Flipped Out

by Jennie Bentley

  By the time I got to the kitchen, Fae had gone to her room. Maybe she had noticed the tension that hung heavy in the kitchen and thought it better to excuse herself. The atmosphere was thick enough to cut with a Skilsaw.

  However, no one was talking about it. Kate and Shannon were deep in a conversation about upcoming reservations for the B&B, while Josh was just staring into space, looking moony. I sat down across from him in Fae’s former seat.

  “How’s it going?”

  His eyes focused, and he grinned. “Great.”

  “I’m sorry we don’t have any work for you today.”

  “That’s all right. I can find things to keep me busy.”

  No doubt.

  “Did Fae say anything about going out last night? Or anything she might have been doing?”

  “She was with me,” Shannon said, from the other end of the table. “We watched a couple of movies and then went to bed. At least I did. Around eleven thirty.”

  “Would you have heard it if she left? Or came back?”

  “Not necessarily,” Shannon admitted, with a sheepish look at her mother. “We had a couple of glasses of wine each, and a lot of pizza, and I was tired. Housekeeping is hard work, and Mom kept me hopping most of the day yesterday. I locked the back door, and then I dropped right off to sleep when I went to bed. If someone had made a ruckus, I’m sure I would have woken up, but if they were quiet—and they probably would have been, since they all knew I was down there—I can’t be sure I would have heard them. Especially if they left by the front door.”

  I nodded. “And you keep spare keys, right? Just in case someone has to leave or come home late?”

  Kate nodded. “Nina asked for one when she left. She didn’t know when she’d be back, and if it was after eleven, she didn’t want to have to wake anyone up.”

  “Except she came in earlier—around ten thirty. What happened to the key?”

  Kate and Shannon exchanged a look. “She said she left it on the console in the foyer.”

  “Was it there this morning?”

  “I didn’t look,” Shannon said. “What are you thinking, Avery?”

  I shrugged apologetically. “If Nina came home at ten thirty and left the key on the console in the foyer, anyone could have taken it and gone back out. Right?”

  “You’re not thinking that Fae . . .” Josh began, already affronted on her behalf, even though he hadn’t so much as taken her on a date yet.

  “I’m not thinking anything,” I said. “I’m just checking. Did you really not hear Nina come home last night, Shannon? If it was around ten thirty, you were still up.”

  Shannon shook her head. “I didn’t. Fae and I were in my room with the TV going. And there are two or three doors, at least, between my room and the front hall.”

  Right. So Nina could be telling the truth, and she really had come home at ten thirty and gone up to her room without anyone seeing her. Or she could be lying to try to establish an alibi, because she’d killed Tony at ten thirty or eleven.

  From out in the front hall, I heard a slithering sound, and then a sort of rattling, metallic slap.

  “Mail slot,” Kate said at my questioning glance.

  “I’ll go.” Shannon jumped up and headed out through the swinging butler door. Josh watched her go, but distractedly, like he wasn’t really paying attention. More like it was his habit to watch Shannon, but right at the moment, his thoughts were occupied elsewhere and he wasn’t really aware of what—or who—he was looking at.

  “So you and Fae are going to Guido’s tonight,” I said into the silence.

  Josh turned back to me from the still-moving door. “That’s right.” And what’s it to you? was implied but remained unsaid. Josh isn’t rude, at least not directly.

  “She seems nice,” Kate said peacefully; the perfect stepmother. “Not that I know her well, but from what I’ve seen.”

  Josh nodded, and I swear his eyes lit up. But before he could say anything, Shannon was back, with a small stack of mail in her hand, as well as a key. “Here. It was on the console, just like she said.”

  She dropped it on the table. Stopping between Kate and Josh, she proceeded to sort through the cards, envelopes, and circulars that had arrived, muttering under her breath as she put everything into piles. “Bill, bill, deposit check—look, Mom; the Fergusons finally got it together—B&B Today magazine, junk mail, more junk mail, a postcard from Paige . . .”

  “Where’s Paige?” I asked, reaching for it. Josh, who had been doing the same thing, pulled his hand back.

  Paige Thompson is Shannon’s best friend, or maybe she’s Josh’s best friend, or if the two of them are best friends, then maybe Paige is the third wheel. Whatever. She’s a nice girl, as small and slight and fair and unobtrusive as Shannon is tall, dark, and dynamic, and I was chagrined to realize that until now, I hadn’t even realized that I hadn’t seen her for weeks.

  The postcard had a photograph of a funicular on the front, with a Victorian building with a little cupola on top, all of it painted sort of lipstick red with teal accents. A curved sign on the side wall of the building said 1870 and Monongahela Incline.

  “Pittsburgh,” Josh said, at the same time as Shannon explained, “She’s gone home with Ricky. To meet his family.”

  Ricky and Paige had developed their relationship with the slow deliberation of two turtles, but it seemed like they were getting serious if she’d been invited home to meet the family.

  Shannon nodded when I said as much. “They took forever to admit they even liked each other, but now they’re talking marriage.”

  “Wow. Already?”

  “I always figured Paige would marry young. She’s the type who wants to be settled with a husband and a bunch of kids.”

  “What about you?” I asked, handing the postcard off to Josh after skimming the message on the back:

  Having a great time. Ricky’s family’s wonderful. Miss you. Tell Josh and your mom hi for me. xoxo

  “I’m not in a hurry,” Shannon answered, without looking at me. “The world’s full of men.” She turned to her mother. “Look, here’s another letter for Nina Andrews.”

  She held out a small ecru-colored envelope with Nina’s name and “c/o Waterfield Inn” on the front. The name and address were typed in faded, old-fashioned letters, the kind you get from an ancient manual typewriter when the ribbon is almost completely dried up and the keys hit at different strengths and don’t go in straight lines. It looked like a clue out of on an old-fashioned legal thriller, starring Perry Mason or Hercule Poirot.

  “Did you say ‘another’?” I inquired.

  Kate nodded. “There was one yesterday, as well. Looked the same as this one. I gave it to her when the crew got home yesterday evening. Before she went upstairs to get ready for her date with Tony.”

  “Strange that she should be getting personal mail here in Waterfield. Especially more than once. What’s the postmark say? Is it local?”

  Kate peered at it and shook her head. “Looks like it says Missouri.”

  “Nina said her first job was in the Midwest. Where she and Tony worked together. Maybe it was in Missouri.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Kate said. She got to her feet. “I’ll take it up to her.”

  “Maybe it’s from someone they both knew back then, who knew that Tony lived here, and who was letting Nina know she might run into him,” Shannon suggested.

  “Maybe.” I turned on my chair to watch Kate walk toward the door. “Did she say anything about the one you gave her yesterday?”

  Kate shook her head.

  “Did she open it while you were there?”

  But Kate said Nina hadn’t. “I’m sure it’s just a friendly note from someone she knows, Avery. Nothing to do with anything.”

  “Right.” I bit my bottom lip.

  “Why are you so interested?” Shannon wanted to know.

  I turned to her. “No reason. It just seems like an interesting coincidence. Nina comes to
Waterfield, she knows Tony from the Midwest, someone from Missouri is writing letters to her, and now Tony’s dead.”

  “I’m sure a coincidence is all it is,” Kate said, and ducked out the door.

  Perhaps. But suddenly that pile of ashes on the saucer in the sitting room of the suite was taking on a whole ’nother meaning. Maybe Nina hadn’t been smoking, after all. Maybe she’d been burning correspondence.

  9

  When Kate came back downstairs, she was minus the letter but followed by Derek.

  “Ready to go, Avery?” he wanted to know.

  “Sure,” I said, without pointing out that he was the one who had wanted to hang back to talk to Wayne. “We’ll see you later, guys. Let me know if anything happens.”

  Kate said she would, and Derek and I headed back out into the heat of the day. He was acting sort of weird, I thought—alternately brusque and quiet—and it made me uneasy. In the year I’d known him, I’d learned that he’s usually even-keeled, hardly ever moody. The fact that he was now was worrisome. Although between Tony’s death and the fact that we were, once again, involved on the periphery of a murder investigation and had to postpone our project, he had reason to be, I suppose. This seemed to be more than that, though, and I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it.

  By this time it was close to lunch, and in an effort to cheer him up, I suggested we head downtown to the little hole-in-the-wall deli that has the best lobster rolls in down east Maine. Derek does get cranky when he doesn’t eat regularly, and I thought that might be part of the problem. There wasn’t anything I could do about the dead body or the fact that we couldn’t get into our house to work, but I could make sure he got fed, and maybe I could also find something to do that would keep his hands busy for the next few hours, at least.

  “They haven’t told us we have to stop work yet,” I said when we were seated on orange plastic chairs at one of the rickety tables in the deli. “I know we can’t go inside the house and mess up Brandon’s crime scene, but maybe he wouldn’t mind if we worked outside in the yard. We could drive out to the nursery and load up the back of the truck with plants and flowers, and ask Cora and Beatrice to help us plant them.”

  Derek took a pensive bite of lobster roll. “I don’t know, Tink. I mean, Tony’s dead. We can’t just carry on like nothing’s happened.”

  “Of course not. But he wanted us to renovate the house. He signed a contract, both with us and with the television company. And Melissa is all set to put the house on the market next week. I don’t think he’d change his mind just because he’s dead. Do you?”

  “Not sure I knew him well enough to determine that,” Derek said. “At this point I guess it would depend on what his heir wanted.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “No idea. There’s no family that I know of. Might be Melissa.”

  If so, at least I was sure we’d get the go-ahead to continue. And get reimbursed for the money we’d spend so far, too.

  “Well, while we wait to find out, do you think we could start on the landscaping? I know it isn’t what we planned to do today,” I added, since we’d worked out a schedule for what needed to be done by the hour, if not the minute, “but when people die, the rest of us have to be a little flexible. And if we do end up going forward with the renovations, I’d hate to lose the whole day.”

  Derek nodded and swallowed before he said, “We were planning to do the landscaping on . . . what . . . Thursday?”

  “While we waited for the paint and the second coat of polyurethane to dry. We were going to paint all day Tuesday and Wednesday, with Kate and Shannon and Josh and anyone else who were willing to lend a hand, and then you were going to do the first coat of poly on Wednesday night before we left. When we got to the house on Thursday morning, you were going to do the second coat, and then we were going to work outside all day on Thursday to let it dry. And then finish up all the piddly details on Friday.”

  Derek nodded. “You keep saying Wednesday, and on Wednesday we were going to do this, that, and the other, but I’m not sure you realize that Wednesday’s tomorrow.”

  I choked on the bite of lobster roll I’d just taken. “It is? Oh, my God. Maybe it would be better if we just gave up. There’s no way we can get everything done in time!”

  For a few hours, I’d actually managed to forget that we had a house to flip in three and a half days, but now the thought was back and with a vengeance.

  “I think we can,” Derek said, “but we have to work smarter. And you’re right, we can’t sit around today and do nothing, even if we can’t get into the house. When we leave here, we’ll stop by the hardware store and pick up a power washer. I’ll take that over to the house and get started on the roof. Meanwhile, you take Cora and go to the nursery and start picking out flowers. Cora’ll tell you what to buy. By the time you get back, I’ll be finished with the power washing, and the ground will be nice and wet and easy to dig. Then we’ll begin planting.”

  He started taking bigger bites of his lobster roll now that he had a plan and a purpose again. “Hurry up, OK? We don’t have any time to waste.”

  I resisted the temptation to salute and just nodded. My mouth was too full to speak.

  Thirty minutes later, I was on my way to the Waterfield Nursery with Cora. We’d called Wayne, who had told us that he had no idea whether we’d be able to finish the renovations or not—that would be up to Tony’s heir—but that if we wanted to plant flowers today, he wasn’t going to stop us. Brandon had already gone over the porch and yard for clues, and we were welcome to go ahead, as long as we realized we might be doing it all for nothing. Derek had rented his power washer, and when I left, he was walking around on the roof of the cottage letting it rip. I’d gotten somewhat inured to this stunt by now, having watched him wander around the roof of the two-and-a-half story Colonial on Rowanberry Island for a few days this spring. This small cottage was nothing in comparison. He’d probably break a few bones if he fell off, but chances were he wouldn’t break his neck.

  So I left him there and went to pick up Cora. And now the two of us were headed north out of town, to the nursery. Beatrice had been in the middle of something when I called, so she’d finish what she was doing first before meeting us at the house, and then all four of us would get busy planting.

  Cora helped me choose flowers and shrubs that would look good in the yard on Cabot Street, and then we loaded the pickup bed full and headed back. Derek had finished his power washing by the time we got there, and Beatrice was waiting, and then all four of us got down on our hands and knees and got busy digging holes and planting. We kept at it until every single flower or shrub was in the ground and the sun was thinking of sliding behind the horizon.

  The conversation while we worked turned to Tony and the murder right off the bat, of course, with Beatrice wanting to know what had happened and me doing my best to answer her questions. Like me, her first thought had been the fact that Melissa was Tony’s fiancée, and as such, she was the logical suspect. Eventually, though, we all agreed that she probably really hadn’t killed Tony. As Derek had once said, when I’d tried to pin another murder—or maybe it was a kidnapping—on Melissa: She wasn’t the type to risk doing anything truly illegal. Too fond of her skin to take the chance of anything happening to it.

  “She does have a short fuse,” Cora said.

  “There’s a big difference between breaking china and stabbing someone with a screwdriver,” Derek answered, not even looking up from the flowerbed he was working on.

  No arguing with that. And we couldn’t anyway, because just then Donna from across the street showed up to say hello and find out about what had been going on today.

  “Oh, wow,” she said when we explained that Tony was dead, “who’d do something like that?”

  “We thought maybe teenagers. You know, for the tools. They’re missing.”

  “Teenagers?” She glanced across the street, involuntarily. “You’re not accusing my teenagers, are you? Beca
use they wouldn’t do that.”

  Cora hastened to reassure her. “Of course not. I’m sure your kids are wonderful. How many do you have?”

  Donna said she had two, both boys. Johnny was fourteen and Matthew sixteen. “But they’re not murderers. And they wouldn’t steal anything. When did you say he was killed?”

  We looked at each other. “I have no idea, really,” I said. “I know that Nina said she came back from dinner around ten thirty. If Tony came straight here from the Waterfield Inn, I guess it couldn’t have been too long after that.”

  “But you don’t know that he came straight here,” Derek pointed out. “He could have gone somewhere else first.”

  I nodded. Like Melissa’s loft to share that bottle of wine with her. Although if he’d been drinking wine with his fiancée, in her apartment, why hadn’t he just spent the night there? Why come here at all?

  “You didn’t happen to look out the window last night and see anything, did you, Donna? Like when Tony’s car arrived?”

  But Donna shook her head. She was a tall, angular woman with short, brown hair, and it flapped around her ears when she moved her head. “We stayed in the backyard last night. On the deck. The weather was nice, and the boys each had a couple of friends over, so there were eight or ten of us altogether.”

  “Any chance anyone else might have seen anything? When did the kids who were visiting go home?”

  It had been after eleven, Donna admitted. With the sun still in the sky well into the evening, and the weather nice and warm, and no school in the morning so everyone could sleep in, there hadn’t seemed any rush in getting the other kids home. “They left together. Everyone lives within a couple of blocks, anyway. Matthew walked with them. His girlfriend was there, and he wanted to make sure she got home all right. Waterfield’s a safe town, but then once in a while something like this happens.” She shook her head.

  “The police will probably want to talk to your family,” I said. “Especially Matthew, if he was out here on the street late.”