“Who are Denise and her husband?”
“They live down the street,” Venetia said. “You’ll meet them.”
I stood up. “I should probably go.”
Venetia stood, too, to walk me to the front door. “Back to the house?”
“Back to town. Wayne… the chief of police won’t let me do any work to the house until they finish with the crawlspace. That will probably be tomorrow. I’ll find something to do at home while I wait. Maybe stop by the hardware store and pick up some paint swatches, or go to some of the junk stores to see if I can find some retro pieces of furniture I can use to stage the house, or something…” I trailed off, already scavenging in my mind.
“Have a good time,” Venetia said, from far away, and I pulled myself back to reality.
“Thank you. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She inclined her head, and I slunk out, feeling stupid for fading out like that.
Here’s the thing: I love junking, and I can totally lose myself in the thrill of hunting second-hand bargains. Salvage stores, thrift stores, consignment stores, flea markets… I love them all. My New York apartment had been mostly furnished from second-hand pieces I had sanded and polished, reupholstered and/or repainted. Some of the furniture I’d even found on the street. New Yorkers tend to put their discards out on the curb for the trash trucks to pick up, and for someone thrifty, who doesn’t mind getting up early-which I do; although the five A.M. alarm on trash day had usually been worth the trouble when I managed-the pickings can be surprisingly good. I’d found a lovely futon frame once that, with some glossy black paint and a new mattress and cover, had been the center-piece of my living room for a while, as well as a nice, sturdy bookshelf that just needed a coat of paint to fit right in. Bought new, it would have been a couple hundred bucks, easy-it was a very nice bookshelf!-and I got it for the price of cab fare from Midtown to my apartment.
When I left New York, the woman who took over my lease asked to keep a lot of the furniture, though, so upon arrival in Waterfield, I had to start over. Aunt Inga’s house had been furnished, for the most part, when I inherited it, but a lot of what my aunt had owned was ugly 1970s stuff, and even the things I’d liked needed reupholstering, sanding, and painting. I’d been busy this summer recovering Aunt Inga’s pieces and hunting for cheap replacements for the ones I absolutely couldn’t live with. And since the Mainers didn’t have the same habit of putting discarded furniture out on trash day, I’d had to become familiar with the various thrift, junk, and salvage stores in the area.
The crowd outside had swelled by this time, and on a whim, I wandered over to the small group of what I assumed were neighbors. I hadn’t met any of them, save for Lionel Kenefick, but as I was now a homeowner on their street, I figured I’d better introduce myself. They probably had some questions and comments about the situation, which it might do them good to get off their chests, and who knew; maybe I’d learn something.
“Hi!” I divided a bright smile between them. There were five people in the cluster, counting Lionel. The woman with the hair rollers and bathrobe, whom I’d noticed earlier, was one of them. The others were a businesswoman in her thirties, dressed in a suit and high heels with a briefcase in her hand, and with brown hair so severely pulled back from her face that her eyebrows were elevated; a younger woman, no more than twenty-two or twenty-three, who had a chubby baby on her hip and looked like she hadn’t slept or taken a shower in at least two days-she was wearing faded jeans, which were a size too small, and a T-shirt pulled too tightly across her breasts; and, finally, an older man in wrinkled khakis and a blue windbreaker holding the leash of a grumpy-looking shih tzu with a red bow on the top of its head. The dog barked shrilly when I got too close, and I jumped back a pace.
“Sorry,” the owner said. “Stella, no.”
He jerked the chain halfheartedly, and Stella huddled behind his legs but kept growling at me. I wondered if I ought to crouch down and try to make friends with her, but I decided it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. My chances of having anything to do with Stella after this were slim, and I depend on my hands too much to want to play fast and loose with them.
Instead, I smiled sweetly at Stella’s owner. “My name is Avery Baker. My boyfriend and I own this house. Since about Monday or so.”
“Arthur Mattson. I live at number fifty-three.” He pointed down the street.
“Irina Rozhdestvensky,” the immaculately turned out businesswoman said, with a faint Russian accent. I didn’t ask her to repeat the surname, but she must have seen my reaction anyway, because she added, with a smile, “You may call me Irina.”
“I appreciate that,” I said, smiling back. “Please call me Avery.” Her teeth were crooked, but the smile was genuine and friendly.
“My name’s Denise,” the younger woman said, “and this is Trevor.” She jiggled the baby, who grinned, showing toothless gums. Babies are really not my thing, but I tickled him anyway and told her what a cutie he was. Denise beamed.
“And I’m Linda,” the lady with the hair rollers said, pulling the fuzzy bathrobe a little tighter around her body. “I live down on the corner, in number fifty.”
I peered down the block to the house on the corner. Like all the rest of them, it was built of brick, and like Linda herself, it looked like it could use a little TLC. She was a blowsy fifty-something, with vivid chestnut hair, obviously color-treated, and with bright coral lipstick leaking into the tiny lines around her mouth. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her breath smelled of day-old liquor. I moved back fractionally before I smiled around the circle.
“Nice to meet all of you. Sorry about the hoopla. Police and all.”
“I’m sure it’s not your fault,” Arthur Mattson murmured, while Irina said, “What is going on? Lionel told us there is a body buried under the house, but that is all we know.”
I shrugged. “That’s all I know, too, right now.” Not exactly all I knew, but it was probably better not to say too much. “My boyfriend was working down there this morning, footing supports, when he found a bone. So of course we had to call the police.”
Arthur Mattson nodded. “Human remains, however old, have to be reported. Probably find out it’s an old Indian burial ground or something.” He looked disgusted.
“Gosh,” I said, diverted, “if it is, will they have to dig up everybody’s basements?”
The rest of them looked at each other. “They’d better not be touching my house,” Linda said belligerently. Denise shook her head.
“The baby won’t be able to sleep if there are people going in and out, making noise.” From the looks of her, she desperately needed little Trevor to take a nap so she could take a shower and get a little rest herself, too.
“They can’t touch private property,” Lionel said in his surprisingly deep voice. “You have to give them permission to do that. All you have to do is say no.”
“Except then they’d come back with a search warrant because they think you’re hiding something,” Linda answered. Lionel shrugged and turned to me.
“What’s up with Miss Rudolph?”
He glanced at Venetia ’s curtains, which were still fluttering.
“As far as I know,” I said, “nothing. She’s sitting in there, keeping an eye on things. Just like she has done for the past twenty years. I asked her about anyone she might have seen around the house, and she gave me a list of people.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “The mailman, the handyman, the newspaper boy, the realtor…”
“The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker?” Irina suggested, in her accented voice. I grinned.
“Pretty much. The squatters, the teenagers, the suit with the clipboard. And now Derek and I. All manner of people seem to have been coming and going. Quite a lot of activity for an empty house. I don’t suppose any of you have noticed anyone suspicious hanging around?”