Home For the Homicide (A Do-It-Yourself Mystery) (4 page)

“Gah!” I said, imagining my own dining room. Compared to this, it looked positively bare.

“Come along, Avery.” Cora tugged on my arm and we passed through the dining room into the kitchen beyond.

Kate’s kitchen was beautiful, and not Victorian at all. Updated with new cabinets and granite counters and stainless steel appliances. Everything I had wanted when I started renovating Aunt Inga’s house. Instead I’d gotten Derek, who refused to allow me to discard Aunt Inga’s cabinets from the 1930s. I’d told him at the time that they looked like they were made out of driftwood. It wasn’t quite that bad, although they weren’t what I wanted at all. I’d come around to his way of thinking over the past year, though. I love my vintage kitchen, old cabinets and all. But it didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate the modern efficiency of Kate’s.

I also appreciated how there were no Victorian Christmas decorations in here. Not a one, unless you counted the three-tier dessert stand on the counter: amber and heavily cut, halfway filled with gilded fruits and frosted pinecones. A decoration in progress.

The room was full of women. In addition to Kate, Cora, and myself, I recognized Kate’s daughter, Shannon, a student at local Barnham College, sitting at the table talking to an old lady with gray hair and an uncompromising demeanor. Her name was Edith Barnes, and she was Derek’s old history teacher, as well as the librarian at the Waterfield Historical Society, which happened to be located in the historic Fraser House. I’d seen rather a lot of Miss Barnes during my time in Waterfield, since I’d spent considerable time researching the various houses we’d worked on.

The two of them couldn’t have looked any more different if they tried. Miss Barnes was the classic old maid: tall, scrawny, and dragon-like, in a twinset and pearls. Shannon was twenty-one and stunning, with her mother’s height and centerfold figure, but without the freckles and with hair the color of black cherries.

Of the other women seated around the table, I only recognized one: Judy Norton, the wife of Derek’s old buddy Bartholomew Norton, who also happened to be the reverend at the local church. She looked up and smiled when we came in.

“Hi, Cora. Avery.”

I smiled back and found a chair across the table from her. “Good to see you, Judy.”

She was eight or ten years older than me, a few years older than her husband, and a few inches taller, as well. Not that she’s oversized or anything, but Barry was hardly bigger than me.

“Do you know Henrietta?” She gestured to the lady on her left, another septuagenarian by the looks of it, but a lot frailer than Edith Barnes.

“I don’t.” I smiled at her. “I’m Avery Baker . . . Ellis.”

Judy chuckled at my hesitation. “Not used to it yet?”

Not quite. “It’s only been a couple months. And I don’t have occasion to introduce myself a lot.”

To Henrietta, I added sheepishly, “I got married in October.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” A lady of few words, it seemed. “So where do you live, Henrietta?”

The question wasn’t as rude as it may have seemed, since I assumed we were all here because our houses were to be part of the home tour.

“Cabot Street,” Henrietta said.

“Like Cora.”

She nodded.

“In one of the Victorians?” Cabot Street—like a lot of Waterfield Village—was Victorian. Aunt Inga’s house, Kate’s house, Cora and Dr. Ben’s house.

“No, it’s an Arts and Crafts bungalow,” Henrietta said.

“My husband and I are renovating one of those right now. On North Street. The Green sisters’ house.”

Her face tightened. I waited for her to say something, but when she didn’t, Judy cut in. “And this is Kerri.”

Kerri sat on Judy’s other side: a woman a few years older than Judy, with a shock of red hair. Not the soft copper of Kate’s curls, or the deep dark cherry of Shannon’s, but a red nature never intended, at least not for hair. Currants, maybe. Or poppies. Ripe tomatoes.

“Nice to meet you,” I said politely. “Avery Ellis.”

It was easier this time, since I’d just done it.

Kerri grinned. She was a lot friendlier than Henrietta, I’ll say that for her. Her voice was deep, a husky contralto, and a little hoarse. Maybe she smoked. “The pleasure’s all mine. I live on North Street. I’ve seen you coming and going the last few days.”

“We started working on the house yesterday. Just tearing out so far, but by the end of the week, we’ll be ready to start putting in new stuff. Which house is yours?”

Kerri chuckled. “The ugly one.”

The . . .

And then it dawned on me. “The infill?”

At some point, a house on North Street in the Village must have met with some sort of accident. A fire maybe? I had no idea really; all I knew was that there was no reason why there would be an empty lot in the middle of the block, if there hadn’t at one time been a house on it, one that wasn’t there anymore.

This was back a few decades, mind you. Long before my time. But it was the only way I could conceive of why there would be a classic 1960s split-level Brady Bunch–type house in the middle of a neighborhood of Victorians and Craftsman cottages. The house that was originally there must have burned, or maybe just been torn down, prior to the Village’s designation as protected, and someone had erected a split-level ranch.

“It isn’t ugly,” I protested. “You keep it looking pretty.” As nice as it could, surrounded by the older, admittedly more attractive architecture. It wasn’t the house’s fault that it couldn’t possibly compete. “The landscaping is nice. And I noticed you’ve decorated the outside for Christmas.”

Kerri nodded. “The inside, too. And it isn’t really ugly, I guess. It just looks out of place.”

No arguing with that.

She added, “Where do you live, Avery?”

“On Bayberry,” I told her. “The top of the hill. I inherited my aunt Inga’s house a year and a half ago.”

“Of course. The pretty blue Victorian.”

“Yup.” Although it hadn’t always been pretty—not before Derek got his hands on it.

“Are you putting the rectory on the tour?” I asked Judy, who nodded.

“The church is always part of the tour, but this is the first time we’re including the rectory. The library will be open, too, along with several of the shops and restaurants on Main Street.”

I had assumed as much, since the Christmas Home Tour wasn’t just a way to make money for the Village neighborhood association; it was a way for the merchants to make a little extra, too, in sales of hot chocolate and handmade soaps and such. And the Waterfield Library was one of the original Carnegie libraries. Businessman Andrew Carnegie donated money to its construction, as well as to the construction of another thirty-five hundred or so libraries across the United States and the world. It was very beautiful, as well as being a national landmark. Many of the Carnegie libraries had been torn down over the years, but the Waterfield branch was one that had survived.

And then Kate cleared her throat, and the buzz of voices quieted as we turned to her and prepared to get to work.

The meeting was short and painless—and included pizza from Guido’s. Josh arrived a few minutes after Cora and I did, with the food and drinks.

We all chomped down, and the discussion started. Mostly it was Kate wanting to get her feet under her after having the home tour dumped in her lap at the last minute, and to get everyone up to speed on what to expect, since several of us were new this year.

“Expect a couple hundred people,” Kate said between bites of bacon and scallion with sour cream dressing. “You’ll have to feed them something—”

“Feed them?” I blurted. We were expected to feed a couple hundred people?

Don’t get me wrong, I manage to feed Derek and myself, but I’m no chef. And I don’t do big parties.

“Nothing fancy,” Kate hastened to assure me.
Easy for her to say
, I thought. “Just cookies or some kind of little nibble.”

Cookies for two hundred–plus people was no little nibble, not if you asked me, but I nodded as if I had no problem with it. All around me, everyone else nodded, too. I wondered how many of them felt the same way I did, but were just better at hiding it.

“You can offer drinks, too,” Kate continued, “if you want, but in the past, I’ve found that when you give people something to drink, they spill, so I prefer not to. In the summer, bottles of water are nice, of course, but cups of coffee and hot chocolate leave too much room for accidents.”

Everyone nodded again. I tried to imagine a wandering guest stumbling on the fringe of the Persian carpet in the parlor and spilling a cup of cocoa on Aunt Inga’s reupholstered love seat—dove gray velvet—and shuddered.

“Lock away your valuables,” Kate went on. “Keys, money, credit cards. Bank statements. Prescription drugs. There’s no telling who might come through your door, and you can’t keep an eye on them all at the same time.”

I raised my hand. “Do we have to keep our whole houses open, or just a few rooms?”

“In your case,” Kate said, since she obviously knew my house well, “the downstairs will do. Hang a rope on the staircase with a piece of paper, and write ‘Private’ on it. That should keep people from going upstairs. Move anything valuable up there.”

Most of my valuables were upstairs anyway. Jewelry in the box by my bedside, and the cough syrup in the bathroom cabinet.

“The tour starts at noon,” Kate said. “Prepare to stay home with a run on the door until after four o’clock. There are always a few stragglers.”

No problem.

“You won’t have to deal with money. People who want to go on the home tour can purchase tickets online, at the library, at the Fraser House, or at the church. When they get to you, they should already have paid, and they should have a hand stamp saying as much.”

Good to know.

“Any questions?”

I had a lot, and so did other people. After a while, the meeting dissolved into chatter, and I addressed Kate. “Where’s Wayne tonight?”

She swallowed. “Working.”

“Anything interesting going on?”

“Nothing you’d consider interesting,” Kate said. “No murders or anything.”

“I don’t find murders interesting.” Not particularly. “I can’t help it that so many people have dropped dead in Waterfield in the time I’ve been here.”

“You could help getting involved,” Kate said, and relented. “It’s the robbery season. Purse snatchings and people getting carjacked in mall parking lots.”

“And Baby Jesuses going missing.”

“That happens every year,” Judy interjected. “It usually comes back after a few days.”

“Is it back now?”

Judy had to admit it wasn’t.

“How long has it been?” Two days, at least, since Kate had told us.

“Five days,” Judy said reluctantly.

“Is that longer than usual?”

It was. But—“It’s probably just someone having fun, Avery,” Judy said. “Teenagers or something.”

Maybe. I turned to Josh and Shannon, who had both grown up in Waterfield. “Did you ever steal the Baby Jesus from the manger?”

“No,” Josh said, looking offended. He’s a lanky guy, almost six and a half feet tall, with glasses and his father’s dark curly hair. He does offended quite well. “My dad’s the chief of police, Avery. You really think I don’t know better than that? He’d ground me for a year.”

Shannon grinned but shook her head. “Me, either. And I haven’t heard of anyone else who did.”

“It isn’t some kind of high school tradition? Or a college dare or something?”

“Not at Barnham,” Josh said. “And not at the high school, either.”

“It’s been going on a very long time,” Judy added. “Since before Barry took over. It’s just one of those endearing quirks you put up with.” She smiled.

“Just as long as the baby comes back again.”

“It always has before.” She didn’t sound worried, and if she wasn’t, I probably shouldn’t be, either. Even if the baby had been missing for longer this time than ever before.

The meeting broke up shortly after that, and Cora and I headed out to the car. I drive a spring green VW Beetle that my mother and stepfather had given me for Christmas last year. I’d had a license when I lived in Manhattan, but driving hadn’t ever figured large in my life, since the city is all about subways and taxis. Over the last year, I’d been surprised at how much I enjoyed driving around in my zippy little Bug.

I wedged behind the wheel and Cora climbed in beside me, and we took off. Zipping around the corner. Zipping around the next.

“How is the work on the Green sisters’ house coming?” Cora asked, hanging on to the edges of the seat.

I smiled. “It’s coming. We’ve finished cleaning out the junk. You won’t believe the kind of stuff we found. Old Christmas decorations, a bicycle, skis, snowshoes, an old baby carriage with a doll in it . . .” I slowed down for a stop sign—California rolling stop—and took off again as we neared the Green sisters’ block. “We can stop and go inside if you want.”

“It’s a little late,” Cora said diplomatically. “And cold.”

And she wanted to get home. I couldn’t blame her. I was looking forward to seeing Derek, too.

“That’s fine.” But the house was coming up, and I pulled up to the curb to peer at it as we got there.

It looked just the way it should. Big and imposing and dark, like a black void against the night. Derek didn’t trust the electrical wiring, so we hadn’t left any lights on, not even on the porch. Didn’t want to come back and find a charred mess tomorrow morning.

“It’s big,” Cora remarked.

“Not as big as the house on Rowanberry Island.”

The rambling center-chimney Colonial from 1783 had seemed to go on for days. But the Green sisters’ house was certainly a lot bigger than the other two projects we’d done since then: the small condo in Josh Rasmussen’s building and the even smaller 1930s cottage in the Village that used to belong to news anchor Tony “the Tiger” Micelli—until he was stabbed to death with a screwdriver in the kitchen.

“Did you leave a light on upstairs?” Cora asked, and I returned to the present, pushing the mental image of Tony and the pool of blood aside to peer up at the house.

“No. Why?”

“I thought I saw one.”

I looked again, staring at the three side-by-side windows in the dormer in the front of the house. They were dark, just as they should be. “I don’t see anything.”

Cora shook her head. “Maybe it was the reflection of a pair of headlights up on the hill. Or a reflection from the house across the street.”

Maybe. I looked to the left, at the farmhouse Victorian located there. One story tall. No second-story windows.

“I must have made a mistake,” Cora said, still staring at the bungalow. “There’s nothing there.”

No. Although now that she’d suggested it, I was loath to leave without making sure. Even if I was equally loath to leave the car to investigate.

Cora glanced at me. “There’s nothing there, Avery. I made a mistake.”

“Right. It’s just . . .” What if she hadn’t? What if someone was inside the house?

“Why would anyone break into an empty house?”

“People do sometimes,” I said. “To steal the tools. And the copper pipes.” Or so Derek had told me.

“Are there any copper pipes in the house? Or any tools?”

Well . . . no. We hadn’t needed tools yet. So far it had all been about hauling junk to the Dumpster. Taking stuff out of the house, not putting anything in. There were no pipes, either, for the same reason.

I shook my head.

“I really think I made a mistake, Avery,” Cora said. “It was just a trick of the light. Let’s go home. If you want to come back, you can take Derek with you.”

That made sense. He had the key, anyway. And I’d rather have Derek next to me than Cora when exploring a creepy old house in the dark.

I put the car back into gear and rolled away from the house, with a last look past Cora and out the passenger side window. There was nothing to see. All the windows were dark. The front door was closed. There were no sinister shadows skulking around the corner. Nothing was stirring. As she’d said, she must have made a mistake.

In contrast, the small green Folk Victorian on Cabot where Cora and Dr. Ben lived was cheerfully blazing with lights. And with sound, we realized when we walked in. It wasn’t just Derek and his father in residence; I could also hear the television, as well as the voices of Beatrice, Cora’s second daughter—her first is Alice, who lives in Boston—and Bea’s husband, Steve.

“Is so!” Steve said.

“No, it isn’t!”

“Yes, it is. And if you’ll give me a minute, I’ll prove it to you.”

There was silence apart from the TV, then a groan from Beatrice and a crow of triumph from Steve.

“Scrabble,” Cora said, hanging up her coat.

I nodded, keeping mine on. “Wonder which word he spelled?”

“‘Syzygy,’” Derek said when I asked.

“Bless you.”

“That’s the word. ‘Syzygy.’” He spelled it, and added, “It means a conjunction of three astronomical objects.”

I stared at him.

“Also a metrical unit of two feet,” Steve added. “In poetry.”

I stared at Steve. And then at Derek again. “How do you know this stuff?”

“Just because I’m a handyman . . .” Derek began, and I rolled my eyes.

“You didn’t become a handyman until you’d been a doctor for a few years first. It’s not like you’re uneducated. But I still don’t see how you’d know about the conjunctions of astronomical objects.” Or poetry. “It isn’t something you’d learn about in medical school.”

“I grew up playing Scrabble,” Derek said. “Of course, he had to use a blank for the third Y. There are only two.” He looked me up and down. “Why do you have your coat on?”

“I just came in.”

“Cora’s taken hers off.”

She had, and sat down next to her husband on the sofa.

“We thought we saw a light in the house on North Street when we drove past,” I said. “I thought maybe you’d want to come with me to check it out.”

“A light?”

“It was probably a mistake,” Cora said, settling into the sofa next to Dr. Ben. “A reflection of headlights from the hill. Or a reflection of light from the house across the street.”

“The house across the street is only one story tall. It wouldn’t reflect into the second-story windows.”

My husband looked at me, and then at Cora. “You didn’t stop and check?”

She shook her head.

“It’s late,” I said. “And dark. And Cora wanted to get home. And besides, you have the only key.”

He nodded and got to his feet. “I was losing anyway. It’s hard to compete with words like ‘syzygy.’ Say good night, Avery.”

“Good night, Avery,” I said, and followed him into the foyer.

“I’m proud of you,” he told me a couple minutes later, when we were in the car and on our way back to North Street.

I glanced across at him for a second. “You are? Why?”

“You could have run inside the house and gotten yourself killed. But you didn’t. You came and got me instead.”