Do-It-Yourself - Spackled And Spooked Part 6

"We weren't carrying on," I said.

"We just came back to make sure that everything's all right," Derek added, obviously loath to admit that we'd forgotten the cats earlier.

"And when Derek opened the door," I finished, "we heard a scream. It was probably one of the cats." It hadn't sounded like one of the cats, but they made a handy excuse. I only wished we hadn't oiled the hinges on the door, or I could have blamed it on that instead. "It wasn't me. I swear. I don't squeal. Ever."

"Sometimes you squeal," Derek said, his voice soft. I flushed and hoped the night was dark enough to hide it.

"It didn't sound like a cat," Venetia Rudolph said. "If you didn't squeal, who did?"

I shrugged. "No idea. I haven't seen anyone else around. It wasn't you, was it?"

She sniffed. "Certainly not. And if you are going to be insulting, young lady, I'm going back to bed." She did, her back as straight as if she'd swallowed a broom handle.

"Huh." I turned to Derek, after the door had slammed on the house next door. "Do you think it was her?"

"Could have been." He walked up the steps to the front porch again. "I don't suppose you could tell where the scream came from, could you? Inside or outside?"

He was inspecting the door jamb, running his fingers over it, his nose a scant two inches from the wood in the dark.

"I'm afraid not," I said, hugging myself. I tried to make believe it was because the night was chilly and I wasn't dressed warmly, but I was spooked. The darkness, the wind rustling the dry leaves on the trees, and the wispy clouds skittering across the moon like ghostly fingers-it all combined with the memory of that bone-chilling scream, which hadn't sounded like it came from anywhere in particular; it was just all around me. . . . "Do you see anything?"

"It's too dark," Derek said in disgust, straightening. "We'll have to get a new bulb tomorrow. There's nothing obviously rigged here, and if someone set something up, to make a scream go off the next time one of us opened the door, they did a pretty good job."

"Maybe it was a coincidence," I suggested.

"Huh!" Derek responded darkly. He slammed the door shut and locked it, his movements crisp and annoyed. "Let's go home. I'll have another look in the morning. We'll be back here all too soon."

"You can say that again," I muttered. "What about the cats?"

"They've probably found their way back to Miss Rudolph's catnip. This way."

He headed around the corner of the house. I followed, balancing carefully on my high heels, while I thought unkind thoughts about Jemmy and Inky.

They were right where Derek had predicted, and as soon as they recognized us, they came trotting to wind themselves around our ankles, complaining loudly about being left behind. Derek snagged Inky, while Jemmy sat down in front of me to grumble. I bent to talk to him. "I'm sorry, Jem. In all the excitement of changing and getting to Ben and Cora's house on time, I forgot that you were here. You were probably curled up in a spot of sunlight somewhere, sleeping, weren't you? Sorry about that. It won't happen again. Tomorrow you can stay home."

Jemmy spoke again, a whiny note in his voice. Maine c.o.o.n cats, for all their imposing size, have rather soft, kittenish voices. I reached out and carefully stroked his head. When he didn't object, I ran my hand down his back and under his belly, to scoop him up. He stiffened for a moment and then allowed me to tuck him under my arm and carry him away from the enticing catnip.

The bright light of morning did nothing to shed more light on the problem of the scream. Derek went over the door, the jamb, and the surrounding area with meticulous attention-if he'd been in possession of a magnifying gla.s.s, I don't doubt he'd have whipped it out-but without finding anything that didn't belong there. No unexplained wires, no switches, no hidden speakers. He was grumbling angrily when he gathered up his heavy-duty gloves and his rented hole digger, which looked like a giant corkscrew with a handle, and headed for the crawls.p.a.ce.

I got busy in the bathroom. While we worked on Aunt Inga's house together, the structural improvements had been Derek's domain, while the design was mine. Naturally I'd taken a hand in tearing out or painting or s.p.a.ckling or anything else he let me do, and he helped implement the cosmetic touches I wanted, but since I'm the one with the design background while he's the one with the hands-on experience, the division of labor made sense. While he crawled under the house, digging holes and pouring concrete, I got busy planning what to do with the main bathroom.

As blank canvases go, it wasn't bad at all. When we started out, there'd been a molded plastic tub on one wall, a toilet and sink base on the other. The tub had been torn out yesterday and was currently reposing in the Dumpster, but we had left the toilet and sink intact for now. The sink base was your basic fake oak with two doors that didn't quite meet in the middle, under a top of molded white plastic. The toilet was a toilet: also basic white, with the wood-grained seat and lid that were so popular in the '80s. The floor had been covered by sheet vinyl, black and white, but now only the subfloor was left, and the shredded vinyl was with the tub, in the Dumpster. The floor around the toilet was rotted, and Derek would have to replace it before I could start doing any serious decorating. Still, I could take measurements and plan what I wanted to do.

I was thinking of doing something retro and funky, and I hoped to figure out a way to incorporate those Mary Quant daisies I'd thought about the other day. Gluing them, three feet tall, to the wall in the hallway might be a little too mod for most people, but I could still use them, scaled down. A house with three bedrooms would likely appeal to families with children, and this bathroom would be the kids' bath, seeing as the master bedroom had its own attached bath with a tiled shower. So this hall bathroom was the perfect place to add some funky touches. I had visions of bubblegum pink, but I supposed I could use banana yellow or pale green instead-something that would appeal to boys as well as girls, and to older children and adults, too. The rest of the bathroom would be bland to the point of being boring: plain white tile on the floor and around the tub to go with any color we decided to paint the walls. The fixtures would also be gleaming white, with bright chrome faucets and handles, and we'd install a slender pedestal sink instead of the clunky cabinet that was there now. Or maybe one of those vessel sinks that looks like a salad bowl. If they weren't too expensive. If they were-and I thought they might be-maybe I'd just use a salad bowl instead. . . .

I'd been at it for maybe forty-five minutes when I noticed, almost subconsciously, that the constant humming of the hole digger had ceased. No sooner had I realized this, than the back door opened.

"Avery?" Derek's voice called. It sounded strained. My heart jumped in my chest, and I scrambled out into the hallway.

"What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

He was standing inside the back door, jeans and boots dirty. And he shook his head in response to my worried question, but of course he'd do that anyway, even if he had cut off a limb. It's the manly thing to do.

"Are you sure?" I probed. "You don't sound like you're OK. What happened?"

"Nothing happened. Not to me. But we have to call Wayne."

Chief of Police Wayne Rasmussen? "Why?"

"Because I found a human bone," Derek said.

"Oh, my G.o.d. Are you sure?"

"Left ulna," Derek said. "Elbow bone. Medial lower arm."

I did a mental duh! Of course he was sure. He was a doctor. He probably knew the name of every single bone in the human body and could identify them all by smell. Still, I felt I had to try one more time. "Are you sure it isn't just the . . . um . . . femur of a dead dog or something?"

Derek looked upset. "Yeah. I wish that was the case. But it's definitely human."

I gave up. "Fine. I'll take your word for it. Where did you find it? Under the house?"

"Yeah. I drilled a hole, looked down into it to make sure it was deep enough, and found the bone. The hole digger must have cut it in two."

"Are there more?" I asked.

"It's not as if someone could lose an ulna and not notice. It isn't something you can take off and leave laying around, like that earring you picked up the other day. I didn't see any more, but if there's one human bone down there, they're all there, believe me. The whole kit and caboodle. Now do you see why we need Wayne?"

I nodded. I saw.

Uploaded by Coral

6.

Wayne made good time. No more than ten minutes could have pa.s.sed before a black and white cruiser pulled up outside the house. Wayne extricated his lanky length from behind the wheel and came toward us.

The chief of the Waterfield PD cuts an impressive figure. At an easy six four or so, he has dark, curly hair just starting to turn distinguished at the temples, coupled with a strong jaw, and steady, dark eyes.

"What have you got?" Wayne asked when he was close enough not to have to raise his voice. Derek didn't bother to answer, just waved for the chief of police to follow him. The two of them walked away, around the corner of the house to the backyard.

I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do. I was curious, yes, but the idea of descending into the crawls.p.a.ce with them, and with the spiders and snakes and other creepy critters-and that was before I knew there were human bones down there!-wasn't appealing. I stood where I was, chewing my bottom lip and looking around. Things had been moving kind of fast up until this point, so I hadn't really had a chance to reflect on Derek's discovery. Now I realized I was not only shocked and creeped out and overwhelmed and slightly nauseous, I was also intrigued in spite of myself.

What was a human arm bone-OK, an ulna-doing buried under our house? There had been no time for cutting up corpses after Mr. Murphy shot his wife and her parents. And I doubted the police had been neglectful enough to overlook any body parts. So how had one of the arm bones made it into the crawls.p.a.ce? It wasn't like it could move from the bedroom to the crawls.p.a.ce on its own or bury itself without help.

Maybe Mr. Murphy had killed someone else, too? If he'd murdered his wife and her family, it wasn't outrageous to speculate that he might have done away with someone else, as well, at some earlier point. Maybe I should stop by the Clarion office this afternoon-the Waterfield Clarion is one of the local newspapers-and see if I could dig up any missing person reports during the time the Murphys had lived here in Waterfield.

Maybe the ulna belonged to Peggy Murphy's supposed lover. Maybe Brian Murphy had discovered that his wife was unfaithful, and he had murdered the man she was seeing. And then he murdered her. And for good measure, he'd murdered her parents, too.

Or maybe the corpse in the crawls.p.a.ce was someone else, someone that Brian had murdered, and when Peggy Murphy discovered that the body was there, Brian had had to kill her so she wouldn't call the cops on him.

Next door, a curtain twitched, and Miss Venetia Rudolph's face appeared in the window. I waved. She withdrew, looking put out. I figured I'd rubbed her the wrong way by letting her know that I'd noticed her nosiness, but then the front door opened, and she headed for me, her large tennis shoes squas.h.i.+ng blades of gra.s.s as she went.

"Miss Baker."

"Miss Rudolph?"

"What is the meaning of this?"

"The meaning of what?" I said. She gestured toward the police car. "Oh. Right. The chief of police stopped by."

"Why?"

I hesitated. Wayne probably wouldn't be happy if I told her what we'd found, but on the other hand, it wasn't like he could keep it a secret for long. Especially if there turned out to be a whole skeleton down there, and there probably would turn out to be.

"My boyfriend was drilling some holes underneath the foundation," I said eventually. "To pour concrete for supports. The floors have settled."

"And?"

"And he found a bone. It could be an animal bone-maybe a dog or a racc.o.o.n got into the crawls.p.a.ce at one time and died-but we thought we'd better call the police just in case." I smiled innocently.

"Isn't your boyfriend Dr. Ellis's son?" Venetia asked. "Didn't he go to medical school? He should know a human bone when he sees one, shouldn't he?"

I sighed. "He should, yes. Nevertheless, I think we should wait for official word from the police before we start spreading rumors that someone has found a skeleton under the haunted house on Becklea."

"A skeleton?" Venetia repeated, her bushy eyebrows practically disappearing beneath her s.h.a.ggy gray bangs. "I thought you said a bone. Singular."

I gave myself a hard mental kick. Stupid, stupid, stupid. "He only found one bone. But since bones aren't something you misplace easily, there may be more down there."

"Harrumph!" Venetia said, but before she could continue, another voice entered the conversation.

"What's going on?"

I swung on my heel and came face-to-face-or nose to Adam's apple-with Lionel Kenefick. The young electrician must have noticed the police car and walked up from his own house to investigate. Now he was standing a few inches away, looking down into what I fondly refer to as my cleavage.

I took a step back and went through my story again, downplaying the discovery as much as I could. Lionel looked, for lack of a better word, nervy. His eyes were showing whites all the way around, like a skittish horse, and that prominent Adam's apple kept jumping as he swallowed agitatedly. Not that I could blame him. The idea that I'd been walking around upstairs for several days, while all along a body had been moldering in the crawls.p.a.ce, was totally creepy. Lionel was probably thinking about all the years he'd been living just down the street, while a body was rotting up here.

I forced a smile. "I'm sure we'll find out soon enough what's going on. The chief of police is down there, looking around. As a matter of fact," I turned as I heard voices from behind the house, "here they are now."

A moment later, Derek and Wayne came around the corner, deep in conversation. I couldn't hear much of what they were saying, but a few words floated over to me.

". . . crew," Wayne said.

". . . going to take?" Derek answered. "Gotta . . ."

Wayne shrugged. ". . . choice. Sorry, Derek. You know how it is." He struck out for the police cruiser.

"Yeah, yeah." Derek made a face at his retreating back and came over to me. "Hiya, Tink. Miss Rudolph. Lionel." He nodded to the other two and put his arm around my shoulders.

"What's going on?" I asked, glancing up at him. He looked resigned and not very happy.

"Wayne has to call in a crew. To dig up the crawls.p.a.ce."

"I guess he probably doesn't have a choice," I said, fairly.

"I know he doesn't. It's just irritating, is all."

"So are there more bones down there?" Venetia Rudolph wanted to know. Lionel looked green.

Derek glanced over at her. "We had a look around and found a couple more, yeah. Enough to establish that there's at least one skeleton down there, maybe more."

"More?" Lionel said faintly. Derek shrugged.

"Could be an old Indian burial ground or something. Not necessarily a murder victim someone stashed under the house. Although that's a possibility, too, of course." Lionel looked ready to hurl. "So the police will be digging up the bas.e.m.e.nt?" Venetia asked, getting the conversation back on track. Derek nodded.

"Yes, ma'am. The chief of police is calling in a crew right now."

"Not much room down there for a whole crew," I remarked.

Derek shook his head. "It'll be Brandon Thomas doing the digging, most likely. And Wayne asked me to stick around, too. He or Brandon can identify the bones themselves in a pinch, but since I'm here anyway, I can help them get a head start. Plus, it's our house."

I nodded. It made sense. He didn't seem to mind looking at bones. Unlike me. "Would you mind if I took the truck into town meanwhile?" I'd had an idea about what I could do to help figure out what was going on.

He hesitated. Men are very possessive of their cars, I've noticed. My ex-boyfriend owned a little Porsche Boxster, and he'd go into flights of worry and indecision whenever I asked if I could drive it. I had, however, thought Derek to be made of sterner stuff.

He pulled the car keys out of his pocket, slowly. "You remember what happened last time, right?"

"Of course I remember," I said, holding out my hand. "The fact that I almost hit Melissa's fancy-pants Mercedes has nothing to do with my driving ability. I know how to drive. You've seen my license, haven't you?"

"I have." But he still didn't hand over the keys.

Wayne, who had just come back from the squad car, looked from one to the other of us with barely concealed amus.e.m.e.nt.

I said, "I'll be careful, Derek. I promise. I know how much that truck means to you."

"It's just a truck . . ." Derek began, and then he grinned. "Just remember that if you drive it off the road, you'll have to walk here from Waterfield every morning. Or move in until we're finished renovating."

"Anything but that," I said, snagging the keys out of his hand. "Thank you. I'll be careful."

"See that you are," Derek answered, but he didn't sound worried anymore. "So Wayne, what's going on?"

"We've got another car coming," Wayne explained. "Brandon's bringing what he refers to as our CSI kit. Once the equipment's here, we'll string some lights so we can see what we're doing and start digging."