Home For the Homicide (A Do-It-Yourself Mystery) (3 page)

I mean, there was junk in the basement, and lots of it. But it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. There were plenty of boxes and crates, full of things like old Christmas decorations and chipped china. An old bicycle with flat tires leaned up against one wall, while a rusty baby carriage stood parked nose-in over in the corner. A fake pine tree still sporting a few sad-looking icicles lay sideways on top of the dirt. A pair of snowshoes and two pairs of child skis were tucked up under the rafters, out of the way. They looked ancient. There were a couple of spades and rakes and other garden implements in a corner, along with a coiled hose, probably stored for the winter. A few buckets and other things lay around: the stainless steel variety instead of colorful plastic.

Something white and skeletal gleaming faintly over in a corner caught my eye, and caused my heart to jump.

“What’s that?” I asked Derek, my voice shaky, and my finger equally so.

He walked a few steps for a closer inspection. “Looks like half a moose rack.”

“Moose rack?”

“Antlers,” Derek said. “Maybe someone shot a moose. Or maybe not. More likely they found it lying around, since there’s only one side.”

“How would a moose lose only one side of his rack?”

“Fighting,” Derek said. “This isn’t a full half, I don’t think, so chances are he got into a fight with another moose, a bigger one, and the bigger moose broke part of his rack off. It was left lying around somewhere, until someone found it, and then it ended up here.”

“Oh. Good.”

He must have heard the relief in my voice, because he smiled. “I don’t think we’ll be digging up any skeletons this time around, Tink. Once was enough.”

“More than enough.” I still hadn’t quite gotten over the skeleton we’d found buried in the crawlspace under the house we’d renovated on Becklea Drive more than a year ago, hence my initial reaction to the innocent moose rack.

“It doesn’t look too bad down here,” Derek added, looking around. “I’ll get the skis and snowshoes down. Why don’t you grab the spades and rakes and drag them upstairs?”

“No problem.” I took what I could and stomped upstairs with it. By the time I got back down to the basement, a little faster this time, since the rickety-looking staircase had proved to be sound, he had taken everything down that had been hanging on or behind the ceiling beams.

We busied ourselves carrying, crossing paths in the living room or dining room on each trip: one of us coming upstairs with junk, the other returning empty-handed. Outside in the driveway, the Dumpster filled up. The sun set, and gray twilight began to descend. The streetlights flickered on, and Derek turned on the interior lights, too.

“Not much more now,” he told me bracingly after an hour or so as he passed me with the decrepit fake Christmas tree. It looked like mice had gnawed on the branches to survive the winter. “Another thirty minutes and we’ll be out of here.”

“Tonight is Kate’s meeting for the home tour,” I reminded him. “Are you planning to come with me?”

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and grimaced. “I love you, Avery, but if it’s OK, I think I’ll pass. I’ll help you do whatever decorating you have to do, but I don’t want to sit around all night and discuss it.”

“That’s fine.”

“Maybe I’ll go hang out with Dad. Since he’s going to be single tonight, too.”

“Cora agreed to be part of the home tour?”

He nodded.

“Have a good time,” I said.

“We always do,” Derek answered and started climbing. “You, too,” he added over his shoulder.

No problem. I adored Kate, and Derek’s stepmother, Cora, who it seemed would be there. “I’m sure we will.”

We worked in silence awhile longer, until the basement was as close to empty as we could get it. “I’ll take the bike upstairs,” Derek said, rolling it—on flat tires—over to the bottom of the stairs.

“Do you need help?”

He shook his head. “Easier for one person to carry a bike than for two. Why don’t you go grab the baby carriage and pull it over here, and when I get back, we’ll carry it up together. That’s going to take both of us.”

I nodded and watched him wrestle the heavy bike up the stairs. It looked like it might be from the 1950s or ’60s, maybe, and they built well in those days. No fiberglass frames back then. “Don’t put it in the Dumpster,” I called after him.

He peered back down at me. “Why not?”

“I’m not sure John saw it. He might be interested. It’s his time period.”

“I’ll put it in the back of the truck,” Derek said. “If he doesn’t want it, we’ll just take it back over here and put it in the Dumpster.”

“He’ll want it.”

Derek shrugged. “Get the carriage.”

He wheeled the bike out of sight. As I headed into the gloom to where the baby carriage was tucked into the corner of the basement, I could hear his footsteps and the scraping of the bike’s wheels up above my head.

The baby carriage looked to be even older than the bike. From the 1940s, maybe even 1930s. Big and—from what I could make out—gray, although admittedly, it was a little hard to see down here in the corner. Besides, the thing was festooned with so many cobwebs the color could have been anything. Gray, faded black, maybe even blue. Or speckled.

It had a heavy metal frame anyway and four big, solid wheels. The metal was cold against my hands when I grabbed the handlebar and pulled, to get it out of the corner before turning around and heading toward the bottom of the stairs.

The carriage responded sluggishly, the wheels not turning at all. I tried again, but nothing happened.

Maybe there was a brake somewhere?

I inspected the handlebar, but couldn’t find one. Next I bent to look at the wheels, and there it was. A little metal contraption with a pedal that either lay flat beside, or poked between the spokes of, the wheel.

I fiddled with it, and after some experimentation, figured out how to move it. Once I saw how, it wasn’t complicated.

The carriage rolled back, and I tilted it up on two wheels to change direction toward the bottom of the stairs. As I did it, the sunshade flopped down. I guess the mechanism created to keep it aloft had gotten soft with time.

It hit my thighs, and I squealed. But not because it hurt; because there was a baby lying in the carriage, gleaming palely in the low light.

By the time Derek had rattled down the stairs to my rescue, his face worried, I was bent over, gasping for breath.

“Avery?” He put a hand on my back and bent, too. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I managed, laughing so hard I could barely speak, in mingled relief and hysteria.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I waved him away and straightened with a little difficulty. “Scared myself half to death.”

“Why?” He dropped his hand from my back and looked around.

I gestured. “Baby. Thought it was real.”

He peered into the carriage and got a funny look on his face. “Whoa.”

I nodded, wiping tears from my eyes. “I know. The sunshade fell back, and I looked down on the top of its head, and for a second I thought, ‘Baby!’” I wiped the backs of my hands against my jeans to dry them. “It was only a second or two before I saw that it was just a doll, but by then I’d already yelled.”

“You scared me half to death,” my husband informed me. “I thought something was wrong.”

“I’m sorry.” I took a step closer to him, and he put an arm around my shoulders and tugged me close to his body. I leaned my cheek against his chest and felt the warmth of his skin through the wool sweater he had on and listened to the steady beat of his heart against my ear until I’d gotten my breath back and could step away again.

He looked down at me, his eyes bright blue even in the gloom. “You OK now?”

I nodded. “Fine. Let’s just get this done and get out of here.”

“Sure.” But he didn’t move, and his eyes took on a faraway look.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

He put a finger to my lips. I listened, and after a second I heard it, too. The creak of the front door upstairs, and footsteps on the floor.

I waited for someone to call out. Waterfield was a small town, where a lot of doors stayed open a lot of the time—ours certainly did right now, since we’d been going in and out with junk—and it wasn’t unlikely that someone we knew should stop by to see how we were getting along. He or she would normally have called our names when we weren’t readily visible, though.

No one called out. The footsteps walked around, slowly and deliberately, into what sounded like the bedroom and bath, before coming back around to the dining room and kitchen.

Derek made to move away from me, toward the bottom of the stairs. I held on. When he glanced at me, I shook my head vigorously.

“I wanna go upstairs.”

“Could be dangerous,” I whispered.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” my husband informed me, but he stayed where he was.

Eventually, a head appeared in the doorway. “Hello?”

“Brandon,” I said, and had to take a breath before I could continue, “dammit. You scared me.”

Derek chuckled.

“I didn’t mean to,” Brandon said apologetically.

Brandon Thomas was one of Wayne’s deputies, and also the Waterfield PD’s forensic expert when one was needed. He and I had gotten to know each other quite well during my first few weeks in Waterfield last year, since someone was bound and determined to chase me out of town. He was in his early twenties with a blond buzz cut, bright blue eyes, and all-American good looks. He’d been a quarterback in high school, and that was still obvious. After school he’d wanted to go away to law school, but then he’d found out his mother, Phoebe, had multiple sclerosis, so he’d chosen to stay in Waterfield and take a job with the police instead. He was a nice young man, and a good cop. And because he was dating a canine handler who worked for the state police in Augusta, Wayne lived in fear that someone would steal him away.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Brandon reached up and rubbed the back of his head. His hair probably felt like a soft bristle brush when he did that. “I’m looking for someone.”

“One of us?”

He shook his head.

“Who?” I asked at the same time as Derek said, “Who else did you think would be here?”

“Mary Green,” Brandon said.

It took a second. “Who?”

Derek caught on before I did. Or maybe he knew Mamie’s birth name while I didn’t. “What makes you think she’s here?”

“She wanders off from the nursing home,” Brandon said. “They take Ruth away for physical therapy or something, and Mamie gets confused and wanders off.”

“But why would she come here?”

“Because it’s the only home she’s ever had,” Brandon said patiently. “She lived in this house for more than seventy years. She’s lived in the nursing home for three months. It’s no wonder she gets a little turned around.”

“We haven’t seen her,” I told him.

“You were down here. Any chance she could have snuck in when you weren’t looking?”

Derek shook his head. “We’ve been in and out hauling junk. And we heard you come in. I think we would have heard her, too. But you’re welcome to look around.”

“I already did,” Brandon said. “Guess I’ll just have to keep driving around.”

He turned to walk away, and Derek said, “Hang on a second.”

Brandon turned back. “What?”

“Since you’re here, help me carry this baby pram upstairs. It’s heavy.”

Brandon shrugged and headed down the stairs. I took the baby doll out of the carriage and watched the two of them wrestle the heavy vehicle up the stairs. When they reached the top, I followed, absently cradling the doll.

Upstairs, I turned the basement light out and closed and locked the door, before following Derek out of the house. He was wheeling the baby carriage across the hardwood floors to the front door, and bumping over the threshold. I pulled the door shut behind me on the way through.

Derek stopped before he got to the Dumpster, and looked at me across his shoulder. “You think John will be interested in the carriage, too?”

I bit my lip. “It’s a little before his period, I think. And it’s in pretty bad shape. Although it seems a shame to throw it out . . .”

Derek nodded. “How about we just leave it here”—he parked it beside the porch, behind a spindly and leafless bush—“until tomorrow, and decide then. They won’t be picking up the Dumpster for a few days anyway.”

“Sure.” I dumped the naked baby—doll—into the carriage, more gently perhaps than necessary, and turned to Brandon while Derek went back up on the porch to lock the front door. “I hope you find Mamie soon. I don’t like the idea of her wandering around in the cold and dark.”

Brandon nodded. “Give me a call if you see her. You know what she looks like, right?”

“I’ve seen her a few times since I moved here. And she isn’t someone you forget.”

“True,” Brandon said, grinning. “When I was a kid, she used to push that thing”—he gestured to the baby carriage—“around town when the weather was good. Not sure whether she thought she had a real baby or she just never grew past playing with dolls.”

I didn’t know, either, but either way, it spoke of someone out of touch with reality. Someone who had no business wandering around Waterfield in the cold and dark of December. “Let me know if you need me to drive around and look for her. She could die out here in the cold.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Brandon said and headed for his car.

I turned to Derek. “What are you and your dad doing tonight? Do you have plans?”

He shook his head. “Just to hang out at the house. Watch TV. Talk. You don’t have to feed me. Cora made lasagna.”

“Yum,” I said. “Maybe I’ll come with you.”

He shook his head. “No, you won’t. You’ll drop me off, pick up Cora, drive to Kate’s, and come back for me. No lasagna for you.”

I pouted. “Fine. Be a hog.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Derek said, patting his wonderfully flat stomach. “You won’t starve, Avery. Kate’ll feed you.”

She would. “We should get home and get changed. I can’t go to Kate’s looking like this.”

Derek shook his head. “If we hurry, maybe we can squeeze in a bit of exercise, too.”

Maybe so. I smiled as I let him give me a boost up into the cab of the truck.

• • • 

Kate lived in a gorgeous Queen Anne Victorian a few blocks from Aunt Inga’s house—and for that matter from the Green sisters’ house—in Waterfield Village. When she bought it some seven or eight years ago, it had been divided up into apartments, with crappy rental bathrooms and rental kitchens. Kate and Derek had spent the best part of a year—and all of Kate’s savings—turning it back into a single-family home fit for use as a bed and breakfast.

The Waterfield Inn had taken my breath away when I’d stayed in it on my first night in town, and although I’d seen it a hundred times since, when I walked in that evening and saw it decked out in all its Christmas finery, it did it again. Kate had gone easy on the decorating last year—busy with the upcoming nuptials on New Year’s Eve—and this was the first year I’d seen it in all its glory. The Victorians did tend to go a bit overboard, or at least it seems that way to our modern, more simplistic tastes, so the Waterfield Inn looked just a bit as if a stage production of Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
had exploded in the foyer. There were pine garlands, gold rope with tassels, and burgundy ribbons draping the staircase to the second floor, and the fireplace mantel was groaning under armfuls of pine boughs decorated with gold-sprayed pinecones and gold cherubs. Fat burgundy pillar candles were interspersed throughout—groupings of them, arranged on top of what must be boxes, since they were of different heights—and so were big, fat burgundy silk roses.

A grouping of carolers in Victorian garb, three or so feet tall, stood beside the fireplace, mouths open and songbooks in their hands.

And then there was the tree: a Frasier fir fully twelve feet tall, with an angel on top, decorated with ribbons and strings of pearls, more silk roses (in burgundy, pink, and off-white), and golden pinecones. And lights, lots and lots of lights.

It was overwhelming, to say the least, and I just stood on the mat, openmouthed, while Cora came in behind me and pushed the door closed.

I turned to her. “Wow.”

She nodded, shrugging out of her coat. “Lovely, isn’t it?”

I started removing my own, still gawking at everything. “Nobody else has a chance of competing with this. Kate’s may as well be the only house on the Christmas Tour.”

“It’s not a competition,” Cora said. “It’s an opportunity to let visitors see several of our historic homes. Not just this one.” She reached for my down coat.

I gave it to her and watched her lay it, along with her own, on a velvet settee by the wall. “I know that. But I don’t want anyone walking into my house and thinking, ‘Well, this can’t compare.’”

“Of course not,” Cora said calmly. “But that won’t happen, Avery. You have wonderful taste. Your home will look lovely. As lovely as this, but different.”

Different, for sure. Walking in here was like getting slapped across the face by Old Saint Nicholas. Overwhelming. And not just because I was having feelings of inferiority, but because there was so much of it. Christmas, Christmas everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

“I need alcohol,” I said.

“I’m sure Kate has some.” Cora took me by the arm and led me toward the hallway to the rest of the house. The meeting was to take place in the kitchen, since the rest of the house was decorated to within an inch of its life. From the buzz of voices, it was already under way, or at least close to commencing. I had surmised as much from the number of cars lining the curb.

(Yes, Derek and I had fit in a bit of exercise before heading out, and as a result, Cora and I were running a few minutes late.)

Walking into the dining room was like déjà vu all over again. Christmas stuff everywhere. There was a mantel in here, too, decorated with greenery, candles, and bird’s nests. Fat, feathered birds sat in them. Fake, I assume, since I doubt Kate would decorate her house with real stuffed birds for Christmas. The Victorians may have done so, but we’ve progressed some since then. Their little black eyes felt like they were following me around the room.

The heavy sideboard was likewise decorated with greenery, candles, and gilded fruit. I’m sure that wasn’t real, either—or at least I hope not—but it looked gorgeous. And the dining room table was set with china and silverware on a damask tablecloth, in the middle of which sat the biggest centerpiece I’d ever seen in my life: an urn filled with a tower of gilded fruits and a pineapple perched precariously on top, reminiscent of Carmen Miranda’s headdress. The whole thing must have been four feet tall; almost big enough to brush the chandelier above the table.