Jennie Bentley - Spackled and Spooked

I nodded, but before I could bring out my other booty-the prom photographs of Derek and Brandon-Paige came trotting into the kitchen again. “He’s locked himself in the bathroom,” she said, her soft, little-girlish voice even softer than usual. “I don’t think he’s feeling well. There were…” she hesitated delicately, “noises.”

Wayne hid a grin. “We should probably get back to work. If you think you’ve had enough to eat?” He glanced pointedly at Brandon, who was still chewing, but who thought it best to nod.

“See you, Tink.” Derek bent and gave me a quick peck on the lips before he followed the others toward the back door. I watched him walk away then flushed and started transferring slices of pizza into a single box when I caught Shannon ’s eye. She grinned.

No sooner had the back door closed and the crawlspace door creaked open outside, than we heard a door close inside the house, as well. A moment later, Ricky shuffled around the corner and into the kitchen. And although it was difficult to see his face behind all the hair, he did seem a little pale. Shannon and Paige exclaimed when they saw him and started flitting around to see what they could do for him, which must have served to make poor Ricky feel even more uncomfortable and embarrassed.

I turned to Josh. “I came across your prom photos in the Weekly when I was in town just now.”

“My prom photos?” He reached for the pieces of copy paper I pulled out of my bag and unfolded them while he continued, “Why would you want to see my prom photos?”

“I wasn’t really looking for them. Venetia Rudolph, our next-door neighbor, told us there were squatters in the crawlspace two years ago. I was looking for information about that, and then I came across the article about the prom.”

Josh nodded, grinning at the photographs. “The Weekly does an article about the prom every year. Hey, Shannon, do you ever hear from Alan Whitaker? What’s he up to these days?”

“The University of Kentucky,” Shannon said over her shoulder, still busy ministering to Ricky. “Baseball scholarship.”

“Ri-i-i-ght.” Josh drew the word out, sarcastically. I could tell he didn’t really like Alan Whitaker. Josh, while adorable in his lanky, bespectacled, brainy way, didn’t quite have the golden-boy appeal of the blonde and athletic pseudo-Norse god in the photograph. Shannon rolled her eyes but didn’t answer. Josh flipped through the stack of other articles while he was at it.

“More prom photos? Who’s this? Oh, wait; that’s Brandon, isn’t it? And she’s quite a knockout, isn’t she? Wow!”

If he had hoped that Shannon would take an interest and come over to see who he thought was hot, Josh must have been disappointed when she just shook her head sadly, like a mother over the antics of her little boy. Josh’s cheeks flushed, but he continued gamely. “And is this Derek? Whoa! How long ago was this?”

“Seventeen years, give or take,” I said as Shannon abandoned Ricky to lean on Josh’s shoulder. He handed the page to her. Paige looked worried, and she kept her hand under Ricky’s elbow as they came closer. Just in case he toppled, I guess. Although I don’t know what she’d be able to do if he did; he was approximately twice her size.

“Who’s this?” Josh asked. I looked back to him and what he was looking at.

“Oh, that’s Brian Murphy. The man who used to live in this house. The one who killed his family. That’s his wife Peggy, in the bonnet. The Murphys had a son, as well…”

I broke off to watch Ricky turn away with a muttered apology. He blundered toward the front door and almost fell over a big can of spackling paste on the way. The kid really needed a haircut, bad. Paige started after him, her elfin face worried. We heard the front door open and then close behind them both before anyone spoke.

“What’s wrong with him?” Josh asked. Shannon shrugged, a tiny wrinkle between her brows.

“I guess maybe he got too close to the pizza?”

We looked at the pizza, a few feet away on the counter. Could be.

“I guess we’d better go, too.” Josh folded the papers again and handed them back to me. “I’ll go tell Dad we’re outta here. You’d better try to catch up with them, see what’s wrong.”

Shannon nodded, and with a polite good-bye to me, left.

She went out the front door, while Josh undoubtedly sneaked a peek at the excavations in the crawlspace while he told his father that the four of them were leaving. I folded the papers back into my bag and finished cleaning up the pizza before I headed out the back door and down to the crawlspace, too.

“What now?!”

Wayne turned with a bark when he heard me come through the door, and then he calmed down when he saw me. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Sorry,” I said, straightening up. Unlike the tall chief of police, who had to stand hunched over, with his shoulders curled and his head retracted like a turtle’s, I had plenty of headroom downstairs. “Your son left and took his friends with him.”

Wayne nodded. “He told me.”

“There’s still a crowd outside the crime scene tape, and if it gets any bigger, you’ll probably have to call in reinforcements.”

“I’ll go out there and keep the peace in a minute. I just hope the newspapers don’t get wind of this.”

“I didn’t say anything to them,” I said, trying hard not to peer past him to the excavation. It drew me, even as I didn’t want to look at it.

“You want to see?” Wayne asked. “From a safe distance?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“You sure?” Derek asked. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, watching, as Brandon labored on his hands and knees in the dirt. “They’re just bones. And it’ll probably be the only chance you’ll ever have to see a human skeleton in situ.”

“Let’s hope.” But I minced closer and glanced into the shallow pit Brandon had excavated, catching a glimpse of the discolored bones of an arm and a leg, before turning away. “Lovely.”

And then I stopped and turned back. “Is that a button or something?”

“Something,” Derek agreed, watching Brandon brush at the small, round object with what looked like a big paintbrush.

“Can I see it?” I glanced at Wayne, who hesitated for a few seconds before he nodded.

Brandon, who was not only digging, but also working on a schematic drawing of the excavation, complete with numbered and labeled grids, marked the location of the button before grabbing it with a pair of tweezers, putting it into a small plastic box, and handing that to me. “Don’t touch.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said, peering into the box. “Thought so.”

“Thought what?”

“Cherokee.”

“Indian?” Wayne asked, his eyes big.

I shook my head. “Cherokee is a brand name for a line of ready-made clothing-pants and blouses and such-sold at Target stores.”

“No kidding?” Wayne was scribbling in his notebook again. “There’s a Target in Topsham, and one in South Portland, too. If we can’t get an identification any other way, I guess we can go back through the sales receipts.”

“Unless she paid cash,” I said. Wayne grimaced.

“There’s that. Still, good catch, Avery. Thank you.” He took the box back. “I guess it’s becoming more and more certain that we’re looking at a female. Seeing as the button is pink and all.”

I nodded. “There’s a Target store in Brooklyn. I went there once to look at the Isaac Mizrahi line.”

“Did he do this Cherokee thing, too?”

I shook my head. “That’s someone else. I don’t know who. I actually came down here to ask what I should do now. You don’t want me to do any work upstairs, right? That’s what you said?”