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

by Bentley, Jennie

  I stayed where I was until she’d let herself into the house and I’d heard the door close behind her, and then I made my own way out of the Dumpster and up onto the porch.

  I looked like hell, of course, with wet spots on my knees and drywall dust on my hands and coat. I’m sure my hair was a snarled mess, and my face was probably dirty. And because I was holding two Mason jars, I couldn’t even do anything to remedy the situation. But I squared my shoulders and reminded myself that Derek was my husband now, not Melissa’s, and he had married me after six years of singlehood, because I was the first woman he’d met who made him want to risk marriage again . . . so I had nothing to worry about.

  I marched into the house with my dirt and my Mason jars, to find Melissa leaning on the bathroom doorjamb ogling my husband.

  In fairness, all I saw was her back, so I can’t say with certainty that she was ogling, but part of me wanted to think so. He’s just so ogleable, especially when he’s on his knees bending over the tub. So I slammed the front door a little extra hard and made Melissa jump. Derek straightened up and grinned, probably because he knew what I was thinking. “Hiya, Tink. Did you find what you were looking for?”

  I brandished my jars and he nodded.

  Melissa wrinkled her perfect nose, possibly at the state of my clothes and hair. “Canning?”

  “Crafting,” I said. “Sconces for the living room.”

  “Out of canning jars?”

  I shrugged.

  “Everything Avery makes ends up looking great,” Derek said, which was nice of him, even if I might have taken issue with the “ends up,” as if my projects didn’t start out that way. Then again, maybe they don’t. Some of my ideas have taken some getting used to, as far as Derek is concerned. He’s always supportive of what I want to try, but not always confident that the result will match my expectations. So far I’ve managed to make him pleasantly surprised.

  Melissa smiled politely and turned her attention back to Derek. “The place looks good.”

  I have no idea how she could tell, when we hadn’t really started on any of the purely cosmetic fixes yet, but maybe she was just flattering him.

  “Thanks.” He went back to tiling, the muscles in his arms moving smoothly under the sleeves of the T-shirt.

  “So did you see Darren?” I asked Melissa, as much to take her attention off Derek as because I wanted to know.

  She shook her head. “I called. He said he was still with his family. We’re going to catch dinner together later.”

  “I thought you didn’t click,” Derek said without looking up. I could hear the amusement in his voice, though, and I bet Melissa could, too. I’m sure she recognized it, after five years of marriage, even if that had been almost seven years ago.

  She rolled those gorgeous Elizabeth Taylor eyes. “It’s just dinner.”

  “No such thing as ‘just dinner,’” Derek informed her.

  She shrugged. Elegantly, of course.

  “You settling in OK in Portland?”

  We spent a few minutes talking about Melissa’s new life in Portland—which sounded like it was going well, unless she was making things sound better than they were, and I wouldn’t put it past her—and then she started making noises about leaving again. “I should stop by Kate’s, too, before dinner, to see how the home tour went.”

  I could just imagine Kate’s reaction to that, especially after getting the home tour dumped in her lap at the last minute. She’d liked Melissa about as well as I did before that—which is to say not at all—and I couldn’t imagine she liked her any better now.

  “Let me walk you out,” I said, although she hadn’t actually made a move toward the door. She smiled, or more accurately smirked, but pushed off from the doorjamb.

  “See you later, Derek.”

  “Sure,” Derek said without looking up.

  She stopped just outside the front door. “How are you enjoying married life, Avery?”

  “Very well,” I said.

  “Does Derek still snore like a buzz saw?” The question was accompanied by a fond smile, and the reminder that she’d shared his bed for five years or more, while I’d been married to him for only a couple of months.

  “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  The look she gave me implied that she thought I was lying. I wasn’t. If Derek had a snoring problem, it hadn’t bothered me yet.

  “Have a good time with Darren,” I said and closed the door.

  I stood and watched her mince back past the Dumpster to her car, and then I watched her get in before I left the window and headed back to the bathroom. “It smells like sulfur in here.”

  “It isn’t me,” Derek said.

  I rolled my eyes. “I know that. Do you snore?”

  He turned his head to look at me. “Wouldn’t you know?”

  I should. “You snuffle once in a while, but I wouldn’t say you snore like a buzz saw.”

  “Thank you,” Derek said, “I would hope not.”

  After a moment he added, “Did someone else say I snored like a buzz saw?”

  I shrugged.

  “That witch.”

  “She’s just trying to cause trouble,” I said. “Reminding me that she shared your bed for a lot of years before I did.”

  “Yes,” Derek answered, “but I was married to Melissa for only five years before I’d had enough. I plan to be married to you for at least fifty.”

  Awww. “You’ll be eighty-five in fifty years.”

  “So? My grandfather’s past that, and he’s still going strong. We can play golf and ride dune buggies together in Florida when we’re in our eighties.”

  I smiled. “I’ll take it.”

  “It’s a date.” He winked and went back to the tile laying. I stood for a moment and watched his fingers deftly position and space the tiles.

  “I’d really like to go visit Ruth.”

  He sighed. “Fine. Take the truck.”

  “I wasn’t going to leave you here. I meant afterwards. After we’re done.”

  “It’ll be too late,” Derek said. “I have another hour of work left, at least. Just take the truck and go out there. If you’re not back by the time I’m done, I’ll either walk home or go to Dad’s. I’m sure Cora’s cooking something edible.”

  No doubt. Derek’s stepmother is a much better cook than I can ever hope to be.

  “Maybe I should come with you.”

  He grinned. “I’ll tell her to save you a plate. It’ll be motivation for you to hurry back.”

  It would, at that. “Are you sure you don’t want me to wait so you can come along?”

  “I’m sure,” Derek said. “You’re not going to give up until you get what you want, and I’d rather just have you go than stand here looking over my shoulder and pecking at me.”

  “I’m not pecking!”

  He looked at me. “Yes, you are. You want what you want, and you won’t stop until you get it.”

  I pouted, and he smiled. “Just go, Avery. It’s fine. I know you want to make sure she’s all right. And I know you’re curious. I am, too. But I want to stay here and finish what I’m doing. So just take the truck and get out of here. I’ll see you at Dad’s and Cora’s later.”

  “I’ll hurry,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it. Like I said, this’ll take at least another hour. Just enjoy yourself.” He turned back to the wall. I grabbed my coat from the dining room window seat and headed out.

  • • •

  The truck was parked at the curb where I’d left it, and still warm from when I’d taken it out earlier. I slid into the seat and cranked the engine over, and away I went. It took only ten minutes to get to the nursing home where Ruth lived, and I parked in the lot and headed inside.

  Like last time I’d been there, Derek’s friend Wanda was manning the desk, and she dimpled when she saw me. “Good evening, Mrs. Ellis.”

  “Call me Avery,” I said, even though I must admit it gave me a little thrill every time someo
ne called me Mrs. Ellis. But I didn’t know Wanda’s last name, and if she called me Avery, I could get away with calling her Wanda.

  “Are you here for Miss Green again?”

  I nodded. “I’m just checking to see how she is. It’s been a tough few days.”

  Wanda nodded, dimples disappearing. “Horrible about Miss Mamie.”

  Bad enough about Mamie, on top of the baby skeleton, but now there was Henrietta, too. Other than Henry, who was ten years younger, there was no one of Ruth’s generation left in the family.

  “Is she all right?” I asked.

  Wanda moved her hand up and down in a rocking motion, like a ship on the sea.

  “Is it OK for me to go back there?”

  “Of course,” Wanda said. “She’s had time to rest up from the funeral this morning. Her cousin sat with her for a while, but he left a couple of hours ago. She might like some company.”

  Or she might not, especially from someone she didn’t really know, and who had—to add insult to injury—discovered the remains of not only her baby brother, but her deceased sister, as well.

  But nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I set off down the hallway in the direction we’d gone last time.

  The doors along the way were all propped open, and I could see beds and some other furniture through the gaps. Not a lot of privacy in a nursing home, although I guess maybe it made it easier for the staff not to have to push the doors open every time they needed to get inside a room.

  When I got to Ruth’s door, I could see that she was sitting in the same chair she’d sat in last time, still in her black funeral dress and with a book on her lap. I stopped to take a breath before knocking on the half-open door.

  Nothing happened, and for a moment—or two or three—I worried that something was wrong. But when I pushed on the door and stuck my head inside, I could see she was alive and well and looking at me.

  “I didn’t say ‘Come in,’” she informed me.

  “Sorry.” I glanced over my shoulder at the hallway. “Do you want me to leave again?”

  “What do you want?”

  I took another step into the room. “I just wanted to see how you were. And give you my condolences. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you in the church, and you weren’t at the reception.”

  She nodded. “We went to the gravesite.”

  “I figured.” I moved another few steps closer. “I thought it was a nice service. Barry—Reverend Norton—did a good job.”

  She hadn’t kicked me out yet, and by now I was close enough to see that she hadn’t been reading. The book on her lap, closed with her index finger between two pages, wasn’t a book at all really. It was a photo album: big and brown and—in case there was any doubt—embossed with the word PHOTOS in gold print across the front.

  “Are you looking at family pictures?”

  She glanced down, as if she’d forgotten. There was a pause and then she sighed. More in resignation than annoyance, I think. “Yes.”

  “May I sit with you?”

  This might be just the opening I was looking for. A perfect opportunity to talk about the past.

  She hesitated, but then she pulled her finger out of the book and opened it at the beginning instead. I took it for an invitation and pulled up a chair, or rather, the ottoman, and made myself comfortable next to her.

  “This is the house the way it looked when we were small.”

  It looked much the way it did now. The trees and flowers were different, and of course the picture was black-and-white, but it was clearly the same house.

  “My father bought it when he and my mother got married,” Ruth said. “In 1938.”

  She turned the page to a wedding photo. Mr. Green had been tall, with slicked-back hair and a flower in his lapel, while his bride was small and dark, her face half-hidden beneath the brim of a hat. She was clutching a bouquet of flowers.

  I leaned a little closer, squinting.

  “It was an afternoon wedding,” Ruth said.

  I nodded. That much was obvious. He was wearing a suit, and so was she. Tweed, it looked like. Midcalf-length skirt with darts, a belted jacket, and a blouse with droopy lapels. Plus the little hat coquettishly tilted over one eye. She was smiling, but I couldn’t get a good look at her face. Something about her was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Maybe she just looked like her children, or they like her.

  “Back then, most people didn’t have cameras,” Ruth told me. “All I have are pictures of special occasions. Here I am, at a year old.”

  There she was, a chubby baby in an embroidered dress, sitting on a pillow and brandishing a toy lamb to the camera, smiling with a few tiny teeth.

  “You were beautiful.”

  She smiled. “Thank you. And here’s my sister.” She turned the page, and I saw an almost identical picture of Mamie, in what looked like the same dress, or at least one very like it. She held a rattle instead of a lamb, but the overall effect was the same. Even then, she had a softer look on her face, less aware.

  I glanced at Ruth, wondering if it would be rude to ask whether Mamie had always been a bit simple . . . and then decided that yes, it would be.

  “When was this?”

  Ruth’s eyes were a bit vacant, too, as she turned her focus inward. “I was born in 1939 and Mamie in 1941. This would be ’42, I guess.”

  “During the war.”

  She nodded.

  “Did your father serve?”

  She shook her head. “He was too old by then. And married with children. He stayed here in Waterfield.”

  “Was he a local man?”

  “He was from Boothbay Harbor,” Ruth said. Boothbay Harbor was a little town slightly less than an hour up the coast. “But my mother’s family was from Waterfield, so they settled here.”

  She turned the page. “Here we all are in the winter.”

  There they were, outside the house on North Street, all posed for another formal photo, surrounded by snowdrifts. The girls were maybe three and five, or four and six, and bundled to the eyebrows. So was Mrs. Green, so I didn’t get a good look at her this time, either. The snow was almost as tall as Mamie.

  “Here’s my brother,” Ruth said and pointed to a chubby baby on the next page. This one wasn’t wearing the embroidered dress, not surprisingly, but was dressed in a little shirt and a pair of shorts, with chubby legs in ankle boots sticking out below. He was waving a building block at the camera and grinning toothlessly.

  He was younger than the girls had been when they were photographed, only four or five months old, and still prone. The picture wasn’t as posed.

  “Cameras were more common by the late forties,” Ruth said when I mentioned it. “Before, Mother and Father had to take us to the photographer to have our pictures taken. But by this time, my father had bought his own camera. They took more photographs after this.”

  She turned the page, to a family grouping much like the one I’d seen in the Silvas’ house the other day. Mother, father, and children, formally posed. Except here there were two girls and a baby boy, perched on his mother’s lap, instead of just one of each. And suddenly I realized why Mrs. Green had struck me as being familiar.

  “They’re twins!”

  Ruth looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “No. I told you I was born in 1939, and my sister in ’41.”

  I shook my head. “Not you and your sister. Your mother and hers.”

  “Oh.” She looked back down at the picture. “Yes. My mother had a twin. Henrietta’s mother. My aunt Sonya.”

  “I knew they were sisters. I just didn’t realize they were twins.”

  Ruth nodded. “My mother was older by a few minutes.”

  “But neither of them had twins of their own?” Twins ran in families, from what I understood.

  A shadow crossed Ruth’s face. “Henrietta had twin brothers. But they didn’t survive.”

  “That’s sad.”

  She nodded. “One of them didn’t thrive and lived only a few
days. The other died a few months later. Crib death.”

  “That’s . . .” Really sad. Horribly sad, in fact. I knew the child mortality rates were higher back then, but losing both of a set of twins must have been more than most people could handle.

  We sat in silence for a few minutes while Ruth turned pages in the album. There were no more pictures of Baby Arthur, of course. And over time, the pictures turned from black-and-white to color. Clothes changed, hairstyles changed. Ruth and Mamie grew up, Mr. and Mrs. Green grew older. Eventually they disappeared altogether, but not until they were into what looked like their seventies or eighties.

  “Were your parents happy together?” I asked.

  She shot me a glance, and I admit maybe it was an intrusive sort of question to ask a virtual stranger. But the pictures made it very obvious that they’d stayed together for a very long time after Baby Arthur died—or disappeared—and they looked like they’d enjoyed each other’s company, too. The stiff poses of the 1940s and ’50s gave way to more relaxed snapshots in the late ’60s and ’70s. There were pictures of Mrs. Green and her husband walking on the beach, sitting in the garden, and driving a convertible with the top down.

  “They look happy.”

  She nodded. Perhaps she’d decided I was just a harmless kook. “They had their problems, like most people. But they had a good life.”

  I took a breath before metaphorically plunging in. “Losing Arthur must have been hard on them.”

  Ruth stiffened perceptibly. “Of course.”

  “It’s good that they were able to stick together through it. Something like that could easily tear a family apart.”

  “My mother married for love,” Ruth said. “Unlike her sister.”

  “Sonya didn’t marry Henry Senior because she loved him?”

  Ruth glanced at me. “She loved his money more. Or so my mother always told me.”

  That didn’t sound like something a twin ought to say about her sister, but what did I know? Not only did I not have a twin, I was an only child. “Were they close? Your mother and her sister?”