Mortar and Murder

by Jennie Bentley

  “And I haven’t noticed anyone acting strangely,” Shannon added. “You’d think if someone knew something, even if it was an accident and she just fell off a boat, whoever was with her would be freaking out.”

  “You’d think.” I turned to Ricky. “What about you? Have you noticed anyone acting weird?” The girl would be closer to Ricky’s age than the others’, since he was a couple of years older than they were.

  Ricky hesitated before replying. “I don’t know who she is—or was—and I haven’t noticed anyone acting weird, but there’s a guy in my class—his name is Calvin—who was going on about Russian women before Christmas. Russian-bride websites and all that. You know, how women from Eastern Europe are dying to come to the U.S.?”

  The obvious pun didn’t seem to strike him, and I didn’t have the heart to point it out.

  “Really?” I said instead. “Did you tell Brandon?”

  Ricky shook his head. “I had no idea about the Russian thing until now. Brandon didn’t mention it.”

  “You should tell Dad,” Josh said, fumbling for his cell phone. “I’ll call him.” He pulled the phone from his pocket. But before he could dial, the waitress appeared next to our table, the same girl who usually waited on us when we were here.

  “What can I get you?” She looked from me to Derek, where recognition seemed to strike. “Oh, it’s you again.” She dimpled.

  “Hi, Candy.” Derek dimpled back. He gets a kick out of the fact that at thirty-five he’s still got what it takes to charm the co-eds. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that it isn’t just the co-eds, it’s every woman between the ages of three and ninety-three. He’s just a charming sort of guy.

  “What can I get you to drink?”

  Derek ordered a beer, I ordered a Diet Coke, and we all ordered pizzas to share. Candy was just about to tuck the order pad into the waistband of her skintight jeans and swish off, when Ricky spoke up.

  “Is Calvin here tonight, Candy?”

  “Calvin?” Candy wrinkled her adorable nose. “That nerdy guy in computer science, you mean?”

  Ricky and Josh, both of them computer science or information technology majors, nodded. Ricky kept a straight face, but Josh smirked. Candy tossed her ponytail.

  “I think he’s over there by the door. You want me to go get him?”

  Ricky and Josh looked at me. I shrugged. I wouldn’t mind meeting Calvin and hearing what he had to say. Normally it wouldn’t occur to me to encroach on Wayne’s turf, and I definitely thought Josh should call his dad and tell him what Ricky had said, but . . . well, we were here, after all.

  “Please,” Josh said. “Tell him Josh and Ricky have a question.”

  Candy nodded and sashayed off, popping a pink bubble-gum bubble as she went.

  Derek looked resigned. “You’re gonna get involved,” he said, “aren’t you, Tink?”

  “Surely it can’t hurt to talk to him. In case he knows something. He might be more forthcoming with us than he would be with the police. And I’ll tell Wayne what he says. Plus, I’m already sort of involved. Because of Irina.”

  Derek shook his head, but he didn’t argue.

  “Is Calvin really a nerd?” I turned to Shannon and Paige.

  They exchanged a look, amused. “I don’t know if I’d call him a nerd,” Shannon said, “but he’s different.”

  “He grew up on one of the islands,” Paige added. “Without a lot of people around. I think he must have been in high school before he started associating with other people on a regular basis.”

  “He’s not a bad guy, though,” Shannon added. “Just a little socially backward.”

  “And he’s a good programmer,” Josh said. “Here he is now.” He waved.

  I followed the direction of the wave and saw a young man make his way toward us, twisting his body through the teeming masses, making apologies left and right as he bumped his way through the overpopulated room.

  He was on the tall side, if not as tall as Josh, and almost painfully thin, with big feet and a pointy nose, soft, light brown hair flopping over his forehead, and the beginnings of a fuzzy mustache on his upper lip. He looked a little bit like a stork, or maybe a heron. When he saw the girls, he flushed to the roots of his hair, and after that, he kept his attention firmly on Josh and Ricky. “What?”

  “Question,” Josh said.

  “Ah-yup?”

  “This is Derek Ellis and Avery Baker. And you know Shannon and Paige?”

  Calvin nodded. “What’s up?”

  Josh indicated Ricky. Calvin shifted his attention to the other side of the table. “Rick?”

  Ricky was silent for a few seconds, probably trying to decide how to form the query, out of the blue like this. “A couple of months ago,” he said slowly, “I heard you talking about Russian women. What was that about?”

  Calvin flushed an even more painful shade of crimson, all the way to the tips of his (large) ears. “Nothing,” he muttered, looking down, shuffling those big feet.

  “You sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. I was just talking.” At this point, Calvin’s ears were burning so bright I could practically feel the heat coming off him in waves. When nobody at the table said anything, he must have felt compelled to continue. “I heard somebody saying how it’s easy to find Russian women who want to come to the U.S., and I was just thinking, you know, that some of those Russian women are pretty hot. Sorry.” He glanced around the table.

  “Who was talking about Russian women who want to come to the U.S.?” I asked.

  Calvin shrugged, avoiding my eyes. “Just a couple guys on the ferry dock.”

  “Which ferry dock? Here in Waterfield?”

  He shook his head. “Boothbay Harbor.”

  “Do you know who they are? Where they’re from? Had you seen them before?”

  But Calvin couldn’t help me. “They were just guys, you know. And it was January, so they were wearing parkas and hats and scarves and suchlike. I didn’t get to see ’em real well.”

  We couldn’t even get a good description of body type, since heavy winter parkas can make even the skinniest guy look like he’s packing on weight. Nor would it help me to ask him to describe the parkas, hats, and scarves, since they were surely in storage somewhere by now. When the snow melts and the ground thaws, Mainers can’t wait to shed their winter clothes and get into something lighter.

  I thanked Calvin for the information, and he slunk away, without another word.

  “That’s interesting,” Josh said when Calvin was gone.

  I nodded. “Wayne definitely needs to know about that. I don’t know how much good it’ll do, when Calvin doesn’t know who the men are. But at least Wayne will know that someone on one of the islands has been discussing Russian women.”

  Derek nodded. “Josh’ll let him know. Let’s talk about something else for a while, OK? Pretend that we haven’t landed in the middle of yet another criminal investigation.”

  “Fine with me,” I said happily. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “I don’t care, as long as it doesn’t have to do with dead bodies. Or Russian women. Or the weather.”

  Josh grinned. “Tell us about this house you’re renovating, then. What’s it like? Can we come see it?”

  “If you want to brave the elements. You’d have to walk across the island from the ferry dock to get there. Unless you can get your hands on a boat. But you’re welcome to come check it out sometime, if you’d like.”

  I didn’t doubt they’d all end up coming to visit. All four of them had stopped by the house on Becklea Drive while we were renovating it, and Josh and Shannon had been frequent guests in Kate and Wayne’s carriage house cum romantic retreat while it was under construction. Not surprisingly, since it was where their parents would be living after the wedding.

  Soon Candy appeared with the pizzas and with Derek’s and my drinks, and we got busy stuffing ourselves. The conversation wandered off into innocuous territory and didn’t return to
the girl in the water or the men on the ferry dock. I wasn’t worried that Josh would forget to call his dad and tell him about Calvin and the conversation the latter had overheard, though. Josh is not only very intelligent with a good memory, but he sees himself joining the police someday, too, once he’s finished college. According to Kate, he wants to become Waterfield’s first cyber detective, thus relieving Brandon of the task of matching fingerprints and searching databases for missing people. That would leave Brandon free to become Waterfield’s first bona fide forensic tech. Nothing would make Brandon happier than to be able to mess with his blood spatter, DNA, and fibers without interruption.

  On the way home in the car, I told Derek about my brief conversation with Miss Barnes in the produce section at Shaw’s. “Apparently she snacks on overstuffed Oreos. And she said she might have some information about our house. Seems there’s a connection to Waterfield.”

  “We’ll have to stop by the Fraser House sometime to see what she’s got,” Derek said calmly, steering the truck down the dark road toward downtown and the Village. “Not tomorrow, though. We didn’t get much done today, between you being gone all morning and Melissa breathing down our necks all afternoon. We’ll have to try to do better tomorrow.”

  “How did it go at her place earlier? Did you get the drywall done? Was she hanging over your shoulder then, too?”

  He shook his head. “She was getting ready for her date with Tony Micelli. Pulling out all the stops. I hardly saw her at all.”

  This was excellent news. Maybe Melissa had her eye on Tony the Tiger instead of Derek. What a relief that would be. And really, I couldn’t think of two people who deserved one another more. I sat back and smiled, watching the streetlights go by outside.

  Once we got to Aunt Inga’s house on Bayberry Lane, Derek turned to me. “See you tomorrow, right?”

  “Absolutely. Bright and early. On the dock by seven.”

  “Good girl,” Derek said.

  I looked at the house over my shoulder. It’s a Second Empire Victorian, with tall, arched windows and a square tower with a mansard roof. In bright sunshine, it looks like a fairy-tale cottage. Now, with none of the lights on and no moon in the sky, it was dark and a little forbidding. And quite empty. “Sure you don’t want to come in?”

  He smiled. “I’d love to come in. Just not tonight. It’s been a long couple of days.”

  “Right.” I couldn’t exactly argue with that.

  “I’ll wait until you’re safely inside.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry,” I said. “Nobody’s out to get me these days. I haven’t had anyone sneaking around my house for six months, at least.”

  “Just about time for someone to start again, don’t you think?”

  “Surely not,” I said. If I was bothering anyone, or I was a threat to someone, that’d be different. Like, when a certain someone wanted me out of Aunt Inga’s house so he could have it, he’d broken in and sabotaged the basement stairs. Or when we’d just found the skeleton in the crawlspace of the house on Becklea Drive, and I was trying to figure out who it was, the killer had snuck around my house as well as tampered with the brakes on Derek’s truck to try to get rid of me. But at the moment I wasn’t a threat or a bother to anyone. Except . . . “You don’t think Melissa would want to get me out of the way so she could have you back, do you?”

  Derek put his head back and laughed. “I doubt it, Tink. Seriously, she’s no more interested in getting back together than I am.”

  “And you’re not?”

  His eyes were warm. “Why would I want Melissa when I have you?”

  “About a million reasons I can think of,” I said. Beginning with that beautiful face and gorgeous body and ending with the happy times they must have spent together before things turned sour between them. Including that weekend in bed on Monhegan.

  “You must have a more vivid imagination than me.” His voice was warm, too. “I love you, Avery. I may not be ready to remarry right now, but when I am, you’ll be the first to know.” He put the truck in gear. “Go to sleep. Sweet dreams.”

  “You, too.” I wandered up to the door and let myself in. He didn’t pull away from the curb until I had turned on the hall light and had waved the all clear.

  9

  I share my house with Jemmy and Inky, two Maine coon cats I inherited from my aunt Inga along with the house itself. The house has turned out to be an easier inheritance than the cats. Once Derek and I went through it last summer and replaced all the old knob-and-tube wiring and galvanized plumbing, and got rid of Aunt Inga’s hideous wallpaper and ugly 1970s teak furniture—and once I decided to stay in Waterfield instead of going back to New York and my textile design career—the house itself became my home. Jemmy and Inky were not so easy to win over. They were grown cats, settled in their ways, and used to my ninety-eight-year-old aunt and her quiet life. They’d loved her, and they clearly felt I was an inferior substitute.

  It wasn’t that we didn’t get along. They were intelligent creatures, who realized I was the one putting kibble in their bowls and keeping the cat flap open in the back door. They knew they had to stay on my good side. And they did; they were polite and well mannered, but not friendly. After almost a year together, they didn’t let me pet them for more than a second or two, they didn’t seek me out unless I’d forgotten to feed and water them, and as long as they had what they needed, they didn’t seem to care much whether I was there or not. When I walked through the door, Jemmy—striped in shades of brown and tan, with tufted ears and that distinctive bushy, ringed tail—opened a yellow eye to look at me, before closing it again. Inky, black as her name, was curled up next to him on Aunt Inga’s love seat in the parlor and merely twitched her ears and whiskers. She had heard me come in, but I didn’t merit so much as a look. And this from the cat that had once helped me fend off a murderer.

  My mother raised me right, though, so I ignored the snub to greet them properly. “Good evening, Jemmy. Good evening, Inky. I hope you’re well?”

  Inky opened her eyes to look at me. They’re a pale green, startling in her dark face. Jemmy yawned, his little pink tongue showing, and meowed. I don’t speak cat, so I’m not sure exactly what he tried to say, but it was clearly a complaint. Maybe he objected to my disturbing his nap.

  “Sorry,” I said. “You stay right where you are, OK? I’m just going to turn on the computer”—it was on the desk in front of the gray velvet love seat the cats considered “their” spot—“and look for something.”

  Inky stretched, curled up the other way, and closed her eyes again. Jemmy sighed. I sat down at the desk and prepared to get to work.

  Ricky had mentioned Russian-bride websites. Calvin hadn’t, and I hadn’t wanted to push too much—I was cautious that he not get his back up so Wayne or Brandon might be able to get a little more information out of him—but I thought the idea was worth following up on. Just in case the girl from the water was a Russian bride—someone who had developed an online relationship with an American man, and who had come to the United States to get married. Maybe the relationship hadn’t worked out, maybe the guy was abusive, or ancient, or had no plans of marrying her, and she had run away, and that was how she had ended up in the water. If the guy lived on one of the islands, for instance. Maybe she’d thought she could swim to shore and get help to get back home to Russia.

  Typing the search term “Russian women” into Google brought up a slew of other suggestions, some of them quite disturbing. “Russian women for marriage” was one of them. So was “Russian women for sale.” Along with “Russian women personals.” And then there was “Russian brides for sale,” and “Russian brides for free.” As well as “Russian girls for marriage” and “for sale.”

  One of the terms was “Russian brides photos,” and I decided to start there. Maybe I’d luck out and find our dead girl’s face among the offerings.

  I spent the next hour surfing and scrolling through hundreds of images. The experience left
me feeling dirty, disgusted, appalled, and angry, as well as a lot of other emotions. Pity was high on the list; sympathy both for those among the women who seemed to be genuinely looking for love—as opposed to the airbrushed ones who were probably models hired to make the site look good—as well as embarrassment for the poor suckers who believed the glossy model types were really available and who put their hard-earned money into paying for introductions and e-mails.

  All in all, the whole thing may not have been much worse than the personals on any American dating or classified site. Once upon a time, I had occasionally visited those. They—the sites—all made it clear that in spite of the website addresses and search terms I had used to get there, the women were not actually for sale; they were looking for their one true love. I wished them luck with that. And I meant it sincerely. True love is hard to find. Whether such a thing is likely to be found through an Internet dating site, I’m not sure, but I suppose stranger things have happened. Several of the websites had “success stories” listed, anyway: Russian women who were now safely settled in the United States, Australia, and Western Europe with bald, paunchy men they wouldn’t have looked twice at had they seen them on the street at home. If that’s true love, then I guess they did find it.

  Yes, I sound cynical. It’s hard to spend a long time looking at this stuff and not be affected by it.

  The faces started to blur after a while, and too many of the women had long, straight, blond hair. None of them jumped out at me specifically as being the girl from the water, but several of them might have been. I bookmarked a few to draw Brandon’s attention to, to see if he could pinpoint any of these women as being our girl.

  It was getting late and I was getting tired. I was just about to close out the webpage and turn in for the night when a face jumped out at me.

  No, it wasn’t a small blonde with blue eyes. This was a brunette, with long, straight hair and heavy bangs highlighting steady eyes, straight brows, and those high, Slavic cheekbones. She looked a little like Paulina Porizkova in her modeling heyday, fifteen or twenty years ago. Her name and age were listed under the photo: Svetlana, twenty-six.