“I think so.”
“Well, this poster was being used as a dartboard and guess whose face was in the center of it?”
“Whose?”
“Simon Fairweather’s.”
THIRTEEN
Susan woke up the next morning in the middle of a dream in which the entire town of Hancock was lining up outside the municipal center to vote for “the most hated man in the world.” Naturally, Simon Fairweather was coming in first. The other candidates included a well-known serial killer and a fascist dictator.
Susan rolled over, trying to get back to sleep. And she might have succeeded if Jed hadn’t asked her a question.
“Do you hear that?”
“What?”
“Sounds like music. Coming from above.”
Susan giggled. “Heavenly choirs? An angelic chorus? It is Sunday, you know.”
“Aretha Franklin,” Jed insisted, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “I think I’d better check it out.”
Susan reached down toward the end of the bed for a cotton blanket before remembering that they had spent the night in the guest room, their own room being covered in plastic and a thick layer of plaster dust. “Damn.” She was cold and it occurred to her that the sounds Jed had heard were coming from the attic. The second day of work on the house had begun. She might as well go downstairs and start the coffeemaker so that there would be a cup waiting when she returned from walking Clue. All she had to do now was sneak into her bedroom and get her bathrobe.
Susan was wearing a bright purple nightshirt; it had been a Christmas gift to her daughter from a friend at college. Chrissy had refused to have anything to do with the gift and it had ended up in the bottom drawer of the guest room dresser. Until the lights had gone off the night before, neither she nor Jed had realized there was a suggestive glow-in-the-dark message printed on the shirt. Susan had been slightly shocked; her husband had thought it was a good suggestion.
Jed reappeared with a paper cup of steaming coffee in each hand.
“Hey, where did you get that?” Susan asked, taking a cup and starting to remove the plastic lid.
“The worker with the weird hair brought it for us.”
“They’re called dreadlocks and his name is Frankie. And bless him; I needed this,” Susan said, taking a long sip of the potent brew. “Did you know they were going to start work this early?”
“Actually, Ken told me yesterday. I guess I forgot to mention it to you.”
“I guess.”
“Maybe you’d like me to walk Clue?”
Susan accepted the offer. “Do you think I could get into the bedroom and find some clean clothes without being seen?”
“Definitely. They’re working on the third floor putting in the new piping up there. See you in a while. Maybe we should go out today—to the park or something—and spend some time lying under the trees and thinking these bathrooms out.”
“Good idea. But don’t you want breakfast first?”
“Sure. Why don’t I walk Clue, then drive down to the bakery and pick up some breakfast. It was nice of those guys to get coffee for us and I think we should return the favor. Then we can leave after we eat and glance at the Times.”
“Fine.” Susan hopped out of bed and trotted across the hall to her own bedroom as soon as Jed was gone. Promising herself that she would spend some time today moving essentials to the guest room, she lifted up the sheet of plastic, dumping filth down the front of her nightshirt before succeeding in retrieving fresh underwear, shorts, and a knit shirt. The angry words of Bob Marley alerted her to Frankie’s whereabouts and she glanced at the gaping hole in the bathroom ceiling before fleeing back to the guest room to dress. She had good reason to hurry. She wanted to talk to Frankie before Jed returned from the bakery.
In an orderly world Frankie wouldn’t have been the person she started her investigation with, but life right now was anything but orderly. She tossed the nightshirt on the bed, pulled her clothing on, and ran downstairs to brush her teeth and wash her face.
Art Young was sitting at her kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading a 1993 Information Please Almanac. He looked up when Susan entered. “Hello. Your husband just left with the dog. Did you know that all golden retrievers are descended from a pair of Russian circus dogs that visited London … Ah, I don’t know how long ago. Damn. Better look that up.” He pulled a tiny black notebook from the pocket in his plaid shirt and after shuffling through it to find an empty page wrote himself a note.
“Actually,” Susan began, feeling a little awkward about socializing with someone she barely knew before she had brushed her teeth or her hair. “I think that story about retrievers is just a romantic tale. Clue’s breeder said they were descended from Newfoundlands.”
“Interesting,” Art Young said, making another note. “Better check that out, too. You never know when ‘Perky Pets’ will appear as a topic on the show.”
“I … uh, I have to use the bathroom,” Susan said honestly.
“Don’t flush until you check with those guys upstairs. They’ve pulled out that cracked drain.”
Susan knew it was too early to knock on a neighbor’s door and ask to use the john. She hurried off to do what she had to do, deciding that she should find out what time the field club opened. Then maybe she would ask Art Young about the letter to Simon Fairweather that she had spied hanging out of his tool chest.
But opportunity wasn’t going to wait for her to brush her teeth, and the carpenter had vanished from her kitchen when she had finally managed to make herself presentable. She headed toward the reggae beat.
“Hi!” Frankie, ever cheerful, rubbed a filthy hand across his forehead and turned off the radio propped on a windowsill. “We’re making too much noise, aren’t we?”
“I told him that shit was too loud,” Buns said, turning off the flame on the torch. “Can’t understand a word myself. But I like the beat. Reminds me of the music in the bar at the hotel where the wife and I spent our honeymoon.”
“You went to Jamaica for your honeymoon?” Susan asked, to be polite.
“Nah. Who do you think we are, Rockefellers? We went to Atlantic City. Sprung for the honeymoon suite at the Polynesian Princess Palace. It was tom down to make way for one of them skyscraper casinos.”
“Oh, really?” Susan said, noticing that Frankie had turned around so that his co-worker wouldn’t see his grin.
“Yeah, nice, simple beat,” Buns said, returning to his work.
Susan, who understood enough of the lyrics to know that this nice, simple beat accompanied a plea for the world to unite through the use of an illegal drug, couldn’t think of anything to say this early in the morning.
“Damn!” Buns put his torch down on a sheet of metal and stood up. “Back to the truck. Ran out of flux again.”
“I’ll …”
“Nah. I could use some coffee, too. You stay here and explain to Mrs. Henshaw what we’re doing. The householder always likes to know what we’re doing—leastways at first.” Buns threw this last cryptic remark over his shoulder as he vanished down the stairs.
Frankie waited until they were alone before speaking. “He’s a nice guy.”
“Have you two worked together for a long time?” Susan asked, leaning against the wall and looking around.
“Couple of years. Buns gave me my first on-the-job training. He’s the only plumber I’ve ever worked with—although maybe I shouldn’t tell you that. Might not build your confidence.”
“You seem to know what you’re doing.”
“Yeah, well, the first few months I worked with Buns he threatened to fire me if I screwed anything up. I was scared to death of ending up on the street, so I learned real quickly. I’m a good plumber and I like my work. You don’t have to worry about your pipes leaking.”
“You work for … Buns.” Susan had trouble saying that name. “Or do you work for Ken Cory?”
“We both work for Cory Construction, but Buns is the sen
ior plumber. Ken actually hired me. A little over two years ago.”
“You like working for Cory Construction?” Susan asked casually, ducking under one of the eaves as she walked around.
“Yeah. They’re all right. Ken’s a real nice guy and everyone on his crew gets along okay.”
“Just okay?”
“Well, we work together every day all day long. Sometimes we get on each other’s nerves.”
“Do you work on more than one project at a time?”
“Sometimes. Not this one though.” Frankie chuckled and his dreadlocks bounced. “This job is bigger than most. After all, it’s really three jobs in one location, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” Susan agreed. “Does that mean that the men working on this job are all the men who work for Cory Construction?”
“Pretty much. Buns and I are the only plumbers. Art Young has been Ken’s main finish carpenter for years. Kyle just hired on this summer. He’s replacing a carpenter who was with Ken forever—maybe even before Art. And Ken works along with the crew a lot of the time. Then there’s Angelo. I don’t know if you’ve met him yet.”
“I don’t think so.” Susan was feeling a little confused, trying to connect the names with the faces.
“He’s the electrician and that’s about it, except for the Joes. They’re the tile men we usually use. They work for other contractors, of course. Tiling a bathroom rarely takes more than a day or two—of course, on this job, that’s six days, so you’ll get to see more of the Joes than most homeowners do.”
“Why do you call them the Joes?”
“That’s what everyone calls them. They’re all named Joe. There’s Uncle Joe and his two nephews, Joe and Joel—both named after their uncle. They are an experience. Uncle Joe believes two things: First that he knows everything about the world that is worth knowing, and second that his nephews know nothing. He spends all his time instructing them in the ways of life while the three of them do the best job of laying tile of anyone in Connecticut.” He looked up at Susan. “Pick out interesting tiles. Those three are truly masters of their trade. Uncle Joe’s uncle came over here from a little town in Tuscany and brought not just the skills but an eye that can’t be beat—and it’s been passed down in the family.”
“That’s good to know,” Susan said, regretting the dull pattern she’d chosen for this floor. Maybe there was time to change it.
“The Joes picked up the materials you selected at Tile City last night,” Buns announced, appearing at the top of the stairs. “That is what you were talking about, isn’t it?”
“Well …” Susan began.
“Actually, I was just trying to help Mrs. Henshaw figure out who was who on the crew,” Frankie explained.
“Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all. Lots of homeowners never figure out who’s who and then phone messages and all get real mixed up.”
“Phone messages?”
“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Henshaw, Ken Cory’s not like other contractors. We’d be in big trouble if we started using the homeowners’ phone for personal calls. We don’t do things like that. No way. But you’ll be getting calls for us. Sometimes Ken will call with an important message—work-related, mind you. And sometimes the companies we do business with will call. Like to see if there’s someone here to accept a delivery. Or to check out information about an order. Course, they’re told to call Cory Construction first and Ken carries one of them new cellular phones, but still you’ll get calls.”
Susan remembered how difficult it had been to leave a message for Cory Construction and resigned herself to more calls than usual—or maybe not, she decided, remembering that her children’s friends wouldn’t be tying up the line.
“Frankie was just telling me that you’ve been with Cory Construction for quite a while,” she said as casually as she could.
“Yup. Almost from the beginning, and that was almost six years ago. Before that I worked with different crews, lots of different ones. That was in the eighties. No reason for any competent carpenter to sit on his butt during the eighties. And plenty of incompetent ones worked then, too.”
Susan wondered how long ago it had been since Simon Fairweather had had his own business. “Did you work for many of the companies in town?” she asked.
“Nah. I worked down at the Jersey shore. Just came up to Connecticut five years ago. The wife’s father died and she wanted to be near her mother. The old lady lives up in Hartford. The wife sees her on weekends. Me, I like working on Sunday, so I don’t have to go along.”
Susan smiled at this display of family devotion.
“Course, George and Art have worked in this town all their lives. They were working with Ken before I was.”
Susan was glad that he had brought up the name of the other carpenter so that she could ask some questions about him. “George? I think someone mentioned him before,” she said.
“George Porter. The original finish carpenter for Cory Construction. He’s the guy that Kyle replaced a few months ago. Yup, George was a real original. I sure miss him.”
“He retired?”
“Died. One of those accidents. Touched a live wire with his metal wrench. Burned him to a crisp in less time than it takes to say Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
Susan gagged as Jed appeared at the top of the stairs, a bulging white bakery box in his hand.
“Doughnuts, anyone?” he offered.
Just the scent, usually delicious, made her nauseous and it was with relief that she rushed past her husband and fled down the stairway to answer the phone.
“Hello?” She fell on the bed, gasping for breath and only managing to fill her lungs with plaster dust. She had assumed it was for one of the crew, so the message surprised her.
“I’ll be right there,” she assured the caller before hanging up and running from the room.
“Jed! I’m on my way to the Gordons’ house. Kathleen’s labor has begun!”
FOURTEEN
“You’re certainly back quickly. I thought you were going to be there until Kathleen’s mother came up from Philly. No one can make that drive in less than three hours,” Jed said, looking up from the newspaper he’d been reading when Susan appeared on the patio.
“True, but the woman had some sort of premonition and left home before five a.m. She got there about an hour after I arrived. Actually, I would have been home quite a while ago if Mrs. Somerville hadn’t insisted on a critique of the bathroom plans I was working on when she walked in the door.”
“Any word about Kathleen or the baby?”
“Nothing yet. I’m sure they’ll call as soon as there’s any news.” She sat down on the lounge next to her husband. “Do you want to see what I accomplished while Ba—Alex built a spaceship with Legos? You’ll be thrilled; I think I’ve finally got everything figured out,” she added, handing him a large sheet of paper.
“What the … ?”
“Ignore the marks made in red pencil. They’re Kathleen’s mother’s—she wanted to be sure I’d recognize the improvements she was making. What sort of woman has a red pencil conveniently tucked into her purse?”
Jed stared at the plans she had handed him. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ve moved the wall! It came to me on the drive over. Look, all you have to do is shift the linen closet in the hallway and the bathroom off our bedroom becomes a rectangle instead of a square. We can put in a truly long bathtub and an extra-large separate shower.”
“A double shower.”
“Yes, with a seat at one end. It will be so much easier to shave my legs.”
“You could practically swim in the bathtub you’ve planned here. Does anyone actually make a tub that long?”
“Yes, it’s right here in this catalog of European tubs and sinks.”
“How much?”
“The other bathroom is very simple, Jed,” Susan said earnestly. “All the fixtures are Kohler. Inexpensive. White. Standard. Good, but inexpensive,” she repeated, to drive home h
er point, and placed the Kohler catalog on top.
Jed looked at the one underneath. “You’re planning one very luxurious bathroom here.”
“But I …”
“But I know how you like to relax in the tub with a glass of white wine.”
“And it’s cheaper than years with a psychiatrist.”
“Well, maybe,” Jed answered, flipping to the price list in the back of the catalog. “Or maybe not! Susan …” He glanced at his wife’s face. “Okay. If anyone deserves the best bathroom in the world, you do.” He looked back at the plan. “What is this?” He pointed to a corner of the room.
“Laundry chute to the basement. It was Kathleen’s mother’s idea.”
“It’s a good one.”
“Only if you like your filthy clothes landing on the middle of the dining room table. There’s no direct route to the basement from the master bath,” Susan explained.
“Oh. Well, shall we go upstairs and show Ken?”
“He’s here?” Susan had been hoping to ask Buns some more questions about Simon Fairweather and felt that he was more likely to answer extensively—and perhaps truthfully—if his employer wasn’t around.
“Upstairs introducing a new carpenter to the rest of his crew. He’s worried about finishing this project in only six weeks, so he’s taken on another employee.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Susan asked, not understanding the expression on her husband’s face.
“You would have thought so, but ever since Josie came, the men have done very little work. Mainly they’re huddled together up in the attic or out in the truck making suspiciously angry sounds. My guess would be that they don’t like working with a woman,” he added, knowing exactly how Susan was going to react to his statement.
“You’re kidding. What a bunch of—”
“Chauvinist pigs.” Jed finished the sentence for her.
“What century do they—”
“Think they’re living in.”
“Jed, this is serious!”
“I wouldn’t argue with you. But I do think you’re going to have to let these guys solve this one by themselves. They have to work together. And they’re not children. Their boss brought in a new worker and they know they’re going to have to make their peace with the situation.”
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