Spackled and Spooked

Epilogue

“Hell of a night,” Derek said a month later. He fell onto the sofa and stretched his long legs, in form-fitting green tights, out in front of him.

I nodded as I curled up in the chair opposite, a glass of wine in my hand. “Quite.”

“Think we did OK?”

“I think so.”

“Good.” He leaned his head on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes.

It was Halloween night, late, and we had just closed the door behind the last of the visitors who had graced us with their presence tonight, for our Halloween party-open house to celebrate the renovated Murphy house.

There had been a lot of visitors. Some had been trick-or-treaters, carrying goody bags and looking for candy, but more had been adults: curious neighbors, wanting to see what we’d done with the place, and local ghouls, eagerly eyeing the house where so many deaths had taken place. One was even a self-professed medium, who sat down on the floor in the master bedroom, Indian style, crossing her eyes and attempting to contact any lingering spirits. She couldn’t raise anyone, and I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. If she had succeeded, I thought there was a chance she’d have wanted to buy the house-genuinely haunted houses aren’t that easy to come by-but on the other hand, such a confirmation of supernatural evildoings would have made it much more difficult to sell the house to someone else.

Word had gotten out about Lionel and the ghostly effects he’d rigged to keep people away, and the general consensus was that the house had never really been haunted. At the moment, Lionel was languishing in jail in Portland while he waited for his case to come to trial. The judge considered him a high flight risk and had set bail accordingly, and although Lionel’s mother had tried to remortgage her house, it still hadn’t been enough to keep her no-good son out of jail. Thank God. Wayne had searched Lionel’s room and that second earring, the mate to the one that had gotten lost under our fridge, had been there, along with the rest of Lionel’s shrine to Holly. Pictures, notes, playbills from the high school drama society… as well as the couple of pieces of clothing that had turned out to be missing from the pink bag. I guess maybe he didn’t think anyone would realize that they were still missing. Either that, or he just couldn’t bear the idea of parting with them. Also there were a few notes she had written to him over the years. The one Linda White had found in her house had originally been written to Lionel, it turned out; his attentions had begun to bother her, and she had written a note to tell him to back off. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. A sort of inside joke between two wan nabe actors. And Lionel had made use of it to make Linda-and everyone else-believe that Holly had left Waterfield of her own free will.

Derek and I had gone back to work on the house while we waited for the trial to begin. I had brown paper bagged the walls in the master bathroom and painted them to resemble leather. They looked great. Derek had finished installing the teak dresser sink base, which also looked fabulous with its two matching white basins and bright chrome faucet sets. To avoid having the master bath look too masculine, I’d gussied it up with some girly accessories: white soap dispenser, bottles of lotion, dainty towels, pretty, painted lampshades on the sconces flanking the mirror.

In the second bath, we’d gone basic, with white tile on the floor and around the tub. The walls were painted turquoise, suitable for both boys and girls, but we had jazzed it up by using both flat and glossy paint in stripes. It gave an interesting 3-D effect when the light hit it. And we had installed a big Fiesta dinnerware mixing bowl in lieu of a vessel sink on top of another small console table I had found in John Nickerson’s antique shop. The wood finish on this one was dry and faded, enough that even Derek had to agree that painting it white would be acceptable. To finish things off, I had made a peek-a-boo shower curtain that had put a smile on Derek’s face as soon as he saw it. I had bagged the daisy idea and come up with my own pattern instead, one with stylized flowers in black and turquoise on a white background. All of their centers were see-through, which made Derek chuckle. He’d tried to talk me into taking a shower almost every night we’d been here, but so far I’d managed to resist. I planned to make him his own peek-a-boo shower curtain for Christmas, though. With tools on it. Or maybe houses. And have all their windows be transparent. He’d like that.

The rest of the Murphy house looked great, too. The floors had come up nicely, polished oak throughout, and we’d painted all the walls in fresh, light colors. I had talked John Nickerson into letting me borrow some furniture and accessories from his store, and the place was staged perfectly (if I do say so myself). John had said so, too, as a matter of fact, just a couple of hours earlier, when he stopped by.

“Nice place,” he’d said, looking around at the gleaming hardwoods, the fresh paint, and a framed fashion poster of Twiggy above the Finn Juhl-inspired sofa.

“It’s not all from the sixties,” I answered apologetically. “Some of it is earlier. I figured most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

“Most people are uncultured plebeians,” agreed Derek with laughter in his eyes. “Hi, John.”

He put out a hand. John nodded and shook. He was dressed as a vampire, with his hair slicked straight back and dyed shoe-polish black for the occasion, wearing a black suit and black cape with a stiff collar. “Nice tights,” he said, with a hint of a smile. Derek grinned.

“Avery insisted.”

I hadn’t, but I didn’t quibble about it. Dressing as Tinkerbell had been pretty much inevitable for me. I had on a little green dress and little green ballerina flats, with my hair piled on top of my head and a set of gauzy wings strapped to my back. Because it was almost November and we were in Maine, I had cheated: The dress wasn’t strapless like Tink’s; it had long sleeves and a sweetheart neckline, and I was wearing tights under it.

I had not, however, insisted that Derek dress as Peter Pan. Donning the green tunic and tights, with the cute little feathered hat sitting jauntily on top of his head, had been his choice. Peter’s hair was a few shades closer to red, and his eyes were hazel to Derek’s dreamy blue, but it wasn’t a bad likeness for all that. The tights fit very nicely, too. At least I thought so, although Kate had taken one look at him earlier in the evening and been overcome with laughter.

She had been here, as had Shannon and Josh, Paige and Ricky. The latter was dressed as a sailor, in white suit and collar, while Paige and Shannon were angel and devil respectively. Paige had the droopy white dress, shiny halo, and wings, while Shannon was wearing a skimpy red cocktail dress and high red heels, with two horns peeking out from under her hair. Josh, dressed as a mad scientist in white lab coat, had a hard time keeping his eyes off her. And Kate was Lady Godiva in a floor-length wig and flesh-colored bodysuit.

I had occasion to talk to Ricky alone for a moment, and I asked him if he’d like to have the boxes of papers we’d found in the attic. All except for the manuscript his mother had been writing; I’d taken that home before Ricky had seen it, so he didn’t know it existed, and I didn’t see the need for telling him. Instead, I had offered it to John Nickerson. It did concern him, after all.

“Manuscript?” he’d said when I told him about it.

“Peggy was writing a romance novel. Tied Up in Tartan. The hero’s name is Iain MacNiachail.”

John flushed a painful crimson from the stiff collar of the suit to the roots of his newly dyed black hair. “So that’s where you read the name,” he said in a strangled voice.

I shrugged apologetically. After a minute, he seemed to pull himself together. “I didn’t sleep with her, you know. We worked together, and I liked her, but she was married. I’m not saying that something might not have developed if she’d been free, but I wasn’t about to get in the middle of their marital problems.”

“So they had marital problems?”

He nodded. “Sure, yeah. He wasn’t abusive, not physically, but after Peggy went to work, I guess maybe he felt like he wasn’t needed. She could go out and make her own living. So he started drinking more, staying out late, getting into trouble at work. She talked about leaving. She might as well live on her own, she said; she did everything herself anyway.”

“Is that why he shot her, do you think? And her parents?”

“I always thought it was,” John said. “I figured her folks came up to Waterfield to help her pack up her stuff, but when she told him she was taking Patrick and moving out, he couldn’t handle it.”

“Tragic.”

He nodded. “I’ll take that manuscript, though. Don’t want anyone else to get their hands on it. Might give someone the wrong idea.”

“I’ll drop it off at the store tomorrow,” I promised.

Ricky was thrilled to have the other boxes of paperwork, and he was also very complimentary about the job we’d done on the house. “I don’t remember much from the time I lived here,” he said apologetically. No one seemed surprised, so he must have told the others who he was. “And I wouldn’t want to move back in, but I feel almost like I could. It looks like a different place now.” He looked around.

“I’m not sure I ever thanked you,” I answered, “but I appreciate your selling it to us. We’ve enjoyed renovating it.” After the footsteps and screams were disengaged, anyway, and the murders were solved and the murderer put away.

“My pleasure,” Ricky said. He promised to come back for the boxes of paperwork sometime when they weren’t all sharing a car, and I told him he was welcome any time.

After that, it was pretty much one thing right after the other until late in the evening, when Derek collapsed on the Finn Juhl sofa and I curled up in the Eero Saarinen tulip chair across from him with my wine.

“Think we did OK?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“Good.” He stretched his legs out in front of him, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. I watched his eyelashes make shadows across his cheeks, and his chest rise and fall with every breath. After a minute, he opened his eyes again. “Think any of ’em will want to buy the place?”

The open house for prospective home buyers had been our realtor’s idea. A Realtor who wasn’t-Lord be praised-Melissa James.

“Irina seemed confident that we’d get an offer soon,” I answered. “She said that several of the people who stopped by said they were interested.”

Yes, our realtor was Irina Rozhdestvensky. Turned out she was affiliated with one of the big national brokerage chains out of Portland, and that she was brand new at her job and desperately needed someone to take a chance on her. I was so thrilled at the thought of not hiring Melissa-OK, thrilled at the idea of putting one over on Melissa-that I hadn’t even blinked at the idea of giving the listing to someone totally unproven. So far it seemed to be working well enough, although Irina had just been marketing the place for the past week or so. Still, the Halloween open house had been her brainchild, and a fairly successful one, it seemed. We’d been overrun with people, and although most had been curious neighbors (and kids looking for candy), some had been genuine homebuyers looking for a house, as well.

“Maybe we’ll get rid of the place before Christmas, then.” Derek closed his eyes again.

“Speaking of Christmas,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think I mentioned that my mother is thinking of coming to visit.”

“Here?”

I nodded.

“No,” Derek said, “you didn’t mention that. Should I worry?”

“I don’t see why. Just because I’m her only daughter, and she’s coming all the way from California to check out the guy who made me give up a successful career in Manhattan to live hand to mouth in this backwater…”

Derek sat up straight, eyes wide, and I grinned. “Don’t worry. She’ll…” I was about to say “love you” but changed it at the last moment, “like you. What’s not to like, right?”

“Right,” Derek said, but he sounded unsure.

I peered at him. This display of insecurity was new, and really kind of sweet, everything considered. Most of the time he came across as comfortably self-confident, and the fact that he was worried about what my mother would think of him was endearing. It meant-I thought-that he was serious about me. Not that I’d doubted it, really-he’d taken me home to meet his parents-but we’d dated only a few months and were still figuring things out. But if he was concerned about finding approval with my mother, that must mean that he was in it for the long haul, right?

I uncurled from the chair, smiling, a warm glow suffusing my body and wiping away my fatigue. It could have been the wine or maybe the fire in the other room, but somehow I didn’t think so. “You know, I’ve never had a boyfriend my mother liked.”

“You’re kidding.”

I shook my head as I navigated around the kidney-shaped Adrian Pearsall-style walnut and glass coffee table. “She despised Philippe. Thought he was too good-looking to be trustworthy.”

“That’s a point in her favor, anyway,” Derek said, watching me come closer. “My dad never liked Melissa, either. Accused me of thinking with my…”

I arched a brow, and he flushed. “… anyway, he thought she only chose me because she wanted to be married to a doctor.”

“Your father’s a smart man. So what does he think of me? Why does he think I chose you?” I stopped in front of him.

“Oh, he likes you. What’s not to like?” He reached out and pulled me down on his lap. “And I’m under no illusions about that. You chose me because I’m good with my hands.”

“You got that right,” I said and leaned against him, laughing.