There are all sorts of antique stores in the world, from your basic junk store, where the owner has no idea what he or she has, to the snobby and upscale places that are more like museums, which specialize in a certain era or type of thing, and where glass cases preclude you from picking anything up even if you dare. Nickerson’s was somewhere in between. John Nickerson had a little bit of everything, but if he had a specialty, it seemed to be midcentury modern: post-WWII up to about the 1980s. There was a ton of 1950s and ’60s kitsch sitting around: a tall, hooked, shag rug with a giraffe hung on one wall, while a pristine dinette set with a yellow Formica top and four yellow and white Naugahyde chairs had pride of place in the back corner. Under the giraffe sat a couple of orange scoop chairs and a glass table with a lava lamp on top, while a few framed examples of that big-eyed art that was so popular a generation ago hung above the dinette set. Everything was accessible and touchable, except for very few pieces of custom jewelry and other small items under the counter.
On a whim, I pulled the earring I had found out of my pocket. “I don’t suppose you have another one like this, do you? I lost one, and now I can’t wear them anymore.”
He took the earring from me with fingers that trembled slightly. I wondered if it was significant or if he always trembled. After a moment of peering myopically at it, he shook his head. “After my time, I’m afraid.” His voice was perfectly even and his face unexpressive; so much for trying to startle him by showing him Peggy Murphy’s earring.
“After?” I had thought the earring looked 1940s or thereabouts. Of course, Shannon had already confirmed that hers were reproductions, so maybe I should have considered that this might be, as well. Then again, that meant that someone must have lost it over the past few years, while the house had been empty.
He nodded. “It looks vintage, but it’s actually a modern reproduction. See the back? No soldering? It’s been made in a mold in the past few years. Sorry I can’t help.” He handed it back.
“That’s OK,” I said, tucking it back into my pocket again. So it wasn’t Peggy Murphy’s after all, or her mother’s, either. Maybe it had belonged to one of the teenagers that Venetia Rudolph had seen in the house a few years ago. “I was actually interested in that chest of drawers you have in the window.”
“The Fredericia? Beautiful, isn’t it?” He jumped down from the tall stool he’d been sitting on, and started toward the display window. His bearing was almost military, straight and tall, but he had a pronounced limp, as if one leg was shorter than the other. “ Vietnam,” he said briefly when he caught my reaction. I blushed.
“Sorry.”
“It’s been forty years. Don’t worry about it. This?” He pointed to the chest of drawers we’d seen through the window.
“That’s the one.”
“Nineteen sixty-five Danish Modern, teak, made in Fredericia Møbelfabrik. That’s the Fredericia Furniture Factory to you. Still in operation today. Give it to you for five hundred fifty dollars.”
“I don’t know…” I said, biting my lip. Five hundred fifty dollars was more than I wanted to spend, especially considering that I’d have to do modifications to turn it from a dresser into a sink base. The top drawer or two would have to be glued and nailed shut and the bottom of at least one of them removed to make room for the plumbing, and I’d have to cut holes in the top for the drain and waterlines, as well as the faucet. Lots of room for error in doing all that, and if I messed up too badly, the piece would be useless. On the other hand, it would look fabulous in the brown and blue bathroom. “What’s that?” I pointed. “A chip?”
Mr. Nickerson bent down. “A small one. I’ll knock off fifty dollars.”
“I don’t know. Five hundred dollars is still a little more than I’m comfortable with. See, I can go to the home improvement center and buy a sink base that’ll look OK for a lot less than that. But because it’s a 1960s ranch, I thought an authentic dresser would look good. With one of those vessel sinks on top, you know, like a bowl. There’s this little brown and blue bathroom that my boyfriend won’t let me tear out, because the tile is perfect…”
I peered at him for any sign of recognition, some clue that he’d been in the Murphy house and had seen-maybe even showered in-the brown and blue master bath, but he didn’t flicker so much as an eyelash. “Sounds like an interesting idea.”
“I hope so,” I said. “If you’ve lived in town for a while, you probably know the house. A family named Murphy used to live there, until seventeen years ago or so, when they all died.” I did my best to sound innocent, but I don’t know how well I did, especially considering that I was-surreptitiously, I hoped-gauging his reaction.
“Peggy Murphy used to work for me,” John Nickerson said neutrally. I opened my eyes wide.
“You’re kidding? Small world.”
It sounded fake even to me, and Kate rolled her eyes. She was over by the Naugahyde chairs examining the big-eyed people. “I remember these,” she said, pointing to the pictures. “My grandmother had them. Little boys with puppies, little girls with kittens. On her living room wall.”
“Highly collectible these days.” John Nickerson left me to limp over to her. He seemed not to care whether I decided to buy the Danish Modern dresser or not. Or maybe it was a tactic: leaving me to stew and decide that if he didn’t care, I’d better pony up. Or maybe my conversation was making him uncomfortable, in spite of his seeming lack of reaction to the earring and the mention of the Murphys.
“They’re kind of cute,” I admitted, following him, “in a weird way.”
“I think I’ll have to buy that one.” Kate pointed to a lost-looking waif in a harlequin costume with a big tear rolling down her cheek. The child had the biggest, sad dest eyes I had seen in my life. “Looks just like Shannon did when she was young. I’m going to give it to her for her birthday.”
“Will she appreciate that?” I asked, while Mr. Nickerson took the print off the wall and carried it to the counter.
“She’ll think it’s funny.” Kate dug her wallet out of her purse and paid fifteen dollars for the picture. Mr. Nickerson wrapped it in brown paper for her.
“I’ll let you know about the dresser,” I said. “I should probably talk to Derek first. See just how difficult it would be to turn something like that into a sink base. Do you expect to sell it in the next couple of days?”
“Can’t promise anything,” John Nickerson said, “but with everything slowing down after the summer, it’ll probably still be here a while. Let me know.” He nodded politely but obviously didn’t feel it necessary to offer me another incentive-like a lower price-to take the dresser off his hands now instead of later.
“What was that all about?” Kate asked when we were outside on Main Street again, continuing our way toward Aunt Inga’s house and the B and B.
I shrugged. “Cora Ellis thought there might have been something going on between him and Peggy Murphy, and that’s why Brian killed her.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Kate said. “John doesn’t seem the type, but even if it were true almost twenty years ago, does it matter now?”
“I guess it doesn’t, really,” I admitted. “There’s never been any doubt about it being Brian who killed the rest of the family. I’m not suggesting that it was really John Nickerson. I’m just curious what would make a man do something like that, you know. There had to have been something behind it, don’t you think?”
“You’d think,” Kate agreed, without sounding like it mattered to her one way or the other.
Derek called a little before nine that night to tell me that the skeleton was out of the ground and in storage at Barnham College. “It’ll end up in Portland eventually, at the medical examiner’s office, but Wayne wants to keep it here for a day or two to see if he can’t figure out who it is without their help. She was buried here, after all, so she has to have had some kind of connection to Waterfield, even if it’s just that her murder took place here.”