Plaster and Poison

Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Home-Renovation - and Design Tips

Fatal Fixer-Upper

“A great whodunit . . . Fans will enjoy this fine cozy.”

—Midwest Book Review

“Smartly blends investigative drama, sexual tension, and romantic comedy elements, and marks the start of what looks like an outstanding series of Avery Baker cases.”

—The Nashville City Paper

“Polished writing and well-paced story. I was hooked on
Fatal Fixer-Upper
from page one.”

—Cozy Library

“An ingeniously plotted murder mystery with several prime suspects and a nail-biting conclusion.”

—The Tennessean

“A strong debut mystery . . . Do-it-yourselfers will find much to enjoy.”

—The Mystery Reader

“Extremely entertaining . . . Home-renovation and design tips are skillfully worked into the story, the characters are developed and sympathetic, and the setting is charming. The climax leads to a bang-up ending in which the intelligent heroine has to either save herself or lose all . . . A first-rate mystery and a frightening surprise ending.”

—Romantic Times

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Jennie Bentley

FATAL FISER-UPPER
SPACKLED AND SPOOKED
PLASTER AND POISON

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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PLASTER AND POISON

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / March 2010

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Acknowledgments

As always, there are lots of people who had a part in bringing this book into the world, and who deserve my eternal thanks, hugs, and kisses:
My editor, Jessica Wade, for letting me continue the journey with Avery and Derek, and my agent, Stephany Evans, for continuing the journey with me.
Artist Jennifer Taylor for another gorgeous cover, and cover designer Rita Frangie and interior designer Laura Corless for another gorgeous book, inside and out.
My publicists, Megan Swartz with the Penguin Group (USA) Inc., and Tom Robinson with Author and Book Media, for getting the word out.
My critique partners, Jamie Livingston-Dierks and Myra McEntire, for help, support, encouragement, friendship, and hot chocolate.
All the other writers it’s been my pleasure to know and associate with over the past four years; by now there are too many of you to mention individually, but you know who you are!
Emily Layne Thompson, for donating your name—and money!—for a good cause. I hope you approve of what I’ve done with it.
Gordon Smith, for help in navigating the ins and outs of the U.S. Navy during World War I.
Everyone who read
Fatal Fixer-Upper
and
Spackled and Spooked
and liked them; especially those of you who said so, to me or someone else!
My friends and family near and far, especially my husband and my two boys. You put up with my crazy schedule, my frequent absences, my weird brand of mothering, and my total lack of the clean gene, and by doing so, you let me be who I am. I love you!
Finally, the late William Avery Ellis of Chandler, Texas, who joined the U.S. Navy on June 3, 1917, and who died of strychnine poisoning—still on the navy base in Dallas—three days later. I took some liberties with your story, since I have no idea what happened to you beyond those few facts, but you inspired the history mystery in
Plaster and Poison,
and for that I am grateful. RIP.

1

Wayne’s sudden attack of modesty came at a great time, at least where Derek and I were concerned.
It was the first week of November, and we had just finished renovating our latest project, a midcentury ranch on the outskirts of Waterfield. Now we were waiting for someone to buy it so we could find another fixer-upper and do the whole thing over again. Derek had his eye on a rundown 1783 center-chimney Colonial on an island off the coast, accessible only by boat, but until we got our money out of the house on Becklea Drive, another purchase wasn’t in the cards for us. It was unfortunate, since Derek was twitching with impatience to get started. I was more sanguine about the matter, since I didn’t really want to spend the winter freezing my butt off on an island off the coast of Maine with nothing but 225-year-old walls between me and the elements. I wasn’t opposed to buying and renovating the place—in fact, it might be fun—but I wanted to do it four months from now, when the days were longer and the temperatures higher.
“That’s fine,” Derek said, “but what are we going to do in the meantime? I don’t want your mom to get here in December and find me sitting on the sofa watching TV and scratching my stomach. It wouldn’t make a very good first impression.”
Considering that the stomach in question was a lovely example of smooth skin and taut muscle, I didn’t think my mother would mind too much. However, I shrugged apologetically, knowing that what I was about to suggest would annoy him.
“You could take on some handyman jobs. I know you don’t want to do those anymore, but it would keep you busy over the winter, until we could start working on the house on the island, and it would help to pay the bills. People are always asking you to do things for them.”
“That’s true,” Derek said grudgingly, although he obviously felt that after spending the summer and autumn renovating houses of our own, laying tile in other people’s bathrooms and painting other people’s walls would be a waste of his considerable talent. I had to agree, I just didn’t know what else to suggest.
At this point, I had lived in Waterfield for five months, since I inherited my great-aunt Inga’s house in June. Derek Ellis was the handyman I’d hired to help me renovate the decrepit Victorian cottage. He’d done so, beautifully, and swept me off my feet at the same time. I was crazy about him—crazy enough to put my New York design career on hold to join Derek in his business, Waterfield Renovation & Restoration—and he seemed to like me well enough, too. I couldn’t wait to show him off to my mom and stepfather when they came to Waterfield from California in a month’s time.
“And I wouldn’t worry too much about what my mom and Noel will think of you,” I added. “After Philippe, anyone will be an improvement.”
Philippe was my ex-boyfriend, the one I’d left behind in Manhattan when I moved to Maine. Derek had met him once and taken an instant dislike to him. So had my mother, who claimed that he was too good-looking and flirtatious to be trustworthy. She’d hit the nail squarely on the head, as it turned out. He wasn’t trustworthy. But since he was history, that was all water under the bridge at this point.
“I’m not sure that’s a point in my favor,” Derek said. I rolled my eyes. “Give me a break. You’re handsome, you’re nice, you’re successful, you’re a doctor, and you treat me a damned sight better than Philippe ever did. What’s not to like? ”
“I’m a retired doctor,” Derek answered dryly. “I’m not always nice, and at the moment, I have no work. All I’ve got going for me is my looks, and you said yourself that your mom thought Phil was too good-looking. What if she says the same about me? ”
“She won’t.”
He arched his brows in mock insult. “What? You’re saying I’m not as good-looking as Phil? ”
I inspected him across the table, with at least an attempt at impartiality. He’s thirty-four years old, with sun-streaked hair in need of a cut and blue eyes with long lashes and crinkles at the corners. As I watched, a slow grin curved his cheeks and brought out a latent dimple. A faded denim shirt completed the picture; it matched his eyes and had the sleeves rolled up to the elbows to bare nicely muscled forearms with a dusting of fair hair. As usual, my stomach did a flip-flop, and I had to concentrate to keep my voice steady.
“It’s not that you’re not cute. But you’ve seen Philippe. Leather pants, satin shirt, ponytail . . . like he stepped off the cover of some kind of vampire romance. You’re not flashy, thank God.”
“God forbid,” Derek answered piously, but not without a twinkle in his eyes. He leaned forward, causing a strand of sun-streaked hair to fall across his forehead, and gave me a melting smile. “So you think I’m cute, huh? ”
I smiled, but before things could develop, there was a knock at the front door.
“Expecting someone?” Derek asked, straightening. I shook my head. “I’ll go.”
He pushed the chair back and headed for the door. I watched him walk away and thought that while he might not have Philippe’s—Phil’s—smarmy sex appeal, there was nothing wrong with either his looks or his ability to garner attention from the opposite gender. He’d have no problem charming my mother. He’d had no problem charming me, and I’d been deep into a hating-all-men phase when I met him, courtesy of Philippe Aubert.
Here’s the thing: Derek’s a genuinely nice guy, in addition to being nice-looking and charming. He’s intelligent, funny, caring, capable, and very, very good with his hands. He’s also an MD, although he doesn’t practice medicine anymore. Mom had harrumphed a little when I mentioned that, but I thought that once she met him and saw how good he was at what he did, and how happy he was doing it—and how happy he made me—she’d agree he’d made the right choice.
I hoped.
Out in the hallway, I heard the front door close. “She’s in the kitchen,” Derek’s voice said. I could hear his footsteps coming closer. A moment later, he ushered Caitlin McGillicutty into my presence.
Kate was my first friend when I came to Waterfield. I met her before I ever moved—she owns the Waterfield Inn, the B&B where I stayed my first night in town. After I learned that Aunt Inga was dead and I had inherited her rundown Second Empire Victorian cottage in need of a truly staggering amount of work. It was Kate who suggested that I renovate the house before selling it, and Kate who recommended that I hire Derek to help me. The two of them had dated a couple of times early on, just after Derek’s ex-wife left him, but for whatever reason, the relationship hadn’t worked out. No zing, or maybe Derek just wasn’t ready to get involved again so soon. Kate started dating Wayne Rasmussen, Waterfield’s chief of police, instead, and on New Year’s Eve, the two of them would be married. But Derek was still single five years later, and maybe Kate thought it was time for him to move on. Or maybe not. Maybe I was just imagining that she’d thrown us together on purpose.
I wasn’t imagining the pout on her face, though, nor the way she flung herself down on the kitchen chair. It creaked, and I gave it a worried glance, concerned that it might be thinking of giving out and dumping her on the floor. Kate is a statuesque woman: a tall Jane Russell type, with an enviably curvaceous figure. She has a mass of copper curls framing her face, which is freckled, open, and friendly, with a wide smile and hazel eyes. The smile was not in evidence at the moment, and the eyes were a flat, muddy brown.
“What’s the matter? ” I asked, a little diffidently, since I would prefer not to have my head bitten off.
“Wayne,” Kate snarled.
Derek grinned. “Cold feet? ” he inquired, pulling a third chair around and straddling it.
Kate turned to him. Or maybe
on
him would be more accurate. “Him or me?”
I shook my head at Derek, who grinned unrepentantly.
“What did he do, Kate?” I asked. “You’re not serious, are you?”
“About the cold feet?” She scowled at her hands. “No one could blame me if I was, but I guess not. Not really. The timing is just super-inconvenient. Eight weeks before the wedding, seven weeks before Christmas, and with everything that goes into running a business at the best of times—why the hell the idiot couldn’t have said something before, when the problem would have been easier to fix . . . !”
She grabbed one of the napkins from lunch and started systematically shredding it all over the enamel surface of the table.
“ ‘The idiot’ being Wayne? ” Derek inquired.
Kate nodded.
“What problem?” I asked.
Kate looked up. “The problem of where to live.”
I wrinkled my brows. I hadn’t realized that there was even a question about it. The chief of police shared a condo with his son Josh, a Barnham College student, on the north side of town. Kate, of course, lived in the B&B. It was a huge house, three thousand square feet or more, with four guestrooms. Kate and her daughter Shannon, also a Barnham College student and Josh’s best friend, had two bedrooms on the first floor and took their meals in the B&B kitchen. When Wayne slept over, he did so in Kate’s room. Since there was plenty of space, I had assumed that when they got married, Wayne would be moving in. So, obviously, had Kate.
“He’s never mentioned it before,” she said, “so it never crossed my mind that he might be uncomfortable with so many other people around. And I’ve been living there for six years, so it doesn’t bother me. I’m not sure it ever did.”
Derek grinned. “But when you’re on your own, you’re probably not in the habit of making enough noise to wake the guests.”
“It isn’t that,” Kate said, but she blushed.
“Sure.”
Kate insisted. “No, really. A couple of weeks ago he came over to spend the night. Late, after I’d gone to bed. The night when that hit-and-run driver killed Carolyn Tate, remember? The accountant at Clovercroft?”
Clovercroft is a building development. It belongs to Raymond and Randall Stenham, owners of Stenham Construction and relatives of mine on my mother’s side of the family. They’re Derek’s age, and they made his formative years a living hell. More recently, Melissa James, Derek’s ex-wife, decided to hook up with Ray Stenham, adding insult to injury.
I abhor Melissa. I don’t like the Stenham twins either, having had my own run-ins with them growing up. I hadn’t crossed paths with Carolyn Tate during my time in Waterfield, though. Until the accident, I hadn’t known she existed. Afterward, I knew her only as a name in the paper.
Apparently, she had been one of the Stenhams’ accountants, keeping one of their projects on track financially, and she had been on her way home from babysitting for her daughter late one night when she had gotten into a car accident on a lonely stretch of road on the outskirts of Waterfield, near Barnham College. It was late and the roads were slick, and she had been spun off the road and into a rock wall. The driver of the other car had fled the scene, leaving Carolyn there, and she had died. Speculation was that maybe the hit-and-run driver had been a college student, possibly someone driving under the influence, but no charges had ever been filed against anyone, and the last I heard, Wayne had no idea who was responsible. It was like the driver had just vanished into thin air. Wayne and Brandon Thomas, his young deputy, had turned the college campus inside out looking for damaged vehicles, and they had talked to all the auto body shops as far away as Portland in hopes that they could track down the culprit that way, but so far they’d had no luck. Meanwhile, we were all looking sideways at one another, wondering if our next-door neighbor or the teenager down the street might be culpable.
Anyway, the accident had taken place two or three weeks before this, and from what I understood, it had been nasty. I focused as Kate continued her story.
“When Wayne arrived at the B&B, he caught a couple of the guests in the kitchen. They’d snuck down for a post-midnight snack. Of course, they were frightened out of their minds when a cop in full uniform—gun, handcuffs, bloodstains, and all—came through the door at one A.M.”
Derek chuckled, and I giggled at the image she painted.
Kate continued, “He explained the situation, and they scuttled back to bed, but when they came down to breakfast the next morning and saw that Wayne was still there, it made him feel uncomfortable that they knew he’d spent the night.”
“
We
know he spends the night,” I pointed out.
“But you’re not there to see it,” Kate answered. “Or hear it.”
“Hah!” Derek crowed. “I told you that’s what it was!”
Kate shrugged. “Yeah, well, can you blame him? The chief of police, providing entertainment for all my guests? They’re not all from away, you know. Some are local, and Wayne feels it undermines his authority when they see him in his boxer shorts in the middle of the night coming from the bathroom.”
“I can see why it might,” I admitted, hiding a smile.
Derek didn’t even try. “No kidding, Kate.”
Kate shrugged, pouting.
“So what does he want you to do about it?” I wanted to know.
The wedding was scheduled for New Year’s Eve, and I didn’t think either of them wanted to cancel. They seemed totally committed to one another and to getting married. Wayne had his apartment, of course, where he could continue to live after they were married, but Kate needed to be on-site to run the B&B. If she had any plans of getting rid of the business, I sure hadn’t heard about it.
“That’s just it,” Kate said, starting to brush shreds of napkin into a pile on the table in front of her. “There’s only one thing I can do, really.”
I blinked, disconcerted. “You’re not going to sell the B&B, are you? Wayne wouldn’t ask that, would he?”
Derek, who knows her better than I do, shook his head at me. “Don’t worry, Avery. She’s playing us. Enough with the guilt, Kate. What do you need?”
Kate glanced at him from under her lashes. When she saw the look on his face, she must have realized that further prevarication was futile. She grimaced. “I need you to renovate the carriage house for me.”
Derek nodded; obviously this didn’t surprise him. “Uh-huh.”
“What carriage house?” I said.
Kate turned to me. “The one at the back of my property. Tall, pointed roof, double doors, little cupola on top?”
“Right. I remember you telling me you were planning to turn it into an apartment and move out there when Shannon leaves the nest. You want to do it now instead? And be finished by New Year’s? Can that even be done?”
I glanced at Derek, who shrugged.
“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Kate said. “And I won’t even be able to help much, with Thanksgiving coming up, and planning the wedding, and guests coming in. . . .”
“Did my mom and Noel call you?” I veered off topic. “They said they would.”