“Interesting. You know, reading through this I’m surprised that Art Young wasn’t more upset by George’s death.”
“Should he have been?”
“Well, they had worked together for years. Wouldn’t you be upset under the circumstances?”
“How I would feel and how someone else would are two different things. When you’re a cop, you learn quickly that people act differently, especially in crisis situations. Besides, just because they worked together doesn’t mean they had developed a close personal relationship.”
“But less than twenty-four hours after his co-worker died Art is quoted talking about finding a replacement for him,” Susan protested. “Doesn’t that seem a little insensitive to you?”
“Sounds to me like he had a job to get done,” Brett answered.
Susan shuffled through the papers. “Sounds like he already had Kyle in mind for the job, though, doesn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Brett disagreed.
“Look here,” Susan insisted, pointing at the middle of one page. “Your officer asked Art Young how Cory Construction was going to get along without a second carpenter. And Art said that he knew about a good carpenter who was looking for work.”
“I did that interview,” Brett said. “And I remember the conversation, but you’re making it rather ominous. It was no big deal. I asked, more in passing than anything else, what was going to happen to their work without George and Art commented on another carpenter he knew who was free. Susan, it’s hard to imagine that conversation happening any other way with any other carpenter.”
“And how do you know he was talking about Kyle Barnes?” Jed spoke up.
“I don’t, of course, but I intend to find out.” Susan picked up the notes and began reading again. She was aware of the fact that the two men were exchanging looks over her head, but she wasn’t going to let that bother her. She was beginning to unravel the threads of this particular puzzle and she had no intention of becoming distracted by their attempts at superiority. “There’s something else interesting here,” she muttered, sniffing the air. There was still a certain smell in the room. Maybe she should change brands of dog food.
“What?” Brett asked.
“Well, for one thing, Ken is a trained carpenter, so how come he didn’t just pitch right in after George died? It says here that Art was working alone when you interviewed him. And if Ken had been helping out, there wouldn’t have been such a rush to find a replacement carpenter.”
“Ken doesn’t seem to be doing any of the carpentry on our house either,” Jed reminded her.
“Do you think that’s strange?”
“Not necessarily,” her husband said. “I just assumed that he was busy planning and ordering materials and … and whatever else there is to do right now on the project.”
“Besides,” Brett reminded them both, “you’re talking about last spring, and at that time Cory Construction was starting projects that Simon Fairweather wouldn’t allow them to complete. At least that’s what your wife has been telling me,” he told Jed. “What I’m trying to say is that maybe there was no immediate reason for another carpenter to start working. And maybe Ken was very busy with other things like protesting everything that the building inspector was doing to the planning board.”
“True, things are different now that Simon is dead,” Susan mumbled, looking over her shoulder. Surely the smell was getting stronger? “But the question is,” she continued, “how were things different after George was killed—no longer on the scene?”
Jed shrugged. “They needed another carpenter to take his place.”
“Hmmm.”
“What are you thinking about?” Brett asked Susan.
“I’m wondering what really happened at that meeting between George and Simon Fairweather that Patsy told me about.”
“It’s going to be hard to find out now that both men are dead,” Brett said.
“Is there anyone else who might know?” Jed asked.
“Patricia Fairweather” was Brett’s suggestion.
“Perhaps, but she didn’t seem to know very much about her husband’s work. Maybe she wasn’t interested or maybe he didn’t bring his work home from the office—or, more likely, he was rarely home,” Susan added. “Remember, he was out at a meeting the night she left for vacation and Patricia implied that that wasn’t an unusual occurrence.”
“Someone in his office—” Jed began.
“Of course, his secretary! What’s her name?” Susan asked.
“Evangeline Forest,” Brett said. “You’ve met her?”
“We spoke at the funeral yesterday. She was quite willing to talk about Simon.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. She must miss him. Some of the people down at the municipal center say that she’s had a crush on the man for years.
“You know, the police department and the building inspector’s office are alike in some ways: They’re the two largest departments in the building and they’re both separated from the other offices—the tax collector, the department of health, the mayor’s office, the parks and recreation department, and the like. We have a wing to ourselves because we function twenty-four hours a day and we have a small holding cell. The building inspector’s office is upstairs—above the city council chambers. It’s a large area and busier than anyplace in the building beside the police department.”
“I think I’ll be seeing it for myself in the morning,” Susan said.
“Maybe after you shower again,” Brett suggested gently. “I know your bathrooms aren’t working, so if you want to use this one again …”
“There are flashing lights out front,” Susan said, standing up.
“Must be the tow truck I called,” Jed answered.
“Why did you call a tow truck?” Susan asked.
“Brett suggested it.”
“Your car is going to be towed to a garage that specializes in cleaning autos. They’ll air it and spray it with deodorant, and if that doesn’t work, they’ll replace the carpeting and upholstery. We use them after accidents and disasters,” Brett explained.
“Disasters?” Jed repeated the word as a question.
“Cars that get caught in floods and fires. It’s a tossup as to which smells worse: mildew or smoke. Of course, your wife’s car stinks worse than either of those things.” He chuckled and looked at Susan.
“Sue?” Jed tried to attract her attention. “Are you with us?”
“Sorry.” She rubbed her eyes. “I’m tired. I think I’ll take you up on that offer to use your shower again and then I’ll go home and get to bed.”
THIRTY
Susan woke up the next morning realizing that she was never, ever going to become accustomed to living in a house while it was being remodeled. A huge crash seemed to cue Jed to roll in her direction.
“That reminds me,” he muttered. “What made that loud noise yesterday morning?”
“Probably the same thing you just heard,” she answered, and pulled a pillow over her head. She didn’t want to admit that she had failed to discover the answer to that question. She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to ignore the voice in her brain reminding her that there were a lot of questions that needed answering—and none of the answers were going to be found there in her bed.
“Are my suits in the closet?” Jed was now sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Excuse me?”
“My suits. My shirts. You said you were going to move our clothing across the hall,” he reminded her.
“I had a busy day yesterday.”
He stood up. “Would you like me to get something for you to wear while I’m at it?”
“Don’t worry about me. I can put on the things I wore last night. After all, I only wore them for a couple of hours.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed, narrowly missing the footboard. “I’m meeting Patricia Fairweather for breakfast.”
“Please, hon, drop Clue off at the dog groomer’s before anything else. Brett a
nd I did the best we could, but …”
“I don’t have a car! How—”
“I already thought of that. I called Jerry last night and I’ll go in with him. You can take my car. I’d better get going.”
Susan noticed that he didn’t bother to kiss her goodbye. That might have bothered her if she hadn’t been in such a hurry herself. Jed was right: First things first. She would stuff Clue in the car and throw herself on the mercy of the owner of the Pampered Pooch, then she would set out in an orderly fashion to solve the murders—plural.
She dressed quickly and hurried out of the house, waving to Art Young and Frankie as she passed them. She knew if she stopped they would think of things to ask her that would take time and, most likely, leave her with even more problems than she had right now.
Jed’s car was usually off limits, so Clue considered the trip to the dog groomer’s a real treat. Susan dropped the dog off and drove over to the restaurant. Patricia was sitting in a window seat waiting for her.
“Hi,” Susan said, sitting down across the table from Patricia. “I like your shirt.” She offered the compliment hoping to get the conversation going.
Patricia seemed to have forgotten the reason she had asked Susan to join her there. She looked down at her clothing and sighed. “I seem to wear black jeans and a dark shirt every day since Simon died. It’s silly, really. No one expects a widow to wear mourning anymore. And I’m not the type of person to put on a public show about anything,” she confessed, as a young waitress approached. “I keep thinking that people might not think it’s appropriate for me to wander around in tom jeans and a Greenpeace T-shirt like I used to.” She frowned. “It’s just not like me to worry about such things. I guess Simon’s death has upset me more than I thought it had.”
Susan had no idea what to say about that after the waitress had left and they were alone again. “You two were married for quite a while,” she muttered, looking at the wheat germ and raisin muffin in front of her. The Seagull’s Retreat was a tiny health-food restaurant so she didn’t have much hope for the baked goods, but the muffin turned out to be excellent. Susan had never even noticed the place before. She guessed that Patricia, from the greetings the staff had given her, was a regular.
“Yes. We were” was all Patricia said.
New Age music tinkled in the background, so Susan figured that what she was experiencing couldn’t actually be called an awkward silence. She decided to try again. “Do you think you’ll stay in that large house? Now that you’re alone?” she added when Patricia didn’t respond.
“It’s my family home,” she finally answered, rather vaguely. “I suppose I’ll stay there. I’ve always been there, after all.”
“And you have your studio all set up,” Susan reminded her.
“Yes. There is that,” Patricia admitted. She seemed more interested in breaking a large slice of zucchini-carrot bread into tiny pieces than talking, so Susan ate her food and looked around the restaurant.
The café was only big enough for seven tables and a long counter that displayed baked goods and bowls of fruit, but the walls were covered with prints, posters, and even framed poems. “This is an interesting place,” Susan said, not expecting a response. Patricia seemed to be getting more upset as her husband’s murder receded farther and farther into the past.
“The art on the walls changes monthly,” Patricia answered slowly, not bothering to glance around. “But … but I didn’t ask you here to talk about art. I need to tell you something. Something about Simon that no one knows.” She paused and looked around the room. “In fact, I didn’t even know it until a short while ago. A very short while ago,” she added quietly.
“When?” Susan asked.
“Yesterday afternoon,” Patricia admitted, and then fell silent again.
Susan realized that she was going to have to ask questions if this conversation was going to go anywhere. “Why don’t you start at the beginning,” she suggested, as she always did. She expected to hear a story beginning less than twenty-four hours before, but the time frame Patricia Fairweather was concerned with was measured in years.
“I suppose this all started about three years after Simon and I got married,” she began. “When I was growing up, there was a small peach orchard behind the house. It was wonderful. I was the youngest child and I guess I was lonely. I used to go out among the peaches and imagine all sorts of things. It was really a magical place for me. The blossoms in the springtime were fabulous. But the smell of the ripe fruit hanging from the branches around this time of year—I think I liked that best.”
She sighed at the memory and continued. “But we needed money. Simon was working as a general contractor, and he was making a decent living but not enough to support the lifestyle that he wanted. And I have to admit that my family home was costly to maintain and we were in the midst of remodeling. Simon was looking for cash and he got it by subdividing the orchard and building two houses there.”
“It must have been a real loss for you.” Susan commented.
“Yes, but that’s not what I’m trying to tell you about. Simon used the profits from selling off those houses to buy some land down by the river, and he built three homes there and sold them at what we thought was an enormous profit. He was happy with the result and we had some extra cash for the first time since our marriage. But Simon wanted to be someone important, not just a general contractor, and when Hancock’s building inspector died, Simon was thrilled to be asked to take the job.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He had worked with the inspector while he was building those five houses and during our remodeling, of course, and I just assumed that he had found something that he wanted to do with his life.”
“And that wasn’t true?”
“Well, maybe in the beginning. The job was wonderful for him. Hancock was in the process of changing from a lovely small town into a wealthy suburb. There were so many opportunities for Simon to act important. He could hold up projects over minor technicalities. He could strut around the houses of millionaires like he owned them. He was courted by contractors and members of the community who were busy cashing in on the housing boom of the late seventies and eighties.”
“Was he building houses himself at the same time?”
“No, and I think that was the problem.” Patricia drained her cup of tea and looked straight across the table at Susan. “You see, his timing was bad. He was building houses in the late sixties and early seventies before the market boomed. He made an honest profit—actually it seemed like a fortune to us at the time—but it wasn’t anywhere near the amount of money that people were making for doing far less only ten years later.”
“So?”
“So he became dishonest,” Patricia explained very quietly. “I didn’t know it at the time. I guess I’ve been very foolish.”
“Maybe it would help if you told me about it,” Susan suggested gently as windchimes and an oboe once again became the only sounds in the room.
“The building inspector has a lot of opportunities to make money illegally if he’s so inclined,” Patricia began slowly.
“Like in New York City, where we’re always hearing about them being paid off to approve unsafe structures and ignore building-code violations,” Susan said, thinking she understood at last.
“No. He didn’t do that. I don’t think Simon would have even considered anything that made the buildings unsafe. What Simon did, I think, was pick a particular contracting company and make them pay him to allow them to work in town.” She pulled her hair together and began making one long braid over her shoulder. “Looking back, it all makes sense. You see, these companies were making the type of profit that Simon had never even dreamed of. And they had long waiting lists of people who wanted work done.
“Poor Simon had had to dredge up jobs that paid very little and then when that job was over, go out and find another. Suddenly there were literally lines of people who wanted building done and who were willing
to pay premium prices for the work. And Simon was out of the business. He also preferred being an important official rather than a carpenter with dirty fingernails. So he found a way to make being a building inspector pay.”
“And they paid him—what would you call it?—bribes so they could work?”
“Exactly. And there was so much money around that they went ahead and paid. One after the other. Some were probably perfectly happy to toss a small percentage of their profits in the direction of the building inspector. As you said, it had been going on in New York City for years. And the few that objected discovered that they couldn’t get permits issued or inspections done on time. Those that didn’t get the hint had their jobs shut down. But …”
“But?” Susan prompted when Patricia didn’t continue.
“What’s the expression? What goes around comes around? Life changed. A recession came along that made the contractors as hungry as Simon had been and recently one of them refused to pay up.”
Susan finally realized where all this was leading. “Ken Cory.”
“Yes, I think so,” Patricia’s voice broke and a tear slipped down one cheek. “I hate to tell you this. I … I just couldn’t keep it to myself.”
“You did the right thing,” Susan assured her. “In fact, you really should have told Brett right away.”
“Oh, but I didn’t know any of this until right before you came over yesterday!” Patricia insisted. “I never would have accepted living on money that was gotten illegally. Never. And that’s why Simon never told me any of this. He understood I would find his actions completely unacceptable.”
“Of course.”
“Of course that doesn’t change the reality of the situation. I did live for years on the earnings of illegal activity. I’m going to have to find some way to atone for that … or something.”
“But how did you find out about this?” Susan asked, less interested in Patricia’s feelings than in the facts.
“My sister and I were going through the desk in Simon’s bedroom. We were looking for insurance papers,” she explained, almost as though the activity wasn’t completely understandable or acceptable. “And in a folder at the bottom of the last drawer we found pages of notes and figures. It took me a while to sort it all out. But when I did, I realized what had been going on.”
Remodeled to Death Page 22
