Fatal Fixer-Upper (27 page)

20

––'I found the stack of photographs on the kitchen table,' Derek explained twenty minutes later. His face had been the first I'd seen when Wayne Rasmussen and his crew broke down the door into the tunnel, and for the first few seconds, his presence was the only one I registered. I walked straight into his arms. Only a rudimentary sense of decorum, plus the fact that we were surrounded by cops and members of the coast guard, stopped me from kissing him right then and there. Still, I clung to him like a limpet while Philippe staggered out of the tunnel behind me, shielding his eyes against the weak sunlight filtering in through an open metal gate a few yards closer to the sea. Beyond it, I could see the gray green waves of the ocean.

We were standing in a cave. For the uninitiated, it looked like the tunnel from the sea ended here. It had taken Wayne several minutes to figure out how to move the fake wall— painted to look like stone—to expose the continuation of the tunnel and the door we were stuck behind. After that, it had been a simple task to get us out. A blowtorch cut straight through the remaining hinge on the door, which fell with a crash. I tumbled out into Derek's arms. Philippe followed, while cops swarmed over the fallen door into the second half of the tunnel, their flashlight beams crossing on the walls, floor, and ceiling.

'Here's the corpse!' someone yelled, and Derek's arms tightened around me.

'I think it's Martin Wentworth,' I mumbled against his shirt, shivering.

'Don't think about it.' His voice was a low rumble against my ear. 'Just be happy that you got out, yeah?'

'Sure.' I sniffed. 'The professor did most of the work, actually. He'd been taking the screws out of the hinges. If he hadn't done that, it would have taken us much longer. We probably wouldn't have heard you talk. You would have come and gone without ever realizing we were back there.'

'We would have found you,' Derek said. 'Before you ended up like him.'

I found the conviction in his voice comforting. 'How did you get here, anyway?'

'I went to the house this morning,' Derek said. 'When you didn't open the door for me, I used the key I kept to let myself in. I saw that your bed hadn't been slept in, and I didn't see the clothes you wore yesterday. It didn't seem right that you would wear them again today.'

'Gosh,' I said, 'I can't believe you remembered what I wore yesterday!'

'I spent all day looking at you. How could I not remember? Especially the way these jeans fit, yeah?' He grinned, a hand skimming across my posterior for a second. I grinned back.

'Thanks for looking out for me, Derek.'

'My pleasure.'

Beyond the metal door, someone had found the wallet I had left in the corpse's pocket and pronounced that it belonged to Martin Wentworth. No surprise there.

'You want to tell me what happened?' Derek added. I shrugged. 'I took the bike out for a spin. When I got here, I had a look around and saw Philippe's Range Rover in the garage. Mr. Rodgers told me Philippe was sick, with food poisoning, and had been in bed all day, and like a fool I believed him.' I hesitated a moment, thinking back. 'Actually, he only implied the part about the food poisoning; what he actually told me, was that Philippe had spent an uncomfortable day and night. Boy, was he right! And then he told me he'd take me to see Philippe, but instead he locked me in the storeroom. Philippe was already there. I'm not sure why Mr. Rodgers locked him up, though. He changed the subject when I asked, and since I was stuck with him, I decided not to push it.'

'We could ask now,' Derek suggested, with a look at Philippe, who was huddled under a blanket looking small and quite unlike himself.

'Wayne can do the asking,' I answered. I didn't want anything more to do with Philippe. 'Explain to me how you came to be here instead.'

'Well, when I couldn't find you,' Derek said, 'I called Wayne and told him about that discussion we had yesterday, about how so many things that have gone wrong pointed to Mr. Rodgers. I know you didn't take it seriously, but when I told Wayne, he thought there might be something to it. Then we remembered the tunnel.'

'And convinced the coast guard to let you in?'

He nodded. 'We didn't want to tip Mr. Rodgers off by searching his house, so we had to wait for him to leave first. He drove off about an hour ago, and as soon as we got word, we pulled out on the water.'

Wayne Rasmussen came out of the tunnel just as Derek put his arm around my shoulders again. He kept it there while I went over everything that had happened, in more detail, while Wayne wrote everything down. Next, Wayne walked over to Philippe, who explained that he had come upon Mr. Rodgers staggering out of my house with the fainting couch when he got back there after dropping Melissa off the other night. Mr. Rodgers had told Philippe I'd asked him to take charge of it, for safekeeping, and Philippe had believed him. When Mr. Rodgers invited Philippe to spend the night at Cliff House, Philippe had accepted with alacrity. He hadn't made reservations anywhere else—and although he didn't say so, it was obvious to all of us that he had expected a more welcoming reception from yours truly—and he didn't want to make the long drive back that night. So he followed Mr. Rodgers back to Cliff House, helped him unload the fainting couch and place it in the foyer, and then they both sat down in the parlor for a welldeserved drink. When Philippe started feeling groggy, Mr. Rodgers had led the way down the hall, making Philippe believe he was taking him to a bedroom. Instead, the same thing happened to Philippe as happened to me: he was locked in the dark storeroom, with no idea what was going on until I came along and explained it to him.

'We're gonna be busy here for a while,' Wayne said, indicating the tunnel and the corpse, 'but I guess you two would probably like to leave?' Philippe and I both nodded.

'I'll have the coast guard take you back to town. We're not quite ready to go up into the house yet. Mr. Albertson . . .'

Philippe winced but nodded, 'I won't ask you to stick around Waterfield. Your rental car has been driven to the police station downtown. You may take it and go back to New York. If I have any questions, I'll call you.'

Philippe nodded. Wayne turned to me. 'You'll be around?'

Derek's arm tightened around my shoulders, but he didn't speak. 'For a while,' I said.

We got a ride back to the harbor in the coast guard boat, then we all piled into Derek's truck. I sat in the middle, with my former boyfriend on one side and my maybe-hopefully- future boyfriend on the other. Nobody said a word. When we got to the police station, Philippe opened the door and got out. For a moment I wondered if he was going to shut it and walk away without saying anything, but then he turned back. 'May I have a word, Avery?'

'Sure,' I said. 'Excuse me a minute?'

Derek nodded, and I slithered out of the truck and faced Philippe. In the bright noon sunlight he looked even worse than I'd realized. Roughing it obviously didn't agree with him. His wavy brown hair was tangled and dirty, his sexy five o'clock shadow had turned into a scruffy beard with touches of gray, and his fancy clothes were ripped and muddied. I was glad he'd come through the night relatively unscathed, though. I was no longer upset that he'd cheated on me; in fact, Tara was welcome to him. For all his glitter, there wasn't a whole lot of genuine gold there, and when push had come to shove down in the tunnel, he'd been pretty useless.

What he said was prosaic enough. 'If you still want an authentication on that fainting couch, I know someone who can do it.'

'That's all right,' I answered. 'Between then and now, I've found the provenance I need. Thanks.'

He nodded. 'Will you be staying here?' He looked around at the slow pace of Waterfield. Birds were singing, the air was clean, and a lady was pushing a baby carriage down the street past the police station. In the distance, the ocean blinked. Two little boys on bikes whizzed by, yelling to each other.

'For now,' I said.

He nodded. 'If you decide to come back to the city, you're welcome to come back to work for me. No strings attached.'

'No offense,' I answered, 'but with Tara still there, I think I'd prefer not to.'

He shrugged, but I could tell that he'd rather have me safely in-house at Aubert Designs than working for someone else who might worm his secret out of me. He needn't have worried. If word got out in certain circles that I'd been dating him for months, believing him to be a French designer when he was really from Tennessee, I'd never live it down.

'I'll let you know,' I added.

He nodded. 'I'd better get going. I don't suppose you'd be inclined to give me a good-bye kiss, for old times' sake?'

I smiled. 'Better not. You take care, Philippe.'

I gave him my hand. He kissed it, lingeringly, gazing soulfully at me. 'You too,
ma petite
.' And then he sauntered off to his car with a touch of his old insouciance in his step. I stood and watched him get in the Range Rover and drive away, and then I crawled back into the truck. Derek grinned. 'Good riddance, yeah?'

I shrugged. 'I can't imagine what I saw in him.'

'Same thing I saw in Melissa?' Derek suggested, cranking the car over and pulling out of the parking lot behind the Range Rover. 'Something that wasn't there?'

'Like substance. You know, we really should tell her who he really is.'

Derek smiled. 'Sooner than later, yeah? So what do you want to do today? Work on the house? Get away for a while?'

'I'd rather just get back to work. Try to forget that I was ever locked in a basement with a con man and a dead body.'

'Sounds good,' Derek concurred.

'And I'd like a bath. And to brush my teeth. I feel grubby.' I moved uneasily in yesterday's more-than-usually dirty clothes, aware that I looked awful and quite possibly smelled worse.

'I'll drop you off at the house,' Derek offered, 'and go pick up some lunch. That way you can get cleaned up, and when I get back, we can eat. Then we'll work on the kitchen cabinets.'

'Sounds like a plan.' I leaned back against the seat, content.

. . .

Thirty minutes later, I was lounging in the bath, letting the hot water and soap clean away not only the dirt and dust but the fatigue and fear and the stench of dankness and death. When the water turned cold, I climbed out and dried myself, wrapping my terry robe warmly around myself before blowdrying my hair. Left on its own, it turns into something resembling a nest of angel-hair pasta. That done, I wandered out into the second-story hall with the intention of going into my room to get dressed.

I was just reaching for the doorknob when I heard footsteps downstairs. Derek must have come back with the food while I was using the hair dryer, and I hadn't heard him unlock the door and let himself in. I changed direction and went to the top of the stairs, a big grin on my face.

'Derek?'

The steps stopped and then came back. A shadow lengthened on the floor of the hall. A figure came into view, and the seductive smile dried on my lips. 'You!' I snarled. Graham Rodgers looked just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He must have thought I was still tucked up nice and tight in his little chamber of horrors.

'Didn't think I could get out, did you?' I added belligerently, as he stopped at the foot of the stairs.

'Indeed, Miss Baker, I did not.' He might have been a little paler than before but didn't look as rattled as I would have liked him to be. 'Perhaps you would tell me how you managed, so I will know better for next time?'

'Oh, there won't be a next time. The police and coast guard are swarming all over your tunnel, processing the body of Martin Wentworth. Poor man.'

'Bah,' Graham Rodgers said. 'Officious busybody.'

'Yes, well, if it hadn't been for him, we wouldn't have made it out of the tunnel. You never went back to check on him, did you?'

'That would have defeated my purpose,' Mr. Rodgers said coldly.

'Well, if you had, you would have seen that he had managed to take almost all the screws out of the hinges on the ocean-side door before he died. It took us just a few hours to deal with the rest. After we had dragged the body out of the way, of course.'

Mr. Rodgers looked unrepentant. 'What happened was his own fault,' he said. 'Meddling in things that weren't any of his business.'

'How so?' I figured I might as well seize the opportunity to get some information out of him, while I waited for Derek to get back. Mr. Rodgers's voice turned colder than a downeast winter.

'He was trying to get your aunt to give back the items that were stolen in .'

'Well, why shouldn't she? They were hers.' Sort of.

'They were mine!' Mr. Rodgers said, a pair of spots appearing high on his sunken cheeks. 'I earned them!'

'What do you mean? You weren't even born in. . .'

'Actually, Miss Baker, I was born in December of that year.'

'So . . . ?' I began, and then the brick dropped. 'In Thomaston, right? Dr. Ben told me you're from Thomaston, and Wayne mentioned that you have family there. Your father was that security guard, wasn't he? The one who was killed during the robbery.'

Mr. Rodgers nodded. 'Indeed he was, Miss Baker. Times were lean during the Great Depression, and my father thought to pick up some extra money by guarding the mansion while the owners were away. When Mr. Kendall and Miss Morton arrived . . .'