Remodeled to Death

by Valerie Wolzien

  “If they’re not, the building inspector will let you know, I’m sure. That type of thing must be in the code.”

  “What code?”

  “The building code. This town follows the U.B.C.—the Universal Building Code. You must remember that from the problems we had venting the laundry room through the garage.”

  “Oh, yes,” Susan lied. She did know that there had been extensive conversations on the subject, but she had tuned them out, preferring to put an intelligent (she hoped) look on her face and think of more interesting things. Her excuse was that her husband enjoyed the technical aspects of any remodeling job. She hoped it was true. “Maybe things will be different now that Simon Fairweather is dead.”

  “The law is the law. Someone else will just have to enforce it, that’s all. But why don’t you explain these drawings to me?” he requested.

  “First, I have some questions for you.” Susan grabbed a pile of pages obviously ripped from glossy shelter magazines. She chose two sheets and held them out to her husband. “Which do you like better?”

  “I don’t really like pink or … what is that color? Maroon?”

  “I’m not talking about the color. I’m talking about the floor plans, although I like the pattern in the tile floor here in this one.” She pointed. “And it’s really peach, not pink.”

  Jed was more interested in her diagrams than in the photographs. “You’re planning on turning this into a big project, aren’t you?” he asked slowly.

  “It is a big project—and as long as we’re going to have to do it anyway, we might as well do it right. Don’t you think?”

  “I think those may turn out to be famous last words. But you’re the one with great taste in the family. I’m sure you know best. Just add a radiant heater in the bathroom we use and choose anything but pink, please. Or apricot. Or peach. Or mango—”

  “Mangoes are orange.”

  “Whatever. I’m going to go upstairs now. I’m exhausted. But you can wake me up when you come to bed if you’d like. I’m not that tired.”

  Susan smiled. “I’m just going to spend a few more minutes here. Then I’ll shower … Oh. Well, I guess I’ll just wash my face. I’ll be up soon.”

  She was back to her drawings before her husband had left the room. The bathroom that her kids and guests used wasn’t going to be much of a problem, she decided. She knew the fixtures she wanted: reproductions of English porcelain that she had admired in the home of a friend. And brass and porcelain faucets. Probably white and black tiles on the floor in a traditional pattern that would go with the rest of the house. Maybe pinstripe wallpaper. She could add color with towels and accessories. Although it would be nice to replace that ugly jalousie window that someone had put in years ago. She looked down at her drawings. One Andersen double-hung window couldn’t add that much to the cost.…

  Truthfully, it wasn’t the cost of that bathroom that worried her. She looked down at the drawings she had made of the master bathroom of her dreams. For the next few hours Susan was involved in plans for watery iridescent tiles, extra-large bathtubs, shimmering mirrors, and everything else she had ever wanted in a bathroom. She drew lines on her diagrams, erased and redrew them, happy to be planning before the reality of finance and workmen got in her way. It wasn’t until she was washing her face in the tiny half-bath next to the kitchen that she remembered her conversation with Kathleen.

  She returned to the desk and pulled a new notebook from the desk drawer, placing it on top of the pile. She’d just spend a few minutes, she decided, making some notes about Simon Fairweather’s murder.

  FIVE

  Susan heard the knocking in her sleep. She thought it was a dream although it seemed a little odd that Jed was having the same dream.

  “The door,” he muttered, pulling a pillow over his head. “Smmm at dur.”

  Susan correctly interpreted his statement. “I’ll go find out who it is,” she said, trying to reach the floor with her feet. They had managed to have a small personal celebration after all, late last night, and she wanted nothing more than to stay in bed. “I’m coming,” she called out, and headed for the bathroom. And then she remembered. “Damn.”

  Jed sat up in bed. “The bathrooms. That must be the investigator from our insurance company. I thought he wasn’t coming until just before noon.”

  “Probably Cory Construction,” Susan said, grabbing yesterday’s jeans off the floor and yanking them on. The T-shirt on top of the pile in her dresser drawer and plastic sandals from the closet completed her hastily assembled ensemble and then she ran down the stairs.

  The man standing on her doorstep didn’t look like any of the carpenters Susan had hired before. In fact, he looked a lot like the professor in the abnormal psychology class she had taken during her sophomore year of college. But that was just prejudice, she reminded herself, thinking of the charming and well-dressed young men who leaped around roofs and crawled under beams on one of her favorite PBS shows. And Ken Cory probably didn’t wear chinos, loafers, and a madras sports jacket while he worked. He brushed his slightly long sandy hair off his forehead, straightened his horn-rimmed glasses, and smiled. “You must be Mrs. Henshaw. I’m Ken Cory.”

  “Of course. Won’t you come in?” Susan offered, opening the door wider. She could hear Clue scratching, apparently trapped behind a closed door nearby. “Could you wait a minute while I get my dog? You do like dogs, don’t you? I mean, you don’t mind working in a house with a dog around?”

  “I love dogs.” The answer was accompanied by a bright smile. “What kind do you have?”

  Susan didn’t have to answer, as Clue had discovered an escape route and was leaping around with joy at the sight of a friendly face.

  “Hey! A golden. I grew up with a golden retriever.” Ken Cory knelt down and allowed Clue to taste his face.

  “Why don’t I walk the dog while you make some coffee and then we can all talk?” Jed appeared at the top of the stairs, tucking his chambray shirt into the waist of his jeans.

  Susan introduced the two men, thinking that they should exchange clothing; Jed looked more like a workman than Ken Cory did. “I’m spread out in the study. Why don’t I show you the stuff and then you can look it over while I make the coffee,” she suggested to Ken as the dog pulled Jed out the door.

  “Great. Back there?”

  “Yes. How did you know?” Susan asked, leading the way.

  “This is a fairly common house plan in this part of Connecticut. Although yours has some unusual features. I particularly like the chestnut wainscotting here in the hallway.”

  “We added that ourselves,” Susan said.

  “Who did the stenciling around the ceiling?”

  “My daughter.”

  “Good job.” He looked more closely. “In fact, it’s an excellent job for an amateur.”

  “She’s an art student.”

  “Nothing like having talent in the family,” Ken Cory said, sitting down where Susan indicated.

  “Too bad one of us didn’t take up plumbing,” Susan said, handing him the sheets of paper she had spent hours poring over the night before. “We could use something more practical around here right now.”

  “Cory Construction can take care of the practical things—”

  “I’ll go make some coffee,” Susan interrupted, resisting the urge to hire him on the spot. She knew that Jed would object if she hired the company without his approval. And so would she. If she took all the responsibility, she would end up taking all the blame if something went wrong. She hurried off to the kitchen.

  It wasn’t easy to make coffee, but Susan managed, getting water from the bathroom and moving her grinder and coffeemaker to the table instead of the counter to avoid treading through the mess on the floor. She’d be glad when the insurance person had finished looking around and they could clean up. It took longer than usual and she was carrying a heavy tray (she’d pulled some small Danish pastries from the freezer and heated them in the microwave)
back to the study when Jed and Clue returned.

  “I filled her food dish and put it in her dog-run. I don’t think she should be left alone in the kitchen until it’s cleaned up. And there’s coffee and Danish for the rest of us,” she said.

  “Looks good. I’ll take her out and join you. What did he think of the damage?”

  “I … I decided you should show him around. I just gave him the plans I made last night.” She hurried off, not wanting to hear any criticism of her priorities. Besides, she was anxious to know what a professional thought of her ideas for the master bathroom.

  Ken Cory was sitting at the desk, apparently too en grossed in her drawings to notice her entrance.

  “What do you think?” Susan asked, setting the tray on a corner of the desk.

  “Looks wonderful.” He eyed the tray.

  “Actually, I was asking about the plans I made,” Susan admitted, pouring coffee into a cup and handing it to him. “There’s milk and sugar. And please have some Danish.”

  “Thanks.” He helped himself. “I’m impressed with this,” he added, motioning to her plans. “Did your daughter draw them?”

  “No, she’s in Europe for a month. I’m afraid that’s just my own inept scribbling. But you probably want to see exactly what happened. My husband can show you around. He’s just feeding Clue.”

  “Clue? That’s the dog’s name?”

  Susan nodded. She didn’t want to explain that her family had named the puppy Susan Hasn’t Got a Clue in honor of some of her more difficult moments during a murder investigation. “You know, I was wondering if we could replace the window in the master bathroom with something more interesting.”

  “Like a round window or a hexagon?”

  “Exactly!” Susan felt she had found a kindred soul.

  “Sure can. But you have to remember that most of them don’t open and the ones that do are pretty expensive.”

  “Everything is going to be pretty expensive.” Jed had joined them.

  Ken put down his food and stood quickly. “I haven’t seen the damage yet.”

  “Maybe we should start there,” Jed suggested.

  “The house is a mess …” Susan began, and then realized how stupid she sounded.

  “Don’t worry. I’m used to it.” The two men left her alone.

  Susan absently ate a couple of poppyseed Danish while trying to decide whether or not it was necessary for the only window in the master bath to open. She had moved on to wondering if maybe a black and white color scheme was slightly … well, slightly colorless … by the time the men returned. They were laughing. Susan suspected some male bonding had taken place over the cracked pipes.

  Ken broke off as soon as he saw her. (Jed didn’t.) “You sure weren’t exaggerating when we spoke on the phone yesterday. You have a true mess on your hands here.”

  “Luckily, Cory Construction can start on the job as soon as the insurance inspector leaves,” Jed surprised Susan by saying.

  “Even sooner, if you include planning and ordering all the fixtures,” Ken added.

  “Are you sure enough about what you want for us to go ahead now?” Jed checked with his wife. “It usually takes you longer than this to make decorating decisions. And the color of tile and the position of a window isn’t easily changed.”

  “Actually, I’ve been thinking about the second-floor bathrooms for a while,” Susan admitted.

  “I suspected that all those magazines didn’t just appear overnight,” Jed said, glancing at the pile of reading material covering his desk. “But you really know what you want?”

  “I don’t have all the specifics. Like I know I want the sink that the Kenneys have in their guest bathroom, but I don’t know who manufactures it—”

  “I have dozens of catalogs in the truck,” Ken interrupted. “If you’re really anxious to get started, you two’d better spend some time figuring out exactly what you want. The sooner you decide, the sooner I can order. And I can’t give you a final price until all the specs are in place.”

  “Sounds like we’re going to have a busy morning,” Jed said, pulling up a chair and sitting down next to his wife.

  “I’ll go get the catalogs from the truck and then I’d better head back to my office and start getting your job organized.”

  “You’ll bring back the preliminary figures?” Jed looked up to ask.

  “Absolutely.”

  Susan waited until Ken Cory had returned with a foot-high pile of catalogs and then left again before she asked Jed if he was completely satisfied with the decision to hire Cory Construction.

  “Do you think it’s a mistake?” he asked anxiously. “I thought you were hot on this company. Did you hear something against them?”

  “No, nothing,” Susan lied. As she was thinking about that, the doorbell rang and someone opened the door without waiting for an answer. “Susan? Jed? It’s me. Kathleen.”

  “Come on in, Kath. We’re in the study,” Susan yelled back.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I visit your bathroom,” Kathleen called as she passed the doorway. “Is there water?”

  “Just on the first floor,” Jed called out, frowning over the Kohler price list. “Black bathtubs?” He flipped to the back of the pamphlet. “Good lord! What are they making these faucets out of? Solid gold?”

  Susan didn’t respond. She knew it would take a while for Jed to adjust to the prices of things he had taken for granted all these years.

  “And look at the difference in price between an ordinary cast-iron bathtub and a whirlpool.”

  Susan started to scratch out the rectangle on her plans for the master bath.

  “Of course, you could get a whirlpool that’s made from acrylic for a lot less,” he continued.

  She retraced her original.

  “But I’ll bet no one uses it after the first few months.”

  She just shook her head and reached for the catalog of Andersen windows. “Did you know that you can buy both hexagon and octagon windows?” she asked casually.

  “Do they open? A window should open,” Jed said.

  Susan made another mark on her design and then returned to the catalog. “There are also parallelograms and diamonds and trapezoids.…”

  Jed stopped writing numbers down on the edge of a used envelope and looked up at his wife. “Sue, why are we talking about windows? The windows in the bathroom are fine. It’s the inside wall that we have to worry about.”

  “As long as we’re doing this, I thought we could get rid of that ugly window in our bathroom. You know how we’ve always said we hated it.”

  “Okay, but I don’t think we need to worry about parallelograms and other exotic shapes.”

  “I was just commenting,” she assured him. She wasn’t even sure what a parallelogram was.

  “You two look busy,” Kathleen said, coming into the room with an empty mug in her hand. “I hope that’s still hot.” She nodded at the coffeepot.

  “I thought you were giving up coffee during your pregnancy,” Susan said.

  “I don’t think I have to worry about damaging this little sweetie’s development so late in the pregnancy,” Kathleen said, choosing a Danish pastry from the plate. “Have you chosen a contractor yet?”

  “Cory Construction,” Jed said, while Susan frowned at her friend. Kathleen had asked that question just a little too casually.

  “That’s right. Ken Cory was due over here this morning, wasn’t he?” Kathleen asked.

  “Yes. Susan explained her plans and I showed him around the disaster area. He’s a nice guy, and due to a last-minute change of plans, his company is free to start right away, and you know how Susan always checks out everyone on the town hotline. So we hired him. He left all these catalogs and he’ll be back to finalize things this afternoon. That reminds me, I want to get our insurance policy out of the safe-deposit box before that inspector shows up.”

  Susan glanced at her watch. “You better hurry up and do it then.”

 
“If the inspector appears, just show him around. Don’t sign anything until we have a second chance to look it over.”

  “Fine with me.” Susan wondered why Kathleen was kicking her under the table. And she asked her why as soon as they were alone together.

  “I just wondered if Jed knew that you hired Cory Construction just because you were investigating the murder.”

  “No, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it. I don’t want to worry him.”

  SIX

  There was loud music falling down the stairway as Susan led Clue into the house. For a moment she thought one of the children was home. Then she realized that neither teen ever listened to country-and-western ballads. She optimistically ordered the dog to stay and climbed the stairs.

  “Hello? Jed? Is that you?”

  It wasn’t Jed. The music was emanating from a gray boom box liberally covered with black fingerprints. Susan assumed the fingerprints would match the fingers of the heavyset man peering into the hole in her bathroom wall. He wore a greasy T-shirt with green Sears, Roebuck work pants. He had graying hair, tan skin, and what looked like a dozen gold chains around his grimy neck. Susan could see three crosses and at least four other religious medals tangled in the hair on his chest. Seeing her, he reached over and turned down the volume on his radio … slightly.

  “YOU MUST BE THE LADY OF THE HOUSE,” he announced loudly.

  Susan nodded, trying to put an appropriate smile on her face.

  “I’M BUNS,” he added.

  “What?” He had said it loudly, but she still thought she must have misheard.

  “BUNS,” he repeated a little more loudly. “DON’T ASK WHY, BUT IT’S WHAT THE GUYS ALL CALL ME.”

  “But who are you?”

  “PLUMBER. I’M ONE OF YOUR PLUMBERS. YOU GOT TWO. THIS HERE’S GONNA BE A REAL BIG PLUMBING JOB.”

  She had spent over a hundred dollars to get rid of those men yesterday and look who had replaced them. Susan felt a headache gathering behind her temples. “Do you think you could turn down that … the radio?” she requested loudly.