Plaster and Poison (15 page)

Plus, that kitchen was where I first set eyes on Derek. And where I first realized I was in love with Derek. And where Derek first . . . never mind.
Anyway, I like my kitchen a lot. I like my whole house a lot, but I like the kitchen the best.
“The attic is full of Aunt Inga’s stuff,” I told my mom. “I had Derek take anything too ugly to salvage to the dump and put all the 1970s stuff on consignment in John Nicker-son’s antique shop downtown—he specializes in midcentury modern—but of course I couldn’t get rid of anything personal. I sent you all the photo albums and papers I came across, but the attic is still full of old tablecloths and vintage clothes and little porcelain tchotchkes and things like that. There are a couple of pairs of old ice skates up there, and several pairs of snowshoes, and a pair of old, wooden, cross-country skis that look like they might belong in a museum. They’re at least fifty years old, if not a hundred. If there’s anything you’d like to have, feel free to take it with you. Or I can ship it to California, if you don’t want to take it on the plane.”
“I’ll have a look,” Mom said happily and headed up the stairs to the treasure trove while I showed Noel around the rest of the house.
After the tour, we all settled down in the little parlor in the front of the house with a couple of boxes Mom had brought down from upstairs. It was too cold to sit in the attic, she said; she could see her breath in front of her face, and her fingers were turning numb. So I stoked up a fire in the fireplace—something else I’d learned how to do since moving to Waterfield—and we sat there and sorted through some of Aunt Inga’s knickknacks while the cats were competing for Mom’s attention and very pointedly ignoring Noel and me. Maybe she was right; maybe she did remind them of Aunt Inga. Or maybe it was just that she was sitting on the 1940s loveseat that had been their particular spot for as long as I’d owned the house. The worn gray velvet had been caked with cat hair when I first moved in. Now the loveseat was reupholstered in a midnight blue satin blend with stars—my own design—and the cat hair brushed right off. It was a trick I’d learned from Melissa James, of all people. I had put her on the gray loveseat once, hoping that copious amounts of cat hair would adhere to her elegant posterior, but unfortunately she was wearing a slippery sort of dress, and the hair just slid right off and onto the floor, leaving Melissa, as always, spotless, but me with a mess to clean up.
“So tell us more about the carriage house you and Derek are renovating,” Mom said, after we had finished talking about Aunt Inga’s house. “It’s the one at the back of the B&B, right? Small yellow building with a cupola on top and a set of French doors? ”
I nodded. “There used to be a big barn-type door there that we took out. For the carriages and cars to fit through back in the old days. The French doors and sidelights went in instead.”
“It looks lovely,” Mom said warmly. “Of course I haven’t seen the inside, and with what’s going on, I may not get to, but I peeked through the window yesterday, and from what I could see, it’s really nice.”
“Derek does good work. And he’s been working hard.”
“I’m sure you’ve worked hard, too, Avery,” Noel said with a smile and another sneeze.
I smiled back. “Bless you. I have. But not as hard as Derek. The early part of the process—framing, roofing, stringing wire, and laying plumbing—that’s something he has more experience with than me, and I’d only slow him down if I tried to help. Kate—or rather, Wayne—didn’t give us much time to get the job done. I’ve been running around ordering cabinets and countertops, picking out paint colors, and making sure Derek has lunch. He’s not much good if he doesn’t eat. Oh, and tracking down this set of initials he found carved in one of the posts inside.”
“Initials? ” Mom said, looking up from her inspection of one of Aunt Inga’s knickknacks. “What initials? ”
“WE, ER, and a heart. Before everything got so crazy, I had just discovered that Lawrence Ritter Jr. was married to a woman named Emily.”
“Really? ” Mom said.
I nodded. “I found a picture of the Ritter family at the topping-out ceremony for the carriage house in April of 1918. I have it here somewhere; you can take a look.”
I dug through the bills and papers on the desk until I found the printout, which had been sitting there unheeded for the past week at least, and handed it to her. She put down the figurine she’d been looking at—a hideous ceramic kitten with enormous eyes—and she and Noel put their heads together over the article and photograph. Meanwhile, I carried on with my story.
“I already knew that Lawrence Junior was married. Miss Barnes at the Historical Society told me. She didn’t tell me what his wife’s name was, though, and I didn’t ask, since I didn’t think it was important. I mean, why would someone’s wife carve her initials in the carriage house wall, inside a heart with someone else’s initials other than her husband’s? So I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence. But if you read the caption under the picture . . .”
“I already am,” Mom said.
“Then you’ll see that there was a guy named William Ellis working on the carriage house. Some relative of Derek’s. His grandfather’s uncle, I think he said.”
Mom nodded. “And you said the other set of initials was ER, didn’t you? So even if Emily Ritter isn’t ER, William Ellis is likely WE, since he was working there and had every opportunity to carve his initials in the post. Are you sure he didn’t just do it to sign his work, so to speak? The way a painter signs a painting? Carve his initials in the post to show he’d been the one erecting it? There’s a man here named Edvard Rasmussen; maybe he’s ER.”
“And the heart is just a blip in the wood? Or . . . wait! Maybe William Ellis was gay, and he and Ed Rasmussen—who’s probably a great-grandfather or uncle or cousin a few times removed of Wayne’s—maybe they were carrying on an illicit affair in the carriage house after hours. And because they couldn’t shout their love to the world, they carved their initials in the post instead.”
“Don’t be facetious, Avery,” Mom said sternly.
“I wasn’t.” Not entirely, anyway. I’d started out being facetious, but now that I thought about it, the explanation made as much sense as any other. As much sense as the idea of Lawrence Ritter’s wife carrying on an affair with one of the carpenters, anyway. People were gay in 1918, too, just not as openly as they are now. Homosexuality might even have been a crime. Coming out of the closet is never easy. More difficult in a small town like Waterfield, where everyone knows everyone else. And still more difficult a century ago, I’d guess, when people weren’t as open-minded about alternative lifestyles as they are these days.
“If we’re going to Cora and Dr. Ellis’s house for dinner tonight,” Mom said, sharing an amused look with Noel, “you could ask if William Ellis by any chance was gay or known for having affairs. It’s not really the kind of thing you pass down, but they might know.”
I nodded. “I was planning to talk to Dr. Ben about William anyway. When I was at the newspaper archives, I discovered that he was murdered. Just a few months after this picture was taken. At the navy base in Elliott. He’d signed up for the navy, and less than three days later, someone poisoned him.”
“You’re kidding!”
I shook my head. “It’s true. At least according to the
Clarion
. That article is there, too. You can look at it.”
Mom turned pages until she found the article about William. It took no more than a minute for her to read it. “Fascinating. Although it doesn’t say that he was murdered, Avery.”
“It does say that he was done to death. Although Derek suggested that he might have committed suicide, maybe to avoid being shipped out. Accidentally, maybe. I guess I’ll have to look for a follow-up story. Once all this hoopla with Gerard and Beatrice is over and I have time to concentrate on other things again.” I held my hand out for the printouts and Mom handed them over.
I was just stuffing them into my bag, so I could show them to the Ellises at dinner, when my cell phone rang. The display showed Derek’s number, and I hastened to answer, heart beating faster. Maybe Beatrice had come home!
“Derek? ”
“Hi, Avery.” He still sounded tired.
“Any news?”
“Unfortunately not. Or nothing good. Alice just called. She’s been to Bea’s house, and it’s empty. Beatrice isn’t there. Nor is Steve. Alice has a key, so she went through the place, top to bottom. There was no sign of either of them.”
“That’s . . .” I hesitated. It was good, in the sense that nothing overtly wrong had been discovered. But it was bad that Beatrice hadn’t been found and was still missing. “Weird.”
“I know. She’s going to go to Steve’s work now. It’s almost an hour away, so it’ll take a while.”
“Can’t she just call? ”
“She’s already called. His direct line went straight to voice mail. And he’s not answering his cell phone. And the receptionist won’t tell her whether he’s there or not. Company policy. I guess they’re afraid some of their clients will come after them with guns if they know where to find them. Alice wants to go there. It’s something for her to do until the kids come home from school or daycare or wherever the hell they’re going.” His temper seemed to be fraying.
“OK,” I said soothingly. “That makes sense. Let me know what she says when she calls back, all right? ”
“Sure. What’s going on with you? ”
“Oh, we’re just sitting here at Aunt Inga’s house, looking through boxes of ceramic kittens and waxed flowers under glass. I’ve been telling Mom and Noel about the initials in the carriage house post.”
“That’s nice.” Derek didn’t sound like he cared one way or the other. Under the circumstances, I didn’t know that I could blame him. Obviously Beatrice and whatever had happened to her would be foremost in his mind.
“Was Wayne able to get into the model apartment earlier? ” I asked. “You said he might have a universal key.”
“He did. And used it, much against Melissa’s wishes. She didn’t try to stop him, but you could tell she didn’t want him to go inside.”
“Why? ”
“I have no idea. There wasn’t anything there. No Beatrice, and nothing else, either. It’s just a generic furnished apartment. It looked like someone had cleaned it recently, since there were fresh vacuum tracks all over the carpet.”
“Melissa said she gave the spare key to someone for maintenance. Maybe they freshened the place up afterwards.”
“Probably,” Derek agreed tiredly.
It seemed to be time to change the subject. “When does your stepmother want us to be there tonight? If she hasn’t changed her mind, that is? ”
Derek consulted with Cora and came back on the line. “She says six o’clock would be good. She’s making lasagna. You can bring the salad and the breadsticks. I’ll pick up the dessert.”
“Can it be whoopie pie? Please, Derek? Mom probably hasn’t had one for ages, and I doubt Noel ever has. And you can’t come to Maine without eating a whoopie pie. It’s like coming to Maine and not eating lobster.”
Derek chuckled. It was rusty, but a chuckle. “If that’s what you’d like.”
“Please.”
“See you at six? ”
“See you then.” I smooched the phone and then flushed when Mom and Noel both grinned.

13

My refrigerator didn’t yield anything resembling salad fixings, so Mom decreed a trip to Shaw’s Supermarket was in order. We all put our winter coats back on and headed out into the frigid December air. By now it was starting to turn dark—the days are short up north, and we were nearing the winter solstice—and crisscrossing Main Street, holiday decorations were lit up. Stars and bells and greenery were strung from building to building, high above the street. One long strand of lights with a blinking snowflake six feet tall was fastened to the wall above Derek’s window, and I could only imagine how light it must be inside the loft. Hopefully they turned the displays off at night, or sleep would be impossible during the month of December.
After getting the ingredients for a lovely Caesar salad, as well as a couple of packages of refrigerated breadsticks from Shaw’s, we headed for the B&B with our bags, since Kate’s kitchen was likely to yield the salad bowls and baking pans my kitchen lacked. Also, it was closer, and the temperature was dropping. We were well below freezing at this point; the average temperature in Maine in December being right around twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Noel, poor guy, was practically burrowing into his coat, his nose bright red and dripping.
When we got there, Kate was sitting at one of the dining room tables talking to an older man with thinning, gray hair and the face of a bulldog, jowly and droopy, with bags under his eyes and sagging skin. The eyes were sharp, though, and shrewd. He was wearing the blue uniform of the state police, with lots of bars and insignia on the chest and shoulders. I didn’t need Kate’s introduction to know who he was.
“This is Reece Tolliver. He’s come down from Augusta to help with the investigation into Gerard’s murder. Reece, this is Avery Baker, her mother Rosemary, and Noel Carrick. Rosemary and Noel are staying with me while they’re in town.”
“Nice to meet you all,” Chief Tolliver said, assessing me with what I can only describe as a cop’s eyes. Steady and penetrating, giving nothing away. “You’re the one that’s been working on the carriage house.”
I nodded.
“And these are your folks.” He moved his attention to Mom and Noel, who stepped closer together. It was hard not to. I bet Reece Tolliver got confessions out of a lot of people simply by fixing them with those steady gray eyes. There was something in them that just made you want to start babbling. “In from California, are you? ”
Noel nodded. “Santa Barbara.”
“And you got here yesterday.”
“We got to Waterfield yesterday. We spent the night in Boston.”
“So you never had occasion to meet the victim.”
Noel and Mom both shook their heads.
“Not to our knowledge,” Mom added. “At least I’ve never known anyone with that name.”
Reece nodded. “We’ll be checking your whereabouts,” he said. “And you . . .” He moved his attention back to me; I swallowed and stood up straighter. “You never met him, either.”
I shook my head. “No, sir. I saw him twice, with Shannon. I never spoke to him, though. And I didn’t know who he was until after we found the body.”
“Huh,” Reece grunted. “OK. I know where to find you if I have any more questions.” He turned back to Kate, dismissing us.
“Sure.” I made tracks for the butler door to the kitchen, throwing a question over my shoulder as I went. “Is it OK if we use your kitchen to make a salad, Kate? ”
“Of course,” Kate said, waving a hand. “Make yourselves at home. You know where everything is.”
“Thanks.” I shooed Mom and Noel in and let the door swing shut behind us. In the dining room, low-voiced conversation picked up again.
OK, so I’m thirty-one years old. Thirty-two in a couple of months. Too old to be listening at keyholes. My mom certainly thought so. When I set her up at the counter, with a cutting board, Kate’s butcher block full of knives, and a Tupperware bowl for the finished salad, and then proceeded to lurk at the crack in the door, she arched her brows at me. “Avery Marie Baker! Haven’t I told you that eavesdropping is wrong? ”
“Sure, Mom.” I pressed my ear to the door.
“. . . record,” Reece Tolliver said.
“. . . know,” Kate answered, her voice strained. ”. . . when I took Shannon and moved.”
“. . . tell him where you went? ”
“No, I didn’t. He was . . .”
This was frustrating. I was missing at least half of what was said.
“What are you doing? ” Noel asked, interestedly.
I glanced at him over my shoulder. “Isn’t it obvious? ”
“I guess it is, at that. Why? ”
“I’m curious,” I hissed. “Gerard was lying in our construction area. For all I know, we’re suspects. And even if we aren’t, our friends are.”
“All right,” Noel said, conceding the point, “but . . .”
“Wayne would tell me what was going on. I don’t know Chief Tolliver. He may not.”
“Kate will tell you, won’t she? ”
“You’d think. But Kate’s involved, too. I can’t be sure.”
“So you’re eavesdropping.” Mom shook her head sadly, albeit not without a twinkle in her eyes as she shredded lettuce. “I know I taught you better than that, Avery.”
“You did. But I don’t have a choice. So please be quiet so I can hear.” I put my ear back to the door again.
“. . . Ludlow? ” Reece Tolliver said.
“No, I didn’t want Shannon to see her dad in a . . .”
“. . . see. OK, then. I’ll be . . .”
I bit my lip and strained my ears, desperately wishing I could push the door open just a crack, so maybe I could hear enough of what they were talking about to actually understand.
Unfortunately, the conversation seemed to be over. I heard steps coming toward the swinging butler door. I jumped out of the way just in time, and although I did my best to look innocent, like I just happened to be loitering next to the door, I don’t think I succeeded very well. Reece Tolliver sent me a hard look on his way past. I blushed. Mom shook her head again, her attention on the salad.
After Chief Tolliver had passed through the back door and was out of range, I joined Kate in the dining room. She was still sitting in the same place at the table, her face pinched and her eyes dull. “What was he doing here?” I wanted to know, sitting down opposite. “Is there any news?”
She shook her head. Even the usually bright curls didn’t dance the way they normally do. “Not really. The ME’s office has confirmed cause of death. Gerard was poisoned and asphyxiated.”
“On purpose? ”
“It wasn’t food poisoning, if that’s what you mean. He didn’t die from eating poisonous mushrooms or bad seafood.” She got up and headed for the door to the kitchen, continuing to talk over her shoulder. “The ME studied the contents of his stomach and said that Gerard had fish for lunch, and eggs and bacon for breakfast, with coffee, but no dinner. There was also some alcohol, so I guess he had a drink in the afternoon. Maybe he met someone somewhere for happy hour. The poison wasn’t what killed him, though; cause of death was asphyxiation.”
“Strangulation? ”
She shook her head. “More likely a pillow or blanket or something. The ME said something about fibers in the lungs.”
“What kind of poison was it? Something he could have taken accidentally? ”
“I’m not sure,” Kate said, pushing open the door to the kitchen. “Reece called it digitalin.”
She glanced at me as I passed through. I shrugged. It sounded somewhat familiar, but Derek would know for sure what it was.
Letting the door swing shut behind her, Kate looked around, from Mom’s salad fixings on the chopping block to Noel separating refrigerated breadsticks and arranging them on a baking tray. The oven beeped its readiness just as he finished, and he opened the door and slid the tray in after sprinkling the breadsticks with some garlic salt and other spices.
“Thirteen minutes,” Mom said, and Noel set the timer, then sneezed.
“Looks good,” Kate remarked. “Bless you, Mr. Carrick.”
“Noel. Please,” Noel sniffed.
“We’re going to dinner at Cora and Dr. Ben’s,” I explained. “She’s making lasagna. We’re in charge of the salad and the breadsticks, and Derek’s buying dessert.”
“Whoopie pies? ” Kate said. I nodded. “Oh, yum!”
“Why don’t you come with us? I’m sure they’d be happy to have you. And Cora always makes enough food for a crew.”
“Tempting,” Kate said, shaking her head, “but I don’t want to intrude. Plus, I should probably spend the night with Wayne. He’s feeling a little put out about being on traffic duty. Not to mention being suspected of murder.”
“Are you expecting him anytime soon? ”
Kate glanced at the clock. “Not for another hour, at least. Why?”
“I had a question I wanted to ask him. About a relative of his. Guy named Edvard Rasmussen. Lived in the early part of the century and worked on your carriage house in 1918.”
“Did he really?” She smiled. “Wayne’ll be tickled to know that. Edvard was his great-grandfather. It’ll be kind of like coming full circle.”
“Right,” I said. “Do you know anything about him? Anyone with initials WE he might have carried a torch for? Derek’s great-grandfather William Ellis, for example?” I raised my eyebrows.
She chuckled. “He had two wives and seven kids, at least one of them with a woman who wasn’t either of his wives. I don’t think he was carrying on an affair with William Ellis.”
“And here I thought I had it all figured out.”
“Sorry about that. I’ll ask Wayne, see if maybe one of Edvard’s girlfriends had the initials WE. He had several. I know it wasn’t a wife: His first was named Louise and his second Clara. But I’ll find out.”
“I’d appreciate that,” I said, dejected. I’d been so sure I had something. “Meanwhile, I guess I’ll ask Dr. Ben about William and his love life. It’ll give us something to talk about tonight other than kidnapping and murder. Or recent murder, anyway. William was poisoned, but at least it happened long ago.”
“Never hurts to ask,” Kate agreed.
“I’ll find out from Derek about the digitalin, too, while I’m at it. He’ll know what it is. And if he doesn’t, Dr. Ben will.”
“I’m not sure what good it’ll do,” Kate said, “but knock yourself out, if you want.”
I nodded. “I will.”
But when we got to Dr. Ben and Cora’s house an hour later, Derek shot me down regarding information on William’s paramours—straight or gay.
“Sorry, Tink.” He dropped a kiss on my cheek and relieved Mom and Noel of their coats and directed them into the living room before he grabbed the salad bowl and walked toward the kitchen, continuing over his shoulder as he went. “I have no idea who he might have had a thing for and no way of finding out. World War I was a little before my time.”
“I realize that,” I said, trailing behind with the breadsticks, “but . . .”
“It was a little before everyone else’s time, too. Paw-Paw Willie is my oldest living relative, and he was born after his Uncle William died. I can call and ask him, but I doubt he’ll be able to tell me anything. Even if William did womanize or even pitch for the other team, it may not be the sort of information that would be passed down through the generations.”
“That’s true.” Much as it irked me to admit it. “Can I still ask your dad? Even if he doesn’t know that, he might know who poisoned William, and why.”
Derek put the bowl on the counter in the kitchen and relieved me of the package of breadsticks, setting them next to the bowl. “As long as you do it after dinner. Things are grim enough right now without having this conversation across the table.”
“I’ll wait until an opportune moment,” I promised. “Since we’re on the subject, though . . . what can you tell me about digitalin? ”
“Quite a lot. It’s Medicine one-oh-one. Why do you ask? ”
“Reece Tolliver told Kate it’s what Gerard took. I wondered what it was.”
“Really?” He looked pensive for a moment. “It’s heart medicine.”
“Is it poisonous? ”
“It can be,” Derek said. “It’s used to control arrhythmia, largely. In people with atrial fibrillation, especially if they’ve been diagnosed with heart failure. To someone who doesn’t have heart trouble, it wouldn’t be beneficial. They’d get dizzy, their heart would start beating erratically, and they’d probably have to lie down. They may even pass out.”
“A perfect position for someone to put a pillow over their face and keep it there. I guess we can take it Gerard didn’t have heart trouble. Or maybe he did, and he took too much of his own medicine. And then someone happened along and decided it was a good opportunity to get rid of him.”
“Or someone slipped a couple of foxglove leaves into his dinner salad,” Derek said, glancing at the greens on the counter.
“Foxglove? ” It sounded familiar, but I wasn’t sure where I might have come across it before.
“It’s a plant. Cora has a border of it in the backyard. Pretty, with purple or white flowers. It’s where digitalis comes from.”
“Digitalis.” I nodded. “Right. I knew it sounded familiar. I’ve read about it. Agatha Christie, I think. Is the plant poisonous, too? ”
“Very,” Derek said. “I treated a kid once who’d eaten foxglove leaves. Thankfully, the mother was right there when he did it and brought him straight to the emergency room. We were able to save him. Everyone isn’t always so lucky.”
“Obviously. Or Gerard would still be with us.”
“Right,” Derek said.
My next question might have sounded like a non sequitur, but wasn’t. Thankfully, Derek didn’t seem to realize it.
“Is there any news of Beatrice?” Who had grown up with a mother who liked to garden, and who might know the deadly properties of the foxglove plant . . .
He shook his head. “Not really. Alice called back again. She went to Steve’s work. He wasn’t there, and of course neither was Beatrice.”
“That figures.”
“Wayne has put out an official APB now, since she’s been gone more than twenty-four hours. We’ll see if anything comes of it.”
I glanced up at him. “You don’t think it will, do you? ”
He hesitated. “Let’s just say that I’ll be really surprised if it turns out that Beatrice is shacked up in some hotel room somewhere, reconfirming her vows to Steve. I don’t think she would just go off without letting her mom know. It isn’t like her. She’s a considerate sort of person, and she knows we’d worry if she just disappeared.”
“So you think there’s reason to worry? What do you think happened to her? ”
“I don’t know,” Derek said, face somber, “but something did. Someone came to Clovercroft yesterday afternoon or was waiting for her when she came back from lunch, and he or she did something to her. If she was able, she would have called by now.”
“She doesn’t have her phone,” I said. “It was at the office.”
He nodded. “Wayne has it now. He took it as evidence. There’s nothing on it. She didn’t get any phone calls yesterday afternoon and didn’t make any, either.”
“What about the office phone? ”