Spackled and Spooked (23 page)

Wayne wasn’t happy to see them, something the look on his face made abundantly clear as he stalked across the grass toward the blue Honda. “Listening to the secure channels again?” I heard him inquire tightly as Josh rolled down his window.

“Actually, dad,” his son responded, “it’s all over the news. Tony the Tiger on channel eight has been broadcasting live for the past two hours. Talking to the neighbors, giving updates of the cadaver dog, stuff like that. When he reported a second body twenty minutes ago, we figured we’d come see if there was anything we could do.”

“You did, huh?” Wayne said, ominously. Josh shrugged. “I’m paying fifteen grand a year for you to cut class, is that it?”

“Relax, dad.” Josh rolled his eyes. “I’m between classes, OK? I’ve been helping the anthropology department process the bones from the crawlspace. Dr. Hardiman said he’d be calling you this afternoon.” I’d heard Wayne and Josh mention Dr. Hardiman. He was a forensic anthropologist who had joined Barnham’s faculty a few years ago but still worked on a freelance basis for the Portland medical examiner. He’d probably never expected to have a case so close to home. “The dentist, Dr. Whitaker, stopped by this morning. He made a record of the teeth—marked which teeth had fillings and which didn’t—and said he’d check his records and notify you if he could identify the skeleton. Also, it is Professor Hardiman’s educated opinion that the skeleton is that of a young woman, and that she’s been in the ground no more than six years and no less than two.”

“So Derek was right,” I said.

Josh continued, “I took a photograph of the skull. I figure I’ll try to use a facial reconstruction program on the computer to see what I can come up with.”

“Facial approximation,” his father corrected. “You know how unreliable it is.”

“It’s mostly just for fun,” Josh said calmly. “You’ll probably get a hit on the dental records long before I get any results on the facial reconstruction, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try.”

“As long as you let me know what you find,” Wayne said. “In fact, why don’t you go get started right now? I have work to do.”

“Can you give me a ride back to town?” I shot in. “Derek’s car is in the shop somewhere on Broad Street.”

“Sure,” Josh said. “Get in.”

I crawled into the back seat while the kids pestered Wayne for details on what was going on. He was circumspect, but a lot of what they’d discovered was public knowledge, thanks to Tony the Tiger. Wayne summarized what had happened this morning.

“Murdered?” Josh asked, eyes alight behind the glasses, after Wayne had finished. His father shrugged.

“Wow,” Shannon said. “I wonder why.”

“She probably knew something,” Josh answered. “Something she didn’t realize she knew. She was old. She’s probably been sitting behind her curtains for twenty years, looking out, seeing everybody coming and going. She probably saw the murderer as well as the victim—the woman in the basement—and just didn’t realize it.”

“Or maybe she did realize it,” Shannon responded. “Yesterday. Maybe she didn’t know that the woman was dead until then, but when she heard about the bones, she realized who it had to be, and also who killed her. And maybe she told the killer that she was going to turn him or her in.”

Josh nodded eagerly. “That’d work. Maybe she asked him or her—the murderer—to stop by, because she was old and couldn’t get around well.”

“She could get around just fine,” I said, remembering Venetia stomping across the grass toward me. “She may have been old, but she wasn’t frail. Or weak, either.” Venetia had been bigger and taller than me, and she had carried both Maine coon cats at the same time, from her yard to our front door, the other day. I sometimes had a problem trying to lift just one, especially if he—Jemmy—didn’t want to be lifted. He weighed almost twenty pounds and could make himself seem twice as heavy when he wanted to. It was like trying to hoist a sandbag.

“OK, then,” Josh said gamely, “so maybe the murderer worried that she’d seen him and knew who he was, and so he decided to pay Miss Rudolph a visit to find out how much she knew. And when she told him she had seen him with the victim—or maybe he tipped her off, just by coming—he had to kill her before she could tell anyone else.”

“Makes sense,” I admitted. Shannon nodded. Josh looked at his dad for approval.

“I’ll look into it,” Wayne said. “As soon as you push off and let me get back to work.”

“Yessah!” Josh dashed off a salute and a cocky grin before putting the car back into gear and rolling sedately down the road away from the house.

“Where’s Paige today?” I asked after we had turned the corner and all the hoopla on Becklea was behind us. “And Ricky?” Every time I’d seen them lately, Ricky Swanson had been with them, so it was almost strange not to see him today.

“They’re at school,” Josh said. “I asked them if they wanted to come, but they said no.”

“Are they going out?”

Paige had been recovering from a rather unfortunate love affair last winter, one that had ended tragically, but I thought I had noticed signs that she might be developing an interest in Ricky. It would explain why he was always hanging out with the three of them, anyway, when they didn’t seem to have a whole lot in common, personality-wise. Then again, Paige had never seemed to have much in common with Josh and Shannon, either; it was more a matter of a life-long friendship between her and Josh, which had grown to include Shannon when the latter moved to Waterfield six years ago.

“Who knows?” Shannon said with a shrug.

“Hard to know what Ricky’s thinking,” Josh added, “though Paige seems to like him.”

“Do
you
like him?” I looked from one to the other of them.

Josh shrugged. “Don’t know him very well yet.”

“I’m reserving judgment,” Shannon said. “So far, so good. Just as long as he doesn’t hurt her. She’s been through enough lately.”

I nodded. Couldn’t argue with that.

“What’s wrong with Derek’s car?” Josh changed the subject.

“The brakes gave out.” I gave them an abbreviated version of what had happened this morning and listened to their exclamations.

“Who would want to hurt Derek? Or you?” Shannon wanted to know.

I shrugged. “No idea. Someone who thinks one of us knows more than we do? Although it was probably just an accident. And even if it wasn’t, I don’t think it was directed at me. It’s Derek’s car, and there’s no way anyone could have known that I’d be driving it today.”

“But it’s not like anyone has a reason to want to get rid of Derek, either,” Shannon pointed out, “and they might know that you’re usually with him. And that you don’t have a car of your own. Anyone who knows you two, knows that. You’re usually together.”

“True. And most people seem to like Derek.”

“Absolutely,” Shannon agreed with a grin. “Except for Ray Stenham, maybe. I don’t think he’d kill him, though.”

“Probably not,” I said with real regret. The Stenham twins had tortured me mercilessly the one time I’d met them when I was little, and had made Derek’s formative years a nightmare as well, and I’d love to make them pay someday. Still, Ray had been decent to me this morning. “Ray was actually pretty nice today. He was the one who had Derek’s truck towed to Cortino’s while Melissa drove me to the house. The accident happened right outside their construction site.”

“That’s a big hill right there,” Josh remarked. “Good thing nothing worse happened.”

I nodded.

Broad Street intersects with Main right in downtown Waterfield, and Cortino’s auto repair shop turned out to be on the other side by a few blocks. It was a blue-painted cinderblock building with three bays, and through the middle one, I could see Derek’s truck up on a lift while a couple of people in blue overalls stood underneath, conferring.

“You want us to wait for you?” Josh asked as I crawled out of the back seat. I shook my head.

“No need. I’m just a few blocks from Aunt Inga’s house. Go back to work on your forensic facial approximation software. See if you can’t figure out who that poor woman was. If she wasn’t local, the dental records may not do any good.”

Josh nodded. “See you, Avery.” He pulled away while Shannon waved. I waved back before I headed for the door to the office.

The counter was manned—or womanned—by a plump blonde a couple of years older than me. She had a round face with a snub nose and slightly protruding, pale blue eyes, and she looked familiar, like maybe I’d passed her on the street or nodded to her at Shaw’s Supermarket sometime. She wasn’t anyone I knew or had ever been introduced to, but I knew I’d seen her before.

“Hi,” I said politely. “I’m Avery Baker.”

“Jill Cortino.” She looked me up and down a few times, assessing me. “So you’re Derek’s new girlfriend. And business partner.”

“That’d be me.” Girlfriend and business partner. Also the person who had driven Derek’s beloved Ford F-150 into a ditch this morning. “I came to check on the truck.”

“Peter’s been looking at it. I’ll get him for you.” She got up and walked over to a door in the back wall. A few moments later, one of the overalls-clad mechanics came jogging toward us.

“What’s up, babe?” He grinned down at her. She indicated me.

“This is Avery Baker. Derek’s girlfriend. She came to find out about the truck.”

Peter Cortino turned to me and flashed another smile. I staggered.

Don’t get me wrong: I adore Derek, and I certainly have no complaints about his physical characteristics. He’s a good-looking guy: a lean six feet or so, with sun-streaked hair and melting blue eyes, not to mention a killer smile and a dimple. And that’s just the exterior. But although I’m attached, and happy to be so, I’m neither stupid nor blind. Peter Cortino was easily the best-looking man I had ever seen, with the possible exception of a soap opera actor I spied in a bar in Greenwich Village one night a few years ago. He was so handsome he looked unreal, especially in the dirt and dust of this untidy auto shop in back-beyond Maine.

An inch or two shorter than Derek, Peter Cortino was as dark as Derek was fair. Black, curly hair covered his head, while his face—a masterpiece of exquisite bone structure and smooth, olive skin—boasted long, thick, curling eyelashes surrounding a pair of eyes as dark and melting as those on a cocker spaniel. It was like Michelangelo’s David had stepped off the pedestal and traded the fig leaf for a pair of dirty overalls.

“Nice to meet you,” I managed. Jill chuckled, and I blushed. It’s bad form to stare at someone else’s husband, even if Jill acted like she was used to it. I wondered if she was also used to people looking from him to her, wondering how she had landed such a catch. Did whispers of, “What’s
he
doing with
her
?” follow them around?

“Likewise.” He extended a hand, briefly. And although my mental visions were of dusty Italian vistas, Peter Cortino’s accent was Boston, all the way. And not upper-crust Boston, either. “Where’s Derek?”

I explained that Derek had gone to the dump with someone. Peter nodded, as if this was par for the course.

“Tell me what happened this morning.” He stuffed one hand back in the pocket of the oil-spotted overalls and put the other around his wife’s waist. She leaned into him. “The guy who towed the truck in said the driver had lost control and driven into a ditch.”

“There was a little more to it than that,” I answered. “I only drove the truck into the ditch because the brakes didn’t respond, and I didn’t want to cause a worse accident.”

Peter nodded, as if this confirmed his findings. “I had a look at it. The good news is, the problem’s easy to fix. I don’t know how much you know about automobiles . . . ?”

He waited for me to speak. When I said I’d never owned a car and knew next to nothing about them, he grinned. “In layman’s terms, then: You had a hole in the brake lines, which turned into no response from the brakes. It’s a simple thing to repair. Installing new brake lines won’t take long at all.”

So far, so good. “What’s the bad news?”

“It didn’t happen accidentally. Someone nicked the lines, and while you drove, the tear became bigger and bigger, until the brake lines broke completely. Likely the same person jiggled with the mechanism for the airbag so that when you did have an accident—and you would have one, eventually—the airbag wouldn’t work.”

Something seemed to have gone wrong with my breathing. “So someone was trying to hurt me?” Or kill me?

“Not necessarily,” Peter said. “The brakes could have given out at any moment, while you were driving ten miles an hour through downtown, or while you were doing sixty on the highway. Depending on the situation, you could have eased the car to a stop at the nearest curb with no harm done to anyone, or caused a six-car pileup on I-295.”

“Or driven off the road and into the water if I’d been heading up the ocean road?”

He nodded. “That, too. If Derek had been driving, you might have avoided the accident altogether. He’s more experienced than you.”

“That doesn’t take much,” I agreed. “So maybe it was more of a warning? Or is it possible that it was just an accident and nobody messed with the brakes? Maybe they just broke?”

Peter shrugged. “I wouldn’t think so,” he said, “although anything’s possible, I guess.”