“ Venetia Rudolph. Next door.” She took her hand back and tucked both into the pockets of her baggy khakis. I did my best not to giggle.
“Well, we’re sorry about the cats. We brought them from home to take care of any mice, and they must have gotten out.” I had in fact let them out myself sometime in the midmorning, after they’d sat at the door complaining for fifteen minutes, but Venetia seemed so upset about the fact that they’d been in her yard, that I thought it better to make it sound like an accident. “I hope they didn’t ruin your lovely landscaping.”
The landscaping of the red brick ranch to the left of us was lovely. There were bushes and plants of various sizes and shades of green in containers and beds all around the front of the house, and when I’d been out in our backyard earlier, I’d seen huge beds of flowering plants behind the house, as well. This late in the year, it wasn’t as beautiful as I could imagine it might be in May or June, with every flower in riotous explosion of color and texture, but I could make out climbing roses on trellises around the back deck, a patch of what could only be monstrous sunflowers off to the side, and pots of colorful pansies marching up the stairs and all along the railing.
Venetia smiled tightly. “They found the herb garden. And the catnip.”
“Oops,” I said.
Derek hid a grin. “Sorry about that, Miss Rudolph. It won’t happen again.”
“You’d best make sure it doesn’t,” Venetia Rudolph said and turned to leave.
“May I ask you a question, Miss Rudolph?” I said quickly.
“In addition to the one you just asked?”
What an old battle-ax! I bit back a sharp retort. “Another of the neighbors told us that our house is haunted. He said he’s heard screams at night and seen lights go on and off and shadows move past the windows.”
“Hogwash!” Venetia barked.
“And Derek and I have both heard footsteps walking down the hallway when no one was here but us.” I glanced over at Derek for confirmation. He nodded.
Venetia ’s eyes slid sideways to the opening to the hallway. She must have been in our house before, to know where it was. Either that, or the layout of her house was exactly the same. “The cat,” she said.
I shook my head. “Jemmy walks like a man, I agree, but he was outside. Savaging your catnip. And yesterday he wasn’t here at all. Sorry.”
“Harrumph! In that case, young lady, I’m sure I can’t help you. I’ve lived next door for twenty-five years, and no screams have ever disturbed my sleep.”
She turned toward the door again.
“Well, have you ever seen anyone around? Squatters? Anyone who might have broken in? People hanging around, doing stuff to the house? The cable guy?”
Derek must have thought I was stretching the point, because he rolled his eyes. I rolled mine right back at him and focused on Venetia.
“No one who shouldn’t be here,” she said promptly. “There were some squatters in the basement once, but that’s two or three years ago. I called the police on ’em, but they up and left before anyone could move ’ em out. The man from the lawn care company cuts the grass every couple of weeks, and twice a year, someone comes out to service the heating system. Once in a while, a handyman will nail down a loose roof shingle or clean out the gutters. But if you’re asking if I’ve seen anyone suspicious hanging around, the answer is no.”
“I see,” I said. “Thank you, Miss Rudolph.”
She waved me aside. “You make sure your kitties stay out of my catnip, Miss Baker. And you, too, young man.” She looked up at Derek for a second as she trotted past him and out the door. He shut it again just in time to stop Jemmy and Inky from following. Both cats skidded to a stop, tucked their plumy tails around their haunches, and gave him identical, affronted looks. Jemmy, the more vocal of the two, complained loudly.
“I brought some cat snacks,” I said, heading for the kitchen and the bag I had left there in the morning. “Maybe that’ll make them happier.”
“Unless it’s catnip, I don’t think so,” Derek answered, “but it’s worth a try.”
“So Venetia Rudolph-what a name!-never saw or heard anything spooky.” I dug out the cat treat box and gave Inky and Jemmy a fish-shaped crunchy each. “Or anyone hanging around, either.”
“So she says,” Derek said, folding his arms across his chest.
“Why would she lie?”
“She’s a closet romantic and she was hunting for the manuscript of Tied Up in Tartan? She’s the next door neighbor, and she’s lived here twenty-five years. She might have had a key this whole time. Most people hide a key outside or give one to a neighbor to keep.”
“That’s true,” I said. In New York I’d given the girl in the apartment across the hall a copy of my key, just in case I lost mine. Here in Waterfield, Kate had a copy, and so, of course, did Derek. It made sense that one of the Murphys would have given their neighbor, Venetia Rudolph, a key to their house for emergencies. Or to another of the neighbors. “Guess I’ll have to read Tied Up in Tartan now, to see what’s so exciting.”
“Like you needed an excuse,” Derek said. I smiled.
We left the house around six, scrambling because we were running late. Derek’s dad, Ben Ellis, and his wife Cora had invited us for dinner, and Derek wanted to please his dad by being on time. He loved his dad dearly, and always worried that he had disappointed the older man by not taking over his medical practice. Derek had, in fact, gone through both medical school and a four-year residency before deciding that he wanted to be a renovator instead of a doctor. That was when Melissa decided she’d had enough of being Mrs. Derek Ellis and wanted a divorce. The marriage had been rocky for a while, Derek had told me, but it was the career change from physician to glorified handyman that had been the final blow.
The older Ellises lived in a beautifully maintained Victorian cottage in the Village, i.e., the historic district. Aunt Inga’s house-my house-was a few blocks away, and so was downtown Waterfield, with Derek’s bachelor pad, as well as Kate’s B and B. We knocked on the beautifully carved front door just a few minutes after six thirty P.M., looking as good as we could under the circumstances. Derek keeps a clean dress shirt in the car for when he has to do a quick change to meet a potential client-or a dinner date-and knowing where we’d be going, I’d made sure to bring a change of clothes, too. The dress was one I had designed myself-yellow background with black silhouettes of cats arching their backs along the hem, and black piping.
Dr. Ben met us at the door and ushered us into the great room; that combination of kitchen-living room-den that’s become so popular over the last couple of years. Derek had added it to the old Victorian house some five or six years ago, when he first decided to do remodeling and renovation for a living. I guess Dr. Ben had wanted to do what he could to give his son a good start in his new profession. Everyone in town knew the Ellises, and everyone who was anyone had seen the kitchen addition and loved it. I loved it, too. It was bright and sunny and open, with terra cotta tile on the floor, lots of green plants, and French doors leading out onto the deck that Derek had also built, and from there into the garden, which was Cora’s domain.
Dr. Ben’s second wife was a lovely person, and I enjoyed her company. She was a few years younger than her new husband, in her early fifties to his sixty or so, and a widow. According to Kate, who knew everything, even things that had happened long before she came to Waterfield, Cora’s late husband had been an alcoholic and a mean drunk. Derek, who adored his stepmother, put it more strongly: The late, unlamented Glenn Morgan had been a drunken bastard who enjoyed knocking his wife around, and he’d got what was coming to him when he got hit by a car late one night as he was staggering home from an all-night binge at the Shamrock. Ben Ellis had already known Cora for a while by then, from treating the various injuries her husband had inflicted upon her over the years. They waited a suitable year before getting married, and were still acting like newlyweds four years later.