Wayne looked like he might have hesitated for just a second. “Likely there’s a connection, yeah. Somewhere. When two unusual things happen back-to-back like this, usually they’re connected somehow. When you saw her yesterday afternoon, how did she seem?”
I shrugged. “Just like always. Tart. Full of questions about what was going on next door. We talked a little about the people she’d seen around the house, because I was trying to figure out whether Venetia might know who the skeleton was, or who might have put her there. Without realizing she knew it, of course.” I went through the list of individuals Venetia had mentioned, who had been seen in or around the house over the past few years. “That reminds me,” I added, digging in my pocket for the earring, “I found this in the kitchen next door a couple of days ago. We thought it might have belonged to one of the Murphy women, but Mr. Nickerson, at Nickerson’s Antiques downtown, says it’s not old enough. And Shannon McGillicutty has a similar pair, which she says Josh gave her for Christmas a few years ago.”
Wayne nodded to Brandon, who pulled a little Ziploc bag out of his pocket. I dropped the sparkly drop into it, and he sealed it and, after a moment’s hesitation and a glance at his boss, put it down on the gleaming surface of the coffee table. I opened my mouth to ask if he recognized it, but before I had the chance, Wayne continued.
“It was in the kitchen?”
I nodded. “In the dust where the fridge used to be. See, Derek ditched the old fridge and stove the day we started work because…” I stopped, feeling the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“Because of what?” Wayne prodded. I swallowed.
“Because there was a spill of something down the side of the stove. From the corner. We thought it was tomato sauce or ketchup…” I trailed off, fully aware of how lame the excuse sounded. We’d talked about tomato sauce and ketchup, yes, but what had caused us to hustle the appliances out of the house in a hurry, was the thought that the spill was blood. I’d assumed the blood to be from one of the Murphys, but now…
“Where are the appliances now?” Wayne asked. Derek gestured with his thumb.
“The dump. They were more than twenty years old, so I doubted even the reuse center would want them. I loaded them in the truck and drove them out to the landfill. Didn’t want them sitting around, even in the Dumpster.” He grimaced.
Wayne nodded to Brandon, who left, without a word being exchanged.
“They were red,” Derek called after him. He added, for our benefit, “No sense in him wasting time looking at every white and almond and stainless steel stove he sees.”
“Maybe we should go with him,” I suggested. “We’re cluttering up Wayne ’s crime scene as it is. Is Brandon finished next door, so we can go back to work, or does he still have things to do?”
“There are no more bodies in the crawlspace,” Wayne answered, walking with us toward the back door of Venetia ’s house, “and none on the rest of the property, either. Just the one we’ve already got out. With this new victim, and figuring out who the old one was, and processing the stove and fridge when we find them, not to mention the work you two have already done tearing everything useful outta there, I’m gonna say that Brandon’s probably finished. But it might be a good idea to wait until tomorrow anyway, just to get rid of the crowds and the reporters before you go back in.”
I nodded. Made sense.
“If you’d wanna ride with him out to the dump to see if maybe you can expedite things, I wouldn’t mind at all.”
“I’ll do that,” Derek said. “Maybe he can drop me off at Cortino’s on the way back into town.” He jogged after Brandon, who was in the process of getting into his cruiser.
Daphne the state trooper was packing things up, too, letting Hans into his special compartment in the K-9 vehicle. I guessed their job here was done. Wayne excused himself to go talk to her, and I stood on the lawn for a second, at loose ends, before I trudged back to the neighbors. Word would be out in a few minutes anyway, and they’d already started speculating-wildly-so maybe it would be better just to tell them the truth instead of allowing them to perpetuate the myth that Venetia had murdered untold numbers of people and hidden them in her house.
“Well?” Arthur Mattson said when I was close enough to hear him. The rest of the group turned, eagerly.
I waited until I didn’t have to raise my voice. “I’m afraid Miss Rudolph has died.”
“Died?” Arthur repeated, as if the word didn’t quite compute. I nodded.
“Murdered?” Denise asked shrilly. Tony the TV guy’s head turned toward the sound. She lowered her voice. “By the same person who killed whoever was in your basement?” It was by no means certain that the same person had killed both our unknown skeleton and Venetia, although as Wayne had said, when two unusual things happen in close succession and right next door to one another, it would be a monstrous coincidence if they weren’t related.
“I don’t know about that,” I said as Tony started toward us.
“But she was murdered?”
“Well…”
“Oh, my God!” Denise glanced down at the sleeping Trevor and around as if she were afraid someone was getting ready to pounce on him.
“How?” Arthur demanded.
“Um… I think maybe it would be better to leave the telling of that to the police.”
Arthur looked like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t. “An accident?” he suggested.
I shook my head. “Likely not.”
“Mercy.” He shook his head. Irina muttered a Russian word or two, and Denise squeaked. Linda crossed herself.
“She was an awful old battle-ax,” she said, with the air of one giving credit where credit was due. “Always carrying on about the kids today. No morals, no sense, no respect for their elders; and the girls, how they were dressed…! Remember, Denise?”
Denise nodded, a faint smile on her lips as she watched Trevor sleep. Linda continued, “But she surely didn’t deserve that. There wasn’t any harm in her. Just because she couldn’t seem to mind her own business…”
She pulled a miniature liquor bottle out of the pocket of her housecoat and tipped it in the direction of Venetia ’s silent house before taking a swig.
“Amen,” Arthur Mattson said. “She’d always stand behind those curtains whenever we’d walk by, making sure I kept Stella off her grass and didn’t let her do any of her business on Venetia’s lawn. Still, you wouldn’t wish something like this on your own worst enemy.”
The others shook their heads solemnly.
“I remember once,” Denise said with a giggle, “when Holly and I…” She stopped abruptly, blushing, and made herself busy adjusting the light blanket that covered the sleeping Trevor. Nobody spoke, and the silence lengthened, heavy.
“Who’s Holly?” I said eventually, looking from one to the other of them. Irina shrugged. Denise still had a betraying blush in her cheeks. I guessed that she and Holly, who must have been her friend, had done something mean or embarrassing to Venetia back in the day, which she wasn’t about to own up to now, when Venetia was due the respect usually accorded the newly deceased. “Holly White?”
Linda shot me a look, and Denise nodded. “We were friends growing up. How do you know about Holly?”
“I don’t,” I explained. “Just the name. Brandon Thomas mentioned her yesterday, when he was talking to Lionel Kenefick, and I happened to see her picture in the newspaper archives yesterday, too. Prom photo. Pretty girl.”
“Gorgeous,” Denise nodded.
“He said she went to Hollywood to become an actress?”
“That’s what she always said she wanted to do. Hollywood or Las Vegas. Or maybe Paris or Rome.”
Linda snorted and took another swig from her bottle. At this rate, it would be empty in another minute.