Home For the Homicide (A Do-It-Yourself Mystery)

by Bentley, Jennie

“He still didn’t have to be rude,” Derek said, and dropped my arm to start picking through the vegetables.

  We got what we needed along with some steak and dessert—rice I already had, in the cupboard at home—and then we headed out. Once we got to Aunt Inga’s house and had greeted Mischa—who wound around our ankles with abandon, purring hysterically—and Jemmy and Inky, who favored us with an open eye and a twitching tail respectively, from the velvet love seat in the parlor—Derek got busy chopping on the kitchen counter, while I laid old newspaper all over the dining room table and began preparations for creating my oversized Christmas ornaments. Soon, the sound of oil popping from the wok mingled with the carols on the radio, and the odors of browning beef and broccoli mixed with the sharp scent of spray paint. I was humming along with Bing and “White Christmas” when there was a knock on the door.

  Mischa, ever my guardian, shot out from under the table and streaked for the door, the better to protect me from whoever was outside. I took a few steps back from the table and peered through the foyer.

  “Brandon’s here,” I informed Derek as I turned down the music. “I’ll let him in.”

  “Go ahead,” floated back to me. “I’ve got my hands full.”

  “He might want to talk to you.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Derek said, “but if he does, he can come into the kitchen.”

  Right-o.

  I snapped the latex gloves off my hands and went to answer the door. “This is a surprise.”

  “Sorry,” Brandon said.

  “Something wrong?” I waved him inside. He stamped his feet on the mat and moved into the foyer so I could close the door behind him.

  “This looks nice.” He looked around at the decorations.

  “It will, once we finish.”

  “You can stay and help if you want,” Derek said, sticking his head out of the kitchen for a moment. “There’s plenty of food.”

  Brandon’s nostrils quivered. “Smells good.”

  “Stir-fry,” I said. “You’re welcome to stay.”

  He shook his head. “I wish I could, but I need one of you to come with me over to the house on North Street.”

  “Our house?” Derek and I exchanged a glance. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not with the house. Miss Mamie is missing again.”

  “The nursing home lost her?”

  “They didn’t lose her,” Brandon said. “She left. She’s not a prisoner there.”

  Right.

  “You go,” I told Derek. “If she’s hurt or something, you’ll know what to do better than I will.”

  He nodded. “Just turn the heat off and put the lid on the wok to keep the food warm.” He paused next to me for long enough to drop a kiss on my cheek.

  “No problem. Be careful.” I watched him snag his coat from the foyer and follow Brandon out into the night. Then I locked the door behind them and headed for the kitchen to make sure the food didn’t overcook. There’s nothing worse than soggy Chinese food.

  Or rather, there are plenty worse things than soggy Chinese food, but as far as Chinese food goes, soggy is the worst.

  —11—

  Derek came back after thirty minutes, his face somber. By then I had set the enameled-top table in the kitchen with plates and silverware, and had started worrying that the food would be inedible by the time he returned.

  I was also worried about Mamie. After such a close call just two nights ago, it was amazing to me that the nursing home staff would allow her to wander off again. Sure, she wasn’t a prisoner. They couldn’t keep her chained to her bed, I understood that. But if she wasn’t capable of keeping herself safe, surely there was something they could do to keep her inside when the temperatures dipped down below freezing.

  “Was she there?” I asked Derek.

  He shook his head. “No sign of her. We went through the whole house, top to bottom. I even stuck my head up into the attic. She wasn’t there.”

  “That’s not good, is it?” I got busy filling the plates with rice.

  “No,” Derek said. “Because it means she’s somewhere else. Hopefully somewhere safe. More likely somewhere that’ll kill her.”

  “Outside, you mean.” I ladled still-warm stir-fry over the rice.

  He nodded. “I told Brandon that if he couldn’t track her down in the next hour, I’d help him look.”

  “Of course.” I put the wok back on the stove and went to get the water pitcher out of the refrigerator to fill the water glasses. If Derek was headed out again, I’d better not get him a beer.

  “This is good,” he told me when I took a seat across from him at the table.

  “You’re the one who made it.” I lifted my fork.

  “You kept it warm,” Derek said.

  “And a great big job it was. So the house was empty? No sign of her?”

  He shook his head. “None. No sign that she’d been there, either. Everything looked just the way it did when we left.”

  “She must be somewhere else.” I forked up some food and chewed. Mmm. Good. “Her cousin Henrietta’s?”

  Derek shook his head. “Brandon had already been there. Henrietta hadn’t seen her.”

  “What about Henry?”

  “Brandon didn’t mention Henry,” Derek said. “I guess he wasn’t home.”

  At this time of night? “Maybe Mamie is with him.”

  “I’m sure Brandon will track him down and ask,” Derek said.

  “There’s no other family. Does she have any other friends?”

  “None we know of,” Derek said. “She and her sister kept to themselves. I never saw them talk to anyone else. They’d chat with Dad if they met him outside, but that was it.”

  “So she’s wandering.”

  He nodded. “Most likely. That’s what she likes to do. The baby carriage is gone.”

  “Our baby carriage? From outside the house?”

  “That’s the one. Would you happen to remember whether it was there today?”

  “During the day, you mean?” I thought back. “I’m not sure.”

  “I didn’t go to the Dumpster a lot,” Derek said. “You took the vinyl flooring out there.”

  “I’m aware of that.” I scooted the stir-fry around my plate while I thought. “I was out there several times in the afternoon. Do you think it went missing earlier?”

  “I have no idea. All I know is it’s missing now. It could have disappeared anytime between yesterday when we put it out there, and this evening.” He forked up another mouthful of food.

  “Does it matter?”

  “I don’t guess it does. I just thought you might remember.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wracking my brain in an effort to recollect whether or not I’d seen the carriage when I’d taken the vinyl flooring out to the Dumpster earlier. It had been cold and dark, I hadn’t been wearing a coat, I’d wanted to get back inside as quickly as possible . . . “I didn’t notice. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, just that I didn’t happen to see it.”

  He nodded. “Don’t worry about it, Avery. I was just trying to figure out whether she’d grabbed it and is taking it for a walk, or whether someone else might have found it and taken it with them.”

  “I suppose someone else could have. It was just sitting there, next to the Dumpster. I guess it looked like it was trash.”

  “It was trash,” Derek said and stood up. He grabbed his plate and took it over to the sink. “Dessert?”

  “Sure.”

  We indulged in dessert—whoopie pies, another Maine staple: the state snack, not to be confused with the state dessert, which is blueberry pie—before I went back to my Chinese lanterns and Derek went to work stringing Christmas lights around the tree. It had settled into the shape it would hopefully stay now, after twenty-four hours inside in the warmth, and it looked wonderfully tall and broad in the middle of the foyer. It managed to make the foyer look small, which was no small feat. No pun intended.

  Brandon did call wh
ile he was in the middle of it, and told Derek he hadn’t found Miss Mamie, so if the offer of help was still open, Brandon would be delighted to take Derek up on it. The search party was meeting outside the church in twenty minutes.

  Derek said he’d be there and then he finished hanging the lights before grabbing his coat. “C’mon, Avery.”

  I stopped in the middle of blowing glitter at a lantern to stare at him. “You want me to come with you?”

  He stared back in the process of shrugging into the sheep’s wool. “Don’t you want to?”

  I blinked. “I don’t mind, I guess.” The idea of wandering through Waterfield in the dark and the cold wasn’t all that appealing, but Miss Mamie had to be found.

  “Good,” Derek said. “Get your coat on.”

  “Just a second.” I put the latest lantern, aka Christmas ornament, down carefully and made sure it wouldn’t roll over and ruin my glittery camel stencil before it could dry. “I didn’t realize I was included in the invitation.”

  “You’re always included,” Derek said, digging hats and gloves out of the basket next to the door. Meanwhile, I pulled on my puffy down coat, the one that went all the way down to my calves, and shoved my feet into heavy fur-lined boots. Manhattan had been plenty cold enough in the winter, but I’d never spent a lot of time outside. It was easy to grab the subway or a cab from home to school or home to work—or home to dinner—when the weather was too bad to want to venture outside. I’d had to update my entire winter wardrobe for Maine, including a pair of boots I’d never want to be caught dead wearing in Manhattan. There was nothing sexy or fashionable about them, but they kept my feet warm, and for that I adored them.

  Derek wound a scarf around my neck before squashing my hair up under a hat. I’d made both scarf and hat myself. The scarf was your average knit-one, purl-one construction with fringe on both ends, but the hat—a tam-o-shanter—was my own design, teal and white, with a lotus leaf design adapted from a vintage pot I’d found in Aunt Inga’s kitchen, from a Norwegian company called Cathrineholm. I loved it, and when I’d gone to look for more, I’d discovered that so did a lot of other people. eBay did a brisk business in Cathrineholm midcentury enamelware, and John Nickerson had informed me he couldn’t keep it in stock.

  Anyway, I had adapted the lotus leaf design from the pot to the hat. And the result was, if I did say so myself, rather attractive. If nothing else, the teal brought out the washed chlorine color of my eyes.

  Derek pulled the hat down over my eyes, and I had to reach up and push it back out. “I have to see to search.”

  “You can hold my hand,” Derek said and grinned. “I just don’t want you to lose any exposed parts, Tink.”

  “I’m more worried about Mamie’s exposed parts,” I said. “Was she at least wearing a coat when she left?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Derek said and pulled on his gloves. “Let’s go.”

  We went.

  • • •

  The crowd outside the church numbered about a dozen people. In addition to Derek and myself and Brandon, there was Wayne—in civvies, so he must be off-duty tonight—and Josh. Barry Norton, the reverend, was there—Judy’s husband and Derek’s old buddy from school—but Judy herself was absent. Darren Silva had shown up, still in his fancy cashmere coat, and someone—Darren or Brandon—must have managed to track down Henry, because the older man was also there. He looked like he’d dressed hurriedly, his thick, gray hair a little tousled and the shirt misbuttoned at the collar.

  Kerri—she of the Brady Bunch house—was on the other side of the crowd, just about as far away from Darren and Henry as she could get, and she had been joined by a friend. The friend was tall, skinny, and blond, huddled inside an oversized green cape. The long hair, round glasses, and cape made her look something like Professor Trelawny from the Harry Potter movies.

  Peter Cortino, another friend of Derek’s, who married Derek’s high school sweetheart, Jill, a few years ago, was there as well, and so was Dr. Ben.

  Derek immediately headed for his dad. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Dr. Ben arched his brows at him. “I hope you’re not telling me I’m too old, son.”

  Derek opened his mouth, and closed it again.

  “I’m sixty-four,” Dr. Ben said. “That’s hardly death’s door.”

  “It’s not that you’re old . . .”

  “I’m not ill, either.” He thumped his chest. “The old ticker is just fine. I don’t even have a cold.”

  “We won’t be tramping through the wilderness,” I said, tucking my arm through Derek’s and smiling at my father-in-law. “Just walking around Waterfield Village. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  Derek sent me a less than loving look. Dr. Ben, meanwhile, smiled back. “Precisely. And if we find her, and something’s wrong, I might be able to help. You”—he nodded to his son—“can’t be everywhere at once.”

  No arguing with that. And at any rate, that was when Brandon cleared his throat and then, when we all looked at him, shot a guilty glance at Wayne. “Did you want to do this?”

  Wayne shook his head. “Carry on.”

  Brandon raised his voice. “Thanks for coming. As you all know, Mary Green—Miss Mamie—is missing again. We’ve looked in all the logical places, and haven’t been able to find her. The next thing to do is a canvass of the Village. If we don’t find her here, we’ll reassess what to do next.”

  We all muttered and nodded, stamped our feet, and blew into our mittens.

  “We’ll break up into pairs,” Brandon said, looking around at all the pairs already formed. “Ms. Holt and Ms. Waldo, are you going to feel safe together, or would you like to pair up with Mr. Silva Junior and Senior?”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “I feel safe,” Kerri said with a glance at Henry and Darren. Henry glanced back at her. Kerri turned to her friend. “Dab?”

  Professor Trelawny shrugged.

  “Whatever you want,” Brandon said. “Dr. Ben, you can go with Mr. Cortino, and Reverend Norton, you can come with me.”

  All three of them nodded.

  “I can go with your dad,” I told Derek, “if you and Peter want to hang out.”

  He glanced down at me. “You think I’d rather spend time with Peter Cortino than my wife or my father?”

  “We have spent rather a lot of time together lately . . .”

  “Oh,” Derek said, “so it’s you who’d rather spend time with someone other than your husband. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to go with Peter and have me go with Dad?”

  “Just because he’s gorgeous . . .” I began. He gave me the evil eye, and I grinned. “You and your dad can’t go together. Sending the only two doctors out together doesn’t make any sense. You’ll do more good separately, assuming we’ll need a doctor at all. But I wouldn’t mind spending some time with my father-in-law. And I actually thought you might enjoy hanging out with a buddy, now that you’re an old married man.”

  “I can go with Peter if you’d rather,” Derek said with a shrug. “It makes no difference to me.”

  “Then go with Peter. It’ll be good for you. And your dad and I will have fun together.” Or as much fun as we could have, walking around in single digits looking for a lost old lady.

  “Whatever you want,” Derek said and headed for where the other two had gravitated together like two magnets. “Excuse us. Change of plans.”

  They both looked up politely and Derek added, “Avery wants to go with you, Dad.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Dr. Ben said with a shrug. “That way those of us with short legs don’t have to try to keep up with the two of you with long ones.”

  My father-in-law was a few inches shorter than his son. Not short by any means—Derek tops out at six feet or so—but not overly tall, either. Peter was almost as tall as Derek.

  They were about the same age, and with all due respect to my husband—quite attractive in his own right—Peter was the best-looking man I’d ever s
een. He looked like one of Michelangelo’s statues come to life, only in jeans and a puffy parka, or one of those Greek gods of legend. Almost too handsome to be believed, with glossy black curls, melting chocolate brown eyes with cow lashes, and a face that might as well have been carved in marble. One of those guys who quite simply take your breath away upon first sight.

  More important, he was a very nice guy who adored his slightly-less-than-perfect wife and their four children.

  Yes, four. In six years. Peter Junior, Paul, Pamela, and little Pepper, only two months old.

  “Is Jill home with the kids?” I asked.

  Peter nodded. “No sense in her walking around in this. Besides, Sneeze will want feeding.”

  “Sneeze? Is that your new nickname for the baby?”

  “It seems fitting.”

  It did, seeing as a sneeze—brought on by the pepper pot at dinner—was what had sent Jill into labor in the first place.

  “How is the baby?”

  “She’s fine,” Peter said. “They’re all fine. And luckily Jill’s nursing, so I don’t have to partake in the middle-of-the-night feedings.” He grinned.

  At that moment, Brandon came over to us with Darren Silva trailing him, and gave us our assignments for the next couple of hours. We informed him of the team change, and he assigned Derek and Peter the area around Main Street in downtown, while Dr. Ben and I were told to stay in the Village, and search the six square blocks between North Street and Birch and between Cabot and Fraser. It was an area that included not only the Green sisters’ house on North Street and Dr. Ben’s house on Cabot, but also Barry’s church and the rectory.

  “Does everyone have a flashlight?” Brandon wanted to know when the assignments were done and it was time to head out. “I brought a few extras.”

  Some people didn’t—the Silvas, for one—and after the oversized Waterfield PD regulation Maglites were distributed, we wandered off. Derek and Peter headed down the hill toward downtown, while Wayne and Josh walked toward the other side of the Village, and Brandon and Barry set out in the direction of Aunt Inga’s house. Henry and Darren headed north, while Kerri and her friend sidled over to us. “This is Deborah,” Kerri said by way of introductions, “but you can call her Dab.”