Remodeled to Death

by Valerie Wolzien

  REMODELED

  TO DEATH

  A Susan Henshaw Mystery

  Valerie Wolzien

  © Valerie Wolzien 1995

  Valerie Wolzien has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1995 by Ballantine Books.

  This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ONE

  “Do you think they’ll be all right?” Susan asked her husband, lowering the car window to wave at a neighbor who was out walking the dog.

  “Hon, this is the first time in almost twenty years that we’re going to have a whole month to ourselves. You’re not going to spend all August worrying about the kids, are you?” Jed Henshaw asked as he turned the car down the road on which they had lived for the past fifteen years.

  “Not a chance! I’ve made plans. I’m going to get up early each day and do yoga with the lady on public TV, then run at least two miles in the morning, swim laps at the club in the afternoon, get lots of reading done, clean out the basement, the garage, and the attic, and paint both upstairs bathrooms. What do you think about apricot?”

  “Sounds like you’re going to be busy. You know, I was hoping we’d be spending more time together,” Jed suggested, placing his hand on his wife’s knee.

  “I just happened to put a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator while you and Chad were filling his backpack this morning.” She smiled and patted his hand. “But you didn’t answer my question. What do you think about apricot?”

  “I like them. But it’s been a long day, why don’t we eat out tonight?”

  “Not the fruit, the color. I was thinking about painting the walls in our bathroom light apricot,” she explained as they entered their driveway. “And maybe lemon yellow in the other bath.”

  “Sounds pretty.”

  “Too feminine?”

  Jed moved his hand off his wife’s knee and pressed the garage-door opener. “Why don’t we take a nice cool shower and think about it?”

  “Okay. But someone has to walk Clue first. She’s been alone for hours.”

  “Why don’t I walk her and you can get the champagne and glasses out,” Jed suggested, putting his foot on the brake and opening the car door in almost one movement.

  “No one would ever guess that we’ve been married for nearly a quarter of a century, would they?” Susan answered, getting out of the car and following him to the door between the garage and the kitchen.

  “It gets better every day. What the … ?”

  Susan ran smack into her husband’s back. “What’s wrong? Is it Clue … ?” But the golden retriever bounded by Jed and leaped up on Susan. “What’s this gooey stuff on her paws?” she asked, realizing that the dog was covering her beige shorts with globs of grayish slime. “Down, Clue! Jed, this stuff reeks!” She grabbed the big animal’s collar and peered around her husband. “Oh, no!” she wailed. “What happened?”

  The Henshaws stood and stared at their kitchen. When they’d left home this morning, there had been dirty dishes cluttering the counters, coffee grounds tossed in the sink, and half-full boxes of dry cereal standing in the middle of the kitchen table. Now there was also a gaping hole in the plaster ceiling and the quarry tile floor was covered with rusty water and slimy muck.

  “What happened?” Susan repeated.

  “I think,” Jed began slowly, “that we’re going to have to worry about more than the color of the bathroom walls.”

  “What?”

  “Why don’t you put Clue in the backyard and I’ll go upstairs and look around?” he urged, then hurried off without waiting for a response.

  Susan stood still, scratching behind the dog’s ears and trying to assimilate what had happened.

  “Hon! You better find the number of that plumber we used when we had the hot-water heater replaced last winter!”

  Susan looked down. There were about twenty gallons of filthy water on the floor between her and the address book, which was lying on the counter under the wall phone. She reached out to get a mop from the broom closet.

  “And don’t touch anything until we take photographs for the insurance investigators!”

  Susan put her hand down, realizing that her husband’s voice was coming through the hole in the ceiling. She sighed. “Come on, Clue, why don’t you go terrorize the squirrels in the yard?”

  The dog dashed out the door that Susan opened as Jed called down from above, “Would you turn off the main shutoff valve?”

  “The what?” Susan called back up, wondering why they had an expensive intercom system if everyone was going to rely on yelling to get messages between floors. Of course, in this case, Jed was actually yelling through the floor.

  “The main water shutoff—it’s in the basement. Above the washing machine. I’ve shown it to you more than once—”

  “I remember! I remember!” All she actually remembered was that Jed had insisted on showing her something hidden in the ceiling over the clothes dryer, but she wasn’t going to admit that now. “Turn it off, right?”

  “It turns off left!”

  Susan frowned and hurried to the basement. First she’d find it, then she would worry about which way to turn it. Water had run across the floor and was dripping down the basement stairs, so she was careful not to slip on her way down. Loud noises were coming from above and she could only hope that Jed was in control of whatever was happening up there. She didn’t relish any of that sludge pouring down on her head.

  There were two knobs sticking out of the many copper pipes hidden in the ceiling of the laundry room. One was red and one green. Susan shrugged and twisted the red knob to the left until it would turn no more. Then she moved everything out of the path of the sludge before she returned upstairs. Jed was still yelling, but it was difficult to understand his words as the dog was scratching on the door and the phone began ringing. Assuming the answering machine was on, she decided to ignore the dog and ran upstairs to see exactly what was happening to her house.

  Jed wasn’t on the second floor, but she didn’t have any trouble finding him. She just followed the squishy footprints leading down the hallway to the attic entrance. “Jed?”

  “Up here.”

  Susan opened the door and climbed the maroon-painted steps to the space under the roof. Before they had moved into the house, a previous owner had made some halfhearted attempts to turn this area into a living space, even adding a tiny half-bath under the eaves. The Henshaws used the area mainly for storage, although Susan had once set up a sewing machine in one corner and there was still evidence of Chad’s enchantment with HO scale trains many years ago. Jed’s footprints led across the wide wood planks to the bathroom.

  “Jed? What are you doing?” The loud noises had resumed.

  “Look at that,” he insisted without answ
ering her question.

  “I can’t see.” She moved around him and peered down into the hole he had ripped in the floor of the bathroom. “What is it?”

  “The top of our cracked main drainpipe. Who would have thought they were still using cast iron when this house was built?”

  Susan assumed that was a rhetorical question.

  But his next one wasn’t. “When is the plumber arriving?”

  “Ah … I couldn’t find his number.…” Susan lied.

  “Call Jerry then. He told me they were going to have a new dishwasher installed before the baby came. Maybe they have the name of a good plumber.”

  “Okay. But I have to go to the bathroom …”

  “You can’t flush the toilets.”

  “I can’t?”

  “You turned off the water, didn’t you? Susan, I hope—”

  “I did—if you’re talking about the red knob in the ceiling of the laundry room. But I better go call Kathleen about that plumber, hadn’t I?” Susan asked, trotting down the stairs toward her bedroom to phone.

  She quickly dialed her best friend’s phone number, more anxious to discover if Kathleen (nine months and eleven days pregnant) had started labor than to acquire the name of a good plumber.

  Kathleen answered on the first ring. “Hello? Susan?”

  “Hi! How did you know it was me?”

  “I’ve been leaving messages on your machine all morning,” Kathleen explained.

  “Your contractions have started! You need me to drive you to the hospital. Where’s Jerry?” Susan wondered where she had stashed her purse as she talked.

  “Don’t get excited. Not a chance. I think this baby is planning on attending college in utero. I’ve been calling all day. Where have you been?”

  “At the airport. We thought we were going to be able to get Chad off to Bangor and Chrissy on her way to Kennedy airport in less than an hour. But Chrissy’s plane was grounded because of some sort of mechanical problem and we had to make other arrangements for her to connect with a flight to Barcelona—and while we were doing that, Chad missed his flight to Maine. So we had to contact the Outward Bound people to see that their van picked him up from the later flight and …”

  “But they both got out okay?”

  “Yes,” Susan said, surprised by Kathleen’s lack of interest. “But what I called for,” she continued, “is the name of your plumber. We just got home and one of the pipes broke on the third floor and water came through the kitchen ceiling and—”

  “It missed the second floor?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You have water on the first floor that came from the attic without hitting the second floor—”

  “Wait a second,” Susan interrupted, putting the receiver down on the bed and hurrying over to the adjoining bedroom. She left the small room more slowly. “Kathleen? Are you still there?” she asked, picking up the receiver.

  “Yes. Susan—”

  “It’s a mess! The ceiling fell into the tub. The tub enclosure is smashed. There’s glass all over the floor. Oh, God, the other bathroom shares that wall. Kath, I’ll call you back.” She hung up without waiting for a response.

  The second bathroom on the floor was worse than the first. The wall had collapsed as well as the ceiling, and the toilet was cracked and leaking water onto the green and white tile floor. Susan was beginning to feel overwhelmed.

  Jed appeared behind her. “Did you call the plumber?”

  “I think we need more than a plumber. Both bathrooms are going to have to be completely remodeled. And there is the ceiling in the kitchen—and who knows what’s happening to the floor down there. There’s even muck dripping down the basement stairs, Jed!”

  “A plumber is the place to start. He’ll be able to assure us that we can use the water in the rest of the house without causing any more damage.”

  “I’ll call Kathleen back—”

  “No, I’ll call Jerry. If they weren’t happy with their plumber, we should find someone else. This is going to be a big job. Why don’t you find the Polaroid camera and start taking pictures of this stuff? Then we can start cleaning up. I should call the insurance company right away, too.…”

  Susan left her husband to make his calls and started back downstairs. She knew that the cameras were in the closet in Jed’s study. And unlike much of the other equipment in the house, she knew how to work them all. She trotted down the stairs, averted her eyes from the mess in her kitchen, and hurried to the study. She was opening the closet door when she noticed the light flashing on the answering machine. Maybe someone other than Kathleen had called; she might as well listen to the messages while putting film in the camera. She pressed the correct button.

  The first three calls were from Kathleen. But the next message was very interesting.

  “Hello, Susan. Jed. It’s Brett Fortesque. Susan, could you please give me a call as soon as possible? Call the police station. Whoever answers will know how to get hold of me.”

  And did, she wondered a minute later, the next message hold a clue to the reason why the chief of Hancock, Connecticut’s, police department seemed so anxious to speak with her?

  “Hello, Susan. This is Margo Kellerman. Did you hear? If you start investigating this one, Susan, you’re going to have to consider me as a major suspect. I would have enjoyed shooting that man myself. Of course, everyone who’s had a house worked on in this town had more than a few good reasons to murder Simon Fairweather.”

  The irritatingly loud beep at the end of the tape startled Susan. She was wondering how she was going to get three bathrooms and a kitchen repaired when the town’s building inspector had just been killed.

  TWO

  “Susan? Did you find the camera?” Jed appeared in the doorway behind her. “I got hold of a plumber—he’s not the one Jerry recommended, but at least he’s willing to come over immediately. And Kathleen says it’s important that you call her back—she just heard something about Simon Fairway—”

  “Simon Fairweather,” Susan corrected her husband. “You met him when we wanted to build the workshop over the garage. He’s the building inspector.”

  “That ass—”

  “You might not want to insult him,” Susan interrupted. “Apparently he’s been murdered.”

  That stopped him. “Hon, we’ve only been home fifteen minutes. How did you end up in the middle of a murder investigation so quickly?”

  “I’m not in the middle of anything! I just happened to get some interesting messages on the machine.” She reached for the phone. “I guess I should call Brett back first.”

  Jed sighed and left her to it. When the chief of police called, his wife usually answered.

  Susan was about to dial Brett’s number when the phone rang. Kathleen was on the other end of the line.

  “Hi. Did Jed tell you about Simon Fairweather?”

  “No, but Margo left a message that he had been murdered. What happened?”

  “I don’t know that much,” Kathleen admitted. “Margo just called me, too. She said that Simon’s body was discovered in his office down at the municipal center this morning.”

  “Who found him?”

  “Brett.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No. The police department’s open all night, of course, and I guess Brett was wandering around early this morning—”

  A loud click interrupted Kathleen.

  “Kath, we had call waiting added to the line because we were worried about the kids not being able to get through,” Susan explained.

  “Fine.”

  Susan pressed the correct button and found herself listening to Brett.

  “Susan, I’m glad you’re home. Simon Fairweather was found dead in his office this morning.”

  “How was he killed?” Susan asked. She had heard this part of the story already.

  There was a short pause before Brett answered. “Do you know anything about nail guns?”

  “You mean …�
�

  “They’re very effective weapons,” Brett said succinctly.

  “I understand you found him,” Susan said, not wanting to think more than was necessary about what she had just been told.

  “You have good sources.”

  “Do you think he was murdered last night?”

  “Absolutely. He was at work yesterday. A lot of people saw him here as well as around town. We don’t know who the last person was to see him alive yet, but we’ll be finding out.”

  “His family …” Susan began.

  “His wife is on a cruise up the inland passage from Vancouver to Anchorage. We put in a call to her ship, but she hasn’t gotten back to us yet. I don’t know if they had any kids. If they did, they must be grown up and living away from home.”

  “They didn’t have children. There may be other relatives around here. I think Simon’s aunt lives on the other side of town in the house that both she and Simon were brought up in,” Susan began.

  “Then you know a lot about the family.”

  Susan thought that Brett sounded relieved. “A little. But it’s not like we’re close friends,” she admitted, remembering her husband’s comment about their planned garage expansion. “In fact, Jed is still angry about a proposal that was turned down by the building inspector’s office.”

  “Recently?”

  “Last year. I was just telling Kathleen about— Oh, my goodness, I left Kathleen on the other line. Hold on a sec, Brett.” She pressed the button and returned to her friend. “Kath, are you still there?”

  A dial tone answered her question. “Damn.” She punched the button that she thought would return her to Brett but got an identical response. “Damn, damn, damn.” She dialed the police station again. “Brett? I’m sorry I cut you off,” she apologized.

  “No problem. I’m used to it. Just one of the minor irritations of life in our electronic age. Right now I’m more interested in knowing about your relationship with Simon Fairweather.”

  “I don’t have a relationship with Simon Fairweather.” Susan was aware of noises indicating that someone had let Clue into the house. “I mean, I didn’t. I know his wife because I’ve taken classes with her at the Art Center downtown. But I didn’t have any sort of relationship with Simon Fairweather—not more than anyone else in town. He was our building inspector, that’s all. Why? Why are you calling me rather than someone else?”