“We’ll just get the skeleton out, give us something to work with, and then we can all go home and try again tomorrow.”
“Sounds good to me,” Derek said. “See ya, Tink.”
“You, too.”
I headed for the steps up into the sunlight while he turned back to watch the grisly excavation.
The crowd outside the crime scene tape was, if anything, even bigger when I got back up into the yard. Lionel Kenefick was still there, looking upset, huddled in a group with what I assumed were other neighbors. They were a motley crew: some old, some young, some dressed for business in suits and ties, one lady in a faded pink bathrobe with rollers in her hair. A few children were hanging around, too, gawking at the house and police cars. They were probably on their way home from school, with heavy backpacks pulling their narrow shoulders down.
Venetia Rudolph wasn’t present, but I could see the lace curtains twitch in the house next door, where she was sitting at the window, peering out. After a moment’s hesitation, I headed in that direction.
The door opened before I reached it, a dead giveaway-if I needed one-that she’d been watching. “Come in, Miss Baker.” She stepped back and ushered me into her living room. I stopped just inside the door and stared.
At first glance, the layout was very much the same as in our house, which explained how Venetia had known where the bedrooms and bathrooms were next door. After that, the similarities pretty much ended, and not only because Venetia ’s house was spotlessly clean and obviously in perfect working order, while ours was a bit of an unfinished mess at the moment.
Next door, we were going for as much spacious openness as possible. We were planning to sand the floors and paint the walls in light, fresh colors, and when we staged the house for prospective buyers, we’d try to buy or borrow minimalistic furniture-glass, chrome, and light wood. Danish Modern. Venetia had gone to the other extreme. The floors were covered with plush, rose-colored, wall-to-wall carpet. The walls in the L-shaped living room and dining room had striped wallpaper and a border running along the top, underneath the ceiling. It had pictures of what I thought were magnolia blossoms. The furniture was overstuffed: a couch, a matching loveseat, and a big chair, all upholstered in shades of green, ranged around a large coffee table in dark wood. The top of the table was so highly polished I could have seen my reflection in it. The dining room was in similar straits: striped walls and rose pink floor, with an oversized sideboard up against the back wall and an oval table with heavy, carved legs, surrounded by six large chairs upholstered with rose-colored damask, in the middle of the floor. On the table sat an enormous, fake arrangement of waxy magnolias and glossy leaves in a large, green vase, and the framed painting above the sideboard was of Vivien Leigh in Scarlett O’Hara’s green dress, the one she made from the curtains at Tara. Venetia was one of those people who keep their dining room table always set, and the settings-arranged on rosy damask placemats-had plates showing scenes from the same movie.
“Nice place,” I said politely-and untruthfully. I’d go crazy living in Venetia ’s house, and although I agree that Gone with the Wind is a masterpiece and that Clark Gable was Rhett Butler, I don’t think he’s hot enough that I’d want to eat my dinner off him.
Venetia smiled tightly. “Thank you, Miss Baker. Have a seat. Tell me, what’s going on next door?”
“Nothing that wasn’t going on three hours ago,” I said, sitting down in the overstuffed armchair. “The police are down in the crawlspace, digging. Derek is watching. And the crowd outside is growing bigger. Wayne is concerned about the media.”
Venetia waved a dismissive hand. “The newspapers have already come and gone. And I guess the news can’t have reached Portland yet, as we don’t have anyone from WMTW hanging around.”
WMTW, channel eight, is the local ABC affiliate. Aunt Inga hadn’t owned a television set, but I’d succumbed over the summer and bought one, and I was becoming familiar with the various Waterfield stations.
“Do you think the national news will be interested in this?” I asked nervously.
“That depends on what this turns out to be,” Venetia answered tartly, which I would have figured out for myself, too, had I thought about it. “If it turns out to be a dead squatter, probably not. Unless it’s an illegal alien. The immigration issue is a political hot button these days. But if it’s a murder victim-someone that Brian Murphy killed and buried under the house before he killed himself and the rest of the family-then yes, the national media will have a field day. The whole story about the Murphy murders will be dragged out again and splashed across the front page of every newspaper in the country, and news vans from every major network will be camped outside your house. And mine.” She sent me a disgruntled look.
“Gee,” I said, leaning back and worrying a fingernail, “that could be bad.”
It was just a few days ago that I’d been concerned about how the long-ago tragedy of the Murphy murders would affect the resale of the house, once we finished fixing it up and got it back on the market. And now here I was, faced not only with having all of that dredged up again, and reimpressed on people’s minds, but with the additional discovery of a skeleton buried in the crawlspace. All we needed at this point was to find out that the skeleton had been murdered upstairs in the house, and my life would be complete. We’d never be able to sell the house. We’d end up in foreclosure, and I’d have to bag groceries as Shaw’s Supermarket to make a living. It was a real shame that there weren’t more people like Kate in the world, who wanted to live in haunted houses.
“You’ve been living here a while,” I said. “Lionel Kenefick-you know, from down the street?”
Venetia nodded, her rather large nostrils flaring. I deduced she didn’t entirely approve of Lionel. I couldn’t blame her, since I didn’t entirely approve of him myself. Not that I had any real reason to disapprove; I just didn’t like the way he looked at me. Or the fact that he’d scared me the other day.
“He told us that he’s heard screaming from the house at night. And a couple of days ago, I heard footsteps inside when no one was there.”
“I told you. I’d never heard anything spooky-until last night,” Venetia said, “and you told me that was one of the cats.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t. Derek thinks something was rigged to go off when we opened the door. We looked again this morning, but we didn’t see anything. No wires or speakers or anything like that. I don’t suppose you’ve noticed anyone hanging around, that shouldn’t have been? Either lately or a few years ago, when that body may have been put in the crawlspace?”
Venetia shook her gray head. “No one I haven’t told you about. There were the squatters two years ago. The teenagers a couple of years before that. Since then, I’ve only seen the folks that were supposed to be here. The lawn care people, the handyman, the person servicing the heat-and-air system. The meter readers, every month. A suit, walking around making notes on a clipboard a few weeks ago.”
I had an insane vision of a man’s suit walking around on its own, clipboard and pen held in an invisible hand. It had probably been the lawyer from Portland, preparing for the sale.
Venetia continued, “I or one of the other neighbors will walk around the house once in a while to make sure there are no broken windows or doors. The mailman comes by once a day, but of course he doesn’t deliver anything. Same with the newspaper boy or girl. Every so often, some nosey parker will drive up, gawk at the house, maybe peer through the windows, and drive away again. I don’t know whether they’re looking for ghosts or hoping to see old bloodstains, or simply want to buy the house. Oh yes, and that realtor was here a couple of weeks ago, too.”