Plaster and Poison Read online

  “Kate . . . oh, hi, Avery.”

  I smiled. After six months, I should be used to Derek, but sometimes, when he shows up unexpectedly—or even when I know he’s coming, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen him, like, overnight—I get giddy. Some of it may have been nervousness about having to introduce him to my mom and Noel later on, but some of it was just seeing him, too. Knowing that that melting smile was for me and the way those blue eyes warmed was because he was happy to see me.

  The proprieties dispensed with, he glanced at the coffeemaker. “Anything left in there?”

  “Help yourself.”

  He opened the cabinet, found a mug, filled it, and sat down at the table, where he nudged my foot. “You’re up early.”

  “I’m excited.”

  “Did your mom and dad call last night? Did they get in OK?”

  I nodded. “The flight from Santa Barbara was delayed about an hour, and then the flight from San Francisco was delayed some more, but they got to Boston and checked into their hotel. This morning, they’ll be having breakfast, and then they’ll be picking up their car and hitting the road. She said they’d be here by lunchtime.”

  “We’d better get busy, then.” He drained the coffee in a couple of gulps and reached for my chair. “C’mon, Tink.”

  “Coming.” I gathered my and Derek’s mugs and carried them over to the counter.

  “We’ll see you later, Kate.” He guided me toward the door, snagging my coat from the hook on the way. “Here. Put this on. It’s nippy today.”

  “No kidding,” I said, the words making a cloud in front of my face as we entered the frigid air.

  “It’ll get worse before it gets better. Get used to it.”

  But he put his arm around me again and hugged me closer. I snuggled in, greedily grasping any warmth I could get.

  It didn’t last long, unfortunately. Upon reaching the carriage house, Derek dropped his arm from around me to fumble for the key under the eave. “Jill called last night,” he said over his shoulder. “You two talked about getting together for dinner?”

  “We touched on it. But it’s probably not the best timing, with Mom and Noel coming. I wasn’t thinking about that when I suggested it.”

  “Your mom and her husband might want some time to themselves one night,” Derek said, “and we could try to get with Jill and Peter then. She sounded like she could use some cheering up.”

  I hugged myself, stomping my feet. This was taking a long time. “She did mention that business was slow. I think this whole thing with Carolyn Tate and the police coming around asking the same questions over and over is bothering her, too.”

  “I think she knew Carolyn,” Derek answered. “She was a lot older than Jill, but I think they went to Barnham together. Carolyn raised her kids first, and then went back to school and got an education.” He lowered his arm. “The key isn’t there.”

  “Maybe it fell.”

  We both crouched and started peering around the stoop. It was Derek who put out a hand to brace himself against the door, and who toppled sideways when the door opened. I giggled, and then tried to stop, unsuccessfully, when he gave me a sour look.

  “Someone’s been here.” He got to his feet.

  “Unless you forgot to lock up last night?” I suggested.

  “I have two grand worth of marble sitting here, Avery, not to mention a small fortune in tools and copper pipes. I’m not gonna forget to lock up. You watched me, didn’t you?”

  “Um . . .” I said. The truth was, I had stood there, and I had watched, but as usual when Derek had his back to me, I’d been too busy admiring the fit of his jeans to notice much of anything else.

  “You’re hopeless,” Derek said, but with a grin; he knew exactly why I hadn’t been paying attention. “C’mon. Let’s make sure nothing’s missing.”

  He pushed the door open and stepped across the threshold. I followed, fumbling for his hand.

  From just inside the door, everything seemed fine, just as it should be. We could see the edge of the marble counter, so at least no one had walked off with that. Derek’s tools were where he had left them—an electric drill over in the corner, a bunch of wrenches and screwdrivers strewn about.

  I’d never realized it before I started hanging out with Derek, but houses under renovation are like magnets for burglars and thieves. They’re empty overnight, usually pretty easy to break into because people don’t bother with security systems and dogs when the houses aren’t occupied, and often they’re chock full of expensive tools and materials. Like the two-thousand-dollar slab of marble Derek and the other guys had hauled inside last night. Also copper pipes, electric drills, nails, screws, drywall, and rolls of electrical wire. All stuff that can be turned into cold, hard cash by someone with an entrepreneurial spirit.

  “Can’t see anything out of the way,” Derek remarked, scanning the room.

  I shook my head. “Are you sure you didn’t just forget to turn the key last night? Too busy wiggling your tush at me, or something?”

  He gave me a look. “I never wiggle my tush. And even if I forgot to turn the key, I know I hung it on the hook. Someone was here.”

  “Maybe we should drag Wayne out of bed, instead of investigating ourselves. Kate said he was still asleep.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Derek said, squaring his shoulders.

  “Well, of course you’re not. I’m not afraid, either”—precisely—“but if there was a burglar here, don’t you think the best people to investigate are the police? We don’t want to mess up any of their evidence.”

  “I think we need to determine whether there’s anything to investigate first,” Derek said stubbornly.

  I sighed. “Fine. After you.”

  He glanced at me but led the way farther into the house. I followed, looking around nervously.

  Nothing seemed out of place on the first floor, and nothing was there that shouldn’t be, either. No sinister footprints across the brown paper that crisscrossed the new hardwood floors, and no conveniently dropped business card with our burglar’s name and telephone number. No monogrammed handkerchief or telltale cigarette butt.

  “Upstairs,” Derek said after we’d made the circuit through living room, dining room, and kitchen, with a peek into the bathroom and laundry closet on our way past.

  He started up. I sighed but followed.

  The loft was less finished than the downstairs. The drywall was up and the bathroom roughed in, but we hadn’t installed Kate’s fluffy carpet yet. Kate had requested a light cream, almost white, deep-pile floor covering, and just in case one of us happened to spill a drop of paint or the new toilet overflowed or something, we’d decided it would be safer to leave the installation of the carpet ’til last. So the floors upstairs were lowly plywood. When I got to the top of the stairs, I couldn’t help but be grateful that we’d chosen to wait.

  “Shit,” Derek said softly, stopping on the second-to-top step. “Looks like we need to get Wayne out of bed after all.”

  “Why?” I peered around him. “Oh, no. Who’s that?” A man’s figure was lying on the floor, with an elegant cashmere overcoat covering the still form from calves to shoulders. I could see a dark head and a pair of wool trousers sticking out at their respective ends.

  Derek didn’t move. “I think it’s that guy Shannon’s been hanging out with.”

  “You’re kidding. What’s he doing here? If she wanted him to sleep over, don’t you think she ought to have had him stay in the house and not out here? Are you going to wake him?”

  “I think he’s beyond waking,” Derek said, his voice a little uneven.

  “He’s dead?”

  Derek glanced at me. “Looks that way. Whoa.”

  He reached out to steady me.

  “Sorry,” I managed, my voice tinny and far away. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve seen worse than this before. There’s not even any blood.”

  “It’s all right.” He half carried, half steadied me down the stairs. “Just sit right here while I go see if there’s anything I can do. Just in case I’m wrong and he’s just drugged or unconscious. Keep your head down.�
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  He deposited me on the bottom step of the staircase and pushed my head down between my knees before he ran back up the stairs, two or three steps at a time. A minute later, he came back down. “He’s beyond anything I can do for him. Are you OK sitting here for another couple of minutes? I need to go get Wayne.”

  I nodded, concentrating on taking deep, even breaths. “I’ll be fine. The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll come back. Go.”

  Derek gave me another measured look, no doubt checking for signs of shock or incipient breakdown, then nodded and turned on his heel. When he glanced at me over his shoulder before going out the door, I waved a shaky hand. He waved back before ducking out the door and running hell for leather for the B&B.

  It was a lonely and scary few minutes before he came back. I made the time pass by telling myself over and over again that this was nothing; that I’d seen much worse before. Wonder what he’s doing here, my treacherous mind whispered in my inner ear. Had he come to meet Shannon? Or had Kate tracked him down and asked him to come over for a chat? She had mentioned giving Shannon’s companion a piece of her mind.

  But if so, why hadn’t she met him inside the B&B instead of out here? Besides, she was a law-abiding citizen; if he’d had a heart attack or something while they’d been discussing things, Kate wouldn’t just have left him here for us to find. She would have called 911 or Wayne or both.

  So maybe he’d made his own way into the carriage house and was waiting for Shannon to come home. To tell her that Kate had contacted him, perhaps. Maybe Shannon was avoiding him, and this was his attempt to corner her for a talk. If he’d been waiting a while, maybe he had lain down for a rest; it would explain the neat way the coat was spread over him. And then he had died. Quietly, in his sleep, since I’d seen no sign of a struggle or upheaval. Poor guy.

  And the best thing was that he hadn’t been murdered like the other dead people I’d come upon since I’d moved to Waterfield. That made it a little easier.

  When the front door opened, I jumped and stared at the two men like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck.

  “Everything OK?” Derek said, scanning my face.

  I nodded, catching my breath. “Fine.”

  “You look better. Not so much like you’re gonna pass out anymore. There’s some color in your cheeks again.”

  “I feel better. Although I don’t think I want to talk about it. That would probably make me feel worse.”

  Wayne nodded. “I don’t think you can tell me anything Derek hasn’t already said, Avery. Just keep doing what you were doing. I’ll go upstairs and take a look.”

  He stepped toward the staircase. It looked like he had dressed hurriedly; his shirt was untucked and hanging over his uniform pants, and his boots were unlaced. His face looked tired, with heavy eyelids. He didn’t look like he had slept well, either, and I don’t suppose facing another dead body ever gets easier.

  “Did you tell Kate?” I asked Derek, sotto voce, when Wayne was out of sight at the top of the stairs.

  He shook his head. “She was in the shower. I figure it’s Wayne’s responsibility to tell her, anyway. As chief of police, and as her fiancé.”

  I nodded. “I can’t imagine she’ll be happy that there’s a dead guy on her premises, and especially the guy who was going around with her daughter, but at least he died a natural death. That’s something to be grateful for.”

  Derek squinted at me. “What makes you say that?”

  I squinted back. “You mean he didn’t?” Damn.

  “I wouldn’t want to go on record,” Derek said, “and I didn’t examine him closely, but there was some evidence that he may have had a little help.”

  “What kind of evidence?”

  He shrugged. “For one, it looks like he may have eaten something that didn’t agree with him.”

  “Food poisoning?” That didn’t sound too bad.

  “Or some other type of poisoning. Before someone asphyxiated him. But it’s just a guess. The ME will have to say for sure.”

  “So you’re saying someone killed the guy on purpose?” That could complicate things. And implicate a whole lot of people. People who had access to the carriage house and who had had dealings with the guy. Like Kate. And Shannon. And even Josh, who might not have liked the fact that Shannon was going around with a man old enough to be her father.

  A stray thought buzzed through my head and out the other side, but before I could try to catch and inspect it, Derek had answered my question.

  “No idea,” he said cheerfully, “and not my problem, thankfully. We’ll just wait until Dudley Do-right gets here, and then we’ll tell the police the little bit we know and knock off work for now. They’re gonna be busy processing the carriage house as a murder scene for the rest of the day. We’d be in the way, even if they’d let us go to work, and they probably won’t. But at least we won’t be suspects. We didn’t know the guy.”

  “Thank God. Horrible how he ended up in our work space, though.”

  He looked down at me. “Seems to follow you around, doesn’t it, Tink?”

  “Me!” I sputtered, moving away. “Nothing ever happened to me until I moved to Waterfield.”

  “Nothing ever happened in Waterfield until you came. The last time we had a murder here was in 1999. And then you showed up, and now we’ve had five in less than a year.”

  “Four,” I said, since one of the bodies had died years before I got here. “No, three.” Since Aunt Inga had died while I was still in New York, too.

  Derek opened his mouth, probably to argue, but before he could get a word out, Wayne came back down the stairs, his steps heavy. Derek closed his mouth again and watched him. Wayne stopped at the bottom of the staircase and looked at us. We looked back.

  “Well?” Derek said eventually.

  “He’s dead, all right.”

  Derek snorted. “No kidding.”

  “Do either of you know who he is?”

  Derek and I exchanged a look.

  “We’ve seen him a couple of times,” Derek admitted. “With Shannon.”

  “But other than that, we don’t know anything about him,” I added. “I don’t even know his name.”

  Wayne looked at me. After a second, he seemed to conclude that I’d find out soon enough anyway, and he may as well tell me. “The name is easy. What he was doing here and who decided to kill him, if he was killed, may be a little trickier.”

  “So who is he?” Derek wanted to know. “He looks familiar, although I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”

  “I don’t imagine you have, since he’s never been to Waterfield before, to my knowledge. But I’m not surprised he looks familiar to you. He looks like his daughter. Or she looks like him.”

  He looked from one to the other of us, waiting to see if we’d catch on. After a few seconds, he said, “His name is Gerard Labadie. He’s Shannon’s father.”

  7

  “Oh, my God!” I said, and I must have reeled, because I felt Derek’s hand reach out and steady me. Again.

  “Shannon’s dad?” he repeated, gripping my elbow. “That prince of a guy who had his fun and then left Kate to raise Shannon on her own, with no help from him?”

  “The same.” Wayne looked about as disgusted as Derek sounded. “He had his wallet in his pocket, with his driver’s license in it, and that’s what it said. Gerard Labadie, with an address in Boston, Massachusetts.”

  “That’s where the car’s from, too,” I nodded.

  Wayne turned to me. “Car?”

  “The silver gray Lexus I’ve seen him drive. It has Massachusetts plates.”

  “Wonder where that is now,” Derek muttered.

  “If we knew that,” Wayne answered, “it might answer a lot of questions.” He sighed, and added, scrubbing his hands over his face, “I guess I need to give Kate the news.”

  He headed for the outside, looking glum.

  I lowered my voice. “He’ll have to give Shannon the news, too. And I don’t envy him. She’ll be devastated, won’t she?”

  Derek nodded. “Especially if her father’s been up here for long enough that she’s
gotten to know him. You know, I didn’t see this coming.”

  He held the door open for me to pass out into the frigid morning air again.

  I shook my head. “I didn’t, either. But now that I know, I can kind of see the resemblance.”

  Shannon had her mother’s statuesque height and centerfold figure, but her father’s dark eyes and strong nose and chin. And her mahogany or black cherry hair was the sort of thing that might happen if a redheaded Irish girl got together with a swarthy Frenchman to make a baby.

  Derek called Wayne to a stop on the snow-covered lawn between the carriage house and the B&B. “Do you want us to come in with you, Wayne? Kate might like to have Avery there when you give her the news. Another woman. But we’ll do whatever you want.”

  “Sure,” Wayne said. “When Brandon gets here, I’m gonna have to come back out here anyway, and it’s just as well to have someone who can stay with her. In case she takes it hard.”

  “I’ll be happy to stay with Kate until Shannon can get here,” I said. “After that, I’m sure they’ll prefer to be alone.”

  “Come along, then.” Wayne headed for the back door. Derek and I followed.

  Kate was still in the kitchen, cleaning up from breakfast, and she took the news rather well, everything considered. She didn’t faint, cry, or have hysterics, although she did turn pale and have to sit down.

  “Dead?” she repeated, in a voice that was barely there.

  Wayne nodded, eyes narrowed. His own face may as well have been chiseled out of granite for all the emotion it expressed. He might be a cop assessing a potential suspect, but I wondered if he wasn’t more of a fiancé assessing his girlfriend’s reaction to the news that her ex—and the father of her child—had died, and on her property. Was he searching her face for something more than just normal shock and grief? Some indication that Kate still had feelings for Gerard? Or that she had had a hand in his demise? Did Wayne know that Gerard had been going about with Shannon? Or that Kate had spoken to Gerard the day before?

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  Kate blinked. “I haven’t seen him for at least six years. Not since Shannon and I moved to Waterfield.”