Plaster and Poison (17 page)

“Your mom? ”
He nodded, eyes soft. “She died seven years ago. I still miss her.”
“So she died while you were married to Melissa. How did your mom like your wife? ”
“They hated each other,” Derek said cheerfully. “My mom always was an excellent judge of character.”
I smiled involuntarily, and he added, “She would have liked you. She enjoyed sewing, and thrift shopping, and doing things with her hands. I’m sorry you didn’t get to meet her.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder for a second. “I’m sorry, too. Although I love Cora.”
“Oh, yeah. Cora is great. I couldn’t ask for a better stepmother. Same with you, right? Noel seems like a nice guy.”
I nodded. “Very nice. And he makes my mom happy, which is the most important thing. I wish they lived closer, but that’s life, I guess.”
“Unfortunately,” Derek agreed and turned over another photo.
Baby pictures of Derek gave way to pictures of Eleanor and Ben when they were younger, and then random pictures of people we had no idea who were unless their names were noted on the back. A man in World War II uniform with a medic’s bag. A woman in nurse’s whites. Pictures of the house we were sitting in at various times, from colored to black and white, going through various stages of wallpaper and paint. We were almost all the way through the photos now. Derek picked up an old—very old, and quite faded—black-and-white photograph of two people, and I snatched at it. “Give me that!”
“Whoa!”
“Sorry. But I know her. This is Emily Ritter, Lawrence Junior’s wife.” I stabbed at her face with my finger. “I saw a picture of her in the newspaper archives. Although she looks a little younger in this picture. Or at least less stressed out.”
Like the wedding day picture of Melissa, this younger Emily looked relaxed and radiant, not uptight and nervous as she had in the microfiche photo. She was dressed in a light dress, not too dissimilar to the one Melissa had gotten married in, although it was patched on both elbows and didn’t fit as snugly, and she was hanging on the arm of a young man who bore a certain resemblance to Derek. Something in the smile, I think. Their coloring was probably similar, too, although it was hard to tell in black and white. As was the fashion at the time, the young man’s hair was slicked straight back from his face, with a little curl falling just across the brow. Definitely kin to Derek, that curl.
“Turn it over,” Derek said. “That has to be William, don’t you think? ”
“I think it would have to be. Yep, says so right here. William Ellis, June 1917.”
He leaned closer. “What about her? Does it say who she is? ”
“Sure does. Emily Thompson. Must have been taken before she married Lawrence.”
“She was pretty,” Derek said.
I nodded. She had been pretty. Long, fair hair, big eyes, finely drawn features . . . “Wonder if she was related to Paige. That’s Paige’s last name, isn’t it? Thompson? ”
“If she was a Thompson, I’m sure she was related to Paige,” Derek said. “In a place like this, everyone with the same name is related if you go back a few generations. Hell, if you go back enough generations, we’re all related, whether we have the same name or not. Paige and I probably have the same great-great-triple-great-aunt, or something.”
“I wonder if Paige would know anything about Emily. I mean, it seems as if she and William Ellis were sort of friendly, doesn’t it? In the summer of 1917? But by the next April, she was married to Lawrence Ritter.”
Derek nodded. “Maybe William threw her over. He looks like a bit of a cad, doesn’t he? ”
“He looks like you,” I said.
“Really? ” He glanced at me. “OK, then. Paige’s family isn’t too well off now, and probably wasn’t then. Maybe Emily wanted to be married to a doctor—if William was an Ellis, he would end up being a doctor sooner or later; we’ve always been doctors—but when he said he wanted to join the navy as soon as he turned eighteen, she figured he’d probably die young, so she married Lawrence instead. He must have been well-off, if he lived in Kate’s house.”
“The Ritters were rich,” I nodded. “New money. German immigrants. Not like the Cabots, Anna Virginia’s family. But if all Emily cared about was money, not where it came from, then yes, it might have gone down like that.”
“I think we should talk to Paige. See if she knows anything.” Seemingly Derek had gotten caught up in the mystery of the initials now, too. Well, it could be only to the good, I told myself. Might give him something to think about besides worrying about Beatrice. Take his mind off things for a few minutes at a time, maybe.
I nodded. “Do you think your father would mind if I took this photograph and made a copy of it? Kate might like to have it. To frame and hang next to her initials. If the police ever release the carriage house and we’re able to finish renovating it, that is.”
“I’m sure Dad won’t mind,” Derek said, gathering the other photographs in his hands and carrying them back over to the buffet. “As long as he gets the original back. Lowry Photo on Main Street can do it for you.”
“I’ll take it there tomorrow.”
“And I’m sure the police will release the carriage house soon. I mean, there’s nothing there. He didn’t even die there. Someone dumped him there because they wanted to be sure he was found in a timely manner. Or maybe they were trying to put the blame on Kate or Shannon. Or Wayne.”
“Or us? ”
“Why would we kill Gerard?” Derek said. “We didn’t even know who he was until he turned up dead.”
“Good point. Although the killer may not have known that. But it must have been someone who knew who he was, anyway. Who in Waterfield knew who Gerard was, other than Kate and Shannon? ”
“If we knew that,” Derek said, “we’d probably know who the murderer is. C’mon, Avery. Let’s go join the action in the living room.”
He helped me out of the chair and put his arm around my waist as we wandered toward the door to the hallway. His fingers slipped under the edge of my sweater, warm and hard against my skin, and I shot a glance up at him. “Speaking of action . . .”
He looked down into my face, startled, and then his lips curved up. “If I had known my wedding pictures would affect you this way, I’d have shown them to you a long time ago.”
“It wasn’t the picture.”
“So what was it? ”
It had been the reassurance that although Melissa was as pretty—and poisonous—as a foxglove, he was glad to be rid of her.
“Never mind,” I said, leaning into him. “Just know that you’ll be rewarded later.”
“I’ll remember.” He dropped a kiss on my forehead, and then we turned into the living room.

15

In the end, Derek chose to spend the night with Cora and Dr. Ben, just in case Beatrice came home or something happened overnight. I went home alone and booted up the computer once I got there. Not to research William Ellis this time; William and Emily and whatever happened to the two of them had happened almost a hundred years ago. Interesting though it was to speculate, I had more immediate concerns, namely Gerard’s death and Bea’s disappearance. Of the two, I must admit, Gerard’s murder interested me more. I still clung stubbornly to the conviction that Bea was just off somewhere with Steve, living it up with room service and splendor, and I’d keep clinging to it until I was proven wrong.
Gerard, on the other hand, was dead, and someone had killed him. Until the police figured out who that someone was, we were all under suspicion. Or maybe not all, but enough of us as made very little difference. I didn’t think Reece Tolliver suspected me, Mom, or Noel particularly, or even Derek, but I wasn’t too sure about Kate, Shannon, or Josh. All three had access to the carriage house, and they all had a connection to Gerard. But because I didn’t want to entertain the thought that any of them were guilty, the question was, who else in town might have known him? Had he really been here just to see Shannon, or had he had another purpose? And could he have upset someone so much in just a few weeks that they decided to kill him?
I hadn’t heard much of the conversation between Reece Tolliver and Kate in the dining room earlier, but I had heard the word, or name, Ludlow. I started there.
My only personal connection to Ludlow was that it’s the name of a street and a luxury rental apartment tower on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, as well as a fitness facility on Delancey Street. Back in Civil War times, the New York County Jail stood on Ludlow Street. Now I discovered that it was also the name of a town and a village in Vermont, a market town in Shropshire, England, near the Welsh-English border, and a town in Colorado, where the Ludlow Massacre took place in 1914, during the Southern Colorado Coal Strike. There was also a place called Port Ludlow, clear across the country in Washington State, and a town in Massachusetts. Since Gerard was from Boston, the latter Ludlow seemed to be the most promising.
I spent a few minutes trawling the Ludlow, Massachusetts site, and soon realized something very interesting: The town of Ludlow is home to the Hampden County medium security correctional facility. In other words, prison. That jibed rather nicely with what I’d overheard Kate tell Reece Tolliver: that she didn’t want Shannon to see her dad in a . . . what? Jail cell? Orange jumpsuit? It also explained Reece’s mention of a record—a prison record, obviously—and it explained why Kate had taken Shannon and moved from Boston to Waterfield.
Of course, it was all conjecture. Kate hadn’t told me any of this, so she must not want the information to get around. Shannon might not know that her dad was a felon. I couldn’t call Kate and ask her. I couldn’t call Wayne; he might not know, he might not tell me if he did know, and he was with Kate, anyway. Reece Tolliver had no reason to tell me, and if Kate hadn’t mentioned it to me, it wasn’t likely that she’d told anyone else. Except maybe Derek; but if Derek knew, surely he would have told me. Especially after finding the body.
Frustrated with my lack of options, I resorted to doing Internet searches of Gerard’s name. It’s amazing what you can find on the Internet these days, and I figured it was worth a try.
Uncommon though the name Gerard Labadie was, there were a few people who carried it, and I spent thirty minutes or more clicking on links at random to see what I could find. Jemmy and Inky came home in the middle of it and let me know, loudly, that they needed sustenance. I filled their bowls with clean water and kitty kibble and left them to it. When they were finished, they deigned to curl up on Aunt Inga’s newly reupholstered loveseat across from the desk, and I kept going. Unsuccessfully. I was just about to give up and go to bed when a name caught my attention.
No, it wasn’t Gerard’s. The name that had jumped out at me was Cortino.

“You can have the carriage house back,” Brandon Thomas said the next morning.
Derek and I had mustered in Kate’s kitchen as usual: Derek to see whether he’d be able to go to work today, and me to tell him what I’d discovered yesterday, and also to see my mom and Noel when they got around to dragging themselves out of bed. And of course to find out whether there had been any breaks in either the murder or the missing-person case overnight.
I walked into the kitchen to find Kate and Wayne at the table along with Derek, Shannon, and Josh, along with Brandon, in full uniform. Unlike yesterday morning, Shannon was ready to face the day, fully dressed and looking rested and more relaxed.
“I’m going back to school,” she explained, between bites of Belgian waffles.
“I guess you must be feeling better, then.”
She nodded and swallowed. “Much. Reece will figure out who killed my dad, and he and Wayne will arrest them, and then everything will go back to normal. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know him better, but at least I got to spend a little time with him. It isn’t like I didn’t get to know him at all.”
“That’s nice,” I said, sitting down. “I’m glad you were able to get to know your dad before he died. I’m sure he was very proud of you.”
Shannon smiled. I turned to Derek. “Any news about Beatrice? Or Steve? ”
He shook his head. “Afraid not. We’re just waiting.” And clearly the waiting was taking a toll. His eyes were shadowed, and he hadn’t taken the time to shave today, so his cheeks and jaw were stubbled with blond. I gave him a sympathetic smile and turned to Josh.
“Do you expect to see Paige today? ”
Josh looked surprised behind the glasses. “I’m sure I will. If not, I’ll see Ricky in class, and I can tell him to give her a message.”
“The two of them are definitely together, then? ”
Josh grinned. “They’re getting there. It’s crazy watching them: You can tell he’s just crazy about her, and you can tell she kind of likes him, too, but they don’t talk about it, and when they’re with other people—with us”—he glanced at Shannon—“they act like nothing’s going on. Seriously weird.”
“I’ve seen weirder,” Brandon muttered, and Josh flushed. I glanced at Shannon, but she didn’t seem to have noticed.
“What do you want with Paige? ” she asked.
“Nothing urgent. When she has a minute, I want to ask her about a woman named Emily Thompson who was born around the turn of the century. The twentieth century. I’m wondering if they were related. Here’s a picture.” I dug it out of my purse and slipped it out of the envelope I’d put it in for safekeeping. “Be careful with it. It’s Dr. Ben’s. That’s his great-uncle, William Ellis.”
“Avery thinks it’s their initials in the carriage house,” Derek explained. “Emily’s and William’s.”
“How can it be her initials? ” Kate picked the picture up by the corners, with her fingertips. “I thought you said her name was Emily Thompson. The initials were WE and ER, weren’t they?”
I nodded. “Thompson was her maiden name. Until she married Lawrence Ritter Jr. in February of 1918.”
I had stopped and checked the church records on my way to Kate’s this morning. The Reverend Bartholomew Norton is a friend of Derek’s from high school, and he’d been happy to help. It had been no problem finding the banns for Emily and Lawrence back in the winter of 1918.
“Anna Virginia’s oldest son? ” Kate said.
I nodded.
“Why would she carve her initials in a heart with William’s initials if she was married—and recently married, too—to Lawrence? ”
“She may not have,” Derek said. “Maybe William did it. She may not even have known.”
“Maybe he was in love with her,” Josh suggested, “but she didn’t realize it. Or didn’t reciprocate.” He made damn sure not to look at Shannon when he said it.
“Or maybe William jilted her and she hooked up with Lawrence on the rebound,” Shannon said. “But then William changed his mind and signed on to work on the carriage house to get close to her. She was someone else’s wife by then; he couldn’t just knock on the door. And they picked up where they left off, and he carved their initials in the post.”
“Or it could have been a marriage of convenience,” Kate suggested. “She wanted to marry William, but her family wanted her to marry Lawrence. No offense, Derek, but I’m sure the Ritters had more money than the Ellises. I’d like a copy of this, if you don’t mind.”
“I figured you would,” I said. “When we take it to Lowry’s, I’ll make sure to get a couple extras.”
“Thanks.” Kate smiled and put the picture back down on the table.
Josh picked it up. “She was pretty,” he said.
Shannon leaned over to take a look, close enough that her hair brushed his cheek. “Has a little bit of Paige in her, don’t you think? Around the eyes, maybe? ”
“Maybe a little. And the smile. Paige is pretty, too.”
“Of course.” Shannon leaned back into her own seat. Josh gave the photograph back to me.
“Are my mom and Noel not up yet? ” I asked as I returned it to the envelope, slipping it into my bag.
Kate shook her head. “Not yet. Another hour or so, maybe. Do you two need to jet off again, like yesterday? Or can you start work on the house again?” Obviously, Kate had decided that the murder was in the past and that the carriage house would still make a good home for her and Wayne.
Derek shook his head. “No jetting today. If I could think of something useful to do, I’d be all over that, but I can’t. Maybe we can get in a couple of hours’ work before Rosemary and Noel wake up and want to get going. Avery? ” He made for the door.
“Coming.” I put the bag over my shoulder and followed. “Send my mom out when she wakes up, would you, Kate? She said she’d like to see the carriage house. Or call my cell phone and tell me they’re awake, if she doesn’t feel like going out in the cold.”
Kate nodded.
“I need to talk to you,” I told Derek as soon as we were inside the carriage house with the door closed behind us.
I had been a little concerned about going into the carriage house for the first time after finding Gerard’s body, honestly, but in my excitement, I forgot all about what had happened last time we had been there.
“Sure,” Derek said, unzipping his jacket and tossing it on top of the kitchen counter. “What’s up? ”
“I did some research last night. Trying to learn more about Gerard.”
“And? ” He was gathering tools as I was talking, paying me half a mind, with the other half running ahead to what he’d be doing today and what sort of tools he’d need for the job.
“Did Kate ever tell you that Gerard was a felon? ”
Derek turned to me, tools forgotten. “No,” he said. “She never mentioned that.”
“Don’t feel bad. She never told me, either.”
“How do you know, then? ”
“I . . . um . . . happened to overhear a conversation between Kate and Reece Tolliver yesterday.”
“Yeah? ”
My cheeks flushed, I admitted, “Actually, I was listening at the butler door. Mom, Noel, and I were in the kitchen. Getting ready for dinner with you and your parents. Reece and Kate were in the dining room. I didn’t hear very much, but at one point, Reece talked about someone, or somewhere, called Ludlow.”
“Massachusetts? ” Derek said.
I nodded. “You know it? ”
“Not apart from the fact that it’s there. What about it? ”
I explained that the Hampden County Correctional Facility was in Ludlow.
“So what?” Derek said. “That doesn’t prove anything. Lots of other things are there, too, I’m sure.”
“I’m sure they are. So I searched for Gerard
and
Ludlow instead.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “And what did you find? ”
I smiled triumphantly. “I found a newspaper article from six years ago about a community-outreach program. Apparently nobody too dangerous gets sent to Ludlow, so their inmates get involved in the community from time to time. This had something to do with a housing development playground and with building and putting together and painting the equipment.”
“And Gerard was involved? ”
I nodded. “There was a picture. Of him and a couple of other guys.”
“That’s nice,” Derek said. “Good for you, tracking down the information. I’m not sure what good it does us, though.” He made a move toward his tools.
“Oh, that wasn’t what I was going to tell you,” I said. “I printed out the picture. Here.” I dug it out of my handbag and unfolded it. “See? There’s Gerard. A little less gray around the temples and not as old. And look there, in the background? Recognize him? ”
Derek squinted. “Shit,” he said. “Peter Cortino? ”
“I’m afraid so. His name is in the caption underneath, so there’s not much doubt.”
“There wouldn’t have been any doubt even without the name. I’ve known Peter for five years, and I see him almost every day. When was this published? ”
I shrugged. “Six years ago? Give or take a couple of months.”
“Peter’s been here for five.” He uttered an even worse word than the one he’d already employed before he snagged his jacket from the counter again and shrugged into it. “C’mon.”
“Where? ” I said, trotting after him toward the door.
He tossed me a glance over his shoulder. “Where do you think? If you could figure this out, surely the police will, especially if they already know about Ludlow. It won’t take genius to come up with the idea of checking the background of everyone here in Waterfield. Or everyone not originally from Waterfield, anyway. They’ll show up at Cortino’s sooner or later, and if Jill doesn’t know about this, I don’t want her to find out that way. You coming? ”
“Right behind you,” I said.