“Avery insisted.”

I hadn’t, but I didn’t quibble about it. Dressing as Tinkerbell had been pretty much inevitable for me. I had on a little green dress and little green ballerina flats, with my hair piled on top of my head and a set of gauzy wings strapped to my back. Because it was almost November and we were in Maine, I had cheated: The dress wasn’t strapless like Tink’s; it had long sleeves and a sweetheart neckline, and I was wearing tights under it.

I had not, however, insisted that Derek dress as Peter Pan. Donning the green tunic and tights, with the cute little feathered hat sitting jauntily on top of his head, had been his choice. Peter’s hair was a few shades closer to red, and his eyes were hazel to Derek’s dreamy blue, but it wasn’t a bad likeness for all that. The tights fit very nicely, too. At least I thought so, although Kate had taken one look at him earlier in the evening and been overcome with laughter.

She had been here, as had Shannon and Josh, Paige and Ricky. The latter was dressed as a sailor, in white suit and collar, while Paige and Shannon were angel and devil respectively. Paige had the droopy white dress, shiny halo, and wings, while Shannon was wearing a skimpy red cocktail dress and high red heels, with two horns peeking out from under her hair. Josh, dressed as a mad scientist in white lab coat, had a hard time keeping his eyes off her. And Kate was Lady Godiva in a floor-length wig and flesh-colored bodysuit.

I had occasion to talk to Ricky alone for a moment, and I asked him if he’d like to have the boxes of papers we’d found in the attic. All except for the manuscript his mother had been writing; I’d taken that home before Ricky had seen it, so he didn’t know it existed, and I didn’t see the need for telling him. Instead, I had offered it to John Nickerson. It did concern him, after all.

“Manuscript?” he’d said when I told him about it.

“Peggy was writing a romance novel. Tied Up in Tartan. The hero’s name is Iain MacNiachail.”

John flushed a painful crimson from the stiff collar of the suit to the roots of his newly dyed black hair. “So that’s where you read the name,” he said in a strangled voice.

I shrugged apologetically. After a minute, he seemed to pull himself together. “I didn’t sleep with her, you know. We worked together, and I liked her, but she was married. I’m not saying that something might not have developed if she’d been free, but I wasn’t about to get in the middle of their marital problems.”

“So they had marital problems?”

He nodded. “Sure, yeah. He wasn’t abusive, not physically, but after Peggy went to work, I guess maybe he felt like he wasn’t needed. She could go out and make her own living. So he started drinking more, staying out late, getting into trouble at work. She talked about leaving. She might as well live on her own, she said; she did everything herself anyway.”

“Is that why he shot her, do you think? And her parents?”

“I always thought it was,” John said. “I figured her folks came up to Waterfield to help her pack up her stuff, but when she told him she was taking Patrick and moving out, he couldn’t handle it.”

“Tragic.”

He nodded. “I’ll take that manuscript, though. Don’t want anyone else to get their hands on it. Might give someone the wrong idea.”

“I’ll drop it off at the store tomorrow,” I promised.

Ricky was thrilled to have the other boxes of paperwork, and he was also very complimentary about the job we’d done on the house. “I don’t remember much from the time I lived here,” he said apologetically. No one seemed surprised, so he must have told the others who he was. “And I wouldn’t want to move back in, but I feel almost like I could. It looks like a different place now.” He looked around.

“I’m not sure I ever thanked you,” I answered, “but I appreciate your selling it to us. We’ve enjoyed renovating it.” After the footsteps and screams were disengaged, anyway, and the murders were solved and the murderer put away.

“My pleasure,” Ricky said. He promised to come back for the boxes of paperwork sometime when they weren’t all sharing a car, and I told him he was welcome any time.

After that, it was pretty much one thing right after the other until late in the evening, when Derek collapsed on the Finn Juhl sofa and I curled up in the Eero Saarinen tulip chair across from him with my wine.

“Think we did OK?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“Good.” He stretched his legs out in front of him, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. I watched his eyelashes make shadows across his cheeks, and his chest rise and fall with every breath. After a minute, he opened his eyes again. “Think any of ’em will want to buy the place?”

The open house for prospective home buyers had been our realtor’s idea. A Realtor who wasn’t-Lord be praised-Melissa James.

“Irina seemed confident that we’d get an offer soon,” I answered. “She said that several of the people who stopped by said they were interested.”

Yes, our realtor was Irina Rozhdestvensky. Turned out she was affiliated with one of the big national brokerage chains out of Portland, and that she was brand new at her job and desperately needed someone to take a chance on her. I was so thrilled at the thought of not hiring Melissa-OK, thrilled at the idea of putting one over on Melissa-that I hadn’t even blinked at the idea of giving the listing to someone totally unproven. So far it seemed to be working well enough, although Irina had just been marketing the place for the past week or so. Still, the Halloween open house had been her brainchild, and a fairly successful one, it seemed. We’d been overrun with people, and although most had been curious neighbors (and kids looking for candy), some had been genuine homebuyers looking for a house, as well.

“Maybe we’ll get rid of the place before Christmas, then.” Derek closed his eyes again.

“Speaking of Christmas,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think I mentioned that my mother is thinking of coming to visit.”

“Here?”

I nodded.

“No,” Derek said, “you didn’t mention that. Should I worry?”

“I don’t see why. Just because I’m her only daughter, and she’s coming all the way from California to check out the guy who made me give up a successful career in Manhattan to live hand to mouth in this backwater…”

Derek sat up straight, eyes wide, and I grinned. “Don’t worry. She’ll…” I was about to say “love you” but changed it at the last moment, “like you. What’s not to like, right?”

“Right,” Derek said, but he sounded unsure.

I peered at him. This display of insecurity was new, and really kind of sweet, everything considered. Most of the time he came across as comfortably self-confident, and the fact that he was worried about what my mother would think of him was endearing. It meant-I thought-that he was serious about me. Not that I’d doubted it, really-he’d taken me home to meet his parents-but we’d dated only a few months and were still figuring things out. But if he was concerned about finding approval with my mother, that must mean that he was in it for the long haul, right?

I uncurled from the chair, smiling, a warm glow suffusing my body and wiping away my fatigue. It could have been the wine or maybe the fire in the other room, but somehow I didn’t think so. “You know, I’ve never had a boyfriend my mother liked.”

“You’re kidding.”

I shook my head as I navigated around the kidney-shaped Adrian Pearsall-style walnut and glass coffee table. “She despised Philippe. Thought he was too good-looking to be trustworthy.”

“That’s a point in her favor, anyway,” Derek said, watching me come closer. “My dad never liked Melissa, either. Accused me of thinking with my…”

I arched a brow, and he flushed. “… anyway, he thought she only chose me because she wanted to be married to a doctor.”