“These appliances are hideous,” I said, reaching out a hand to touch the brick red stove next to us. “They’ll definitely have to go. And someone didn’t do a very good job cleaning up, either. There’s a big spill of something down the front of this thing. From the corner here, see? They probably didn’t notice, against the red. Looks like spaghetti sauce or ketchup or something.”
Derek’s arm stiffened around my shoulders, and when I looked up, I saw that he had a funny look on his face. “Oh,” I said, and snatched my hand away. Maybe not ketchup after all. We took a couple of synchronized steps away from the stove. “Um… where exactly did the shootings take place?”
“Bedrooms,” Derek said.
“Maybe someone came through the kitchen at some point. Trying to get to the back door, or something.”
The little boy… no, he wouldn’t have been in contact with any blood. One of the in-laws, maybe, fatally wounded, trying to make it to safety: staggering toward the back door, holding on to the stove for support. They would have cleaned up though, wouldn’t they? My stomach clenched.
“Let’s get out of here,” Derek said. “Have you seen enough?” It was a rhetorical question; he was already on his way out of the kitchen toward the front door, pulling me along with him.
“More than enough,” I answered, hustling to keep up. His legs are a lot longer than mine. “We’ll have to clean it up, you know.”
He glanced at me without slowing his stride. “Like hell we will. I’ll put on a pair of gloves and haul it out to the truck, but that’s the most I’ll do. Let the people at the dump deal with it.”
“Works for me. Like I said, the appliances will have to be replaced anyway.”
He nodded, yanking open the front door and shooing me toward it. “After you.”
I took a step forward and stopped on the threshold with a squeak, face-to-face with a menacing figure, one arm lifted and ending in a closed fist.
A second or two passed while I rocked back on my heels, trying to catch my breath, and while Derek peered around the doorframe to figure out why I wasn’t moving. “Who the hell are you?” he said.
The young man outside lowered his arm, and I realized he wasn’t near as menacing as I had thought. We had yanked the door open just as he was about to knock, and he looked as rattled as I felt.
I placed him somewhere around twenty, with a freckled face, pale blue eyes, and a prominent Adam’s apple, which suddenly bounced as he swallowed.
“Who are you?” Derek asked again, more calmly this time, and the young man shifted his attention from me to him.
“My name’s Lionel Kenefick. I live down the road apiece.”
His voice was a lot deeper and more resonant than I had expected, considering his small stature and narrow chest. He gestured with his thumb over his shoulder. Derek nodded. I knew from experience that in Maine, down the road apiece could mean anywhere from three doors down to three miles out of town.
“Where the van’s parked out front,” Lionel clarified. Derek looked over Lionel’s shoulder. Being much shorter, I snuck a peek around Lionel’s far-from-imposing frame and spied a dirty paneled van in a driveway halfway down the block. A couple of ladders and some other paraphernalia were attached to the roof rack.
“Carpenter?” Derek inquired.
Lionel shook his head, causing strands of reddish hair to fall into his eyes. “Electrician.”
“Who are you working for? Yourself?”
“Subcontractor. I’m working in Devon Highlands.” He sounded proud, as well he should, considering that Devon Highlands was the biggest, most expensive development going into Waterfield at the moment, and the Stenhams were the biggest construction contractors in town. Poor guy, he couldn’t have known that mentioning the Stenhams and their development to either one of us was like waving a red flag in the face of a bull. Derek scowled but didn’t take the bait.
“What can we do for you, Lionel?” he asked instead, bluntly.
“Oh,” Lionel said. His blue eyes flicked back and forth. “I… um… saw the truck. Was wondering what was going on. Are you guys gonna be renovating the place?”
Derek nodded. “We’re buying it.”
“Oh,” Lionel said again. “Um… I thought maybe Pat was back…?” His inflection made it sound like a question.
“Apparently not,” Derek said. “He’s selling the house to us.”
“Did you know Patrick?” I interjected.
“Best friends when we were little. Till he left.”
“Did you stay in touch with him afterwards?”
Lionel shrugged narrow shoulders. “Tried. I haven’t heard anything from him for years now, though. But when I saw the truck, I thought maybe he was coming home.”
“Guess maybe he feels there’s nothing to come home to,” Derek said lightly. I nodded. I certainly wouldn’t want to move back into the house where my father had killed my mother and my grandparents. I’d do exactly what Patrick had done and off-load it tout de suite.
Lionel looked from one to the other of us. “Are you guys gonna be moving in?”
Derek shook his head. “We’re just planning to renovate it and put it back on the market. Make some money.”
“Derek lives in downtown,” I added. “I own a house on Bayberry.”
Lionel nodded. “Let me know if you need an electrician. I can always use some extra money.”
Derek told him we would, and Lionel stood for another second, shuffling his feet. “Place is haunted, you know,” he said at last, without looking at either of us. Derek quirked an eyebrow.
“Have you seen anything spooky?” I wanted to know. Lionel shrugged.
“Not much to see. Lights go on and off sometimes, is all. Shadows moving. I’ve heard ’em, though. Late at night. Screaming.”
I felt a chill go down my spine. “Screaming?”
Lionel nodded, his pale eyes catching mine for a second then sliding away. “He shot ’em in their sleep, you know, so they didn’t have time to scream. Guess they’re making up for it now.”
He stood for a moment while the blood drained out of my head, then he walked away, across the grass to the gravel edging the road. I kept my eye on him while Derek inserted the key in the lock and made sure the house was secure.
“That was interesting,” he said when he turned back to me, his voice deliberately light. I nodded with a last look at Lionel, who was just turning into his driveway. The house he lived in was another brick ranch, like all the houses on the street. This one was a dull gray in color, with overgrown bushes in the front yard. Just before he disappeared, Lionel turned around once and stared at us.
“I’m not sure if interesting is the word I’d choose, but yes, I guess it was. Do you think it’s true?”
Derek shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. He’s probably just yanking our chains.”
“But what if it’s true?”
He answered my question with one of his own. “Are you planning to spend the night out here, Tinkerbell? No? Then I don’t think you have anything to worry about. If the screaming comes at night, we’ll just make sure we’re gone by sundown. Ready?” He put an arm around my shoulders and guided me down the steps toward the car.
2
Two weeks later, the house was ours. By nine o’clock the morning after closing, we were hard at work. I was stripping the ketchup-bottle-patterned paper from the kitchen walls, wielding my handheld scorer expertly, while Derek was putting his muscles to good use yanking up the soiled wall-to-wall carpeting and carpet pad in the common rooms. I’d catch occasional glimpses of him through the doorway and stop for a moment to enjoy the show. The muscles in his upper arms bunched as he hauled on the stubborn carpet, and every time he bent to grab another piece, his faded jeans stretched tight across his behind. I smiled appreciatively. The blinds were off the windows, allowing sharp autumn sunshine to flood in, and the light gilded his hair and outlined all those lovely muscles.
That same sunshine didn’t
do so flattering a job on the house itself. There were cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling, faded and peeling paint, legions of dead flies littering every windowsill, and even a mummified mouse on the floor in the smallest bedroom. Derek removed it, along with the soiled stove and ancient refrigerator in the kitchen.
“If Jemmy and Inky happen to stop in at Aunt Inga’s house tonight,” he said when he came back from depositing the unfortunate rodent in the oversized Dumpster we had rented, “try to make them stick around so they can come with us tomorrow. Just in case there are more rodents.”
I nodded, although my chances of holding on to Jemmy and Inky if they didn’t want to be held-and they usually didn’t-were practically nil.
Jemmy and Inky were cats. Specifically, Maine coon cats. The biggest breed there is. Jemmy topped twenty pounds, and Inky was close to fifteen. They had belonged to my aunt, and I had inherited them along with her house. Or they had inherited me, for those rare times when they needed something. Jemmy and Inky don’t cuddle, they don’t care whether I’m there or not, and they search me out only when they want something, usually food. They come and go as they please, through a cat flap in the back door, and as long as there’s food and water in their bowls, I rarely see them. Still, I could try to keep them around if they surfaced this evening. By locking the cat flap after they were inside, for instance, so they couldn’t leave again. Derek would be putting them in the truck in the morning, though. After being kept inside all night, they’d be seriously annoyed, and I wasn’t about to risk my skin. If Derek wanted to bring them, Derek could handle getting them here.
Despite the dead mouse, and the thought that there might be more where that one came from, I was still psyched about renovating the house. It was such a promising place. All it needed was some tender, loving care to come into its own after being ignored and neglected for so many years. It was a friendly house, in spite of what had happened here. I didn’t get any creepy vibes, and if there was screaming going on, we didn’t hear it. Nothing untoward had happened, and so far, we hadn’t come across anything too horrible in the structural department, either. No major wood rot, no evidence of termites or carpenter ants. The plumbing needed work, of course, as did the electrical system, but we’d been expecting that.
“Are you planning to call Lionel Kenefick?” I asked. The young man had, after all, offered.
“I’ll do the electrical work myself,” Derek answered. “If he works for the Stenhams, he probably doesn’t know what he’s doing anyway.”
“That’s a little harsh, isn’t it? He could be a great electrician.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Derek said, and of course he’d never see it, because he was going to do the work himself. I didn’t say anything.
So structurally, at least, the place seemed sound. Or so we thought, until midafternoon, when Derek, now ripping up the vinyl floor in the kitchen for a change of pace, came into the second bathroom, where I was once again wielding my scorer to great effect, stripping wallpaper blossoming with twining vines of roses and thorns.
“Problem,” he said, succinctly.
“What kind of problem?” I climbed off the step stool I’d been standing on and out of the tub, where the step stool was positioned.
“Weak floor in the kitchen. Under the refrigerator and the bank of cabinets where the dishwasher was. There’s probably been a leak at some point, and now the floor’s soft.”
“Can you fix it?”
Derek snorted. “Of course I can fix it. It’s just going to take a day or two. I’m going to have to go into the crawlspace and do it from below. I thought you might want to come out there with me and see what’s going on.”
“To the crawlspace?” I said. “No thanks. There are probably spiders and beetles and other creepy critters down there.”
“At the very least,” Derek agreed. “Maybe even snakes. What I meant was that I thought you might come into the kitchen while I crawled under the house, and we could talk through the floor. I’ll need you to write down some measurements.”
“Oh. Sure.” I could do that. I balanced my plastic tool on the vanity cabinet and followed him into the hallway. “Um… you don’t really think there are snakes, do you?”
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Could be snakes.”
“Dangerous snakes?”
“Probably not. I’ll shine the flashlight in first, scare anything off.”
“Bring a tool, too. Something heavy. With a sharp edge.”
Derek promised he would, and then he sauntered out through the back door while I wandered into the kitchen, over to the area where the refrigerator had been. I could feel how the floor gave a little when I stepped on it, and it looked like it had settled a little, too, toward the wall. I dug a marble out of Derek’s toolbox and put it on the floor. It rolled away from the nearest wall, picking up speed, until it smacked into the opposite wall and bounced back. I stooped to pick it up again and caught sight of something shiny in the debris where the refrigerator had stood. Grimacing as I stuck my fingers into the dust and fossilized crumbs, I picked up an earring. Sparkly rhinestones, shaped like a flower. Very pretty. Very 1940s.
I admit it, it was a little freaky. The earring had probably belonged to one of the dead women, lost under the refrigerator, only to surface now, seventeen or eighteen years later. Long after the person who had worn it was dust. Shivering a little, I stuffed it in my pocket, intending to show it to Derek when he came back inside. Maybe we should give it to the lawyer in Portland to forward on to Patrick Murphy. He might appreciate having it.
From outside, I could hear a screeching noise as Derek pulled open the hatch, giving entry into the crawlspace. We’d have to buy some oil to lubricate the hinges on the doors. The auditory effects were enough to induce night-mares. I wrote “lubricant” on the bottom of a long list of materials Derek had already started, and waited for him to speak. From below, I could hear scuffling noises and then, finally, Derek’s voice, muffled and distant. “It’s a lot better down here than I expected.”
I raised my own voice. “Really? How so?”
“Not as low, for one thing. It’s not actually a crawlspace. More of a walk-bent-over-at-the-waist space. You might be able to walk upright, though.” He chuckled.
“Hey! I am five feet two,” I said, offended, and I could hear another chuckle float through the floorboards.
“The floor’s just dirt. Hardpacked, but at least it isn’t concrete. I can haul a shovel down here and make some progress.”
“Works for me,” I said, since I wasn’t the one who’d have to do it. “So what do you need to make the repairs? I’m ready.”
Derek started firing off items and measurements, and for a few minutes, I was busy writing. “See any wild-life?” I asked, when he had wound down.
“There are some ants and beetles crawling around. And cobwebs. Lots of cobwebs. I’ll need a shower when I get outta here.”
“Anything else? Was the hatch locked?”
The hatch had not been locked, only closed and bolted, and Derek reported a lot of junk sitting around. Ratty blankets, old cans, empty bottles, old insulation, and newspapers.
“It looks like someone might have been hanging out down there,” he said when he came back into the house again, brushing cobwebs and dirt from his hair. “Not for a while, I think, but we should get a padlock and make sure the space is locked up tight anyway.”
I nodded, scribbling it at the bottom of the now even-longer list. “We need a ton of other things, too. I added lubricant, for the hinges.”
“Good idea.” Derek nodded approvingly. “For a second there, I thought I’d stepped on a cat. Do you think the screaming Lionel said he heard was someone opening the hatch?”
I nodded. “Or the front door. But the hatch is more likely, especially if it wasn’t locked. And squatters make more sense than ghosts, anyway. They could have been arguing or something, and that’s what he heard.”
“Sure,” Derek
agreed. “So do you want me to go to the hardware store and pick up some of this stuff, then? Or do you want to come, too?”
I hesitated. There was a part of me that wanted to go with him. Or not so much wanted to go as wanted to avoid being left behind, alone. Still, I’m a big girl-in everything but stature-and I know there is no such thing as ghosts.
“I’d love to, but Kate said she’d be stopping by this afternoon. I don’t want her to drive all the way out here and then find nobody home.”
Kate McGillicutty had been my first friend when I came to town. She lived a couple of blocks from Aunt Inga’s house, in the heart of Waterfield, and was the owner of a local B and B, and she was someone who disliked Melissa James as heartily as I did. She also knew and liked Derek and had given us tons of assistance while we were renovating Aunt Inga’s house. Kate had great taste in interior decorating and a way of jollying Derek along, by alternately flirting and big-sistering him, that had been very helpful when he and I weren’t getting along as well as we do now.
“You want me to wait for her?” Derek asked. “That way you won’t have to stay here alone?”
He looked serious, but a hint of amusement lurked in the corners of his mouth. I shook my head. “That’s OK.”
“You sure?”
I nodded bravely. “Positive.”
He chucked me under the chin. “Just stay in the bathroom and work on the wallpaper. If someone knocks on the door, make sure it’s Kate before you open it.”
I promised I would, and then I followed him to the front door. When he was gone, I locked and bolted it behind him and attached the security chain before I headed down the hallway to the back bathroom again.
The house was laid out very nicely. The front door opened into an L-shaped living room-dining room combination, with the eat-in kitchen behind the dining room and the den behind the living room. The hallway leading to the bedrooms and bathrooms was in the den; there was a full bath with a combo tub-shower on the left and a small bedroom on the right. At the end of the hall, there were two more bedrooms: the master with an attached three-quarter bath-shower only-on the left, and another biggish bedroom on the right. Although it was the last thing I wanted to dwell on, I couldn’t help thinking that the little boy must have slept in the small room across from the big bathroom, closest to the den, while his grandparents had shared the bigger room at the end of the hall. That would have allowed him to sneak out undetected while his father murdered his wife and in-laws.
Spackled and Spooked Page 2