went down the street to talk to Denise Robertson and Linda White,” I suggested. “He said he’d have to.”

Derek nodded. “Can you help me carry, or do you want to wait until Wayne comes back?”

“I’m not a wimp,” I said, a little insulted that he thought I was too weak to help him carry the dresser. Granted, I’m not big, and I was still a little sore from the accident yesterday, but surely I’d be able to hold up my end of a dresser.

“Teak has a very high density,” Derek warned. “It’s heavy.”

“Fine. There’s Lionel. Why don’t you ask him?” I pointed down the road to where Lionel Kenefick had just exited his house and was on his way to the van. He glanced our way, and Derek lifted a hand. Lionel hesitated.

“Be right back,” Derek said and took off down the road. I folded my arms across my chest and watched him meet up with Lionel at the edge of the latter’s driveway. They spoke for a minute-Derek gestured toward me, or more likely, toward the teak dresser on the back of the truck-and Lionel nodded. The two of them came back up the road.

“Can you hold the door open, Tink?” Derek asked as they wrestled the dresser off the bed of the truck and walked it across the grass toward the stairs. I scurried up the stairs to the front door and pushed it open. And I guess I can admit now that although I’d unlocked it earlier, I hadn’t gone inside by myself. Instead, I’d headed back down the stairs to talk to Derek, loath to go inside the supposedly haunted house alone.

The dresser must have been heavy, because I could see muscles bunching in both of their arms as they hauled the gleaming piece of furniture over the threshold and into the stripped-down living room. “Where to?” Lionel wheezed. Derek glanced at me.

“Master bedroom,” I said, “for now.”

“Down the hall,” Derek directed, and Lionel aimed his skinny posterior toward the doorway to the den. I minced behind them as they carried their burden down the hallway and into the big bedroom at the back of the house.

“You can just leave it in the middle of the floor for now. We’ll have to tear out the old sink from the bathroom before we can install it.”

“I’ll have to glue the top drawers shut and cut the holes for the basins, too,” Derek added, rubbing his hands together after putting the dresser down in the middle of the floor. Lionel did the same, looking around.

“Have you ever been here before?” I asked. He glanced at me.

“When Patrick lived here.”

“Right. Sorry, I forgot.”

He shrugged. “What’s that?”

“What’s what? Oh, just some boxes we found upstairs in the attic a couple of days ago. Some of Mrs. Murphy’s writing, old drawings that Patrick made, that sort of thing.”

One of the boxes was open, and a few pieces of paper were trailing out.

“ Brandon must have looked through them,” Derek said, obviously reading my mind.

“Why would he do that?” I answered.

He shrugged. “No idea, but he was in here yesterday. I guess maybe he saw the boxes and was curious.”

“You’d think he could have put the papers back where he found them, then. Instead of leaving them on the floor.”

“Maybe he was interrupted,” Derek said.

“Maybe. Did he know Patrick Murphy, I wonder? They’d be the same age…”

“Brandon Thomas?” Lionel said. I nodded. He shook his head. “He lived in the Village. Went to the elementary school in town. Patrick and I-and Holly and Denise-went to school out here. Wasn’t till senior high that we all ended up together. Patrick was long gone by then.”

“So Holly and Brandon didn’t know each other until high school? And Brandon didn’t know Patrick at all?”

Lionel shook his head.

“He went to live with family, right? Somewhere? After the murders?”

“Aunt and uncle, I think. Somewhere west of here.”

“Like Arizona? Or Nevada?”

“More like Ohio. Or Pennsylvania. Indiana, maybe.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a picture of him, would you? I’ve seen pictures of Peggy and Brian, but I haven’t seen one of Patrick. Someone told me he looked like his mother, but I’d like to see a picture.”

Lionel looked like he wanted to object, but he refrained. I was grateful, because I wasn’t sure I could explain. “I think so. You want it now?”

“If it isn’t too much of an imposition,” I said. He shook his head.

“I’ll go look for it.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said. “That way you won’t have to walk back up here.”

Derek arched his brows. “I’ll come, too,” he said.

“Did you know Venetia well?” I asked on the way down the street, after having ascertained that Lionel had heard about the latest murder. He shrugged.

“She’s been living here since before I was born.”

“I don’t suppose you have any idea who could have killed her?”

He shook his head. “What do the police think?”

“As far as I know,” I said, with a glance at Derek, “they’re working on the assumption that whoever killed Holly killed Venetia Rudolph. She lived right next door, and she’d kept an eye on the place, seeing who came and went. Maybe she knew something she didn’t realize she knew. Or maybe she saw Holly with someone before she died, or something.”

Lionel paled. “Someone she knew, then? Someone around here?”

I nodded sympathetically. The thought was unpleasant. Bad enough to be killed by someone just randomly passing through; worse somehow to have someone you trust turn on you like that. “Either someone she knew or someone she thought she could trust.” I explained my cop-or-preacher theory.

“Makes sense,” Derek admitted. Lionel agreed, still looking pale.

“Excuse me,” he added. “I’ll go look for the picture of Pat.” He ducked into the house.

“I don’t want you to be alone with that guy,” Derek said as soon as Lionel was gone.

“Lionel? Don’t be silly.”

“He knew Venetia. She’d probably let him in if he knocked on the door. And he knew Holly, too.”

“But look at him!” I objected. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“That’s what people said about Ted Bundy,” said Derek.

“Ted Bundy was good-looking and charming and a mass murderer. Lionel is none of those things. And why would he kill Holly? They were friends.”

“I don’t know why. But until this case is solved, I don’t want you to be alone with him. Or any other men. Except me.”

“Does that include Wayne?” I pointed down the street to where the chief of police was making his way toward us.

“Of course not,” Derek said. “If you can’t trust Wayne, who can you trust?”

“That may have been Venetia ’s mistake,” I answered. “Not Wayne, of course. I’m not saying that Wayne killed her. But somebody she trusted did. So maybe we shouldn’t trust anybody.”

Derek nodded. “Point taken. Until this is over, I don’t want you to be alone with anyone. That includes Lionel, and Ricky Swanson, and Brandon, and even John Nickerson. But not Wayne.”

“What about Josh?”

He pretended to think about it. “I think Josh is safe.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Wayne said, from a distance. “Safe from what?”

“Derek’s being silly,” I answered. “He’s telling me not to be alone with anyone but him until you catch Venetia ’s murderer.”

“And Josh?” Wayne stopped beside me and straightened his belt.

“I’m allowed to be alone with Josh. Derek doesn’t think there’s any chance he’s a murderer.”

Wayne measured Derek with a long, steady look but didn’t comment. “I’m sure Dr. Ellis is safe, too. And what makes you think it was a man who committed the murders, anyway? There was no evidence of sexual trauma. Impossible to tell on Holly, of course, but none on Venetia Rudolph. And it didn’t take special strength to commit either murder, so the killer might well be female.”

“Fine,” Derek said. “Until Wayne catches the murderer, Avery, I don’t want you to be alone with anyone but me, my dad, Cora, Wayne, Kate, Josh, or Shannon.”

I ignored him. “Do you really think it could be a woman, Wayne? Who?”

“This is speculation,” Wayne warned. “I have no proof or even a reason to suspect these people particularly. But according to Denise, Holly and her mom fought a lot. Linda has a drinking problem. And she’d be better able to forge a note with her daughter’s handwriting than anyone else.”

“Lord!” Holly’s own mother might have killed the girl?

“On the other hand, Linda said that Denise and Holly had had a falling out just before Holly disappeared. Something about a boy. Denise had known Holly all her life; she’d probably be able to forge Holly’s handwriting, too. Linda says she might even have had a key to the house. Not that Linda is particularly good about locking up. The door was open when I got there this morning, and she was fast asleep on the sofa. If it was the same thing four years ago, someone could have walked right in and taken some of Holly’s things and left the note. Unless Holly herself left the note and packed the bag, because she really was planning to leave, and then someone intercepted her.”

“Did Linda still have the note?” I asked. Wayne shook his head.

“It’s long gone. She said she expected to hear from her daughter within a couple of days-figured she’d come crawling back when she realized the world was a lot tougher than she thought-and there was no need to keep it. If she’d realized it would be the last letter she ever got from her daughter, she would have kept it, she said, but that doesn’t do me any good now. She did say she was sure it was Holly’s handwriting. And she made a list of the clothes she thought were missing from her daughter’s closet, but after all this time, there’s no telling how accurate it is. Or if she’s telling the truth.”

“How did Brandon handle being taken off the case yesterday?” I asked just as Lionel materialized next to me. I hadn’t heard him come out of his house again, and I wondered how much of our conversation he’d overheard.

“ Brandon got taken off the case?” he blurted, eyes wide. Wayne nodded. “Why?”

“Because he knew Holly White. It wouldn’t look good to have him investigate her death.” Wayne turned to me. “He took it about as expected. He’s disappointed, of course, but he understands. Or says he does. He’s in Bar Harbor today, breaking the news to Miss Rudolph’s next of kin.”

“Who’s her next of kin?” Derek asked.

It turned out that Venetia had an older brother who lived in Bar Harbor, or Bah Habuh, as the Mainers say. “He’ll probably want to sell the house,” Wayne added, “if you two are interested.”

Derek and I locked eyes for a second. We’d talked about the possibility briefly in the car last night, after Kate had brought it up over dinner, but we hadn’t made any decisions. Under the circumstances, we figured we might be able to get the house cheaply, but the problem would be to sell it again, with the stigma of the murders, plural now, hanging over it. A lot would depend on how difficult it turned out to be to sell the house we already owned.

“You don’t have to decide now,” Wayne said. “The estate has to go through probate, and that can take months. By spring, things may look different.”

“That’s true.”

Lionel cleared his throat. “I should get to work,” he said, handing me an envelope.

“So should we,” Derek agreed and put an arm around my shoulders. “Come along, Avery.”

Wayne nodded. I thanked Lionel, and the three of us headed up the street toward the end of the cul-de-sac again. By the time we got to our own property, we heard Lionel’s van start up and drive away, backfiring as it slowed to a stop at the intersection with Primrose. Wayne was telling us about driving Ricky Swanson home last night, or rather, back to the dorm at Barnham, where he lived. “He took me up to the computer lab to show me the facial reconstruction he and Josh did of Holly. It’s a pretty good likeness, isn’t it?”

“Good enough that Brandon recognized her,” I said, fiddling with the envelope Lionel had given me. “Josh says Ricky is brilliant when it comes to computers. Did he explain why he acted so strangely at dinner last night?”

Wayne shook his head. “We talked mostly about Pittsburgh. I’ve been there a few times, for law enforcement conventions and the like. And it’s not like I could interrogate the poor kid, you know. He’s not a suspect in any of this. What’s that?” He indicated the envelope.

I turned it over. “Just an old photograph of Patrick Murphy. He and Lionel were friends when they were small. I’ve never seen a picture of Patrick, so I thought I’d ask Lionel if he had one.”

“Well, let’s see,” Derek said.

I ripped open the envelope and pulled out the photo, which showed two small boys grinning at the camera, from what I realized were the front steps behind me. One was small and scrawny, with Lionel’s reddish brown hair and pale eyes. The other was stockier, solid, with darker hair, electric blue eyes, and ruddy cheeks. He was dressed in a striped shirt and jeans, and even in comparison to the grainy newsprint of Peggy Murphy, I could see that he looked like his mother. I could also see that he looked like someone else.

“Speak of the devil,” Derek said softly. I nodded.