Spackled and Spooked (30 page)

“Sounds good. Maybe we can go talk to him tomorrow morning, before we head out to the house? If you like the dresser, we can put it in the back of the truck and take it with us. And you can give me your opinion of Mr. Nickerson, too.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Derek wanted to know. “Do I have to worry about a rival? One who’s older than my dad?”

Kate giggled, and so did Shannon. I rolled my eyes. “Hardly. I think he was involved with Peggy Murphy.”

“Peggy Murphy?” Wayne repeated. I nodded as all eyes focused on me.

“Cora knew Peggy. Their husbands used to drink together. And she said that a couple of months before the murders, Peggy changed. Took a job, began wearing makeup, seemed happier. Cora thought it was possible that Peggy had met someone else, and that she was planning to leave Brian, and that’s why he killed her.”

“No kidding?” Wayne said. I nodded, but before I could answer, Ricky got to his feet.

“Excuse me.” He headed for the door to the hallway again. But instead of going to the bathroom, he disappeared down the hallway toward the front door. A moment later, we heard it open and close behind him with a bang.

“Huh,” Josh said, making to get up. His father waved him down.

“I’ll go. I should get back to work anyway. Kate, thanks for dinner.” He put a hand on her shoulder on the way past, and then he was gone, too.

“Weird,” Shannon said. I nodded. Very.

18

The teak dresser was still in the window of Nickerson’s Antiques the next morning when Derek pulled the truck to a stop outside. He pointed to it. “That it?”

“That’s the one. And that’s Mr. Nickerson.” I indicated the man who was wielding a broom to sweep a handful of yellow leaves off the sidewalk in front of his store. Today, he was wearing a denim suit, western style, with wide-legged jeans that looked like something Elvis might have worn in his heyday. On his feet were black snakeskin cowboy boots with high heels.

Derek nodded. “So I see.”

“Everyone knows everyone in Waterfield, don’t they?”

“Pretty much,” Derek said. “At least until Melissa and the Stenhams starting going wild and strangers started moving in.”

Mr. Nickerson heard this last statement. He looked up and nodded, although it was difficult to be sure whether the nod was agreement or just a general greeting. “Derek.”

“John.” He put out a hand, and they shook. “Avery’s been telling me about the Danish Modern dresser.” Derek glanced at the display window. “She’d like to use it for a sink base in a house we’re renovating. Mind if I go take a look?”

“Knock yourself out,” John Nickerson said. Derek headed for the store while the two of us stayed where we were, on the sidewalk. Downtown Waterfield was just waking up; blinds were lifted in the shop windows along Main Street, those of the shop owners who had sandwich boards or outdoor displays had put them out, and front doors were propped open with doorstops or tied with twine. The temperature would reach an estimated sixty-five degrees or so today, nice and crisp, but at the moment it was in the fifties, and I was glad I had a jacket on over my T-shirt and jeans.

“You told me that Peggy Murphy used to work for you, right?” I ventured, when the silence became uncomfortable. In the display window, Derek was examining the Danish dresser, pulling out the drawers and peering at the sides and back.

Mr. Nickerson nodded, his eyes on Derek, as well. “For six or eight months before she died.”

“Did you know Patrick, too? Her little boy?”

His silvered brows drew together slightly. “Met him. He’d come over after school sometimes, do his home-work or sit and draw in the back room. Why?”

“I’m just curious,” I said with a shrug. “I told you we’re renovating the old Murphy house. I saw pictures of Brian and Peggy in the newspaper archives, but I haven’t seen a picture of Patrick.”

John Nickerson leaned the broom up against the front of the store. “Looked like his mother. Brian had red hair and freckles. Like me, before I turned gray.” He smoothed a freckled hand over his ducktail. “But Peggy and Patrick were Black Irish, with dark hair and blue eyes.”

“Are you Irish, too, then?”

He shook his head. “Scots.”

“Nickerson doesn’t sound Scottish.” Although the only time I’d come across the name was when I was reading Nancy Drew as a girl, so what did I know? Still, in my mind, all Scottish names started with “mac,” which I knew meant “son of.” MacDonald would be the son of Donald and MacEwen the son of Ewen, and so on. Although MacNicker didn’t sound right. Nickerson was better.

“Nickerson and Nicholson are from the MacNicol clan,” John Nickerson explained. “Along with MacNicoll, Nichols, Nickells, and MacNeacail.” He helpfully spelled the different variants of the name.

“How about MacNiachail?” I wanted to know. He wrinkled his brows.

“Haven’t come across that one. Where d’you hear it?”

“Read it somewhere. So if you were in Scotland, your name would be Ian MacNicol? John is Ian, right?”

“More likely it would be Iain MacNeacail, but that’s close enough.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“For clearing it up for me.” I smiled. It seemed to worry him, because he peered intently at me. But before he could say anything, Derek came out of the shop again. “What did you think?” I asked, happy for an excuse to change the subject.

“I think I can make it work.” He turned to John Nickerson. “Will you take three hundred fifty dollars for it?”

They went into the age-old dance of buyer and seller, and I left them to it and turned my mind to what I had just learned. So John Nickerson was for all intents and purposes an Americanization, or Anglicization, of Iain MacNiachail—which had been the name of the dashing hero in Peggy Murphy’s unfinished bodice-ripper manuscript,
Tied Up in Tartan
. Did that coincidence prove that Peggy had had an affair with her boss?

“Not necessarily,” Derek said ten minutes later, after the purchase of the dresser was a fait accompli at four hundred dollars and I had told him what John Nickerson had said. “All it proves is that she had a crush on him. Or maybe not even; maybe she just liked the name.”

“It’s interesting, though, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” Derek said with a shrug. Apparently he didn’t find it as interesting as I did. “Why do you care so much, Avery? Not to be insensitive or anything, but they’re just as dead either way.”

“I know that,” I answered. “I know it doesn’t make any difference. I’d just like to know what happened.”

He glanced over at me. “No doubt about what happened, is there? Brian killed them.”

“I know that. But why?”

Derek shrugged. “He must have had a reason. There’s always a reason, whether we understand it or not. She could have been having an affair. She could have been thinking about leaving him. Or he could simply have thought she did. He could have felt threatened because she started working and having fun without him. We’ll never really know.”

“I guess. It’s just interesting to me, is all.”

Derek didn’t answer.

“I’ll get Wayne to help me unload the dresser,” he said when we pulled up outside the house on Becklea. For a wonder, it was nice and quiet here today. Maybe it was too early in the morning, or maybe the TV crew and the nosy neighbors had had their fill. Maybe they figured the excitement was over. Whatever the reason, it was nice to have the place to ourselves for a bit. The black and white cruiser was still here, though, parked outside Venetia’s house, so Wayne—or somebody—was doing something in the neighborhood. “Why don’t you go open the door,” Derek added, handing over the keys.

I trudged off across the grass toward our front door while he headed right, to Venetia’s backyard and the back door. Two minutes later he came back. “Nobody there. Maybe they parked the car there to deter gawkers, or maybe Wayne’s just didn’t hear the knock.”

“Maybe he went down the street to talk to Denise Robertson and Linda White,” I suggested. “He said he’d have to.”

Derek nodded. “Can you help me carry, or do you want to wait until Wayne comes back?”

“I’m not a wimp,” I said, a little insulted that he thought I was too weak to help him carry the dresser. Granted, I’m not big, and I was still a little sore from the accident yesterday, but surely I’d be able to hold up my end of a dresser.

“Teak has a very high density,” Derek warned. “It’s heavy.”

“Fine. There’s Lionel. Why don’t you ask him?” I pointed down the road to where Lionel Kenefick had just exited his house and was on his way to the van. He glanced our way, and Derek lifted a hand. Lionel hesitated.

“Be right back,” Derek said and took off down the road. I folded my arms across my chest and watched him meet up with Lionel at the edge of the latter’s driveway. They spoke for a minute—Derek gestured toward me, or more likely, toward the teak dresser on the back of the truck—and Lionel nodded. The two of them came back up the road.

“Can you hold the door open, Tink?” Derek asked as they wrestled the dresser off the bed of the truck and walked it across the grass toward the stairs. I scurried up the stairs to the front door and pushed it open. And I guess I can admit now that although I’d unlocked it earlier, I hadn’t gone inside by myself. Instead, I’d headed back down the stairs to talk to Derek, loath to go inside the supposedly haunted house alone.

The dresser must have been heavy, because I could see muscles bunching in both of their arms as they hauled the gleaming piece of furniture over the threshold and into the stripped-down living room. “Where to?” Lionel wheezed. Derek glanced at me.

“Master bedroom,” I said, “for now.”

“Down the hall,” Derek directed, and Lionel aimed his skinny posterior toward the doorway to the den. I minced behind them as they carried their burden down the hallway and into the big bedroom at the back of the house.

“You can just leave it in the middle of the floor for now. We’ll have to tear out the old sink from the bathroom before we can install it.”

“I’ll have to glue the top drawers shut and cut the holes for the basins, too,” Derek added, rubbing his hands together after putting the dresser down in the middle of the floor. Lionel did the same, looking around.

“Have you ever been here before?” I asked. He glanced at me.

“When Patrick lived here.”

“Right. Sorry, I forgot.”

He shrugged. “What’s that?”

“What’s what? Oh, just some boxes we found upstairs in the attic a couple of days ago. Some of Mrs. Murphy’s writing, old drawings that Patrick made, that sort of thing.”

One of the boxes was open, and a few pieces of paper were trailing out.

“Brandon must have looked through them,” Derek said, obviously reading my mind.

“Why would he do that?” I answered.

He shrugged. “No idea, but he was in here yesterday. I guess maybe he saw the boxes and was curious.”

“You’d think he could have put the papers back where he found them, then. Instead of leaving them on the floor.”

“Maybe he was interrupted,” Derek said.

“Maybe. Did he know Patrick Murphy, I wonder? They’d be the same age. . . .”

“Brandon Thomas?” Lionel said. I nodded. He shook his head. “He lived in the Village. Went to the elementary school in town. Patrick and I—and Holly and Denise—went to school out here. Wasn’t till senior high that we all ended up together. Patrick was long gone by then.”

“So Holly and Brandon didn’t know each other until high school? And Brandon didn’t know Patrick at all?”

Lionel shook his head.

“He went to live with family, right? Somewhere? After the murders?”

“Aunt and uncle, I think. Somewhere west of here.”

“Like Arizona? Or Nevada?”

“More like Ohio. Or Pennsylvania. Indiana, maybe.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a picture of him, would you? I’ve seen pictures of Peggy and Brian, but I haven’t seen one of Patrick. Someone told me he looked like his mother, but I’d like to see a picture.”

Lionel looked like he wanted to object, but he refrained. I was grateful, because I wasn’t sure I could explain. “I think so. You want it now?”

“If it isn’t too much of an imposition,” I said. He shook his head.