Spackled and Spooked (33 page)

“I guess she’s not worried that you’ll find anything, then.”

“
I’m
not worried that I’ll find anything,” Wayne said. “But I have to look. It would look bad if I didn’t.”

I nodded. Bad enough that Brandon and Holly had dated in the first place, now that she was dead, but if word got out that Wayne had received an anonymous tip that Brandon was involved, and he’d ignored it, the manure would hit the fan for sure. “But you don’t really think he was involved, right? Even though he and Holly dated?”

“I’d be very surprised,” Wayne said. “I’ve worked with the boy for two years. He’s not a killer.”

I hesitated, but in the end I felt I had to speak. “Is he the type to try to hide a crime, though? If it was an accident, and he was afraid he’d go to jail? His father just left, and his mother would be all alone, with no one to take care of her. . . . Is it possible that he’d panic and bury Holly’s body and try to get away with it?”

Wayne didn’t answer for a moment. “Much as I’d like to say I know he wouldn’t,” he said eventually, “I’m not sure. It was four years ago. He was eighteen, just a kid; there’s no telling what he might have done in a moment of panic. Let’s just say that I’m hoping real hard the call was just a prank and there’s nothing here for us to find.”

I nodded. I could get behind that.

“Sorry to burst your bubble,” Derek said from over in his corner, “but I think I found something.”

Wayne stiffened, like a pointer scenting game. “Don’t touch it!”

“Do I look stupid to you?” Derek stepped aside as Wayne came closer. “There, in the corner. Under the bottom shelf. I don’t think Brandon would own a hot pink backpack, do you?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Wayne agreed. He pulled out a small digital camera and snapped a couple of shots of the bag in situ before tucking the camera back into his pocket and fishing out a pair of surgical gloves instead.

Five minutes later the bag was in the middle of the floor, emptied of all contents. Surrounding it were those of Holly’s possessions the girl had wanted to take to California with her. Or those whoever packed the bag had thought it would make sense for her to take to make it look like she’d left town of her own free will. Two pairs of jeans, a half dozen T-shirts, socks, bras, and panties, a makeup bag, a small jewelry box, and a pair of black patent-leather shoes with four-inch heels sat in neat piles on the floor. A clingy, black dress that looked like it might have covered the essentials but very little else was draped over the weight bench next to the sequined, green gown from the prom photos. A little black book full of phone numbers and addresses lay in Wayne’s gloved hands. A quick look revealed that Brandon’s name and number was present, with a little heart next to it, no less.

“That’s to be expected, though,” I said. “They were dating.”

“Sure.” Wayne kept flipping through the book, back to front. “Here’s Denise Robertson. She was Denise Kurtz back then. And Lionel Kenefick, with no heart next to his name.”

“I’m not surprised,” I said. “They knew each other, but they weren’t involved.”

Wayne nodded. “I’ll have to go through this in more detail down at the station. Eventually, I guess I might have to interview everyone whose name is in this book.”

“That sounds like it ought to be fun,” Derek commented. He was standing next to me with his arm around my shoulders, watching Wayne go through the contents of the backpack. “How was she going to get to California? Hitchhike?”

“Let’s hope not. Or maybe that’s what killed her. She tried to hitch a ride with the wrong person.” Wayne looked around, vaguely. “You’re right, though. There ought to be a wallet here, with money and identification. She’d have to prove she was eighteen to get a job once she got settled, and surely she would have made sure she had some cash.”

“She worked at the Shamrock,” a voice said. Looking up, we saw Brandon standing in the doorway. His face was pale but composed. “She had just started. On her eighteenth birthday. She knew it was the only way to make enough money fast enough to be ready to leave by graduation.”

Wayne straightened, the empty pink bag in his hand. “You recognize this, I take it?”

“Sure.” Brandon nodded. “It’s Holly’s. Her book bag. I saw it every day in school.”

“Can you explain how it got here?”

Brandon shook his head. “Would you mind explaining how
you
got here?”

The stupid answer would be “by car,” but Wayne didn’t go for the cheap out. “Anonymous tip. Your mother said I should feel free to look around while I waited.” He shifted his weight slightly. “You made good time to Bar Harbor and back.” There was just a hint of . . . was it suspicion, in his voice?

“Mr. Rudolph wasn’t the chatty type. And I didn’t think you were paying me to go sightseeing.”

Brandon came a few steps into the room, and they faced each other across the neat stacks of items that had been Holly’s. Tension crackled in the air. I looked from one to the other of them. As far as I could tell, they were both behaving like idiots, although I didn’t suppose it was my place to say anything about it. “Did you hear about Ricky Swanson?” I asked instead, in an effort to calm the waters and give everyone something else to think about. Brandon turned to me.

“The one who made the picture of Holly over at the college? What about him?”

“Turns out he’s really Patrick Murphy. You know, the kid who survived the massacre of his family at the house on Becklea seventeen years ago?”

Brandon’s wary expression lightened a little as he listened but shuttered again when he heard the conclusion. “So he didn’t have anything to do with Holly’s death?”

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Wayne said. “I was on my way to check into it when this anonymous tip came in and I got distracted.”

“I’d be crazy to call it in myself,” Brandon pointed out, folding muscular arms across his broad chest. “And if I killed her, I’d be crazy to keep her stuff sitting around, too. Especially where anyone walking in from the street could find it. The shed’s not even locked!”

Wayne nodded. “I noticed.”

“And even if I’d been nutty enough to keep her bag here for four years—to finger her underwear whenever I felt lonely or whatever . . .”

Mine wasn’t the only face that twisted in distaste at this image. Brandon continued, “I’d have wanted to get rid of it once the body was found. I had a perfect opportunity today, too. I could have taken it with me to Bar Harbor and tossed it in a Dumpster. You’d never have thought to look for it there. Not after all this time.”

“You’re right about that,” Wayne nodded. “Still, you have to see that it looks bad.”

Brandon had to agree that it did. “What are you going to do?”

His boss grimaced. “Guess I’ll have to suspend you for the time being. While we look into it. No choice, really.”

Brandon grimaced, too, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he pulled his gun off his belt, removed the ammunition, and handed both to Wayne before unpinning his badge from the front of his shirt and handing that over, as well. I could see his throat move as he swallowed, but he didn’t say a word.

“This stinks,” Derek said.

I nodded. “Whoever called that tip in—Holly’s killer, don’t you think? Since only Holly’s killer would have had Holly’s stuff to be able to plant it here?—whoever it was not only shifted suspicion onto Brandon, and tied up police resources, since Wayne has to spend time investigating Brandon now, but he also took Brandon off duty, so Wayne has less help to do the rest of the work.”

“It was a brilliant move,” Derek agreed. “So what will you do now, Brandon?”

He looked down at his hands and shrugged forlornly. “No idea.”

“Want to help us renovate?” I blurted out. It was the only thing I could think to suggest.

Brandon hesitated. Glanced at Wayne.

“It’s fine with me,” the latter said.

“But the location . . . ? The fact that Holly was found underneath the house and Miss Rudolph was murdered next door?”

Wayne shrugged. “It’s private property. The police have released it to the owners, and they can invite anyone they want inside to help them.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Brandon admitted, with a glance around. “I’ll have to do something to stay busy, or I’ll go crazy. Working out doesn’t have much appeal right now.”

“We’ll have to seal the place anyway,” Wayne said. “Dust for fingerprints, and all that. Without you to do it, it’s gonna take a lot longer.”

“And I can’t leave Waterfield; that would look like I was running away. . . .”

“It’ll give you something to do,” Derek said with a bracing slap on Brandon’s broad shoulder. “Go get changed. You can start right now.”

Brandon nodded and loped off toward the house to change out of the uniform that was no longer his and to reassure his mother that whatever else was wrong, at least he wasn’t about to be arrested.

“That’s nice of you,” Wayne said with an approving nod. Derek shrugged.

“Better than having him sit around thinking up some cockamamie idea for something he can do to help himself. And we can keep an eye on him, too. Just in case he isn’t as innocent as he seems.”

“Not to mention that we can always use another pair of hands,” I said.

“There’s that.”

“Well, whatever the reason,” Wayne said, “you’re doing a good thing. I appreciate it. And so, I’m sure, does he.”

“We’ll see,” Derek answered, with a grin, “after he’s finished work tonight.”

20

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Derek said five hours later. Between them, he and Brandon had torn out the old sink base and commode from the brown and blue master bathroom and had readied the teak dresser to be put in its place. But before we could get to that, we had to put together the plumbing for the two sinks and attach the basins to the dresser; once that was done, we could slide it over the pipes, and finish hooking the pipes together inside it. “We need to buy two sinks and a couple of fittings and pipes for the plumbing. I guess it’s time for dinner anyway. Have you had enough for today, Brandon?”

Brandon didn’t look as fresh as he had earlier, but I didn’t think it was because of what he’d been doing. Renovating is hard work, but he was twenty-two and in good shape; a half day of manual labor shouldn’t have bothered him. More likely he was stressed. He’d lost his gun and badge, at least temporarily, and was, at least officially, a suspect in two homicides. It had to be disturbing. We’d tried to keep him busy to keep him from having time to think, but it was inevitable that his predicament would be on his mind. Also, he was back here, where Holly had lain buried for four years, he being none the wiser. He probably felt he’d failed her, somehow. Not to mention that he’d been here with Holly himself, at least once. When she was young and beautiful, and above all, alive.

“When were you and Holly here together?” I asked impulsively. Brandon turned to me, taken aback, and I clarified, “The other day, before we realized that it was Holly who was buried in the crawlspace, you said you’d been here with her once. You were talking to Lionel Kenefick, remember? Outside.”

“Oh. Right.” He thought back. “I guess it must have been a week or two before she left. Died.” He swallowed.

“That wasn’t the last time you saw her, was it?”

He shook his head. “I saw her at school every day after that. And we were still dating, too. Hanging out. You know. We just didn’t come back here.”

I opened my mouth to ask why, whether anything had happened to make them choose not to, but before I could, Derek had taken the conversation in a different direction.

“So when was the last time you saw her?” He had folded his arms across his chest and was leaning against the front of the dresser. Being, as he had said, dense and heavy, it didn’t budge.

“Alive?” Brandon asked.

Derek rolled his eyes. “Of course alive. You didn’t see her dead, did you?”

“Of course not.” Brandon’s face was pale. “Not until two days ago. And then I didn’t know it was her.”

“So when?”

His eyes flickered. “I guess it must have been the day before she died. Final exams were over, and she told me she was ready to blow town. I tried to get her to change her mind, but she wouldn’t. Then she tried to get me to agree to come with her.”

“I thought she wanted to marry some rich guy and sit around sipping champagne all day,” I commented. “At least that’s what Denise Robertson said.”