Flipped Out (19 page)

“And she did know Tony from before,” Josh reminded me. “So she might be next in line.”

“God.” I pulled out my phone and called Kate. As soon as I heard her voice, I blurted out, “Is Nina dead?”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said, “Avery? I don’t think I heard you right. Did you just ask, ‘Is Nina there?’”

“No, I asked if Nina was dead. D. E. A. D. Dead.”

Kate sounded confused, which probably meant I didn’t have to worry. “Why would you think she’d be dead?”

“Josh suggested it. I said I hadn’t seen her this morning, and he said maybe she’s dead. That murders usually come in twos.”

“God,” Kate said. “No, Nina’s fine. She came downstairs a few minutes after you and Derek left. Said she hadn’t slept well after what happened yesterday.”

“Great. Thanks. You coming?”

She promised me she’d be there as soon as she had finished the chores, and I hung up and turned to Josh. “Nina’s fine.”

“I gathered.” He lifted the coffee to his mouth and took a swallow.

“You freaked me out there for a minute.”

He grinned. “I gathered that, too.”

“So how did you know that she knew Tony? You weren’t here when they met on Monday.”

“Fae told me,” Josh said.

“Really? You talked about that?”

“You’re kidding, right? Everyone’s talking about it.”

“I just thought the two of you would be busy talking about yourselves. You know, getting to know each other. First date and all that.”

“We did some of that, too,” Josh said.

I thought for a second. “Nice girl?”

“She seems to be. You wouldn’t think it to look at her, but she’s actually kinda innocent, even a little bit naive. Grew up with her grandparents, and they kept her pretty sheltered.” He took another sip of coffee.

After a second, he added, “I think she’s a little hung up on that guy who used to host the show. Stuart?”

I nodded. “They were telling me about him. He had some kind of freak accident and ended up in the hospital.”

“That’s what she said. Apparently he was lucky it wasn’t worse. Although she said he probably won’t be back to the show again. I guess they’re stuck with Adam.”

“Or not,” I said. When Josh looked surprised, I added, “You haven’t seen him, but he’s awful. Can’t remember details to save his life. He kept calling Waterfield Waterford, and he called Derek Erik and me Ivory.... It must have taken an hour to film a two-minute segment of introductions on Monday.”

“No kidding?” Josh grinned. “So he’s stupid?”

“I don’t know that I’d go that far, but he doesn’t seem especially bright. Then again, drop-dead gorgeous looks and a brilliant mind very rarely go together.” Most fabulously good-looking people tend to be terribly self-absorbed, which kills a lot of the charm.

“Shannon is gorgeous and smart,” Josh said.

I glanced at him, but he didn’t seem to have realized what he’d said. Maybe it was just reflex. “That’s true. So what else did you and Fae talk about last night? Did she say anything else about Nina and Tony?”

“I don’t think she knows anything else about Nina and Tony,” Josh said, tossing back the dregs of his coffee and looking around for a place to put the empty cup. Since the counter was gone, preparatory to putting in a new one, he held on to it. “Just that they worked together a lifetime ago. Mostly we talked about computers.”

“Fae knows about computers?”

He stared at me. “That’s her major. She’s just taking time off from college to do this gig during the summer.”

“And she just happened to snag a summer job working in television? That’s nice work if you can get it.”

“No,” Josh said, “I don’t think it just happened. The camera guy is her uncle or something. Apparently, he set it up.”

“Really?” They hadn’t mentioned that. Of course, there was no reason why they would have. It was none of my business. But it explained Wilson’s interest in her well-being, and the way he had stopped by their table at Guido’s last night. Checking up on his niece and the guy she was having dinner with . . .

“It’s been three minutes.” Derek’s voice floated to us from out of the bathroom. “You done with that coffee yet?”

Josh looked like he might want to say something, but he chose not to.

“Yes, Derek,” I called back. “He’s coming.”

I turned to Josh. “You can have your pick: Cora is in one bedroom and Beatrice in the other. You’re gonna have to paint both, so you can choose whether you feel like starting with blue or green.”

Josh looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Does it matter?”

“Not at all. Like I said, you’ll end up painting both anyway. Have fun.” I went back to my kitchen cabinets and my own yellow paint.

Silence descended again, only broken by the swish of paint brushes and rollers. All four of the others were on the other side of the house, where the two bedrooms flanked the one bath, while I was on my own over on this side. I could hear them chattering and caught an occasional snatch of conversation, but I was too far away to participate without yelling. Instead I enjoyed the sharp smell of fresh paint and the morning sun coming through the kitchen window while I concentrated on making smooth strokes across the wood.

Painting is the kind of mindless activity that makes it easy to think. And I had a few things to think about.

OK, so there was Derek and Melissa. Together, sharing a glass of wine. Late at night, after he’d left my house.

But I didn’t want to think about that. And besides, I trusted him. So I forced myself to consider Tony instead, and the future instead of the past.

Josh had a point: Murders sometimes did come in twos. Maybe the murderer kills again, usually to silence someone who knows he—or she—killed the first time, and sometimes the second victim is the murderer of the first, and someone else has decided to take revenge. Sometimes the first death isn’t even a murder, just some kind of accident that someone wants to hush up. If that happened here, who would the next target be?

OK, so here was Tony, right? Local boy done good. He’d probably moved around a bit in his younger days, but he was back here now and had been working for Portland’s channel eight for a few years. Long enough to become one of their go-to guys. Long enough to get his face, many times life size, on the side of the station news van.

And then he’d died. Here in his childhood home. The same night he came face-to-face with Nina, who had known him twenty years ago. Nina, who hadn’t seemed thrilled to see him at first, but who had come around and agreed to go to dinner with him.

Had someone used the crew as a distraction, knowing that the logical thing for Wayne to do was focus on the newcomers? Or had someone on the crew actually killed Tony? And if so, who?

The only person I could imagine might have had a reason would be Nina herself. The others hadn’t mentioned meeting him before. Wilson was happily married, so it wasn’t like he would have killed Tony to uphold Nina’s honor. If it had been Fae, maybe. But Tony hadn’t had anything to do with Fae. She’d been with Shannon when Nina and Tony went to dinner. And Ted . . .

Maybe Ted had a silent crush on Nina. And maybe he thought Nina and Tony were about to get together, and so he’d decided to do away with Tony. Although he and Wilson had been together in Portland, hadn’t they?

And then there was Melissa. She was Tony’s fiancée. If she hadn’t killed him—and Derek seemed convinced she hadn’t—was it possible that she was the next target? She knew him better than anyone. If something was going on—if Tony had dug up dirt on someone, for instance—Melissa was the most likely person to know who and what. They’d been together awhile, and dirt was something that Melissa might also enjoy. I wouldn’t go so far as to accuse her of blackmail, nor Tony, for that matter, but she was the type of person who liked to know things about people.

Maybe Wayne had done her a favor by putting her in jail. If she knew something about Tony’s killer, and that person was out to get her, jail might be the safest place for her.

That’s as far as I got in my musings, and then the crew arrived at the house and took my mind off things. Nina did look rather the worse for wear, I noticed; she’d told Kate she hadn’t slept well, and it was obvious in her heavy eyes and pallor. For the first time since I’d met her, she truly looked her age. She was even a tiny bit disheveled: There were a few hairs out of place on her head, and she hadn’t matched her jewelry. The gold hoops in her ears didn’t go with the silver necklace.

She managed a smile when she saw me. “Hello, Avery. Everything OK?”

I smiled back. “Fine. We’re scrambling to catch up. Derek’s retiling the bathroom floor. His stepmother and her daughter are painting the bedrooms, and Josh is helping them. Or vice versa. And I’m here.” I gestured with the paintbrush to the half-finished cabinets. “When Kate and Shannon get here, I’ll have them get started on the cabinet doors.”

“I’ll send Wilson in here to get some footage,” Nina said, but she didn’t move, just looked around. This was where we’d been standing two days ago when Melissa and Tony showed up, and I thought maybe she was remembering. Either that or picturing Tony’s body on the floor. From imagination or, if she’d killed him, from memory.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said again. “Were you and Tony close? Back when?”

She forced a smile. “At one time. We worked together and dated for a while. Then things happened, and we went our separate ways. I hadn’t seen him in over twenty years.”

“That’s a long time.”

“At first I was shocked to see him, and then upset, because it brought up memories, both good and bad. But it’s been so long, and we’re different people now.... We had a good time at dinner the other night.”

“That’s nice.” I kept painting. Nina kept standing. Since she didn’t seem ready to leave, I added, “You can remember that, at least. That you saw him again and things were good.”

She shrugged.

“I don’t suppose he said anything at dinner? About anyone who might be out to get him? Maybe he’d been working to break some story . . . ?”

Nina shook her head. “We talked mostly about the old days and tried to catch up on everything that had happened to us both since. We had plenty to talk about.”

“I know it’s personal, but . . . did you talk about getting back together?”

Nina stared at me like I was crazy.

“The police arrested his girlfriend,” I explained. “I thought if Tony was planning to throw her over . . .”

Nina smiled. “This was the gorgeous blonde he was with the other day? Your real estate agent? He wouldn’t be that stupid. They’d just gotten engaged, or so he said at dinner. Why would he be planning to throw her over? And how would she know if he did? We ate, and then he dropped me off and came here. Unless he stopped at her house on the way, she’d have no way of knowing.”

“He might have done that. I just can’t figure out why she’d kill him, you know? I’ve known her for more than a year. Derek’s known her for twelve or thirteen. They used to be married, did you know? And he says she couldn’t have done it.”

Nina nodded, but it didn’t look like she really cared. “I’m sure your sheriff will figure it out. He seems capable.”

“He is.” Even if he wasn’t a sheriff. “And I’m sure he will. We haven’t had a murder yet that he hasn’t been able to solve. I just hope he does it before someone else dies.”

Nina blinked. “Why would someone else die?”

“Haven’t you noticed how often there’s a second victim after the first one?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t had much experience with murder,” Nina said and turned toward the dining room. “I’ll go get Will and the others, and we can get started.”

I nodded, wondering if I should tell her to be careful, that she might be the next victim in line, or whether that would just freak her out unnecessarily.

Things got under way after that, with Ted juggling lights and wires and Wilson juggling his camera. Adam was called upon to ask questions and make comments, and he managed to make it through most of the morning without messing up too badly. He certainly did look good, with those glossy brown curls and that tight, open-at-the-neck golf shirt. He’d gone from calling me Ivory to Ivy, and I think I heard him call my boyfriend Tarek once, which was pretty laughable, but other than that, he did all right.

Nina hovered, correcting him with increasingly strained patience when she had to, and I could tell it bothered him. It made me wonder why he didn’t just restructure his patter to avoid the words that tripped him up. Like our names. I mean, there wasn’t really any reason to start every sentence he spoke to me with, “So, Ivy . . .”

Maybe Josh was right and Adam really was stupid.

Speaking of Josh, he was hanging out in the bedrooms painting and joking with Fae. I could hear her laughter, and Cora and Beatrice’s, too. They sounded like they were having a good time in there. After finishing with me, Wilson and Adam and Nina headed in that direction as well, and I tagged along to watch a little bit of the filming.

The bathroom was starting to look good. Derek was on his knees on the floor, and Wilson took the time to stop and film the process for a minute as Derek slapped mortar down on the subfloor, positioned his spacers, and slid another tile into place. And added more thin-set mortar, more spacers, and another tile. Tile laying is time-consuming and tedious and boring to watch, so I contented myself with watching Derek, since my boyfriend’s posterior in tight jeans is worth a look, and so are the muscles in his arms under the short sleeves of the blue T-shirt.

Wilson had moved into the bedroom, where Cora was up on a ladder, using a brush to cut in around the ceiling while Josh was applying pale blue paint to the wall with a long-handled roller. There were muscles in his arms, too, that he hadn’t gotten from working at a computer. And he looked boyishly charming with his rumpled curls and round glasses and a smear of paint across one cheek. Fae obviously thought so: She was standing in the middle of the room, out of the camera’s frame, listening to his banter with a smile on her face.