Ricky looked different today. He was still dressed the same, in a plain button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. But when I greeted him, he didn’t peer furtively out at me through a curtain of shaggy, dark hair, nor did he mutter an almost inaudible response. Instead, he looked straight at me, and smiled. “Hi.”
I blinked. When Ricky smiled, his whole face changed. Lit up. Became handsome. And not only that, but I realized something else, too. John Nickerson may have thought Patrick-Ricky-looked like his mother, but when he smiled, he was the spitting image of his father. He had his mother’s coloring, yes, but he had his father’s smile.
None of the others reacted, and I found myself wondering if they knew. Would Ricky have told them? Safer to assume they didn’t know, I decided, and that Ricky preferred it that way. “You look like you’re feeling better today.”
He blushed. “Yes, thanks.”
“Too bad you had to leave so quickly last night,” Derek said blandly. “Avery’s Bailey’s fudge cake was great.”
“It was more Kate’s Bailey’s fudge cake than mine, but thanks.”
“So what’s going on with you two?” Josh wanted to know. “Did my dad let you go back to work on the house today?”
Derek nodded. “We left Brandon there while we went to get something to eat. We’re supposed to bring something back for him.”
“ Brandon?” Josh’s brows drew together. “What’s he doing there? Has something else happened?”
“Oops,” I said softly. Derek nodded, responding to what I was thinking rather than what I said.
“It’ll probably be all over the news tonight, if it isn’t already, Avery. We may as well tell them.”
“Tell us what?” Shannon asked. Her eyes were bright, and so was her smile, but as Derek explained what had happened, the smile slipped and the eyes went from eager to horrified.
“Poor Brandon!” Her voice was warm, full of sympathy. Josh sent her a sideways scowl, but he didn’t speak. “Of course he’d never do anything like that!”
Paige shook her head in agreement.
“I don’t know,” Josh said darkly. “Seems to me a pretty girl can get a man to do almost anything.” He stabbed his straw through the ice in his drink with savage force. I suppressed a smile, and so did Derek. Shannon, amazingly, seemed to have no idea that Josh was so crazy in love with her that he couldn’t see straight and automatically disliked any man she spoke well of. She turned in her seat to face him, their noses just a few inches apart.
“How can you say that, Josh? You know Brandon; he’d never hurt anyone!”
Josh shrugged sulkily. “It happened a long time ago. We didn’t know him then.” Shannon looked like she was about to open her mouth to argue further, and he continued, “It could have been unintentional. If they had an argument-she wanted to leave and wanted him to come with her; he wanted to stay and wanted her to stay, too-and she turned to walk away, and he grabbed her, and she stumbled and fell… He didn’t mean to hurt her, but then when she died, he panicked and buried her under the house. It could have happened.”
“He wouldn’t have done that,” Shannon said, although her voice was a lot less sure this time. “Would he?”
“ Wayne doesn’t think so,” Derek said, “although he’s not sure, either. Not totally. I don’t think Brandon did it, but I wouldn’t leave Avery alone with him.”
“I’m not worried,” I said. “I’ll buy that he could have killed Holly by accident. It could have happened to anyone. I’ll even buy that he might have panicked and buried her in the crawlspace. But that he’d leave her bag of clothes and jewelry sitting in his garden shed for four years? He’s not that stupid. Nobody knew she was missing. He could have gotten rid of it at any time, and nobody would have known. And it’s not like he’d place an anonymous phone call implicating himself, either.”
Everyone was silent for a moment after I finished speaking.
“She has a point,” Shannon said eventually.
Josh nodded. “So someone else killed Holly and left the bag in Brandon ’s garden shed to throw suspicion on him. Or get him off the case?”
“Or throw suspicion off himself,” I said. “Or herself, if it was a woman. Even if Holly’s death was an accident, and the only crime was in covering it up, we’re way past that now. Venetia Rudolph’s death was no accident. Someone deliberately picked up that flower arrangement and bashed her over the head with it. And I definitely can’t see Brandon doing that.”
“Who do you think did it, then?” Paige asked, her soft voice even softer than usual, almost inaudible in the loud room. I shrugged.
“I have only been in Waterfield a short while. You’d be better able to determine that than me.”
“Who are the suspects?” Josh asked.
“Well.” Derek and I exchanged a glance. “There’s Brandon, because he dated Holly and because her bag was found on his property. Also because Venetia Rudolph would most likely open the door for him, especially if he were in uniform.”
Then there was Ricky, but I wasn’t about to mention that with him sitting across the table.
“There’s Holly’s mother,” Derek said. I nodded.
“Linda White. She lives on Becklea, so she’d know that the Murphy house was empty and would be a safe place to hide the body. Holly’s friend Denise said that Holly and her mother argued a lot. If Holly didn’t write her own good-bye note and pack her own bag, Linda had the best opportunity to do it.”
“But to kill your own child…!” Shannon said with a shudder. I glanced involuntarily at Ricky, whose expression was inscrutable.
“It happens,” he said.
“Yes, I know it does, but the thought…!” She shook her head.
Josh, who was very sharp and a lot less emotionally charged than Shannon, looked from her to Ricky for a moment. His eyes lingered on Ricky a little longer than strictly necessary before he turned his attention to his drink.
“Then there’s Denise herself,” I said. “She lives on Becklea, too, and she was Holly’s best friend. Except Brandon says they weren’t as close as Denise makes out, and Linda says that Holly and Denise had a falling out a few weeks before Holly disappeared. Over a boy.”
“Probably her husband,” Paige said. We all looked at her in surprise, and she shrugged. “I know Travis. He and Denise started dating in high school, and she held on to him all through college. If anyone else so much as looked at him, she’d pitch all sorts of fits. If she and Holly had a falling out because she thought Travis was interested in Holly, I could definitely see Denise killing Holly to keep him.”
Hearing this amazing statement delivered so cold bloodedly in Paige’s soft, little-girl voice, was almost surreal, and left us all speechless for a moment.
“OK, then,” Josh said after a pause. “So Denise is on the suspect list. Anyone else?”
Derek and I looked at each other. “Lionel Kenefick?” Derek suggested.
“Denise said he and Holly were friends.”
“Denise also said she and Holly were friends,” Derek reminded me. “ Brandon said they weren’t.”
“That’s true. And he does live on the street. He’d know that the house was empty, and that it’d be safe to bury the body in the basement. And Venetia would probably open the door for him, just as she would for Denise or Linda. Or Brandon. Or, for that matter, for Travis. As for motive, though…”
“Motive’s a lot less important than means and opportunity,” Josh declared. “Especially if Holly’s death was an accident. If her killer didn’t mean to kill her but panicked and buried her and then killed Ms. Rudolph when the body was found, because he was afraid Ms. Rudolph knew who he was… or she, of course.”