by Terri Thayer
April’s heart sank. “Did you talk to him? This morning?” April asked.
Lyle said, “No. Vince left me a message last night with the crew’s work assignments.” He looked at her hopefully as if she would enlighten him. “He said we were off the mansion job for now?”
Obviously Vince hadn’t thought he needed to know about Mrs. H. kicking them out. “For now,” she said, hoping her oblique tone would keep him satisfied. He waited for more, but when she wasn’t forthcoming, he tapped the folder.
Lyle said, “I guess he forgot about payroll. Understandable, with everything else going on. But the men have to be paid on time.”
She said, “Do you know how to do the payroll?”
Lyle dashed her hopes. “I don’t. I stick strictly to the construction side of the business.”
April felt her head start to pound. How had she gotten so involved? She’d come back to Pennsylvania to work on one of her dad’s jobs. No pressure. No being her own boss. She’d just wanted to be an employee, but here she was the boss of a six-man crew who needed to get paid. She rubbed her temples.
April said, “Leave the time cards with me.”
“Want me to put them inside?” Lyle asked.
She shook her head. “That’s okay. I just locked up.”
He handed the folder to her and started to put his truck in gear but then stopped. “I already told Vince, but I’ll tell you, too. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Retro Reproductions going.”
April was touched. “Thanks, we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
Lyle backed out of the driveway. She tossed the folder on her passenger seat. The payroll would have to wait until she got back. Maybe Ed would be home by then.
The first order of business was getting Retro Reproductions back into Mirabella. If she didn’t keep the men working, there would be no more paydays after this one. She jumped into her car and drove to the Tudor.
Rocky was waiting on the back steps. Today she was dressed in a loose sundress, the floral print bringing out her green eyes. She was hearing red huaraches that looked like they came from Mexico. The bracelet she never seemed to be without dangled from her perfect wrist, and an old Schwinn bike with a wicker basket leaned against the porch railing.
April felt her stomach tighten at the thought of what waited for her inside. Vince and her dad were counting on her. “Did you look at the mural?” she asked.
Rocky shook her head. “No, I just got here, too. Come on.”
April hesitated as Rocky stood to go in. She was officially off the job and had no business going into Mrs. H.’s house. If she wasn’t breaking any laws, she was at least breaking rules of etiquette. Rocky disappeared and April shook herself. The mural wasn’t going to fix itself.
The house was quiet except for the ticking of a clock somewhere and the whirr of the fan of the air conditioner. Drapes were drawn against the heat of a summer day. With no construction workers on site, the house seemed unnaturally still.
“How are you this morning?” Mitch asked. He came from the hall and scrutinized her expression. April saw Rocky stop and look back at the two of them, a bemused expression on her face.
“Fine,” she said abruptly, quickly passing him and catching up with Rocky in the dining room. She didn’t want Rocky thinking she had any feelings for Mitch. He looked a little confused by her abruptness, but she couldn’t worry about him now.
Rocky had installed herself in front of the mural, her eyes narrowed. She picked off a piece of peeling paint and sniffed at it. Squatting, she rubbed her hand over the surface of the wall.
April’s throat constricted. She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. There was so much riding on Rocky’s opinion. But the frown on her face was not a good sign.
Sitting back on her heels, Rocky pursed her lips and brushed the hair from her eyes. April saw a tiny scar that led from the corner of her eyelid up across her forehead. It bisected her frown lines. No wonder she wore her hair the way she did.
She couldn’t wait any longer. “What do you think, Rocky?”
“Like I said yesterday, you’re screwed. This was painted with oils, so when you used alcohol on it, the paint actually dissolved. There’s nothing under there. See?” She rubbed at the spot and showed April her fingertip, covered with gold color. “You’re down to blank wall.”
April groaned. “So not what I wanted to hear,” she said.
Rocky shrugged, her shoulders eloquent. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
April said hopefully, “Maybe you can convince your aunt Barbara that the mural is too ugly to restore.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Rocky said. “We’ve grown up hearing how it was a genuine Refregier.”
Mrs. H. had said something like that on Wednesday. “Is that someone well-known?” April asked. Her voice was thick with panic.
Rocky nodded. Mitch looked grim.
“A famous muralist painted this?” That was all she needed. She’d destroyed the work of a world-renowned painter. Her heart sunk even lower.
Mitch said, “Supposedly the guy became famous later doing WPA work. You know, like the mural at Coit Tower.”
So Mitch had been to San Francisco. Interesting.
April stared at the wall. The picture was so ugly and over the top. The characters were oversized, almost cartoonlike. But the colors did have that 1930s sensibility. Damn.
Mitch’s phone rang and he walked away from them to answer it.
Rocky straightened. “I’m sorry, April. I’m fresh out of ideas.”
“Well, thanks anyhow.”
The mural was hopeless. Her mind shut down, unable to think of alternate solutions. She’d have to let her father know she’d failed. April followed Rocky through the kitchen.
Rocky said conversationally, “I’ve got to go. I’m meeting Tammy for breakfast.”
“Is she okay?” April asked. “She was so upset last night.”
“She’s just had a stressful week.”
“Yes, with George dying and all. And then Frankie Imperiale, too,” April said, watching Rocky’s expression. Rocky’s face didn’t change.
Rocky shook her head, her beautiful hair moving as one sheet. “Why would Frankie’s death affect her? She didn’t know him. Tammy’s only ever had one boyfriend. She’s gone out with Lyle since she was sixteen.”
Rocky and April were off the porch now. Rocky grabbed her bike and turned it around. She glanced up to see if Mitch was coming and then pitched her voice low, her comments for April’s ears only. “Whatever you’re trying to do by connecting Tammy with Frankie, you need to stop now. She’s an innocent who’s being stretched to the max. You have no idea what her life has been like in the last year with the deaths at the nursing home.”
“Kind of like the stress of having your father interrogated by the police, I’d imagine,” April said sarcastically.
Rocky was fingering the pieces on her bracelet. One piece was made of brass and looked familiar to April. April bent down and touched Rocky’s wrist.
“Let me see that,” she said.
Rocky pulled away, but April had hold of the piece she wanted to study. She saw the letters “UC” and the front wheels of a truck. “This is part of a Buchert Construction buckle,” she said. “Where did you get this?”
Rocky said, “Tammy and I found it in Lyle’s dresser a couple of years ago. We were looking for found objects for our bracelets.”
April looked at the bracelet more closely. The charms were bits of metal washers, pieces of glass and fiber beads. The eccentric mix was charming.
“Why this?” April asked. “Why the Buchert buckle?”
Rocky looked away as she pulled her wrist from April’s grasp. “It’s a talisman of sorts. Reminds Tammy and me of graduation night. She has a piece, too.”
“That’s weird,” April said.
“The point is,” Rocky called as she rode away on her bike, “Tammy had nothing to do with Frankie. Nothing.”
April leaned against her car, heart pounding. What did Rocky have against her? She needed time to think. But the screen door slammed and she jumped as Mitch came out of the house to join her. “Sorry,” he said.
She didn’t acknowledge him, lost again in thoughts about a long-ago party.
“So now what?” he asked, indicating the mansion behind him. “What are you going to do about the mural?
She tried to pull her thoughts out of the past and into the here and now, shaking her head as she did so. “I really don’t know. I need to get the men back on the job by Monday, or Retro Reproductions will suffer.”
Mitch frowned. “Don’t forget your dad’s part in this. I mean, he’s the one who told Aunt Barbara that you could clean the mural.”
“True, but I doubt he could have imagined that I’d do enough damage to shut down the whole job.”
Mitch’s mouth twitched. “You can’t lay it all on you. Ed’s got to take some responsibility. Your only hope is to get Ed to talk to her and convince her everything’ll be all right.”
“Kind of tough, from a jail cell.” April shrugged. She wasn’t successful at keeping her bitter disappointment out of her voice.
She noticed a blue truck in the drive. “What’s Lyle doing here?”
Mitch said, “He said something about a shipment of pipe coming here by mistake.”
April was annoyed. “Cripes, he was here last night when the pipe was unloaded. I hope he gets up to the Heights job soon. Vince’s expecting him.”
Seeing Lyle’s truck reminded her of the payroll that needed to be done.
“I’ve got to go, Mitch. I’ve got paperwork I have to get done.”
“Just remember, your father has to bear some responsibility for this.”
She headed back to the barn. Mitch’s words about her father had her wondering what to tell him. Chances were Vince had already told him about her contretemps with Mrs. H. yesterday. But she’d assured Vince she would fix things. And she hadn’t.
She could do the payroll. That would help. She dumped the folder Lyle had given her on her father’s desk and flipped through the time cards, trying to place names with the faces of the guys she’d met Wednesday. John Clark, Bernie Dudek, Butch Martin, Carlos Riveria, Mike McCarty.
Retro Reproductions had a total of eight men on their payroll, not including Vince or Ed. Yesterday, there’d been four men on the Mirabella job. Three others were with Lyle on the Heights job. She flipped through the time cards. The workweek ended yesterday, Thursday. The hours had to be allocated to the correct job, and it looked as though Ed used a color-coded system. Lyle’s time card was divided between two jobs: the Heights and the Castle. He wasn’t involved in the Mirabella job. At least not this week. April noticed his whole day was allotted to the Castle. He said he was getting permits, but he was also out at the job site. He’d said he hadn’t seen George and Mo, but Tammy had found out about George’s turned ankle from him. She’d have to ask Mo about what happened on Tuesday.
April noticed John Clark was on record as having worked at the Mirabella job yesterday, but she was sure he was the guy who hadn’t been there. Lyle, or John, had put the wrong color next to his time.
April wrote a note to Ed, outlining the mistake.
Receipts from the supply house and other vendors were in a neat pile on the metal spike. The ones Lyle dropped off last night. She saw the invoice from the delivery from yesterday on top. Sure enough, the materials had been allotted to the Mirabella job. She made a note to ask Lyle about the pipe he’d moved this morning.
There was an invoice for the dynamite from the Eckley Munitions Company. It was dated a month earlier, so April put it in the folder marked “Mirabella.”
April turned on Ed’s computer and found a folder named “Payroll.” Inside the folder was a spreadsheet that Ed had designed. April found last week’s file. The payroll was complicated; each man had a different rate of pay, as did each job. There were benefits to be figured out, payroll deductions for taxes and union dues. Her heart sank. This would take a while.
She added the hours on Mike McCarty’s time card and tentatively plugged in the numbers. The payroll tax was figured automatically, as were the other deductions. Net pay appeared in the final column. As long as she transcribed the number of hours correctly, this payroll should be okay. Then she could write the checks out and have them ready for Ed to sign whenever he got back here tonight. If he got back here.
Her mind wandered back to Frankie Imperiale’s time card that she’d seen earlier. In those days, the pay week had run from Friday to Friday. He’d been paid through Friday, June 11. As far as April knew, no one had seen him after that.
The Castle had been boarded up sometime on Monday, June 14. But the Buchert Construction payroll ended the week before. No one was paid past that day. She’d have to ask Ed who had boarded the place up. He couldn’t have. He was with her.
She finished writing the payroll just after one and closed the checkbook with a flourish, congratulating herself. It was one less thing her father would have to deal with. That felt good.
She had time to eat before heading to the nursing home. Deana had sent her home with enough leftovers to last her a couple of days. As long as she didn’t tire of pierogies, she was set.
Walking toward the kitchen, April spotted her sketchbook on the table. She opened it and looked at the skulls she’d drawn the night before last, one of which had a star-like impression on the side of the head. She opened her camera phone and looked at the real pictures. Her drawings really bore no resemblance to the actual skull of Frankie Imperiale. In her drawings, the star-shaped indentation had been huge, but in reality, it was quite small. Probably not enough to kill anyone.
She looked closer. She couldn’t see a bullet hole from this angle. Had she missed one on the other side? Maybe a bullet had penetrated the skull through the crack. She couldn’t tell. She didn’t have enough information, but she knew where to get some.
April dialed Deana’s number without even stopping to think about it. She knew the number by heart. They’d talked to each other every day, several times a day, all through junior high and high school. She had no other friends for whom this was true. She didn’t even know what Ken’s phone number was. Of course he’d changed numbers so many times to get away from his creditors he probably didn’t know what the number was himself.
Deana picked up right away, recognizing her ring. “April? Is your dad okay?”
April said, “Yost’s still got him. I’m hoping he’ll be home later today. I have a question for you. About the cause of death.”
“Anyone in particular?” Deana asked.
“You know I mean Frankie. I saw the skull, Deana, and I saw that it was bashed in. I mean, there was a star-shaped dent in the side of that man’s head. Could that be why he died?”
Deana said, “It’s very difficult to determine cause of death without the complete body. He could have been knocked on the head without it being fatal, then stabbed through the heart or poisoned. It’s not a given, no, that just because he was hit in the head that that’s why he died.”
Or he could have been shot, April thought. “Yost thinks they might have found a bullet fragment.”
“That would change everything,” Deana agreed.
“What about George’s death, Dee? Is there anything weird about it?”
Deana was quiet for a beat. April was about to check her phone to see if the call had been dropped when Deana said, “People in nursing homes are very vulnerable. Any kind of fall or injury could lead to death.”
April knew the end of a topic when she heard one. Deana would say no more.
Her call-waiting tone sounded. She checked the screen. “Deana, it’s my dad. I’ve got to get this.” She hung up quickly and picked up the call. “Dad?”
“Hi, honey.”
April felt her knees go weak. Her dad sounded okay. “Are you out of trouble?”
Ed’s voice was low. “No, not yet. T
hey’re still talking to me. Listen, Lyle will be dropping off the time cards.”
“He already did. I’ve got them.”
Ed grunted. “The payroll has to be done today.” His voice got higher. “If the checks aren’t in the guys’ hands today, their union can fine me. If I get too many fines, I won’t get any more carpenters when I need them. And too many fines mean Retro will go busto.”
He stopped to draw in a ragged breath, and April interrupted. “Hold up, Dad. You’re covered. I figured out the payroll.”
“You did? With all the deductions and the different rates for each job? That Heights job is a prevailing wage job, you know.”
“I did it. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I think it’s okay.”
“You’re a doll,” Ed said, the relief palatable.
“One problem. I can’t sign the checks.”
Ed’s voice deflated. “Only Vince or I can sign checks.”
“I’ll bring them to you. Yost will have to let you deal with this.”
“No, bug. I don’t want you here. I’ll have Lyle pick them up. He can get Vince to sign and then deliver the checks to the men.”
“I’ll leave them on the desk. I’ve got to go out for a while,” April said.
“You saved my life today, April.”
“I love you, Dad,” she said, her heart suddenly swamped by the feelings of love and loss.
“I’ll be home soon.”
The nursing home was a converted old house that had been added onto more than once. The front door led to a lobby sitting area, which had folks in wheelchairs lined up along one wall. A woman yelled as she passed, calling April a pretty girl. April didn’t quite get to the desk before she was waylaid by Tammy.
“April, goody. You’re here,” Tammy said, greeting her with a hug and a kiss. “Sign in. Everyone has to sign in. For security reasons.” She pointed to a clipboard at the unmanned desk.
If this was their security system, it was pretty rudimentary. April could have just walked in.
A woman with her tiny feet encased in bright pink fuzzy socks pushed against the floor. The wheelchair moved forward a few inches before Tammy yanked on the handles and brought her back in line.
