Spackled and Spooked (25 page)

“Right,” Kate said, rolling her eyes. I glanced at her.

“It did take him rather a long time to get involved with someone else—me—after Melissa.”

“Well, can you blame him? If I’d spent five years with her, I’d want some peace and quiet, too. Wouldn’t you?”

She steered the car around the curve at the bottom of the hill, easily skirting the gates and the billboard of Melissa.

“I guess,” I said. Kate shot me a look.

“You have nothing to worry about, Avery. Derek is over Melissa. He was over Melissa long before they divorced. If you don’t believe me, ask Jill.”

“Jill who? Cortino? Peter’s wife?”

She nodded.

“How would she know?”

The Volvo whizzed past Primrose Drive on the way to Barnham. “Derek and Jill were high school sweet-hearts,” Kate said. “Until he left for medical school and met Melissa.”

The invisible lightbulb above my head flickered on. “So that’s where I’ve seen her before.”

“Excuse me?”

“I thought she looked familiar. I saw her picture in the newspaper archives yesterday. With Derek. Prom picture.”

Kate nodded. “While Derek went away and hooked up with Melissa, Jill studied bookkeeping at Barnham. She never did marry anyone, and I guess everyone thought she was still carrying a torch for him. Until Peter Cortino came to town.”

“When was that?”

Kate thought back. “Must be about five years ago now. Or six. Right before Melissa and Derek split up.”

“About the same time you and Shannon moved here?”

She nodded. “I didn’t know any of them at the time, except for Melissa, but Derek told me what happened later. He and Jill used to hang out sometimes while Melissa was busy showing properties. She didn’t seem to see Jill as any kind of threat, so she didn’t mind the two of them spending time together.”

“Does Melissa see anyone as a threat?”

Kate grinned. “Now that you mention it, probably not. She didn’t mind Derek hanging out with Jill, anyway. Not that anything happened between them; Jill’s too nice to try to seduce someone else’s husband, even when the marriage is as rocky as Derek’s and Melissa’s was. Although people were whispering, of course. Derek and Melissa were on the skids, and Jill was getting into position, biding her time until he was free.”

“Of course.” People are always whispering, aren’t they? “Then what?”

“Then Peter Cortino moved to town and opened Cortino’s Auto Repair.”

“And Jill took one look at him and fell?”

Kate smiled. “You’ve seen him, right? Of course she did. Along with all the other single women in town. And a few of the married ones, as well.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Melissa?”

“She wasn’t above flirting a bit. But Peter’s too decent to poach on someone else’s turf, and Melissa was working her magic on Ray Stenham by then, anyway. Peter’s just an auto mechanic, after all. Nobody important. Melissa wanted money and status. That’s why she married Derek in the first place.”

“And why she divorced him when he decided he wasn’t cut out to be a doctor,” I nodded. “I know. So what happened?”

“Melissa kicked Derek out and started seeing Ray instead. Peter could have his pick of women and surprised everyone when he chose Jill. Not that she isn’t wonderful; she’s just not . . .”

“Pretty,” I said when she hesitated.

Kate shrugged. “Well, yes. She’s nice, intelligent, very capable, and did I mention nice?”

“Twice. And you’re right, she seems nice. And if she’s a friend of Derek’s, that’s saying a lot right there. So Jill and Peter got married and Derek and Melissa got divorced?”

“That’s pretty much the long and short of it, yes. Derek didn’t seem upset, if that’s what you’re worried about. I think he and Jill had realized long ago that whatever they had when they were teenagers was long gone. But they managed to stay friends through it all, and Peter and Jill were very supportive of Derek when Melissa kicked him out. In fact, when Peter and Jill got married, Derek bought Peter’s apartment.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. “So they’ve been married for about as long as Derek’s been divorced. Five years or so?”

“About that, yes. Started having kids right away, too. There are three of them. Peter, Paul, and . . .”

“Mary?”

She shook her head. “Pamela. Peter’s four, Paul three, and Pammy just over a year old.”

“That’s a lot of kids,” I said.

“Depends on what you compare it to. My mother was one of seven and my father one of five. I’m one of four.”

“I’m an only child. Like Shannon. Did you ever think about having more?”

She laughed. “Lord, no. At the time—nineteen—I had more than enough trouble with the one I had, especially with Gerard being who he was. Raising a kid on your own is no picnic. And now I’m too old.”

“So you and Wayne don’t plan on having any together?”

Wayne and Kate were discussing marriage. He hadn’t officially proposed, but they were talking about it. Weighing the pros and cons, trying to decide whether they wanted to upset the status quo when the status quo worked quite well for them.

“Are you nuts?” Kate said. “I’m almost forty. Wayne’s forty-six.”

“These days, women have children later in life. And Wayne’s age doesn’t matter.”

“That’s true. But I’m old enough to be a grandmother. If Shannon had gotten pregnant when I did—and thank God she had more sense than I had at her age!—I’d have had a grandchild already. Could you imagine Shannon’s and Josh’s faces if we came and told them they’re getting a little brother or sister?”

“It would almost be worth it just for that,” I said. Kate smiled and turned the station wagon into the parking lot at Barnham College.

Barnham looks like one of those picture-perfect colleges you see in the movies, especially at this time of year, surrounded by blushing trees and the clear blue autumn sky. The buildings are brick, with gothic arches above windows and doors, and brooding gargoyles squatting on the corners of the roof. They’re ranged around a central quad, and Kate, who was more familiar with the place than I, headed for a building on the far side.

“Labs,” she explained when I asked. “Science, anthropology, computer, even home ec. I figure we’ll find Josh first—I saw his car in the lot, so I’m sure he’s here—and then we’ll get him to take us to everyone else.”

She led the way to the computer lab, where we found Josh hunched over a desk. On the screen in front of him, a face was slowly taking shape. At the moment it was halfway between skeletal and finished: still very thin, but with olive skin covering the bones, and a nondescript nose and brown eyes.

“Why brown?” I asked. “Derek told me there was nothing left of the eyes.”

Josh glanced at me over his shoulder while his fingers continued to move on the keyboard. “More Americans have brown eyes than blue, green, or gray. And her hair was long and dark.”

His fingers flickered, and a two-dimensional wig appeared on the screen, cupping the skeletal face. Long, brown hair, similar in color to Josh’s own, but straight, without his clustering curls. “And she was young, so she probably had some fullness to her face, here and here . . .”

The cheeks plumped, and so did the lips, which he tinted pale pink. We all contemplated the result, our heads cocked. “There’s something there . . .” I said. Josh nodded. Kate looked from one to the other of us, rolling her eyes.

“Get real, you two. Whoever she is, this woman has been in the ground for years. There’s no way you could have seen her, Avery.”

“That’s true,” I admitted. “She looks a little like someone I’ve seen, though. I don’t know where or when—or who—but she looks familiar.”

“It’s difficult when you don’t know much,” Josh said. “Her eyes could have been hazel, or gray, or blue, instead of brown.” As he spoke, the image changed eye color rapidly. “Just because brown is the most common, doesn’t mean everyone has brown eyes. Yours and Derek’s are blue, and so are Ricky’s and Paige’s. Her skin could have been lighter or darker. And she could have been overweight enough that it changed her face.” He added fifty pounds or so to the image, which bloated up to something unrecognizable before slimming down again. “And she could have had a hook nose, or a ski jump, or a flat nose, or a pointy chin, or a square chin with a dimple. . . .”

While he spoke his fingers danced over the keyboard, and with every keystroke the image changed, flickering from green-eyed with a pointy chin and a Roman nose, to blue-eyed with a dimpled chin and a pert nose. It was amazing how different the face looked in its various permutations. “She could have had freckles, a mole, a dimple, heavy eyebrows, narrow eyebrows, no eyebrows. . . .”

“Wayne said this was unreliable,” I said sympathetically. Josh blew out an exasperated breath.

“He wasn’t kidding. I don’t even know how old she was, and let’s face it: There’s a big difference between what someone looks like at eighteen and twenty-eight. So what can I do for you two? You coming to check progress?”

I shrugged. “It’s something to do. I can’t go back to work at the house on Becklea, and although there are still things I need to do to Aunt Inga’s house—I want to paint the porch ceiling blue, and attach some stars, and I found a great porch swing at a flea market a couple of weeks ago, but that needs painting, too—anyway, I can’t seem to concentrate on it. I want to know who this woman is. Was.”

“Maybe some food’ll make you feel better,” Josh said, getting up. “Shannon’s at the cafeteria, working on her history project, and I’m not making much progress here. Let’s go.”

He headed for the door, with Kate and me trailing behind. I glanced over my shoulder once and met the brown eyes of the girl on the screen. It was probably just me, but they looked compelling.

15

We found Shannon sucking down a cup of bad coffee and working. I was relieved to see that what she was doing had nothing to do with the skeleton in the crawlspace or the murder of Venetia Rudolph; she was simply working on her history report about the settling of Maine in 1607. It was a nice change.

“Popham was the first American settlement,” she explained without looking up.

“I thought Jamestown, Virginia, was the first,” I answered. I don’t know much about history, except as it relates to textiles, but a few of the better-known facts have stayed with me.

Shannon shook her head. “Popham, Maine, was earlier. But the colony didn’t survive the winter. So Jamestown became the first permanent settlement.”

“Interesting,” I said, taking a seat across the table from her. “It gets pretty cold here in the winter, doesn’t it?”

“Depends on what you mean by cold,” Josh said with a shrug. He had grown up here, so the cold obviously didn’t worry him. Kate grinned.

“You’ve heard what they say, haven’t you, Avery? There are only two seasons in Maine: winter and the fourth of July.”

“I hadn’t heard that, actually. And it’s not true, either. It’s pretty nice out there right now.” I glanced out the window at the yellowing birch trees and bright, blue sky. The temperature hovered in the midsixties, so it was nice and crisp, just the way a fall day ought to be.

“Wait a couple of months,” Kate said, as Josh grinned. “And lay in a supply of long-johns. Not to mention fire-wood. How’s the house?”

“Aunt Inga’s house? Fine.”

“Have Derek look it over,” Kate advised. Josh nodded. “Make sure it’s well insulated. Have him put weather-stripping around the doors and caulk around the windows to keep the wind out. Put storm windows and storm doors everywhere if you don’t have them already. Insulate your pipes so they don’t freeze. And buy an electric blanket.”

I felt myself pale. “It’s going to be that cold?”

Shannon was still bent over her work, but Kate and Josh exchanged a glance. “It gets pretty cold here, yes.”

“Colder than in New York?”

Kate shrugged. “The average lows are in the low teens. And then there are the ocean breezes.”

“It can get windy in New York, too,” I said, desperately trying to get them to tell me that it wouldn’t be much worse than what I was used to. Temperatures in New York City rarely dip into the teens, though. “When the cold air goes screaming down the streets, between the buildings . . .”

“I’m sure it can get freezing in New York,” Kate said kindly. “It’s colder here, though. And a lot more snow, too. You’d better prepare yourself.”