Plaster and Poison (3 page)

3

The month of November went by in a blur. I spent a day or two with pen and paper and a computer program I hunted up, redesigning the carriage house into a romantic retreat for two. It would have a nice, open feeling downstairs, with living room, dining room, and kitchen all flowing into one another, and with a half bath and a laundry closet off in a corner. A second corner would have a staircase to the loft, where there would be a nice, big bedroom and a fabulous master bath. And because the newlyweds would be honeymooning in Paris, I thought making the place look like a Parisian apartment might be fun.
The French city style is very distinct and not too difficult to copy. The floors would be hardwood; it would be no problem to stain them dark. The ceilings would be high, and there was lots of natural light coming in through the big windows Derek would have to cut in the walls. (The tiller and aerator hadn’t needed windows. Kate and Wayne did.) We could put a bistro table and two elegant chairs in the dining area; that was all Wayne and Kate would need out here. If they wanted to have a party, they’d set the tables in the B&B instead. The dining room in the main house could seat fifteen or twenty comfortably. This kitchen was for intimate breakfasts and suppers for just the two of them.
The fireplace would be elegant, with a white mantel and maybe some black marble. I could imagine sconces with black silk shades above it, and a matching light fixture above the bistro table. The upstairs bathroom would have a crystal chandelier, I decided, and maybe a black-and-white tiled floor. White fixtures, of course, with maybe some framed silhouettes on the walls.
And the bedroom . . . that would be black and white, too. Maybe some toile on the walls; the kind of black and white wallpaper that looks like old fabric, with scenes of women washing clothes or children playing with small dogs or tending chickens. Or French vanilla paint with love poetry stenciled around the wall. In French. A big white bed with lots of pillows. And—I squinted into space, trying to picture it—a padded headboard? Or why not a whole padded wall? The wall behind the bed. Vinyl or velvet, maybe: something unexpected. That way I could knock myself out on making a cool headboard out of something else. Sheer curtains on the windows, blowing in the breeze. Some kind of funky tiebacks. Black-and-white photographs in black frames, of Wayne and Kate on their Parisian honeymoon. I’d have to tell them to go crazy with the camera . . . give me lots of shots to choose from . . .
Once Kate approved the plans, we got busy. Derek went to work roofing and rewiring, while I drove the truck all over down east Maine, scoping out cabinet fronts and kitchen counters, tiles and carpet colors. I’ve always loved hardwood floors, but now that I lived in Maine—and was getting my first taste of a Maine winter—I could understand why Kate had requested fluffy carpeting for the loft. Not only would it help to muffle footsteps, but it would be nice for her to curl her toes into when it was freezing outside.
I was having fun, but I couldn’t help waiting for the other shoe to drop. The other two times Derek and I had renovated houses together, bad things had started happening pretty much right away. In Aunt Inga’s house, someone had broken in and smashed things, as well as tampered with the cellar stairs so I fell and banged myself up. In the house on Becklea Drive, there had been unexplained footsteps and screams, and rumors of ghosts, and then someone had tampered with the brakes on the car so I’d had an accident. Here, nothing happened. Work progressed with no snags or snafus other than the ones that go with the territory. We came to work every morning to find the place looking exactly like we had left it the night before. The truck performed magnificently, and no one threatened us with bodily harm or financial ruin if we didn’t stop renovations immediately. The most exciting thing that happened was that Derek discovered a heart carved in one of the posts inside the carriage house, with two sets of initials inside it, and they didn’t belong to anyone we knew.
All this didn’t stop worry from gnawing at me, though. Shannon still spent most of her time away from the B&B, and I didn’t see her at all. When I asked Kate, she said she hadn’t had a chance to talk to her daughter about whatever might be going on in Shannon’s life. And Kate seemed to have troubles of her own. I felt like I could see her turning thinner and paler in front of my eyes, but she kept telling me that everything was fine and that nothing was wrong, and there wasn’t anything I could do but accept it.
For a while I wondered if maybe she and Wayne were getting cold feet as the wedding drew nearer. He was gone a lot, too, and I hardly ever saw the two of them together anymore. But then I realized that he was just pushing himself day and night to try to figure out who might have killed Carolyn Tate. He and Brandon were both becoming more and more exasperated and angry as time went by. They turned Barnham College over a second time, and kept hounding every auto shop owner between Bar Harbor and Portland, including Derek’s friends the Cortinos, but with no luck. No car was found, and no arrests were made.
Pretty soon it was Thanksgiving, and Derek was persuaded to stop working to spend the holiday with Dr. Ben and Cora.
Benjamin Ellis is Waterfield’s GP as well as Derek’s dad, and Cora is his second wife. Derek adores his stepmother—the feeling is mutual—and he loves his dad dearly, although he feels horrible about disappointing his father with his career choice. From where I’m standing, Dr. Ben doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge, but Derek still feels that he should have known, before going through four years of medical school and four years of residency, that he wouldn’t be happy being a doctor. I don’t know how he could have, really, without trying it first, but that’s what he says.
Alice and Beatrice, Cora’s daughters from her first marriage, had driven up from Boston for the occasion, so the Ellises had a full house. This was the first time I’d met Derek’s stepsisters. Alice turned out to be very much like Cora: plump and motherly, with soft, brown hair and dimples, outgoing and friendly. Beatrice was a few years younger, still under thirty, and too thin to have dimples, but she had the same brown hair, grown long and pulled back from her face by a barrette. Her face was pretty enough, if a little plain and pale without makeup, and she struck me as quiet and very intelligent.
Beatrice came alone, while Alice brought her husband Lon, a big teddy bear of a guy with a full beard, and both of their kids. Lon ended up in front of the TV with Derek and Dr. Ben, while I ended up in the kitchen with the other women, helping with preparations for the feast.
It was nice, but kind of different, being part of a family. I’m an only child, and my mother grew up in Maine and my dad in the Boston area, but they settled in New York, so it was usually just the three of us for Christmas and holidays. After dad died, it was just Mom and me. Spending the day with more people was interesting. Especially when they started talking about things I wasn’t sure were any of my business.
“Where’s Steve?” Alice wanted to know, knife flashing as she chopped pecans for the pie. “Didn’t he want to spend Thanksgiving with us?”
“I didn’t ask him,” Beatrice said.
“Oh, no.” Cora looked up from the piecrust to examine her younger daughter. “Did you and Steve have a fight, Bea? ”
“Steve doesn’t fight,” Beatrice said. “Steve isn’t around enough to fight.”
Cora and Alice exchanged a glance. Beatrice didn’t notice; her eyes were fastened on the aluminum foil she was wrapping carefully around the exposed parts of the turkey.
“You did tell him you were driving up here, didn’t you?” Cora asked.
“I haven’t seen him lately,” Beatrice muttered.
“Really? What’s he been doing?”
“The same thing he’s always doing. Working.” She put the bird back in and slammed the oven door with unnecessary force.
“On Thanksgiving?” I blurted. And then I bit my lip when everyone looked at me. “Sorry. But even Derek takes holidays off.”
Beatrice shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but her eyes gave her away: They were shiny with moisture.
“So you decided to drive up for dinner on your own?” Cora asked gently.
“I’ve got two suitcases in the car,” Beatrice answered, blinking the tears away. Her voice hardened. “If I can’t stay here, I’ll go to a hotel. And charge it to Steve’s American Express card. He can afford it.”
She sniffed. Cora, Alice, and I looked at each other.
“Of course you can stay here, Bea,” Cora said. “You know that. You don’t even have to ask.”
Beatrice nodded. After a beat, when I think we all tried to come up with an innocuous subject, we started talking about shopping and Christmas gifts and other things of interest to four women stuck in a kitchen cooking Thanksgiving dinner. A few minutes later, the children came and wanted grandma for something, and then dinner was ready and we joined the men around the dining room table. Nothing more was said about Steve and Beatrice that night. However, as I was walking home with Derek later in the evening, I asked, “Did you ever meet Beatrice’s husband Steve?”
The evening was clear and cold, with the smell of snow in the air, but so far we hadn’t seen any of the white stuff. I shivered in the open-toed platform wedges I had put on in an attempt to gain a few inches of height. It’s only a couple of blocks between the Ellis house and Aunt Inga’s, but I wished I’d asked Derek to bring the truck tonight, instead of agreeing blithely that a walk home after dinner would be nice to help offset the sleep-inducing properties of tryptophan.
He glanced down at me. “Once or twice. They’ve been together for years. Why?”
“Apparently they broke up. Beatrice arrived in Waterfield with a couple of suitcases this afternoon. She’ll be staying a while.”
“Oh.” He thought for a second. “Well, I’m not surprised.”
“Is he not a nice person?”
Derek shrugged inside his warm winter coat. “He’s nice enough. Or was, when she met him. Law student. Harvard.”
“Exalted stuff.”
“Beatrice is a wiz, too. Numbers. Frighteningly smart. And they seemed happy the first couple of years they were together, while they were both in school and struggling to get by. Nothing like a little adversity to bring people together. But then he landed this job with a big, important law firm in Boston a couple of years ago, and he’s been getting more and more consumed with it. Sometimes he doesn’t come home at all. She has everything he thinks she wants: great house in a great location, time, and money enough to go anywhere and do anything . . . but he’s never there to share it with her.”
“He’s not—you know—cheating, is he?” So I’m a little paranoid. Sue me.
Derek shook his head. “Not the type. Just a workaholic.”
“And they don’t have any kids, either?”
“He’s not home enough to make any. And when he’s there, he’s too tired.”
I blinked. “She told you this?” They were honorary siblings, and he had once been a doctor, but still, it didn’t seem like something Beatrice would be talking to her stepbrother about.
“She mentioned it to Cora,” Derek explained. “Six months ago or so. I happened to overhear.”
“I see. Well, apparently he decided to work on Thanksgiving, and Beatrice decided she’d had enough. So she came home to Waterfield.”
Derek nodded. “Guess we’ll wait and see how long it takes him to notice that she’s gone. Should be interesting. If I had any money to wager, I’d say at least a week.”
“No deal,” I answered. “I don’t have any money to wager, either; plus, I don’t know him.”
The road from the Ellises’ house to Aunt Inga’s went past Kate’s B&B.
“Do you think we’ll be able to finish the carriage house by New Year’s?” I changed the subject. Or would the sky open and dump three feet of snow on us, closing down renovations until spring?
“I don’t see why not,” Derek answered. “The new roof is on and the framing is done. The plumbing and electric are laid. Tomorrow I’ll start insulating and hanging drywall, and after that, we can run the HVAC. It’ll be nice and toasty in there by next week.” He grinned.
“Sounds good.” I grinned back. “Anything interesting turn up lately?”
“In the carriage house? Not since the initials on the post. I showed you those, didn’t I?”
I nodded. He had discovered a heart with initials inside it carved on one of the posts holding up the roof. There were half a dozen of them spread throughout the inside of the carriage house, and we’d been trying to figure out what to do with them when we added the loft. Some would have to be built into a bearing wall holding the floor of the loft up, but some we might be able to remove. Kate had gotten excited about the initials, though, and talked about leaving them, or doing something else with them, rather than chop the post down. Derek, who is always eager to preserve something original, was all for it, and the two of them had been postulating—no pun intended—incorporating the post into a freestanding fireplace or something.
“What were they, again?”
“The initials? W-E plus E-R, and a heart.”
“I wonder if Kate ever figured out who WE and ER were.”
It could have been anyone at any time in the past hundred years or so since the place was built, or so it seemed to me. But Kate was excited about the find and was probably hoping that it would have some kind of connection to the B&B and the family that used to live there.
“I don’t think she’s had time,” Derek said. “She’s been busy with her Thanksgiving dinner stuff and the preparations for the wedding. Maybe you should look into it for her. There’s a few days until I need you for anything specific.”
“I guess I could do that,” I agreed.
“It won’t hurt you to stop in at the Historical Society for a few minutes, anyway, to see if they have any information about the family that used to own Kate’s house.”
“How do you know that it was someone from the family who used to own Kate’s house? It could have been anyone in town, couldn’t it? A couple of kids looking for a private spot to make out, or something.” I waited a second before asking, innocently, “You’re sure it was a W and not a D, aren’t you?”
DE, for Derek Ellis . . .
Derek grinned down at me. “If I’d carved my initials inside a heart in Kate’s carriage house, I think I would remember, Tink. And I don’t know any girls with the initials ER, anyway. Back in the days when I was inclined to carve my initials into walls, I was dating Jill Gers.”
“Maybe it was a Rasmussen,” I said. “You sure it wasn’t WR? Wayne Rasmussen? And whatever his first wife’s name was?”
“I’m sure,” Derek said. “WE and ER. Although it could have been a Rasmussen, I guess. Another Rasmussen, just not Wayne. There have been Rasmussens in Waterfield for eons. Or a Ritter. The family that built Kate’s house was the Ritters.”