This Old Murder (7 page)

NINE

JOSIE WAS SITTING at the kitchen table in her landlady’s apartment. There was a glass of wine in her hand, an untouched bowl of pasta on the table in front of her. She had finished telling Risa of her day and now found herself, un-characteristically, not hungry.

“You like this Courtney Castle?” Risa asked. She stopped stirring a large pot on the stove, unrolled the voluminous silk sleeves of the shirt she was wearing, and poured herself a glass of Chianti.

“I didn’t really know her,” Josie said, staring down at her food. It was true. That poised, perfect television personality was an unknown quantity—no matter what had happened in the past.

“I have watched her show,” Risa said flatly. “I did not like it.”

Josie smiled for the first time since she’d heard of Courtney’s supposed disappearing act. “Really? Everyone keeps telling me how much they love her.”

“Her? Sì! Her, I like. Beautiful blond hair. But that show. No, I do not like that show.”

Josie was momentarily diverted. “Why not?”

“It’s not what it says it is.”

“What do you mean? You don’t think you could learn a lot about remodeling from watching?”

“I think you would learn a lie from watching.”

“What sort of lie?” Josie reached for her wineglass.

“I would not have known this if I had not known you,” Risa answered obliquely, sipping from her glass.

Josie followed suit; she was beginning to relax. “What do I have to do with it?”

“I see you after you work. When you come home, you are tired, you are filthy, some days you are disgusting and you actually smell.”

“I work hard!” Josie protested.

“But she . . . that Castle person. She doesn’t. She’s like a . . . a tourist on the work site.”

Josie took another sip of her wine and didn’t speak for a few minutes. “A tourist on the work site,” she repeated quietly. It was an interesting image. “Yeah, that makes sense. The makeup. The hairdo. Those long fingernails.”

“No, not the nails. They are acrid . . . or something like plastic. They are very hard. They break after everything else.”

Was this true? Josie looked down at her split and cracked nails. Could she go to one of those manicure salons that seemed to have popped up all over the place in the last few years and come out with beautiful hands? And would they last throughout her workday?

“They are also ugly.” Risa, never one to keep an opinion to herself, continued. “And unnatural. Plastic attached to the end of the digits . . . the fingers . . . No, not good.”

“You’re saying that you don’t like the show because you know what hard work it is to remodel a house.”

“Sì.” Risa nodded. “She makes it look easy. It’s not easy. People do not know this. They start work. They make mess. They unhappy. That’s not good. Not fair.”

“No, you’re right.” Josie took another sip of wine. “And that’s the right word. It’s not fair to the people in the audience.” She frowned. “What about Courtney Castle?”

“I like her better on her other show. She made polenta almost like she was Italian. . . .”

Josie put down her glass. “What other show?”

“I do not remember the name . . . Not
Viva Italia
. It was not just Italian food. Also French and, I think, maybe Spanish . . .
Mediterranean Cooking.
No,
Mediterranean Cuisine.
They show not just recipes but also travel to places where food is made. Fascinating. The show on the fishing for scungilli. Fascinating,” she repeated.

“You’re telling me that Courtney was the hostess—or host or whatever they call it—of a cooking show on public television?”

“Sì. It was not recent though. A while ago. She was younger. Hair not so blond.”

“She’s really a brunette,” Josie muttered bitchily, and then sighed. What Risa was saying was interesting. Josie picked up her fork and speared a piece of pasta. She asked another question before putting it in her mouth. “Do you remember when it was on? How long ago?”

“Oh, years. You eat. I think.” She pushed a bowl of freshly ground Parmesan cheese across the table. “It was the year little Tyler played on that bad team for Little League. I learned to make those little orange rolls that he loved to eat when they lost from Courtney on TV.”

Josie was accustomed to understanding her landlady’s convoluted syntax and didn’t question her statement. “That was the spring before he started boarding school. Three years ago.”

“Sì. Who is that at the door?” Risa asked, standing.

“Risa! Josie! Tyler!”

Josie, a smile on her face, got up for one of the few things as interesting to her as food or her son. “It’s Sam!”

Risa, ever the good hostess, headed to her stove. “I get him some dinner. He must be hungry.”

“We’re back here, Sam!”

“Josie, I heard about what happened today. I can’t believe it!” he said, not bothering to greet her properly.

“I know, Sam, I—”

“You sit right down and eat this pasta,” Risa interrupted. “You think better on a full stomach.”

Momentarily startled, Sam stood still. “What in particular should I be thinking about?” he asked.

“About how to make sure Josie and Island Contracting are on TV. To make sure they still get good covers.”

“She means coverage, Sam. And I’m not so sure I want to be on Courtney’s show if she is going to pull stunts like this.”

“Stunts? You think this is a stunt?”

“Yes. No one has talked about the handwriting of that note. I’ll bet she wrote it herself.”

“Why would anyone pretend to be murdered?” Sam asked.

Josie had thought about it for a while and come up with what she thought was a logical answer. “For publicity. Everyone knows how television people are always after publicity.”

“Sì. She just hiding.” Risa nodded vigorously.

“That’s not what the police think. They seem to be taking this very, very seriously.”

“Really?”

“I was told they were talking of bringing dredging equipment to the island.”

“What? Dredge the ocean? They are mad!” Risa exclaimed.

“No, the bay,” Josie said. “That’s what they’re talking about doing, isn’t it, Sam? They’re planning to dredge the bay.”

“That’s what I’ve been told.” Owning the largest and most exclusive of the two liquor stores on the island, Sam was in a position to hear most of the gossip going around.

“Is there any evidence at all that she was killed?” Josie asked slowly. “More than the note, I mean.”

“Well, what I heard was that she hadn’t been seen since doing the interview with you.”

“Really?
Cara,
what are they saying about you?”

“Were you two alone together for the interview?” Sam asked.

“Alone? Are you kidding? I’ve only been exposed to this stuff for a few days, but, believe me, it takes more than one person to do anything for television. It almost takes a crowd!”

“Was the interview done in the house? Or on some sort of set?”

“It was done in a corner of the deck in front of the house. They wanted to see me, the house, and the bay in the background. That, apparently, was the best place to see all three.”

“And how big was the crowd it took to do this?” Sam asked. There was a smile on his face, but whether it was from Josie’s answer or Risa’s pasta, she didn’t know.

“Well, there were only the cameraman, the producer, Bobby Valentine, Courtney, and me. But there were lots of people milling around. And it wasn’t the first time I’d been interviewed. Bobby Valentine had asked me a bunch of questions earlier in the day. He told me that Courtney would use the information he got to figure out what to ask me.”

“Perhaps this Bobby Valentine made up the questions and gave them to Courtney. It’s not unheard of for on-air personalities to work from scripts provided by other people.”

“No. She made up these questions herself.” Josie stopped and glanced at Risa. “I’m sure they were her work.”

“How do you know?” Sam asked.

“I just know,” she answered.

“Woman’s intuition,” Risa suggested.

“Oh?” Sam looked at Josie for confirmation.

“I guess.” She shrugged and changed the subject. “When is the dredging supposed to begin?”

“As soon as possible, is what I heard. Of course, knowing the police on this island, that could mean anytime in the next decade. There were two guys talking about it in the store when I left. I got the impression that they were summer cops.”

“I don’t suppose one of them was named Mark.”

“I don’t know either of their names. But they were buying soda and complaining about having to work late and, more significantly, go without beer for the evening while they figured out how to get the dredge into the bay without calling the Coast Guard for help. Although I don’t understand why they wouldn’t want to call the Coast Guard in. I don’t understand the delineation of duties here, but it seems to me that a missing person, presumed to be in the water, is exactly the type of thing the Coast Guard does get involved in.”

“On any other island, yes. But the local police and the Coast Guard have a history of . . . um, of not getting along.”

“Isn’t that a bit foolish?” Sam asked.

“Sure is, but you’ve been around long enough to not be surprised by it.”

“What happened?”

“You didn’t hear about it? It’s a great story.”

“So tell it.”

“It happened one Fourth of July. You know what a big deal we all make of that day. It’s pretty much the height of the summer season. All the tourists are here. When I moved here, there were fireworks shot off the old drawbridge at the south end of the island. Then someone suggested that an even bigger and better display could be created from the new causeway up north. But the smaller display at the other end of the island was a tradition and, well, you know how things go around here. We ended up with what we have now.”

Sam nodded. “Fireworks at both ends of the island.”

“Exactly. And you know how people head out to sea in their boats so that they can see both displays at the same time?”

“Yes.”

“Well, a year or two before you arrived, one of the party boats that had been hired for the evening lost its engine and couldn’t get back in after the shows ended. Unfortunately, the people in the boat were so drunk, they didn’t notice they had a problem until they had drifted almost twenty miles out to sea. And then there was a storm that night and the boat drifted back toward land and ended up stuck on a sandbar about a mile off the coast. Well, to make a long story short, the Coast Guard rescue the next morning was very dramatic and could be seen by everyone sunning on the beach.”

“So what does this have to do with the police?” Sam asked.

“They were the police,” Risa explained. “In the boat. They were our police.”

Sam grinned. “The island police were in the rescued boat? Surely not all of them. What about crowd control and traffic and all the other things they’re supposed to do before, during, and after the fireworks?”

“Exactly the question everyone else was asking. And you can imagine how Chief Rodney reacted.”

“Badly.”

“And publicly. He accused the Coast Guard of incompetence for no reason at all. And he was quoted in the island newspaper. And the next week a reporter interviewed the captain of the rescue ship and that was the first mention of the empty beer kegs found in the hold of the boat.”

“At least they didn’t toss them overboard and pollute the ocean,” Sam suggested.

“Sam, you own a liquor store. You know they didn’t want to forfeit their deposit on the kegs!”

“Good point. So the police were embarrassed by the interview with the Coast Guard.”

“Yes, but it didn’t stop there. Some enterprising reporter went back to Chief Rodney the next week. Well, you can guess what happened. That man never has the sense to shut up. And since the Coast Guard had right on their side, they continued to respond to whatever idiocy he uttered. This went on week after week until the reporter went back to college for the fall semester. Everyone on the island was amused. Until there was a real crisis during one of the big fall storms and Rodney refused to call the Coast Guard for help.”

“That man can be extraordinarily stupid,” Sam said. No one in the room was inclined to argue.

“Definitely. Well, obviously that couldn’t continue. The Coast Guard is equipped to deal with lots of problems that the police can’t help. So they call them in an emergency. But not until they’ve tried to do everything themselves.”

“Well, that’s what’s going on now,” Sam said. He had finished his pasta during Josie’s explanation and he passed the plate over to Risa for a refill.

“Hey, I hope there’s some of that left for me!” Tyler appeared in the doorway.

Risa loved Sam. She hoped, prayed, and tried to arrange for Josie to marry him. But Tyler was her baby. She dropped what she was doing and reached for the large pottery bowl reserved for the young man’s meals.

Knowing what was coming, Tyler plopped himself down at the table. “Hi, Sam. Hi, Mom. Thanks, Risa.”

“How was work?” Josie asked, resisting the urge to reach across the table and push the hair out of his eyes. Her son had inherited her flyaway hair. The older he got, the longer he wore it.

“Great. We get to watch videos when there’s no one in the store. And with that television crew on the island, no one has much time to watch TV, so we’re not all that busy. Thanks, Risa,” he repeated before digging into the food she’d given him.

“I saw three John Waters films,” he said, chewing and talking at the same time. “Great stuff. I really loved
Polyester
—”

“They’re pretty weird,” Sam said. “What did you think about . . .”

Josie had no idea what they were saying. But she was happy to just sit and watch her son eat. She started to listen more carefully when Courtney Castle was mentioned.

“They’re saying some strange things,” Tyler was explaining to Sam. “About”—he glanced at his mother from under his long bangs before continuing—“about Mom, too.”

“What about me?” Josie asked.