Melissa looked from me to Kate and back, all her lovely teeth on display and her amazing eyes-deep violet, her own-gleaming with interest. “What are you talking about?”
Kate glanced at me. I shrugged. Word would get all over Waterfield sooner or later, so we might as well tell her now. “There are bones buried under the house that Derek and I are renovating.”
“Oooooh!” Melissa patted my arm with a sympathetic hand ending in long, bloodred talons, a perfect match to the shoes. “That’s no fun, is it? I remember last year, when Ray and Randy were starting development on that little subdivision north of town-not Devon Highlands; the other one, Clovercroft-anyway, when they started digging, they turned up bones. So we called the police, and they came out and had a look, and then they called in someone from the college, the anthropology department, and it turned out to be an old Indian burial ground, and now the whole thing is a nightmare, with the various tribes and nations refusing to let the bones be moved, and until they are, Ray and Randy can’t go forward with the development, and everything is just a big mess!”
“Gee,” Kate said with a grin, “that’s too bad.”
Melissa narrowed those fabulous eyes, but instead of commenting on Kate’s lack of sympathy, she addressed me instead. “Derek must be livid, the poor baby. He gets so upset when he’s sidetracked. What are you going to do, Avery?”
“Oh, I’m not going to do anything,” I answered, with a sweet smile. “Derek is helping Wayne and Brandon with the excavation. And if he’s livid, I didn’t notice. He’ll be home this evening. I guess I’ll find out then.”
Melissa smiled back, a little less sweetly. “Where are you renovating now, Avery?”
“Gosh,” I said, “I thought you knew. We bought the old Murphy house on Becklea. You were out there just a couple of weeks ago, weren’t you?”
“You bought that?” For a second, Melissa’s lovely face didn’t look quite so lovely. Then it smoothed out again. “Actually, I was. But how did you know?”
I explained that one of the neighbors had seen her.
“That old biddy in the house next door, I guess,” Melissa said with a look at me from under her lashes, looking for confirmation. “Horrible old busybody. She kept peering at me through the curtains, like she thought I was doing something wrong.”
“Miss Rudolph likes keeping an eye on what goes on in her neighborhood,” I agreed, glancing over at Kate. She hid a smile.
Melissa cleared her throat to bring our attention back to her. “How are the renovations going, Avery?”
“Fine, until the skeleton became an issue. You know Derek. Good with his hands.”
I smiled. Kate snorted and changed it into a cough. Covering her mouth with her hand, she turned away, shoulders shaking. Melissa’s eyes narrowed, but she kept her voice smooth and solicitous.
“I’m glad you two are doing well. Poor baby, he took it so hard when we broke up. I didn’t think he’d ever find anyone else.”
This was a none-too-subtle dig at both Kate and me. Two birds with one stone. Derek and Kate had dated a few times when Kate first moved to town, shortly after Melissa’s defection, and for obvious reasons, it hadn’t worked out between them. They got along well and enjoyed each other’s company, but the romantic spark just wasn’t there. In her own inimitable way, Melissa was telling Kate that she hadn’t measured up in Derek’s eyes. And of course the suggestion that it had taken Derek five years to find someone to replace her was designed to make me think about the possibility that he might just have picked me as second best, after he finally came to terms with the fact that Melissa was lost to him. I didn’t think that was really the reason he’d settled on me-on me, not for me; or so I hoped-although the worry would probably gnaw at me at intervals until I could put it to rest. Damn Melissa and her insidious suggestions.
Her job done to her satisfaction, Melissa wriggled her fingers in a friendly wave. “I’d better get back to work. Nice seeing you both.” She sashayed away, back into the Waterfield Realty office. Her cell phone was glued to her ear before she had shut the door behind her. Probably calling Ray to tell him that Derek and I had scooped them once again and were renovating the house that the Stenhams had wanted to get their hands on. At the moment, with the skeleton in the crawlspace added to the haunted house issue and the old murders, I was kind of wishing that the Stenhams had scooped us this time and that the whole mess had landed in their laps instead of in ours. Still, the feeling of having beaten them to the punch was compelling enough that I smiled anyway.
“Boy, she sure put us in our place, didn’t she?” Kate said with a grin. “Aren’t you feeling properly scorned, Avery? I mean, does she really think I care that Derek didn’t choose to pursue our relationship? Puh-leeze!” She rolled her expressive, hazel eyes.
I smiled half-heartedly, and she added, “And that lame attempt to make you think Derek only picked you after he realized that he could never have Melissa back? What a crock!”
“You think?”
“Of course! The only reason he fell in love with Melissa in the first place was that he was young and stupid, and she was gorgeous and determined to marry a doctor. Believe me, he’s learned his lesson. He won’t be making that mistake again.”
She sounded so confident that I thought maybe I’d better listen to her. She had known Derek for five years longer than I had, so she probably understood the situation fairly well. If she said he wasn’t hung up on Melissa, I should probably take her word for it.
“So what are you doing here?” Kate dismissed the question of Melissa, and looked around at the not-so-bustling downtown Waterfield. “Why aren’t you working on the house?
“ Wayne has vetoed any further renovating until they get the body out.”
I explained that I had driven Derek’s truck into town and parked it behind the hardware store, and now I was on my way home to Aunt Inga’s house.
“You know, Avery,” Kate said, “your aunt-rest her soul-has been dead for months. It’s your house now.”
“I know that. It’s just easier to think of it as Aunt In ga’s house. Everyone knows where Inga Morton lived. She was a Waterfield institution.”
My aunt had been almost ninety-nine when she died, the longest-living resident of Waterfield.
There was another reason why I still referred to the house as my aunt’s and not mine, though, although I didn’t want Kate to know it. She’s a people-person, in the best sense of the word-interested in everyone and everything they’re up to-but she’s also a bit of a talker, and I didn’t want word to get around that I was having… maybe not second thoughts about settling down in Waterfield, exactly, but at least thoughts about it. I’d been in town for a few months by now, I’d started to make friends, and of course I’d become involved with Derek, but there was a part of me that was still keeping one foot on the fence in case I decided I didn’t want to stick around beyond the winter. Referring to the house as Aunt Inga’s and not mine allowed me a certain amount of emotional distance. Once it was my house, in my mind as well as on paper, I figured I was stuck with it.
I grew up in New York City, and until I came to Waterfield, I’d never lived outside Manhattan. I was enjoying the change of pace-the fresh air, the ocean, the slow rhythm of life in Maine -but I also missed the hustle and bustle of the city. The restaurants and shops, the theater, the sure and certain knowledge that something exciting was just about to happen somewhere close by. I missed my old friends. My alma mater, prestigious Parsons School of Design. My compact apartment, currently someone else’s home. My job, with its steady income…
“You want to walk up the hill together?” Kate asked. “If you’re ready to go.”