Lie of the Needle (A Deadly Notions Mystery) (7 page)

The previous owners hadn’t done any additional landscaping either. The three stunted bushes that the builder had originally supplied were spaced far apart, far too few for the front of the house.

Inside, it was frigid and the living room carpet was badly stained and needed a good vacuuming. It looked as though someone had punched a huge hole in the drywall in a fit of rage.

Patsy flipped a light switch, but nothing happened.

“The electricity was shut off. By the electric company,” said the agent apologetically. “The couple who owned the house are getting divorced and I guess they didn’t pay the bill.”

The tour didn’t improve as we continued. In the kitchen, white countertops made of laminate to look like Corian were marred by cigarette burns and red wineglass stains that no one had bothered to try to remove.

I swallowed against the acrid odor of bleach overlaying mold. The owners must not have emptied the fridge when they left, and when the electricity was turned off, everything had rotted. Now the door was propped ajar from a recent cleanout. I wondered if the real estate agent had done it.

“Guess we’d need a new icebox.” Patsy shrugged her shoulders as she inspected the upper kitchen cabinets.

Feeling my stomach lurch, I blew out a breath and hurried out of the kitchen with Claire right behind me.

“I don’t like this place, Daisy,” she whispered. “It feels bad.” Claire was normally a sweet-natured child, but she was obviously violently opposed to the two-year-old building with holes in the walls. She’d once shown me a painting of her dream house for herself and her mom that won first prize at a country fair. This was definitely not it.

I had to agree with her. Houses had personalities just like people, and there was something very angry and bitter about this one.

By the time we made it down to the basement with its broken window and piles of black garbage bags holding who knows what, Claire had had enough.

“Mom! I don’t want to live here. It’s a
horrible
house.”

“Yo, don’t be a brat. Lose the addi-tood.” Patsy ruffled her hair. “Just use your imagination. Picture this place with some fresh paint and cleaned up a bit.” She glanced around. “Okay, maybe a lot.”

I could tell that the ever-practical Patsy liked the low price and the idea of getting a real bargain. Some might call her tough, and she could be brash at times, but she was also good-hearted and devoted to her daughter. Despite a hard start in life, she was making her own way.

“I’m glad you could come, Daisy,” she said to me. “You know about all the things that could possibly go wrong in a house.”

I chuckled ruefully. “Sad, but true.” Our Greek Revival had been a never-ending repair story. Even now, some thirty years later, we still weren’t finished working on it. Speaking of money pits, Joe and I knew we’d taken on a big challenge when we bought it. But it didn’t matter—we’d fallen madly in love and had overlooked the leaking roof, ancient electrical fuses, and drafty windows. Angus had been a big help with fixing up the house as well as remodeling my store.

I thought it would behoove the bank to pay a few bucks to get this place properly cleaned if they wanted to see it sold. Most buyers were distracted by details like carpets that needed vacuuming and wouldn’t be able to see the potential.

The smell of mold was strong in the basement, too, which was surprising for a young house built using modern drainage systems. I couldn’t see any water on the floor, but it could be a potential issue down the road.

We headed upstairs where the same sad feeling pervaded. The bathroom tiles were grungy, a broken venetian blind hung down in one of the bedrooms, and the closet doors were off the track. There was another hole smashed in the drywall.

Angus was inspecting the master bedroom. He had worked in construction for years before he opened his auction business. “Well, I don’t need a split level to see that the walls aren’t true. Even when this place was brand-new, it wasn’t up to snuff. In my opinion you’d be better off with an older home with solid construction and good bones. Something with only some cosmetic touches needed. I can help you with that.”

Patsy glared at him. I’d seen that same bullish expression on Angus’s face a thousand times before. If a person didn’t know otherwise, it would be easy to think that they were father and daughter. Of course, the fact that they were alike in lots of ways meant they butted heads all the time, but I knew Angus hoped Patsy could take over the business someday. He absolutely doted on Claire, too.

Patsy hitched her leather jacket back and stuck her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “I can’t deal with pink-tiled bathrooms and psychedelic wallpaper, Angus. I don’t want to do a lot of rehab. I want something newer.”

“You’d have to do just as much work with this place. Look at all the damn holes in the walls!”

Claire held out her palm and Angus fished in his pockets, looking for a quarter as penance for his cuss word. Claire had done her best to clean up her mother’s language and was now working on Angus, twenty-five cents at a time.

He grunted as he pulled down the steps to the attic and one of the hinges swung loose. “Sloppy. No excuse. Cassell is banging these dumps up as fast as he can go. There’s no quality workmanship here.” Angus, who took his job as surrogate parent to Patsy very seriously, climbed the attic steps to inspect the roof construction.

The real estate agent shifted nervously as we watched his large frame disappear into the rafters. Patsy sighed.

“Don’t worry, dear,” the agent murmured as she laid a hand on Patsy’s sleeve. “You know, sometimes when parents are involved, they can be overly picky. It’s how they justify why they’ve been brought along.”

I gritted my teeth. I viewed Patsy and Claire as my family, too. I wasn’t about to let them make a mistake either.

A few moments later, Angus clambered back down. “Some of those rafters have been spray-foamed and some not. I’ve never seen such an uneven and unprofessional job in my life.” He let go of the attic steps, and they swung back into the roof with a clang.

“Nope, you gals are not buying this place. No way. It’s a disaster waiting to happen. Come on, we’re leaving.”

The real estate agent pressed her lips together, probably wishing Patsy hadn’t brought her “dad” along.

Outside, as we headed toward Angus’s truck, Beau Cassell himself was getting out of a big pickup truck, a length of metal rebar in his hand. Patsy walked past him with her rangy stride that made men stop and take a second look when she walked by. Beau Cassell was no exception.

Angus took a step in front of her. “Hey, Cassell, congratulations, you did a real crap job on this place,” he said with a nod of his head toward the house we had just vacated.

“What the hell are you talking about, Backstead?” Cassell’s cheeks flushed.

“That spray foam in the attic? It’s not even finished, and it’s way too thick in some places, not enough in others. Your fricking building technique is for the birds.”

Cassell gripped the rebar so tightly, I could see the white on his knuckles. “The owner must have done it himself, because spray foam wasn’t an option when we built this section. I remember these homeowners. What a pair. They had a huge fight right in the model home.” Suddenly his eyes narrowed. “That son of a bitch! He must have been stealing my construction materials.”

“Or maybe some of your crew are doing work on the side and pocketing the cash?” Patsy suggested.

Cassell’s face turned a purplish-red, and he hurried toward the house with Angus hard on his heels, obviously eager to personally point out the rest of the builder’s failings to him.

“Oh, jeez,” I said. “Patsy, you stay here with Claire. I don’t want Angus getting into a fight.”

I ran after the two men. To say Angus was a hothead was an understatement, and he’d already been in trouble with the law for brawling. It wouldn’t take much of a cinder to ignite the simmering resentment between these two into a firestorm.

As I hurried up to the second floor, Beau was already at the top of the pull-down steps.

“This foam smells as though it’s been recently applied,” he said as he heaved himself into the attic.

“Angus, wait,” I pleaded, but Angus was following Cassell, and with a sigh, I grabbed the side of the steps and gingerly climbed up until I could peek inside.

In the dingy light I could see puffed rows of cream-colored foam piled high between the wooden rafters. Even though I wasn’t a construction expert, it looked like a holy mess to me.

“Son of a . . . It’s way too thick. How deep did this idiot spray this stuff?” Cassell took his length of metal rebar and poked at the end of the thickest pile.

A jagged piece of foam broke off, exposing the tip of a brilliant emerald snakeskin boot.

T
he
missing photographer.

I gasped and clung to the wooden rail as my knees went soft, but Cassell was already heading for the steps. I had to scurry back down and out of the way before he trampled over my fingers with his big construction boots.

“Everyone out of here now!” he yelled. “It’s a frigging fire hazard!” Without looking back he was gone. I grabbed Angus’s hand as we ran for the front door.

Once we were all a safe distance away, Angus called the police and fire departments.

Who on earth could have wanted to kill Alex Roos?

I joined Patsy and Claire near the retention pond, my heart racing. It wasn’t long before we heard the whine of sirens. Two police cars flew into the lot, and a fire engine rumbled up in front of the house.

“What’s going on, Daisy?” Patsy asked.

“The builder thinks the house is dangerous and may catch on fire,” I answered as carefully as I could.

Claire gasped. “I knew it! Didn’t I tell you this wasn’t a good place, Mommy?”

“So why are the
police
here?”

As Cyril would have said, Patsy wasn’t as green as she was cabbage-looking. I shook my head slightly and glanced meaningfully at Claire. “Fill you in later, okay? Just keep Claire as far away from this scene as you can.”

It didn’t take long for Serrano to roar up in his Dodge Challenger and bark out orders to secure the area and keep the gaggle of interested homeowners at bay.

One old man behind us was pushing his way to the front. “What’s going on here?”

“Unsafe situation,” I said, but didn’t elaborate.

“I’m not surprised. Cassell did a crap job on my house, too. Everything’s falling apart on a house that’s barely two years old. Criminal, it is. Good to see the police finally took some notice.”

Serrano caught my eye and motioned me through the yellow tape. I passed the builder, who was explaining the dangers of oversprayed foam to an officer.

“You’re going to have a helluva job here, Serrano,” Angus was saying as I caught up to them. He nodded toward the roof. “You’re gonna need a reciprocating saw or sabre saw, something like that, to cut that guy out.”

“Oh, God, Angus, please.” I shuddered and wrapped my arms around my chest. The charismatic photographer had been in my shop only a couple of days ago. If I let myself imagine the hideous reality of his last moments on this earth, I thought I might crumble into a million pieces.

“Sorry, Daisy, but seems like someone was royally pissed off at this guy, don’t it?”

“Yes, but who on earth could it be?” I glanced over to where Beau Cassell, still vermilion in the face, was gesturing wildly at the police officer. I was relieved to see that Patsy and Claire were well away in the grassy common area and Claire was bending to pet a neighbor’s dog. “As much as I don’t like Beau Cassell, it seems a bit far-fetched for him to have done it to block the production of the calendar and maybe win the bid for the farm.”

For some reason the night of the calendar shoot popped into my head and I told them about Stanley’s panicked deathbed statement. I didn’t miss the look that passed between Serrano and Angus.

“Bornstein had dementia, right?” Serrano said. “Anyway, what’s this to do with the situation at hand, Ms. Buchanan?”

I inhaled, prayed for patience, and tried again. “Maybe Alex caught something on film that night that someone else would not want to be common knowledge. Like someone murdering a defenseless old man, for instance.”

Serrano sighed. “Facts, facts, Daisy. How many times must we repeat this? There’s nothing concrete here, just speculation.”

I bit my lip. Sometimes Serrano was just great to me, valuing my help and my opinions, and other times he was so high-handed and dismissive that I wished he was a student in one of my elementary classes of yore and I could make him sit in the corner for a long time-out.

“But that’s not all. This morning I saw Ruth Bornstein walking through Sheepville with a very attractive younger man.”

“There’s no law that says she can’t have a little romance in her life.” Serrano winked at Angus, who smiled benevolently at me.

I wanted to smack them both.

Serrano consulted his notepad. “Now, Daisy, you say that the last time you saw Roos was the day of the shoot for Cyril Mackey?”

An even more disturbing image popped into my head. Had Alex been attacked while they were taking pictures? Was Cyril hurt and bleeding somewhere, or perhaps tied up and held for ransom?

“Do you think Cyril could have been kidnapped?” I gasped.

Serrano shook his head. He glanced at Angus again, but there was no humor in their eyes this time.

After we had finished giving our statements, we walked back to Angus’s truck, where the agent was saying something about vacant houses being targets.

Her mouth pressed into a thin line at the sight of Angus. She must have thought she could talk Patsy into this place, but now it was a crime scene and off the market for a little while at least. “Well, we’ve run out of time for today,” she said, as if a dead body was just a blip in the schedule. “I have another appointment now, but I’ll line up some more places for us to see soon.”

*   *   *

A
fter we dropped Patsy and Claire off at Quarry Ridge, the development where they lived with her sister, Angus drove back to the auction house. I was silent as we drove, my mind speeding a million miles faster than Angus’s pickup.

“Now what, missy? What’s going on in that head of yours?”

“I’ve been trying to think of places where Alex and Cyril may have done their modeling shoot. I have a hunch it might have been at the old farmhouse. I think I’ll stop there on my way home.”

“Oh no, you don’t. Not by yourself, anyway. I’ll go with you.”

“Angus, that’s ridiculous. It’s five miles out of your way, and back. I’ll be fine.”

Angus drummed his meaty fingers on the steering wheel.

I sighed. Me and my big mouth.

I hopped into my Subaru, and Angus followed me to the outskirts of Millbury. As I got closer, I felt a racing tingle in my skin, the way I usually did when I listened to my intuition. The rough, rustic setting would fit Cyril’s character perfectly and be a nice tie-in to the purpose of the calendar.

When we pulled into the rutted driveway, where the entrance sign for Glory Farm hung askew on the pole, I was glad Angus had insisted on coming with me. The farmhouse was set a good distance back from the road. In the waning light of a winter afternoon, it suddenly seemed eerily remote.

The last time I’d seen the place up close was a few months ago when the Historical Society had toured here, trying to come up with ideas to save it. It was boarded up then, too, but not so condemned-looking.

“Don’t look too glorious now, does it?” Angus said once we were out of our vehicles and picking our way over muddy puddles and patches of gravel in the melting snow. In late summer there had been perennials in the garden, albeit overgrown, and in the glow of the sun it had seemed a whole lot better.

“Careful, Daisy.” Angus reached out a hand as I stepped onto the porch and almost lost my balance when one of the rotted boards sank beneath my feet. Some of the gutters were missing, and long treacherous icicles hung off the sides of the house. I spotted some shingles lying on the ground from the recent storms. If someone didn’t do something soon, the roof would leak and the cost of restoration would zoom to astronomical.

I peered through a gap where one of the slats had been ripped away from the boarded-up kitchen window. The room was a mess, with a table overturned, beer bottles on the ground, trash everywhere. Kids must have been in here at some point, just like Althea said. Or had there been a struggle? It was tough to tell.

There was still quite a bit of furniture in the house from what I could see. My heart raced as I spotted some earthenware jars in the corner.

“Wonder why the farmer left all this stuff here?” I whispered to Angus, who was looking over my shoulder.

He shrugged. “Shame to see those jars broken by vandals or squatters. They’re probably worth a couple of hundred bucks each.”

“The sooner we sort this out, the better. I can’t bear to think of this place being bulldozed.” If houses could speak, this one was crying out for help. Even in the terrible shape it was in, it still had way more character and beauty than Cassell’s boring boxes.

Above us the sky was streaked with deep purple and violent pink, almost Technicolor. A vivid contrast against the white of the farmhouse and the snowy fields. It would make a great watercolor painting, except it wouldn’t look real.

The main house was closed up, but there also were plenty of outbuildings where the shoot could have taken place. As Angus and I were walking over to the barn, with its bird coop built into the top, I suddenly spotted an unopened pack of Benson & Hedges cigarettes on the ground. Cyril, a former smoker, always carried one as a security blanket. He used to say if he knew he had them, but chose not to smoke, the urge went away. He’d had them for so long that if he ever did succumb to the urge, his head would probably explode.

My heart was racing as I traced my fingers over the battered gold foil box.

I wasn’t a particularly mystical person, but I didn’t get the sense that Cyril was dead. If he was, I thought I should feel an ache in my heart, but I couldn’t, especially not in this run-down atmosphere where he would have felt so at home.

“Oh, Cyril,” I whispered, “where the heck are you?”

*   *   *

T
hat night I came home to find Martha in my kitchen with a large cosmopolitan in her hand and a distressed look on her face. Joe was chatting with her as he busied himself at the stove.

“I heard what happened on the house hunt, Daisy.” He gave me a meaningful look. “I figured Martha would like to hear the story directly from you, so I invited her for dinner.”

My kind, thoughtful husband knew that news about the murder would have reached her already and she’d be panic-stricken for Cyril’s safety. The Millbury village grapevine was faster than any ultrahigh-speed fiber-optic network.

I smiled at him. “Thank you, Joe.”

“Daisy!” Martha got up and flung herself into my arms, and I braced my legs so we both didn’t topple over backward. “I hope you don’t mind that I accepted your dear husband’s invitation, but I am simply
beside
myself with worry.”

“I’m so glad you’re here.” I kissed her soft cheek and urged her to sit down at the butcher block table. Jasper slid in between us and rested his head on her knee.

“You need to tell me exactly what went on today,” she said. “
Everything.
Don’t you dare leave anything out.”

Joe poured me a glass of cabernet and I told them the story from beginning to end, including every tiny detail I could remember.

Martha seemed to relax a little as I spoke, as if the information gave her some sense of control. “Do the police think that Roos was attacked at the house? Or earlier in the day?”

I shook my head. “They don’t really know anything yet.”

“You know, if Cyril needs his space, as
everyone
keeps telling me, why isn’t he calling after all this happened? So I don’t worry?”

She was twisting the long chains around her neck into a tangled mess. I took her hands gently away and set them in her lap before a million beads burst all over the kitchen floor.

I was worried about Cyril, too, but I tried to hide my anxiety for Martha’s sake. I didn’t tell her about finding the cigarettes on the farm. Perhaps it was kinder for her to think he was safely out of the picture, blowing off steam in some dive bar somewhere.

When I got to the part about the disgruntled homeowners complaining about the quality of their Cassell-built homes, she sniffed.

“Well, the only thing
well-built
about that man is himself. His houses are a rip-off. I can tell you about so many people who have had problems. Even with a brand-new place. Take Terri Jones, for instance. Mold throughout, and so bad that her poor child has terrible asthma now.”

I sipped my wine thoughtfully. “You know, I could see if it was Beau Cassell who had been murdered instead of Alex. There must be a thousand people who bear him a grudge.”

At that moment, Joe came to the table with a steaming casserole dish. I breathed in the aroma of pot roast as he ladled out three generous portions. Jasper took great, gulping sniffs of the air.

Conversation ceased as I dug in, savoring the succulent meat and trying not to moan at how spectacular it was. “Joe, this is
so
good.” Pot roast was one of Joe’s signature dishes anyway, but he’d really outdone himself tonight.

He smiled at me, but then a shadow crossed his face as he glanced at our other dinner partner. “Don’t you like it, Martha?”

She sighed, a long breathy sound that could have given Marilyn Monroe a run for her money. “Oh, it’s wonderful, you darling man. It’s just that my stomach is
completely
and
utterly
in knots.”

I looked up guiltily from where I had been shoveling in the delicious meat, potatoes, and carrots as fast as I could go. The aftermath of the adrenaline surge from the discovery of a dead body, plus the fact that I’d missed lunch, had left me famished.