Plaster and Poison (11 page)

“Nice lady,” Mom said after we’d said good-bye to Cora and Beatrice and were on our way up the hill toward the Village.
“Cora? Yeah, she’s great, isn’t she? I’ve been looking forward to introducing the two of you. I figured you’d get along.”
“They invited us for dinner tomorrow night. Of course you and Derek are included.”
I nodded. I had heard Cora extend the invitation and had assumed as much. “I’ll tell him. Although you do realize it’ll be much easier to discuss us if we’re not there, right?”
“Now, why would we be talking about you behind your backs, Avery?” Mom wanted to know and slipped her hand through my arm again. “You’re not sixteen. It isn’t like Noel and I have to approve of your boyfriend before you can go out with him.”
“It helps if you like him, though. Not so I can go out with him”—since we were a ways beyond that by now— “but because it’s just nice when you like my boyfriends. I don’t think you ever have.”
“You’ve dated some real duds,” Mom said calmly. “Starting with that garage band musician in high school and ending with Philippe. Phil. Whatever. Not a decent human being among them.”
“Derek’s a decent human being.”
“He seems to be. And I remember Ben Ellis from when I was growing up; he’s always struck me as a nice guy. And I really like Cora. Although her daughter seemed . . .” Mom thought for a second before she said, judiciously, “Troubled.”
I nodded. I had noticed the same thing. Gerard’s death seemed to have upset her, for some reason. Maybe she was thinking of Steve and realizing that anything could happen to him in her absence. “She just left her husband. He’s always working and never home, so she figured if she was going to be alone anyway, she might as well be alone by herself. Or with her family around her.”
Mom nodded. “It’s a good thing, living in a time and place where a woman can leave her husband without legal or moral repercussions.”
I had honestly never thought about it. Being able to leave a dysfunctional relationship seems like it ought to be a right. It’s a sad thing when marriages break up, but sometimes, it’s the only choice. But Mom had a point: In other parts of the world, it was a right many women didn’t have. Even in our part of the world, women hadn’t always had it. As recently as a hundred years ago, women didn’t have the right to vote in elections. And as Miss Barnes and Derek had told me, up until World War I, the navy hadn’t been willing to accept women in its ranks. As soon as the war was over, it kicked back out the ones whom it had relied on.
And even now, there were women who wanted to leave their husbands and couldn’t for fear of repercussions. I had a feeling Cora knew all about that. So did Bea, having grown up with an abusive father.
“Looking on the bright side,” I said, “at least it doesn’t sound as if Steve is the possessive sort. I don’t think he’ll be showing up in Waterfield with a shotgun.”
“Be grateful for small favors,” Mom said. “There have been too many murders in this quiet little town already.”

10

The Waymouth Tavern is located a few miles outside town, overlooking the ocean and the small islands that dot the Maine coastline. Rowanberry Island, where Derek’s Colonial house is located—the Colonial house that Derek wants to renovate—is one of them, and we pointed it out to Mom and Noel over dinner. Noel had the lobster, of course; you can’t visit Maine for the first time and not have lobster. Mom had crab cakes, and so did I, to show solidarity and because I like them. And Derek, being Derek, had a burger and fries.
He’s one of those supermetabolic people who’ll never get fat because his body burns calories so fast, and usually, when there’s food in front of him, he focuses on eating it. To the exclusion of anything else, including conversation. At first it bothered me, since I took it to mean that he wasn’t interested in me or what I was talking about. Now I know that it doesn’t mean anything at all, except that he’s hungry. Once he gets some food into him, he’ll pay me attention again. This evening, in an effort to impress Mom and Noel, he was on his best behavior. I even managed to get a couple of words out of him between bites. The rest of the time, Noel, Mom, and I held down the conversation. Mom told Noel how downtown had changed—or not—since she was last in Waterfield, and how we’d met Cora and Beatrice and been invited to supper tomorrow, and how nice Aunt Inga’s house looked and what a marvelous job Derek and I had done on the renovations.
Aunt Inga’s house—my house now—is an 1870s Second Empire Victorian with a square tower, a mansard roof laid in a flower pattern, and tall, thin windows. Derek had painted it a lovely robin’s egg blue, with cornflower and ochre trim, back in August, and just last weekend, he had hung strings of blue Christmas lights along the porch and around the front door for the season. It looked like a fairy-tale cottage.
Mom and I had stopped by for a brief tour before heading back to the B&B this afternoon. She had admired the mosaic backsplash I had painstakingly put together out of the broken china someone had left all over Aunt Inga’s floor, and the original kitchen cabinets that Derek had made me keep and that I had jazzed up with some antique lace panels cut from Aunt Inga’s never-used wedding veil. And of course she had met the cats, Jemmy and Inky, two monstrously large Maine coons that I had inherited along with Aunt Inga’s house back in June. Six months later, we were still tiptoeing around each other, trying to figure out our relationship. Or I was tiptoeing, anyway, while Jemmy and Inky were making it clear that I was there for their convenience, not the other way around.
I didn’t have any pets growing up. The apartment in New York was small for Mom, Dad, and me, as are most apartments in New York; plus, it had a no-pets policy. And I lived in the same apartment until I moved to Waterfield, with just Mom after my dad died; alone after she moved to California. I had friends who had pets, though. Amy had three rabbits, which chewed the electrical cords and tried to bite me if I attempted to pick them up. And Laura Lee, Philippe’s lawyer, had a dog: a small Yorkshire terrier named Muffin who ate better food and had more expensive accessories than I do. Laura carries Muffin around in a monogrammed bag so the dog’s polished toenails never need touch the pavement, and she feeds it gourmet dog food from the Kanine Kafé. Reba was the only one with a cat, and it was a Siamese so ancient it practically creaked when it moved. Mostly, I’d see it in Reba’s lap, being stroked, or curled into a ball on the sofa. So nothing had really prepared me for the responsibility of two fully grown, extremely healthy Maine coon cats who were used to coming and going as they pleased, and who had absolutely no use for a human.
Aunt Inga had bequeathed them to me, though, so I did my best, and we’d forged an uneasy sort of bond where we inhabited the same house—when the cats deigned to come home—and where I made sure their bowls were filled with food and water and that they got their checkups regularly to keep them healthy. Beyond that, we coexisted by pretending the other wasn’t there. Imagine my surprise when they both walked right up to my mother and butted their heads against her legs and—when she bent down—her hands.
“They liked her,” I told Derek at dinner. “They don’t like anyone, but they liked my mom.”
“Of course,” Derek answered smoothly, with a wink across the table. “They have good taste. I like your mom, too.”
I sniffed. “So if they have good taste, and they don’t like me, what does that mean, exactly?”
“Nonsense, Avery,” Mom said, “of course they like you. I’m just new and exciting, that’s all. Or maybe I remind them of Aunt Inga.”
“Hah,” I answered and turned to Noel. “So how did it go at Cortino’s earlier? Was Peter able to help you?”
“Oh, yes.” Noel caught Mom’s eye as he nodded. “Peter was very helpful. It’s all taken care of.”
“Excellent,” Mom said, smiling at her crab cakes.
I looked from Noel to Derek. “Did he say anything about Gerard after we left? Or did Jill?”
Derek shook his head. “Why would he?”
I shrugged. “No reason, I guess. I just thought he looked shocked when he heard the news.”
“We all looked shocked when we heard the news, Avery,” Mom said.
I huffed, exasperated. “I know that. I just thought he looked more shocked than he ought to look, if he didn’t know Gerard.”
“I guess maybe he thought Waterfield would be safer than this,” Derek said. “I think he moved here to get away from Boston and all the crime. And now we’ve had nothing but dead bodies ever since you moved here in June.”
“Thanks ever so,” I began, and then stopped when he caught sight of something—or someone—beyond me. Derek’s eyes turned flat, and he straightened up, as if bracing himself. I turned to look over my shoulder and rolled my eyes. “Oh, great.”
“What?” Mom said.
“Melissa.”
Mom raised an eyebrow.
“Hi, Derek,” a voice purred as a vision in creamy white cashmere and taupe suede stopped beside the table. An elegant hand with long, French-manicure-tipped talons landed on his shoulder. Another reason to dislike her: I’ve never been able to keep my nails long or to keep polish on them. “Hello, Avery,” she added, a good deal less sweetly.
I smiled back, insincerely. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I showed teeth.
Melissa James brings out the worst in me. Not only the worst of my inferiority complexes, but the worst of my behavior, too. I don’t like her. In addition to having been married to Derek for five years, while I’ve known him for only a few months, she’s tall and elegant, with pale hair razor-cut in a sleek wedge, and huge violet blue eyes. Real, of course; not contacts. She’s always dressed to the nines, in designer originals and tasteful—and, above all, genuine—jewelry, while I’m short and bouncy with kinky hair the color of Mello Yello. I gritted my teeth, wishing I wasn’t wearing jeans and a fuzzy turtleneck, and that I was taller and my hair wasn’t so frizzy and that I had bigger boobs and longer legs.
Melissa had already moved on. “And these must be your parents.” She bathed Mom and Noel in the brilliance of her smile. I swear she has more teeth than a crocodile, and they’re impossibly white. “I’m Melissa James.” She took the hand off Derek’s shoulder and offered it to my mother.
“Nice to meet you,” Mom said, with—I was pleased to note—just about as much sincerity as I’d been able to muster. Mom must already be feeling proprietary toward Derek, and Melissa clearly didn’t intimidate her. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Oh?” Melissa glanced at Derek, whose bland expression gave nothing away. Then she turned to Noel and turned the charm up another notch at the same time, until it was almost visibly oozing out of her (invisible) pores. “And you must be Avery’s dad. So nice to meet you!”
“The pleasure is all mine,” Noel said politely.
Melissa beamed at us all. “So you’ve come up to visit Avery. How do you like Waterfield?”
As the most successful Realtor in town, the one whose slogan is “Selling Waterfield one yard at a time,” Melissa obviously feels a proprietary interest in the place. She has bought and sold enough of it, certainly.
“Fine, fine,” Noel said with a glance at Mom.
Mom smiled brightly. “It’s quite different from what it used to be, isn’t it? A few years ago, Waterfield was such a lovely, quaint little place. Before all the building and development, and before all the flatlanders started moving in.” She sighed and shook her head, sadly.
Melissa flushed, I’m happy to say. Not only is she a flatlander and a Southerner—she’s from Maryland or West Virginia or some such place—but she’s also responsible for selling Waterfield properties to many of the other flatlanders, and, through her boyfriend, she’s responsible for quite a lot of the building and development, too.
“So how is my dear cousin Mary Elizabeth?” Mom added. “Avery tells me you’re seeing Randall now.”
“Raymond,” I said.
Mom glanced at me. “Raymond. Of course. My mistake. How are the Stenhams, Ms. James?”
Melissa recovered her poise and told Mom that Aunt Mary Elizabeth was fine, except for her health. Apparently Mary Elizabeth is what used to be called delicate. I’d be delicate, too, if I had brought Ray and Randy into the world. They’d been thoroughly nasty little boys who had tied me to a tree and left me there for hours the summer I was five. And they had not improved with age. I hadn’t even been in Waterfield a week when Randy threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t sign Aunt Inga’s house over to him and Ray and leave town.
For this and other reasons I had endeavored to avoid Aunt Mary Elizabeth during the time I’d been here. I didn’t think I’d know her if I saw her on the street. Mom, on the other hand, had met her many times growing up, while my grandfather was still alive and the family came up to visit. Naturally, Mom might like to see her cousin while she was here. Or if she didn’t precisely want to, she might feel an obligation. She told Melissa that she and Noel were staying at Kate’s B&B, and she would call tomorrow to see if Mary Elizabeth might be interested in getting together.
The mention of Kate’s B&B got Melissa off on another tangent. “I hear you’ve found another body, Avery.” She smiled at me with no warmth whatsoever. “Who was it this time? ”
“If you know about the body, how come you don’t know who it was?” I countered.
Melissa shrugged elegant shoulders under the cashmere. “Tony didn’t know. Just that the police were investigating. Apparently Wayne’s being stingy with the details.”
“In that case,” I said, “I’m not sure I should tell you, either.”
Tony, by the way, is Tony “the Tiger” Micelli, investigative reporter for Portland’s channel eight news. I’d encountered him before, a couple of months ago, after Derek and I found that skeleton in the crawlspace of the house we were renovating on Becklea Drive. The fact that Tony is slick and slimy and calls Melissa “Missy” was enough to turn me against him, although the final nail in his coffin was when he said that he was keeping his fingers crossed for another John Wayne Gacy story, as in the serial killer. The fact that anyone—even an on-air reporter with the IQ of a turnip—would wish such a discovery on anyone was seriously disturbing.
“Be nice, Avery,” Derek said. “Wayne will go out with a statement as soon as he can, I’m sure, Melissa. But in the meantime, I’ll tell you. The deceased was Kate’s ex. Shannon’s father.”
Melissa turned pale under the meticulously laid makeup. “Gerard? How terrible!”
“Did you know him?” I asked.
She turned to me. “Of course not. How would I know him? He wasn’t from Waterfield.”
I shrugged. “You knew his name. And you do seem to hook up with every good-looking man who comes through town sooner or later, so I thought maybe your paths had crossed.”
“Why, thank you, Avery!” She smiled.
“You’re welcome.” I hadn’t meant it as a compliment, but then she knew that.
“Be nice, Tinkerbell,” Derek murmured and put a hand on my back. It was warm and hard through my sweater, and I leaned a little closer to him.
Melissa watched us. “Tinkerbell?” she repeated, an elegant eyebrow arched. “How sweet.” She smiled condescendingly before focusing on Derek. “What was it you used to call me, again?”
“You didn’t really lend yourself to nicknames, Melissa,” Derek said, although there was a little extra color in his cheeks, I thought.
Melissa smiled, as at a private joke. Or a nice memory. “I should get going. I have a client waiting. Nice to meet you both.” She smiled at Mom and Noel, who grimaced back, politely. “Here’s my card. Give me a call sometime. I have some lovely condos just getting ready to go on the market in the new year. Granite counters, stainless steel appliances, ocean view, and a very good price, considering. I’ll be happy to give you a preview, if you’d like.”
“We live in California,” Mom said.
“Oh, of course.” Melissa nodded. “But with your daughter settled here, at least for the time being, I thought you might consider purchasing a place to stay when you come to visit. Kate’s bed and breakfast is lovely—I sold it to her; I should know—but it isn’t like having your own space, is it? And since you’re family, I’m sure Ray and Randy would give you a good deal. Just something to think about.”
She bathed us all in another blindingly white smile before turning on her heel and slithering off, cashmere swinging around her calves.
“I hate that witch,” I muttered as I watched her go.
“That’s not very nice,” Derek answered mildly.
I glanced up at him, still tucked in the crook of his arm. “Can you blame me?”
His eyes were level. “Actually, I can. Melissa and I have been divorced for almost six years. It’s over between us. You have nothing to worry about.”
“It’s not that I’m worried, exactly,” I said. Although worried was exactly what I was, of course. “What
did
you used to call her?”
“Like I said,” Derek said, “she didn’t lend herself to nicknames.”
“I can think of a few.” I straightened up, putting some distance between us.
“I’m sure you can,” Derek said and dropped his arm from around my waist. “But there’s no need.”
“Because you don’t want to hear anything against her?”
“Because you won’t call her anything I haven’t already called her myself. Let it go.” He turned away to the view.
Mom looked from one to the other of us. “If she’d never met the murdered man,” she said, “how
did
she know his name? She never explained that.”
“Kate told her?” Derek suggested, over his shoulder. “They talk sometimes.”
“When Kate can’t avoid it,” I said. “I doubt she’d confide any secrets in Melissa.”
“I don’t know that Gerard’s name would be a secret,” Derek answered. “It’s not like Kate’s ever tried to pretend that Shannon was found under a cabbage leaf.”