Read Online Spackled and Spooked by Jennie Bentley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jennie Bentley
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and gave Inky and Jemmy a fish-shaped crunchy each. “Or anyone hanging around, either.”
“So she says,” Derek said, folding his arms across his chest.
“Why would she lie?”
“She’s a closet romantic and she was hunting for the manuscript of Tied Up in Tartan ? She’s the next door neighbor, and she’s lived here twenty-five years. She might have had a key this whole time. Most people hide a key outside or give one to a neighbor to keep.”
“That’s true,” I said. In New York I’d given the girl in the apartment across the hall a copy of my key, just in case I lost mine. Here in Waterfield, Kate had a copy, and so, of course, did Derek. It made sense that one of the Murphys would have given their neighbor, Venetia Rudolph, a key to their house for emergencies. Or to another of the neighbors. “Guess I’ll have to read Tied Up in Tartan now, to see what’s so exciting.”
“Like you needed an excuse,” Derek said. I smiled.
We left the house around six, scrambling because we were running late. Derek’s dad, Ben Ellis, and his wife Cora had invited us for dinner, and Derek wanted to please his dad by being on time. He loved his dad dearly, and always worried that he had disappointed the older man by not taking over his medical practice. Derek had, in fact, gone through both medical school and a four-year residency before deciding that he wanted to be a renovator instead of a doctor. That was when Melissa decided she’d had enough of being Mrs. Derek Ellis and wanted a divorce. The marriage had been rocky for a while, Derek had told me, but it was the career change from physician to glorified handyman that had been the final blow.
The older Ellises lived in a beautifully maintained Victorian cottage in the Village, i.e., the historic district. Aunt Inga’s house—my house—was a few blocks away, and so was downtown Waterfield, with Derek’s bachelor pad, as well as Kate’s B and B. We knocked on the beautifully carved front door just a few minutes after six thirty P.M., looking as good as we could under the circumstances. Derek keeps a clean dress shirt in the car for when he has to do a quick change to meet a potential client—or a dinner date—and knowing where we’d be going, I’d made sure to bring a change of clothes, too. The dress was one I had designed myself—yellow background with black silhouettes of cats arching their backs along the hem, and black piping.
Dr. Ben met us at the door and ushered us into the great room; that combination of kitchen-living room-den that’s become so popular over the last couple of years. Derek had added it to the old Victorian house some five or six years ago, when he first decided to do remodeling and renovation for a living. I guess Dr. Ben had wanted to do what he could to give his son a good start in his new profession. Everyone in town knew the Ellises, and everyone who was anyone had seen the kitchen addition and loved it. I loved it, too. It was bright and sunny and open, with terra cotta tile on the floor, lots of green plants, and French doors leading out onto the deck that Derek had also built, and from there into the garden, which was Cora’s domain.
Dr. Ben’s second wife was a lovely person, and I enjoyed her company. She was a few years younger than her new husband, in her early fifties to his sixty or so, and a widow. According to Kate, who knew everything, even things that had happened long before she came to Waterfield, Cora’s late husband had been an alcoholic and a mean drunk. Derek, who adored his stepmother, put it more strongly: The late, unlamented Glenn Morgan had been a drunken bastard who enjoyed knocking his wife around, and he’d got what was coming to him when he got hit by a car late one night as he was staggering home from an all-night binge at the Shamrock. Ben Ellis had already known Cora for a while by then, from treating the various injuries her husband had inflicted upon her over the years. They
“So she says,” Derek said, folding his arms across his chest.
“Why would she lie?”
“She’s a closet romantic and she was hunting for the manuscript of Tied Up in Tartan ? She’s the next door neighbor, and she’s lived here twenty-five years. She might have had a key this whole time. Most people hide a key outside or give one to a neighbor to keep.”
“That’s true,” I said. In New York I’d given the girl in the apartment across the hall a copy of my key, just in case I lost mine. Here in Waterfield, Kate had a copy, and so, of course, did Derek. It made sense that one of the Murphys would have given their neighbor, Venetia Rudolph, a key to their house for emergencies. Or to another of the neighbors. “Guess I’ll have to read Tied Up in Tartan now, to see what’s so exciting.”
“Like you needed an excuse,” Derek said. I smiled.
We left the house around six, scrambling because we were running late. Derek’s dad, Ben Ellis, and his wife Cora had invited us for dinner, and Derek wanted to please his dad by being on time. He loved his dad dearly, and always worried that he had disappointed the older man by not taking over his medical practice. Derek had, in fact, gone through both medical school and a four-year residency before deciding that he wanted to be a renovator instead of a doctor. That was when Melissa decided she’d had enough of being Mrs. Derek Ellis and wanted a divorce. The marriage had been rocky for a while, Derek had told me, but it was the career change from physician to glorified handyman that had been the final blow.
The older Ellises lived in a beautifully maintained Victorian cottage in the Village, i.e., the historic district. Aunt Inga’s house—my house—was a few blocks away, and so was downtown Waterfield, with Derek’s bachelor pad, as well as Kate’s B and B. We knocked on the beautifully carved front door just a few minutes after six thirty P.M., looking as good as we could under the circumstances. Derek keeps a clean dress shirt in the car for when he has to do a quick change to meet a potential client—or a dinner date—and knowing where we’d be going, I’d made sure to bring a change of clothes, too. The dress was one I had designed myself—yellow background with black silhouettes of cats arching their backs along the hem, and black piping.
Dr. Ben met us at the door and ushered us into the great room; that combination of kitchen-living room-den that’s become so popular over the last couple of years. Derek had added it to the old Victorian house some five or six years ago, when he first decided to do remodeling and renovation for a living. I guess Dr. Ben had wanted to do what he could to give his son a good start in his new profession. Everyone in town knew the Ellises, and everyone who was anyone had seen the kitchen addition and loved it. I loved it, too. It was bright and sunny and open, with terra cotta tile on the floor, lots of green plants, and French doors leading out onto the deck that Derek had also built, and from there into the garden, which was Cora’s domain.
Dr. Ben’s second wife was a lovely person, and I enjoyed her company. She was a few years younger than her new husband, in her early fifties to his sixty or so, and a widow. According to Kate, who knew everything, even things that had happened long before she came to Waterfield, Cora’s late husband had been an alcoholic and a mean drunk. Derek, who adored his stepmother, put it more strongly: The late, unlamented Glenn Morgan had been a drunken bastard who enjoyed knocking his wife around, and he’d got what was coming to him when he got hit by a car late one night as he was staggering home from an all-night binge at the Shamrock. Ben Ellis had already known Cora for a while by then, from treating the various injuries her husband had inflicted upon her over the years. They
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