Fatal Fixer-Upper (16 page)

'OK?' he said now, turning to look at me. I nodded, although I hadn't the faintest idea what he'd said. 'I'll leave you to it, then.' He straightened up.

'Um . . .' I said.

'Yeah?'

'Could you maybe go over it one more time? Just in case I didn't catch it all?' As I'd told him once, I had in fact done mosaic before, but I enjoyed watching him demonstrate.

'You gonna listen this time?' He didn't wait for me to answer, just launched into his spiel again. I didn't think I could get away with asking a third time, so when he turned to me to make sure I understood what I was to do, I nodded and looked capable.

'Let me know if you run into any problems.'

I promised I would.

'When you're ready for the grout, let me know, and I'll mix it for you.'

'Thank you,' I said.

'No problem. I'll be around if you need anything.'

I watched him grab a set of burglar-proof dead bolts and chains and saunter out the door. Shortly afterward, I began hearing sounds of drilling in the hall. I turned back to the counter to manipulate china shards, wondering whether Derek wasn't being just a little
too
friendly and helpful (and flirtatious) all of a sudden.

OK, so on TV, the heroine's near demise at the hands of the villain might make the hero realize how he's felt about her all along. But this was real life, and although I was most likely the heroine, at least in my own life, Derek was just as likely to be the villain as the hero, even if I couldn't think what he might have to gain by causing me to fall to my death.

Could he be trying to impress Melissa?
I wondered, as I arranged the porcelain shards in various combinations to create a pleasingly random pattern across the countertop. She had left him. If he wanted her back, and he knew she wanted Aunt Inga's house, maybe he thought getting rid of me would make her happy. Hard to believe he'd attempt murder for the woman who'd jilted him for his schoolyard nemesis, but as Mother said, love doesn't always make sense. Maybe he was still pining. He had tried to divert suspicion from her, telling me she couldn't possibly be behind my accident, not that I was about to take his word for it.

It seemed more likely that Melissa was working with the Stenhams, though, since she was dating Ray. Or maybe that relationship was going south? If she was happy with Ray, why would she care that Derek was working for me? But if she wasn't happy, and she wanted Derek back, and perceived me as a threat, then maybe . . .

'Looks good,' Derek's voice said near my ear. I jumped. 'Thank . . . thank you.'

My voice got caught in my throat. I'd like to claim it was because he startled me, but I'm afraid it was really because he was standing too close, leaning over my shoulder. If I tilted my head back, I could almost kiss him. If he met me halfway, at least.

He didn't. But he did stay where he was a second longer, looking down at me. Long enough for my eyes to flick down to his lips and back up to his eyes. He grinned and straight ened. I turned back to the counter, my cheeks hot.

'I just wanted to tell you that Officer Thomas has arrived,' Derek said. 'I took him downstairs.' He sounded blessedly normal, although, of course, that fact irritated me, too. Breathless and stammering might be too much to expect, but it would have been nice if he'd been not entirely unaffected.

'Thank you,' I said.

'Your front door's secured. I'll start putting locks on the windows now.'

He turned to the table, where the paraphernalia he'd brought earlier still lay, scattered across the enamel surface. I watched as he gathered up a half dozen small packets of window hardware and stuffed them in his pocket. 'See ya.'

He wandered out.

'Later,' I said to his back, rolling my eyes in exasperation as he disappeared into the dining room. A few seconds later the power drill kicked on again. I went back to my broken shards and my dark thoughts.

. . .

Officer Thomas finished his work just before lunch and headed out with his fingerprinting kit and a plastic container full of bits and pieces of broken railing that Derek helped him carry to his cruiser. Of course he wasn't able to tell me whether he'd found any interesting prints downstairs, not until he could process them—and Derek's, for comparison; he already had mine, from the last time someone had broken in—but I did get him to confirm that the bike I'd found in Aunt Inga's shed had belonged to Martin Wentworth. The police had pulled the professor's fingerprints from his condo after the disappearance, in high enough numbers to ensure that they were actually his, and there were matching prints on the bicycle. I had obliterated any prints on the handlebar and brakes when I rode the bike the other night, but the professor's prints remained on the tires and frame. 'It was a lucky break for us that it's been inside the shed this whole time,' Brandon Thomas said, 'or the rain would have washed away anything useful long ago.'

'What are you planning to do now?' I wanted to know. Brandon said they'd go over Professor Wentworth's condo and office again, looking for anything that might tie my aunt to the professor. I tried not to feel guilty about walking off with the photographs from the desk as I asked him to please keep me updated on what he found.

'Ready to go?' Derek asked when Officer Thomas had driven away. I turned to him.

'Go where?'

'I thought you wanted to stop by the historical society today.'

'Oh,' I said. 'Right.'

'I'll buy you lunch.'

'You don't have to do that,' I protested, although I allowed myself to be led out of the kitchen and down the hall toward the front door by his hand at the small of my back. Derek drove the three blocks into downtown, parked the truck on a side street, and walked me to a small, utilitarian deli just off Main Street. It must have been a place where the locals hung out, because the proprietor greeted him by name. Derek ordered a lobster roll, while I tried unsuccessfully to negotiate for turkey on whole wheat as a change from the tuna. Apparently downeasterners, as the local Mainers are known, weren't into turkey, and I had to settle (hah!) for another lobster roll, along with chips and a Diet Coke. We ate sitting across from each other on hard plastic orange chairs, and although the ambiance may have been lacking, the quality of the food wasn't. The lobster was some of the best I'd ever had: fresh, succulent, and flavorful, with a side of melted butter. Le Coq au Vin couldn't have done better.

'How's the counter coming?' Derek asked when he'd eaten a few bites and had to take a break for a sip of Moxie soda.

I swallowed before I answered. 'You looked at it before we left. Didn't it look OK?'

'It looked fine. I wondered how you felt about it.'

'Oh,' I said. 'I feel good. I still think it's going to look nice. Although it's going to be hard to get an even surface. You know, for cutting and things like that.'

He took another bite of the sandwich before he answered.

'Would you consider using your scridgens for a backsplash instead?'

'My what?'

'Pieces.'

'For a backsplash?' I thought about it. With a solid countertop—maybe a bright blue Corian or eco-friendly resin—doing the backsplash in a pattern of broken Blue Willow might look quite good. 'That might work.'

'Something to think about.' He crunched a chip.

'How long have you been doing renovation work?' I asked, partly to keep the conversation going but mostly because I was interested.

'Full time for about five years now. I started doing it in high school, to make some money over the summer, and then I got good at it. It seemed a shame to stop.' He grinned.

'Especially when all you had to look forward to was taking over your dad's medical practice,' I nodded. 'Just out of curiosity, why didn't you ever tell me you went to medical school?'

'Not because it's a secret. I figured you already knew. Everyone else does. And you talk to Kate, and Kate knows everything. She's not shy about telling people, either.'

I hid a smile. 'She's not, is she?'

He shook his head, and that wayward lock of hair fell into his eyes again. I busied myself by picking up my sandwich and taking another bite. 'You two seem friendly,' I remarked when I had swallowed. Kate had been in and out of the house almost every day for the past week, and their relationship had seemed casually affectionate: half sisterly indulgence on Kate's part, half brotherly exasperation on Derek's, with some easy flirtatiousness thrown in for good measure.

He grinned. 'Is that a roundabout way of asking if we've been involved? Just because I told you how long I've been working on houses doesn't mean you can ask for all my secrets, Tinkerbell.'

'I wouldn't dream of it,' I said. 'Besides, I know enough about your love life already.'

'You do, do you? Like what?'

The grin was challenging, and like a fool, I took the bait.

'Like the fact that you and Melissa James used to be married.' That efficiently wiped the smile off his face, and I added, wishing I'd kept my mouth shut, 'I'm sorry.'

'So am I,' Derek said. And added, 'It was a long time ago.'

'Four or five years, Kate said.'

'Kate says entirely too much.' His voice was free of rancor, however. 'I'll tell you about it sometime.'

'Why not now?'

He pushed his chair back. 'Right now we've got other things to do. You ready?'

'I guess I can be.' I'm a small person; I don't need much fuel to make it through the day.

'I'll walk you over to the Fraser House. It's just a few blocks away. Think your knee can handle it? And then I'll head down to the hardware store for some supplies.'

'Sure.' I followed him out the door. The middle-aged woman behind the counter, the same one who had made our sandwiches, called out a 'See ya,' as we left.

A symmetrical armchair, scaled down to fit in the intimate salons so popular under Marie Antoinette, with straight legs and arms in carved gilt wood, upholstered in peach damask. A bergère, just like in the notation on the envelope in Professor Wentworth's office. I recognized it from one of the snapshots I'd liberated, too. And although I'm no expert, the tiny maker's mark, burned into the frame underneath the seat, where it wouldn't be noticed, looked exactly like the maker's mark on the chaise longue in Aunt Inga's attic. When I came back out to the reception area, the elderly docent had finished her search through the files and was flirting—yes, flirting!—with Derek. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that Derek was flirting with her, and she was responding in kind. He did everything except kiss her hand, and she was visibly eating out of his.