Flipped Out (7 page)

“Tony mentioned the Something Tavern,” Nina said. “Are you familiar with it?”

Kate nodded. “It’s called the Waymouth Tavern. And it’s up the ocean road apiece. Nice place.”

“Apiece?”

“A mile or two.”

“And is it formal?”

Kate shook her head. “What you’re wearing is fine. Jeans are fine, too, if you want to change into something more comfortable. People in Waterfield don’t stand on ceremony.” She flashed that big, friendly smile. Nina looked almost offended at the suggestion that she should kick back and relax, but after a moment, she smiled back.

“That’s good to know. I’ll keep it in mind.”

As we got out on the porch, Kate turned to the rest of the television crew. “I’m not licensed to serve dinner, but there are several restaurants in the downtown area that you can walk to, and several more in driving distance. They all stay open pretty late in the summer. We’ve also got Boothbay Harbor and Portland within a forty-five minute drive in either direction. Or feel free to order a pizza or something else to be delivered. There’s a list of restaurants next to the telephone in the foyer of the B and B.”

Wilson replied on everyone’s behalf. “We’ll figure something out. Thanks.”

“We’ll rendezvous here at the house again tomorrow morning,” Nina said, “bright and early.” She glanced at Derek, who had put away his phone and was coming back up the porch steps. “Seven o’clock too early for you two?”

I grimaced. I prefer staying in bed until at least eight, but Derek’s been working hard to change that. He has no problem getting up with the sun. Or staying up all night, for that matter. Or staying up all night and then getting up with the sun. It’s all those years of medical school, rotations, and residency. Doctors are light sleepers, and they can easily go all day on minimal or no sleep.

“Not at all,” Derek said, with a glance at me. When he saw my expression, he grinned. “It’s just for a week, Avery. You can sleep next week, I promise.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” I grumbled. “Next week, you’ll come up with some other reason why I have to get up early. I know you.”

Ted cleared his throat. “I may want to get here ahead of everyone and set up for the shots. Any way we can leave the place open?” He looked up and down the sleepy street. “This seems like a nice, low-crime kind of place.”

Derek was already shaking his head. “Empty houses under renovation are magnets for thieves, and we’ve got tools and materials inside. But I’ll hide the key, and whoever gets here first can open up.”

“That’ll work.” Ted nodded. “What’s a good place?”

The two of them started looking around. Shannon turned to Fae. “You wanna order a pizza and watch a movie tonight? I’ve got the latest Matt Damon action flick.”

Fae grinned. “Sounds great.”

They headed down the steps, discussing the delights of Matt Damon and the toppings for the pizza. Kate and Nina exchanged the kind of look that two mothers might, and followed.

Derek and Ted agreed to put the house key inside a chipped plaster planter full of wilted purple petunias we hadn’t gotten around to moving to the Dumpster yet. As Derek tucked the key into the dirt and out of sight, I scanned the neighborhood, making sure that no one was watching.

The little cottage on Cabot Street sat surrounded by similar homes. There was a big, well-maintained Arts and Crafts bungalow down on the corner, but the rest of the houses on the block were small, all built between the early 1930s and 1945. During the Depression and the war, in times that were tough, financially and emotionally, for most people.

We were close to the edge of the Village, Waterfield’s historic district. It started down by the harbor, with the late Victorian business buildings lining Main Street and a few older, historic homes interspersed: the Fraser House, a Colonial; an early saltbox or two; a few small and original Cape Cods from the early seventeen hundreds. Farther up the hill were the ornate Victorians: the big Queen Annes and Eastlakes, like Kate’s bed and breakfast, and the smaller cottages, like Aunt Inga’s Second Empire and the Folk Victorian Benjamin Ellis and his wife, Cora, live in. Then there are the bungalows and the rare stone or brick Tudors, along with the small cottages. Beyond where we were standing, Cabot Street petered out into suburbia, where the architecture ran to 1950s cookie-cutter tract houses, low-slung brick ranches and Brady Bunch split-levels.

There were a lot of older people in this neighborhood, people who had lived here their whole lives, whose parents may have built the very houses they were living in. There isn’t a lot of turnover in a small town like Waterfield. Children take over their parents’ houses, and their children take over their houses in the fullness of time. Derek would probably be expected to take over Benjamin Ellis’s house when he and Cora decided they’d had enough. Derek’s an only child, and the house had been in his father’s family for generations. Dr. Ben had taken it over from his father when Derek’s Paw-Paw Willie retired to Florida. Chances were Derek and I would end up with two houses, his and mine. Or Dr. Ben’s and Aunt Inga’s. That is, if we were still together at that point. It’d be a while; Dr. Ben was just over sixty.

I had no plans of going anywhere. I didn’t think Derek did, either, but only time would tell. And since that thought gave me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach, I shook it off and returned to the present.

Now that the business of the key was dispensed with, the others had started drifting toward the curb, where the television crew’s van and Kate’s tan station wagon were parked.

“You wanna ride with us?” I heard Shannon ask Fae. Fae glanced at the rest of the crew—maybe she was hoping Adam would tell her to come with him instead, or maybe she expected Nina to tell her she had to drive back to the bed and breakfast in the van—but when no one said anything, she nodded.

“Sure.”

“Great.” Shannon smiled. She must have decided that Fae needed a friend her own age while she was here, or maybe the two of them had just clicked right away, the way people sometimes do.

“We’ll see you tomorrow,” Kate said. “I can’t get here until late morning or early afternoon. I have to clean up after breakfast and change the sheets and towels in the guest rooms before I can head out.”

“That’s fine.” Derek put his arm around my shoulders as we wandered down the garden path toward the street in Kate’s wake. “We’ll take you whenever we can get you. Shannon can come out with the crew if she wants, or she can come with you later. Or Josh can pick her up; he’s gonna be here in the morning.”

“Is he going to help you with the tile?”

“I think I’ll just have him start painting. Any idiot can roll paint.” He pondered for a second and qualified the statement. “Almost any idiot.”

“Josh isn’t an idiot,” Kate said with an amused smile.

Derek smiled back. “He’s not a renovator, either. Painting is something he won’t need specialized knowledge to do. I don’t mind teaching people how to do this job, but this week, I just can’t take the time out.”

“So what are you and Wayne doing tonight?” I wanted to know. “Big plans?”

Kate shook her head. “Just dinner at home. Wayne needs to relax. He’s been working long hours lately. There’s always more crime in the summer, when the population doubles.”

“Nothing too bad has been going on, has it?”

I couldn’t recall hearing about anything terrible lately. No new murders, anyway. Not since the body we’d found in the harbor in April.

Kate shook her head. “It’s mostly minor things this time of year. A lot of drunk and disorderly conduct, some fighting, one or two domestic brawls. Purse snatches and pickpockets, since people carry more money when they’re on vacation. Scammers. And a whole lot of traffic tickets.” She grinned. “The new radar guns are getting a workout.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Derek answered, with a grin of his own.

“So what are you two planning to do tonight?”

“We’ll figure something out,” Derek said.

I added, “Work, most likely. I have to sew pillows and curtains. Derek has to make window boxes.”

“Isn’t the camera guy going to want to tape you doing those things?”

“I’ll leave a seam undone for the camera,” I said. “Derek can make most of the boxes and leave one for demonstration, as well.”

“We’ll be at Avery’s house if you need us.” Derek guided me toward the truck while Kate opened the door to the Volvo station wagon and slid behind the wheel. The TV van had already pulled away from the curb in the direction of the B&B.

It ended up being a long night. After dinner, I put together a dozen pillows from bolts of fabric I had sitting around in the spare bedroom upstairs while Derek used Aunt Inga’s front porch to saw and hammer window boxes to hang outside the cottage. While he was at it, he made two planters, as well, one for each side of the front door.

“They’re no different,” he explained as he worked. “If you know how to make one, you can figure out how to make the other. Planters are square with legs while window boxes are rectangular. The most important thing, whether you’re making a box or a planter, is to drill holes through the bottom so the water can drain out.”

“Makes sense.” I had taken a break from sewing and had brought Derek a cold drink to keep him going. A bottle of beer, as it happened. He doesn’t care much for wine. In all the time that he was married to Melissa, she only ever succeeded in getting him to share one certain type of Bordeaux with her, he’d told me. Like Melissa, I prefer red wine to beer, but since we had to be up early tomorrow and I still had work to do tonight, I thought I’d better not indulge. I was sitting in Aunt Inga’s porch swing with Mischa on my lap, sipping from a can of Diet Coke, while Derek kept working and giving me a running commentary on what he was doing. He had removed his shirt, and I stroked Mischa absently and tried not to drool too visibly as I watched him flex and bend.

Mischa was on duty, of course. I could see the determination on his little furry face and in the way the tip of his tail twitched occasionally as he watched Derek. When we walked through the door earlier, Derek with the friendly greeting, “Hello, killer,” Mischa had crouched and hissed. I’d been too slow to intercept him: He had launched himself at Derek’s leg, and I’d had to unhook him from the denim, claw by claw. Now he was curled up on my lap, a boneless bundle of silvery blue fur, with his eyes wide open and watching Derek’s every move. Derek kept his distance; if he were to come any closer, Mischa would most likely try to eviscerate him.

“So what did you think of them all?” I asked after a moment.

Derek glanced over at me. “The crew? They seemed OK, didn’t they?”

“All except Adam.”

Derek lifted the bottle and toasted me with it, grinning, before he took a swallow of beer. “Nina seems nice. And she must be competent, if she’s in charge.”

“Funny coincidence, that she knows Tony Micelli.”

“Small world.” Derek nodded, putting the bottle back down on the windowsill. “Or maybe not. Television is a community. Anyone who has lasted fifteen or twenty years probably knows, or knows of, anyone else who’s been around that long.”

“She didn’t seem too happy to see him, did she?”

Derek pondered for a moment. “Not very, no. More surprised or shocked than unhappy, though, I think. And she must have gotten over it if she agreed to have dinner with him.”

“I guess so. Ted didn’t seem to like him much, either.”

“No,” Derek said, “he didn’t. Then again, you and I don’t like Tony much ourselves, so I don’t know that I can blame him for that.”

“That’s true.” I had taken against Tony last autumn, when we’d found that skeleton in the crawlspace of the house on Becklea Drive, and I had overheard him wishing for a case of serial murder, with bodies buried all over the yard. John Wayne Gacy in Waterfield, Maine. I got along with him well enough, in polite, social settings and when I had to, but I didn’t like him. As far as I was concerned, he and Melissa deserved each other.

“You ready to call it a night?” Derek wanted to know. “Or do you want to go back to your sewing machine for a while?”

“I probably should.” But I made no move to get up, just stayed where I was, with one hand buried in Mischa’s fur and the other holding the sweating can of Diet Coke, lazily pushing the swing back and forth with one foot.

Just over a year ago, I’d come here to Waterfield for the first time, only to learn when I arrived that the ancient second cousin twice removed—the “aunt” was a courtesy title—who had summoned me had died in the time it had taken me to get here.

My first impression of Waterfield was that it was hopelessly quaint, agonizingly slow-moving, and one of those places where nothing ever happened. No Balthazar coffee, no theaters or museums, no expensive boutiques, no allnight diners. The streets were winding and narrow, there was allergy-inducing vegetation everywhere, and the pace was snail-like. I couldn’t wait to leave and get back to the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, back to my great job, my perfect boyfriend, and my rent-controlled apartment.