Mortar and Murder (28 page)

Irina is thirty-one,
the caption said,
and from Kiev. She likes to dance, visit museums, and go to the theater and ballet.

The computer signaled another e-mail.

Funny thing
, Ricky wrote,
you’d think a website hawking Russian women would originate somewhere in Eastern Europe. This one doesn’t. It’s here in Maine. That’s as close as I can get right now, but if you give me a little time I can probably get you a name and address for the owner
.

I wrote back and told him to go ahead if he wanted a challenge. Surely it couldn’t hurt to have that information.

By the time I finished dusting and vacuuming and had emptied the dish drainer of last night’s dishes, it was going on eleven o’clock in the morning. Ricky hadn’t gotten back to me with any details about the website owner. Either it must be harder than he thought to get the information, or he’d gotten sidetracked with something—probably Paige—and had gone out. I pulled on my pink Wellies and a coat and headed outside, too.

The weather had turned colder again. Derek had mentioned that snow had fallen on the mountains overnight, and even here in Waterfield, it was chillier than it had been just the day before. The sky was gray with low-hanging clouds. I didn’t think we’d get any snow down here on the coast today, but I was glad I hadn’t relegated my puffy blue winter jacket to the attic quite yet. It was nice and warm, and I snuggled into it as I wandered down the hill from Aunt Inga’s house on Bayberry Lane.

It wasn’t that I was worried, I told myself as I headed for the harbor and the ferry. After all, if Irina was the murderer, and she was safely on the Appalachian Trail, halfway across the state from where I was going, there’d be nothing to worry about, would there? I just wanted to check up on my kitten and maybe stop by Gert Heyerdahl’s house on the way back to the ferry dock to see if the caretaker was still breathing. If he was, then no harm done. And if he wasn’t . . . well, that’d be another nail in Irina’s coffin, I figured. If he wasn’t there at all . . . maybe I’d just try to take a closer look around.

It must have been Ned the ferry conductor’s day off, because another man—old and gnarled—was doing Ned’s job. I paid him the fare and went to sit on one of the benches near the steering house, where I’d be as protected as I could be on the ride. The weather had turned exceedingly nasty: much colder, with froth-capped waves and a stinging wind that blew my hair back from my face and then curved around and came back to whip it forward. The horizon was gone; all I could see in front of the boat was shades of gray, as waves, clouds, and fog blended into a messy whole. Great. Just what Derek and the rest of the rescue team needed: a proper pea-souper to make navigating the Appalachian Trail even more treacherous. I grimaced.

Rowanberry Island was just as desolate and depressing as the previous day. More so, with the overcast sky, the fog in the distance, and the stinging mist. I buried my hands in my pockets and ducked my head, wishing I’d brought my winter hat, gloves, and a scarf along with my winter coat.

There was no one abroad today, not even Pepper the Russian blue, and the small general store was dark and closed. It
was
Sunday morning, so maybe the owner had gone to church. On the mainland, since Rowanberry didn’t boast a church. As I slogged past the village toward the woods, I wondered idly if any of the other islands did, or if everyone had to get into Boothbay Harbor or Waterfield to go to church. The place looked like a ghost town, so maybe everyone had headed for the mainland, en masse, this morning. And then I put the thoughts aside and set out for Sunrise and Sunset.

All the salmon and crunchy bits from yesterday were gone.

I peered into the darkness under the stairs but saw no evil red eyes staring back at me. No eyes of any other kind, either. And jumping up and down on the porch didn’t bring forth the little monster. I unlocked the front door and went inside to get Derek’s flashlight. I was on my way back out when it occurred to me to look inside the cardboard box we’d placed on the porch, and lo and behold, the kitten was curled up inside in a corner of the box in a nest of old curtains. Of course, as soon as I opened the flaps on top of the box, he or she shot out of the opening Derek had cut, between my legs, and made a beeline for the safety of the underside of the porch again.

Fine. If that’s the way it wanted it.

I filled another bowl with more crunchy bits and cat food, added one filled with clean water, and put them both on the porch in the corner by the box. When I left, the kitten would probably come back out and would eat and go back to sleep inside the box again. Meanwhile, I had more important things to do.

The fog was starting to creep in for real now, trailing white fingers through the trees as I set out for Gert Heyerdahl’s house. The atmosphere was eerie, with a sort of hollow and echoing quiet. Except for the mournful sound of a foghorn somewhere in the distance, and the wind rustling above my head, causing pine needles to whisper and still-bare branches to crack together, everything was still.

There was no sign of life at Gert’s house, and the dock was empty.
Calliope
was gone. Gert’s caretaker must not be working on Sundays. Lucky break, if one I had sort of counted on. Or at least hoped for.

I climbed the stone steps and peered through the sidelights. The entrance hall looked exactly as it had the last time I was here. Dark and quiet. The door was locked, of course, and no one answered when I knocked. Not that I’d expected anything different.

I stood for a second, biting my lip, thinking about what to do next. The shutters were still covering the windows downstairs, although they’d been turned back from the windows on the second floor. Maybe Gert’s caretaker was doing one level at a time. Or maybe the Russian women had been kept up there, hidden away until Irina came and got them, and now there was no sense in keeping the shutters closed anymore. That didn’t explain why the shutters on the main floor were still closed, of course. It did mean that I would be able to look into the second floor if I could get up to it.

Would I be able to pull Derek’s ladder from our house over here? If I went back and got it? And if I did, would I be able to raise it? Or maybe Gert had a ladder sitting around somewhere? I could have a look around for it, maybe.

Decisions, decisions. I mulled for a second, weighing the time it would take to run back to our house and drag, literally, a ladder all the way back over here against the time it would take to check the property for one. One that might not exist. Just because the place was deserted now didn’t mean Gert’s caretaker wouldn’t be back soon. And it would behoove me to be finished and gone by the time he got here. Unless he was dead, of course. And he might be. Maybe even somewhere inside the house.

Something moved behind the upstairs window. I took a couple of steps back, the better to see. I blinked. Stared. Shaded my eyes. Blinked again.

Maybe it had been just a patch of fog floating by.

No, there it was again. The outline of a person. Between the six-over-six panes and the ancient, wavy glass, it was difficult to make out details, but it looked like a woman. Pale face, long dark hair . . . The ghost of Clara van Duren, or whatever her married name had been? Or maybe Gert had a live-in housekeeper as well as a caretaker, making the place ready for him?

Or could it be Svetlana Rozhdestvensky?

What if I’d been looking at the situation wrong? What if Irina hadn’t gone hiking on the Appalachian Trail with her sister and Katya/Olga? What if she hadn’t run away at all? What if she had come here to rescue Svetlana and the others. Here, where Gert’s caretaker found her and killed her. The way he’d killed Agent Trent? Maybe I’d find Irina’s body floating in the harbor one of these mornings. And now Svetlana was upstairs, with no hope of rescue. While Derek, Josh, Brandon, and Wayne were wasting their time trekking the Appalachian Trail looking for three other women who fit the general description of Irina, Svetlana, and friend.

Given the circumstances, I decided to sacrifice the wavy glass in one of the sidelight panes in order to find out who was upstairs. It would take too long to go back for the ladder, and what if she—whoever she was—needed help? If I used a rock to knock out one of the sidelights, I might be able to reach my hand in and turn the locks and bolts on the inside of the door.

I was on my way up the stoop again, rock palmed and ready, when the door opened.

For a second, my hand wavered as I considered the idea of lifting the rock to use as a weapon in case I needed one. Then my fingers twitched, and the rock dropped. It hit the stoop with a crack and rolled off into the grass. I didn’t watch it. I was staring at the woman in the doorway, my eyes threatening to roll, too, straight out of my head.

“Oh, my God!” I managed. “What are you doing here?”

It was Irina—not Svetlana, Irina herself—dressed, as Arthur Mattson had described, in jeans and a green sweatshirt with the white Maine Association of Realtors® logo on it.

For a moment I wasn’t sure what to do, and more, what to think. I’d always liked Irina, ever since the first time I’d met her. I didn’t want to believe her guilty of what Derek and Wayne suspected her of. At the same time, the fact that my boyfriend and the chief of police thought she was a murderer was sobering. And more than sobering, it was scary. What if they were right and I was wrong? What if I was standing face-to-face with a cold-blooded killer? What if she was thinking of killing me, too?

I took a step back—just a precaution—and stumbled, off the stoop and onto the ground, ending up on my butt on the wet grass.

“Are you all right?” Irina said. She was still standing inside the door in the shaded front hall, where she couldn’t be seen from outside. I don’t know who she was afraid would see her, since we were clearly the only two people here and since visibility was becoming less and less as the fog settled in. By now, even the dock was starting to disappear.

“Fine, thanks.” I got myself to my feet and brushed my rear clean. As well as I could, since there’s nothing anyone can do to brush away water that’s already seeped into fabric. I’d be walking around with a wet bottom for the next few hours until I could make it off the island and into a dry pair of jeans.

“What are you doing here?” I asked again. “I thought you were on the Appalachian Trail.”

Irina blinked. “Why would you think that?”

I moved a little closer, up to the stoop but not onto it. “When you disappeared, Brandon Thomas put out an APB on you. He got a tip that someone who matched your description, and your sister’s, went on the trail yesterday afternoon.”

Irina paled. “My sister?”

“She’s here, isn’t she? Svetlana? In Maine?”

Irina glanced past me, into the fog. She did a sort of sweep with her eyes of the area in front of the house. “Where’s Derek?”

I rolled my eyes. “Where do you think? Hiking the Appalachian Trail looking for you.”

“He let you go out here alone?”

“He didn’t let me. I went.” And what was up with the question, anyway? Was she worried that something might happen to me? Or did she want to make sure I was alone, in case she was planning to do something to me herself? “And you never told me what you’re doing here.”

“You never told me what you’re doing here,” Irina shot back.

I sighed. “Not looking for you. I had no idea you’d be here. I was just having a look around.”

Irina scanned the fog again. There was nothing to see. Just me, standing here with my wet butt and my arms folded across my chest. Her eyes returned to me. “It’s a long story. You’d better come in.”

I hesitated. Did I trust her enough to walk into Gert’s house when I’d maybe never walk out? Or did I trust her more, enough to believe that she didn’t—couldn’t have—killed anyone?

I stalled. “Do you know about what happened to Agent Trent?”

Irina nodded. I’d been hoping she’d say no; that way at least I’d know she hadn’t had a hand in killing the ICE agent.

“How did you hear?” Had it been on television? Or in the newspaper? Had Tony the Tiger gotten hold of the story and run with it?

“My”—Irina hesitated—“friend was in Waterfield yesterday and heard the news.”

Her . . . friend? “Would that be the guy we saw at Shaw’s Supermarket the other day? When you dropped that jar of tomato sauce?”

Irina nodded. She was still peering worriedly into the fog. “Please come inside, Avery.”

Her fear was infectious, and I found myself looking around, too, the small hairs on the back of my neck prickling.

From out of the fog, the sound of a boat motor reached us. It was impossible to tell where it was coming from or which direction it was heading, but it was getting louder, so at least it was coming closer. Irina twitched. I made up my mind.

“OK.” I may as well go in; she wasn’t coming outside, and she didn’t seem willing to tell me anything while we were standing here half in, half out of the house. Plus, I wanted the opportunity to look around the place. And maybe to see if I could open Gert Heyerdahl’s secret room. If the houses were exact replicas, and ours had one, it stood to reason that his would have one, too.