Spackled and Spooked (8 page)

“Not really,” Derek said, turning into the master bedroom. “It’s just a hatch in the ceiling with a makeshift ladder nailed to the wall. I guess they wanted it somewhere out of the way.”

He pulled open the door to the closet and stepped in. I stopped in the doorway and watched as he started up the short ladder on the far wall of the closet. After just two rungs he was able to push the piece of plywood covering the access off into the attic. Grabbing the edges of the hole with both hands, he boosted himself up through the hole. I smiled appreciatively at the display of muscles bunching under the sleeves of his blue T-shirt.

“You coming?” he asked from upstairs as he swung his jeans-clad legs up through the hole and into the attic. The next moment his face appeared in the opening. “I’ll pull.”

“Is there anything worth seeing up there?”

Derek looked around for a second. “Not much, no. A few old boxes over in the corner. Maybe some stuff whoever cleaned the place out seventeen years ago didn’t realize was here.”

“No super-duper sound system with spooky, ghostly sound effects?”

“Afraid not. Just the boxes. And some more dust and old insulation and stuff like that. C’mere, I’ll pull you up.” He extended a tanned arm down through the hatch.

“If there’s nothing there, I think I’ll pass. Go get the boxes and hand them to me, would you? We may as well look through them.”

Derek crawled away and reappeared a minute later with an old corrugated cardboard box. “It’s heavy,” he warned, lowering it through the opening, the muscles in his arms tensing.

“I’m stronger than I look,” I answered. And added an involuntary, “Ooof!” when the box dropped into my arms. My knees buckled, and I staggered out into the bedroom, groaning, while Derek disappeared from view to gather up another box, chuckling.

There were four boxes in all, and we opened them sitting cross-legged on the floor in the master bedroom. Derek slit the tape on the first with his trusty X-Acto knife, and a cloud of dust flew skyward as he pulled the flaps apart. I sneezed.

“Old books,” he said after a moment’s examination. “Paperbacks. Romance novels from the late ’80s and early ’90s, looks like.” He wielded the X-Acto knife again. “Same thing in this one. I think Melissa used to read these. Wonder if she still does. And how that makes Ray Stenham feel.” He smirked.

“Why would it make Ray feel anything at all?” I wanted to know. I mean, we all know that just because a woman enjoys a good romance novel now and again, it doesn’t mean that she’s unfulfilled in her own relationship, right?

“Hey, anyone who drives a Hummer that big must have something to prove, don’t you think?”

“I prefer not to think about Raymond Stenham in that way,” I said.

“Because he’s not as good-looking as me?”

“Because he’s my cousin. And because I’m involved with you and shouldn’t have a need to speculate about anyone else’s . . . um . . . tools.”

Derek chuckled but didn’t pursue the subject. “This one’s full of elementary school stuff,” he said, opening the third box. “Composition notebooks, projects, drawings. Peggy must have kept her kid’s school work.”

“Open the last one.” I pulled the fourth box toward me. “If there’s anything valuable anywhere, it must be there. Nothing in these others would fetch a fortune. A first edition pre-Plum Janet Evanovich romance might be worth a few bucks on eBay, but even if every book in the box is a first edition, and autographed, we’re only talking a few thousand dollars. And I doubt anyone would want Patrick’s drawing of A-is-for-Apple or the handprint turned-into-a-turkey he made for Thanksgiving the year he was four. Although Patrick himself might like them.”

“Sorry,” Derek answered, having ripped open the last box while I was expounding. “Nothing exciting here, either. More papers. Notes. Something that looks like a manuscript. Maybe Peggy had aspirations of becoming the next big thing in romance. It’s called
Tied Up in Tartan
.”

“Ooooh!” I reached out.

Derek grinned. “Scottish bondage, you think? You’re not going to read it, are you?” He held on to the handful of pages as I tugged.

“Why not? It’s ours. Came with the house, right? And if it has the potential to be a bestseller, why not get it published?”

“I doubt it’s that easy,” Derek said, but he relinquished the first few pages of the manuscript anyway. It was handwritten, the cursive childishly rounded.

Iain MacNiachail, his long reddish gold hair flowing in the breeze that blew in from the North Sea, carrying with it the smell of heather and gorse, clung to the ramparts of Dunaghdrumnich Castle. . . .

I giggled.

“I’m going back to work,” Derek announced. “C’mon, Avery. You can read the rest tonight. Let’s not waste the daylight.” He reached down for me, and I took his hand and got to my feet.

“So there was no evidence of foul play up there? No sound system, no suspicious wires, nobody hiding in a corner with a foghorn ready to make ghostly noises?”

“Nothing,” Derek said, heading for the smaller bedroom with me behind.

“So if someone’s playing with us, they didn’t hide their equipment in the attic.”

“That’s right.”

“So maybe nobody’s playing tricks on us.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Derek said. I rolled my eyes at his back as we both trotted into the small bedroom and returned to work.

An hour or so later, there was a knock on the door. A peremptory
rat-tat-tat
, conveying brisk impatience. Derek arched his brows, took a better hold of the crowbar, and headed out of the bedroom. I jumped off my step stool and trailed after, spackling knife in hand.

We were halfway across the living room when the knock came again, followed by a yowl. I sped up and was next to Derek when he yanked open the door, a scowl on his face and crowbar at the ready.

Outside stood an older lady with gray hair cut in a mannish crop. Looking at the wrinkles crisscrossing her face, I put her close to the three-quarters-of-a-century mark, but the rest of her showed no sign of succumbing to old age anytime soon. She was dressed in a green shirt and tan pants with dirt on the knees, and under one beefy arm she held Jemmy, while in the other hand, by the scruff of her neck, she hoisted Inky. I was impressed. Hauling both cats at the same time is a chore, especially when they’re unwilling to be hauled, which is most of the time. But she wasn’t even breathing hard, in spite of Inky’s irate yowls and efforts to free herself.

“These critters yours?” She looked from Derek to me with sharp, dark eyes.

“Mine,” I said, making no move to take them from her. I’ve been scratched enough to know better. “You can put them down.”

“And let ’em go right back to digging in my garden? Nosah!” She snapped her lips closed. Nosah—no, sir—is the Mainer’s way of stating an emphatic negative.

“You’d better come in then,” I said, moving back, “and then you can let them go.”

She stepped across the threshold, still holding both cats, and Derek swung the door shut behind her. As soon as she put them down, Jemmy and Inky took off, tearing across the hardwood floors, skidding around the corner. Inky hissed once across her shoulder before she disappeared.

“My name is Avery Baker,” I added, extending the hand that wasn’t holding the knife, “and this is Derek Ellis.”

The older woman shook my hand, her grip tight enough to grind my bones together. I hid my paw behind my back, surreptitiously flexing, after she let go. Derek gave as good as he got, I was glad to see, after switching the crowbar to his other hand. “And you are . . . ?” he prompted as he squeezed.

“Venetia Rudolph. Next door.” She took her hand back and tucked both into the pockets of her baggy khakis. I did my best not to giggle.

“Well, we’re sorry about the cats. We brought them from home to take care of any mice, and they must have gotten out.” I had in fact let them out myself sometime in the midmorning, after they’d sat at the door complaining for fifteen minutes, but Venetia seemed so upset about the fact that they’d been in her yard, that I thought it better to make it sound like an accident. “I hope they didn’t ruin your lovely landscaping.”

The landscaping of the red brick ranch to the left of us
was
lovely. There were bushes and plants of various sizes and shades of green in containers and beds all around the front of the house, and when I’d been out in our backyard earlier, I’d seen huge beds of flowering plants behind the house, as well. This late in the year, it wasn’t as beautiful as I could imagine it might be in May or June, with every flower in riotous explosion of color and texture, but I could make out climbing roses on trellises around the back deck, a patch of what could only be monstrous sunflowers off to the side, and pots of colorful pansies marching up the stairs and all along the railing.

Venetia smiled tightly. “They found the herb garden. And the catnip.”

“Oops,” I said.

Derek hid a grin. “Sorry about that, Miss Rudolph. It won’t happen again.”

“You’d best make sure it doesn’t,” Venetia Rudolph said and turned to leave.

“May I ask you a question, Miss Rudolph?” I said quickly.

“In addition to the one you just asked?”

What an old battle-ax! I bit back a sharp retort. “Another of the neighbors told us that our house is haunted. He said he’s heard screams at night and seen lights go on and off and shadows move past the windows.”

“Hogwash!” Venetia barked.

“And Derek and I have both heard footsteps walking down the hallway when no one was here but us.” I glanced over at Derek for confirmation. He nodded.

Venetia’s eyes slid sideways to the opening to the hallway. She must have been in our house before, to know where it was. Either that, or the layout of her house was exactly the same. “The cat,” she said.

I shook my head. “Jemmy walks like a man, I agree, but he was outside. Savaging your catnip. And yesterday he wasn’t here at all. Sorry.”

“Harrumph! In that case, young lady, I’m sure I can’t help you. I’ve lived next door for twenty-five years, and no screams have ever disturbed
my
sleep.”

She turned toward the door again.

“Well, have you ever seen anyone around? Squatters? Anyone who might have broken in? People hanging around, doing stuff to the house? The cable guy?”

Derek must have thought I was stretching the point, because he rolled his eyes. I rolled mine right back at him and focused on Venetia.

“No one who shouldn’t be here,” she said promptly. “There were some squatters in the basement once, but that’s two or three years ago. I called the police on ’em, but they up and left before anyone could move ’em out. The man from the lawn care company cuts the grass every couple of weeks, and twice a year, someone comes out to service the heating system. Once in a while, a handyman will nail down a loose roof shingle or clean out the gutters. But if you’re asking if I’ve seen anyone suspicious hanging around, the answer is no.”

“I see,” I said. “Thank you, Miss Rudolph.”

She waved me aside. “You make sure your kitties stay out of my catnip, Miss Baker. And you, too, young man.” She looked up at Derek for a second as she trotted past him and out the door. He shut it again just in time to stop Jemmy and Inky from following. Both cats skidded to a stop, tucked their plumy tails around their haunches, and gave him identical, affronted looks. Jemmy, the more vocal of the two, complained loudly.

“I brought some cat snacks,” I said, heading for the kitchen and the bag I had left there in the morning. “Maybe that’ll make them happier.”

“Unless it’s catnip, I don’t think so,” Derek answered, “but it’s worth a try.”

“So Venetia Rudolph—what a name!—never saw or heard anything spooky.” I dug out the cat treat box and gave Inky and Jemmy a fish-shaped crunchy each. “Or anyone hanging around, either.”

“So she says,” Derek said, folding his arms across his chest.

“Why would she lie?”

“She’s a closet romantic and she was hunting for the manuscript of
Tied Up in Tartan
? She’s the next door neighbor, and she’s lived here twenty-five years. She might have had a key this whole time. Most people hide a key outside or give one to a neighbor to keep.”