Mr. Nickerson nodded, his eyes on Derek, as well. “For six or eight months before she died.”
“Did you know Patrick, too? Her little boy?”
His silvered brows drew together slightly. “Met him. He’d come over after school sometimes, do his home-work or sit and draw in the back room. Why?”
“I’m just curious,” I said with a shrug. “I told you we’re renovating the old Murphy house. I saw pictures of Brian and Peggy in the newspaper archives, but I haven’t seen a picture of Patrick.”
John Nickerson leaned the broom up against the front of the store. “Looked like his mother. Brian had red hair and freckles. Like me, before I turned gray.” He smoothed a freckled hand over his ducktail. “But Peggy and Patrick were Black Irish, with dark hair and blue eyes.”
“Are you Irish, too, then?”
He shook his head. “Scots.”
“Nickerson doesn’t sound Scottish.” Although the only time I’d come across the name was when I was reading Nancy Drew as a girl, so what did I know? Still, in my mind, all Scottish names started with “mac,” which I knew meant “son of.” MacDonald would be the son of Donald and MacEwen the son of Ewen, and so on. Although MacNicker didn’t sound right. Nickerson was better.
“Nickerson and Nicholson are from the MacNicol clan,” John Nickerson explained. “Along with MacNicoll, Nichols, Nickells, and MacNeacail.” He helpfully spelled the different variants of the name.
“How about MacNiachail?” I wanted to know. He wrinkled his brows.
“Haven’t come across that one. Where d’you hear it?”
“Read it somewhere. So if you were in Scotland, your name would be Ian MacNicol? John is Ian, right?”
“More likely it would be Iain MacNeacail, but that’s close enough.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“For what?”
“For clearing it up for me.” I smiled. It seemed to worry him, because he peered intently at me. But before he could say anything, Derek came out of the shop again. “What did you think?” I asked, happy for an excuse to change the subject.
“I think I can make it work.” He turned to John Nickerson. “Will you take three hundred fifty dollars for it?”
They went into the age-old dance of buyer and seller, and I left them to it and turned my mind to what I had just learned. So John Nickerson was for all intents and purposes an Americanization, or Anglicization, of Iain MacNiachail-which had been the name of the dashing hero in Peggy Murphy’s unfinished bodice-ripper manuscript, Tied Up in Tartan. Did that coincidence prove that Peggy had had an affair with her boss?
“Not necessarily,” Derek said ten minutes later, after the purchase of the dresser was a fait accompli at four hundred dollars and I had told him what John Nickerson had said. “All it proves is that she had a crush on him. Or maybe not even; maybe she just liked the name.”
“It’s interesting, though, don’t you think?”
“I guess,” Derek said with a shrug. Apparently he didn’t find it as interesting as I did. “Why do you care so much, Avery? Not to be insensitive or anything, but they’re just as dead either way.”
“I know that,” I answered. “I know it doesn’t make any difference. I’d just like to know what happened.”
He glanced over at me. “No doubt about what happened, is there? Brian killed them.”
“I know that. But why?”
Derek shrugged. “He must have had a reason. There’s always a reason, whether we understand it or not. She could have been having an affair. She could have been thinking about leaving him. Or he could simply have thought she did. He could have felt threatened because she started working and having fun without him. We’ll never really know.”
“I guess. It’s just interesting to me, is all.”
Derek didn’t answer.
“I’ll get Wayne to help me unload the dresser,” he said when we pulled up outside the house on Becklea. For a wonder, it was nice and quiet here today. Maybe it was too early in the morning, or maybe the TV crew and the nosy neighbors had had their fill. Maybe they figured the excitement was over. Whatever the reason, it was nice to have the place to ourselves for a bit. The black and white cruiser was still here, though, parked outside Venetia’s house, so Wayne -or somebody-was doing something in the neighborhood. “Why don’t you go open the door,” Derek added, handing over the keys.
I trudged off across the grass toward our front door while he headed right, to Venetia ’s backyard and the back door. Two minutes later he came back. “Nobody there. Maybe they parked the car there to deter gawkers, or maybe Wayne ’s just didn’t hear the knock.”
“Maybe he went down the street to talk to Denise Robertson and Linda White,” I suggested. “He said he’d have to.”
Derek nodded. “Can you help me carry, or do you want to wait until Wayne comes back?”
“I’m not a wimp,” I said, a little insulted that he thought I was too weak to help him carry the dresser. Granted, I’m not big, and I was still a little sore from the accident yesterday, but surely I’d be able to hold up my end of a dresser.
“Teak has a very high density,” Derek warned. “It’s heavy.”
“Fine. There’s Lionel. Why don’t you ask him?” I pointed down the road to where Lionel Kenefick had just exited his house and was on his way to the van. He glanced our way, and Derek lifted a hand. Lionel hesitated.
“Be right back,” Derek said and took off down the road. I folded my arms across my chest and watched him meet up with Lionel at the edge of the latter’s driveway. They spoke for a minute-Derek gestured toward me, or more likely, toward the teak dresser on the back of the truck-and Lionel nodded. The two of them came back up the road.
“Can you hold the door open, Tink?” Derek asked as they wrestled the dresser off the bed of the truck and walked it across the grass toward the stairs. I scurried up the stairs to the front door and pushed it open. And I guess I can admit now that although I’d unlocked it earlier, I hadn’t gone inside by myself. Instead, I’d headed back down the stairs to talk to Derek, loath to go inside the supposedly haunted house alone.
The dresser must have been heavy, because I could see muscles bunching in both of their arms as they hauled the gleaming piece of furniture over the threshold and into the stripped-down living room. “Where to?” Lionel wheezed. Derek glanced at me.
“Master bedroom,” I said, “for now.”
“Down the hall,” Derek directed, and Lionel aimed his skinny posterior toward the doorway to the den. I minced behind them as they carried their burden down the hallway and into the big bedroom at the back of the house.
“You can just leave it in the middle of the floor for now. We’ll have to tear out the old sink from the bathroom before we can install it.”
“I’ll have to glue the top drawers shut and cut the holes for the basins, too,” Derek added, rubbing his hands together after putting the dresser down in the middle of the floor. Lionel did the same, looking around.
“Have you ever been here before?” I asked. He glanced at me.
“When Patrick lived here.”
“Right. Sorry, I forgot.”
He shrugged. “What’s that?”
“What’s what? Oh, just some boxes we found upstairs in the attic a couple of days ago. Some of Mrs. Murphy’s writing, old drawings that Patrick made, that sort of thing.”
One of the boxes was open, and a few pieces of paper were trailing out.
“ Brandon must have looked through them,” Derek said, obviously reading my mind.
“Why would he do that?” I answered.
He shrugged. “No idea, but he was in here yesterday. I guess maybe he saw the boxes and was curious.”
“You’d think he could have put the papers back where he found them, then. Instead of leaving them on the floor.”