Plaster and Poison Read online

  “Sssh.” Kate abandoned the stove to put an arm around her daughter’s shaking shoulders. “Don’t worry about it, honey. They’ll find who did this. They’ll catch him and put him away. I promise.”

  Derek motioned to the French toast. “This looks ready. Can you eat, Shannon?”

  “I don’t think so,” Shannon said, her voice exhausted.

  “Try a bite, OK?” He put a plate in front of her. “Get some food inside you.”

  Shannon lifted a fork and picked at her food. “I’m not hungry.”

  “I am,” Derek said. “Here, Avery.” He handed me my plate before sitting down next to Shannon with his own plate mounded with glistening slices of French toast.

  My stomach rumbled. “Looks great.”

  “One of these days I’ll teach you to cook, Avery,” Kate promised. “When things aren’t so crazy.”

  “One of these days, I might take you up on that. Until then, I’ll just enjoy food someone else made.” I smiled and put a piece of French toast in my mouth and chewed. Mmm, yummy!

  Under the peer pressure, Shannon managed to choke down a few bites. Derek, of course, polished off two servings in less time than it took the rest of us to have one.

  “So what are you and your parents planning to do today, Avery?” Kate wanted to know after a minute or two of keeping an eye on her daughter between bites of her own breakfast.

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted, chasing the last few pieces of toast through the syrup on my plate. “Are they still sleeping?” I hadn’t heard any sounds from upstairs.

  Kate glanced at the display on the stove. “Almost eight forty-five. Three hours earlier in California. That makes it almost six o’clock. They’ll wake up in the next hour or so, most likely.”

  “Well, Mom mentioned something about trying to get in touch with her cousin Mary Elizabeth. You know, Ray and Randy Stenham’s mother.”

  Kate nodded. “I keep forgetting that you guys are related. You haven’t gone to visit her, have you? Mary Elizabeth?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve endeavored to avoid that pleasure.”

  Derek snorted. “I can understand that,” Kate nodded.

  “You know her?” I looked from one to the other of them.

  Kate shook her head. “Oh, no. Know of her. Know her to look at. But I’ve never had occasion to talk to her. Don’t think I’d care to.”

  Derek added, “I know her. Or rather, she knows Dad. Old Waterfield families and all that.”

  “Really? Well, Mom knew Mary Elizabeth growing up, so she doesn’t really have a choice in the matter. She told me they never had much in common, but Mom can’t very well come back to Waterfield and not see her family. And Mary Elizabeth is all that’s left. Plus the twins.”

  Kate nodded. “Are you planning to go with her?”

  I shrugged. “Depends on what she wants. If she asks, I don’t think I can refuse.”

  “It’d seem petty,” Kate admitted. “So does your aunt know that your mom’s in town?”

  “If she doesn’t yet, she will soon. We ran into Melissa last night, at the Tavern, and Mom told her to tell Mary Elizabeth that Mom would be in touch. So Melissa will tell Ray, and Ray will tell his mom. And Mary Elizabeth will expect a call.”

  Like magic, Derek’s cell phone rang and he picked it up, heading for the door.

  “How did your mom like Melissa?” Kate wanted to know with a faint smile.

  “She didn’t. I’ve talked about Melissa, so of course Mom knew who she was as soon as she set eyes on her. Then Melissa flirted with Derek right in front of us, and she was a little too friendly with Noel, too. And then she totally dissed me. So it’s safe to say that Mom didn’t care for her. By the way, did you ever happen to talk to her about Gerard? Melissa, I mean? Not about the . . . um . . .” I glanced at Shannon, sitting there like a shadow, and amended my statement. “Not about what happened yesterday, but before? That he’s Shannon’s father, where you met him, what happened between you, anything like that?”

  Kate drew her brows together. “Why would I tell Melissa that I became pregnant at eighteen and that my boyfriend didn’t want anything to do with me or his daughter? No offense, Shannon, but he hasn’t been a regular part of your life until just a few weeks ago.”

  “You never liked him,” Shannon said, too tired even to work up any steam about it.

  Kate rolled her eyes. “Of course I liked him. I was crazy about him. Until I had you and realized he wasn’t ready to be a daddy.”

  When Shannon didn’t respond, Kate turned back to me. “Why do you ask, Avery?”

  “What? . . . Oh, because she knew his name. Melissa. Knew Gerard’s name. She swore she didn’t know him, but she knew his name. So I thought maybe you’d mentioned him sometime. When you first moved to Waterfield, or something. While she was showing you properties, maybe. Before you realized what a witch she is.”

  Kate thought about it. “I may have,” she said eventually. “It’s not impossible. I don’t remember doing it, but it’s not inconceivable that I could have, in passing. It would have been six years ago, if so. That’s a long time to remember a throwaway remark.”

  I nodded. It was. Especially for someone as self-absorbed as Melissa. It was also interesting. Fraught with possibilities, one might even say. If Kate had mentioned Gerard, then the problem was solved. But what if she hadn’t? Then Melissa must have known about Gerard from somewhere else. And if she did, maybe she’d had something going with him on the side. I wouldn’t put it past her. Like I’d said last night, she seemed to hook up with all the good-looking men in Waterfield sooner or later. First Derek, then Ray; she hadn’t been above flirting with Peter Cortino when he first came to town, and I’d seen her sweet-talk Tony “the Tiger” Micelli. And if Ray had realized it—and Ray, like his twin Randy, wasn’t above making threats and maybe even making good on them—was it possible that the Stenhams might have had a hand in Gerard’s death? I had suspected them of having had a hand in Aunt Inga’s, so it didn’t seem like too much of a stretch.

  Or was I grasping at straws and trying to find a way to implicate Melissa and the Stenham twins in anything I could? I’d been wrong about Aunt Inga—they hadn’t had anything to do with her death—so maybe I was just as wrong now.

  Before I had the chance to articulate any of these thoughts, the door opened and Derek walked back in. Hard on his heels came Josh, whose eyes went to Shannon immediately upon entering, and whose mouth turned down at the corners when he saw how she looked. She managed a smile, but it wasn’t up to her usual brilliant standard.

  Derek looked from one to the other of them for a moment before he focused on Kate. “Dad’s gonna stop by in a few minutes, on his way to the office. He’ll give her something to help her sleep. She needs rest.”

  Shannon looked mutinous, but Josh smiled approvingly, and Kate nodded.

  “We need to go.” Derek turned to me and reached out a hand.

  “Sure.” I stood and took it. “Have my mom give me a call when she gets up, OK, Kate?”

  Kate promised she would, and Derek and I headed back out into the cold.

  11

  “What’s the matter?” I asked as we made our way, not toward the carriage house, but to the truck. “Has something happened? Something more?”

  He glanced down at me. “When Dad called, he told me that Beatrice didn’t come home last night.”

  He opened the truck door and handed me up into the passenger seat.

  “OK,” I said when he had walked around the truck and boosted himself up behind the wheel. “That’s a little unusual, I guess, but it’s not like she’s a kid. She’s almost thirty, and has a job and a car and a life. I’m sure it isn’t the first time she’s stayed out all night.”

  “I know that,” Derek said.

  “Well, are you sure your dad or Cora didn’t just miss a phone call, or something?”

  “Cora doesn’t think so.” He put the truck in gear and headed down the road. “I called her after I got off the phone with Dad. She’s worried.”

  “So maybe Steve finally showed up, and he and Beatrice are shacked up in a motel somewhere, making am
ends.”

  Maybe calling her mom had slipped Beatrice’s mind. Under those circumstances, I think it might have slipped mine.

  “She would have called,” Derek said, turning the corner and speeding up.

  I looked around. “Where are we going?” “Clovercroft. It’s where she was going the last time Cora saw her, after lunch yesterday, and it’s where she’s supposed to be this morning, in”—he glanced at the dashboard display—“eight minutes. She’s very conscientious; she won’t miss work without calling in sick. If she can.” He rolled through a stop sign and kept going.

  “What about Cora?” I wanted to know.

  “She’ll meet us there. Dad would come, too, but he’s scheduled to work. And until we know that something’s wrong, there’s no sense in him missing time at the office. When he doesn’t come in, sick people’s appointments have to be rescheduled and stuff like that.”

  “Oh, absolutely.” I nodded. “Chances are everything is just fine. Steve finally showed up, and they’re together somewhere. Or she got tired of waiting for him and decided to go back to Boston. Or maybe she met someone else and went out on a date with him, and then one thing led to another, and now she’s scrambling out of bed and throwing on her clothes to get to work on time.”

  Derek shot me a look. “Does that sound like Beatrice to you?”

  “I don’t know her very well,” I pointed out.

  “That’s true. But you can take my word for it, that doesn’t sound like something Beatrice would do. Go to Boston because she got tired of waiting for Steve to come after her, maybe, but she would have told someone she was going; she wouldn’t just have disappeared. And it’s only a couple of weeks since she left Steve; she’s not going to jump into bed with someone else.”

  “If you say so.” I sat back.

  Derek ignored the comment and pushed down on the gas pedal.

  Clovercroft, the Stenhams’ currently nondeveloping multi-use development of condos, townhomes, commercial spaces, and single-family residences, is situated on the north side of Waterfield, off the Augusta Highway. As we left the town and headed inland, the signs of human habitation became more sporadic and the landscape changed to include groves of tall pine trees and slender birches, leafless now in midwinter. After about ten minutes, Derek turned right, onto a road that ran through one such stand of trees, and which let out into the usual construction zone. The ground was plowed and mounded, and sprinkled with snow and ice. Large rocks and boulders were grouped to one side, near the tree line. Skeletal houses stood here and there, in various stages of completion, and tiny, triangular flags whapped in the breeze, delineating the end of one parcel and the beginning of the next. But instead of hustle and bustle, the sound of hammering and sawing and large machinery moving around, and the activity and life that usually accompany a construction site, Clovercroft was eerily quiet. Nothing moved across the frozen ground save for a small group of birds pecking at a piece of exposed dirt.

  Derek parked the truck in front of the only completely finished construction in the development: a row of four brick commercial buildings with, most likely, apartments or condominiums on the second floor. They looked to be modeled after downtown Waterfield and the Victorian buildings lining Main Street, but without the quirky charm of the originals. Rather than authentic and solid, these looked like inferior copies, tossed up over a couple of days.

  “Shoddy workmanship,” Derek muttered, looking at them.

  “I know. Pitiful, isn’t it? Is that Beatrice’s car?”

  I pointed to the white Toyota with Massachusetts plates parked in front of the far building.

  Derek nodded. “That must be the office.” He indicated the far door and the tattered banner that was flapping in the breeze from a pole above it, the words Model Home printed on it in faded gold letters.

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” I asked, when he didn’t move toward it.

  “Cora. She’s not here yet.”

  “No offense, but if you’re concerned that Beatrice may be in there, with something really wrong with her, don’t you think it would be better if we checked it out before Cora got here?”

  “Good point,” Derek said. After a couple of steps he looked down at me again, where I trotted alongside, half running to keep up. “You know, Avery, sometimes your mind works in very disturbing ways.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that we found a dead body yesterday, so they’re on my mind. I’ve seen more than my share in the past six months.”

  “Let’s hope you won’t see another today.” Derek grabbed the door handle. He twisted it, but the door didn’t open. “Huh.” He knocked, then stepped back and waited.

  “The sign says ‘Back at nine,’ ” I pointed out. One of those little fake clocks with the movable hands sat in the window.

  “And it’s past that now.” He knocked again. There was no answer this time, either.

  I stamped my feet on the cold concrete and wrapped my arms around myself for warmth. Derek tried to peer through the window, but the interior of the building was dark, and he couldn’t see much. While we stood there with our noses pressed against the glass, like kids outside a candy store, Cora’s green Saturn came into the lot and parked next to the truck.

  “Isn’t she here?” she called as soon as the car door was open and before she’d even swung her legs out.

  Derek gave the office door a last rat-a-tat; more for emphasis than because he thought he’d get an answer now when he hadn’t before. “If she is, she isn’t coming to the door. But that’s her car, right?”

  Cora glanced at the Toyota and nodded. “That’s it. She took it to work yesterday, after lunch. Have you checked inside? ”

  “Inside the car?”

  We hadn’t, but now we did. There was no sign of Beatrice in the interior, and no obvious clues, either. No note conveniently left on the seat saying, “Call me at the Pines Motel room six,” signed, Steve, and no signs of a struggle. Everything looked just the way it should, as if Beatrice had parked, gotten out, and gone inside to work. She had left the car doors unlocked, unworried about anyone trying to steal her vehicle out here in the middle of nowhere, so we were able to go over it with a fine-tooth comb. We even lifted and replaced the floor mats but didn’t find anything more exciting than a parking ticket from last month in Boston.

  “What about the trunk?” Cora asked.

  Derek and I exchanged an involuntary look, and for all that he thought my mind moved in mysterious and disturbing ways, his own obviously did the same. “I’ll check,” he said and walked around to the back of the car. “Avery?”

  I popped the trunk and waited a breathless moment before he said, “Nothing. Just some blankets and a little spade and an open bag of kitty litter. The usual.”

  “Kitty litter is usual?”

  I own cats, but I don’t carry kitty litter in my trunk. Or wouldn’t, if I had a trunk to carry it in. Jemmy and Inky don’t use a litter box—they’re outdoor cats and do their business in nature—but what good does kitty litter do in a trunk? There aren’t any cats there.

  “It’s for icy conditions,” Derek explained. “Everyone in New England carries kitty litter. I’d have been more surprised if I didn’t find it.”

  Cora nodded.

  “I’ve never noticed a bag of kitty litter in the truck,” I said, glancing at it.

  “I keep it behind the seat.” He slammed Beatrice’s trunk shut. “Nothing useful here. Other than the fact that she obviously made it back to work after lunch yesterday, or the car wouldn’t be parked here.”

  “Right.” Cora turned back to the buildings.

  “Not to be obvious or anything,” I said, moving to stand beside her, “but you’ve tried to call her, right?”

  Cora glanced at me. “Of course. Half the night and all morning. She’s not answering. But I’ll try again now. It’s been fifteen minutes since last time.” She pulled her cell phone out of her purse.

  Derek came up to stand on her other side, like a matching bookend, silently adding his support. Cora dialed the number and put the phone to her ear. After a moment, we could hear distant rin
ging.

  “What the hell . . . ? ” Derek muttered, looking around.

  “It’s coming from inside.” I pointed through the window, where a tiny green light pulsed. “She must have left her cell phone on the desk.”

  “Damn.”

  I nodded. That didn’t sound right. If she’d left of her own free will, she probably would have taken her phone. If she hadn’t left of her own free will, all the more reason to take it, of course, but she might not have had the chance. “You know her better than me. If Steve showed up and apologized and begged her to run off with him, would she be so overcome with joy that she’d forget her phone?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Cora said, her voice strained, “but that’s certainly a happier explanation than anything else I’ve come up with.”

  Derek pulled his own phone off his belt and dialed.

  “Who are you calling?” I wanted to know.

  He glanced at me. “We have to get inside. It’s either breaking a window or finding someone with a key. So I’m calling Melissa.”

  I blinked. “You know Melissa’s number by heart?” Or did he have it stored in his phone’s memory?

  Derek rolled his eyes. “Everyone in Waterfield knows Melissa’s number, Avery. She’s got For Sale signs all over town. In this case, though, I got it off that.”

  He pointed to a fifteen-by-thirty-foot billboard riding above the pine trees. “Welcome to Clovercroft,” it said. “Lots from $50,000. Call Melissa James for more information .” It was accompanied by Melissa’s face, a hundred times magnified, all gleaming white teeth and violet blue eyes, and her phone number.

  “Oh.” I bit my lip, blushing. “Sorry.”

  “You should be. Melissa and I are done. Over. Finished. I wouldn’t take her back if she . . . Melissa? It’s Derek.”

  I choked back a giggle, and even Cora’s lips twitched. Derek sent us both a sour look while he talked into the phone, his tone soothing. “No, of course not. Would I be so rude?” He grimaced, so I guess Melissa must have told him that yes, he would. “Never mind that, OK? I need a favor. Are you out of bed yet?”