Fatal Fixer-Upper (5 page)

'It's beautiful now,' I said.

'No thanks to me; that was all Derek's doing. Derek Ellis: he runs a local renovation and restoration company. But I'm keeping you from eating. There are English muffins and toast next to the toaster, coffee in the urn, orange juice in the pitcher, egg strata in the hot dish, and scones and Danish in the basket. Enjoy.'

'Thank you,' I said. 'I will.' I started to turn away, but Kate just couldn't seem to keep herself from chattering, not that I minded.

'You look better today. More rested, and very nice, too.'

'Yes, well . . .' I shrugged sheepishly. 'Melissa James made me feel ratty yesterday, so I decided to try to do better today. I guess it should have been black, under the circumstances, but I didn't realize I'd have to wear mourning attire, and I didn't bring anything appropriate.'

'Well, you look very nice,' Kate said. 'Doesn't she, Wayne?'

She turned to Wayne for his approval. He nodded, mouth full of English muffin with orange marmalade. After he had swallowed, he added, 'Better get yourself some food, Miss Baker. Before I eat it all.' He winked.

'Thank you,' I said. 'Um . . . good luck today. I hope you find the professor.'

His face sobered. 'So do I. Nice young fellow shouldn't just be able to walk out his front door and disappear. Not in my town.'

I nodded. 'It was nice to meet you, Chief Rasmussen. Excuse me. I'm going to get some breakfast.'

Both of them nodded, and they went back to their lowvoiced conversation while I filled my plate with a pile of the good things Kate had prepared.

By the time I had eaten my way through all of it, Chief Rasmussen was ready to leave. He gave Kate a chaste peck on the cheek and a not quite so chaste slap on the bottom before he sauntered toward the door and out. Kate came over and sat down on the opposite side of the table from me, her eyes still dancing merrily.

'Sorry,' I apologized, 'I didn't mean to interrupt your time together.'

Kate grinned. She was wearing another pair of stretchy jeans today, and a scoop-necked, sapphire blue T-shirt that pulled tight across her enviably ample chest. 'You didn't. He'll be back this evening.'

'He seems like a nice man,' I said. Laid-back, comfortable, easy to talk to.

'As long as you're on the right side of the law. But yes, Wayne's the best.'

'I don't expect he has a whole lot to do in a place like this?' Pretty, peaceful Waterfield didn't seem like a place with a flourishing criminal class.

Kate shook her head. 'We're on the coast, and not too far from the Canadian border, so we see some attempted smuggling from time to time. It's a tradition hereabouts, dating back to Federal times. But mostly we have small-time crime. Shoplifting, drunk drivers, an occasional domestic disturbance. A couple of kids from the college getting into a fight over a girl . . . The last time we had a murder was, I think, four years ago, and everyone knew that crazy old Mr. Withers had just had enough of his golf buddy's gloating and hit him over the head with his nine iron.' She took a sip of the coffee she had brought over to my table.

'This disappearance must be a big deal, then.'

Kate nodded. 'Everyone at the college is beside themselves. It's difficult to imagine that he would just walk out. But the alternative is even more unlikely. Who would have wanted to hurt such a nice young man?'

'Maybe he just had an accident,' I suggested. 'Went for a walk and fell off the edge of the cliffs, or something. There are cliffs here, right? I think I remember my mother telling me not to go near the cliffs when I was little.'

'Oh, have you been here before?' Kate's eyes were bright.

I nodded. 'When I was five. My mother and I came up to visit Aunt Inga one summer. I don't remember much of it. Just the cats and the cliffs.'

'The cats. Right.' She took another sip of coffee.

'Uh-oh,' I said. Mr. Rodgers hadn't mentioned cats, and I hadn't seen any evidence of them on my tour of the house, so I hadn't realized that they might still be here. Kate nodded. 'Remember yesterday, when I said I had something that belonged to you? After your aunt died, we brought her cats over here. Mr. Rodgers was her lawyer, so he's supposed to be handling things, but he doesn't seem to like them. Wayne lives in an apartment, and I couldn't bear the idea of taking them to the pound. They've been here for a couple of days. But they're digging in the yard and sharpening their claws on my furniture, and I can't keep them much longer. Would it be possible for you to take them with you when you leave?'

I could feel myself turning pale. 'I live in an apartment, too. And I have a no-pet policy in my building. One cat might be possible—I could smuggle it in, and if it was fairly quiet and slept most of the time, maybe no one would notice that it was there—but if I remember correctly, Aunt Inga had a lot of cats. Five, I think my mother said.'

'That was then,' Kate said. 'Now there are only two. But they're big cats, and not quiet at all. Especially if you plan to keep them inside. They're used to being able to roam. If you try to keep them locked up in a small apartment, I can pretty much guarantee that someone will figure out that they're there within twenty-four hours.'

'So what am I supposed to do?'

She shrugged lightly. ' I guess that depends on what your plans are.'

'My plans,' I said, 'are to wait a week to make sure no one else tries to claim they have rights to the house, and then sign Mr. Rodgers's papers and get it off my hands as quickly as possible. He didn't mention the cats were still around, so I guess I didn't realize I'd have to deal with them.'

'Surprise,' Kate said, with a catlike smile of her own.

'Have you hired Melissa to list the house for sale for you? Is that how you met her?'

'She knocked on the door and said she had a client who was interested in buying it. I have no need for a house in Maine. I live in Manhattan.'

Kate nodded. 'Just out of curiosity, how much did she tell you the house was worth?'

I repeated the amount Melissa had mentioned and added,

'Why? Didn't she tell me the truth?'

'I'm sure she did. She works with a lot of renovators and developers—including her boyfriend—and she knows ex actly what they'll pay for something like that. They'll be fighting each other to get at that house. It's one of the few in the village that hasn't been renovated. Once it's back on the market—for two hundred fifty thousand dollars or three hundred thousand dollars, say—she'll sell it again, and double-dip the commission, too, if she can represent the new buyer as well. She stands to make plenty.'

'Two hundred fifty thousand?' I repeated, my eyes big. Kate nodded.

'I paid just under two for this house five years ago. Of course, it's much bigger. But Waterfield is becoming a desirable—and expensive—place to live.'

'Three hundred thousand?!'

I knew I sounded like a broken record, but I couldn't help myself. Kate grinned.

'If you don't mind some unsolicited advice, why don't you reconsider your plan? Wayne took me over to your aunt's house the other day, to help him round up the cats, so I know what it looks like. If you clean out all the debris, and you just do basic repairs, you can probably get fifty or sixty thousand more than Melissa said. And if you have some time and a few grand to spare, you could turn it into quite a nice little place and probably make a good bit more.' She leaned back in her chair.

'It sounds like a good idea,' I admitted. 'But I live in New York. And I don't know the first thing about renovating a house.' I had no problem imagining what it might look like, what colors to paint the walls, the proper kinds of furniture and draperies to use, but I hadn't the faintest idea how to go about actually doing the work.

'It's not difficult,' Kate said. 'Just a lot of hard, manual labor. And you can always hire people to do the things you can't. You could even hire someone to do everything while you stay in New York, and just drive up once or twice over the summer to check progress.'

She paused a moment, watching me think, before adding, 'I can give you the number of the guy who helped me. His name is Derek Ellis. Local guy. Totally trustworthy, and very good with his hands.' She didn't seem to be aware of the connotations of the remark, so I decided not to comment. In any case, she kept right on talking. 'He's the one who restored the fireplace over there,' she indicated the gleaming mantel I had admired earlier, 'and the stained glass window on the landing. It had been painted over, and Derek cleaned all the paint off and brought it back.'

'Expensive?' I asked.

'He is. But if he's not too busy, he might cut you a break. Especially under the circumstances.' She grinned.

'What circumstances?' I asked, but before she could answer, the butler door between the dining room and the kitchen creaked open. I glanced over, expecting to see someone. The opening was just big enough for a slight body to squeeze through. I heard soft, padding footsteps, then the door swung shut again. Kate took one look at the expression on my face and burst out laughing.

'It's one of the cats. Nothing to worry about.'

'Cat?'

I leaned down and peered through the table legs, and sure enough, it was a cat. The biggest cat I'd ever seen. My friend Laura Lee in New York, a high-powered attorney, has one of those small, yippy dogs with a bow in its topknot. A Yorkshire terrier. It spends its days on a monogrammed pillow in Laura's office and its nights on Laura's bed. When Laura goes out, the dog goes with her, in a specially made, monogrammed purse that she carries everywhere. The dog's name is Muffin. This cat could have eaten three Muffins for breakfast and still had room for pancakes. A brown tabby cat, it must have weighed a good twenty pounds. Long, thick fur made it look even bigger than it was. It had a ruff around its neck, tufted ears, more tufts of fur between its toes, and a long, bushy tail. Its eyes were big, round, and golden green, and they were fastened on Kate. The cat padded right up to the side of our table, sat down, tucked its luxurious tail around its haunches, and opened its mouth. What came out was less a meow than a chirping sort of trill, and in the back of my mind, a memory stirred. I'd met this cat, or one like it, before. Kate nodded politely. 'Good morning, Jemmy.'

The cat turned his head to look at me. I smiled tentatively. 'Hi, Jemmy. Nice to meet you.'

Jemmy regarded me with disdain for a moment before turning his attention back to Kate, who told him, 'If you'll come out to the kitchen, I'll give you your breakfast.'

Jemmy meowed, a surprisingly soft, kittenish sound, given his size. He headed for the door, his tail waving like a knight's plume. 'Excuse me,' Kate said, following him. The door swung shut behind them both, and I heard the sound of water running and an electric can opener.

'Wow,' I said when Kate came back a few minutes later, drying her hands on a dish towel she slung over her shoulder when she was finished. 'That's the biggest cat I've ever seen.'

She nodded. 'Maine coon cat. Biggest breed there is.'

'Coon cat?'

'There's a story that they came from cats and raccoons interbreeding, but that isn't biologically possible. Some people think they may be descended from Norwegian forest cats that the Vikings brought over from Scandinavia a thousand years ago. The two breeds have a lot in common. Tufted ears, big feet, long hair . . . There's also a story about an English sea captain named Coon, who sailed up and down the coast a couple hundred years ago with several long-haired cats. When the captain went ashore, so did the cats, and made kittens with the local cat ladies. Hence, Coon's cats. There are even people who think the Maine coon breed is descended from Marie Antoinette's cats at the French court. Apparently, she had a fascination with long-haired cats.'

'These days it would probably be small, yappy dogs,' I muttered, thinking of Laura Lee and Muffin. Kate giggled. 'I think she liked those, too. Anyway, Jemmy is one of your aunt Inga's cats. The other one is Inky. She's around here somewhere, too.' She glanced around.

'Is she as big as Jemmy?' After seeing him, the thought of bringing them both back to New York seemed even more preposterous. The people in the apartment below me would be complaining about thudding footsteps above their heads all day.

'Not quite,' Kate said. 'The females are a little smaller than the males. Jemmy must be eighteen or nineteen pounds. Inky is probably only thirteen or fourteen.'

'Only.'

Kate shrugged, trying unsuccessfully to hold back another amused giggle. 'Sorry, Avery. If you decide to stick around and renovate the house, they can move back in with you. Maybe you'll get attached to them and decide to stay.'

Fat chance,
I thought, but I didn't say it. 'Or I could take them to the pound,' I said, in spite of the fact that I didn't think I had it in me, any more than Kate did. She nodded, her eyes flat.

'You could. They're your cats. Or will be, once your week's waiting period is over. I'll keep them until then, if you need me to, but after that, you'll have to make other arrangements. Like I said, they're digging in my garden and scratching my furniture. Not to mention that a lot of people are allergic to them. I had a cancellation yesterday because of the cats.'

'Gosh,' I said, stricken, 'I'm sorry. Would you like me to reimburse you for the loss?'

'Thanks, but that's not necessary. If you're going to renovate your aunt's house, you'll need all the money you can lay your hands on.' She smiled, and with that oh, so encouraging parting remark, she grabbed my empty plate and wandered out into the kitchen to clean up the breakfast dishes. I grimaced.

4

––There didn't seem to be any reason to stay in Waterfield any longer, so I turned the nose of the Beetle back toward New York. As I drove, I pondered what Kate had said. The more I thought about it, the more sense her idea made. Why sell the house for a measly hundred grand if I could throw a little bit of money at it and maybe make three hundred thousand? Once the house was mine, I could borrow against the equity to finance the repairs, and if Kate's Mr. Ellis was willing to do the work without my even being there, I could just arrange to drop in once or twice over the summer to see how he was getting on. Simultaneously, I'd keep my job in New York and get to enjoy all the benefits of living in the city: restaurants, shops, theater, Philippe . . . My first stop, once I'd dropped my bags at my apartment and the Beetle at the rental office, was my boyfriend's place.

I couldn't wait to tell him that he'd been right and that I was an heiress after all. I also couldn't wait to see him again. After just over four months together, I was still pinching myself regularly and asking myself how I could have been so lucky that this gorgeous, talented, successful man was into me.

Philippe lives in SoHo in a converted loft with enormously high ceilings, wide-open living areas, and sumptuous furniture and accessories. It's on the top floor, so it's a bit of a climb, but it's worth it. I was pausing for a second outside the door, catching my breath before knocking, when I heard a voice from inside. A female voice, raised in an excited squeal.

I froze, still as a statue, my raised fist hovering two inches from the door and my narrowed eyes fixed on nothing. A few seconds later, when the buzzing in my ears had abated, I recognized the squeal as belonging to Tara. I could have taken the high road, I suppose, and walked away without making a fuss. I could have, but I didn't. Instead, I knocked on the door, and when Philippe opened it, bleary-eyed and gorgeous in a sumptuous silk dressing gown, I pushed past him into the apartment and swung on my heel.

'You son of a bitch! You didn't waste any time, did you? I haven't even been gone for two whole days, and you're already sleeping with someone else.' I directed a glare over my shoulder to where Tara was perched on the arm of the sofa, wearing one of Philippe's shirts and nothing else, looking like a Victoria's Secret model. She smiled complacently, flipping her corn-silk hair over her shoulder and recrossing her long legs. I turned back to Philippe. 'You're old enough to be her father, for God's sake!'

Tara pouted. Philippe rubbed his stubbly chin. From what I could tell, he hadn't left the apartment all day. They'd probably started their love marathon right after work yesterday, just about the time I was learning that my aunt had died, and they'd been at it all night and all day, like rabbits.

'Avery,
ma petite chou
. . .' Philippe reached a conciliatory hand toward me. I stepped back.

'Don't call me your little cabbage, you bastard! And don't you touch me, either.' I felt tears threaten and added, on a renewed burst of anger, 'Dammit, Philippe, how could you do this to me?'

Philippe opened his mouth to answer, but I waved a hand to shut him up. If he gave me some glib, charming line about being a man, and French, and—Lord have mercy—having needs, I'd be tempted to give it right back to him, and I didn't feel like getting into it. I just wanted to get out before he could see me cry.

'You know, it's not important. I came to tell you that you were right. My aunt did put me in her will. She left me everything she owned, including a house in Maine. So what I really came to do was tell you I quit. I'll go over to the shop tonight and clear out my things; that way we won't have to deal with each other during business hours tomorrow.'

I turned on my heel and walked to the door with all the dignity I could muster. 'Avery!' Philippe said behind me, a note of alarm in his voice for the first time. I guess losing me as a designer was a lot more important to him than losing me as his girlfriend. Or maybe the fact that I was an heiress suddenly lent me some extra appeal I hadn't had twenty minutes ago, when he was bonking Tara.

'I have an idea,' I said, turning. 'Why don't you promote Tara into my job? She's got everything else, after all. And you'll need another designer, won't you? Someone without any experience or vision who'll turn out all the boring fabrics you want without any questions, unlike me. Yes, I think Tara will be perfect, don't you?'

I smiled brightly at them both, and then I ran down the stairs and out the door before either one of them could say another word.

. . .

I had thought that maybe, just maybe, Philippe would follow me to the gallery and try to make amends, but in that I was disappointed. Either Tara had seduced him back to bed, or I really didn't matter to him at all, heiress or not. I gathered my tools and a few personal items in a box, then carried it home on the subway, blinking back tears. Someone even asked, in flagrant disregard for New York's dog-eatdog reputation, whether I was all right. Once I got back to my rent-controlled, little two-bedroom walk-up on Sixtyninth Street, I curled up on the kiwi-patterned couch and called my mother.

'Oh, dear,' she said when I told her about Philippe. 'I'm so sorry, Avery.'

'Me, too,' I sniffed. 'But I always knew, deep down, that it was too good to be true, you know. I mean, why would somebody like him like me?'

'What nonsense,' Mother said. 'The question you should ask is, why would someone like you like someone like him? You're a wonderful, loving person, and he's too slick and good-looking to be trustworthy; you know I've always said that.'

'I know,' I agreed with a sigh. 'I guess I should have believed you. I just thought it would be different this time, you know?'

'I know, sweetie,' Mother said sympathetically. 'So what are you going to do now? Take the one hundred thousand dollars from Aunt Inga's house and use it to live on while you look for another design job?'

'That's a possibility, I guess. Although . . .' I slowed down as new and interesting possibilities opened up in front of me. 'Although maybe I should go up to Maine and spend a month or two working on the house before I sell it. I was planning to pay someone to do the work for me while I stayed here, but it would be a lot cheaper if I could do some of the repairs myself, and since I'm out of a job anyway . . .'

'That sounds like a wonderful idea,' Mother said warmly. 'You've been putting in a lot of hours in your career the past couple of years, and apart from The Wedding last year, I can't remember the last time you took a vacation. It'll be good for you.'

'Uh-huh.' I wasn't exactly sure how she could equate renovating a house with taking a vacation, but she was probably right: it would be good for me. If nothing else, it would take me out of New York for a while. I wouldn't have to worry about running into Philippe at Le Coq au Vin or Tara at Bloomingdale's, and I also wouldn't have to worry about coming up with another design job in the middle of summer.

'You shouldn't have a problem finding someone to sublet your apartment while you're gone,' Mother continued.

'Not where you live. The location's wonderful, and the rent hasn't gone up more than a few hundred dollars since I first moved into the place back when you were a baby.'

I nodded. I still lived in the apartment where I'd grown up, although back then it had been Mother's and Dad's, and now it was mine. Relatively speaking, since it actually belonged to someone else, and I, like most New Yorkers, just rented.

'It sounds like you have a lot to do in the next few days,' Mother said, smoothly excusing herself from the conversation now that her mission was accomplished and I had something to think about other than Philippe and his betrayal. 'Let me know how it goes and when you're leaving.'

I promised I would, and we both hung up. I got to work. Finding someone to sublet turned out to be even simpler than Mother thought. The day after the debacle with Philippe, Laura Lee called to talk. We arranged to get together for lunch the next day, with Muffin the dog in her bag under the table, surreptitiously accepting morsels of chicken.

'So spill,' Laura said, after we had ordered our salads and the waiter had given us both our bottled spring water.

'What happened?' One side of her stick-straight black hair fell forward as she twisted the cap off the water bottle, and she tucked it behind her ear with a pink-polished nail. I eyed both nails and hair enviously. I've long since given up on growing my fingernails long, let alone on keeping any polish I put on them from chipping off, but if there's one thing I'd sell my soul for, it's straight hair.

Twisting a tendril of my own kinky mop around my finger, I told her what had happened when I came back from Maine, and why I had made the on-the-spot decision to leave Aubert Designs. Laura didn't blame me at all. 'The bastard,' she said. 'And with that little tramp, too. What could he possibly see in her?'

'She's young, pretty, and adores him?' I suggested.

'While you're ugly and old?' She rolled her eyes eloquently. 'She's a bimbo, Avery, and he'll tire of her in a matter of weeks, if not sooner.'

'It doesn't matter,' I said with a shrug, although between you and me, it did.

Laura looked at me. 'What are you going to do now?'

'I've decided to spend some time in Maine. I'm going to renovate my aunt's house and get it ready to sell.' And it was going to be fun. I was going to go completely crazy and do everything I wanted to do, on a much larger scale than my small apartment had allowed.

Looking back on the past few months, I had realized that during the time I'd worked for Philippe, I'd had to put rather a lot of myself aside to make things run smoothly. I hadn't been given much room to grow and develop my own art; it had been more a matter of turning out the frankly boring fabrics and patterns Philippe wanted. If I was good, occasionally he'd let me come up with something more to my own taste, like the lipstick-kissed love seat. But when it came to a big, important commission, like the Hamiltons' dining room set, my input and expertise were unwanted and unappreciated. But now I had a chance to really put my mark on something without anyone telling me what I could and couldn't do, and by golly, I was going to do it! And the next guy who tried to tell me that his vision was better, more right, more appropriate than mine, would get it with both barrels.

'What are you going to do with your place while you're gone?' Laura wanted to know.

'I was hoping to sublet it for the summer,' I answered. She smiled. 'I was hoping you'd say that. I have this friend . . .'

It turned out that Laura's old college roommate wanted to spend a few months in New York—she was changing careers and needed to do an internship—and I agreed to sublet my apartment to her for the duration. If I finished the repairs on Aunt Inga's house before Laura's friend was ready to go back home, I figured I'd just fly out to California and spend some time with Mother and Noel.

The ever-efficient Laura called her friend, got an excited squeal of approval, and drafted a lease agreement right then and there on a yellow legal pad she pulled from her briefcase. I signed it, and we were all set. We stopped at a hardware store and made a set of keys to pass on to her friend. She gave me a hug before she lifted the bag full of Muffin and minced off up Eighth Avenue on her three-inch heels. It was that afternoon, after I had essentially signed away, at least temporarily, the one thing still keeping me in New York (apart from my friends and Central Park), that I got my first inkling that spending the summer in Waterfield might not be as simple and uncomplicated as I had envisioned. When I picked up my mail in the lobby on my way upstairs, among the circulars, bills, and trade magazines was a plain, white envelope with my name and address printed on the outside.

I turned it over in my hands as I stood in the lobby. At first glance it was eerily similar to the letter I'd gotten from Aunt Inga less than a week ago, only white instead of ecru, and on less impressive paper. The inscription was done in one of those computer-generated fonts made to look like handwriting, and the envelope lacked a sender's name or address. For a second I thought about ripping it in half and tossing it directly in the trash. I'd gotten similar mailings before, and they had invariably turned out to be solicitations. However, upon closer examination, I noticed that this had a real stamp—one with enough postage—as well as a bona fide postmark. The letter had originated in Waterfield. If someone had thought enough of it to pay for first-class postage to get it here, I should at least take a look at what was inside.

The envelope contained a single piece of copy paper, folded in thirds. When I unfolded it, expecting a letter of some kind, I stared in shock at the single sentence typed across the paper, in the same computer-generated font as the name and address on the outside:

Stay away from Waterfield unless you want to end up like your aunt.

It was followed by a small icon of skull and crossbones. Just in case I had somehow missed the point, I guess.

. . .

For the next several days, I seriously considered changing my plans and not going to Waterfield after all. I called Wayne Rasmussen and told him about the letter. He sounded concerned, and he asked me to fax him a copy, which I promptly did, promising to deliver the original in person when I came back up to Waterfield. Probably just a prank, he said, but he wanted to see it.