Wayne nodded. “Let’s take a walk out front.” He headed toward the house before I could say anything, and it was just as well, because he’d said “us,” and I wasn’t about to dissuade him from the idea that I should come along.
14
Inside the house, it was business as earlier. Josh had finished the two bedrooms and was busy rolling paint in the dining room. Beatrice was with him, cutting in. Cora had started the same job in the living room, carefully maneuvering her loaded brush around the stone of the fireplace. Derek was still working on the bathroom floor, but all the tile was laid now, and he was filling in with grout. Wilson was back to filming, with Adam standing by. He had taken to calling Derek Dirk. No one stopped him; I guess maybe because it was closer than anything else he’d come up with so far.
As Wayne and I came through to the outside, Fae was on the porch talking quietly on her cell. I caught just a few words. “. . . anymore. For now, anyway.” When she saw us, she turned away and lowered her voice even further.
Kate and Shannon were still on the lawn painting cabinet doors. Usually I prefer a more durable oil-based paint for the sheen and coverage, but since time was of the essence this week, we’d decided to go with quick-drying latex. It was warm in the sun, so the first doors they’d painted had already dried, and Shannon had turned them over and started painting the backs. At this rate, I thought we might almost be able to get everything done by Friday night after all, at least if we cut a few corners along the way. We could spruce up the front of the house, for instance, saving the back and sides until the crew had left and we weren’t in such a hurry anymore. That way they’d have a lovely front exterior to film on Friday night, and we could take our time finishing up the rest of the house next week.
Kate looked up when we walked past. She arched her brows at me, and I mouthed, “Nina.”
Kate nodded. And watched out of the corner of her eye as Wayne approached the director.
Nina was standing outside the picket fence, a lit cigarette in her hand and a strained look on her face. Wayne’s approach over the grass was almost noiseless, so when he greeted her, she jumped. “Miz Andrews.”
“Chief Rasmussen,” Nina managed. The hand holding the cigarette shook when she lifted it to her mouth. “And Avery.” She forced a smile in my direction.
“How are you holding up?” I smiled back. “You seem a little jumpy today.”
“It’s this situation with Tony,” Nina said, taking another drag on her cigarette, deep enough to make her cheeks hollow. “Seeing him again after twenty years and then—poof!—he’s gone. Brings back”—she hesitated—“memories.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Miz Andrews. You and Tony worked together once, you said?”
Nina nodded. “Our first job. It didn’t last long, though. Just six months or so.”
“I remember. He grew up here, you know. I remember his mother telling us about his job, and then just a few months later, he was back in town again. Something happen?”
“Nothing in particular,” Nina said, but she avoided looking at either of us.
I would probably have pushed—in fact, I intended to do a little online research tonight to see what I could dig up; both about Nina’s past and about Tony’s—but Wayne just nodded. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the letter. Tony’s letter. Unfolded it and handed it to her. “I need you to tell me about this.”
For a second, I was afraid that Nina was going to drop into a dead faint. What little color she’d had drained from her face and she wobbled. The cigarette in her hand shook hard enough to dislodge the inch-long piece of ash that had been hanging off the end.
When the ash fell and hit her toe in the open sandal, she seemed to come back to reality. She looked at the cigarette for a second, her expression disgusted, and then she dropped it on the pavement and stepped on it. Before squaring her shoulders and looking at Wayne. “Where did you get that?”
Nina obviously thought this was one of her letters. Wayne did nothing to dissuade her from that belief, either. “I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind. My wife tells me you’ve been getting these for the past few days. Ever since you and your crew arrived here in my town.”
Nina nodded. No reason not to admit it when Kate had seen the letters. Or at least the envelopes.
“Did it start this week, or has it been going on longer?”
“It started a few weeks ago,” Nina said. She glanced around to make sure no one else was in hearing distance. Kate and Shannon were still on the grass, but Fae had disappeared off the porch. “At first it was just one. I didn’t think anything of it. I mean, these things happen, right? Prank calls and e-mails and letters once in a while is just part of the business.”
Maybe so, I thought. Or maybe not. The talent, sure, they’re in the public eye, and it stands to reason they’d sometimes catch the attention of some wacko or other, but the director, someone who spent her time behind the scenes . . . ?
Wayne didn’t ask, though, just nodded for Nina to continue.
“Then another came. Exactly the same as the first. And a few days later, another. In the past week, they’ve been coming every day.”
“Any idea who’s sending them?” Wayne asked.
Nina shook her head. “If I did, don’t you think I would have put a stop to it?”
“I don’t know.” Wayne’s voice was bland. “You might not want to confront someone who claims to know something you did. Something the letter-writer seems to think you’d want kept quiet.”
Nina didn’t answer, but she flushed.
“Would you mind telling me what the unknown writer thinks you did?”
“I have no idea,” Nina said. “I’ve done a lot of things in my life. I can imagine quite a few of them might have upset someone. You flirt with someone’s husband, you inherit someone’s job, you take someone’s parking space. Things happen every day. Isn’t that the case for most of us?”
Wayne shrugged, but I had to agree. We all do things that affect other people all the time, and sometimes, if one of those people is more on edge than the rest, he or she might resort to poison-pen letters. Like Derek had said, it needn’t even be something that anyone else would consider a big deal.
“I was an investigative reporter for a while,” Nina continued, “and I discovered things about people. Little secrets, things people wouldn’t necessarily want the neighbors to know. Nothing stands out, though. I didn’t do criminal investigations, just public-interest things.”
“Anything else come to mind?” Wayne had pulled out his little notebook and was scratching in it.
Nina hesitated. Just for a second, but I noticed. So did Wayne. He leveled a stare at her. She buckled. “I wondered . . .”
“Yes?”
“The first letter arrived just a few days after the accident.”
“Accident?” Wayne said.
“Stuart’s accident?” I asked. Nina nodded.
Wayne looked from one to the other of us. “Who’s Stuart and what happened to him?”
Nina explained. Her explanation matched Wilson’s in every particular. Wayne, however, was not happy. “Why didn’t I hear about this?” he demanded.
Nina glanced at me. I shrugged. “I guess no one thought it was important. You have enough to deal with, with Tony’s death.”
“Besides,” Nina added, “there’s no possible connection between them. Stuart never met Tony, or heard his name, even. And what happened to him was an accident. Totally unforeseen and tragic, but an accident.”
“But you knew both of them,” Wayne said. “That’s a connection.”
Nina blanched. “What are you saying?”
Wayne got right back in her face. “That two men close to you have met with violence in the past few weeks, and that from what you’re saying, it sounds as if Stuart was lucky he didn’t die as well.”
“So?”
“So it’s a connection. And something I needed to hear. You can’t possibly know what�
��s connected and what’s not. You should have told me.”
“Sorry,” I said, since I’d known about Stuart, too, and hadn’t thought to tell Wayne, either.
“So when the letter came just after Stuart’s accident”—Wayne brought the conversation back on track—“you thought that perhaps the writer was accusing you of having had something to do with it?”
Nina shrugged. “It crossed my mind.”
“And did you?”
She looked offended. “Of course not! I liked Stuart. He was a joy to work with, and he made Flipped Out! what it is today. We would never have let him go voluntarily. As it is, we’re all hoping he’ll make a full recovery and come back.”
“That’s not likely, is it?”
Nina shook her head. “But I’m not going to start a search for a new host until I have to. We’ll just have to put up with Adam for the time being.” She turned to me. “I’m sorry he keeps botching your name. But he photographs like a dream, and the camera loves him. I’m sure that knowledge doesn’t make it any easier for you, but for now, we’ll just have to deal.”
Wayne cleared his throat. “Would you mind letting me see the letter you have in your bag?”
Nina looked surprised, and her eyes flickered to the letter in Wayne’s hand.
“This isn’t it,” Wayne said as Nina dug into her purse to make sure he was telling the truth. She came out a second later with her own envelope, still unopened.
“You tricked me!”
Wayne shrugged unapologetically. “Not really. You just assumed it was yours. Fear, I’d guess, and perhaps a bit of guilty conscience?”
Nina didn’t answer. Wayne added, “Open it, please. I’d like to compare it to this one.”
“It’ll look exactly the same,” Nina said, as she tore at the envelope with long fingernails. “All the others did.”
“I’d still like to see it. If you’ll allow.”
“It’s not going to do me any good to refuse, is it? Here you go.” She handed him the letter from her purse, without even glancing at it. It did indeed look identical to the one Wayne already had in his hand.
“May I keep it?” he asked.
“Sure. I burned the others, but they were all exactly like this, too. I was going to burn this one.”
“And you have no idea who’s sending them to you? The postmark says Missouri.”
Nina shook her head. “I don’t know anyone in Missouri. It’s more than twenty years since I worked there for just a few months, and I didn’t make any connections in the community. As for my coworkers, we’re all over the map now. It was the kind of midsize market that’s a stepping stone to bigger and better, and we’ve all moved on.”
For a second, it looked like she was going to add something, but she must have changed her mind. “Sorry I can’t be more help.”
“That’s all right,” Wayne said. “Thank you.”
Nina nodded and turned halfway around. Then she turned back. “Just out of curiosity . . . if that isn’t my letter, whose is it? Is someone else on the crew getting them, too? Because then, maybe it does have something to do with Stuart’s accident.”
“I’m afraid not,” Wayne said, shaking his head. “This arrived here, for Tony.”
When Nina just gaped at him, he added, “Give it some thought, would you? And if you can come up with something that happened in Missouri that involved you and him, perhaps you’ll be so kind as to let me know?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, just walked off across the grass again. I smiled apologetically to Nina and followed.
Wayne stopped by Kate’s side and watched her work for a few seconds before he stated his intention to go back to the police station. “I’ll have to have Brandon do fingerprints on these. I doubt he’ll find anything, but it has to be done.”
“Brandon said he was going to stop by the Waymouth Tavern last night,” I said. “To see if anyone remembered Nina and Tony eating there. Do you know if he did?”
“He didn’t,” Wayne said. “We got busy with Melissa last night, so he didn’t have time. I’ll remind him to do it tonight, when they open.”
“No need. I’ll get Derek to take me there for dinner. I’ll let you know what they say.”
“You know I can’t take your word for it. . . .” Wayne began, and then he admitted defeat. “Sure, Avery. Do what you want.”
“Dinner at home?” Kate asked, batting her eyes up at him. “Just the two of us? I’ll make enchiladas.”
“Great.” Wayne relaxed, grinning. Shannon looked up.
“I forgot. I’m going out tonight, too. At eight. That’s OK, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” Kate said. “If anyone has an emergency, they can walk across the grass to the carriage house to find me. You go out and have a good time, honey.”
“Thanks.” Shannon grinned. Adam must be growing on her if she could smile like that at the thought of going out with him.
So Wayne headed back to his police cruiser, and I headed back to work. For about an hour, until it was time for lunch. Fae had found the circular from the pizza parlor, and she had ordered a half dozen pizzas to be delivered. “Expense account,” she said when I thanked her. “It seems the least we can do after bringing all this trouble your way.”
“Don’t be silly.” I smiled at her. “None of this is your fault. You just came here to do your job. It’s not like you killed Tony.”
Fae shook her head, her lips tight. “I didn’t even know him. Just met him that one time on Monday. It has to be a coincidence that he was killed just when we got here. Don’t you think?”
“I’m sure it was,” I said, although it would have to be a huge coincidence, if so. That didn’t necessarily mean that anyone on the crew had killed him, of course. Their arrival could have precipitated the murder in other ways. I kept coming back to Melissa. Maybe Tony had carried a torch for Nina for twenty years, and now that he had seen her again, he’d known he couldn’t possibly go through with marrying Melissa. Maybe little Miss Melly had gotten her nose out of joint when he took Nina to dinner. Maybe she had followed the two of them. When he dropped Nina off, she had gotten his attention and they’d ended up here at the house. And when he told her he couldn’t go through with the marriage, Melissa had gone for the screwdriver. And then she’d panicked. And she had gotten Derek to come upstairs to her loft and had kept him there half the night, thinking it would give her an alibi.
No wonder Wayne had arrested her and refused to let her go. If I’d been in charge, I would have arrested her, too.
But what had she done with the murder weapon? There was no ocean between Cabot Street and Main that she could have dropped it in, and if Brandon had gone over her apartment and her car . . .
“What are you thinking?” Fae asked, from far away. I shook myself and managed a smile.
“Nothing. Or at least nothing pleasant. Hey, listen—”
“Yes?”
“You seem to have known Stuart well. Can you think of any reason anyone would have wanted him dead? Or out of the way?”
Fae turned pale. “What a horrible thing to say!”
“Sorry. It’s just that two bad things have happened recently to people associated with this show, and I thought maybe you could think of something. Like, a rival show is trying to get Flipped Out! off the air or something.”
“That kind of stuff just happens on TV,” Fae said. “I can’t think of anyone who would have wanted to hurt Stuart. He was a really sweet guy, very humble, not full of himself at all.”
Unlike Adam, then.
“There was nothing going on in his personal life that I know of. He didn’t really have one. No girlfriend or wife. The crew is on the road so much . . .”
“Were you there when it happened?”
“Oh, yes.” She shuddered. “It was horrible. At first I thought he was dead. Electricity shot right through his body, and made his hair stick straight up. He convulsed and everything.” She swallowed. “Ted ran to turn off the breaker, a
nd when the electricity went off, Stuart fell all in a heap. And we were afraid to touch him, you know?”
I nodded. Derek had lectured me on electric shock, because it’s one of the possible hazards of home renovation, and he had told me that a current can be passed from body to body. After the power has been turned off, there’s no danger, though.
“Then Ted came back and he kept Stuart alive until the paramedics got there,” Fae said. “They said he’d been lucky, and that if Ted hadn’t given him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he probably would have died.” There were tears in her eyes now.
“Are you sure it was an accident? That someone didn’t turn the power back on deliberately?”
“I don’t know,” Fae said, with a helpless shrug of her thin shoulders. “Everyone just assumed it was an accident. That both the renovators thought the other one had turned the power off when really, no one had. I just can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt Stuart. He was the sweetest guy in the world!”
Tears were rolling down her cheeks now, and I felt like an enormous jerk for making her cry. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll . . . um . . . just go tell everyone that lunch is here, OK?”
“OK.” Fae sniffed, wiping at her cheeks. I made myself scarce.
The pizza was on the porch, and a few minutes later, everyone was out there eating. Derek, Kate, and I sat down on the porch steps. Shannon, meanwhile, took her pizza back to the plastic sheet in the yard and was eating there. After a minute or two, Josh joined her. Fae had latched on to her uncle, and they were standing at the other end of the porch talking in low voices. Fae still seemed teary.
“What’s going on there?” Kate asked me, with a toss of her head.
I made a face. “I upset her. Nina said she originally thought those letters she’s been getting might have had something to do with what happened to Stuart, the former host of the show. He was electrocuted when he stepped on a live wire, and I suggested to Fae that maybe someone had staged the accident. She didn’t like that idea.”
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