This Old Murder (9 page)

“I won’t argue with that.”

“And I was jealous as hell of her. Over little things. Like my mother’s idea of an appropriate bedroom for a young girl included lots of ruffles and fake French-country furniture. I slept in a canopied bed until I went off to college. In fact, I may have gone off to college just to get away from that horrible room. I wasn’t even allowed to put up posters on my own walls. And that wallpaper desperately needed to be covered! My mother,” she explained, “loved cabbage roses.”

“I don’t think I know what they are.”

“You’re lucky. So was Courtney. She slept in a room furnished with teak Scandinavian furniture. I used to think she could stay in that room and imagine she was living in an apartment in Greenwich Village even though she lived a few blocks away from me in a conventional upper-middle-class suburb. And when she was in high school the rock posters were so thick on her walls that she probably didn’t even have to turn on the heat in the winter.” She paused. “I was jealous of her.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“I don’t mean to sound stupid. I guess a therapist would say that we have a lot of unresolved stuff between us.”

Sam seemed to be thinking for a moment. “You didn’t change your name, did you? I mean, you grew up as Josie Pigeon.”

“My family called me Josephine, but everyone else always knew me as Josie. Why?”

“Just wondering. What did she say to you?”

“About what?”

“About the past. What did she say about you two meeting again after all these years?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

ELEVEN

"NOW WAIT A second. How was Island Contracting chosen to be on Courtney Castle’s Castles?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who contacted you?”

“Bobby Valentine.”

“How?”

“He called on the phone. Why?”

Sam ignored her question and asked another of his own. “When?”

“About a month ago.”

“Did you take the call?”

She had to think to answer that question. “The answering machine actually picked up the call. I called him back.”

“And what did he say?”

“He asked if Island Contracting would be on the show. What else?”

“Josie, try to remember exactly what he said and when he said it. On the tape and during your first conversation.”

“I’m not sure I can,” she admitted.

“Try. It might turn out to be important.”

“Okay. I think he just introduced himself. You know, I’m Bobby Valentine and I’m a television producer and I need to speak with Josie Pigeon immediately. In fact, I’m sure that’s what he said because I remember Dottie was listening and she said he would be a difficult client since he was so snotty that he thought I should know right away what he did for a living. Of course, that was before we knew what he wanted. We thought he was calling about a normal remodeling job at first.”

“Of course. But you called him back, right?”

“Yes, immediately. And he explained that he didn’t want to hire us. He wanted Island Contracting for a television show. I . . . I’m not sure if he said the name of the show then. But he did say that he wanted to feature the remodeling project we were going to start this month, the one we’re doing now.”

“How did he refer to it? I mean, you usually say things like the Richardson project or the Jones project, right?”

“Sure. We refer to it by the owner’s name. This one we’ve been calling the PBS house though. Um . . . I think he may have called it the house on the bay.”

“How did he know about it?”

“Oh, that’s easy. He said that someone who worked on the show had told him about it and that they were always looking for interesting projects, which made a lot of sense at the time. Do you think he was lying?”

“I have no idea. But I sure would like to know which staff member knows the owners of that house. Who are the owners, by the way? Do they live on the island?”

“I doubt it. I’ve never met them.”

“What? Doesn’t that worry you?”

Josie laughed. “Are you kidding? You’ve been around long enough to know that homeowners frequently are big pains in the ass, always in a panic that the job won’t get done on time while making extensive and time-consuming changes. This job would be the easiest ever if that television show wasn’t involved.”

“So how did you get the remodeling job?”

“It just dropped in our laps. Like the TV show, come to think of it. The house is owned by a company called Island Homes. My contact has been through some lawyer. He called a few days before Bobby Valentine did and asked if I would look at an architect’s plan and submit a bid for the job. I did, and it was accepted.”

“That simple?” Sam, who had been around for more than one of Josie’s projects, was surprised.

“It was. I couldn’t believe it. The bid was accepted in a day. Amazing.”

“Have you ever had that happen before?”

“Yeah, once or twice. But usually with repeat clients. What happens is we do a job and the clients are happy with our work, so when they need something else done, they think of us. But everyone wants a bargain and there are a lot of contracting companies, so they ask for a few bids. But once the bids come in, they discover that our bid, if not the lowest, is in the ballpark and since they know our work, they really don’t have to think about it. They hire us right away.”

“But this is the first time it has happened with a new client?”

“I guess. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But so what? What could it have to do with Courtney’s disappearance?”

“Probably nothing. It’s just interesting.” He frowned.

“Didn’t you tell me that you had two big jobs this summer and the first was on one of those Cape Cods at the foot of the dunes? Did that job disappear?”

“Oh, no. It’s still on. We’re going to start that the third week of July. But you’re right. We were going to do them in reverse order. But things changed suddenly . . .”

“And Bobby Valentine just happened to want to tape the bay job for the show at the beginning of the summer?”

“How did you know?”

“Just a good guess. Seems to me there are a few too many coincidences here, Josie. Who made the change? The lawyer for Island Homes?”

“No. It was the other job. The family who owns that house had a change in plans. They were going to spend the second half of the summer in the house and I’d remodel the kitchen and add on a breakfast slash family room before then, but they decided to do it the other way and asked if Island Contracting could accommodate them.”

“But you had the Island Homes job by that time, right?”

“Yes, but I called their lawyer—he has an office in New York City—and asked him if we could make a change in the schedule. I didn’t think he’d go along with it, but he agreed and . . .”

“Why were you surprised that he agreed?”

“Well, usually the people who hire us have many things to consider when they schedule a job. Like getting the money to pay for the work. I mean, getting a bank loan can take quite a while. And then, of course, people have to adjust their lives— move out of the house, or the kitchen, or whatever. But apparently Island Homes doesn’t have to worry about any of that. The lawyer was quite happy with the change when we spoke on the phone and he sent back an annotated contract right away.”

“So apparently his client wasn’t planning on spending the first part of the summer in the house.”

“I haven’t the foggiest. I don’t get the impression that the owner is terribly attached to the house, to tell you the truth. I mean, when I’ve called about changes in the architect’s plans or brands or anything, the lawyer leaves most of the decisions up to me.”

“And that’s unusual.”

“Damn right. I sure wish we had more clients like him. The house will probably be put on the market at the end of summer, at least that’s my guess.”

“Why?”

“The lawyer wants the best—and recognizable brand names—which is what high-end developers usually insist on. And he hasn’t conveyed a single personal preference from anyone except for taking care of that damn sculpture in the living room. Most people are very vocal about their likes and dislikes.”

“But the sculpture is different?”

“It’s ugly as hell, but apparently, to some people, it would be a selling point.”

“But no one has specifically mentioned selling?”

“Why? Are you interested in buying a second home on the island?”

“No, just curious. Not that a second home wouldn’t be an excellent investment.”

Josie wasn’t interested. She couldn’t afford to buy a first home; a second home was just too far out of her frame of reference to discuss. “Well, Island Homes may be planning to use it as a rental property instead.”

“So things just happened to work out for Courtney Castle’s show. Did you ever ask Bobby Valentine for more specific information about how they found out about this project and why they thought it would be interesting enough to put on television?”

“Not really. But it wasn’t just the house on the bay and the unique aspects of that sort of building that interested them. They were interested in Island Contracting. He said that they thought their audience would love an all-female contracting company. But how did they know about us?” she asked, suddenly realizing that there were questions she hadn’t considered before.

“How was it explained to you?”

“It wasn’t. I . . . I was so flattered that I never even thought about it. Stupid, huh?”

“Completely understandable. And it could have been a coincidence. I mean, the show could have been told about this interesting house, and then when they investigated the story, they discovered that a unique contracting company was going to be doing the work and that just sold them on the entire thing.”

“Do you think that’s what happened?”

“I think it
could
have happened. But frankly, Josie, I doubt it.”

“Me, too.”

“What did Courtney say?”

“About what? This?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing.”

“You two hadn’t seen each other in how many years?”

“Wow. Let me think. Tyler is sixteen and I left school when I was two months pregnant. . . . I guess it’s been almost seventeen years.” She grinned. “In fact, she was there when I discovered I was pregnant. Although she couldn’t know that, of course.”

“What do you mean?”

Josie frowned. “I was so young and stupid. I don’t like to think about those times.” And she sure didn’t want to tell him about them.

“We all did stupid things when we were young,” Sam said gently. “Tell me about it.”

“Okay. See, I thought I couldn’t get pregnant.” She paused and, happy that he hadn’t asked why, continued with her tale. “So when I didn’t get my period, I went to the school infirmary to see a doctor. I wasn’t just surprised and upset to find out I was pregnant; I was embarrassed to be so naive. The doctor I saw was less than kind. In fact, it was obvious that he thought I was too stupid to be in college. He told me I was pregnant and said he was busy and had to see students who were really sick. I walked back out into the waiting room in shock. And Courtney was there.”

“She just happened to be there? You weren’t meeting her there for any reason?”

“No. Heavens, no. I spent a lot of my first two months on campus avoiding her.”

“Did you two speak? Did you tell her what you were doing there?”

“I wasn’t thinking straight. I was in shock. My whole life had changed in just a few minutes. And . . . there was something else.” It was becoming more and more difficult to talk about it.

Sam didn’t say anything. He just waited for her to continue.

“See, she was dating the guy who . . . who got me pregnant.” She didn’t say “Tyler’s father.” She didn’t think of him that way. She hadn’t thought of him that way since his response to her announcement that she was pregnant.

“She was dating him while you were dating him?” Sam’s voice was gentle.

“I think so. She was still dating him at that point. They could be seen necking all over campus.”

“That must have been horrible for you.”

“It was. But more before I discovered I was pregnant than after. Once I knew I was going to have a baby—or an abortion—nothing else mattered a lot.”

“Josie, did you tell the guy you were pregnant? Or did Courtney find out in some way?”

“I told them both. I told you, I wasn’t thinking. I actually blabbed it out to Courtney right there in the waiting room.”

“You just told her you were pregnant?”

“I don’t actually remember the words, but she knew I was pregnant and who . . . the father was.”

“Do you remember what she said?”

That she remembered as if it was yesterday. Courtney had looked up from the book she was studying, brushed her long hair back over her shoulder, and said, “It doesn’t surprise me, Josie. I always said you were stupid.”

Sam’s response to her statement was gratifying. “What a bitch!”

“Yeah, but she was right. I was stupid to get involved with that guy, even stupider to get pregnant, and then I did something else stupid. I told him.”

“Since you ended up here, I gather he didn’t offer to do the right thing.”

“To marry me? No way, but I don’t think I would have married him.” She frowned. “At least I hope not. But, anyway, you’re right, he never offered. He didn’t even offer to help pay for an abortion. But I guess I should be glad about that. I probably would have done it without thinking about whether or not it was what I wanted to do. When I think back on that time—and I don’t much—I realize that most people, including my family, thought I should have gotten rid of the baby, changed schools, and gone on with my life, but then I wouldn’t have Tyler.”

“And everyone who knows him is glad of that,” Sam assured her. “He’s quite a kid. And you’ve done a remarkable job of raising him and creating a life for yourself.”

“He really is wonderful, isn’t he?” Josie smiled. “But I was lucky, too. I came to the island and Noel offered to help me. I don’t like to think about where Tyler or I would be if that hadn’t happened.”

“But go back to Courtney,” Sam urged. “What happened to your relationship?”

“Nothing. That day in the infirmary office was the last time I saw her until this week. The word on campus was that she and her boyfriend broke up. Of course I knew why, but I didn’t tell anyone. That would have meant letting people know about my pregnancy.” She decided to skip over the rest. “Christmas break started two days later and I was planning on going home. I think . . . I think Courtney and her family went to St. Bart’s over vacation. I . . . My parents and I stopped speaking to each other and suddenly I found out that I was on my own in the world. I came here. And I’ve been here ever since.”

“And you’re not in contact with anyone who might have told you what Courtney was up to?”

“I hadn’t even thought of her in years and years.”

“What about her? Doesn’t it strike you as odd that she came here to tape a show? Did you get the impression that she knew she would find you here?”

“I have no idea.”

“And she honestly didn’t say a word when the two of you met again? Certainly she expected you to know who she is.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you think she probably assumed you would have watched her show and recognized her on TV?”

“I guess. Probably.”

“So what did she say when you two met?”

“Hello. I mean, she said hello, like she’d never met me before. Or maybe she didn’t remember.”

“Josie, I’ve got to tell you this. I think she remembered you. In fact, this may all be based on circumstantial evidence, but I’ll bet they are taping here because you are here.”