Mortar and Murder

by Jennie Bentley

  While I’d been thinking about—all right, gloating over—my uncommon luck, I’d made my way through the woods covering the middle of Rowanberry Island, and now I could see the ocean blinking in the distance, between the trees. Another minute or two and I was out of the woods—literally—and standing in front of, or behind, the other Colonial.

  From the back, it looked exactly like ours, except for the fact that this one was freshly painted, with no wood rot, and no blue tarp covering the roof.

  It was a gleaming white, the windows shuttered for the winter, but I was willing to bet none of them were broken.

  Sighing enviously, I picked my way around the side of the house. From this view, also, it looked exactly the same as ours, except for the condition. Four windows on each floor, plus an attic. No holes under the eaves for squirrels and birds to get into and build nests. (We’d be dealing with that little problem soon, hopefully in time to keep out the migratory sparrows and warblers that were, even now, I figured, on their way up from South America.)

  The place looked deserted, although there was a boat tied up at the dock, a dock which, incidentally, was far superior to ours. Not only did it not droop into the water, but it had room for at least five boats in addition to the one that was there now. The extra berths were in case Gert Heyerdahl decided to throw a party for his friends, I imagined. There are a lot of writers who live in Maine. Maybe they got together for Algonquin-like roundtable discussions when Gert was in residence. Or debauchery and drink, at least.

  I doubted Gert was in residence right now. Aside from the shuttered house, the boat didn’t look like something a bestselling author would own. It was utilitarian, wooden rather than fiberglass. Not a fishing boat—I’d seen plenty of those in the harbor in Waterfield—but nothing like a yacht, either. There wasn’t anything sleek or expensive about it; it was old, with a little deck house with curtained windows, and some coils of rope and things stowed on the deck. It reminded me of houseboats I’d seen in pictures, traveling the canals in England. Smaller, though. Too small to live on, but possibly big enough to spend a night or two in the cabin, if there was no other alternative. The name of it was Calliope, or so it said on the prow in red letters.

  I wasn’t really interested in the boat, though, other than as an indication that someone was here, so I turned to look at the facade of the house.

  The Colonial looked just the way I hoped that ours would look one day. The white paint gleamed in the sunlight, all the windows were neatly shuttered, and it had a rather nice slab-stone stoop; not rickety wood, like ours. I made a mental note to ask Derek whether he thought such a stoop might be hidden underneath the little wooden porch outside our house; whether someone might have simply built the porch and wooden stairs right over it. Certainly worth looking into. I also wanted to figure out what lived underneath the porch. I’d seen the streak of blue gray fur a few more times in the past couple of days, but never close enough to identify. It had four legs and not much of a tail and it ran fast, but so far, that was all I’d been able to determine.

  Colonial homes are pretty simple constructions, really. As Derek had told me, the style started out as your basic two-room cottage or cabin, then grew to a one-over-one and two-over-two as time went on. Three bays, a door and two windows, turned to five bays. A center chimney turned to matching chimneys, one on either end. The simplicity and symmetry continued to be a part of the design, though. The windows are on the small side, and unadorned; six-over-six panes, not much taller than they are wide. No six-or eight-foot windows here, like in Aunt Inga’s Victorian. The only true ornamentation on the exterior of a Colonial home is usually the front door area. This one was no exception. The door itself was extra wide, made of vertical planks painted a pale sage green, same as the shutters, and held to the frame with black iron hinges. It sported a heavy black handle and separate deadbolt. Not very historical, that last one, but Gert probably had some nice stuff inside that he wanted to protect. Computer equipment, certainly, maybe even a home theater.

  Above the door was a half-circular window, a fanlight, while beside the door on each side were sidelights. Outside that were pilasters, half columns, supporting a pediment that looked like the mantel on a fireplace. Heavy, black, iron carriage lamps hung on each side of the door, completing the picture.

  I was gaping at the whole thing, so overcome with door-envy that I didn’t hear the footsteps behind me, until a voice asked me what I thought I was doing there, and then I realized I was no longer alone.

  A skinny, middle-aged man with sunken cheeks and a ruddy complexion stood behind me. Or maybe he just appeared ruddy because he was outside in Maine in April. The wind off the ocean was brisk, even here on the lee side of the island. He was dressed for the elements in a pair of padded coveralls of the sort worn by construction workers. The fingers of a pair of black gloves stuck out of one pocket, and a ski cap was bunched on top of his head, ready to pull down once he got into open water.

  His eyes were muddy brown, like pebbles, and suspicious. He repeated the question, and added, “Who are you?”

  I extended a hand and my best smile. “Hi. I’m Avery Baker. My boyfriend and I just started fixing up the other Colonial. You know, the house across the island. The twin to this one.”

  He didn’t take my hand, nor acknowledge that it was there, and after a few moments I lowered it, feeling awkward.

  “I . . . uh . . . Someone told us this house is exactly the same as ours, so I thought I’d take a walk over to . . . um . . . look at it. To see if I could get some ideas, you know? I mean, it’s so beautiful, and . . . eh . . . clearly very well maintained. Are you the . . . um . . . caretaker?”

  He wasn’t Gert Heyerdahl, whose hairy, considerably younger face I knew from the flaps of the dustcovers of his books. Derek had a few sitting around. Gert Heyerdahl is a man’s man, writing a man’s book, a hardcore thriller series about some former KGB agent or spy going around “solving problems” for people and ending up saving the world.

  The man nodded.

  “It’s a beautiful place. You must work really hard to keep it looking like this.”

  He shrugged.

  “I guess Mr. Heyerdahl isn’t here at the moment, right? I mean, with the shuttered windows and all?” I glanced at them.

  “Mr. Heyerdahl lives in Florida,” his caretaker ground out, practically without moving his lips.

  I nodded. “Right. Derek—my boyfriend—told me he has a place there. Good for him. Um . . . I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d show me the inside of the place, is there? Since it’s not occupied at the moment?” I fluttered my lashes and smiled my sweetest smile. Sometimes it works. This time it didn’t.

  “Sorry,” the caretaker grunted, without making an effort to sound like he meant it. “Not without Mr. Heyerdahl’s permission.”

  “Right.” I nodded. “Of course. Sorry I asked. Um . . . when will Mr. Heyerdahl be here?”

  His eyes maintained their flat lack of expression, but somehow he managed to look maliciously amused. “June.”

  Two months from now. “I see.”

  OK, then. I wondered if the caretaker lived here or just came out every day to work. From Waterfield or Boothbay Harbor or just around the island from the village?

  “Um . . . I don’t suppose you’d allow me to look through the sidelights before I go?”

  He hesitated. For long enough that I thought for sure he’d say no. Then he shrugged. “Why not.”

  “Really?” Wow. I scurried up the two stone steps to the front door and leaned forward, straining, my nose practically pressed against the wavy glass. (Original 225-year-old glass!) The inside was dark, with no lights on and all the windows covered. After my eyes adjusted, I could just barely make out wide plank floors—like ours, but polished to a high gloss—and another tight run-around staircase. The threads were polished hardwood, the risers painted white. The walls were paneled—225-year-old paneling; not 1970s—and also painted a light color. And tha
t was all I could see. The doors to the left and right were closed, so I got no glimpse of furnishings or decor, and the hallway receded into darkness just a few feet in. I stepped back, fighting disappointment. “Thanks.”

  The caretaker nodded.

  “I’ll just be on my way, then. Back to my own house. Nice to meet you.”

  As I walked away, I turned to look over my shoulder. He was still standing in the same place, watching me. I guess he’d stand there until he was sure I was off Mr. Heyerdahl’s property and not coming back.

  In my hurry to get away from Gert Heyerdahl’s house and back to my own, I guess I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere in the woods, because instead of ending up at our decrepit Colonial by the sea, I found myself on a path that ended at a little, old saltbox house instead.

  They’re called saltboxes because back in the time when they originated, in the late sixteen hundreds and throughout the seventeen hundreds, salt was kept in containers with that shape. A square box with a sloped lid, taller in the front than the back. Basically, the roof of a saltbox is much longer in the back than in the front, because it extends over a one-story addition called a lean-to. The saltbox style became popular after Queen Anne imposed taxation of houses with more than one story; because the two-story front of the house went down to just one story in the back, saltboxes were exempt from the tax.

  With no other houses in sight, the place looked desolate and lonely, if also picturesque sitting there, half hidden in the brush. I walked around it but saw no sign of life. Like on Gert Heyerdahl’s house, the tiny windows were covered with plain wooden shutters, and the door was locked up tight. (Yes, I tried the knob. Sue me.) The decrepit little dock, in worse shape even than ours, was boat-free.

  “Probably another of the summer homes,” Derek said when I had made my way back to our own place and had described the property to him. “It may even be the original van Duren house. Where Mr. van Duren lived. The guy who built our house. And Gert’s.”

  “It looked old enough. Very small and primitive.” I shrugged. “I don’t care about that, though. The guy at Gert Heyerdahl’s house—really seemed like a weirdo and he wasn’t that friendly. . . .”

  All right, I was the one who wanted to peek through someone else’s windows, so maybe I was the weirdo, and he had let me . . . but he’d still freaked me out a little.

  “I wouldn’t worry about him, Avery,” Derek said. “If he’s responsible for keeping Gert’s house maintained and protected while the great man is in Florida, it’s understandable that he wouldn’t want some dippy blonde wandering around inside.”

  “I’m not a dippy blonde!”

  Derek grinned. “I know that, and you know that, but how’s he supposed to know that? You’re female, you’re blond, and you’re wearing pink rain boots with kisses on them. You probably batted your eyes at him, too, while you were trying to talk him into letting you in.”

  I made a face. So what if I had?

  Derek chuckled.

  I had found him standing with his hands on his hips contemplating the fireplace, his eyes serious. My story distracted him for a few minutes, but now his attention moved on. I turned to looked at what was so interesting.

  As fireplaces go, this one was pretty basic. Nothing like Aunt Inga’s intricately carved and mirrored mantels in dark wood and tile, taller even than the top of Derek’s head. This was much shorter, barely coming up to my waist, and it didn’t even really have a proper mantel; just a red-brick hearth and surround set into a paneled wall, like the ones I’d spied through the sidelight windows at Gert Heyerdahl’s house. The paneling was intricate and lovely, with big rectangles over small rectangles, and crown molding ringing the room below the ceiling, as well as around the brick, but it looked pockmarked, not smooth. Holey and uneven.

  “What’s wrong with it?” I asked, brows wrinkled.

  “Worms,” Derek answered.

  I took a step back, my wet rubber soles squeaking on the wood floor. “Worms?”

  He glanced at me. “They’re long gone. But at one time, there were wood-boring insects in that piece of paneling. They chewed tunnels through it.”

  “Yuck.”

  “It’s no big deal. There are wood-boring insects in lots of wood. Old furniture, picture frames, even houses. And not only old houses, either. A lot of infestations are found in houses less than ten years old. It happens a lot around here, since the beetles like fir and spruce and other coniferous woods. The kind of wood we have a lot of in Maine.”

  “Beetles?” I repeated, wrinkling my nose. “I thought you said they were worms?”

  Frankly, I like beetles even less than I like worms. It’s the legs, I think. And the clicking noise they make when they move.

  “Figure of speech,” Derek said. “They’re known as woodworms, but the tunnels are actually made by larva. Then the larva turn into beetles, which make the exit holes. But there aren’t any here. This is old damage.”

  “Oh. Good.” I took a relieved breath. “Will you be able to fix it? Or are we going to leave it? For verisimilitude, or something?”

  Derek smiled and put an arm around my shoulders. “You know me; I’d love to leave it. It’s part of the natural process. But I don’t think whoever we sell this mansion to once we’re finished with it will want wormholes in their paneling. We’ll have to cut it out and replace it.”

  “That seems a shame.” If it had been here for two hundred years already.

  “I’ll make it look good,” Derek promised. “Just like it was always there.”

  “If anyone can do it, you can.” I snuggled a little closer. He laughed and dropped a kiss on the top of my head before he let me go.

  “C’mon, let’s get busy. We’ll have time for that later.”

  “That?” I tilted my face up at him.

  “You know what.” But he relented enough to give me another kiss, this one on the mouth. “Now can we get to work?”

  “Sure,” I said happily.

  3

  We were a little late setting out from Waterfield the next morning.

  The weather had changed over the past couple of days from crisp blue skies and a brisk spring breeze on the day we started to gray and gloomy clouds full of stinging rain and wind that whipped across the ocean and stirred up choppy, foam-topped waves this morning. I huddled in the back of the boat, the hood of my raincoat—pink, to match the Wellies—up over my head, the color clashing rather pointedly with the orange life vest. Derek was at the wheel again, looking sort of like the Gorton’s fisherman in his yellow slicker and hat, feet planted, squinting into the drizzle. Minus the beard, of course. And from the back.

  Chilled and damp, I was focused on keeping my face down and my hood up, so I had no idea anything was wrong until Derek cut the engine.

  “Are we there already?” I looked up, blinking as the rain hit my face.

  “Not yet,” Derek said over his shoulder, still steering the boat. The motor may have been cut off, but the boat was moving.

  “Why did we stop?”

  “There’s something in the water.” Derek’s voice was muffled by the collar of the rain gear as well as the wind and rain. “Grab that hook, would you?” He waved a hand.

  I looked around. Along the side of the boat lay an implement, a long pole that had a hook at the end, with a straight prong or spike behind it. “This?” I picked it up and extended it to him.

  “Thanks. Could you to hold the boat steady?”

  “Sure,” I said, scrambling forward. “What’s going on?”

  I expected there to be a log or tree limb in the water, maybe, that he needed to push out of our way. I was wholly unprepared for what I did see when I followed the direction of his finger. All the color left my face and my breath caught in my throat. “That’s a body!”

  “Looks that way,” Derek said. “Could just be a mannequin or a scarecrow, I suppose. Someone’s idea of a joke.”

  “Not very funny, is it?”

  He shook
his head. “Not very, no. I think we’re almost close enough. If you’ll hold the boat steady, I’ll try to hook her and pull her in.”

  I nodded, my hands wet on the steering wheel, my lips tight and my teeth clenched against the nausea rolling in my stomach.

  The body was that of a girl or young woman, facedown in the water, and long, pale hair floated around her. She was dressed for summer, the small of her back exposed between low-riding jeans and a cropped top. Her skin, both on her back and arms, was pale and bluish, although not necessarily because it was her natural complexion.

  “Don’t look,” Derek commanded, and I averted my eyes as he used the hook to snag the corpse and bring it closer to the boat.

  “Do you need help?” I asked, not looking at him.

  There was nothing else to see in any direction. No other people, alive or dead; no debris from—for instance—a shipwreck. Nothing but choppy waves and rain. Where did she come from? Had she fallen off a boat, and no one had missed her? Had she been on a boat that sank?

  “I got it,” Derek said. “Would you go over to the other side of the boat, please. I’m gonna try to lift her in, and I need your weight on the other side so we won’t capsize.”

  “Sure.” I left the steering wheel—the boat was stationary now anyway, drifting on the swells—and headed for the port side. From the railing, I turned to watch Derek bend over the wale, straining. The small boat rocked, tilting almost flush with the water surface before he managed to haul the body, none too gently, into the boat.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. I’ve read books describing bloated, drowned corpses fished from the water, nibbled by lobsters and fish, and I didn’t think I’d like to experience one firsthand.

  “It’s OK, Avery,” Derek said, his voice low. “She doesn’t look bad.”