Fatal Fixer-Upper (23 page)

18

––'So,' Derek said when we were outside, wandering along one of the gravel paths underneath towering oaks and maples and the bowl of a clear, blue sky, 'Aunt Inga was engaged to Hamish Kendall.'

I nodded, looking right and left as we walked, reading the names on the gravestones along the walkway.

'The same Hamish Kendall who married your aunt Catherine. Mary Elizabeth Kendall's father. Ray and Randy Stenham's grandfather.'

'If you say so.'

'But old Hamish died years ago,' Derek continued, 'so he's definitely not out to get you. He couldn't have killed your aunt, unless he did it from beyond the grave. And neither could his wife. She's been dead even longer.'

'I'm not sure anyone killed my aunt,' I admitted. 'Maybe my imagination is running away with me. She was very old, and they're very steep stairs. If she fell, it's not unlikely that she'd die.'

'That's true.'

'I mean, why would someone want to kill someone who's almost ninety-nine and could go at any moment? It doesn't make sense.'

'Not unless someone was afraid of what she'd tell you when you came to visit,' Derek said.

'But if so, they'd have to have known she was writing to me, and why.'

'She might have asked whoever it was to mail the letter for her,' Derek suggested. 'She couldn't get around very easily anymore, so maybe she gave it to someone else to put in the mailbox.'

'But then that someone could have just kept it instead of mailing it. And she didn't die for another two weeks, anyway. If she had put the right amount of postage on the letter, it would have reached me in a couple of days, and I might have been in Waterfield a week before I actually came. While Aunt Inga was still alive.'

A stab of guilt and grief hit me in the gut. I knew it wasn't my fault, that I'd come as soon as I could, but I felt like I had failed my aunt. She had reached out to me for help, for absolution, for
something
, and I hadn't responded quickly enough. If only the letter had gotten to me sooner, if only I had dropped everything and run right then . . . if . . . if . . . if.

'Tell me again everything that's happened,' Derek said.

'From the beginning. I have a feeling I'm missing something.'

I took a breath, then laid everything—the whole case— out for him as we wandered between the old gravestones with their angels and crosses. The letter from Aunt Inga, the phone call to my mother, the trip to Waterfield, only to discover that Aunt Inga was dead. Mr. Rodgers crawling on the floor, looking for her will . . .

'On the floor?' Derek interjected. 'Why would he think it would be there? The logical place to look for a will would be the desk, wouldn't it?'

I nodded. 'That's what I thought, too. In fact, that's what I told him. And that's where it was.'

'Huh,' Derek said. 'Seems strange.'

'It does, doesn't it? You know, I could make a doozy of a case against Graham Rodgers if I wanted to. He was at the house when we brought the fainting couch down from the attic. He said he didn't know how he could have missed it, remember?'

Derek nodded. 'If the keys were on the desk, he could have taken one while Melissa was performing her big scene. We were all too busy looking at her to notice what anyone else was doing.'

Humph, I thought, although I didn't say it. 'He also had a key to the house while I was in New York, when someone came in and broke all Aunt Inga's china.'

'What?' Derek said.

'Don't you remember? You walked in on me sweeping up, the first day you came to the house.'

'I remember you sweeping, but I didn't realize someone had broken in. Too busy admiring the scenery, I guess.' He grinned.

I remembered that when he came in that morning, I'd been standing bent over, my butt in the air, wiggling to Bruce Springsteen. Hopefully that was the scenery he was referring to, and not Aunt Inga's kitchen. 'What did you think? That I'd had a hissy fit and smashed everything myself?'

Derek didn't answer, but he blushed, and my jaw dropped. 'Oh, you . . . you . . . that's just insulting! I'd never do that! Who do you think I am, your ex-wife?!'

'You do have a bit of a temper,' Derek said. 'You yelled at me, yeah?'

'You scared me! And then you talked down to me. You laughed at me, too.'

'That was before I knew you,' Derek said.

'Well, Graham Rodgers was the one who put the key under the mat for me. He tried to get rid of me before that, too. He offered to have the house cleaned out and put on the market for me, so I wouldn't have to be bothered. I thought it was nice of him, but it could certainly look like he was trying to keep me away. And that night someone rigged the stairs. He showed up the next morning, remember?'

'To make sure Mr. Todd had come by to talk to you about the grass, wasn't it? Why do you think that's sinister?'

'Well, he had his own key. When I didn't answer the door quickly enough, he began to let himself in. If this was a TV show, he'd be the murderer returning to the scene of the crime to make sure I was dead. Or to discover my body, like he . . . Uh-oh!'

'What?'

I grinned. 'I was going to say, like he discovered Aunt Inga's. But they had a standing lunch date every Friday, right?'

'Did they? I thought it was Thursday.'

I wrinkled my brows. 'Why would you think that?'

His voice was patient. 'Because Martin Wentworth went missing on a Wednesday, and Mr. Rodgers found your aunt the next day.'

'On Thursday? Are you sure?'

'Positive. It's just a couple of weeks ago. But I'll call and check with Wayne if you want.' He put his hand on his phone.

I shook my head. 'That's not necessary. I probably just made a mistake.' It's difficult, not to say impossible, to remember every word someone has said, especially when it doesn't seem significant at the time. After all, who could seriously suspect dapper, gentlemanly Mr. Rodgers of anything?

'Shouldn't be too hard to figure out,' Derek opined. 'Either they went somewhere together, or he picked up food somewhere and brought it to her. If it happened on the same day every week, all we have to do is ask around. In a town this small, someone will know their routine.'

He tilted his head. That sun-streaked lock of hair fell into his eyes, and this time—dammit—I lifted my hand to brush it aside. I caught myself, but not fast enough. He chuckled.

'Sounds like a lot of work,' I said, putting both hands behind my back and pretending, without much success, that nothing had happened. 'Wouldn't it be easier just to call and ask him?'

'No, because then he'll know we're on to him.'

'On to what? You don't really think he's done anything, do you?'

'I don't know,' Derek said. 'With this much evidence, I think it's worth including him as a suspect for real.'

I giggled. 'Don't be silly. He was Aunt Inga's friend. And he's always been helpful to me.'

'That's exactly what he would do,' Derek answered, 'if he was trying to lull you into a false sense of security.'

I shook my head, amused and exasperated. 'You know, if carpentry doesn't work out and you don't want to go back to medicine, you should try writing thrillers.'

'I'm just trying to make sure you don't do anything stupid,' Derek said, turning toward the small family plot surrounded by a knee-high wrought-iron fence. I glanced up at him, smiling.

'You know, if I didn't know better, I'd think you cared.'

'If you weren't leaving once we sell your aunt's house, I might.'

I blinked. After a short, piercing glance, he wasn't looking at me, just staring straight ahead at the tall stone marking the final resting place of the Mortons, and his expression was approximately as stony as the old granite. I opened my mouth and closed it again.

For something to do, I turned my own attention away from Derek and to the monument. It was a big slab of granite, and at its head was the name Frederick William Morton, with dates of birth and death in and , respectively. His wife, Rose, was born a few years after him and died a few years before.

Below Frederick, the inscriptions divided. On one side lay Edward and his progeny, among them my grandfather John and his sister Catherine; the latter with a death date the year I turned five. On the other lay William, born , dead , along with his wife, Constance, –and his daughter Inga Marie. The fresh carving of Aunt Inga's death date was like an unhealed wound, dark and sharp in contrast to the weathered and softened edges of the older inscriptions.

There were some flowers, mostly wilted, on Edward's side of the stone—maybe my aunt Mary Elizabeth had put them there, for her mother—but there was nothing on Aunt Inga's side. I looked around, disconcerted.

'Here.'

Derek walked over to the picket fence surrounding the churchyard and bent. When he straightened back up, he was holding a motley bouquet of weeds, wildflowers, and a few irises he must have yanked out of a bed on the other side. The mixture was lovely, especially considering its impromptu arrangement. 'This should do for now, yeah?'

I nodded. 'Yes.' My voice was froggy, and to my horror, my eyes were turning misty, too. 'Thank you.'

'My pleasure.' He looked down at me, and then smiled.

'C'mere.' Shifting the flowers to the other hand, he put his free arm around my shoulders. 'We'll come back some other time with a proper bouquet, OK?'

'OK,' I sniffed. He was just the right height for the back of my head to fit perfectly into the crook of his shoulder.

'Sorry for being so wet.'

'You've had a lot going on in the past few days. You're due.' His voice was easy, and when he didn't say anything else, I snuggled into his side and had a good if subdued cry. If this had been a sappy romance novel, one thing would have led to another, and when I raised my lovely, dewy-eyed face to his, he would have kissed me and everything would have dissolved into pink mist. The reality wasn't quite so glamorous. I'm not lovely in the best of circumstances— cute sometimes, but never lovely—and by the time my selfindulgent moments of grief, guilt, and overwroughtness were over, my eyes were red and puffy, and I looked not so much dewy as drowned. He kissed me anyway. On the forehead. 'Feel better?'

'I guess.' I took a step back and swiped my eyes with the backs of my hands. 'Sorry.'

'We'll try it again sometime. Where do you want these flowers?'

'Oh. Um . . .' I looked around. 'I guess just under Aunt Inga's name. John was my grandfather, so whenever I come back, I'll bring something for him, too, but for now, let's just give them to Aunt Inga.'

'Done.' He straightened up. 'You ready to go back to work? We should try to get a little more done on the house today, yeah? The sooner we get finished, the sooner you can go back to New York.'

'Right,' I said. He looked at me, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth, but he didn't say anything else. I squared my shoulders. 'Let's go.'

We spent the rest of the afternoon working on the kitchen. The backsplash was done, and the kitchen cabinets were next. While Derek popped the panels out of the ucabinet doors—and 'popping' makes the process sound a lot simpler than it was—I continued constructing lace panels, which Derek attached to the cabinets with a staple gun before reattaching the doors to the rest of the cabinets. We labored in companionable silence, only broken by the buzzing of the sewing machine and banging and prying sounds from Derek, interspersed with the occasional muffled swear word.

Five o'clock came and went without fanfare, but around six, Derek started making noises about quitting for the day. I nodded and smiled. I wanted to suggest having dinner together again, but I didn't dare.

'You OK?' he asked.

I nodded.

'Going to be all right alone tonight?'

'Are you offering to stay?' I wanted to know. He looked at me for a moment in silence. 'Do you want me to stay?'

I was tempted, I admit. 'I wouldn't mind if you stayed,' I said at last. 'But I think maybe, under the circumstances, it would be better if you didn't.'

He didn't pretend not understanding what I meant. 'With you leaving soon, and all.'

I nodded. 'With me leaving soon, and all.'

'I'll see you in the morning, then. You have my number if there's anything you need.' He hesitated for a second before he reached out and brushed a wild strand of hair off my cheek. 'Sleep well.'

'You, too,' I said and walked with him down the hallway to the door.

I watched him get in the truck and pull away from the curb. He waved as he drove off. And then I headed back into the house, pulling my cell phone out of my pocket and dialing as I went. Much as I didn't want to, I really had to pass Professor Wentworth's day planner off to the appropriate authorities. But now at least I didn't have to put Derek in the middle of it. He'd have to live with these people, probably for the rest of his life, while I only had to put up with them until the end of the summer. 'Wayne? This is Avery Baker. Do you have a minute? I have something for you.'

'And what might that be?' Wayne's deep voice responded.

'Professor Wentworth's day planner. With his schedule. The one you couldn't find.'

Wayne was quiet. Ominously so. 'Where did you get it?' he asked eventually. 'Somewhere in your aunt's house?'