Fatal Fixer-Upper (28 page)

'Miss Morton?' I repeated, my eyes big. 'You mean, my aunt Inga took part in the robberies?'

'The idea for the robberies came from Mr. Kendall originally. Your aunt Inga went along with them because she was afraid that if she didn't, Mr. Kendall would break off the engagement and marry someone else.'

'But he did anyway, didn't he? What happened?'

Mr. Rodgers's eyes turned even colder, the color and consistency of steel. 'My father happened, Miss Baker. When he caught Miss Morton and Mr. Kendall that night, he recognized them. They were the same age, and Thomaston isn't far from Waterfield. While Miss Morton tried to talk to my father, Mr. Kendall hit him with the statue.'

'And killed him,' I said, feeling sick to my stomach. Mr. Rodgers nodded. 'And that's why Aunt Inga didn't marry him?'

Mr. Rodgers nodded. 'She locked herself in her house, surrounded by her stolen antiques, and refused to have anything to do with anyone. She couldn't notify the police, because she would be arrested along with Mr. Kendall, but she also didn't feel she could marry him.'

'And then Aunt Catherine married him instead. How do you know all this?'

Mr. Rodgers's face twisted. With rage, I thought. 'From Horace Cooper, of course. When I graduated from high school, a poor, fatherless boy in Thomaston, Mr. Cooper offered me a job doing office work and running errands for him. Miss Morton put him up to it, I daresay. Guilty conscience. He taught me about the law and ensured that I passed the bar exam and could become his successor.'

'And he knew about all of this?'

'He drew up Miss Morton's first will, leaving everything to her cousin, Catherine Kendall. It was Miss Morton's way of getting back at both Mr. and Mrs. Kendall. She planned for Catherine Kendall to inherit all the loot from the robberies, along with a letter explaining Mr. Kendall's role in the death of my father. But then Mrs. Kendall died, and a few years later, Mr. Kendall died, and Miss Morton had to make other plans. She wanted to give the antiques back to their rightful owners, but posthumously, of course. Mr. Cooper and Miss Morton decided that Miss Morton would leave her possessions to Mr. Cooper, and he would arrange the matter anonymously. Of course, he couldn't draft a document with himself as the beneficiary, so he asked me to do so.'

'And then you killed him because you were his heir?' I ventured.

'Mr. Cooper died peacefully in his sleep.' That didn't exactly answer my question, especially not considering the tone of voice Mr. Rodgers used when he said it, but I let it go.

'But you murdered my aunt, right? And Professor Wentworth?'

'In matter of fact, Miss Baker, I murdered neither. Professor Wentworth convinced your aunt to clear her conscience by returning the items immediately, rather than wait to do it posthumously. Of course I couldn't let her.'

'Why not?'

Horace Cooper was beyond the long arm of the law, and Mr. Rodgers hadn't even been born when the robberies took place, so it wasn't like anything bad could happen to him.

'Because if Miss Morton returned the items before her death or changed her will so they didn't join the Cooper estate, I wouldn't inherit them. And they're mine. I've earned them.' His voice was chillingly reasonable, as if this made perfect sense. In a twisted way, I guess maybe it did.

'But I guess you weren't planning to give them back to the rightful owners, were you?' I ventured. Mr. Rodgers smiled tightly, a tacit admission.

'They're probably worth a mint. And they look so lovely in your inherited home. I guess you stripped them all after my aunt died, because as Mr. Cooper's heir, you thought they'd come to you anyway.'

Mr. Rodgers inclined his head.

'But if Professor Wentworth convinced my aunt to return them right away, you'd miss out. So you killed them both.'

'Indeed not, Miss Baker. Miss Morton's fall was an accident. Mostly. I hit Professor Wentworth with the fireplace poker and bundled him into the car; that much is true. With the assistance of Miss Morton's wheelchair, in case you were wondering how an elderly man like myself managed to move the body of a well-conditioned, much younger man.'

'Actually,' I said weakly, 'I did wonder.'

'The old smuggler storeroom seemed the best place for him. It is soundproof, you know, with no way in or out except through the house, now that the coast guard has locked the tunnel. And I did not imagine he would live long, with a head injury and no food or water.'

I swallowed.

'But I did not, in fact, kill him. He was alive when I shut the door.'

'Oh.' It was all I could manage. Somehow, leaving the professor to die seemed even worse than killing him outright, but maybe that was just me.

A shadow of vexation crossed Mr. Rodgers's features.

'While I took care of the professor, Miss Morton retreated to the upstairs. I felt certain she would go along with my suggestion that he just disappear—she had had no qualms about leaving my father to die, after all—but the years must have turned her squeamish, because she objected.'

'So you pushed her down the stairs?'

'Dear me, no, Miss Baker. It was an accident, as I told you. We were standing at the top of the stairs, where you are now.' He moved another couple of steps closer to me; I considered turning tail and locking myself in my bedroom but stood my ground, even as Mr. Rodgers's already cold eyes turned colder with remembered fury. 'She refused to go along with my plan. When I couldn't convince her otherwise, it seemed better to let the matter die.'

'You mean, let my aunt die.'

Mr. Rodgers shrugged. 'When I reached for her, she attempted to evade me. I left her on the floor in the hallway. It seemed fitting, considering that she did the same to my father. I made sure to tell her so. She was still breathing when I left, although I'm afraid her neck was broken. By the time I came back the next morning, she had expired.' He said it with no more emotion than if he were talking about a fly.

'Just out of curiosity,' I said, trying my best to match his dispassionate tone, without success, 'I've been told that Martin Wentworth went missing on a Wednesday. I guess my aunt died on Wednesday, too?' Mr. Rodgers nodded.

'You told me once that you had a standing lunch date with her every Friday. I guess you decided Friday would be too long to wait, so you came back on Thursday morning instead to make sure she was dead?'

Mr. Rodgers agreed politely. 'Indeed I did, Miss Baker. Otherwise, someone else might accidentally stop in first, you see, and if she were still alive, that might be awkward.'

'I can quite see that,' I agreed.

Mr. Rodgers smiled tightly. 'I am certain you also see why I now have to do something about you?'

'Actually,' I answered, my heart starting to beat faster, 'I'm afraid I don't. The police have found Professor Wentworth. They realize the only way he could have gotten into the tunnel was through your house. And I've already told them what happened yesterday. So has Philippe. Nobody's going to believe that I fell down the stairs and broke my neck. Plus, I'm not as easy to kill as my aunt. I'm almost seventy years younger, for one thing.'

'Ah, but you fail to understand the satisfaction it would bring me.' Mr. Rodgers's smile was like an ice cube down my back. 'You ruined everything, you see. Until you showed up, I had everything under control. Miss Morton's death was considered an accident, and the police had no idea what had become of Martin Wentworth. He would have stayed down in the tunnel until there was nothing left but bones, and then I could have thrown those into the sea. But you arrived with the letter from your aunt, and saw me find the holographic will, which made it impossible for me to destroy it. Even then things might have worked out all right if you had agreed to sell the house to Miss James's boyfriend, or just allowed me the responsibility of packing everything up for you and moving it to a storage facility—of course removing anything valuable in the process—but you wouldn't even do that. Instead, you insisted on moving in and doing everything yourself, even after I tried to scare you away. And then you discovered Professor Wentworth's bicycle in the shed, and the chaise longue in the attic, and the whole story behind the robberies, and now everything is ruined.'

He had slowly moved up the stairs as we spoke, almost— but not quite—without my noticing, and I hadn't been too worried. He was an old man, and I'm young and healthy, if on the small side. Still, when he put on a burst of speed over the last few steps, teeth bared, it took me by surprise. He had both clawed hands around my neck before I realized what he was planning to do, and then he squeezed. And he was stronger than I had expected. I couldn't catch my breath, and everything started to spin, while little specks of light, like colored confetti, danced in front of my eyes. Somewhere in the back of my head, a roar built up. This man had done enough harm to enough people, and I was damned if I was going to let him do anything to me. I was not about to let myself be thrown down the stairs like a rag doll, the way he had thrown my aunt. I lashed out with my hands, kicked out with my feet, hit, clawed, and scratched like a wildcat, and drove Mr. Rodgers backward, to the edge of the stairs.

Still, I'm not sure he wouldn't have taken me with him when he fell, but for one thing. As he lingered, unbalanced, a small, black form trotted up the stairs and between his legs. I twisted back, away from his grasp, and I could see his eyes widen as he realized what was happening.

And then he tipped over backward and tumbled down, head over heels over head again, a thin scream issuing from his throat. Until he landed on his back and slid the rest of the way down the staircase, and out onto the hardwood floor. He ended up in a tangle of arms and legs and lay still. Inky, whose natural agility had allowed her to twist aside safely, sat down on the top step and tucked her tail around her neatly planted paws.

I waited for a minute, but Mr. Rodgers didn't stir, so I crept timidly down the stairs after him. Inky followed. After a detour into the kitchen to snatch up Derek's crowbar, I nervously crouched beside Mr. Rodgers. One of his legs was twisted, and he was out cold, but he was breathing, and I decided it was best to keep him that way. I wanted him to pay, and pay dearly, for what he had done to my aunt, to Martin Wentworth, and to Philippe and me, but I didn't want him to pay that way. I'd rather have him alive and regretting what he'd done, if only because he'd gotten caught. So I covered him with a blanket and called 911.

Five minutes later, when Derek walked into the house carrying a pizza box and a liter bottle of Coke for me and Moxie for himself, he found me sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, my pale blue terrycloth robe snugged around me, a cat on each side, and the crowbar convulsively clutched in my hand, waiting for the ambulance to show up.

EPILOGUE

'So, Tinkerbell,' Derek said, 'what's it going to be?'

. . .

It had been nine weeks since Mr. Rodgers fell down my stairs, breaking his leg and his collarbone and giving himself a severe concussion. He was lucky; that same fall had killed Aunt Inga, so it could have gone a whole lot worse for him than it had. Or maybe not: he'd lived to see another day, but a day when he was tried for the murder of Martin Wentworth and the negligent homicide of my aunt Inga, not to mention the kidnapping of Philippe and me. He pleaded guilty—not only to those things, but to the trifling details of threatening me and sabotaging my stairs, as well as to breaking and entering and vandalizing Aunt Inga's house— and was sentenced to a large number of years behind bars. I don't expect to see him out and about any time soon. If he's an exemplary prisoner and lives to be as old as Aunt Inga, he might see sunlight again, but otherwise, no. And I don't feel too bad about that.

Wayne arranged for all the treasures we could find to be returned to the rightful owners. There was even a small finder's fee attached to a few of them. I didn't feel great about accepting money to right a wrong committed by my aunt in the first place, but I took the money anyway, with the caveat that it was going to go to a good cause. Martin Wentworth's body—what was left of it—was processed and shipped back to his family in Rhode Island for burial. I never did have to look at it, a fact for which I will always be grateful. Poor Paige asked if she could, but was gently dissuaded by Wayne. He kept his promise not to tell her parents what had been going on; he even made sure she got Professor Wentworth's day planner back after the police were finished with it. It was all she had left of her boyfriend, and she clung to it and to her memories of their time together. When I saw her next, at the memorial service at Barnham College in July, she was dressed in unrelieved black from head to toe, looking like a bereaved widow. After Mr. Rodgers's tumble, Derek and I went back to work on the house, of course also looking for any little trinkets we might have missed. But although we looked everywhere we could think of, and even checked the floors and walls for hidden rooms and cavities, we came up empty. If the jewel-encrusted fan was still around, we sure couldn't find it.

We found lots of other great things, though. Beautiful oak floors throughout the first story of the house, equally beautiful but less formal heart of pine floors upstairs. Pristine plaster walls under the wallpaper. A wonderful—if horribly rusty and abused—fireplace screen in a corner of the basement, which Derek cleaned and affixed to the dining room fireplace. My special texturing techniques got shunted to the wayside—it just wasn't the right house for them—but we painted the kitchen floor in a diamond pattern of blue and white, to go with the Blue Willow backsplash and the gleaming cobalt counter, and even Derek admitted that it looked great. I got rid of Aunt Inga's s furniture and replaced it with things from the attic, including the lovely rolltop desk and a pair of dark blue velvet curtains with tassels that I had to air out for several days before we could hang them. Once I had added a sprinkling of silver stars, they looked fabulous. I kept reminding myself that whatever I did had to appeal to potential buyers as well as to myself, but in truth, I ended up decorating and furnishing the house more to my own taste than anyone else's. Within reason, of course; Derek had managed to make me see that maybe the house wasn't the perfect blank canvas for
every
one of my whims.

He painted the outside a gorgeous robin's egg blue with cornflower and ochre trim, while I weeded the garden beds and planted flowers. And one crisp morning in mid-August, we were standing on the sidewalk in front of the house, looking at our handiwork.

'So, Tinkerbell,' Derek said, 'what's it going to be?'

I turned to look at him. He'd had a haircut since the events in Mr. Rodgers's basement, but his hair grew so fast that that irritating forelock still—or again—fell into his eyes. I'd gotten used to it by now. My hand hardly twitched at all anymore. 'Your hair's doing it again,' I said.

'Sorry.' He grinned and tossed his head. 'Don't try to change the subject. The house is finished. Or as finished as it'll ever be. There's always something more you can do.

But the summer's over. It'll start getting colder in a few weeks. You're going to have to decide, yeah?'

'About the house?'

'Of course about the house.'

And about him. He didn't say it, but he didn't have to. We'd been skirting the issue for the past two months. I guess we'd been dating, sort of, but we'd avoided getting too close. We both knew that the end of the summer was coming, and neither of us wanted to start something we couldn't finish. Derek didn't want to get attached to me and then have me leave, and I didn't want to get attached to him and then either have to leave him or stay and maybe resent him because of what I'd given up. So we'd spent almost all our time together, but none of it horizontally (except for the time when we'd lain side by side on the dining room floor looking for Marie Antoinette's fan under a loose floorboard, but I don't count that). We shared the occasional kiss, and sometimes a quick snuggle, but so far we'd kept the relationship pretty casual.

'I've decided,' I said. He turned to me.

'Yeah?'

'Yes.' I took a deep breath. 'I'm flying to New York tomorrow.'

His face didn't change, but something moved in his eyes. Still, he kept looking at me, waiting for me to continue. 'I had a call from my friend Laura Lee a few days ago,' I continued. 'A friend of hers sublet my apartment while I was here.'

'And now she's leaving, so you can move back in?'

'Actually, she's found a job in New York and wants to stay. In my apartment. And make it her apartment.'

'You're kidding,' Derek said.

I shook my head. 'I have to go pick up the rest of my stuff. Whatever she doesn't want to keep, which isn't much. And then start over somewhere.'

'You can live here for free,' Derek pointed out. 'But I don't know that there's a lot of call for textile designers in these parts.'

I shrugged. 'That's OK. I thought maybe I'd try a career change. Be my own boss.'

'Start your own design studio?'

'Maybe. Do some designing, teach a few courses on the side. I've already spoken to the people at Barnham and gotten the go-ahead to teach a class there next semester. It won't pay a whole lot, but it'll be enough to live on if I supplement with other things.'

'And if I need a textile designer, or an interior designer, maybe you'd be available for consultation?' He was starting to grin.

'I think we might be able to arrange that,' I agreed demurely. And then I grinned back. 'Maybe we can even look for another property to renovate together, one we can actually sell and make a profit from. Between us, we'll probably have enough money to put a down payment on something, don't you think? If we put up Aunt Inga's house and your bachelor pad as collateral?'

'I wouldn't be surprised,' Derek said. He put an arm around my shoulders. 'You know, I could get into this idea.'

'Glad to hear it,' I answered, snuggling into his side.

'If we make it just one project to start with, and we discover that we can't work together, then we won't have lost anything.'

'Exactly.'

'But if we do work well together, we can keep doing it.'

'That's right.'

'I like this idea.'

'Glad to hear it.'

'How about we go somewhere to celebrate?' He glanced down at me, eyes very blue against his tanned face.

'What did you have in mind?' I asked.

His voice dropped. 'I was thinking of someplace small and intimate, out of the way, that only the locals know about. Somewhere appropriate for celebrating our new . . . partnership.'

I grinned. 'Your place?' He lived in a converted loft above the hardware store in downtown. It had exposed brickwork, ducts running under the ceiling, even a concrete counter; all the things he hadn't allowed me to put into Aunt Inga's house for fear it would mess with the s mojo. The first time I'd seen it, I had stared in openmouthed surprise for a few seconds, then burst out laughing.

'Yours is closer.' He glanced at it.

'True. Sounds like you're in a hurry.'

He shrugged unapologetically. 'If you're leaving tomorrow, we don't have much time. Don't want to waste any of it.'

'Of course not,' I agreed. 'Don't let me stand in your way.'

'Never.' He grinned. The next second I found myself hanging over his shoulder, giggling and squealing, as he kicked open the fence gate and strode up the walkway to Aunt Inga's—make that
my
—house.