Home For the Homicide (A Do-It-Yourself Mystery) (10 page)

“Food?” Derek asked hopefully when we had checked out and put the purchases in the truck. He’d worked hard this morning, and he had a high metabolism anyway. He was pretty much always hungry.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

We headed down the road toward Barnham College, and pulled into the parking lot at Guido’s Pizzeria before we got there.

It was a small cinderblock building with a neon sign flashing HOT-HOT-HOT, sort of like a strip club. Derek had taken me here for the first time when we were renovating the midcentury ranch on Becklea Drive last fall—Primrose Acres, the 1950s subdivision, was just down the road—and we’d been regulars ever since.

It could get pretty busy at night, with the college students, but in the middle of the day like this, it wasn’t bad at all. It was no problem getting a table. The waitress, most likely a student herself, had long, black hair in a ponytail and piercings in her eyebrow and lip. Tattoos of leaves and flowers wound up both her arms and disappeared under the sleeves of the black T-shirt.

“I miss Candy,” I told Derek when she’d departed with our drink and pizza orders.

A shadow crossed his face, and he nodded.

Candy used to work at Guido’s. She’d been our waitress the very first time Derek had taken me here, and almost every time since. She lived in Josh Rasmussen’s condo building, and she passed away a few months ago. Derek had tried hard to save her, and had thought for a while he had. She’d made it to the hospital still breathing. But then something went wrong. It hadn’t been his fault, not at all, but he still took it personally.

That made me feel bad for inadvertently bringing it up and reminding him, so I hurried to change the subject. “At least she isn’t flirting with you.”

“Probably noticed the ring,” Derek said and twisted his hand so the wide gold band on his finger caught the light. “I didn’t use to wear one.”

True. I smiled at my own: a little slimmer, encircling my own finger. “Are you sure you want to come to the nursing home with me?”

“I’m sure.”

“Because you could just go back to work and I could go on my own.”

“No. I want to come.”

I peered at him across the table. “You’re curious, too. Aren’t you? Go on, admit it!”

“I may be a little curious,” Derek said.

“Just a little?”

“Not as curious as you.”

“How do you know how curious I am?”

“I know you,” Derek said. “I know you’re absolutely eaten up inside right now because there’s something you don’t know. You’re incurably nosy.”

I pouted, and he grinned at me, and then transferred the smile onto the waitress when she put the drinks on the table. “Thank you.”

“Food will be right out.” She stomped off in some sort of military boots laced up her calf, over black stockings. She couldn’t have looked any more different from the previous waitress, Candy, with her bouncy blond ponytail and pink cropped top and bubble gum.

“I wonder if David Rossini still manages the place,” I said.

“Last I heard,” Derek answered, “Francesca kicked him out and filed for divorce.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Wouldn’t you?”

“For cheating? You better believe it. So don’t even think about it.”

“It wouldn’t cross my mind,” Derek said sincerely. “But to get back to what we were talking about . . . yes, I am a bit curious. It’s an interesting story. Sad, but interesting.”

Definitely. Sad and a bit disturbing. I wondered whether it might be better not to know exactly what had happened—in case what had happened was something I didn’t want to know—but wasn’t it always better to know the truth?

Not that I planned to ask Ruth Green whether she thought her mother was an adulteress or her father a murderer, of course. I might be curious, but there were limits to the kinds of questions you could ask. Especially of a fragile seventy-five-year-old in a hospital bed.

No, I was just going to give her the box of Elvis clippings and tell her where I found it, and see if she felt inclined to reminisce. If she didn’t, we’d get out of there and look for Mamie. Give her the tea set and see if she’d be more obliging with information than her sister.

I might ask a few leading questions if the occasion seemed to call for it. But I wouldn’t turn it into an interrogation. I knew my place. And if it ever got back to Wayne that I’d sprung the news of the skeleton on the Green sisters, he’d probably lock me up for interfering in his investigation. And that was the last thing I needed, with the Christmas Home Tour coming up. I didn’t want to be stuck in jail while Derek had to deal with the visitors and while both he and Kate were cursing me.

“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this, Avery?” Derek asked me on the way back to the truck after we’d eaten and paid.

I squinted up at him. “Would you rather I didn’t?”

“I would rather not upset Wayne,” Derek said, ducking the question.

“He won’t be upset. There’s nothing for him to be upset about. We’re just returning some of the Green sisters’ things that were left at the house. Whoever packed up—and I’m sure it wasn’t them, if Ruth has a broken hip—didn’t realize the boxes were there. We’re not doing anything wrong.”

“You think Wayne will see it that way?”

“It’s the truth,” I said, “so why not?”

Derek shrugged and opened the door for me. I let him give me a boost up into the passenger seat, and then I watched him walk around the truck and open his own door.

“You know,” I told him when he was sitting next to me, inserting the key in the ignition, “it’s OK if you don’t want to come. Really. You can drop me and the lanterns and the boxes off at Aunt Inga’s house and I can take the Beetle out to the nursing home on my own. I don’t mind. If you’re worried, you don’t have to be a part of it.”

“I’m not afraid,” Derek said, his tone highly offended.

“I didn’t say ‘afraid.’ I said ‘worried.’ If you’re worried, you don’t have to come.”

“I’m not afraid. Or worried. I just think we should leave Wayne alone to do his job.”

“I’m not interfering with Wayne’s job,” I said. “I’m not going to tell them about the skeleton. I’m just returning their toys.”

“Sure.” Derek put the truck into reverse and backed out of the parking spot, then shifted and moved forward, out of the lot and onto the Augusta Highway. “I’m coming. That’s final.”

“Suit yourself,” I said, and settled into the seat.

It didn’t take long to get to the nursing home, even if Derek did stick to the speed limits today, as opposed to the other night. Nonetheless, it was no more than fifteen minutes later when we pulled up outside—in the adjacent parking lot this time, instead of under the portico—and got out. I grabbed the boxes, and we headed for the door.

A nice lady manned the reception counter in the lobby, and like most ladies of a certain age—eight to eighty—she seemed predisposed to give Derek anything he wanted. She practically preened.

As we stopped in front of the counter, she simpered up at him. “Good afternoon, Dr. Ellis.”

“I’m not a doctor anymore, Wanda,” Derek reminded her with that patented, dimpled Derek-grin, “but good afternoon to you, too.”

“And who’s this?” She turned bright eyes on me.

“This is my wife.” There was a distinct note of pride in Derek’s voice, and it made me blush. The nurse flushed, too, from pleasure or the effect of Derek’s grin. He’s a handsome devil, my husband.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, putting the boxes down on the counter and extending a hand across. “I’m Avery.”

Wanda took my hand and shook it. “How can I help the two of you?”

I had my mouth open to answer, but Derek got in before me. “First, I wanted to know how Mary Green was doing. We found her the other night and brought her here, and I just wanted to know if everything turned out all right.”

“Oh,” Wanda said brightly, “she fine. Right as rain again. If you hadn’t found her when you did, it could well have gone wrong, but as it is, no harm done.”

“Wonderful. Is she here?”

“She’s out of bed and moving around again,” Wanda said, “but if you want to see her, I’ll see if I can track her down.”

“A little later. First I’d like to see her sister, Ruth. Avery has something for her.”

Wanda turned her attention to me, and I explained. “We’re renovating the Green sisters’ house, and I found some of their old things that were missed in the cleanup. Some of Mamie’s toys and Ruth’s teenage stuff. I thought she might enjoy seeing it.”

“Of course.” Wanda smiled. “She’s in room 202, down the hall. Just don’t tire her out. She’s been in physical therapy this morning, and she might be a little worn out from it.”

I could imagine. “We won’t stay long,” I promised. “Do you think Mamie will be with her, too?”

“She might be. But Mamie is more of a free spirit. She likes to wander.”

No kidding.

“If we don’t find her,” Derek said, “we’ll be back so you can track her down for us.”

“Happy to help,” Wanda said, and turned away as the phone rang. As we headed down the hall, we heard her trill into the phone, “Thank you for calling Sunset Acres. How may I direct your call?”

“Sunset Acres?” I asked Derek out of the corner of my mouth.

He shrugged. “Guess someone has a sense of humor.”

Guess so.

We found Ruth Green in a room down the hall. Not knowing much about it, I halfway expected her to be in a hospital bed in one of those traction things, with her leg halfway up into the air, attached to a wire.

She wasn’t. She was sitting in a chair with her leg on an ottoman. It was encased in a huge, puffy cast: dark blue with white Velcro straps. A four-footed walker stood next to her, and she was leaning back with her eyes closed, her face pale with papery skin.

Ruth looked older than seventy-five, but maybe that was the pain.

While I’d seen Mamie a few times in the year I’d been living in Waterfield—she was active and physically healthy, even if her mind had gone bye-bye a long time ago—this was the first time I’d met Ruth. She didn’t look much like her sister, other than that they both had white hair and that there was perhaps a similarity in facial features. But where Mamie looked girlish and frilly in her incongruous pinafore and braids, Ruth looked severe yet fragile, with her white hair cropped short, sticking to her head in wispy curls, and with lines and grooves on her face.

“If she’s asleep, I’m not waking her,” Derek told me
sotto voce
.

I shook my head. No, I wouldn’t expect him to. She looked like she could use the rest. The physical therapy must have been hard.

But she must have heard us whispering, because she opened her eyes, blinked and then focused on us. After a second it must have dawned that we were there to see her. “Oh.”

She made an effort to push herself farther up in the chair, without much success. Derek went to help.

“Do you need a hand, Miss Ruth?”

She blinked up at him. “You’re Dr. Ellis’s son, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I’m Derek.”

“Aren’t you a doctor, too?”

He shifted her a little higher in the chair and made sure she was comfortable before he stepped back. “I used to be. Now I renovate houses. This is my wife, Avery.”

“Hi,” I said. If I hadn’t been carrying the boxes of stuff, I would have twiddled my fingers at her.

She had very cool, blue eyes. “Renovate houses?”

“We bought yours,” I said apologetically. “From Mr. Silva.”

Her face closed. “I see.”

“I’m sorry you had to leave. You lived there a long time, didn’t you?”

“All my life,” Ruth said. “My father bought the house for Mother when they married.”

That was quite the wedding gift. “How long were your parents married?”

“Fifty-seven years,” Ruth said proudly.

“That’s a long time.” And it meant that whoever had done what was done to Baby Arthur—if anyone had done anything at all, and if it even was the remains of Baby Arthur we’d found—Mr. and Mrs. Green had stayed together afterward. For a long, long time.

If Mrs. Green had had an affair, Mr. Green had obviously forgiven her. And she had loved him enough to stick around after the death—or disappearance—of the baby.

“They must have been happy together.”

Ruth shrugged skinny shoulders underneath a fuzzy cardigan jacket. “They had their difficulties, like everyone else.”

“Marriage is hard.” I glanced at Derek, who arched his brows at me.
Sorry
, I telegraphed.
Nothing personal. Just trying to get information
.

It must have transferred, because he said, “Avery has something for you, Miss Ruth.”

“Right.” I put the boxes down on the foot of the bed and retrieved the one with Ruth’s Elvis clippings. “I thought you might enjoy having this. I found it in the wall cubby in your room. There were a couple of boxes in your sister’s room, and this one in yours. Pictures of Elvis.”

I took the lid off and put the open box on her lap, carefully, and watched as her thin fingers sifted through the clippings.

“How old were you?” Derek asked after a moment, his voice soft.

She shot him a distracted glance before going back to the clippings. “Sixteen. Seventeen.”

She’d been around ten, then, when her brother went missing. Died.

“We found some of Mamie’s things, too. In the other bedroom.”

I took the lid off the box with the tea set, and showed it to Ruth. She stared at it for a second, silent, before she said, “She loved that. She used to make me take tea with her dolls long after I was too old to play with them.”

“You must have been good friends. Sisters, close in age . . .” I let the sentence trail off, hoping for a tidbit of information.

She smiled. “We were. Mamie, me, and Henrietta.”

“Henrietta?” Of course I knew who Henrietta was, but I wanted to keep the conversation going.

“Our cousin,” Ruth said. “She’s a year younger than I am, and a year older than Mamie. We were inseparable, the three of us.” A shadow passed over her face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together. “We were good friends when we were small. Then things changed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was nobody’s fault,” Ruth said, going back to sifting through her clippings. “Things happen.”

She said it without looking up. I glanced at Derek. He nodded and got to his feet. “We’ll leave you to rest, Miss Ruth. It was nice to see you.”

“Didn’t she want to sell the house?” I asked Derek when we were back in the hallway, hunting for Mamie’s room.

“I don’t think she did,” Derek answered. “She must have known she didn’t have a choice, but I can’t imagine she was happy about it. She and Mamie lived together in that house as long as they’ve been alive. It’s the only home she’s ever had. And now she’s here, with no privacy, unable to take care of herself, unable to take care of Mamie . . .”

He shook his head. “It happens to a lot of people as they get older, you know? They get to a point where they can’t live on their own anymore. Just look at Henrietta. With the hip, Ruth would be out of commission for a good long time, and of course Mamie couldn’t stay in the house on her own. This was the best thing for them. The only thing for them. But I imagine she’d have preferred for it not to be this way.”

Probably so.

Mamie’s room was empty, except for the two dolls and one teddy bear on the neatly made bed. The bear was a dirty yellow and was missing one black button eye and half an ear. One of the dolls was the baby I’d found in the basement of the house a few days ago. The other was tucked carefully under the blanket so only the top of the head was visible. I guess maybe it was Mamie’s favorite.

I took an impulsive step forward, but Derek held me back. “She isn’t here.”

“I just wanted a look at the doll,” I said.

He shook his head. “She might be able to tell if someone has disturbed the ‘baby.’ Better leave it alone.”

I figured I’d probably be able to put the blanket back over the “baby” to make it look like no one had touched it, but it wasn’t important, after all. Just idle curiosity on my part. So I backed out of the room and we wandered on down the hall looking for Mamie.

We tracked her down to a chair in the common room, by the fireplace. Maybe she was still feeling chilled after the ordeal the other night, or maybe someone else had put her there and she just hadn’t gotten around to wandering off yet.

She had no idea who we were, of course, and didn’t seem to understand when we explained it. But she was beyond excited to receive her tea set. Her face cracked in a wide grin, and she hummed as she pulled each little cup and saucer out and caressed them before putting them on the table beside her.

“Who gave it to you?” I asked, pulling up an armchair and leaning forward to watch as she put it all together perfectly on the table.

“I got it for Christmas. From Mama and Papa.” Her voice was high, girlish.

“That’s a great gift.” I found myself talking to her as if she were seven instead of seventy-some. “How old were you?”

She wrinkled her brows at me. “It was last Christmas.”

Of course. “Seven maybe? Or eight?”

“Seven,” Mamie said. “I was seven last Christmas. I’m eight now.”

I made sure not to look at Derek. “Eight is a great age. Do you and Ruth play tea party a lot?”

“Ruth and I and Henrietta,” Mamie said. “Henrietta is my cousin.”

“I think I’ve met Henrietta once.”

“She’s nine. But she still likes tea parties. Ruth doesn’t.”

“Why not?”

“She has to take care of the babies,” Mamie said, fiddling with her teacups. “The babies are too small for tea parties.”

“Do you like babies?”

“I like
my
baby,” Mamie said. “I don’t like Henrietta’s. He cries all the time.”

“But your baby doesn’t cry?”

She shook her head. “He’s good.” She looked up at me. “Do I know you?”

“My name is Avery,” I said.

She shook her head. “I don’t know you. And I’m not supposed to talk to strangers. You’ll have to leave.”

“Of course.” I got to my feet. “Enjoy your tea set.”

She looked down at it, and her face softened. I don’t think she even noticed when we walked away.

• • • 

“Something wrong?” Derek inquired when we were outside again, crossing the parking lot and breathing deeply of the crisp, cold winter air with a hint of snow.

It wasn’t that it had smelled bad inside the nursing home. It hadn’t particularly. I hadn’t even noticed being bothered by it inside. There had been a medical, sort of antiseptic smell, overlaid by some mixture of baby powder or vanilla and lavender. But it hadn’t smelled bad.

But now that I was outside, I noticed I was gulping deep mouthfuls of cold air, as if I couldn’t replace the air in my lungs fast enough.

I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

“Dizzy?”

“No. Just . . . the air feels good.”

“Close in there.” Derek nodded.

It had been, yes. And hot, not just in front of the fireplace, but everywhere. I guess it’s true what I’ve heard, that old people feel the cold more.

“We didn’t really learn anything.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” He unlocked the car door for me and boosted me inside. “We found out that Mamie liked her own brother, but didn’t like little Henry.”

“So?” I said, but he had already closed the door behind me and was on his way around the truck. That gave me a little time to think about what he’d said before I had to respond.

“Do you think that’s significant?” I picked up the conversation when he was sitting beside me.

He glanced at me in the process of inserting the key in the ignition. “Hard to say what’s significant and what isn’t. I don’t imagine it is. But it’s something.”

“If it doesn’t mean anything, I don’t really care.”

“It’s too soon to know what means anything,” Derek said and put the truck in reverse. “You also found out that Ruth, Mamie, and Henrietta were close friends when they were small, but that something happened to change that.”

I nodded. “Do you suppose it was Henrietta who killed the baby?”

Derek stared at me. “I wouldn’t think so.”

“What are you saying, then?”

“I’m not saying anything. Just telling you that you found out some things.”

“Useless things.”

“That happens,” Derek said and headed out of the parking lot.

I waited a few minutes, while he navigated back toward Waterfield proper, and then I broke the silence again. “Where are we going?”

“Home,” Derek said.

“To Aunt Inga’s house?”

He nodded. “You can drop off the lanterns and paint, and I’ll find a spade. Then you can spend the afternoon taking up the floor in the kitchen.”

“Fine.” I folded my arms across my chest.

He gave it a minute and then looked at me. “Don’t you want to take up the kitchen floor?”

“I want to make my Christmas ornaments,” I said.

“The lanterns?”

I nodded.

“Why don’t you do that tonight? I’ll help you. We can spend all night getting ready for the tour. I’ll even cook.”

“Cook what?”