Spackled and Spooked by Jennie Bentley Read Free Book Online Page A

explaining just how wonderfully handy he was when Shannon slid back into the booth next to him. Hard on her heels was Candy with our drinks, followed by two other ponytailed coeds carrying pizzas.
    We got busy eating, and for a minute or two, nothing in the way of meaningful conversation took place while we all filled our plates and our mouths. After a break, I looked over at Shannon. “I was looking at your earrings earlier.”
    She tweaked one of them, causing prisms of light to play across the wall. Her nails were polished and tinted pale pink. “These old things? Josh gave them to me for Christmas a few years ago.” She grinned at him.
    “Four,” Josh said, his mouth full of pizza.
    “They were all the rage back then. Every girl in school had a pair. You did, too, didn’t you, Paige?”
    Paige nodded. She was carefully dissecting a piece of pizza, blotting off as much of the sauce as she could reach with a napkin. “Josh got a pair for me, too. But then I lost one.” She shrugged.
    “I don’t suppose you’ve ever been inside the house on Becklea?” I said.
    Paige shook her head.
    “You found an earring in there?” Josh said, interested. I nodded, digging in my pocket. He extended his hand across the table, and I dropped the shiny thing into his palm. He turned it over and showed it to Shannon. “Looks just like yours, doesn’t it?”
    She nodded, her head practically on his shoulder. He tilted his head, and I could see his nostrils flare as he breathed in.
    “It has to be older than four years, though, Josh.” She looked up at him, then she straightened before she added, “Nobody’s lived in that house for seventeen years, at least. Right?”
    “That’s true,” Josh admitted. Ricky extended a meaty paw, and Josh passed the shiny trinket over to him. Ricky ran the tip of his finger over it, hunching so far forward that his hair totally obscured his face.
    “We figure it probably belonged to the mother,” Derek said. “Or maybe the mother-in-law. I’m sure they had these kinds of earrings back in the 1980s, too.”
    “No doubt.” I held out my hand, and Ricky placed the earring on my palm. I stuck it back in my pocket. “We’re considering sending it to the lawyer in Portland. The one the Murphy kid hired to help him sell the house. Just in case the boy would like to have it.”
    “Sure,” Shannon said. Josh nodded, although he probably would have agreed with anything Shannon said.

    “Of course,” my mother said a couple of hours later, after I’d changed into my jammies and was curled up on the newly upholstered loveseat in Aunt Inga’s front parlor talking on the phone. “I remember the Murphy murders. They made the news all up and down the East Coast. We lived in New York at the time, but it happened in Waterfield, so I took a special interest. Whatever would possess you to buy the old Murphy house, Avery?”
    “Well,” I said. “Derek went out and made an offer on it while I was away in New York. We had just talked about going into business together. It’s taken all this time to come to an agreement with the owner. I mean, he showed it to me before we closed, and told me we could change our minds if we wanted to, but I could tell he really wanted it, so I couldn’t really tell him I didn’t want it, you know.”
    “That seems a little inconsiderate of him,” my mother sniffed.
    I heard a noise on the porch, like a footfall, and glanced toward the window. Was it Derek coming back for something he’d forgotten? “I do like it, and it’s going to be a ton of fun working on it, but I guess we could have discussed it more. . . .”
    Mother agreed. “But from everything you’ve told me about Derek, he doesn’t sound like an inconsiderate jerk.”
    I shook my head. “He’s not. He’s actually a very nice guy. Much nicer than anyone else I’ve ever dated.” I kept my eye on the window but couldn’t see anyone.
    “You did have some bad luck with the men you got involved