Spackled and Spooked (18 page)

“After?” I had thought the earring looked 1940s or thereabouts. Of course, Shannon had already confirmed that hers were reproductions, so maybe I should have considered that this might be, as well. Then again, that meant that someone must have lost it over the past few years, while the house had been empty.

He nodded. “It looks vintage, but it’s actually a modern reproduction. See the back? No soldering? It’s been made in a mold in the past few years. Sorry I can’t help.” He handed it back.

“That’s OK,” I said, tucking it back into my pocket again. So it wasn’t Peggy Murphy’s after all, or her mother’s, either. Maybe it had belonged to one of the teenagers that Venetia Rudolph had seen in the house a few years ago. “I was actually interested in that chest of drawers you have in the window.”

“The Fredericia? Beautiful, isn’t it?” He jumped down from the tall stool he’d been sitting on, and started toward the display window. His bearing was almost military, straight and tall, but he had a pronounced limp, as if one leg was shorter than the other. “Vietnam,” he said briefly when he caught my reaction. I blushed.

“Sorry.”

“It’s been forty years. Don’t worry about it. This?” He pointed to the chest of drawers we’d seen through the window.

“That’s the one.”

“Nineteen sixty-five Danish Modern, teak, made in Fredericia Møbelfabrik. That’s the Fredericia Furniture Factory to you. Still in operation today. Give it to you for five hundred fifty dollars.”

“I don’t know . . .” I said, biting my lip. Five hundred fifty dollars was more than I wanted to spend, especially considering that I’d have to do modifications to turn it from a dresser into a sink base. The top drawer or two would have to be glued and nailed shut and the bottom of at least one of them removed to make room for the plumbing, and I’d have to cut holes in the top for the drain and waterlines, as well as the faucet. Lots of room for error in doing all that, and if I messed up too badly, the piece would be useless. On the other hand, it would look fabulous in the brown and blue bathroom. “What’s that?” I pointed. “A chip?”

Mr. Nickerson bent down. “A small one. I’ll knock off fifty dollars.”

“I don’t know. Five hundred dollars is still a little more than I’m comfortable with. See, I can go to the home improvement center and buy a sink base that’ll look OK for a lot less than that. But because it’s a 1960s ranch, I thought an authentic dresser would look good. With one of those vessel sinks on top, you know, like a bowl. There’s this little brown and blue bathroom that my boyfriend won’t let me tear out, because the tile is perfect. . . .”

I peered at him for any sign of recognition, some clue that he’d been in the Murphy house and had seen—maybe even showered in—the brown and blue master bath, but he didn’t flicker so much as an eyelash. “Sounds like an interesting idea.”

“I hope so,” I said. “If you’ve lived in town for a while, you probably know the house. A family named Murphy used to live there, until seventeen years ago or so, when they all died.” I did my best to sound innocent, but I don’t know how well I did, especially considering that I was—surreptitiously, I hoped—gauging his reaction.

“Peggy Murphy used to work for me,” John Nickerson said neutrally. I opened my eyes wide.

“You’re kidding? Small world.”

It sounded fake even to me, and Kate rolled her eyes. She was over by the Naugahyde chairs examining the big-eyed people. “I remember these,” she said, pointing to the pictures. “My grandmother had them. Little boys with puppies, little girls with kittens. On her living room wall.”

“Highly collectible these days.” John Nickerson left me to limp over to her. He seemed not to care whether I decided to buy the Danish Modern dresser or not. Or maybe it was a tactic: leaving me to stew and decide that if he didn’t care, I’d better pony up. Or maybe my conversation was making him uncomfortable, in spite of his seeming lack of reaction to the earring and the mention of the Murphys.

“They’re kind of cute,” I admitted, following him, “in a weird way.”

“I think I’ll have to buy that one.” Kate pointed to a lost-looking waif in a harlequin costume with a big tear rolling down her cheek. The child had the biggest, sad dest eyes I had seen in my life. “Looks just like Shannon did when she was young. I’m going to give it to her for her birthday.”

“Will she appreciate that?” I asked, while Mr. Nickerson took the print off the wall and carried it to the counter.

“She’ll think it’s funny.” Kate dug her wallet out of her purse and paid fifteen dollars for the picture. Mr. Nickerson wrapped it in brown paper for her.

“I’ll let you know about the dresser,” I said. “I should probably talk to Derek first. See just how difficult it would be to turn something like that into a sink base. Do you expect to sell it in the next couple of days?”

“Can’t promise anything,” John Nickerson said, “but with everything slowing down after the summer, it’ll probably still be here a while. Let me know.” He nodded politely but obviously didn’t feel it necessary to offer me another incentive—like a lower price—to take the dresser off his hands now instead of later.

“What was that all about?” Kate asked when we were outside on Main Street again, continuing our way toward Aunt Inga’s house and the B and B.

I shrugged. “Cora Ellis thought there might have been something going on between him and Peggy Murphy, and that’s why Brian killed her.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Kate said. “John doesn’t seem the type, but even if it were true almost twenty years ago, does it matter now?”

“I guess it doesn’t, really,” I admitted. “There’s never been any doubt about it being Brian who killed the rest of the family. I’m not suggesting that it was really John Nickerson. I’m just curious what would make a man do something like that, you know. There had to have been something behind it, don’t you think?”

“You’d think,” Kate agreed, without sounding like it mattered to her one way or the other.

Derek called a little before nine that night to tell me that the skeleton was out of the ground and in storage at Barnham College. “It’ll end up in Portland eventually, at the medical examiner’s office, but Wayne wants to keep it here for a day or two to see if he can’t figure out who it is without their help. She was buried here, after all, so she has to have had some kind of connection to Waterfield, even if it’s just that her murder took place here.”

“Murder?”

He sounded tired. “The back of her skull was crushed, as if someone hit her with something.”

For a second, the room spun crazily, and I had to sit down on Aunt Inga’s newly reupholstered loveseat as the macaroni and cheese I’d had for dinner threatened to make a repeat performance. I swallowed hard and tried to concentrate on what Derek was saying. From the tone of his voice, the sight or thought hadn’t bothered him at all; he seemed to be treating the whole thing more as an intellectual riddle.

“Could she have fallen and hit her head on something?” I suggested once I could breathe again.

“It would have to have been something sharp. Like the corner of a table, maybe.”

Something skittered through my head and out on the other side. I didn’t even try to pursue it. If it was important, it would come back. “Surely the fact that someone took the trouble to bury her means that it was murder.”

“Not necessarily,” Derek said. “It could have been an accident, but whoever was there with her didn’t want to get involved.”

“Who would do something like that?”

It wasn’t so much a question as a rhetorical comment on the cowardice and lack of moral fiber of some people, but Derek chose to answer it. “Someone with a lot to lose. A cheating husband whose wife would cut up rough? Or just someone who didn’t think too clearly in the moment? Not impossible, under the circumstances.”

I nodded. “And by the time he’d buried her and come to his senses, he couldn’t very well dig her back up again and call the police. They wouldn’t like that, would they?”

“Not at all,” Derek said.

“Any idea who she was? Did you find any clues? Anything except the bones?”

“Brandon found a small silver stud among the lumbar vertebrae.”

I flipped through my mental file. “That’s the spine, right?”

“Lower part of the spine, yes. Lumbar, then thoracic, then cervical.”

“A navel ring?” Whoever she was, she must have been fairly young, if so. Most middle-aged women don’t go piercing their navels.

“I assume that’s what it was,” Derek said. “As the flesh and intestines rotted away, the stud would have ended up among the vertebrae.”

“Gack!” I protested. Derek apologized.

“If he can’t identify her any other way, Wayne will place photographs of the stud in the
Clarion
and the
Weekly
, and see if anyone recognizes it. Brandon gathered it up and put it in a box.” His voice was flat and fatigued, and I took pity on him.

“Why don’t you go get some sleep? You sound like you could use it.”

“I’m tired,” Derek admitted.

“What about tomorrow? Are Wayne and Brandon going to dig up the rest of the crawlspace? Or will they be busy tracking down the identity of this woman?”

“Rather than dig up the rest of the crawlspace,” Derek said, “Wayne has seen the light and agreed to bring in cadaver dogs. Brandon’s idea. They’ll sniff around the crawlspace and see if there’s anything else down there, and then they’ll do the same to the yard, just in case.”

“And if they mark, or whatever it is cadaver dogs do, then Brandon will dig?”

“Guess so.” He sounded less than thrilled at the prospect.

“What about the house?” I asked. “Are they going to check that, as well?”

“I would. Just in case this woman died inside.”

He continued, but I didn’t hear him. That same thought as earlier skittered across my brain again, and this time I did try to chase it down. “I’m sorry,” I said, when I had tried and failed, “would you mind repeating that? I was thinking about something else.”

“I was just saying not to expect anything to get done on the house tomorrow. Maybe not the next day, either. So if you just want to find something else to do, that’s fine.”

“What about you? Don’t you want to do something together?” My voice might have been just a little come hitherish, because he chuckled.

“I’d love to do something together, Avery, but I think at least one of us ought to be there, keeping an eye on things, don’t you? It
is
our house.”

“True.”

“And you didn’t seem to be enjoying yourself today.”

“I’m not as fond of bones as you are,” I explained. “Nor as comfortable with them. The whole thing is freaking me out, to be honest, and that’s without worrying about how all this is going to affect resale.”

“Don’t remind me,” Derek said. “I figure with your aversion to bones, and the fact that I’m comfortable with them and can tell them apart if necessary, it’s probably better for me to be there. But feel free to stop by as well. It’s your house, too.”

“I might just do that. If I can find a ride.”

“I’ll call Brandon and ask him to pick me up in the morning,” Derek said. “That way you can drive the truck again. I didn’t even pick up the key yet. But I think we’re gonna have to seriously look into getting you a car, Avery. It’s no problem as long as we’re going to the same place at the same time, but we don’t always, and it’s gonna be too cold in the winter to do much walking. You really ought to have transportation of your own.”

“I guess you’re right.” Much as I hated to admit it. I’d spent my entire life in Manhattan, without ever owning a car, and I wasn’t looking forward to the responsibility. Which was why I had gone through the summer without buying one. “As soon as this skeleton issue is resolved, we’ll do something about it, I promise. Let’s just get over one hurdle at a time.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Derek said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Tink.” He hung up.