Flipped Out (10 page)

Dr. Ben Ellis and his wife, Cora, live in a pristine, greenpainted Folk Victorian on Chandler Street in the Village. Like a lot of houses in Waterfield, it’s been in Derek’s family since it was built.

When we pulled up to the curb outside the house, Derek said, “Stay there.”

It brought back memories. He’d done the same thing the first time he’d brought me here. I’d had an accident during the renovation of Aunt Inga’s house, had fallen down the sabotaged basement stairs, and when Derek came and found me all banged up and bruised the next morning, he had picked me up and carried me to the truck and driven me to Dr. Ben’s house. When we arrived, he’d told me to stay put until he could come around the car to carry me. I, being stubborn and embarrassed and not entirely sure that
he
hadn’t sabotaged the stairs—and liking being in his arms a little too much for comfort—had insisted on getting out on my own. He’d had to catch me before I fell flat on my face. This time, I did as I was told.

Between us, we got Melissa out of the truck and up the garden path to the front door. Under her own steam, with Derek supporting her on one side and me on the other. When she wobbled and Derek asked if she needed to be carried, I’d come back with a firm, “She’ll be fine,” before Melissa even had time to open her mouth.

On the top of the stairs, Derek tried the knob before ringing the bell, and then we waited. After a moment, there were footsteps inside, and then the door opened.

“Derek.” Dr. Ben stood on the threshold knotting his tie. “And . . . Melissa?” His eyebrows shot up, and he looked around. I think he may have been just a little worried, which was nice of him. There was definite relief on his face when he spotted me. “Avery. There you are. What’s going on, Son?”

“There’s been an accident,” Derek said, guiding Melissa through the door and into the front hall, and from there into the parlor on the left. He put her down on the same yellow brocade-upholstered sofa I’d sat on last summer when Dr. Ben had examined my leg. He had called Derek “Son” then, too, my first indication of the relationship between them.

“What sort of accident?” Dr. Ben watched Melissa, who sat as docile as a child, staring straight ahead, violet eyes unfocused.

“What looks like a break-in at the house on Cabot Street.”

Dr. Ben knew all about the house on Cabot Street, of course; we hadn’t talked about much else for the past couple of weeks.

“Looks like?” he repeated.

Derek shrugged. “I left the key in a planter on the porch last night. One of the crew said he might get there early to start setting up for the shoot.”

“And when you got there this morning?”

“The key was gone, the door was open, and Tony Micelli was inside. Dead.”

That was succinct and to the point. Maybe a little too succinct. I glanced at Melissa.

Dr. Ben nodded. “Cora’s in the kitchen. Why don’t you two go say hi and get some breakfast while I talk to Melissa.” He turned to his former daughter-in-law. Derek looked like he might be thinking about protesting, but then he shrugged and went.

Cora, of course, had not heard anything about what had happened, and we had to go through the story again for her, sitting around the kitchen table in the Ellises’ comfortable kitchen addition. “Tony Micelli?” she exclaimed when Derek had finished the sordid tale. “Who’d want to kill Tony Micelli?”

“I can’t imagine it was premeditated,” Derek answered, hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. “He probably just drove by on his way home from dropping Nina at the B and B last night and saw the door standing open or something. Maybe he thought I was there and he wanted to talk to me.”

“Why would he want to talk to you?”

“Could be anything,” Derek said. “It was his house, and I was working on it. Or he was engaged to Melissa, and I used to be married to her, so he wanted the inside scoop.”

“Either that, or your blessing.”

“He had it,” Derek said and took a sip of coffee.

Cora looked from one to the other of us. “So you think it was random? Someone broke in to steal your tools, and Tony happened to be there and walked in on them, and they killed him? That’s rather coincidental, isn’t it?”

It was. Especially that it should happen on the same night that Derek had told the whole crew about houses under construction being magnets for thieves.

He seemed to disagree, however. “What else could it be? I mean, who’d want to kill Tony Micelli?”

“He
was
a reporter,” I said. “Maybe he’d discovered something about someone.”

“And he arranged to meet them in our fixer-upper? Why?”

“No idea. But it doesn’t make sense to kill someone over a few tools, either.”

Cora nodded in agreement. “How much did the things cost that you left in the house?”

Derek looked pensive. “Not much, now that you mention it. I hadn’t brought over the tile saw yet, or any of the other expensive stuff, so it was just some hammers and chisels, an electric screwdriver that Avery used to take the cabinet doors off—it didn’t cost more than twenty bucks brand-new—a crowbar, and the manual screwdriver, of course. . . .”

Of course. “Doesn’t seem enough to murder someone over, does it?”

“No,” Derek admitted, “but whoever broke in may not have realized that. Not until it was too late. Teenagers, maybe, trying to make a quick buck, never intending to hurt anyone. But when Tony walked in on them, they panicked. Maybe he grabbed hold of whoever had the screwdriver in his hand, and the kid lashed out, not even intending to stab him but just to buy enough time to get away.”

“That would explain the first stab wound,” I said, “but not the other half dozen.”

“So maybe he accidentally got Tony in the chest, and Tony fell, and then they all freaked out and decided they’d better make sure he was really dead, and so they stabbed him a few more times for good measure.”

“Maybe. But do you really think they’d be able to think clearly enough after something like that to take the murder weapon with them? Not to mention the other tools? Wouldn’t they just drop everything and run?”

“Maybe they were afraid their fingerprints would be on the screwdriver,” Derek said.

“If they broke in without wearing gloves, their fingerprints would be on everything else, too. Including the doorknobs and any other surfaces they touched.”

Derek didn’t answer. I added, “They took the time to gather the rest of the tools and bring them along. And that doesn’t sound like panic. That sounds calculated to me.”

“Do you think someone planned to kill Tony Micelli, then, Avery?” Cora asked in her soft voice. She looks deceptively sweet and simple, with her round face and fluffy brown hair and soft blue eyes, but she’s not stupid at all.

I shook my head. “Not necessarily. It could still be like Derek said: Someone broke in to steal our tools, and Tony caught them in the act. But I don’t think they were panicked teenagers. They took the time to remove not only the murder weapon but all our tools afterward. So they weren’t too freaked out about stabbing Tony to lose sight of why they were there in the first place.”

“Someone who really needed the fifty bucks those tools would fetch at a pawnshop, then?” Derek said, eyebrows raised in mingled disbelief and incredulity.

I grimaced. “That doesn’t make much sense, either, does it?”

“Not really, no. If they were old enough and coolheaded enough to stab Tony and remove the evidence, they’d be mature enough to realize that the profit wasn’t worth the crime.”

“You don’t suppose . . .” But I stopped and shook my head. “No, surely not.”

“What?”

I would have continued, but we could hear Dr. Ben’s footsteps in the hallway. After a few seconds, he came into the kitchen. Instead of sitting down at the table, he went around the island and pulled another mug out of the cabinet.

“Everything OK?” Derek asked when his father didn’t immediately speak.

Dr. Ben nodded. “She’ll be all right. I offered her a prescription for something to help her sleep, but she said she already has something at home.”

“If you want her to sleep, I don’t think hopping her up on a stimulant is the way to go.”

“I know that,” Dr. Ben said. “I’m making tea. With lots of sugar for the shock.”

He put the mug of water in the microwave and set the timer. The appliance whirred, and Dr. Ben leaned against the counter, watching the mug spin through the door.

“So, um . . .” I glanced at Derek before continuing. “She really is upset, right? She’s not just faking?”

Derek and Cora both looked at me but neither spoke.

“Faking?” Dr. Ben repeated. “What makes you ask that?”

“Wayne said that when someone is killed, the significant other is always the first person they look at. She’s the significant other. His fiancée or girlfriend or whatever.”

“Why would she want to kill him?” Cora asked. “Haven’t they just gotten engaged?”

I shrugged apologetically. “Well . . . Tony did go to dinner with Nina last night. Maybe Melissa objected.”

“Enough to stab him several times with a screwdriver?” Derek said. “Surely that’s overkill.”

He flinched when he realized what he’d said. “I mean . . .”

“I know what you mean. And she probably didn’t. It just struck me, is all. That she stopped by the house this morning because she knew the police would find her fingerprints and hair all over the kitchen, and she wanted to explain it away.”

Nobody spoke for another few seconds. The microwave stopped running and the buzzer rang into the silence. Dr. Ben opened the door, grabbed the mug of hot water, and put it on the counter before hunting up a tea bag and dropping it in to steep. While it did, he assembled milk and sugar.

“I’ll take this to her. You can drive her home in a few minutes.”

He wandered out, holding the mug.

“You’re not serious?” Derek said, turning to me.

I shrugged, avoiding his eyes. I wanted to tell him I wasn’t, because I could see that the fact that I might be upset him, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. Sure, I was probably wrong. I knew I was biased. I don’t like Melissa. But the possibility should at least be noted. When someone’s killed, the significant other is always a suspect. Melissa had no business at the house this morning. And if Tony had gone to dinner with another woman last night . . .

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Derek kept his voice low to make sure Melissa couldn’t hear him, but his eyes were blazing blue fire. “You think Melissa killed Tony!”

“I didn’t say that. I just think we need to consider the possibility. She does have a bit of a temper, doesn’t she?”

Derek’s face shuttered. “Who told you that?”

“Kate,” I said. “Last summer. Before I met you. That day I got back to Waterfield from New York and discovered all of Aunt Inga’s china broken on the kitchen floor. Wayne wanted the names of anyone I knew in town who might want to upset me, and she was one of the few people I’d met. Kate said it wouldn’t have been the first time Melissa threw flatware around.”

He didn’t answer, and I added, “Are you saying Kate’s wrong? That Melissa doesn’t have a bad temper?”

“She has a short fuse,” Cora said. Derek sent his stepmother a look across the table, but he didn’t protest. “And she does get jealous. She never seemed to mind you hanging out with Jill—”

Jill Cortino nee Gers was Derek’s high school sweetheart. They’re still good friends, and Jill’s husband, Peter, certainly doesn’t seem to mind their continuing relationship.

“—but I remember when you were working with Kate McGillicutty on renovating the bed and breakfast. Melissa wasn’t happy at all.”

“She didn’t stab me with a screwdriver, though,” Derek said.

“But weren’t things already unraveling by then? In your marriage?” Kate had been in town for seven years, and Derek and Melissa had been divorced for at least six.

He shrugged. “I suppose they were. As soon as I decided I didn’t want to keep being a doctor, she started to look for a way out. So I guess it wasn’t like she really cared what I did at that point.”

“She never did,” Cora said. “She was just jealous because you belonged to her and she didn’t want anyone to think she couldn’t keep you. If anyone was going to leave the relationship, it would be her.”

“And she did,” Derek said. “As soon as she had Ray firmly under her thumb.” He shook his head. “Why are we talking about this? She never stabbed me; I don’t think she’d have stabbed Tony.”

“You never gave her a real reason to think you’d cheat,” I pointed out. “You’re not the type. But maybe Tony was. Maybe he and Nina were involved when they were younger, and now that he’d seen her again, he was planning to dump Melissa. If she can’t handle rejection . . .”

“She didn’t kill anyone!” He winced at the loudness of his own voice, and moderated his tone. “I was married to her for five years and dated her for a couple years before that. Don’t you think I’d know if she’s capable of murder?”

“I’m sure you would,” I said, although I couldn’t help involuntarily glancing at Cora. She was looking back at me, and I could tell that she shared my view. I’d definitely have to run this idea past Wayne, but it would have to be sometime when Derek wasn’t around to contribute his two cents worth of opinion.