Spackled and Spooked

4

“This,” Derek said the next morning, taking it out of my hand, “is a TT-500 romex connector, also known as a Tom Two Way.”

“A what?” It seemed a long name for the small, gray doohickey now lying in his palm.

“A connector that’s used to clamp an electrical wire to a junction box,” Derek explained. “Why do you ask?” He tossed it up in the air and caught it again.

“No reason, I guess. I found it in Aunt Inga’s yard this morning.”

Derek grinned. “No kidding. Only the one? I appreciate your bringing it to me, Avery, but they’re a dime a dozen, almost literally. I buy a hundred for less than twenty bucks, and there’re probably fifteen more of them floating around your house and yard right now.” He stuck it in his pocket anyway.

“So it’s yours?”

Derek looked at me for a moment. “Well, it’s not like it has my name on it or anything, but who else’s would it be?”

“No idea. I thought I saw something in the yard last night, so I hoped I’d found a clue, but I guess not.”

“Afraid not,” Derek said. “I must have dropped it this summer, while we were working on the house. Sorry, Tink.”

“No problem. It was probably just my imagination anyway. Or an animal.”

“You sure?” He looked around, brows knitted. There was nothing to see, however. No footprints, no broken branches, no conveniently dropped handkerchief with the prowler’s initials… not even a paw print or a hair ball. All I’d found during my early-morning search was the small Tom Two Way, and that had turned out to be a red herring.

“I’m sure,” I said firmly. “It was just my imagination. Or the Weimaraner from three doors down.”

“The ghost dog?”

I nodded. The Weimaraner is smoky gray with yellow eyes, and it does look ghostly. “Sometimes it gets out. And chases the cats. I’m sure that’s what it was. You ready to go?”

“As soon as I get the cats out of the laundry room,” Derek said and went to suit action to words.

That day, the footsteps came back twice.

In the morning, Derek and I were hard at work removing the kitchen cabinets. I had excused myself for a visit to the bathroom, and while I was there, I heard someone come down the hallway. Naturally I assumed it was Derek, and started talking to him through the door. When he didn’t respond, I raised my voice and heard him answer, faintly, from the kitchen. Since he couldn’t very well be in two places at once, obviously he wasn’t making the footsteps, which kept moving past the door even as we were calling to each other. However, he’d also been too far away to hear them, and by the time he arrived in the hallway, at a run and skid, the footsteps had reached the end of the hall and stopped. One funny thing: They were still muffled and soft, as if they were walking on carpet, while the hallway now had hardwood floors. But that’s the way it is with ghosts, I’ve heard: There’s a nun in England somewhere who supposedly walks a half a foot below the current floor of whatever it is she haunts. Ghosts walk where the floor was when they were walking on it.

In the middle of the afternoon, the footsteps came back, and this time we both heard them. By then, the kitchen cabinets were history, thrown in the Dumpster, and we were in the small bedroom across from the main bath. I was spackling holes in the walls and Derek was tearing out the makeshift shelves in the closet. When the footsteps started, we both froze, ears pricked. I stayed where I was, balanced on the step stool, my arm with the putty knife raised above my head. Derek, on the other hand, leapt for the hallway and stood there, hands on his hips and sandy eyebrows drawn into a scowl, while the footsteps essentially walked right through him and continued down the hall. He turned around to watch, not that there was anything to see.

“What did it feel like?” I asked when the footsteps had stopped and he came back into the room, chewing his bottom lip in what was either agitation or deep thought. “I’ve heard that encountering a ghost is like plunging into ice water.”

“You have, huh? Sorry, this didn’t feel like anything at all. I heard the steps walk toward me then walk away. I didn’t feel anything.”

“So you don’t think it’s a ghost?” I rubbed my arm with my free hand, to get rid of the goose pimples. Derek might not be cold, but I was.

“What happened to ‘there’s no such thing as ghosts’?” Derek asked.

“That was before I heard footsteps walking around in an empty house,” I answered.

“There are other explanations, you know.”

“Like what?”

“Somebody’s trying to scare us.”

“I thought about that.” I nodded. “Specifically, I thought about you trying to scare me.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “What are you suggesting? That I rigged a sound system and set it off by remote while I was away?”

“Or on a timer.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Derek said. “What would I gain by scaring you, Avery? If you refuse to come back to work, I’ll have to do everything by myself.”

He had a point. He had also brought up another one. “What would anyone else have to gain by scaring us both?”

“I’m not scared,” Derek said. I rolled my eyes.

“Of course not. Pardon me. I’m sure it would take a lot more than a few unexplainable footsteps in an empty house to scare you. You didn’t answer my question.”

“No idea,” Derek said cheerfully. “Maybe there’s a safe full of cash under the floorboards, and somebody’s looking for it? Maybe Mr. Murphy was a jewel thief and the Hope Diamond is hidden in the chimney? Maybe somebody else wanted to buy the house, and they’re upset that we got it instead, and now they’re trying to force us out so they can take over and renovate the house and make all the money?”

“If so, wouldn’t they have come to us with an offer already? What’s the good of getting rid of us if they can’t be assured of getting the house? For all they know, someone else is trying to buy it from us, and we’ll sell it to them instead. You’ve been in the crawlspace, so you should have been able to see if there was a safe under the floorboards anywhere. And if there is something valuable hidden in the house, why wait until now to start looking? They had seventeen years to find it while the house was just sitting here.”

“Fine,” Derek said sulkily. “What’s your suggestion?”

“I’m not sure. But it seems to me that either there’s a ghost walking down the hallway at five past two every afternoon, or someone is playing a joke on us.”

“Why would someone do that?”

“Because it’s fun to see us sweat?”

“Who’s sweating?” Derek asked. “And nobody’s here to see our reactions anyway. But if someone is doing it, there’ll be evidence somewhere. Wires, speakers, something like that. At the very least a tape recorder or something in the attic.”

“There’s an attic?” I glanced up at the ceiling. Considering how low the roof was, I hadn’t considered the possibility of more space up above.

Derek nodded. “I stuck my head up there when I first looked at the place. The entrance is in the master bedroom closet.”

He headed down the hallway, following the path the footsteps had taken. I trailed behind, looking around. The carpets were gone, so there was nowhere to hide a trip wire, and there were no suspicious holes in the walls or unexplained electrical thingamajigs, either. Just the stuff you’d expect to be there: switch plates and outlets for the electrical system, an old-fashioned phone jack or two, and the vents for the heat and air. “Funny place for an attic access.”

“Not really,” Derek said, turning into the master bedroom. “It’s just a hatch in the ceiling with a makeshift ladder nailed to the wall. I guess they wanted it somewhere out of the way.”

He pulled open the door to the closet and stepped in. I stopped in the doorway and watched as he started up the short ladder on the far wall of the closet. After just two rungs he was able to push the piece of plywood covering the access off into the attic. Grabbing the edges of the hole with both hands, he boosted himself up through the hole. I smiled appreciatively at the display of muscles bunching under the sleeves of his blue T-shirt.

“You coming?” he asked from upstairs as he swung his jeans-clad legs up through the hole and into the attic. The next moment his face appeared in the opening. “I’ll pull.”

“Is there anything worth seeing up there?”

Derek looked around for a second. “Not much, no. A few old boxes over in the corner. Maybe some stuff whoever cleaned the place out seventeen years ago didn’t realize was here.”

“No super-duper sound system with spooky, ghostly sound effects?”

“Afraid not. Just the boxes. And some more dust and old insulation and stuff like that. C’mere, I’ll pull you up.” He extended a tanned arm down through the hatch.

“If there’s nothing there, I think I’ll pass. Go get the boxes and hand them to me, would you? We may as well look through them.”

Derek crawled away and reappeared a minute later with an old corrugated cardboard box. “It’s heavy,” he warned, lowering it through the opening, the muscles in his arms tensing.

“I’m stronger than I look,” I answered. And added an involuntary, “Ooof!” when the box dropped into my arms. My knees buckled, and I staggered out into the bedroom, groaning, while Derek disappeared from view to gather up another box, chuckling.

There were four boxes in all, and we opened them sitting cross-legged on the floor in the master bedroom. Derek slit the tape on the first with his trusty X-Acto knife, and a cloud of dust flew skyward as he pulled the flaps apart. I sneezed.

“Old books,” he said after a moment’s examination. “Paperbacks. Romance novels from the late ’80s and early ’90s, looks like.” He wielded the X-Acto knife again. “Same thing in this one. I think Melissa used to read these. Wonder if she still does. And how that makes Ray Stenham feel.” He smirked.

“Why would it make Ray feel anything at all?” I wanted to know. I mean, we all know that just because a woman enjoys a good romance novel now and again, it doesn’t mean that she’s unfulfilled in her own relationship, right?

“Hey, anyone who drives a Hummer that big must have something to prove, don’t you think?”

“I prefer not to think about Raymond Stenham in that way,” I said.

“Because he’s not as good-looking as me?”

“Because he’s my cousin. And because I’m involved with you and shouldn’t have a need to speculate about anyone else’s… um… tools.”

Derek chuckled but didn’t pursue the subject. “This one’s full of elementary school stuff,” he said, opening the third box. “Composition notebooks, projects, drawings. Peggy must have kept her kid’s school work.”

“Open the last one.” I pulled the fourth box toward me. “If there’s anything valuable anywhere, it must be there. Nothing in these others would fetch a fortune. A first edition pre-Plum Janet Evanovich romance might be worth a few bucks on eBay, but even if every book in the box is a first edition, and autographed, we’re only talking a few thousand dollars. And I doubt anyone would want Patrick’s drawing of A-is-for-Apple or the handprint turned-into-a-turkey he made for Thanksgiving the year he was four. Although Patrick himself might like them.”

“Sorry,” Derek answered, having ripped open the last box while I was expounding. “Nothing exciting here, either. More papers. Notes. Something that looks like a manuscript. Maybe Peggy had aspirations of becoming the next big thing in romance. It’s called Tied Up in Tartan.”

“Ooooh!” I reached out.

Derek grinned. “Scottish bondage, you think? You’re not going to read it, are you?” He held on to the handful of pages as I tugged.

“Why not? It’s ours. Came with the house, right? And if it has the potential to be a bestseller, why not get it published?”

“I doubt it’s that easy,” Derek said, but he relinquished the first few pages of the manuscript anyway. It was handwritten, the cursive childishly rounded.

Iain MacNiachail, his long reddish gold hair flowing in the breeze that blew in from the North Sea, carrying with it the smell of heather and gorse, clung to the ramparts of Dunaghdrumnich Castle…

I giggled.

“I’m going back to work,” Derek announced. “C’mon, Avery. You can read the rest tonight. Let’s not waste the daylight.” He reached down for me, and I took his hand and got to my feet.

“So there was no evidence of foul play up there? No sound system, no suspicious wires, nobody hiding in a corner with a foghorn ready to make ghostly noises?”

“Nothing,” Derek said, heading for the smaller bedroom with me behind.

“So if someone’s playing with us, they didn’t hide their equipment in the attic.”

“That’s right.”

“So maybe nobody’s playing tricks on us.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Derek said. I rolled my eyes at his back as we both trotted into the small bedroom and returned to work.

An hour or so later, there was a knock on the door. A peremptory rat-tat-tat, conveying brisk impatience. Derek arched his brows, took a better hold of the crowbar, and headed out of the bedroom. I jumped off my step stool and trailed after, spackling knife in hand.

We were halfway across the living room when the knock came again, followed by a yowl. I sped up and was next to Derek when he yanked open the door, a scowl on his face and crowbar at the ready.

Outside stood an older lady with gray hair cut in a mannish crop. Looking at the wrinkles crisscrossing her face, I put her close to the three-quarters-of-a-century mark, but the rest of her showed no sign of succumbing to old age anytime soon. She was dressed in a green shirt and tan pants with dirt on the knees, and under one beefy arm she held Jemmy, while in the other hand, by the scruff of her neck, she hoisted Inky. I was impressed. Hauling both cats at the same time is a chore, especially when they’re unwilling to be hauled, which is most of the time. But she wasn’t even breathing hard, in spite of Inky’s irate yowls and efforts to free herself.

“These critters yours?” She looked from Derek to me with sharp, dark eyes.

“Mine,” I said, making no move to take them from her. I’ve been scratched enough to know better. “You can put them down.”

“And let ’em go right back to digging in my garden? Nosah!” She snapped her lips closed. Nosah-no, sir-is the Mainer’s way of stating an emphatic negative.

“You’d better come in then,” I said, moving back, “and then you can let them go.”

She stepped across the threshold, still holding both cats, and Derek swung the door shut behind her. As soon as she put them down, Jemmy and Inky took off, tearing across the hardwood floors, skidding around the corner. Inky hissed once across her shoulder before she disappeared.

“My name is Avery Baker,” I added, extending the hand that wasn’t holding the knife, “and this is Derek Ellis.”

The older woman shook my hand, her grip tight enough to grind my bones together. I hid my paw behind my back, surreptitiously flexing, after she let go. Derek gave as good as he got, I was glad to see, after switching the crowbar to his other hand. “And you are…?” he prompted as he squeezed.

“ Venetia Rudolph. Next door.” She took her hand back and tucked both into the pockets of her baggy khakis. I did my best not to giggle.

“Well, we’re sorry about the cats. We brought them from home to take care of any mice, and they must have gotten out.” I had in fact let them out myself sometime in the midmorning, after they’d sat at the door complaining for fifteen minutes, but Venetia seemed so upset about the fact that they’d been in her yard, that I thought it better to make it sound like an accident. “I hope they didn’t ruin your lovely landscaping.”

The landscaping of the red brick ranch to the left of us was lovely. There were bushes and plants of various sizes and shades of green in containers and beds all around the front of the house, and when I’d been out in our backyard earlier, I’d seen huge beds of flowering plants behind the house, as well. This late in the year, it wasn’t as beautiful as I could imagine it might be in May or June, with every flower in riotous explosion of color and texture, but I could make out climbing roses on trellises around the back deck, a patch of what could only be monstrous sunflowers off to the side, and pots of colorful pansies marching up the stairs and all along the railing.

Venetia smiled tightly. “They found the herb garden. And the catnip.”

“Oops,” I said.

Derek hid a grin. “Sorry about that, Miss Rudolph. It won’t happen again.”

“You’d best make sure it doesn’t,” Venetia Rudolph said and turned to leave.

“May I ask you a question, Miss Rudolph?” I said quickly.

“In addition to the one you just asked?”

What an old battle-ax! I bit back a sharp retort. “Another of the neighbors told us that our house is haunted. He said he’s heard screams at night and seen lights go on and off and shadows move past the windows.”

“Hogwash!” Venetia barked.

“And Derek and I have both heard footsteps walking down the hallway when no one was here but us.” I glanced over at Derek for confirmation. He nodded.

Venetia ’s eyes slid sideways to the opening to the hallway. She must have been in our house before, to know where it was. Either that, or the layout of her house was exactly the same. “The cat,” she said.

I shook my head. “Jemmy walks like a man, I agree, but he was outside. Savaging your catnip. And yesterday he wasn’t here at all. Sorry.”

“Harrumph! In that case, young lady, I’m sure I can’t help you. I’ve lived next door for twenty-five years, and no screams have ever disturbed my sleep.”

She turned toward the door again.

“Well, have you ever seen anyone around? Squatters? Anyone who might have broken in? People hanging around, doing stuff to the house? The cable guy?”

Derek must have thought I was stretching the point, because he rolled his eyes. I rolled mine right back at him and focused on Venetia.

“No one who shouldn’t be here,” she said promptly. “There were some squatters in the basement once, but that’s two or three years ago. I called the police on ’em, but they up and left before anyone could move ’ em out. The man from the lawn care company cuts the grass every couple of weeks, and twice a year, someone comes out to service the heating system. Once in a while, a handyman will nail down a loose roof shingle or clean out the gutters. But if you’re asking if I’ve seen anyone suspicious hanging around, the answer is no.”

“I see,” I said. “Thank you, Miss Rudolph.”

She waved me aside. “You make sure your kitties stay out of my catnip, Miss Baker. And you, too, young man.” She looked up at Derek for a second as she trotted past him and out the door. He shut it again just in time to stop Jemmy and Inky from following. Both cats skidded to a stop, tucked their plumy tails around their haunches, and gave him identical, affronted looks. Jemmy, the more vocal of the two, complained loudly.

“I brought some cat snacks,” I said, heading for the kitchen and the bag I had left there in the morning. “Maybe that’ll make them happier.”

“Unless it’s catnip, I don’t think so,” Derek answered, “but it’s worth a try.”

“So Venetia Rudolph-what a name!-never saw or heard anything spooky.” I dug out the cat treat box and gave Inky and Jemmy a fish-shaped crunchy each. “Or anyone hanging around, either.”

“So she says,” Derek said, folding his arms across his chest.

“Why would she lie?”

“She’s a closet romantic and she was hunting for the manuscript of Tied Up in Tartan? She’s the next door neighbor, and she’s lived here twenty-five years. She might have had a key this whole time. Most people hide a key outside or give one to a neighbor to keep.”

“That’s true,” I said. In New York I’d given the girl in the apartment across the hall a copy of my key, just in case I lost mine. Here in Waterfield, Kate had a copy, and so, of course, did Derek. It made sense that one of the Murphys would have given their neighbor, Venetia Rudolph, a key to their house for emergencies. Or to another of the neighbors. “Guess I’ll have to read Tied Up in Tartan now, to see what’s so exciting.”

“Like you needed an excuse,” Derek said. I smiled.

We left the house around six, scrambling because we were running late. Derek’s dad, Ben Ellis, and his wife Cora had invited us for dinner, and Derek wanted to please his dad by being on time. He loved his dad dearly, and always worried that he had disappointed the older man by not taking over his medical practice. Derek had, in fact, gone through both medical school and a four-year residency before deciding that he wanted to be a renovator instead of a doctor. That was when Melissa decided she’d had enough of being Mrs. Derek Ellis and wanted a divorce. The marriage had been rocky for a while, Derek had told me, but it was the career change from physician to glorified handyman that had been the final blow.

The older Ellises lived in a beautifully maintained Victorian cottage in the Village, i.e., the historic district. Aunt Inga’s house-my house-was a few blocks away, and so was downtown Waterfield, with Derek’s bachelor pad, as well as Kate’s B and B. We knocked on the beautifully carved front door just a few minutes after six thirty P.M., looking as good as we could under the circumstances. Derek keeps a clean dress shirt in the car for when he has to do a quick change to meet a potential client-or a dinner date-and knowing where we’d be going, I’d made sure to bring a change of clothes, too. The dress was one I had designed myself-yellow background with black silhouettes of cats arching their backs along the hem, and black piping.

Dr. Ben met us at the door and ushered us into the great room; that combination of kitchen-living room-den that’s become so popular over the last couple of years. Derek had added it to the old Victorian house some five or six years ago, when he first decided to do remodeling and renovation for a living. I guess Dr. Ben had wanted to do what he could to give his son a good start in his new profession. Everyone in town knew the Ellises, and everyone who was anyone had seen the kitchen addition and loved it. I loved it, too. It was bright and sunny and open, with terra cotta tile on the floor, lots of green plants, and French doors leading out onto the deck that Derek had also built, and from there into the garden, which was Cora’s domain.

Dr. Ben’s second wife was a lovely person, and I enjoyed her company. She was a few years younger than her new husband, in her early fifties to his sixty or so, and a widow. According to Kate, who knew everything, even things that had happened long before she came to Waterfield, Cora’s late husband had been an alcoholic and a mean drunk. Derek, who adored his stepmother, put it more strongly: The late, unlamented Glenn Morgan had been a drunken bastard who enjoyed knocking his wife around, and he’d got what was coming to him when he got hit by a car late one night as he was staggering home from an all-night binge at the Shamrock. Ben Ellis had already known Cora for a while by then, from treating the various injuries her husband had inflicted upon her over the years. They waited a suitable year before getting married, and were still acting like newlyweds four years later.

Cora, a short, plump brunette with lovely blue eyes and a sweet smile, was busy at the stove when we came into the kitchen, her fluffy hair standing out in a halo around her flushed face. “We’re having chicken fajitas,” she explained over her shoulder. “Oh, hi, Derek.” He bent to kiss her on the cheek and to steal a piece of deliciously browned chicken out of the pan at the same time. He stuck it in his mouth and blew on his fingers. Cora giggled.

“Can I do anything?” I asked, hoping she’d say it was all under control. I’m not much of a cook, having always had only myself to cook for and no real inclination to learn. My former boyfriend, Philippe, preferred eating out, and when we didn’t, when he had something else to do, I had usually just nuked a bowl of macaroni and cheese or mixed up some tuna salad for myself.

Cora smiled, delighted. “Would you like to make the guacamole?”

“Sure,” I said, relieved. Even I could mash a couple of avocados in a bowl.

“Excellent. And Derek, would you mind helping your dad set the table?”

Derek declared himself willing and able, and we all got to work. Cora stood by my side for a minute or two to make sure I knew what I was doing before going back to whatever it was that was simmering on the stove, filling the house with the spicy aroma of Mexico.

“So how are things going over at the house?” Dr. Ben asked when dinner was on the table and we’d all held hands over grace. Derek had his mouth full, so it fell to me to answer.

“I guess it’s going as well as can be expected. We’ve done most of the tear-out. Kitchen cabinets, carpets, wallpaper. We’re leaving the toilets and light fixtures where they are until we’re ready to replace them.”

“Tomorrow I’m going to shore up the floor,” Derek added. “Rent a handheld hole digger, pour some concrete, and set up some metal posts to get the floors level before we start putting in the new kitchen.” To me he added, “I may be a little late picking you up tomorrow morning. I have to stop at the hardware store first, and they don’t open till nine.”

I nodded. I had no problem with that, not being an early riser under the best of circumstances.

“I knew Peggy Murphy, you know,” Cora said unexpectedly. Both Derek and I turned to look at her. She added, “Glenn and Brian both used to drink at the Shamrock. They were both hot-tempered, and sometimes they’d get into it. I met Peggy at the police station one night, after Roger Tucker, who was chief of police back then, had arrested them both for drunk and disorderly conduct.”

“I didn’t know that,” Dr. Ben said.

“We never talked about it,” Cora answered, with a smile. “She was long gone by the time you and I met.” She shook her head, looking down at her food. “It still amazes me sometimes, to think of what happened to her. There, but for the grace of God, and all that.”

She took another bite of food while Derek and I looked at each other, not quite sure what to say. Dr. Ben was the one who got the conversation back on track.

“I never had to take care of Peggy Murphy at the clinic. Are you saying that her husband used to knock her around? I don’t remember any injuries or bruises or anything on the body.”

“Well, he must have had some issues,” Cora said reasonably, “to do what he did.”

Couldn’t argue with that.

“What made him do it?” I asked. “Didn’t he leave a note or anything? Some explanation for why he decided to murder her?” I looked around the table.

“If he did, I never heard about it,” Dr. Ben said. “Although the police probably didn’t tell me everything. They called me in to pronounce time of death, and to make sure there wasn’t anything that could be done for any of the victims, but I wasn’t involved in the investigation beyond that. The bodies went to Portland, to the medical examiner’s office, for autopsy, and there was no doubt what had happened, anyway. Brian Murphy killed his wife and her parents, who were in town on a visit, and before his son could come back with help, he killed himself. The gun was his, and the fingerprints on it were his as well. The boy saw his dad walk from the master bedroom to the guest bedroom, where his grandparents slept, with the gun in his hand, after the first shot had woken him up.”

“And the police didn’t find any other reason why he might have wanted to go out in a blaze of glory? Was he sick? Depressed? Was his wife leaving him for someone else and threatening to take Patrick, and he decided if he couldn’t have her, no one could?”

Across the table from me, Cora moved on her chair. Our eyes met for a moment before she looked down. I glanced at Dr. Ben, but he seemed to have missed the byplay. So had Derek, apparently. When my boyfriend is involved in something he enjoys, like eating, he doesn’t care about anything else. I’ve gotten used to it. Sometimes, it’s even convenient.

“If the medical examiner found anything wrong, I didn’t hear about it,” Ben Ellis said, “and I never treated Brian, either. I only ever saw Patrick. And whatever Brian’s problems were, they didn’t extend to hurting his child. I never saw anything wrong with the boy beyond the usual childhood complaints. Measles, flu, the occasional broken bone, a few stitches from falling off a bike or out of a tree…”

Cora looked over at him, a question in her eyes. Obviously she was well aware of the fact that broken bones, bruises, and cuts are common signs of abuse.

The doctor shook his head. “The boy didn’t show any of the symptoms of abuse. He was a healthy, normal child, well-adjusted, and seemed genuinely happy and fond of his parents. I’m sure the injuries were gotten the way they said, by falling off bikes and out of trees.”

That was something to be grateful for, anyway. What had happened was still just as horrific, and the boy was still just as alone, but at least the nightmare hadn’t gone on for long.

When dinner was over, I offered to help Cora clean up while the men made themselves comfortable in the re cliners. It seemed the least I could do, and I wanted to talk to her. Bending over the sink, I asked softly, “Was Peggy Murphy leaving her husband, Cora? Were her parents helping her move? Is that why he killed her?”

Cora avoided my eyes. “I don’t know, Avery.”

“Was she having an affair with someone?”

She shrugged, her softly rounded body moving gently under a printed cotton blouse. Cora is a very comfortable person, someone you’d have no qualms confiding in, knowing she’d know the right words to say and would make you feel better after you’d told her everything. I wondered if Peggy Murphy had felt the same way. “I don’t know that, either. Although I wondered.”

“About what? Or who?”

Cora hesitated. “A few months before the murders, Peggy changed. Colored her hair to get rid of the gray that had crept in, bought some new clothes, and started wearing makeup…”

I was rinsing dishes in the sink then handing them to Cora to put in the dishwasher. “Who was she seeing?”

“I’m not sure she was seeing anyone,” Cora said. “She went to work when Patrick started kindergarten. At some antique store downtown. Part-time, so she could get home before the school bus dropped him off in the afternoons.”

“And that’s when she started changing?”

“A few months later,” Cora said, and shut the dishwasher door decisively. “Help me serve the coffee, Avery. I baked a cake, too. There are cups and plates in the cabinet and forks in the drawer.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, opening the cabinet door. I’d worry about Peggy Murphy and her phantom lover later.