Plaster and Poison (20 page)

“Home?” I said when we were pulling out of the parking lot and onto the road back to Waterfield.
Mom hesitated. “Don’t the Stenhams live out this way?”
“I really have no idea.” I have endeavored not to know anything I don’t have to know about that side of my family. “Ray and Melissa live in a McMansion on the other side of town. Derek pointed it out to me once. I’m not sure about Randy or Mary Elizabeth.”
“I was talking about Mary Elizabeth,” Mom said. “I don’t know where Randy lives, either. But although it’s been a while, I’m pretty sure Mary Elizabeth’s house is out this way. At least if she lives in what used to be Aunt Catherine’s house. I just want to see if my memory is as good as I think it is. Take a left over here.” She pointed.
I took the left, away from the main road between Waterfield and Portland, and pretty soon we found ourselves navigating a neighborhood of older homes on huge lots. Not old like Waterfield Village, with its Victorian and even Colonial homes: This was a neighborhood built in the 1920s and ’30s, full of Craftsman bungalows and reproduction Tudors, with the occasional pseudo-Greek Revival thrown in for good measure.
“There.” Mom pointed. “That Colonial Revival right there. Stuccoed brick, two and a half stories, with the pediment over the door.”
I stared at the house she indicated. “It’s enormous!”
“The Stenhams are well off,” Mom said. “And so were Aunt Catherine and Uncle Hamish.”
I nodded. I knew a little bit about the ways in which Hamish Kendall and his wife had made money, and I also knew about Ray and Randy’s work ethics, or lack thereof. I wasn’t surprised to hear that they were doing well financially. “Are we stopping?”
“We may as well,” Mom said. “We’re here.”
I pulled the truck into the driveway—the football-field-length driveway—even as I said, “What about Aunt Mary Elizabeth’s delicate health? And her nap? You said you’d call first.”
“It’s not going to hurt her to make nice for thirty minutes,” Mom said callously. “And there’s nothing wrong with her health, other than that her husband and those little boys of hers ran roughshod over her for years. It’d be enough to make anyone delicate.”
“I’m not sure a husband and two boys, even if they were Ray and Randy Stenham, would be enough to make
you
delicate,” I pointed out, with a smile. For all her small size and sweet disposition, my mother doesn’t let herself be pushed around; she pushes back.
She smiled back at me. “Fine. It’d be enough to make anyone, even me, wish for some peace and quiet. That’s all she’s doing. Making sure her life is nice and quiet and orderly.” She twisted the old-fashioned brass doorbell fastened to the middle of the front door. Inside the house, a bell rang faintly.
“Do you think she’ll come?” I asked after a minute, when no one had answered.
Mom nodded. “When she realizes we’re not going away, she’ll open the door. She’s standing inside listening to us.” She raised her voice. “Mary Elizabeth? It’s Rosemary. Your cousin. And Avery.”
Silence.
“Are you sure she’s there?” I whispered, just in case she was there and could hear me.
“She’s there.” She knocked on the door. “C’mon, Mary Elizabeth. I just want to say hello. Open up.”
Another silence followed. Just when I was about to give up and suggest we leave, we heard the security chain rattle and the locks tumble. Mary Elizabeth pulled the door open and looked out at us. I fell back a step.
It was the first time I’d laid eyes on my aunt. She obviously didn’t go out much, so I’d never run across her by accident, and as I said, I’d never sought her out, either. I had expected her to look something like the twins, sturdy and dark, with curly hair and big teeth. She didn’t. Instead she looked a lot like I imagine Aunt Inga must have looked at this age, early sixties. She was tall, taller than me or Mom by several inches, and so pale as to be almost colorless. Her white blond hair (whether blond by nature or nurture I wasn’t entirely sure) was immaculately styled. Her skin was paper thin and almost transparent. She was dressed in an icy blue pantsuit, so light in color that it was practically white, and her only concession to makeup was a sweep of pale coral lipstick across her thin lips. Her jewelry was, I hardly need say, a string of pearls. It was like looking at Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen, all the more so because she was clearly not happy to see us.
“Rosemary.” Her lips barely moved when she spoke. “And Avery.” Those pale blue eyes stabbed like icicles.
Mom smiled, her voice warm. “Mary Elizabeth! It’s so good to see you!” She stepped forward, arms outstretched. Mary Elizabeth stepped back. I guess she was trying to avoid the embrace, but the result was that she appeared to be inviting us in. Mom zoomed across the threshold into the house. “Wow.” She looked around. “It must be twenty-five years since I was here. It hasn’t changed a bit.”
I could well believe it. It probably hadn’t changed in the twenty-five before that, either.
The foyer was marble tiled in squares of black and white. The walls were white, the banister on the stairs was white (although the stairs themselves were covered with a runner), and the console table standing against the wall was white. There was a vase of flowers on it. White, of course. The green leaves were a nice touch of color.
“This isn’t a good time,” Mary Elizabeth said, with a glance over her shoulder. From the depths of the house, upstairs somewhere, we could hear a sort of thumping and a squeaking or whining noise.
“What’s that?” I asked, curiously.
“The dogs.” Mary Elizabeth looked at me.
“You have dogs?” I wouldn’t have thought she’d have risked upsetting her pristine house with something she couldn’t control. “What kind? ”
“Poodles,” Mary Elizabeth said, without moving her lips.
White ones, no doubt. “Cool. I have cats. Aunt Inga’s cats.”
“You remember, Mary Elizabeth,” Mom added helpfully, “the cats that Raymond and Randall shaved when they were younger.”
Mary Elizabeth nodded, lips tight.
“They seem to be doing well,” Mom said. “Your boys. We saw Randall at the lumber yard earlier. He said the development at Devon Highlands is selling well and that the company just procured another property for development.”
Mary Elizabeth nodded, her lips relaxing for the first time. Not much, but enough to allow her to speak without having to squeeze the words out. “They’re good boys. Smart and knowledgeable. Not afraid of hard work. Like their grandfather.”
“Their grandfather?” I repeated. “Hamish Kendall?” He who had married my Aunt Catherine after Aunt Inga threw him over after realizing he was not only a thief and a murderer, but a coward?
“Burton Stenham. My father-in-law. He founded the company.”
“Right. My bad. You know, I came across a picture of one of the Stenhams in the newspaper archives recently. From 1918, the crew that built Kate McGillicutty’s carriage house. One of them was a Stenham.”
Mary Elizabeth nodded. “My grandfather-in-law, no doubt. His name was Calvin.”
Another barrage of thumping came down the stairs, and Mary Elizabeth threw another glance over her shoulder. “Excuse me. I really should take care of this. Perhaps we could arrange to get together another time?” She herded us toward the door.
“I’m staying at the Waterfield Inn,” Mom said, as she found herself ushered out. “You can call me there.”
“I’ll do that.” Mary Elizabeth closed the door behind us. We heard the locks snick and the security chain rattle before we were even off the top step.
“Weird,” I said.
Mom nodded. “She always was odd. I’m surprised she has dogs. There never used to be pets in the house.”
“She had Ray and Randy,” I reminded her. “They were animals in their own right.”
“True. And with their track record, it’s probably just as well. They would have shaved the poor things, just like they did Aunt Inga’s Prissy.”
I glanced at the house over my shoulder. “The poodles were causing quite a ruckus, weren’t they? Must be king poodles, the big ones, to make so much noise. I’m surprised they weren’t barking.”
“She probably had their tongues cut out,” Mom said callously.
I closed the truck door behind me and cranked the engine over. “Anywhere else you want to go? Or just back to the B&B?”
“I guess I’ve left Noel alone for long enough. I’m going to make him some homemade chicken soup tonight and spend some time nursing him back to health. And you need to drop off the shutters, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Let me just call and ask Derek whether he wants me to bring him food or whether Jill fed him.”
“You do that,” Mom said, leaning back against the seat and looking out. “I’m going to enjoy the view, meanwhile.”

18

Jill had fed Derek, so I drove straight to the B&B, where I requested Kate’s help with unloading the shutters, since she was younger and stronger than my mom.
“Where’s Derek?” Kate wanted to know, breathlessly, as we hauled big slabs of wood.
“He’s still with Jill Cortino.” I glanced over my shoulder to make sure I didn’t trip over the threshold on my way in, backward. “I guess she’s pretty upset about what happened this morning.”
“I would be, too, if I suddenly found out that my husband was a felon.” After a second she added, “Of course, my ex
was
a felon. I’ve just known about it for a while.”
Jill had known about it for a while, too, if it came to that. It was the police taking her husband away that had upset her. “Did his time in prison have anything to do with why he was killed, do you think? Someone from his past caught up with him?”
“Can’t imagine who,” Kate said. “I mean, he served his time. More likely he was up to his old tricks, trying to extort money from someone new, and they weren’t having it.”
I nodded. Made sense.
Kate and I ended up in the kitchen after the shutters were safely leaned up against the wall inside the carriage house. “Have you eaten?” she asked, hanging her coat back on the hook by the door.
I shook my head. “Too much going on today. I haven’t had time.”
She got up and went to the refrigerator. “Ham and cheese? Turkey? Salami?”
“Whatever is convenient. Thank you. By the way, I ran into Paige Thompson and Ricky.”
“Paige and Ricky?” Kate repeated.
I nodded. “I asked her about Emily. She says she never heard of her, but she’s going to ask her dad. Meanwhile, Ricky said he’d seen Gerard come out of a real estate development north of town. One that has Melissa’s picture on a billboard. I’m thinking it’s Clovercroft.”
“Most likely,” Kate agreed, setting a sandwich down in front of me. It was beautiful, with a frilly edge of lettuce peeping out on one side of the crusty bread. I admired it for a second before I lifted it and took a bite. Roast beef. Yum. “Devon Highlands is on the west side, near Barnham, so it wouldn’t be that. Ricky is probably familiar with it, anyway. And then they’ve got that little cul-de-sac of condos up the ocean road to the east, but that’s not on the north side, either.”
“Exactly. And Peter told us Gerard had asked him questions about Beatrice. That must be where he met her. At the Clovercroft office.”
“What would he be doing at the Clovercroft office?” Kate wanted to know.
I shrugged. “No idea. Got lost and stopped in to ask directions?” I took another bite of sandwich and chewed.
“Wayne stopped by for lunch,” Kate said. “He told me Reece has put in a call to Augusta to have Daphne and Hans come back to Waterfield to sniff around.”
That might sound like a bad pun, but in fact wasn’t. Hans was the cadaver dog that had searched our yard on Becklea in the fall, and Daphne was his handler.
“Sniff around what?” I wanted to know. “The Cortinos’ shop? ”
Kate nodded. “Gerard died somewhere, and it wasn’t in the carriage house. That means he was transported here somehow.”
And Peter had access to a lot of cars. His own as well as the ones in the shop.
“So when will they be here?” I pulled a sliver of lettuce off the sandwich and put it in my mouth.
“Not until tomorrow morning,” Kate said.
“I saw Peter vacuuming out the back of a Stenham Construction vehicle when we got there this morning. If you see Brandon or Reece in what’s left of today, you may want to tell them that.”
“I will. Any news on Beatrice?”
I shook my head. “Hopefully she and Steve are just off somewhere, kissing and making up and promising never to leave one another again.”
“That’d be nice,” Kate nodded. “Although she disappeared the day after Gerard died, do you think there’s a connection? That she had something to do with it, or maybe someone thought she knew something?”
I hadn’t thought about that last one. The first, yes, but not the possibility that someone else might have murdered Gerard, and then snatched Beatrice because she had met him and might know the murderer. “That’s scary.”
Kate agreed. “Here’s a thought. Didn’t you say that Melissa knew Gerard’s name? Maybe he saw her billboard at Clovercroft and drove in to see if they had an apartment for rent? And then he ran across Beatrice in the office. She’s the only person there, right? And maybe Beatrice told him to call Melissa, and he did. And that’s how she knows his name.”
I sat back on my chair. “That’s not a bad idea, actually. It would explain a lot.”
“Maybe we should give Melissa a call,” Kate said.
“Wait a second. I just had another thought. When we were out there the other day—was it only yesterday?—to look for Beatrice, Melissa couldn’t let us into the model home above the office. She said she’d given the key to someone.”
Kate blinked. “You think she gave the key to the model home to Gerard? Why?”
“Could be any number of reasons. She was sleeping with him and wanted somewhere private they could meet. Or he needed a place to live and offered to pay her.”
“That’s true,” Kate said. She was quiet while I finished the rest of my sandwich. Then she said, “Maybe we shouldn’t call Melissa after all. Maybe we should just go out there and have a look around.”
“Break and enter?”
“Extenuating circumstances,” Kate said. She got up and reached for her winter coat again. “Beatrice could be inside, in need of medical attention.”
“Wayne already looked. Although he was looking for Bea and not information about Gerard. Yesterday, we didn’t know there was a connection. Wait for me.” I hurried out the door behind her.