Plaster and Poison (9 page)

Brandon arrived first, and he and Wayne disappeared across the grass and into the carriage house. Derek went with them, to have a second, closer look at the body and see if he could narrow down the time of death or see anything that would settle the question of natural versus unnatural death one way or the other. Wayne would get a second opinion from the medical examiner in Portland, of course, who would be doing the autopsy. But he often took Derek’s word for things when Derek was on hand. In a small town like Waterfield, procedures are often pretty relaxed, I’ve noticed.
Kate and I sat down at the kitchen table to wait, silently nursing cups of hot, strong tea. She was probably thinking about Gerard and about how she would break the news of his death to Shannon. I wondered what Shannon’s reaction would be. It would depend a lot on how well she knew him, I thought; whether she’d become attached to him during the short time he’d been here, or whether they were still getting to know each other and she had reservations.
“My dad died when I was thirteen,” I said, addressing the table. Kate looked up but didn’t speak. “He was only thirty-eight. It was an accident. Drunk driver. Kind of like Carolyn Tate. Wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I’m sorry,” Kate said.
I shrugged. “They caught the people who did it and sent them to prison. Not that that made it any easier at the time. I still miss him sometimes, even though it’s almost twenty years ago now. Mom missed him, too, for years. Until she met Noel.”
“I’m sure she still misses him,” Kate said. “There’s nothing wrong with still loving a dead husband even though there’s a new love in her life.”
“I guess.”
We sat in silence a little longer. This time, Kate was the one who broke it.
“I’ve spent almost twenty years hating Gerard’s guts. For seducing me. For not taking responsibility when I got pregnant. For not helping me provide for Shannon.”
I nodded.
“But even so, there was a small part of me, somewhere, that still had a soft spot for him. That remembered what it was like, being eighteen and in love. Before it all blew up in my face.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She nodded, and when she looked up, I wasn’t surprised to see that her eyes were wet. “I may not have been happy to find out that he was here, cozying up to my daughter without letting me know about it, but I didn’t want him dead.”
“Of course you didn’t,” I said.
“I may have felt like I did, yesterday. But I didn’t wish him any harm. Not really.”
“Of course not.”
The sound of a car pulling up outside and stopping in the driveway with a screech of brakes, saved me from having to think up something more to say. I wanted to believe her, really I did, but there was a part of me—a small, treacherous part—that wondered if I could. The expression on her face yesterday, when she realized who Shannon had been spending time with, had been murderous. And I liked Kate, but how well did I know her, really? Well enough to believe she wasn’t capable of murder, I supposed, but perhaps not well enough to know, bone deep, that she hadn’t killed her ex-boyfriend.
Outside, a car door slammed, and rapid footsteps pounded around the corner. The kitchen door flew open.
“Mom!”
Shannon burst in, hair flying, her face pale and her eyes frightened. I could hear the car engine turn off, and then a set of more measured steps came around the corner and through the open door. Meanwhile, Shannon threw herself at Kate. “Mom! What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
“I’ll go get Wayne,” I said, getting up.
“I’ll do it,” Josh offered. He was standing in the door, hands in the pockets of his puffy, blue jacket, a long, striped scarf wound around his neck.
“That’s OK,” I said. “I’d better.” I ducked past him and out before he could ask me why.
When I got back to the kitchen, with Derek and Wayne in tow, Josh had taken his jacket off and gotten himself a cup of tea, which he was sipping from his vantage point by the counter. Shannon had also taken off her coat and had hung it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. It was clear from the way she was fussing over Kate that she thought whatever was wrong had to do with her mother. Seeing Kate crying probably hadn’t helped to alleviate her fears. When Wayne came through the door, she turned to him, dark eyes flashing.
“What did you do to her?”
Wayne rolled his eyes. “I didn’t do anything to her. I love your mother.”
Kate smiled at him wetly.
“So why is she upset?” Shannon demanded. She straightened, hands on her hips, and tossed her hair back over her shoulder. Josh’s eyes turned glassy behind the round frames.
“Have a seat.” Wayne waved her to a chair. “We have some bad news.”
“What kind of news? Did someone break into the carriage house last night? Is that why Brandon is here?”
She sank down on the chair next to her mother and scooted it a little closer.
“In a manner of speaking,” Wayne said. “Yes, someone broke in. And died.”
“Oh, no! Who?” She looked around, taking account that none of us were missing.
Kate fumbled for her hand. “Honey, it was your father. Gerard. He’s dead.”
For a second, Shannon’s face was blank, absolutely void of expression. Then—“Daddy?” she asked, her voice cracking. “How?”
Josh swallowed, and I could see his jaw clench and his hand tighten around the mug he was holding until his knuckles showed white.
“It’s too soon to know for sure,” Wayne said, watching her, “but we believe, on preliminary evidence, that he was poisoned and asphyxiated.”
“Oh, my God!” For a second she looked like she might faint. Josh made a movement in her direction, then stopped himself. Hot tea splashed out of the mug and onto his hand, and he turned to the sink, swearing under his breath. The sound of cold water running accompanied Wayne’s next statement.
“I have to ask you some questions.”
“Sure,” Shannon whispered.
She had first heard from her dad a few months ago, she explained. He had contacted her on her Barnham College e-mail account and said he wanted to get to know her.
“That’s when he heard about the money,” Kate muttered. “Probate was complete in September.”
Shannon glanced at her but addressed Wayne. “We went back and forth a couple of times, by e-mail and phone, and then he told me he was coming up to Maine for a while.”
“Why?” Wayne had pulled out his notebook and pencil and was taking notes.
Shannon shrugged. “Just to see me. He’s been here for a few weeks.”
“Staying where?”
“Not sure,” Shannon said, biting her lip. “He had the car, so he always picked me up. We never went to his place.”
Wayne made a note, presumably to find out where Gerard had been staying. “Was this the first time he’d been in Waterfield?”
“No idea. If he’d been here before, he didn’t try to contact me then.”
“Of course not,” Kate muttered. “You weren’t a rich heiress until this autumn. There was nothing in it for him until then. He always was good at keeping an eye out for Number One.”
Wayne looked at her but didn’t comment. Instead, he glanced around the table, taking in Derek and me on the way past. “Can any of you think of any reason why he’d be in the carriage house last night? Did you arrange to meet him, Shannon?”
Shannon shook her head. “He always picked me up at Barnham. And I wasn’t planning to be here last night. I had studying to do. Midterms. With Paige. He and I were going to get together for dinner on Friday.”
A moment passed, and then we could see the realization hit her that there would be no more dinners with her dad, Friday or anytime.
“Did he ever ask you about it?” Wayne asked gently. “The carriage house? What was going on there? Whether anyone lived in it? Anything like that?”
Shannon shook her head. “He mostly talked about him and Mom, when they were young. And me, when I was a baby. About how he always wished they’d been able to work things out between them, but they were just too young when they met. Although to hear him tell it, Mom was the love of his life.” She avoided looking at Kate as well as Wayne when she said it.
“Love, my left buttock,” Kate spat.
Shannon’s pretty face crumpled, her lips quivering, and her mother reached out to her, voice softening. “Honey, I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset you any more than the news has already. But the truth is that when I met your dad, I was eighteen and stupid. He was twenty and slick. I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me back. He said he did. But when I got pregnant with you and turned to him for help, he left me to handle it all on my own. So don’t talk to me about the love of Gerard’s life. If he has one, it’s Gerard himself.”
“He loved
me
,” Shannon whispered.
Kate looked like she wished she could kick herself. Hard. “Of course he did, honey. I didn’t mean that he didn’t love
you
.” She looked up at Wayne, helplessly, as Shannon dissolved into tears. Josh twitched.
It was at this pivotal moment that we heard the sound of another car pulling into the driveway outside. Two doors slammed and two sets of footsteps made their way through the slush and snow to the back door. A light knock heralded the arrival of a small figure in a royal blue coat, who looked around the kitchen for a second until her pair of blue eyes lighted on me.
“Avery!”
My mom had arrived.

8

The group broke up after that. Josh escorted Shannon into her room down the hall, where we could hear their voices through the wall, murmuring low. They were best friends in addition to the small matter of him being in love with her, so he might help her more at the moment than even her mother, especially given Kate’s conflicted feelings about Gerard.
Kate introduced Wayne to my mom and Noel—as her fiancé, who just happened to be the chief of police, but with no mention of the fact that a suspicious death had taken place on the premises overnight and that was why he was here. After making the appropriate noises, Wayne excused himself. Kate took Mom and me upstairs to the suite while Derek and Noel trotted back outside to unload the car.
The rooms in Kate’s B&B are named for the members of the Cabot family. None of the Cabots ever lived in the house, except for Anna Virginia, after she married Lawrence Ritter and ceased to be a Cabot. But as Kate once explained to me, the Cabots were a Waterfield institution and it seemed the appropriate thing to do. There is Captain Cabot’s room; John Cabot was a sea captain back in the day, and so was his father. There is Mrs. Mary’s room, Anna Virginia’s room, and John Andrew’s room, and then there’s the Widow’s Walk: the suite taking up the entire third floor. That’s where Mom and Noel would be staying.
Back in the day, the suite had been the smallest of the three apartments in Helen Ritter’s house. Back then, it had consisted of a kitchen, a living room/bedroom, and a tiny bath. Now, most of the walls had been removed, and except for the bathroom—which was the old kitchen—the suite was one big room, with windows on three sides. Because the B&B sits up high, it’s possible to see not only most of Waterfield Village from the windows, but also the harbor and the ocean. The view is better in the summer, when the trees are green and the sun shines on the water, but it was still pretty impressive now, in spite of being monochromatically white and gray. The furniture is Victorian and dark, the king-sized bed has corner posts and a canopy, and there’s a sitting area with a TV off to one side, as well as a smallish dormer with a desk and chair. That’s where the old bathroom used to be. And of course the new bathroom is sublime, with green glass tiles, a double shower, and a jetted whirlpool tub. Everything the honeymooning couple could wish for.
“Oh!” Mom said, looking around, “this is wonderful!”
Kate smiled. It looked strained, but it was a smile.
“Derek did most of the work,” I said. It wasn’t my intention to denigrate Kate’s contribution, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to sing Derek’s praises to my mom.
“Really?” Mom glanced at Kate, who nodded. “Handsome
and
talented. He does beautiful work.”
She looked around appreciatively. Kate looked at me, her eyebrows signaling
You owe me one.
I turned my back to her to address my mother. “I told you he was cute, didn’t I?”
“Gag me,” Kate muttered behind my back.
Mom giggled. “Yes, Avery, you did. And you were right. He’s definitely cute. And good with his hands.”
She winked. Kate rolled her eyes. I blushed.
Luckily I was saved from having to comment by the arrival of the man himself, carrying two suitcases and a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Behind him came Noel, carrying the other two suitcases. Obviously my mom had packed for every contingency.
Mom’s new husband is nothing like what you might expect, considering that he swept her so thoroughly off her feet. I know I was surprised the first time I met him.
My dad was tall, blond, and good-looking: a somewhat similar physical type to Derek. When Mom told me she had met a new man, I figured he’d look kind of like dad did. Maybe not tall and blond exactly, but tallish, handsome, well-dressed . . . all the things I associated with my father, and as a result, with what my mother liked. In addition to that, since I knew Noel was some kind of big shot in television, I pictured someone sort of like George Hamilton: a California high roller, tanned and trim, with blinding white teeth and a face lift.
Noel is short for a man, a mere five feet six or so, and portly. He has no hair left, and his scalp looks like he buffs it with a towel every morning. What hair he used to have seems to have migrated to his eyebrows, which are thick and bushy and snow white. His face looks lived in, with wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and lines bracketing his mouth—from smiling rather than frowning—and although he has his own teeth, and they’re perfectly serviceable, they don’t cause snow blindness when he smiles.
He was smiling now. “Hello, Avery!”
“Hi, Noel,” I smiled back. I’d seen him downstairs, but we hadn’t had the opportunity to really greet one another properly. Now I wandered over and pecked him on the cheek, leaving Kate to referee the first meeting between Mom and Derek. Short as my stepfather is, I still had to go up on my toes. “How was the drive?”
“Oh, no problem.” He put the suitcases down and shrugged his chubby shoulders. Or maybe he was just circulating them after carrying my mother’s bags up two flights of stairs. “The roads were slick, and we took it slow to get a good look around. Your mother hasn’t been up to this part of the country for years, and I’ve never spent much time in rural New England. It looks very different from California.”
“I bet. I’ve never spent much time in California, just that one time I came out for the wedding last year, but I remember thinking it looked like a different world.”
“We should get you out there again sometime,” Noel said. “You know you’re always welcome, Avery. We have plenty of room. And I know Rosie has missed seeing you.”
My mother’s name is Rosemary. The first time I heard Noel call her Rosie, it was a bit of a fazer, but I’ve gotten used to it. She doesn’t seem to mind, and as long as she doesn’t, I guess I can’t.
“That’d be nice,” I said, with a quick sideways glance at Derek. Just how hard would it be to pry him away from Waterfield for a week or two? Would he want to visit California?
Noel followed my gaze to where Derek was dimpling at my mother. He lowered his voice. “Any wedding bells on the horizon for you two?”
“Lord!” I had to take a breath. “We’ve only known each other for six months. And he’s been burned once before.”
“Sugar,” Noel said, patting my arm, “I’ve been burned before, too, more than once. That doesn’t mean it can’t work out next time.” He looked over at my mom, beaming.
“I’m sure,” I said.
I wasn’t lamenting the fact that Derek hadn’t proposed. I’m not one of those women who have to be married to feel validated. We had only known one another a short time, and although I don’t have a failed marriage in my past, I’ve thought I was in love before, and learned the hard way that I wasn’t. Usually when they dumped me, or I realized they weren’t what I thought they were.
I didn’t expect that to happen with Derek. I was pretty sure I had discovered all his bad qualities by now, and I wasn’t afraid that he’d cheat on me, either. He’s just not the type. People do fall out of love, though, and to be honest, I was a little concerned about Melissa. He’d once told me that she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, and if she ever broke up with my cousin Ray and decided she’d like to have Derek back—and who wouldn’t?—could I trust that he wouldn’t agree to forgive and forget, and give her another chance?
“You want I should tell him?” Noel was looking at Derek. Rather speculatively, I thought.
I shook my head. “Please don’t. I don’t want him to think I’m fishing.”
“I wouldn’t be obvious,” Noel said. “I’d just hint gently—as a stand-in for your father, you know—that I’d like to know what his intentions are.”
I shuddered. “No, thanks. That won’t be necessary. If he has intentions, I’m sure he’ll get around to telling me. Without any prodding.”
“Suit yourself,” Noel said with a shrug. “He seems like a nice young man. You could do worse.”
“A whole lot worse,” I agreed.
By now, Derek and Mom had finished their little talk, and they joined us, while Kate excused herself and went back downstairs. I felt bad that I couldn’t stay here to help her, after the shock she’d had, but I knew it would probably help in itself if I got Mom and Noel out of the B&B for a couple hours. No reason for us to sit around waiting for the van from the medical examiner’s office to arrive and the body to be removed, after all. I knew I couldn’t keep the murder from Mom and Noel indefinitely, or even for very long, but if I removed them for now, at the very least, they might be able to avoid a personal encounter with the late Gerard.
Derek must have done his usual stellar job of charming, because Mom was clutching his arm and beaming up at him. “Derek knows just the place to take the car,” she told Noel. “He has a friend who owns a body shop. If we go now, we can probably have everything taken care of by the end of the day.”
I looked from one to the other of them. “Is something wrong with the rental car? Why don’t you just call the rental company and ask for a new car?”
For a second nobody spoke. Then Noel said, “It’s not that simple.”
Mom nodded. “We had a little accident on the way here.”
I felt myself turn pale. “An accident? You didn’t say anything about an accident. What happened? Are you OK? You’re not hurt, are you?”
“We’re fine, darling.” She transferred her grip from Derek’s arm to mine, with a comforting smile. “Nothing to worry about. We got a little too close to the side of the road at one point, and . . . um . . . a branch took some of the paint off the side of the car.”
“Won’t the insurance take care of it?”
Another beat passed, then . . . “It’s not that simple,” Noel said again.
“What isn’t?”
I looked at them. They looked at one another.
“I have a condition called . . . um . . . white-coat hypertension,” Noel explained after a moment, a little embarrassedly. He wasn’t looking at me, but down at his shoes, and his cheeks were flushed. I glanced up at Derek. The corners of his mouth were compressed, but he didn’t object, so white coat hypertension must be a real condition, even if it sounded like a joke. “The medicine can cause dizziness and drowsiness, and if the condition isn’t treated, I can start having strokes and heart attacks. It can even cause blindness.”
“Wow.” I looked at Derek again, for confirmation. He nodded. I turned back to Noel. “Sounds serious.”
“Oh, it is,” Noel nodded, oozing sincerity. “Terribly. And if I start having accidents, and start filing too many claims, our car insurance company may notify the California DMV, and then they’ll take away my driver’s license.”
“And that would be bad?”
Must be a guy thing. If I could get away with never having to drive again, I’d be thrilled, but men’s masculinity seems to be tied up in their cars. Just look at Derek and his truck, and Gerard and his sleek, gray Lexus, not to mention Brandon Thomas and his patrol car, with the flashing blue lights and the siren.
“It would be horrible,” Mom said loyally, hooking her hand through Noel’s arm and fixing me with big, sincere eyes. They’re a pale, slightly chlorinated-looking blue, like mine. “It’s impossible to get around in California without a car. And this had nothing to do with Noel’s . . . um”—her eyes flickered—“condition. Another car drifted over the median and forced us out on the curb.”
“So we decided it would be simpler and easier just to take care of the damage ourselves,” Noel said. “It’ll be done in a couple of hours, and it’ll be well worth the money. No one need know it ever happened.” He smiled contentedly.
“That’s fine with me,” I said with a shrug. “Whatever you want. Are we going to Cortino’s, then?”
Derek nodded. “I’ll call Jill, make sure Peter can get it done today. But as slow as business is this time of year, I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”
“Even if they were stacked, Jill would fit you in. Old girlfriend,” I added, for Mom and Noel’s benefit.
“High school prom date,” Derek corrected.
“Whatever. You ready, Mom?”
Mom was ready, and together we descended the two flights of stairs to the main floor. Kate was in the kitchen, cleaning up. Keeping her hands busy while her mind spun like a top, no doubt. I could see the stress lines around her eyes when she turned and smiled. “You heading out?”
“We’re going to Cortino’s,” I explained, taking note of the look of relief in her eyes when she heard her boarders would be making themselves scarce for a while. “And then we’ll go to lunch. And probably take a look at Waterfield. See how much it’s changed since the last time Mom was here. And you’ll want to see Aunt Inga’s house, right, Mom?”
“Of course,” my mother said. “We’ll get it all done, Avery. No worries.”
Derek smiled and put an arm around my shoulders. I was probably babbling.
The car Mom and Noel had driven up in was a Beetle. It looked like the one I’d rented to drive up to Waterfield the first time I came, except this one was spring green and mine had been baby blue. I walked around it.
“Where’s the scratch?”
“Here,” Noel said and put his finger on the side panel.
I squinted. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s there. You just have to look at it from the right angle.”
I adjusted my angle, but I still couldn’t see anything.
“You don’t need glasses, do you, Avery?” Mom asked, sounding worried. Derek chuckled.
“Of course not.” I flushed. “Fine. Let’s go, then, if you’re sure you want to spend money getting rid of this nonexistent scratch you say you made on the car.”
“We’ll follow you,” Noel said, “since you know where you’re going.” He opened the passenger door of the Beetle for my mom, who got in.
“C’mon, Avery.” Derek guided me over to the truck and handed me up into the passenger seat.
“Did you see a scratch?” I asked when he was sitting beside me and was backing the truck out of the driveway and into the street.
He glanced over. “Not much of one, no. But it’s your stepfather’s car. And your stepfather’s money. And if he wants to have Peter run a buffer over a scratch he says he sees, and he can afford it, and Peter and Jill can use the work, then I don’t see any reason to dissuade him. Do you?”
“When you put it like that,” I admitted, “I guess I don’t.”
He smiled. “You don’t have to try so hard, Avery. Your mom and I will find our way on our own. And your stepdad and I, too. It’ll all work out.”
He reached over to tuck my hair behind my ear before putting the truck in gear and rolling slowly down the street. Behind us, Noel maneuvered the Beetle into position and followed.