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

by Bentley, Jennie

  “I don’t suppose it’s for sale? The lampshade over there?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Dab said with a glance at it. “It’s a special order.”

  “Another house in York?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you have anything like it?”

  She shook her head. “I work mostly on commission. And I’m booked for the next several months.”

  And by then we’d be finished with the Green sisters’—or Green sister’s—house. Guess I was stuck with a store-bought lamp, unless I wanted to utilize the one I had just made, and I feared it wasn’t up for the task.

  I put my lampshade in the Beetle, turned the car toward home, and went on my way.

  —14—

  Kate rang the doorbell at four o’clock precisely, sending Mischa streaking for the door to protect me. I have to admit that my heart was thudding a little extra hard when I unlocked the door and pulled it open. “C’mon in.”

  She did, shaking the snow from her hair before looking around. “This looks nice.”

  My heart sank. “Just nice?”

  “Very nice.”

  “Just very . . .”

  Derek shot me a look and I closed my mouth with a snap. “Did you see the lanterns outside?” he asked.

  “The big ornaments?” Kate nodded. “Very nice. Where did you get them?”

  I explained where they’d come from and how they’d come to look the way they did.

  “Smart of you,” Kate said.

  “This is the Christmas tree.” As if she could miss it, taking up most of the space in the foyer, almost brushing the ceiling.

  “So I see. Looks good.”

  “And the banister.”

  Kate looked at it, nodding.

  “And here’s the dining room.” I walked in front of her through the door.

  “You don’t have to try so hard, Avery,” Kate told me. “I’m not going to kick you off the tour if I don’t like something.”

  I glanced at her over my shoulder. “I know that. I just want the place to look nice. Comparatively speaking. I don’t want anyone walking in here and thinking, ‘Gee, this doesn’t look as nice as the others.’”

  “No worries,” Kate said, looking around, “it looks very nice.”

  “Just very . . .” I snapped my mouth closed at another look from Derek.

  Kate grinned. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Just let me get my coat.” I headed for the coatrack in the foyer. Kate turned to Derek meanwhile.

  “You aren’t coming?”

  “I’ve been inside most of these houses already,” my husband told her. “I helped Kerri install a new commode once. I grew up with Darren, so I’ve been at the Silvas’ plenty through the years. And I grew up in Dad’s house.”

  I turned to him. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “That I grew up in Dad’s house?”

  “Of course not. That you’ve been inside the Silva mansion.”

  “I’ve been inside almost every house in Waterfield Village at some point or other, Avery,” Derek said. “Between growing up here, being a doctor, and then being a handyman, you get to see plenty.”

  “You did house calls?”

  “What’s the point of being a small-town GP if you can’t?” He bent to drop a kiss on my cheek. “Have fun, Tink. You too, Kate.”

  “Where’s my kiss?” Kate wanted to know, and Derek blew her one from where he was standing. They grinned at each other.

  Once upon a time they’d gone on a date or two, I knew. Long before I came to Waterfield. Just after Melissa left Derek, which would make it six years prior, or maybe even more. It hadn’t worked out, obviously, but they’d become good friends in the process.

  “How are you and Wayne doing?” I asked as we set off down the road toward downtown. The air was crisp and clear, and I could see my breath in front of me, but we were both bundled up, and it was brisk but not uncomfortable outside. The snow crunched under the soles of my boots, and I kept my (mittened) fingers in the pockets of my coat.

  Kate glanced at me. “Fine. Why?”

  “No reason. It’s been almost a year since you got married.”

  Her lips curved. “I know.”

  “Are you doing anything special for your anniversary?”

  “Champagne,” Kate said and grinned, “which we’d be doing anyway.”

  Since they’d gotten married on New Year’s Eve. Right.

  She added, “We’ve discussed running away to New York for a couple of days. See the ball drop in Times Square. I never have before.”

  I had. But then I’d lived a few blocks from Times Square, in Hell’s Kitchen, my whole life, so it hadn’t been much of a trip. I hadn’t always cared to make it, either. A few times go a long way. Times Square on New Year’s Eve is a madhouse. Same as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I did that once in a while, too, but not every year. There were just too many people in too small of an area, and you know when a New Yorker says that, it has to be bad.

  Of course I didn’t tell Kate so. “You should. You’d enjoy it.”

  “Wayne is trying to take a few days off. We’ll see if it works out.”

  “He’s the chief of police. Can’t he just schedule himself off?”

  “He can,” Kate said, “but everyone wants holidays off. They have to make it fair. Just because Wayne is the chief and has seniority doesn’t mean he can take all the holidays off. The others have to have their share, too, and someone has to man the shop.”

  Of course.

  “He had it off last year. Along with the first two weeks in January.”

  “He was on his honeymoon!”

  She shrugged. “Still.”

  Fine. “Well, I hope you get to go. If you need any help organizing the trip, let me know. I spent thirty-one years of my life in Manhattan.”

  “I will,” Kate said.

  We started our tour with the historic Fraser House in downtown Waterfield, just around the corner from Main Street. Miss Edith Barnes was the curator there, and she had it all spic-and-span and decked out the way it would have been in Colonial times.

  The decorations were similar to the ones at Kate’s house, yet very different from the lush style of the Victorians. The components were the same, but the execution and style vastly different. There were candles in each window, but not the fat candles I’d seen on Kate’s mantels. These were slender tapers, and there was a simple wreath in lieu of a mirror above the mantel. The mantel itself was decorated with greenery and topiaries of fruit: oranges and lemons stacked in pyramids, one on each end of the mantel. Unlike Kate’s golden fruit, these were natural: orange and yellow, interspersed with twigs of green. And unlike Kate’s overflowing swag, draping over the edges of her mantels, the Fraser House greenery stayed on top of the mantel itself. The dining room was similarly simply decorated, the table sporting two candelabras with tall tapers, as well as a centerpiece of fir and glossy magnolia leaves, and a handful of small, green winter apples.

  The effect was a bit rustic and a bit elegant at the same time, and very, very historic.

  “Looks great,” Kate said, and Miss Barnes inclined her head regally.

  We bypassed Kate’s bed and breakfast, since we both knew what it looked like, and made our way up Cabot to the Silvas’ big mansion.

  “Are you sure it’s OK to stop here?” I asked Kate as we let ourselves into the yard and stamped up the hard-packed path toward the front door.

  She glanced at me. “Why not?”

  “They had a death in the family yesterday.”

  “This won’t take long. And I don’t think they were close.”

  “They grew up together,” I said. “Miss Ruth told me. She and Mamie and Henrietta grew up together, and they were close friends when they were little. Then something happened—she didn’t say what—and it changed.”

  “So?” Kate said, kicking the snow off her feet at the bottom step of the stairs up to the front door.

 
I followed suit, knocking my toes against the stones. “I wonder if it had anything to do with Baby Arthur’s disappearance. Or death, now that the body’s been found.”

  “That’s only if what you found is Baby Arthur’s body,” Kate said with a glance at me. “Wayne said the DNA didn’t match the Green sisters’.”

  I lowered my voice. “I think maybe Baby Arthur was conceived on the wrong side of the blanket. You know? Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Green were having problems, and she had a boyfriend.”

  “Do you have any reason to suspect that? Did they get a divorce or anything afterwards?”

  I shook my head. “But that doesn’t mean anything. Maybe the disappearance of Baby Arthur brought them closer together again. Shared grief.”

  “In my experience,” Kate said, “the opposite would be more likely. A relationship that’s already strained won’t withstand adversity like that. The death of a child—or the disappearance of one—is the hardest thing two parents can go through. If they were already struggling, I don’t see them making it through that and staying together. Especially if one of them did it.”

  “The other one may not have known.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t,” Kate said, obviously thinking along the same lines I was, “or he. But it would still put a strain on the relationship. How do you kill your child—or your spouse’s child—and just carry on as if nothing happened?”

  “You don’t.”

  She shook her head. “I defy any relationship to survive something like that. I don’t think you could keep it going. Especially if it was strained to begin with.”

  I thought for a second. “So what do you think happened to the baby, then? It was hidden in the attic, so obviously it wasn’t taken by anyone else. It would have to be one of the family members who hid it.”

  “If it’s the same baby,” Kate said.

  “Who do you think it is, if not Baby Arthur? There haven’t been any other missing babies in Waterfield. Not that I know of.”

  “Maybe one of the Green sisters had a baby at some point. That would account for the DNA discrepancy. Mamie or Ruth slept with someone and got pregnant, and because it was out of wedlock, they didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “So they killed the infant? That seems pretty brutal. I can’t imagine two little old ladies doing that.”

  “They weren’t little old ladies when it happened,” Kate said. “They couldn’t have been. And they may not have killed it. It could have been stillborn.”

  “Don’t you think they would have buried it in the yard, at least?”

  Kate shrugged. “Maybe it was winter and the ground was frozen.”

  Maybe. “That would explain some of Mamie’s behavior anyway. Derek told me that she used to wheel her baby carriage around town when she was younger. If she had a baby and lost it, it would be even more traumatic than losing a baby brother.”

  Kate nodded, and we stood in silence for a moment, contemplating the scenario. It was sad. Almost unbearably so.

  We might have continued the conversation, but just then the front door opened, and we both jumped guiltily. I’d more or less forgotten that we were standing right outside the Silvas’ house. Very insensitive of us to discuss this here. Especially here.

  The front door was big, a heavy slab of polished oak with panels and three small windows in the top half, and Henrietta looked especially small and frail standing next to it. Frailer than the last time I’d seen her, if it came to that. Then again, she’d lost her cousin two nights ago, and had probably received the news by now, so maybe it wasn’t so surprising.

  She looked from Kate to me and back without a word.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Parker,” Kate said. “We’re just stopping by to check that everything’s ready for the home tour tomorrow.”

  Henrietta’s dark eyes focused on her. After a moment—a long moment, as if the words didn’t quite register at first—she nodded.

  “May we come in?”

  Another pause, while we waited for the question to hit the part of Henrietta’s brain that processed. Then she nodded and stepped back. I followed Kate across the threshold and into the entry foyer.

  It was fabulous. The ceilings were tall—twelve feet probably—and the walls were paneled in the same warm golden oak as the front door. Glass-fronted cabinets topped by tall tapered pillars separated the foyer from the living room beyond: a huge room with glossy oak floors that ended in a floor-to-ceiling stacked stone fireplace that took up the entire opposite wall. A wall that extended all the way up to a two-story cathedral ceiling with exposed beams. A wrought-iron chandelier that looked like it had originally been crafted to burn candles, hung from the middle beam, dark with age.

  “Wow.”

  Kate glanced at me and grinned at my expression. “Pretty impressive, isn’t it?”

  It was. So impressive I hadn’t even noticed the Christmas decorations.

  They were there, and very tastefully done. Live poinsettias clustered around the bottom of the fireplace, and stockings hung from the mantel: green, red, and blue velvet with silver ribbons and sparkling stars. The mantel was filled with family photographs, from black-and-white and formally posed to snapshots of the current generations of Silvas in more relaxing circumstances. I recognized Darren and the silver-haired Henry, both wearing tuxedos and holding glasses of champagne, in one shot, and a younger Henrietta wearing a sixties-style wedding dress in another. A third showed a chubby baby with a shock of black hair on the lap of a young woman with dimples. Darren and his mother, I assumed, from the clothing and hairstyle.

  A much older black-and-white photograph in a silver frame showed what I assumed was the former generation of Silvas. A girl, maybe nine or ten, might have been—probably was—Henrietta as a child, in a dress and pinafore. She leaned against her father, who was tall and dark and severe-looking, while a woman held a baby boy I assumed was the infant Henry. He looked just like any other baby, round-faced and toothless, with little wisps of soft hair on his head, dressed in what looked like a hand-knit set of short pants with suspenders and a little jacket.

  “Your family?” I asked.

  Henrietta nodded, brown eyes lingering on the photograph for a few seconds before we moved on.

  The Christmas tree stood in a bay window in the family room, tall and imposing, and decorated with little horses and other wooden ornaments. There were bowls of pinecones on the tables, and old aluminum buckets of greenery and branches with red berries on every other step of the staircase to the second floor. Even the deck was decorated, with Christmas-themed pillows on the Adirondack-style furniture, and with strings of lights outlining the roof.

  And speaking of Tiffany lamps, they were everywhere. Some might even, I suspected, be original, and actually made by Tiffany. If not, they were certainly made by someone with as much skill as Dab Holt. My own first attempt at lamp making would make a sad showing by comparison.

  “This is beautiful,” Kate said.

  I nodded. “The sconces are gorgeous.”

  They were hanging on the wall in the foyer, one on either side of a big mirror facing the front door. And they were made of oiled brass, deep and rich in color, topped by warm yellow shades with filigree ornamentation. Stunning. Something like that would look fantastic in the house on North Street, on the stretch of empty wall above the stone fireplace.

  Henrietta glanced at them. “Thank you.”

  “They look original.”

  “The house was built in 1919,” Henrietta said.

  “It’s incredible.” It was. Everything I had expected from the outside, and then some. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I added. I mean, I couldn’t really be here and not give my condolences to the family, could I?

  Henrietta opened her mouth, although for a moment no words came out. Eventually, after several seconds, she managed a choked, “Thank you.”

  “Miss Ruth said you used to be close when you were younger.”

  She nodded, and by now there were te
ars in her eyes. I glanced at Kate, who frowned and gave a surreptitious gesture toward the door.

  I agreed. We should get out of there. I certainly hadn’t meant to make Henrietta cry, although maybe I should have been prepared for it. I had assumed, though, after the way Ruth spoke, that they weren’t close anymore.

  “We should go,” Kate said, inching toward the door. I did the same. “We just wanted to make sure everything was ready for tomorrow. You’ll let me know if there’s anything you need, won’t you?”

  Henrietta nodded. We stepped out into the air and stood there for a second, getting readjusted to the cold, while the door closed behind us.

  Kate shot me a look. “Awkward.”

  I nodded. “Bad time to call, I guess. Not that it could be helped.”

  Kate shook her head. “Let’s do Cora and Dr. Ben’s house next.”

  Fine with me. It was right up the road. Not that I wouldn’t have plenty of occasion to see it over the holidays—Derek and I were going there for Christmas dinner—but Kate hadn’t seen it yet, and should have the opportunity to reassure herself that it was ready for the tour.

  Which of course it was. Cora has wonderful taste. As far as I know, it was Derek’s mother, Eleanor, who furnished the place—unless it had stayed the way it was from Dr. Ben’s mother; the house had been in the Ellis family for generations, and was chock full of antiques—but Cora certainly had done a great job on the Christmas decorations. They were Victorian, like Kate’s, but where Kate’s house is an oversized, imposing Queen Anne, Cora and Dr. Ben live in a much smaller, daintier Folk Victorian cottage. Cora kept her decorations light and airy: The greenery—sweet-smelling cedar—didn’t drape over the mantel so much as perch there, festooned with silver balls, like drops of water. The tree, slender and not overly large, was similarly decorated with silver and white balls, white bows, and strings of silver beads, as well as white candles. Real candles, not fairy lights. Real candles you could put a flame to.

  “That looks scary,” Kate commented.

  Cora smiled. “It’s just for the tour. We’ll change them out for strings of electrical lights before Alice and Lon and the kids come for Christmas.”