Spackled and Spooked (11 page)

Chief of Police Wayne Rasmussen? “Why?”

“Because I found a human bone,” Derek said.

“Oh, my God. Are you sure?”

“Left ulna,” Derek said. “Elbow bone. Medial lower arm.”

I did a mental
duh
! Of course he was sure. He was a doctor. He probably knew the name of every single bone in the human body and could identify them all by smell. Still, I felt I had to try one more time. “Are you sure it isn’t just the . . . um . . . femur of a dead dog or something?”

Derek looked upset. “Yeah. I wish that was the case. But it’s definitely human.”

I gave up. “Fine. I’ll take your word for it. Where did you find it? Under the house?”

“Yeah. I drilled a hole, looked down into it to make sure it was deep enough, and found the bone. The hole digger must have cut it in two.”

“Are there more?” I asked.

“It’s not as if someone could lose an ulna and not notice. It isn’t something you can take off and leave laying around, like that earring you picked up the other day. I didn’t see any more, but if there’s one human bone down there, they’re all there, believe me. The whole kit and caboodle. Now do you see why we need Wayne?”

I nodded. I saw.

6

Wayne made good time. No more than ten minutes could have passed before a black and white cruiser pulled up outside the house. Wayne extricated his lanky length from behind the wheel and came toward us.

The chief of the Waterfield PD cuts an impressive figure. At an easy six four or so, he has dark, curly hair just starting to turn distinguished at the temples, coupled with a strong jaw, and steady, dark eyes.

“What have you got?” Wayne asked when he was close enough not to have to raise his voice. Derek didn’t bother to answer, just waved for the chief of police to follow him. The two of them walked away, around the corner of the house to the backyard.

I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do. I was curious, yes, but the idea of descending into the crawlspace with them, and with the spiders and snakes and other creepy critters—and that was before I knew there were human bones down there!—wasn’t appealing. I stood where I was, chewing my bottom lip and looking around. Things had been moving kind of fast up until this point, so I hadn’t really had a chance to reflect on Derek’s discovery. Now I realized I was not only shocked and creeped out and overwhelmed and slightly nauseous, I was also intrigued in spite of myself.

What was a human arm bone—OK, an ulna—doing buried under our house? There had been no time for cutting up corpses after Mr. Murphy shot his wife and her parents. And I doubted the police had been neglectful enough to overlook any body parts. So how had one of the arm bones made it into the crawlspace? It wasn’t like it could move from the bedroom to the crawlspace on its own or bury itself without help.

Maybe Mr. Murphy had killed someone else, too? If he’d murdered his wife and her family, it wasn’t outrageous to speculate that he might have done away with someone else, as well, at some earlier point. Maybe I should stop by the
Clarion
office this afternoon—the
Waterfield Clarion
is one of the local newspapers—and see if I could dig up any missing person reports during the time the Murphys had lived here in Waterfield.

Maybe the ulna belonged to Peggy Murphy’s supposed lover. Maybe Brian Murphy had discovered that his wife was unfaithful, and he had murdered the man she was seeing. And then he murdered her. And for good measure, he’d murdered her parents, too.

Or maybe the corpse in the crawlspace was someone else, someone that Brian had murdered, and when Peggy Murphy discovered that the body was there, Brian had had to kill her so she wouldn’t call the cops on him.

Next door, a curtain twitched, and Miss Venetia Rudolph’s face appeared in the window. I waved. She withdrew, looking put out. I figured I’d rubbed her the wrong way by letting her know that I’d noticed her nosiness, but then the front door opened, and she headed for me, her large tennis shoes squashing blades of grass as she went.

“Miss Baker.”

“Miss Rudolph?”

“What is the meaning of this?”

“The meaning of what?” I said. She gestured toward the police car. “Oh. Right. The chief of police stopped by.”

“Why?”

I hesitated. Wayne probably wouldn’t be happy if I told her what we’d found, but on the other hand, it wasn’t like he could keep it a secret for long. Especially if there turned out to be a whole skeleton down there, and there probably would turn out to be.

“My boyfriend was drilling some holes underneath the foundation,” I said eventually. “To pour concrete for supports. The floors have settled.”

“And?”

“And he found a bone. It could be an animal bone—maybe a dog or a raccoon got into the crawlspace at one time and died—but we thought we’d better call the police just in case.” I smiled innocently.

“Isn’t your boyfriend Dr. Ellis’s son?” Venetia asked. “Didn’t he go to medical school? He should know a human bone when he sees one, shouldn’t he?”

I sighed. “He should, yes. Nevertheless, I think we should wait for official word from the police before we start spreading rumors that someone has found a skeleton under the haunted house on Becklea.”

“A skeleton?” Venetia repeated, her bushy eyebrows practically disappearing beneath her shaggy gray bangs. “I thought you said a bone. Singular.”

I gave myself a hard mental kick. Stupid, stupid, stupid. “He only found one bone. But since bones aren’t something you misplace easily, there may be more down there.”

“Harrumph!” Venetia said, but before she could continue, another voice entered the conversation.

“What’s going on?”

I swung on my heel and came face-to-face—or nose to Adam’s apple—with Lionel Kenefick. The young electrician must have noticed the police car and walked up from his own house to investigate. Now he was standing a few inches away, looking down into what I fondly refer to as my cleavage.

I took a step back and went through my story again, downplaying the discovery as much as I could. Lionel looked, for lack of a better word, nervy. His eyes were showing whites all the way around, like a skittish horse, and that prominent Adam’s apple kept jumping as he swallowed agitatedly. Not that I could blame him. The idea that I’d been walking around upstairs for several days, while all along a body had been moldering in the crawlspace, was totally creepy. Lionel was probably thinking about all the years he’d been living just down the street, while a body was rotting up here.

I forced a smile. “I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough what’s going on. The chief of police is down there, looking around. As a matter of fact,” I turned as I heard voices from behind the house, “here they are now.”

A moment later, Derek and Wayne came around the corner, deep in conversation. I couldn’t hear much of what they were saying, but a few words floated over to me.

“. . . crew,” Wayne said.

“. . . going to take?” Derek answered. “Gotta . . .”

Wayne shrugged. “. . . choice. Sorry, Derek. You know how it is.” He struck out for the police cruiser.

“Yeah, yeah.” Derek made a face at his retreating back and came over to me. “Hiya, Tink. Miss Rudolph. Lionel.” He nodded to the other two and put his arm around my shoulders.

“What’s going on?” I asked, glancing up at him. He looked resigned and not very happy.

“Wayne has to call in a crew. To dig up the crawlspace.”

“I guess he probably doesn’t have a choice,” I said, fairly.

“I know he doesn’t. It’s just irritating, is all.”

“So are there more bones down there?” Venetia Rudolph wanted to know. Lionel looked green.

Derek glanced over at her. “We had a look around and found a couple more, yeah. Enough to establish that there’s at least one skeleton down there, maybe more.”

“More?” Lionel said faintly. Derek shrugged.

“Could be an old Indian burial ground or something. Not necessarily a murder victim someone stashed under the house. Although that’s a possibility, too, of course.” Lionel looked ready to hurl. “So the police will be digging up the basement?” Venetia asked, getting the conversation back on track. Derek nodded.

“Yes, ma’am. The chief of police is calling in a crew right now.”

“Not much room down there for a whole crew,” I remarked.

Derek shook his head. “It’ll be Brandon Thomas doing the digging, most likely. And Wayne asked me to stick around, too. He or Brandon can identify the bones themselves in a pinch, but since I’m here anyway, I can help them get a head start. Plus, it’s our house.”

I nodded. It made sense. He didn’t seem to mind looking at bones. Unlike me. “Would you mind if I took the truck into town meanwhile?” I’d had an idea about what I could do to help figure out what was going on.

He hesitated. Men are very possessive of their cars, I’ve noticed. My ex-boyfriend owned a little Porsche Boxster, and he’d go into flights of worry and indecision whenever I asked if I could drive it. I had, however, thought Derek to be made of sterner stuff.

He pulled the car keys out of his pocket, slowly. “You remember what happened last time, right?”

“Of course I remember,” I said, holding out my hand. “The fact that I almost hit Melissa’s fancy-pants Mercedes has nothing to do with my driving ability. I know how to drive. You’ve seen my license, haven’t you?”

“I have.” But he still didn’t hand over the keys.

Wayne, who had just come back from the squad car, looked from one to the other of us with barely concealed amusement.

I said, “I’ll be careful, Derek. I promise. I know how much that truck means to you.”

“It’s just a truck . . .” Derek began, and then he grinned. “Just remember that if you drive it off the road, you’ll have to walk here from Waterfield every morning. Or move in until we’re finished renovating.”

“Anything but that,” I said, snagging the keys out of his hand. “Thank you. I’ll be careful.”

“See that you are,” Derek answered, but he didn’t sound worried anymore. “So Wayne, what’s going on?”

“We’ve got another car coming,” Wayne explained. “Brandon’s bringing what he refers to as our CSI kit. Once the equipment’s here, we’ll string some lights so we can see what we’re doing and start digging.”

Lionel was lurking next to the chief, still looking a little nauseated. Wayne nodded to him. “Lionel Kenefick, isn’t it?”

Lionel nodded.

“And this is Miss Venetia Rudolph,” I said. “Miss Rudolph, this is Police Chief Wayne Rasmussen.”

I stood in silence for the next few minutes as the rest of them talked amongst themselves—about everything except the grisly find in the crawlspace, it seemed. Lionel talked about working for the Stenham brothers at Devon Highlands—Derek got a shuttered look every time Lionel mentioned Melissa, which he did without seeming to realize that she and Derek used to be married—and Venetia talked about gardening and the recent Garden Tour she’d been a part of.

After less than ten minutes, another squad car came up the street, sirens screaming and blue lights flashing, and screeched to a stop behind Wayne’s car. The driver’s side door opened and Brandon Thomas burst out and jogged toward us, cheeks flushed with excitement.

At twenty-two or so, Brandon is likely to be chief of the Waterfield PD himself one day, if he doesn’t get tired of the small town and strike out for greener pastures before then. He’s the Waterfield police department’s CSI officer when one is needed, and the rest of the time, he is simply Patrol Officer Thomas. I’d gotten to know Brandon pretty well over the summer, since he’d had to come to Aunt Inga’s house to look for fingerprints and other evidence no less than four times during the first month I lived there. I smiled at him when he reached us, and he grinned back, clearly delighted at the thought of digging up bones.

“Brandon,” Wayne nodded. “You made good time.”

Brandon flushed, looking sheepish. He’d probably averaged sixty miles per hour the whole way out here. Considering the small one- and two-lane roads surrounding Waterfield, he’d likely broken every traffic law he was sworn to uphold. Avoiding his boss’s eye, he greeted Derek and Lionel. “Hi, Derek. Lionel. Long time no see.”

Derek nodded back, clearly amused that Brandon was so excited by a bunch of old bones. Lionel nodded, too, sullenly. Next to the tall and strapping Brandon, with his gleaming golden hair and broad shoulders, not to mention starched and pressed uniform shirt and spit-shined shoes, Lionel looked even smaller, younger, and scruffier than earlier.