Spackled and Spooked

20

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Derek said five hours later. Between them, he and Brandon had torn out the old sink base and commode from the brown and blue master bathroom and had readied the teak dresser to be put in its place. But before we could get to that, we had to put together the plumbing for the two sinks and attach the basins to the dresser; once that was done, we could slide it over the pipes, and finish hooking the pipes together inside it. “We need to buy two sinks and a couple of fittings and pipes for the plumbing. I guess it’s time for dinner anyway. Have you had enough for today, Brandon?”

Brandon didn’t look as fresh as he had earlier, but I didn’t think it was because of what he’d been doing. Renovating is hard work, but he was twenty-two and in good shape; a half day of manual labor shouldn’t have bothered him. More likely he was stressed. He’d lost his gun and badge, at least temporarily, and was, at least officially, a suspect in two homicides. It had to be disturbing. We’d tried to keep him busy to keep him from having time to think, but it was inevitable that his predicament would be on his mind. Also, he was back here, where Holly had lain buried for four years, he being none the wiser. He probably felt he’d failed her, somehow. Not to mention that he’d been here with Holly himself, at least once. When she was young and beautiful, and above all, alive.

“When were you and Holly here together?” I asked impulsively. Brandon turned to me, taken aback, and I clarified, “The other day, before we realized that it was Holly who was buried in the crawlspace, you said you’d been here with her once. You were talking to Lionel Kenefick, remember? Outside.”

“Oh. Right.” He thought back. “I guess it must have been a week or two before she left. Died.” He swallowed.

“That wasn’t the last time you saw her, was it?”

He shook his head. “I saw her at school every day after that. And we were still dating, too. Hanging out. You know. We just didn’t come back here.”

I opened my mouth to ask why, whether anything had happened to make them choose not to, but before I could, Derek had taken the conversation in a different direction.

“So when was the last time you saw her?” He had folded his arms across his chest and was leaning against the front of the dresser. Being, as he had said, dense and heavy, it didn’t budge.

“Alive?” Brandon asked.

Derek rolled his eyes. “Of course alive. You didn’t see her dead, did you?”

“Of course not.” Brandon ’s face was pale. “Not until two days ago. And then I didn’t know it was her.”

“So when?”

His eyes flickered. “I guess it must have been the day before she died. Final exams were over, and she told me she was ready to blow town. I tried to get her to change her mind, but she wouldn’t. Then she tried to get me to agree to come with her.”

“I thought she wanted to marry some rich guy and sit around sipping champagne all day,” I commented. “At least that’s what Denise Robertson said.”

That particular fantasy didn’t seem to include a steady boyfriend, especially one she’d dragged clear across the country with her.

“Denise doesn’t know squat,” Brandon answered.

“I thought she and Holly were close friends?”

“Is that what she told you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Look, Holly was gorgeous. Popular. The girl all the other girls wanted to be and all the guys wanted to be with. And she got off on it. It fed some kind of insecurity in her to have everyone admire her. She let Denise hang around with her, but their relationship wasn’t friendship so much as hero-worship on Denise’s part, and maybe some calculation on Holly’s. Denise was always sort of plain and dumpy, and Holly knew that if they were standing next to each other, she’d come off looking better.”

Derek muttered something, in which I thought I could make out the word “Melissa,” but I had other things on my mind and didn’t chase it down.

“She doesn’t sound like a very nice person,” I remarked instead.

Brandon looked frustrated. He tried to drive a hand through his hair, but the police buzz cut was too short to give satisfaction. “It wasn’t that she wasn’t nice, OK? She could be very sweet. She was just immature, you know? Her dad left when she was just a kid, and I think it probably messed with her. Made her feel like he didn’t love her. So she was always trying to get everyone else to love her, or at least like her, instead. Especially men.”

Derek had told me that Brandon ’s dad had left around the same time as Brandon started dating Holly, so maybe that’s what had brought them together. The loss of both their fathers, at different times.

“So Holly asked you to go to California with her?” Derek said. Brandon nodded. “How was she planning to get there?”

“She wanted me to drive,” Brandon said, with a faint, reminiscent smile. “Like that old jalopy I had then would have made it that far!”

“What do you think she did, when you said no?”

Brandon thought for a brief second. “Probably tried to find someone else to take her instead.”

“Would she hitchhike?” I asked. He shook his head.

“I don’t think so. She may have been immature, but she wasn’t stupid. More likely she tried to find another friend with a car who’d be up for an adventure.”

Someone without a sick mother and ties to Waterfield that couldn’t easily be broken. Brandon must have been more mature than Holly, even four years ago.

“Denise?” Derek suggested. Brandon shook his head.

“There’s no way Denise would have left Travis. Her boyfriend. Husband, now. And Holly wouldn’t have wanted the competition, anyway. Getting away from Waterfield and ‘making it’ was her thing; she would have wanted to do it on her own.”

“Would she have asked a guy, then?”

Brandon ’s eyebrows furrowed for a second while he thought. “Most likely she would. No competition from a guy, and she could get most of us-them-to do whatever she wanted.”

“So maybe whoever she asked killed her?” I said.

“Unless she never asked anyone else, and Denise killed her,” Derek answered. “Or her mother did. To stop her from leaving, maybe.”

“True,” I admitted.

Brandon looked a little shell-shocked as he listened to our discussion. He’d known Holly, and must be, in his own way, mourning the loss, as well as processing the shock of finding out she’d been killed, even so long after the fact. Not to mention that he was probably processing the fact that he’d been digging out her skeleton, without realizing it. To us, it was more of an interesting puzzle. And also, if we could prove that Holly had been killed somewhere else, and arrived here only after death, maybe that would make the house a little easier to off-load. Not that there was much hope of that, considering the blood stain on the stove and what was likely Holly’s earring that I’d found underneath the fridge.

“So about dinner,” Derek said. Obviously the discussion hadn’t affected his appetite at all. Derek’s appetite was affected by very little, I’d realized. Brandon, on the other hand, looked queasy.

“Why don’t you two go get some food,” he suggested, “and pick up the stuff we need while you’re at it. I’ll stay here and strip some wallpaper or something. You can bring me back a sandwich, just in case I get hungry later.”

“We can do that,” Derek said, putting an arm around my shoulders.

“Are you sure you want to stay here alone, though?” I asked. Brandon nodded.

“Word’s probably got out by now. I don’t want to go anywhere where I’ll have to talk to anyone. Or listen to them talk about me.”

I could understand that. “Still…”

Derek’s arm tightened. “C’mon, Avery. Let’s go.”

“Yes,” I said as he led me toward the door to the hallway, “but…”

“I’ll be fine,” Brandon assured my back. “I’m just gonna stay here and work. And think. Maybe I’ll remember something that’ll help. The sooner Wayne arrests somebody for the murders, the sooner I’ll be back on duty. No offense, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’d rather be back at my own job again.”

“We’ll see you in an hour or so,” Derek said, without commenting. “Move it, Tink.”

“Yes,” I tried again, “but…”

The rest of my sentence was lost when he whisked me out the door into the gathering dusk.

“What was that all about?” I asked a couple of minutes later, when we were in the truck on our way down Becklea. Just as we reached the corner, we met Lionel Kenefick’s van coming the other way. I waved, but he must not have realized who I was, because he didn’t wave back. I watched in the mirror as he zipped into his driveway and parked.

“He wants some time alone,” Derek answered.

“ Brandon? Why?”

Derek glanced over at me, his expression almost comical. “Put yourself in his shoes, Avery. In the past two days, he’s found out that his old girlfriend, who he thought was strutting her stuff on a movie set in Hollywood, has actually been dead for four years. He’s dug up her skeleton and come face-to-face with a forensic reconstruction of her face. He’s also had to process another murder victim, this one fresh. And now someone is planting evidence around his house, trying to implicate him. He has lost his job, at least temporarily, and along with it his ability to support his mom, whose medicines cost thousands every month. MS isn’t a cheap illness to treat. And on top of that, we’ve just asked him to spend four hours in the house where Holly was buried. Then grilled him about what happened the last time he saw her. I’m sure he’s happy to be rid of us for a while.”

“When you put it like that,” I admitted, “I guess I can see your point.”

“So where do you want to eat?” He turned the car onto the main road.

“How about we just stop by Guido’s again? It’s close, and we can get Brandon a calzone or a meatball sandwich or something.”

“It’ll be fast,” Derek nodded. “I don’t want to leave Brandon alone too long.”

I opened my eyes wide. “You’re not afraid he’s suicidal, are you?”

He snorted. “Hardly. I’m afraid he’ll go hog wild with my tools and destroy something. I want to get back there before he decides to try to work on the plumbing on his own and floods the place, or something.”

I leaned back on the seat, teeth worrying my bottom lip. “But we have to go get the sinks and plumbing stuff, don’t we?”

“It’s getting late,” Derek answered. “We’ll take our time over dinner, order something to go for Brandon, and by the time we get back to the house, it’ll be seven o’clock, and he’ll probably be ready to leave. Even if all he has planned is to sit at home and watch TV for the rest of the night.”

“That’s true. All right, then. We’ll do that.” I sat back in the seat and watched Derek’s hands on the wheel until he stopped the car in the parking lot of Guido’s and turned off the ignition.

The interior of the small building was just as it had been when we’d been here last. Loud and boisterous, with lots of people. Candy, the waitress, was wearing the same tight jeans with her hair in the same jaunty ponytail; she might even have been chewing the same wad of bright pink bubblegum. And over in the corner, the same familiar faces were sitting around the same table. They didn’t even blink when they saw us. “Have a seat,” Josh said, scooting a little closer to Shannon. I slid in next to them while Derek sat down next to Ricky Swanson-Patrick Murphy Swanson-on the opposite side of the table.

Ricky looked different today. He was still dressed the same, in a plain button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. But when I greeted him, he didn’t peer furtively out at me through a curtain of shaggy, dark hair, nor did he mutter an almost inaudible response. Instead, he looked straight at me, and smiled. “Hi.”

I blinked. When Ricky smiled, his whole face changed. Lit up. Became handsome. And not only that, but I realized something else, too. John Nickerson may have thought Patrick-Ricky-looked like his mother, but when he smiled, he was the spitting image of his father. He had his mother’s coloring, yes, but he had his father’s smile.

None of the others reacted, and I found myself wondering if they knew. Would Ricky have told them? Safer to assume they didn’t know, I decided, and that Ricky preferred it that way. “You look like you’re feeling better today.”

He blushed. “Yes, thanks.”

“Too bad you had to leave so quickly last night,” Derek said blandly. “Avery’s Bailey’s fudge cake was great.”

“It was more Kate’s Bailey’s fudge cake than mine, but thanks.”

“So what’s going on with you two?” Josh wanted to know. “Did my dad let you go back to work on the house today?”

Derek nodded. “We left Brandon there while we went to get something to eat. We’re supposed to bring something back for him.”

“ Brandon?” Josh’s brows drew together. “What’s he doing there? Has something else happened?”

“Oops,” I said softly. Derek nodded, responding to what I was thinking rather than what I said.

“It’ll probably be all over the news tonight, if it isn’t already, Avery. We may as well tell them.”

“Tell us what?” Shannon asked. Her eyes were bright, and so was her smile, but as Derek explained what had happened, the smile slipped and the eyes went from eager to horrified.

“Poor Brandon!” Her voice was warm, full of sympathy. Josh sent her a sideways scowl, but he didn’t speak. “Of course he’d never do anything like that!”

Paige shook her head in agreement.

“I don’t know,” Josh said darkly. “Seems to me a pretty girl can get a man to do almost anything.” He stabbed his straw through the ice in his drink with savage force. I suppressed a smile, and so did Derek. Shannon, amazingly, seemed to have no idea that Josh was so crazy in love with her that he couldn’t see straight and automatically disliked any man she spoke well of. She turned in her seat to face him, their noses just a few inches apart.

“How can you say that, Josh? You know Brandon; he’d never hurt anyone!”

Josh shrugged sulkily. “It happened a long time ago. We didn’t know him then.” Shannon looked like she was about to open her mouth to argue further, and he continued, “It could have been unintentional. If they had an argument-she wanted to leave and wanted him to come with her; he wanted to stay and wanted her to stay, too-and she turned to walk away, and he grabbed her, and she stumbled and fell… He didn’t mean to hurt her, but then when she died, he panicked and buried her under the house. It could have happened.”

“He wouldn’t have done that,” Shannon said, although her voice was a lot less sure this time. “Would he?”

“ Wayne doesn’t think so,” Derek said, “although he’s not sure, either. Not totally. I don’t think Brandon did it, but I wouldn’t leave Avery alone with him.”

“I’m not worried,” I said. “I’ll buy that he could have killed Holly by accident. It could have happened to anyone. I’ll even buy that he might have panicked and buried her in the crawlspace. But that he’d leave her bag of clothes and jewelry sitting in his garden shed for four years? He’s not that stupid. Nobody knew she was missing. He could have gotten rid of it at any time, and nobody would have known. And it’s not like he’d place an anonymous phone call implicating himself, either.”

Everyone was silent for a moment after I finished speaking.

“She has a point,” Shannon said eventually.

Josh nodded. “So someone else killed Holly and left the bag in Brandon ’s garden shed to throw suspicion on him. Or get him off the case?”

“Or throw suspicion off himself,” I said. “Or herself, if it was a woman. Even if Holly’s death was an accident, and the only crime was in covering it up, we’re way past that now. Venetia Rudolph’s death was no accident. Someone deliberately picked up that flower arrangement and bashed her over the head with it. And I definitely can’t see Brandon doing that.”

“Who do you think did it, then?” Paige asked, her soft voice even softer than usual, almost inaudible in the loud room. I shrugged.

“I have only been in Waterfield a short while. You’d be better able to determine that than me.”

“Who are the suspects?” Josh asked.

“Well.” Derek and I exchanged a glance. “There’s Brandon, because he dated Holly and because her bag was found on his property. Also because Venetia Rudolph would most likely open the door for him, especially if he were in uniform.”

Then there was Ricky, but I wasn’t about to mention that with him sitting across the table.

“There’s Holly’s mother,” Derek said. I nodded.

“Linda White. She lives on Becklea, so she’d know that the Murphy house was empty and would be a safe place to hide the body. Holly’s friend Denise said that Holly and her mother argued a lot. If Holly didn’t write her own good-bye note and pack her own bag, Linda had the best opportunity to do it.”

“But to kill your own child…!” Shannon said with a shudder. I glanced involuntarily at Ricky, whose expression was inscrutable.

“It happens,” he said.

“Yes, I know it does, but the thought…!” She shook her head.

Josh, who was very sharp and a lot less emotionally charged than Shannon, looked from her to Ricky for a moment. His eyes lingered on Ricky a little longer than strictly necessary before he turned his attention to his drink.

“Then there’s Denise herself,” I said. “She lives on Becklea, too, and she was Holly’s best friend. Except Brandon says they weren’t as close as Denise makes out, and Linda says that Holly and Denise had a falling out a few weeks before Holly disappeared. Over a boy.”

“Probably her husband,” Paige said. We all looked at her in surprise, and she shrugged. “I know Travis. He and Denise started dating in high school, and she held on to him all through college. If anyone else so much as looked at him, she’d pitch all sorts of fits. If she and Holly had a falling out because she thought Travis was interested in Holly, I could definitely see Denise killing Holly to keep him.”

Hearing this amazing statement delivered so cold bloodedly in Paige’s soft, little-girl voice, was almost surreal, and left us all speechless for a moment.

“OK, then,” Josh said after a pause. “So Denise is on the suspect list. Anyone else?”

Derek and I looked at each other. “Lionel Kenefick?” Derek suggested.

“Denise said he and Holly were friends.”

“Denise also said she and Holly were friends,” Derek reminded me. “ Brandon said they weren’t.”

“That’s true. And he does live on the street. He’d know that the house was empty, and that it’d be safe to bury the body in the basement. And Venetia would probably open the door for him, just as she would for Denise or Linda. Or Brandon. Or, for that matter, for Travis. As for motive, though…”

“Motive’s a lot less important than means and opportunity,” Josh declared. “Especially if Holly’s death was an accident. If her killer didn’t mean to kill her but panicked and buried her and then killed Ms. Rudolph when the body was found, because he was afraid Ms. Rudolph knew who he was… or she, of course.”

“That’s true.”

“Are you talking about Lionel Kenefick?” Candy, the waitress, asked as she leaned over to put Derek’s and my drinks on the table. She made a point of brushing against Derek’s arm as she put his drink in front of him.

Derek smiled. “That’s right. You know him?”

“Went to school with him,” Candy said, slowly straightening up. “What’s he done?”

“What makes you think he’s done anything?” I wanted to know.

She shrugged, setting into motion a ripple effect underneath the skimpy T-shirt.

“He’s a little weird. I was in the drama society with him in high school, and he was always ogling me. Me and all the other girls.”

I exchanged a look with Derek. “Really? Did that include Holly White?”

Candy tossed her ponytail. “Especially Holly. All the guys did, except with Lionel it was a little more than that. He gave her flowers every opening night, stuff like that. Whenever she got stuck somewhere and needed a ride or something, even in the middle of the night, she’d call him to come get her.”

“And he would?”

“Sure,” Candy said, popping a pink bubble.

“Wow.” Derek and I exchanged a look.

Candy lifted a shoulder. “They were friends, you know. Grew up together. On the same street and all. And they were in drama club together.”

“I wouldn’t have thought Lionel Kenefick was the drama society type,” Derek remarked. “Or was that just because of Holly, too?”

Candy turned to him. “Oh, no. Lionel was in every show the drama society put on. He always said he was gonna be on Broadway when he grew up. Holly couldn’t really act or anything, she just got all the best parts because she was so pretty, but Lionel was good.”

“So what happened?” Big difference between Broadway and stringing electrical wiring for the Stenham brothers.

Candy shrugged. “No idea. I guess maybe he just woke up and smelled the decaf, you know?” She looked around the circle of faces. “I mean, he’s not really leading-man material. He can sing, and I guess he can act and dance, too, but… I mean, just look at him!” She giggled.

“So he and Holly didn’t date?” Derek said. “They were just friends?”

She nodded. “Oh, sure. Holly dated Brandon Thomas. Lionel wasn’t her type at all.” She lowered her voice. “I heard that he was fired from the police department. Brandon. It wasn’t because he killed her, was it?”

“He wasn’t fired,” Shannon said.

“And he didn’t kill anyone,” I added. “Thanks, Candy. We appreciate the information.”

Derek smiled. “Would you mind checking on those pizzas? We’re in kind of a hurry.”

“Sure,” Candy said and sashayed off. Josh and Ricky watched her go. Shannon rolled her eyes. I caught Derek’s eye, and he grinned.

“So what’s the guy going to do now?” Ricky asked. We all turned to him.

“ Brandon?”

Ricky shook his head. “If the police don’t believe that Brandon ’s guilty, they won’t stop looking for the real killer. So the whole thing with the bag didn’t come off. What’s the killer’s next step?”

We all exchanged glances across the table again. In the (relative) silence, Candy came back to the table, followed by her fellow coeds, and unloaded several pizzas.

“If it were me,” Josh said, reaching for a slice of pizza and dumping it on Shannon ’s plate before snagging one for himself, “I’d bail.”

“Leave town?”

He nodded. “Get in my car and go. Try to get across the border to Canada, maybe, before anyone realized I was gone. Or just drive until I got far enough from here that nobody would know me, and start over. Use a fake name, all of that.”

Ricky’s face twitched, but he didn’t speak.

“Not everyone thinks like you, Josh,” Shannon said, nibbling around the edges of her pizza. “Not everyone is willing to go halfway across the country, away from everyone and everything they know, and start over. It takes confidence. Not everyone has it.”

“So if you weren’t going to bail,” Derek wanted to know, “what would you do?”

Shannon shrugged. “Find someone else to throw suspicion on?” she suggested.

“Or just sit tight and hope for the best,” Josh added. He reached for another slice of pizza, having devoured the first in a couple of bites. Derek did the same.

“Try to get, or make up, some proof that I couldn’t have done it,” was Paige’s contribution. “In case the police decided to take a closer look at me.”

“What about you, Ricky?” I turned to the young man. He glanced up, bright blue eyes meeting mine. I continued, “Would you run away? Tough it out? Try to prove why you couldn’t have done it? Or find someone else to throw suspicion on, since implicating Brandon didn’t work out?”

“Keep doing what I’ve been doing,” Ricky said. I must have looked confused, because he added, “Throw more evidence at Brandon. If I keep implicating him, sooner or later something will stick. Or the sheer accumulation will make him look guilty. If he could have proven he didn’t commit the murders, he would have, so he can’t. And even if the police can’t ever prove he did it, even if they catch me-that is, the real killer-there’ll be enough evidence against Brandon to provide more than reasonable doubt if the case ever goes to trial.”

He took another bite of pizza.

“That’s scary,” I said after a minute. Several of the others nodded.

“You should write thrillers,” Derek said, with a wink at me. I rolled my eyes. Once upon a time, I had told him the same thing, accusing him of having too vivid of an imagination. As it turned out, his suspicions had been spot-on.

“I’m researching a true crime story,” Ricky answered blandly, but with just a brief glance in my direction. I looked down.