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Remodeled to Death

Page 16

by Valerie Wolzien


  “I’ll look up the order in the computer if you give me your name.”

  “Oh. Henshaw. The order was probably placed in my husband’s name. Jed Henshaw.”

  “I’ll go look it up. The tub enclosures surround all the showers and tubs in that section.” He waved his hand. “And there are more against the rear wall. Also, of course, we can design something just for you if you don’t find what you like here. We are known for our custom work. I’ll be right back.”

  Susan wandered around the large sales floor, examining glass enclosures as she went. But the salesman returned almost immediately. “There has been no order placed in your name,” he announced.

  “Oh, that can’t be possible. Ken Cory told me—”

  “Oh, you’re using Cory Construction. That explains it. I’ll be right back with your printout.”

  “I—” But he had hurried back to his computer and Susan decided to wait. She had just spied the sink she’d picked out, anyway.

  “Ah … you’ve found your sink.”

  “It’s too shallow,” Susan said, placing her hand in the porcelain interior. “It didn’t look like this in the catalog. I can pick out another, can’t I? That’s what Ken told me.”

  “Yes. Let me see, your order doesn’t go out for a few weeks. There will be no trouble at all. It’s a good thing you came in today.”

  “Ken insisted on it,” Susan said. She wandered among the sinks, turning on taps that didn’t work and trying to decide between brass and chrome.

  “Sounds like Cory Construction is back on its feet,” the salesman said casually.

  “What do you mean?” Susan asked, stooping down to peer at the pedestal of a large forest-green sink. “Does this come in white?”

  “Yes, of course. There’s also a matching toilet. Right over there.”

  “I like them. What’s the price?”

  “About twenty percent less than the set you chose originally.”

  “Let’s order these then,” Susan said. She’d be sure to point out to Jed that she was saving money every step of the way. “What did you mean when you said that it sounded like Cory Construction is back on its feet?” she asked again.

  “From what I’d heard, Simon Fairweather had almost shut them down,” the salesman answered, writing in the large notebook that he carried. “You said white, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. What about Simon Fairweather and Cory Construction?”

  “Well, I only know the gossip, but from what I hear, for the last few months Simon Fairweather had almost refused to accept any work that anyone on the crew did. Hiring Cory Construction meant that your job was never going to be done.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It was simple. Simon Fairweather personally inspected all the jobs that were done by Cory Construction.”

  “And?”

  “And he worked very hard to avoid approving any of the work the company did—from the early stages of a job, every single time an inspection had to be done, the work was not approved without extensive reworking and revisions.”

  “Could Simon Fairweather do that?”

  “Yes, he certainly could. And did until the day he died. Most people in this town stopped hiring Cory Construction about three months ago.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Well, at least for jobs that required inspection. They might have done some decorating—you know, painting and the like—but they haven’t done much building around here that I know of.”

  “How did the people who hired Cory Construction know this was going on?”

  The man shrugged. “Can’t say I’m sure of that. Once in a while someone would come in here and mention it. In fact, one of my colleagues was just telling me about a woman who came in last week to try to return a bathtub. I don’t know the whole story, but Cory Construction screwed up her job about halfway through and she fired them. But she had already ordered some of the bathroom fixtures and Ken Cory didn’t cancel the order. One of her kids accepted delivery on the fixtures for a thirty-thousand-dollar bathroom—”

  “Right before she got the bill from Ken Cory explaining that he expected to be paid fully for a job he wasn’t going to be allowed to do.” They had been joined by another salesman.

  “You’re kidding!” Susan exclaimed.

  “Mr. Bordon had, after all, signed a contract.”

  “Jack and Eleanor Bordon?” Susan asked. “I knew Ellie wanted to get her bathroom redone—”

  “We really shouldn’t be talking about our clients,” the man who had been helping her said quickly.

  “I would never pass this along to anyone else,” Susan assured him, hoping they wouldn’t stop talking. “You see, I’m concerned because Cory Construction is working for me,” she explained to the new arrival.

  “Now that Simon Fairweather has died, you don’t have anything to worry about, do you?”

  Susan thought about that statement while she was doing the rest of her errands.

  She picked out a wonderful clear-glass surround for the master bath and a standard tub enclosure for the main bathroom. The man who had waited on her politely refused to answer any more questions about Cory Construction or the Bordons. His colleague had disappeared. But she did get the feeling that they both considered her a suspect in Simon Fairweather’s murder. Who benefited after all? She did. She was going to acquire three remodeled bathrooms. She decided that she was suffering from low blood sugar and headed for the nearest bakery.

  Two slices of sour-cherry strudel and a creamy napoleon later, she had found the hardware store, fallen in love with chrome faucets for the master bath and chosen traditional brass and porcelain for the family’s bathroom, and was wondering exactly what had happened six months before to turn Simon Fairweather against Cory Construction.

  She picked out a long rectangle of chrome wires fashioned in Italy to hold soaps and sponges and anything else (bath salts? candles? glasses of wine?) over her extra-long bathtub. She discovered quadruple showerheads that would spray in all directions. And decided that she should call on the Bordons just as soon as possible.

  Her next stop was the tile store, which lived up to the Joes’ accolades.

  She ordered white tiles with a watery iridescent finish for the master bathroom and spent a wonderful few hours discussing possibilities for the family bathroom with the tile artist. And she decided that she didn’t know enough about Simon Fairweather. Not nearly enough.

  But first things first, she reminded herself, parking her Cherokee in the street in front of Jack and Ellie Bordon’s home. She would have parked in the cobblestone circular drive if a massive overflowing Dumpster hadn’t gotten there first.

  Susan locked her car and jumped out, hurrying up the flagstones that led to the entrance of the faux English-country cottage the Bordons had purchased a couple of years ago.

  “Susan Henshaw, what are you doing here?” Jack Bordon exclaimed as he opened the door. “Ellie was just talking about calling you.”

  “You’re kidding!” Susan followed her host into the hallway, remembering just in time that the tiny, colored panes in the stained-glass windows permitted almost no light to permeate them and that there was a large, dark antique trunk just waiting to remove chunks from the shins of the unwary. “What about?”

  “Cory Construction.”

  Sometimes things just fell into your lap if you waited long enough, Susan gloated silently.

  “Ellie is in the living room. We were just having cocktails. Maybe you’ll join us?”

  “Of course,” Susan agreed before remembering that the Bordons were big fans of amontillado, fino, and manzanilla sherry. Oh, well, it had been a long day. She didn’t need anything stronger.

  “We’ve been experimenting with single-malt scotches,” Jack surprised her by saying. “Would you like to try one of them?”

  “Sounds good,” Susan said, peering into the gloom of the Bordons’ living room and spying Ellie lying on a large maroon leather couch with
her feet across a sleeping basset hound. “Ellie. Hi,” she added as her friend opened one eye and apparently looked in her direction.

  “Susan. We were just talking about you. Come and sit down, you poor thing.”

  Susan wondered if there had been a death in her immediate family that no one had told her about. Could anything else deserve such commiseration and sympathy?

  Ellie sat up and patted the cushion beside her. “Sit here. We need to talk.”

  “About what?” Susan asked, glad she was wearing old clothes. Apparently basset hounds shed almost as much as golden retrievers.

  “About how Cory Construction is going to ruin your life.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  “I really don’t think Cory Construction is going to ruin my life,” Susan protested, accepting a thistle-shaped glass of amber liquid from Jack Bordon. “They’re just remodeling my bathrooms.”

  “Your bathrooms? You’re letting them work on more than one?” Ellie asked in a horrified voice.

  “Three, actually. Let me explain,” Susan answered, and started to tell the story of her home’s plumbing disaster.

  “Susan, you don’t know what a disaster is until you invite Cory Construction into your home. Come, let me show you something,” Ellie insisted, interrupting Susan’s story.

  “Bring your drink along,” Jack added as they all stood up. “You may need it.”

  “What do you want me to see?” Susan asked as they all tramped through the hallway (this time the trunk acquired a small piece of her shin as she passed) and up the broad stairway to the second floor.

  “Do you remember the bathroom at the top of the stairs?” Ellie answered her question with a question.

  “Not really.”

  “It was designed by the previous owners. In violet and white. With purple and white violets on every surface, if you know what I mean.”

  “Wallpaper …”

  “And the tiles on the walls and floor, etched into the lights over the sink, enameled in the surface of the sink itself—”

  “And on towels and shower curtains, even on the bath-mat,” Jack finished his wife’s story.

  “Yes, but those were different—they were easy to get rid of,” Ellie said impatiently. “But the rest called for something more drastic. And, we figured, since we were going to have to change the sink and all the tiles—”

  “Why not just remodel the entire thing? It will be just as easy,” Jack finished her story in jovial terms. “Well, that’s what we thought at the time,” he added in response to his wife’s glare.

  “That is what we thought at the time, but we were entirely mistaken as you are going to see,” Ellie added, reaching out and throwing open a door at the top of the stairway.

  Susan peered into the darkness. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Wait. There’s a light here somewhere.” Ellie reached around the corner into the room and pressed on a switch attached to a heavy orange extension cord. The room did not exactly spring to life, but a 150-watt bulb, which was tied to a rough ceiling beam, brought its unbroken glare to all four corners.

  “What a mess!”

  “A mess? You call this a mess?” Ellie mocked her statement and Susan realized that she had had too much to drink. “A mess is what you have when this exists for a week or two. Even a month of this is a mess. Six months is a disaster. And that’s what we’ve been living with for six months. That damn Dumpster in the middle of our driveway. A garage full of … of plumbing shit that will never be used. Only one bathroom in the entire house that works. We can’t give parties, can’t have company, can’t live a normal life because of what you refer to as a mess.”

  “I only meant—” Susan began.

  “We know what you meant,” Jack said quietly, putting a restraining hand on his wife’s arm and turning out the light with the other. “You see, we have no idea how long we’re going to be living like this and, I have to admit, it’s gotten to both of us.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We’re suing Cory Construction,” Jack said quietly, leading both women back downstairs with promises of fresh drinks. “And we have to leave everything in place until the case comes before the court.”

  “And that’s only part of the story,” Ellie added, hurrying ahead of the other two when further drinks were mentioned. “We had to stop work originally because our esteemed building inspector’s office wouldn’t approve any further construction. That was six months ago. So we fired Ken Cory and tried to return the garbage in our garage, but no one would accept returns, and we’ll have to take a huge loss if we try to sell it to another contracting company or a jobber. It’s been a disaster. We gave up a month ago, put the dog in a kennel and went to Europe for three weeks. We just got home yesterday.”

  “Then you don’t know that Simon Fairweather is dead!” Susan exclaimed, resuming her seat on the couch and picking up her glass.

  The next few minutes were spent busily mopping expensive single-malt scotch whisky off the basset hound, who had been sitting underneath Eleanor Bordon’s arm when Susan made that announcement. As the Bordons worked, Susan continued the story of the murder.

  “Guess it’s a good thing we were away when Fairweather was murdered or we’d be suspects in the case,” Jack continued jovially.

  “Not really,” his wife contradicted him. “His death doesn’t help us. We’re still stuck with that mess upstairs and in the garage. Our lawsuit is against Cory Construction, not Simon Fairweather. The only person who is going to be helped by Fairweather’s death is Ken Cory—and maybe Patricia Fairweather, if you believe the rumors about their marriage.”

  “What rumors?” Susan asked quickly.

  “I once heard something about him hitting her during a fight,” Ellie said.

  “Where? Who did you hear it from?” Susan asked quickly.

  Ellie seemed surprised by these questions. “Down at the club, I think. I was complaining about Cory Construction and how it couldn’t get approval for any work from the building inspector’s office and someone—in my aerobics class, I think—said that Patricia Fairweather’s husband was a real skunk, that he beat his wife.”

  “Do you remember who?”

  “You know, I do remember. It was Caroline White. She and Patricia did some volunteer work together—League of Women Voters or something—and she said that Simon had given Patricia a black eye. She was smart enough to hire Hancock Contracting when they had the addition built on the side of their house, I know that.”

  “So—” Susan tried again.

  “But there were one or two other people in my class who had been skunked by Ken Cory.”

  “Who?”

  Ellie nodded. “Lacy Knight and Debbie Sanderson. Do you know either of them?”

  “I’m not sure. Wasn’t there a Debbie who won the handball championship down at the club? Tall and thin? A brunette?”

  “Exactly! What a memory you have, Susan.”

  Susan glanced down at the third glass Ellie had emptied since her arrival but didn’t say anything. “I don’t think I know who Lacy is. Tell me about her and Debbie. Did Cory Construction work on both their houses? Did the work ever get completed?” She had visions of unfinished construction dotting the landscape all over Hancock.

  “Yes and no.” Ellie frowned and looked around the dimly lit room. “I’m getting hungry. Maybe we should have something to munch on with our drinks.”

  Jack took the hint and stood up. “I’ll get us all some cheese and crackers, shall I?”

  Ellie smiled. “That would be lovely, dear.” She turned back to Susan as soon as he had left the room. “Jack is sweet, but there are some things he doesn’t need to know. Like why I chose Cory Construction instead of another company.”

  Susan was becoming confused and said so.

  “Well, why did you pick them?” Ellie asked.

  “Because they had free time and no one else even bothered to return my calls,” Susan explained.

  “
Well, of course, now things are different for Ken. He’s just lucky that there are some people in town who haven’t heard about his problems with the inspector’s office and are interested in hiring him. But a few months ago the word wasn’t out. At least, I didn’t know anything when contractors were putting in bids to do the work on my bathroom.”

  “So why did you hire him? Did he give you the best price? Had you heard good things about his work?” Susan asked.

  “Not really,” Ellie admitted, looking at the door her husband had used to leave the room. “I guess I hired him because he flattered me. He certainly didn’t give me the best price, although his estimate wasn’t the most expensive I received.”

  “But?” Susan encouraged her to continue.

  “Well, he told me how much he loved my house and everything I had done with it.” Susan remembered the comments Ken had made about her hallway. “He practically raved about the needlepoint pillows I had made for this couch.” Susan remembered how impressed he had been with Chrissy’s stenciling. “They’re not here now,” Ellie explained. “The dog took a strange dislike to them and chewed them up. But Ken was just so sweet and he looks so nice—I thought it would be worth a little more money to have him do the job. After all, he was going to be working in my house. You know how it is.”

  “I do.”

  “But please don’t tell Jack how foolish I was. I just told him that Cory Construction had a good reputation and made the best bid—neither of which was true, but I didn’t know about their reputation when I hired them.”

  “What about Lacy and Debbie? You said they had bad experiences with Cory Construction, too,” Susan was saying as Jack returned to the room with a platter of Brie, olives, and three types of crackers. She was impressed. Jed seemed unable to locate things like crackers in the kitchen. She was fairly sure he knew that cheese and olives were kept in the refrigerator.

  “Lacy hired Cory Construction about the same time I did. They were just going to do a small job: rebuilding a stairway to her attic and insulating it and installing a floor. You don’t know her? Well, she has twin boys—eleven years old,” Ellie continued when Susan shook her head. “And she was thinking that they could use the area as a play space and maybe, when the kids got older, she would have the entire room finished and turn it over to one or both of them as a bedroom.”

 

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