Home For the Homicide (A Do-It-Yourself Mystery) (13 page)

It was small, and looked a lot like Aunt Inga’s shed used to before it was immolated. Shelves, pots, garden implements, bags of dirt.

Over in the corner was something that looked like a huddle of fabric, and my heart skipped a beat. “Miss Mamie?”

There was no answer, but if she were asleep, there wouldn’t be. I forced myself to step forward into the darkness.

I had only taken a couple of steps when the doorway darkened.

I jumped and squealed and dropped my flashlight. The beam bounced a couple of times, and then settled on the floor to illuminate a pair of sturdy brown boots, the soles and tips wet with slush.

“Goodness, Avery,” Dr. Ben’s voice said, “you scared me half to death.”

It took me several seconds to find my voice. “Likewise.”

“What are you doing?” He flashed his light around the interior of the shed.

I bent to pick up my own flashlight before I answered. “I saw this bundle of . . . stuff.” I pointed at it.

“Fertilizer,” Dr. Ben said, focusing his flashlight beam on it. “And Cora’s gardening coat.”

Of course. Now that I was standing closer, it was easy to see. A couple of big bags of fertilizer, with a coat on top; a coat whose sleeve had accidentally gotten hung up on a nail, so it looked like someone’s arm was inside it.

“There’s nobody here,” I said, stating the obvious.

Dr. Ben shook his head. “Let’s go.”

Our next focused stop was Miss Mamie’s old house, now Derek’s and my renovation object on North Street. On the way there, we shone our lights into cars and bushes, but saw no sign of Miss Mamie. And we discussed my brush with death in the garden shed in July, since Dr. Ben had obviously noticed that I was still jumpy.

“It’s normal,” he told me. “It’s only been a few months. You’ll be more comfortable in time. The more garden sheds you visit without incident, the better you’ll feel.”

Sure.

“Derek hasn’t built you a new one yet, has he?”

I shook my head. “We were busy with the TV crew when it burned, and then there was the condo to renovate, and the wedding, and by then it was too cold to start building. He told me he’d build me a new one when the weather gets warm again.”

Dr. Ben nodded. “That’ll help, too. Get involved in building it. It’ll be yours and you’ll feel more confident about it.”

Good advice.

“Feel free to come hang out in ours anytime you want,” Dr. Ben added.

“Thank you.” I smiled. “I might take you up on that when the weather gets a little better.”

We stopped on the sidewalk outside the house. It was dark and creepy, just as creepy as it had appeared that first night when Cora and I drove past.

“I don’t have the key,” I said. “And anyway, Derek and Brandon already checked here.”

Dr. Ben nodded. “Let’s just take a look around the yard. If they’ve already checked the inside, there’s no sense in doing it again. This is taking more time than I thought.”

It was. We had already used up half our allotted time, and we hadn’t patrolled anything even close to half our section. Hopefully the others were making better time. I kept hoping my phone would ring with a report that someone had found Miss Mamie, but so far, no luck.

“I’ll go this way,” Dr. Ben said, and headed left, across the snowy grass in front of the house. I went straight, down the driveway and around the Dumpster to the opening.

There was nothing inside it that shouldn’t be there, at least as far as I could determine in the beam from the flashlight. And Derek was right; the baby carriage was gone. We had parked it between the house and the Dumpster, and now the space was empty. I shone the light on the ground to see if I could determine which way it had gone—it couldn’t have flown, after all; someone had had to wheel it away—but between the hard-packed snow from before and the new dusting over top, I had no idea.

I continued down alongside the house, flashing my light to and fro.

It was dark back here, the only sounds my footsteps crunching on the snow. A square of light shone on the ground up ahead, out of the basement window. Derek and Brandon must have forgotten to turn it off when they searched the house earlier.

I squatted in front of it and peered down, just in case it wasn’t Derek’s or Brandon’s doing, but Miss Mamie’s. There was no reason to think she’d be in the basement—if she were inside the house, it was more likely she was upstairs in her old room again. Not that she was in the house, because Derek and Brandon had checked.

Anyway, I squatted and peered in. And saw nothing. Everything looked empty and quiet, just as it should.

But just in case, I pulled out my phone and dialed Derek. A few seconds passed and then I heard his voice. “Avery?”

“Did you check the basement when you were over here at the house earlier?”

“Hello to you, too,” Derek said. “Yes, we did.”

“Is it possible that you forgot to turn off the light?”

There was a beat. “I don’t think so,” Derek said.

“Not the big ceiling light. The small one under the stairs. The bulb hanging on the string.”

“Oh.” He sounded relieved. “Yes, we might have forgotten to turn that off. I don’t recall turning it on, but Brandon may have, and I may not have realized it.”

Good enough. “I just wanted to check. It’s on now, and I wanted to make sure we didn’t have to go back inside. I don’t have the key, so it would involve breaking a window.”

“Don’t do that,” Derek said. “I take it you haven’t found her yet.”

“Afraid not. I guess you haven’t, either.”

“No,” Derek said. “No sign of her down here.”

“No sign of her up here, either. We’ll keep looking.”

“Us, too,” Derek said. “See you at the church in an hour.”

I told him we’d be there and continued on my way into the backyard. From the other side of the property, I could hear Dr. Ben’s footsteps crunching and see the beam of his flashlight moving to and fro.

It wasn’t a terribly big backyard. Smaller than Aunt Inga’s, and about the same size as Dr. Ben’s and Cora’s. But where Cora kept her yard in immaculate shape, and where Derek and I had slowly but surely managed to tame Aunt Inga’s mess, the Green sisters’ yard was a nightmare. It was a good thing it was winter and there were no leaves or grass, because we wouldn’t have been able to get around during the warm season. The backyard would have been a jungle. As it was, I kept brushing against snow-covered bushes and trees, making my pants and my mittens wet.

I found Dr. Ben standing outside a small, rickety structure that looked more like an outhouse than a potting shed. It leaned. It was built from what looked like driftwood—and I know I’d once said that about Aunt Inga’s kitchen cabinets, but this really did look that way. There was evidence that the planks might at one point have been painted a dark green, but all that was left now were a few flecks here and there; the rest was a silvery gray. It had small windows with small window boxes underneath, and a small door that showed evidence of red paint, and the whole thing was, in a word, small.

“Playhouse,” Dr. Ben said.

I nodded. So it seemed. The structure certainly hadn’t been built for anyone adult-sized. I’m short, but even I would have had to bend my head to get under the lintel. “I didn’t even know this was here.”

“In the summer you probably can’t see it.” He nodded to the overhanging branches, dipping low over the roof and doorway, threatening us with snow showers. “Unless you knew it was back here, you wouldn’t notice.”

“It must be the girls’ playhouse from when they were small.”

“I expect so,” Dr. Ben said. “We should check inside. Since we’re here anyway.”

“Of course.” I stood back and watched as he struggled with the latch. “Is it locked?”

“I don’t think so. But it may as well be.” He grunted, jiggling the mechanism back and forth. “It must be rusty. Here.”

He handed me his flashlight so he could use both hands on the handle. I juggled it and my own flashlight for a second until I could get one of them pointed at the lock so he could see what he was doing. The other waved around wildly while I did it, and that’s when I saw them. Two thin tracks, as if from bicycle wheels, through the snow. Parallel tracks, a couple feet apart, disappearing around the corner of the shed.

I followed.

“Where are you going?” Dr. Ben asked from behind me. “I can’t see.”

“Just a second.” I ducked around the corner and flashed my light around. The baby carriage was there, parked beside the wall. Empty, of course.

I stomped back to Dr. Ben and focused the light on the handle again. “The old baby carriage from the basement is parked next to the wall. We didn’t put it there. I think maybe Mamie did.”

Ben refocused his efforts on the door. “Give me the flashlight,” he said after a minute’s struggle.

I handed it over and watched as he hefted it and brought it down on the latch. There was a tinkle of glass as the flashlight shattered, along with the sound of metal screeching. The latch bent.

Dr. Ben worked it loose and pulled the door open. We both bent low and leaned into the doorway, playing our single beam of light around the tiny interior.

It wasn’t much to look at. Built-in benches around the perimeter, with a table in the middle. On it sat the doll-sized tea set I’d given Mamie yesterday. The doll from the carriage was propped up against a little chair on one side of the table, while on the other, a different baby doll stared out at the world through painted blue eyes. Mamie lay on the bench by the wall, curled on her side the way she had lain two nights ago when Derek and I had found her upstairs in her old room.

Dr. Ben pushed ahead of me into the tiny space, and straightened up. There was just enough space under the ceiling for him to stand upright. I followed and straightened, too, carefully, while he moved the couple of steps over to Miss Mamie. I watched as he put his hand against her cheek, against her back, and then against her chest. I already knew what he was going to say when he turned to me and opened his mouth.

“She’s gone.”

• • • 

Things slipped sideways after that. I called an ambulance, and then I called Brandon and finally Derek, while Dr. Ben started lifesaving measures. We both knew she was dead, but I guess he felt he had to try.

The ambulance arrived within a few minutes, and right on the heels of it came Brandon’s patrol car with Henry Silva in the passenger seat and Darren in the back. By then, I was up at the front of the property, greeting people as they were arriving and telling them where to go. “Past the Dumpster, into the backyard, far left corner.”

“Wheels?” one of the paramedics asked, and I shook my head.

“You’ll have to carry her. But she doesn’t weigh much. Dr. Ellis is back there.”

They headed into the backyard, and that’s when Brandon and the Silvas arrived. I gave Brandon the same directions I had given everyone else, and he loped off. Henry followed, a little more carefully. Darren hesitated.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I told him.

He glanced at me. “Excuse me?”

“She’s your aunt, isn’t she? Or something like that? Second cousin a few times removed?”

“Oh,” Darren said. “Yes. Distantly related.”

It struck me that we were both talking about Mamie as if she were still living. “I take it you weren’t close.”

Darren shook his head. “This’ll really upset my aunt Henrietta.”

No doubt.

“I should go back there. See her. Make sure my dad’s all right.”

He didn’t wait for me to answer, just walked off past the Dumpster, his hands in the pockets of his cashmere coat. He had dress shoes on, I noticed; shiny and black. He must have run out without taking the time to change when he realized Mamie was missing.

I was just about to follow when I heard the sounds of running feet. A few seconds later, I saw Derek and Peter jogging up the street, at a pretty good clip, too, considering that they both had heavy winter boots on their feet.

They skidded to a stop next to me and took a few seconds to catch their breath. “You found her?” Derek managed after a while.

I nodded. “She was asleep in the playhouse in the yard.”

“There’s a playhouse in the yard?” He glanced at Peter, who was just straightening after getting his own breath back. Being winded and disheveled and sweaty did nothing to diminish either of their good looks.

“That’s what
I
said. It’s down in the far corner, overgrown by bushes and overhung by trees. In the summer, it probably isn’t visible at all. It wasn’t very visible now, either.”

“What was she doing in there?”