“What kind of button?” Kate wanted to know. I told her. “So this isn’t an old skeleton, then?”
“Doesn’t seem to be. Originally, we thought maybe we’d stumbled over an old Indian burial or something. There were Indians around here in the old days, right?”
“Still are,” Kate nodded. “Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Micmac, and Penobscot, mostly.”
“Well, we were wrong. This is someone more recent. She was wearing clothes from Target.”
“Target?” Kate repeated, hazel eyes big. “She?”
I explained about the button and what it signified, and also what Derek had said about the length of the femur, tibia, and fibula.
“If Derek says so, then I’m sure it’s right,” Kate said loyally.
“No doubt.” Her faith in Derek was touching, and I was about to comment on it when another voice interrupted me.
“Afternoon, Avery. Kate.”
It was a lovely voice, a soft and feminine purr with a hint of sheathed claws underneath, and it fit its owner perfectly. Melissa James was gorgeous, from the top of her razor-edged cap of glossy hair to the pointy toes of her shiny, red, patent-leather Mary Janes. Manolo Blah nik, of course, with four-inch heels. Her killer body, all five feet eight inches of it, was dressed in an Yves Saint Laurent pencil skirt and matching blouse, and she smiled down at me with her blindingly white, preternaturally even teeth. Melissa invariably made me feel like a dirty-faced urchin, even when I had made an effort to look good, and most of the time she seemed to have an uncanny ability to sense when I looked my worst and zero in on me in those moments. Like now, when I was dressed in worn jeans and sneakers, with my hair twisted up in a tie, and a minimum of makeup on my face.
“Hi, Melissa,” Kate answered, with her own big, fake smile. Kate is Melissa’s height, and between the two of them, I feel positively dainty. I also felt like lightning bolts-or more accurately, lighted barbs-were crossing above my head. Kate dislikes Melissa on a whole lot of levels, and the fact that Kate adores Derek, and that Melissa dumped him, is only one of them. She-Melissa-is also doing her best to turn Waterfield into the kind of town Kate left Massachusetts to get away from, and then there’s the fact that every time Melissa refers someone to Kate’s B and B, she seems to feel that Kate owes her a referral fee. Somehow, the reverse isn’t true: Whenever Kate refers someone to Melissa, it doesn’t seem to cross Melissa’s mind to give Kate a referral fee or so much as a handful of flowers for her trouble. Melissa usually manages a thank you, but even that seems to be a bit of an effort.
I guess I don’t have to say that I don’t like Melissa, either. In addition to her delight in making me feel small and insignificant, she dumped Derek and hurt his pride and his feelings, even if she didn’t break his heart. More than that, she was married to Derek for a few years before she dumped him, and that means there are things about him she knows that I haven’t discovered yet. And then there’s the fact that she’s dating my cousin Ray, who’s a jerk. Mostly, though, I just chafe at her perfection. I dredged up a smile from somewhere and plastered it on my face. “Nice to see you.” Not.
Melissa looked from me to Kate and back, all her lovely teeth on display and her amazing eyes-deep violet, her own-gleaming with interest. “What are you talking about?”
Kate glanced at me. I shrugged. Word would get all over Waterfield sooner or later, so we might as well tell her now. “There are bones buried under the house that Derek and I are renovating.”
“Oooooh!” Melissa patted my arm with a sympathetic hand ending in long, bloodred talons, a perfect match to the shoes. “That’s no fun, is it? I remember last year, when Ray and Randy were starting development on that little subdivision north of town-not Devon Highlands; the other one, Clovercroft-anyway, when they started digging, they turned up bones. So we called the police, and they came out and had a look, and then they called in someone from the college, the anthropology department, and it turned out to be an old Indian burial ground, and now the whole thing is a nightmare, with the various tribes and nations refusing to let the bones be moved, and until they are, Ray and Randy can’t go forward with the development, and everything is just a big mess!”
“Gee,” Kate said with a grin, “that’s too bad.”
Melissa narrowed those fabulous eyes, but instead of commenting on Kate’s lack of sympathy, she addressed me instead. “Derek must be livid, the poor baby. He gets so upset when he’s sidetracked. What are you going to do, Avery?”
“Oh, I’m not going to do anything,” I answered, with a sweet smile. “Derek is helping Wayne and Brandon with the excavation. And if he’s livid, I didn’t notice. He’ll be home this evening. I guess I’ll find out then.”
Melissa smiled back, a little less sweetly. “Where are you renovating now, Avery?”
“Gosh,” I said, “I thought you knew. We bought the old Murphy house on Becklea. You were out there just a couple of weeks ago, weren’t you?”
“You bought that?” For a second, Melissa’s lovely face didn’t look quite so lovely. Then it smoothed out again. “Actually, I was. But how did you know?”
I explained that one of the neighbors had seen her.
“That old biddy in the house next door, I guess,” Melissa said with a look at me from under her lashes, looking for confirmation. “Horrible old busybody. She kept peering at me through the curtains, like she thought I was doing something wrong.”
“Miss Rudolph likes keeping an eye on what goes on in her neighborhood,” I agreed, glancing over at Kate. She hid a smile.
Melissa cleared her throat to bring our attention back to her. “How are the renovations going, Avery?”
“Fine, until the skeleton became an issue. You know Derek. Good with his hands.”
I smiled. Kate snorted and changed it into a cough. Covering her mouth with her hand, she turned away, shoulders shaking. Melissa’s eyes narrowed, but she kept her voice smooth and solicitous.
“I’m glad you two are doing well. Poor baby, he took it so hard when we broke up. I didn’t think he’d ever find anyone else.”
This was a none-too-subtle dig at both Kate and me. Two birds with one stone. Derek and Kate had dated a few times when Kate first moved to town, shortly after Melissa’s defection, and for obvious reasons, it hadn’t worked out between them. They got along well and enjoyed each other’s company, but the romantic spark just wasn’t there. In her own inimitable way, Melissa was telling Kate that she hadn’t measured up in Derek’s eyes. And of course the suggestion that it had taken Derek five years to find someone to replace her was designed to make me think about the possibility that he might just have picked me as second best, after he finally came to terms with the fact that Melissa was lost to him. I didn’t think that was really the reason he’d settled on me-on me, not for me; or so I hoped-although the worry would probably gnaw at me at intervals until I could put it to rest. Damn Melissa and her insidious suggestions.
Her job done to her satisfaction, Melissa wriggled her fingers in a friendly wave. “I’d better get back to work. Nice seeing you both.” She sashayed away, back into the Waterfield Realty office. Her cell phone was glued to her ear before she had shut the door behind her. Probably calling Ray to tell him that Derek and I had scooped them once again and were renovating the house that the Stenhams had wanted to get their hands on. At the moment, with the skeleton in the crawlspace added to the haunted house issue and the old murders, I was kind of wishing that the Stenhams had scooped us this time and that the whole mess had landed in their laps instead of in ours. Still, the feeling of having beaten them to the punch was compelling enough that I smiled anyway.
“Boy, she sure put us in our place, didn’t she?” Kate said with a grin. “Aren’t you feeling properly scorned, Avery? I mean, does she really think I care that Derek didn’t choose to pursue our relationship? Puh-leeze!” She rolled her expressive, hazel eyes.