Plaster and Poison (13 page)

Clovercroft, the Stenhams’ currently nondeveloping multi-use development of condos, townhomes, commercial spaces, and single-family residences, is situated on the north side of Waterfield, off the Augusta Highway. As we left the town and headed inland, the signs of human habitation became more sporadic and the landscape changed to include groves of tall pine trees and slender birches, leafless now in midwinter. After about ten minutes, Derek turned right, onto a road that ran through one such stand of trees, and which let out into the usual construction zone. The ground was plowed and mounded, and sprinkled with snow and ice. Large rocks and boulders were grouped to one side, near the tree line. Skeletal houses stood here and there, in various stages of completion, and tiny, triangular flags whapped in the breeze, delineating the end of one parcel and the beginning of the next. But instead of hustle and bustle, the sound of hammering and sawing and large machinery moving around, and the activity and life that usually accompany a construction site, Clovercroft was eerily quiet. Nothing moved across the frozen ground save for a small group of birds pecking at a piece of exposed dirt.
Derek parked the truck in front of the only completely finished construction in the development: a row of four brick commercial buildings with, most likely, apartments or condominiums on the second floor. They looked to be modeled after downtown Waterfield and the Victorian buildings lining Main Street, but without the quirky charm of the originals. Rather than authentic and solid, these looked like inferior copies, tossed up over a couple of days.
“Shoddy workmanship,” Derek muttered, looking at them.
“I know. Pitiful, isn’t it? Is that Beatrice’s car?”
I pointed to the white Toyota with Massachusetts plates parked in front of the far building.
Derek nodded. “That must be the office.” He indicated the far door and the tattered banner that was flapping in the breeze from a pole above it, the words Model Home printed on it in faded gold letters.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” I asked, when he didn’t move toward it.
“Cora. She’s not here yet.”
“No offense, but if you’re concerned that Beatrice may be in there, with something really wrong with her, don’t you think it would be better if we checked it out before Cora got here?”
“Good point,” Derek said. After a couple of steps he looked down at me again, where I trotted alongside, half running to keep up. “You know, Avery, sometimes your mind works in very disturbing ways.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that we found a dead body yesterday, so they’re on my mind. I’ve seen more than my share in the past six months.”
“Let’s hope you won’t see another today.” Derek grabbed the door handle. He twisted it, but the door didn’t open. “Huh.” He knocked, then stepped back and waited.
“The sign says ‘Back at nine,’ ” I pointed out. One of those little fake clocks with the movable hands sat in the window.
“And it’s past that now.” He knocked again. There was no answer this time, either.
I stamped my feet on the cold concrete and wrapped my arms around myself for warmth. Derek tried to peer through the window, but the interior of the building was dark, and he couldn’t see much. While we stood there with our noses pressed against the glass, like kids outside a candy store, Cora’s green Saturn came into the lot and parked next to the truck.
“Isn’t she here?” she called as soon as the car door was open and before she’d even swung her legs out.
Derek gave the office door a last rat-a-tat; more for emphasis than because he thought he’d get an answer now when he hadn’t before. “If she is, she isn’t coming to the door. But that’s her car, right?”
Cora glanced at the Toyota and nodded. “That’s it. She took it to work yesterday, after lunch. Have you checked inside? ”
“Inside the car?”
We hadn’t, but now we did. There was no sign of Beatrice in the interior, and no obvious clues, either. No note conveniently left on the seat saying, “Call me at the Pines Motel room six,” signed,
Steve
, and no signs of a struggle. Everything looked just the way it should, as if Beatrice had parked, gotten out, and gone inside to work. She had left the car doors unlocked, unworried about anyone trying to steal her vehicle out here in the middle of nowhere, so we were able to go over it with a fine-tooth comb. We even lifted and replaced the floor mats but didn’t find anything more exciting than a parking ticket from last month in Boston.
“What about the trunk?” Cora asked.
Derek and I exchanged an involuntary look, and for all that he thought my mind moved in mysterious and disturbing ways, his own obviously did the same. “I’ll check,” he said and walked around to the back of the car. “Avery?”
I popped the trunk and waited a breathless moment before he said, “Nothing. Just some blankets and a little spade and an open bag of kitty litter. The usual.”
“Kitty litter is usual?”
I own cats, but I don’t carry kitty litter in my trunk. Or wouldn’t, if I had a trunk to carry it in. Jemmy and Inky don’t use a litter box—they’re outdoor cats and do their business in nature—but what good does kitty litter do in a trunk? There aren’t any cats there.
“It’s for icy conditions,” Derek explained. “Everyone in New England carries kitty litter. I’d have been more surprised if I didn’t find it.”
Cora nodded.
“I’ve never noticed a bag of kitty litter in the truck,” I said, glancing at it.
“I keep it behind the seat.” He slammed Beatrice’s trunk shut. “Nothing useful here. Other than the fact that she obviously made it back to work after lunch yesterday, or the car wouldn’t be parked here.”
“Right.” Cora turned back to the buildings.
“Not to be obvious or anything,” I said, moving to stand beside her, “but you’ve tried to call her, right?”
Cora glanced at me. “Of course. Half the night and all morning. She’s not answering. But I’ll try again now. It’s been fifteen minutes since last time.” She pulled her cell phone out of her purse.
Derek came up to stand on her other side, like a matching bookend, silently adding his support. Cora dialed the number and put the phone to her ear. After a moment, we could hear distant ringing.
“What the hell . . . ? ” Derek muttered, looking around.
“It’s coming from inside.” I pointed through the window, where a tiny green light pulsed. “She must have left her cell phone on the desk.”
“Damn.”
I nodded. That didn’t sound right. If she’d left of her own free will, she probably would have taken her phone. If she hadn’t left of her own free will, all the more reason to take it, of course, but she might not have had the chance. “You know her better than me. If Steve showed up and apologized and begged her to run off with him, would she be so overcome with joy that she’d forget her phone?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Cora said, her voice strained, “but that’s certainly a happier explanation than anything else I’ve come up with.”
Derek pulled his own phone off his belt and dialed.
“Who are you calling?” I wanted to know.
He glanced at me. “We have to get inside. It’s either breaking a window or finding someone with a key. So I’m calling Melissa.”
I blinked. “You know Melissa’s number by heart?” Or did he have it stored in his phone’s memory?
Derek rolled his eyes. “Everyone in Waterfield knows Melissa’s number, Avery. She’s got For Sale signs all over town. In this case, though, I got it off that.”
He pointed to a fifteen-by-thirty-foot billboard riding above the pine trees. “Welcome to Clovercroft,” it said. “Lots from $50,000
.
Call Melissa James for more information
.
” It was accompanied by Melissa’s face, a hundred times magnified, all gleaming white teeth and violet blue eyes, and her phone number.
“Oh.” I bit my lip, blushing. “Sorry.”
“You should be. Melissa and I are done. Over. Finished. I wouldn’t take her back if she . . . Melissa? It’s Derek.”
I choked back a giggle, and even Cora’s lips twitched. Derek sent us both a sour look while he talked into the phone, his tone soothing. “No, of course not. Would I be so rude?” He grimaced, so I guess Melissa must have told him that yes, he would. “Never mind that, OK? I need a favor. Are you out of bed yet?”
Melissa quacked in his ear.
“Yes, of course,” Derek said patiently. “Listen. I’m at Clovercroft. My stepsister Beatrice works in the office out here. Yes, I’m sure you know that.” He rolled his eyes again. “Thank you, Melissa. To continue, then. Bea didn’t come home last night. Her car is in the lot and her phone is ringing inside the office, but she’s not here. Or if she is, she’s not answering the door. I can break a window or take the lock off the door and get in that way, but I thought you might prefer to come out with a key.”
Melissa quacked again. Derek glanced at his watch. “Fine. We’ll be here.” He ended the call and tucked the phone back in its pouch. “She’s on her way. Or will be, once she gets moving. Her makeup is already laid, so it shouldn’t take her more than a half hour or so.”
Cora nodded.
We spent the next thirty minutes looking around the construction site. Derek got in the truck, which had four-wheel drive, and went bumping across the frozen ground, on the lookout for any sign of life or—although he didn’t say it—foul play. I checked out the row of buildings as best I could. The commercial spaces were all locked, and there was no sign of life inside any of them. But I tried all the doors and peeked through all accessible windows, seeing nothing but construction debris and trash. Or rubbish, as they say in Maine. Cora, meanwhile, was on the phone. She called Dr. Ben to update him on the search, and then she called her other daughter, Alice, to tell her Beatrice was missing and to ask if she had spoken to Bea recently. I listened to Cora’s half of the conversation with half an ear while I peered through windows and peeked into corners.
“You haven’t? Not since the weekend? Well, what did she say? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, I’m afraid not. Not a word. She just didn’t come home last night. Yes, I know that, honey. But her car is still parked outside the place where she works, and her phone is ringing inside the building, the only problem is that she’s not here. Or if she’s here, she’s not able to answer the door.”
Her voice hitched a little on the last sentence, and I went over and patted her shoulder.
“I would appreciate that,” Cora said into the phone. “You have a key? Thank you. Let me know if you find her. Or what Steve has to say when you talk to him.”
She shut her phone off. “Alice hasn’t heard from her for several days. When they last spoke, Beatrice didn’t say anything about leaving Waterfield or going back to Boston. She said she hadn’t had any contact with Steve—as far as I know, too, she hasn’t—and she didn’t tell Alice that she’d met anyone else, either.”
“It’d be very soon for her to get involved with someone else,” I agreed. “Unless she was doing it to show Steve that they were finished, but I didn’t get the impression that she was at that point yet.” Unless she had simply indulged in a one-night stand. She wouldn’t be the first unappreciated wife trying for some validation that way.
Cora shook her head. “I think she just wanted him to come after her. To promise that things would be different, and actually make them so. She wasn’t interested in anyone else. She and Steve have been together for seven years. You don’t just throw something like that away in a couple of weeks.”
I nodded. “So Alice is going to go to Bea’s place in Boston? And talk to Steve?”
Cora nodded. “Just in case Beatrice is there. Just in case Steve came to Waterfield and got her, and she was so excited she forgot to call and tell me she was leaving.”
Her soft, blue eyes were shadowed, so in spite of the firm tone, I don’t think she believed that Alice would find Beatrice and Steve snuggled up in bed together. She added, “And if she’s not there, Steve needs to know that she’s gone. They’re still married. He’s her next of kin.”
“Unless he did something to her,” I said.
Cora looked at me. I floundered on. “Um . . . he’s not the type to come after her with a shotgun, is he? If he can’t have her, no one can?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Cora said, “although I wouldn’t have thought anything could happen to her in our quiet, little town, either. I worried about her living in Boston—I worried about both my girls living in Boston—but maybe we’re no safer here.”
She looked around, as if seeing the place for the first time. In the distance, the truck navigated the ruts of a staked-out parcel and stopped for a second, engine running, so Derek could peer into the half-finished skeleton of a house. After a few moments, he moved on.
“Have you tried calling Steve?” I asked.
Cora shook her head. “Don’t have his cell phone number. I tried calling the house, but there’s no answer there. So he’s either gone to work, or they’re both there, together, and they just don’t want to answer the phone. But Alice will figure it out.”
I nodded, turning as another car engine approached through the trees. After a second, Melissa’s cream-colored Mercedes came into the parking lot and pulled to a stop next to Cora’s Saturn. Derek’s truck changed direction and started making its way back toward us. The Mercedes’ engine cut off, and Melissa got out.
I had hoped that since it was so early—barely nine in the morning—Melissa might look less put together than usual. Having her show up in ratty sweats with her hair undone and her face naked might be too much to hope for, but couldn’t she have had the decency to be at least a little disheveled?
She looked just as dewy fresh as always, of course. Hair perfectly groomed, sleek and shiny, cupping her elegant jaw, and with no hint of dark roots. She was dressed in cream slacks and a sapphire blue silk blouse under that same cashmere coat as yesterday. The stones in her earlobes were probably real diamonds, and another sparkled on her finger when she pulled the key chain out of her purse.
“I’m so sorry,” she said to Cora, her voice sympathetic. “I have no idea what’s happened. I was out here yesterday morning and saw Beatrice then, and as far as I could tell, nothing was wrong with her. Should we wait for Derek before we open the door?” She glanced at the truck making tracks across the frozen ground, the tires spitting up little pieces of ice and dirt.
“Please,” I said. Beatrice might be inside, in need of medical attention, in which case we needed Derek. Or, a little voice reminded me, Beatrice might be inside, dead, and if so, I’d definitely want Derek next to me when we made the discovery.
“I saw her in the middle of the day yesterday,” Cora said. “She drove into town so we could have lunch together. We walked down to Main Street and met Avery and her mother on the way. And afterward she got back in the car to go back to work.”