Mortar and Murder (6 page)

The return trip to the island was mostly quiet. The weather had gotten a little better in the past hour, the rain wasn’t stinging my face so much as just settling like a damp, gray blanket over everything, but I guess neither of us really felt like talking. Derek steered the boat and I sat in the stern, huddled with my own depressing thoughts. I know I’d told Wayne—and myself—I couldn’t care less, but it was hard not to be affected by what had happened. The girl in the water had been young and pretty, seemingly healthy; she had probably enjoyed life, and had expected it to go on for eternity, or at least for a long time to come. And now she was dead. She might have had a boyfriend, or even a husband. Young children, maybe. Certainly a mother and a father. Maybe siblings. Friends . . .

“Leave it alone, Avery,” Derek said when he had pulled the boat up next to the leaning dock again and had hauled me out to stand next to him. We had seen no more bodies on the way here, and nothing else, either, with the exception of a coast guard boat off in the distance, slowly making its way between the islands scattered off the coast. Searching for clues, I guess.

I pulled my focus back in to look at him. “What?”

He shook me, gently. “Leave it alone. I know it sounds cold, but we didn’t know her, and there’s nothing we can do for her. Sometimes there just isn’t. Even when they come to you still alive, sometimes there’s nothing you can do.”

“I know that. I’m just thinking about her family, you know? She’s on her way to the morgue, and they have no idea. And she was so young. . . .”

“Accidents happen,” Derek said, not unkindly. He let me go and started unfastening the straps on his life vest. “Especially here on the coast. There are a few drownings here every year. And a few people who die from exposure because they underestimate the temperature, either of the water or the air. I’m sorry about it, but it’s life.”

I nodded reluctantly, unbuckling my own life vest.

“Wayne will take care of her. They’ll figure out who she is and notify her family, and that’ll be it. In the meantime, let’s just get back to work. It’ll give you something else to think about.”

I nodded. Sounded like a good idea.

We spent the rest of the day working on the house, which meant that Derek concentrated on getting the generator up and working while I walked around with pen and paper, counting the cracked window panes that needed to be replaced (fifty-six), and measuring the piece of worm-eaten paneling that needed to be matched (four feet by two and a half), and trying to come up with an accurate tally of missing bricks from the foundation and missing doorknobs from the interior doors. At some point, someone had done their level best to strip the house of anything not integral to the structure, so there were no light fixtures, just naked bulbs hanging from the ceilings, and no doorknobs or other hardware, either. Anything someone could walk off with was gone.

“There’s a place up near Boothbay Harbor,” Derek said when I mentioned it to him, “where they’ll have what we need. A salvage yard.”

“Old House Parts?” Everyone in Maine has heard of the Old House Parts Company. Except I had been under the impression that the famous architectural salvage company was located in the other direction.

“That’s in Kennebunkport,” Derek confirmed. “This place is smaller, and it’s up the road apiece. The selection isn’t as wide, but the prices tend to be a little better, and sometimes you can find some real treasures there. The competition isn’t as stiff.”

I nodded. “You want to go there now?”

“Probably not. Interior doorknobs aren’t a priority. I’ll give Ian a call, see what he can scrounge up and if he can hold some stuff for us until we can make it up there. He’s usually good about that kind of thing, since he knows I’ll get there eventually.”

“What are we doing in the meantime, then?”

He grimaced. “Unfortunately, supplies probably take precedence right now. We should head back to town soon to make sure we can make it to the hardware store and the lumber depot before they close. I need lumber for the new paneling and the hardware store can cut the window glass we need.”

“Do you know how to put them in?”

He smiled. “By tomorrow night, you’ll know how to put them in, too. There’s nothing to it.”

“Until I slice my wrist open on a piece of glass and bleed out, you mean.”

“Good thing I’m a doctor,” Derek said lightly, and lifting my hand, he turned it over and kissed the inside of my wrist. My toes curled inside the pink rubber boots, and suddenly I couldn’t wait to get back to shore.

Of course, once Derek had his pieces of wood for the new paneling, and we had ordered the fifty-six panes of glass we needed, and we were leaving the hardware store and we only had to walk around the building to the rear stairs and go up to Derek’s loft and shut out the rest of the world for a while, the rest of the world interrupted.

“Yoo-hoo! Derek!”

“Oh, great!” I muttered.

Derek chuckled. “I don’t think she did it on purpose, Avery.”

I wouldn’t bet on it. Personally, I think Melissa James, Derek’s too perfect ex-wife, would be just delighted to screw up my prospects for a romantic tête-a-tête with her ex-husband. And not only because I think she wants him back, but because it’s the sort of thing she’d do just because she could.

Melissa and Derek got married in their twenties, while he was in medical school and she was prowling for a husband. She stuck with him all through school and residency, and then moved back to Waterfield with him so he could join his dad, Dr. Ben Ellis, in the latter’s medical practice. The Ellises have been physicians for generations. From what I gather, Melissa did it all with a pretty good attitude, too, probably envisioning herself becoming the gracious First Lady of Waterfield as time went by. That all changed about a year later, when Derek decided he wasn’t happy being an MD, and he wanted to quit and start Waterfield Renovation and Restoration instead. Dr. Ben was disappointed but supportive, while Derek’s other friends just wanted him to do whatever would make him happy. And, of course, Melissa had a fit. In the midst of all of this, she went out and got her real estate license, and then she hooked up with my cousin Ray Stenham, a local builder. As soon as she had him firmly wrapped around her finger, personally and professionally, she drop-kicked Derek to the curb.

Now that Ray was out of the picture, it seemed that she might want Derek’s attention again.

“Derek! Over here!”

She was hanging halfway out of the window of a loft across the street, waving. Yes, once Ray and Melissa broke up, Melissa had moved out of the shared McMansion on the outskirts of Waterfield and sold it. Half the money went toward Ray’s legal fees while the other half went toward a loft on Main Street, right across from Derek’s and just up the block from Melissa’s office at Waterfield Realty. She could probably look out her window straight into Derek’s bedroom. I made a mental note to put up some curtains. Immediately.

“Derek!” Her voice was starting to become annoyed.

“I should go see what she wants,” Derek muttered. Happily, he didn’t seem thrilled at the prospect.

“Be my guest.”

“You don’t want to come?” He glanced down at me.

“You know me. I like Melissa better at a distance.”

“Don’t we all,” Derek said. “You wanna go upstairs and wait for me?”

I shook my head. The rain had stopped, and although it wasn’t precisely warm, I was all right, for the time being. “I’ll just wait right here.”

“It might take a while. She probably wants to talk about some new project she wants me to do.”

“I don’t doubt it at all,” I said. “It’s pitiful, how she can’t come up with a better excuse than that. After spending six years ordering the Stenham Construction crews around, you’d think she’d know enough other plumbers and electricians and carpenters that she didn’t have to cozy up to
you
.”

“But I’m the best,” Derek said with a grin.

I grinned back. “No argument here.”

Melissa’s lovely face had twisted into a pout by now, and she had crawled back into her apartment, where she was standing at the window, hands on her hips. As always, she was gorgeous: razor-cut, pale blond hair cupping her jaw, with a fuzzy, begging-to-be-touched V-necked sweater in the same violet blue color as her eyes hugging every curve.

“You better go,” I added. “She’s looking miffed.”

He nodded. “The sooner I get it over with, the sooner I’ll get back. Don’t go anywhere.” He dropped a kiss on my mouth before he turned and sauntered across the street, obviously in no hurry. I watched him stop under Melissa’s window and call up to her. Wiggling my butt against the cold wetness, I made myself comfortable on a bench.

No sooner had I sat down than a black-and-white police cruiser pulled up to the curb and parked. The door opened and Wayne unfolded his lanky length. The chief of police is almost six foot four, so it’s quite a production getting his legs in and out of a normal sedan. A truck suits him much better, and when he’s off duty, he drives one, but he was still in uniform and on the job, looking grim and professional.

“Avery.”

“Chief.”

He made a face. “I need your help.”

“And here I thought you were coming to arrest me for loitering. I’m waiting for Derek. He’s right there.” I pointed across the street to where Melissa was once again hanging halfway out of the window, creamy cleavage on display, while Derek had his head tilted back to look up at her. I’m sure she found the position fitting.

Wayne shot him a glance. “I don’t need him. You’ll do.”

“Flattered, I’m sure. What can I do for you?”

He sat down next to me and fumbled in the pocket of his jacket. “What do you make of this?”

“This” was a ziplock baggie, sandwich sized, with condensation and a scrap of paper inside. The paper looked like it had been torn from the edge of something, and it also looked like it had been through the wringer, or at least through the washer. It was crinkly, and the letters written on it, in a crabbed pencil script, were pale and faded. I squinted, turning the baggie this way and that in an effort to make out the writing.

“I can read some of it,” I said after a few seconds. “At least I think so. There’s a small
g
here, with a period after it, and then I think it says
Waterfield
. Or something like it. Some of the letters are a little different. And then a lowercase u and a period before something funny that starts with a
b
. Or not exactly a
b
. . .” The letter looked like a cross between a lowercase and a capital
b
: Б. “And then the number fourteen.” At least I recognized that.

“It’s Russian,” Wayne said.

I squinted at him. “Really? How do you know?”

“Took it to a professor of Cyrillic at Barnham College. The lowercase
g
denotes the town, and the lowercase u means street. In Russian, the street number comes after the address, not before like here.”

“Interesting. But what’s it got to do with me? I’m not Russian.”

“The ME found it in the pocket of that young woman you brought to shore this morning,” Wayne said. “That’s why it looks like it’s been submerged.”

“Because it has.” I nodded. “I appreciate your sharing it with me, but I still don’t know what you want.”

“It’s an address,” Wayne said. “On Becklea Drive.”

He didn’t have to add, “Where the two of you owned a house last year.”

“No kidding? That’s what those squiggles say? Wow.” I thought for a moment before I added, “Number fourteen is Irina’s house, I think.”

Wayne nodded. “I know it is. This is her name, right here.” He pointed to some of the squiggles—excuse me, Cyrillic letters—on the piece of paper. “I’ve already been there, but no one’s home. You two work with her, don’t you? Do you have a phone number?”

“Sure.” I fished in my pocket for my cell phone just as Derek finished with Melissa and came back across the street again and stopped next to us.

“What’s going on?”

“I need Irina Rozhdestvensky’s telephone number,” Wayne said, managing a reasonable approximation of the last name.

“Avery’s got it.” Derek turned to me. “Melissa says she has a leak in her bathroom. She wants me to come up and fix it.”

“Right now?”

“Better right now than tomorrow morning,” Derek said. “The hardware store is still open, so I can still get materials, and it won’t cut into the time we have to work on our own house.”

I shrugged. “Fine.”

He grinned. “I’ll charge her the going rate, plus fifteen percent for after-hours and a little for my suffering. I can meet you for dinner later, if you want. Melissa’s paying.”

“That’s all right,” I said, “I have to help Wayne track down Irina.”

“Why?” Derek turned to Wayne, who shrugged.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” I said. “Just go look at Melissa’s plumbing. I mean, Melissa’s bathroom, and I’ll call you.”

“OK,” Derek said. “See ya, Tink.” He blew me a kiss and headed back across the street. Melissa was already downstairs at the door, ready to let him in. I turned to Wayne.

“I’ve got the number. What do you want me to tell her?”

Wayne sighed.