by Emily James
“He completed the work with integrity?” I asked without looking up.
A slight hesitation. “Yes.”
I pasted my smile on again and met her gaze. All my training, all the years watching my parents work, told me there was something more here, but what? It all sounded legitimate on the surface.
I stopped myself in time to keep from chewing on my bottom lip.
“Would you be willing to testify if we need a character witness?”
She shook her head rapidly. “My husband supervised the work, really. I only met Dean Scott once. I don’t know him well enough to vouch for him.”
Her voice edged a little toward panic. Not far enough to be obvious, but her tone was higher-pitched than before.
“If your husband supervised, then it’d be better to have him testify anyway—”
“My husband’s too busy. I’m sorry, but we can’t help any more than we have.”
She raised a hand in goodbye and closed the door.
The impish part of me wished I’d thought to wedge my foot in the door so she couldn’t close it on me. Then again, I didn’t want to end up arrested for harassment, either.
I shuffled slowly back down the walkway. I stopped halfway to my car and looked up at the roof.
It seemed like a good roof as far as roofs went. As far as I could tell, it was relatively new as well. Though, a roof probably looked new for years.
Maybe I was also reading too much into her reaction. It was possible somewhere deep down I wanted to prove Dean guilty rather than innocent. Even though I loved Mark and wouldn’t trade him for anyone, it still hurt when I thought about what my ex-boyfriend Peter did to me. Cheating husbands pushed my buttons in a way few other things did. It felt like Dean should have been punished more than he had for what he did to Elise.
Maybe it was time I checked my motives so that I wasn’t chasing figments of my imagination. If Dean was doing something that might have resulted in Sandra’s death, that was one thing. If I was now on a witch hunt to punish him because he reminded me of Peter, that was something entirely different.
I hadn’t ever had work done on a home, so maybe I was underestimating what things should cost. And perhaps the woman was nervous because she wasn’t convinced I was who I said I was. She had kept checking my card. I couldn’t blame her for not trusting me. I was a stranger who showed up at her door, and I had been kind of lying to her.
I pulled out my cell phone and texted Russ. What’s the average price for a new roof?
I went to put my cell phone away, but it chimed before I could.
What happened? Which building needs a new roof?
Oops. It’s for the case I’m working. House looks like it’s about 1600 sq ft. Rancher with a basement.
The number he sent back was half what the woman I’d just spoken to paid Dean.
I was halfway through writing a reply to Russ, asking if there was any reason he could think of why a roof would cost double, when a large white square of cardboard-like material in the garden caught my attention. It had metal rods sticking out of the bottom as if it were supposed to be standing up. Dead leaves, dirt, and a few fresh weeds hid it, as if it’d fallen over and been forgotten sometime during the past winter.
It reminded me of the signs construction companies often asked their clients to display after a job. If Dean had asked them to advertise his company, then he couldn’t be doing anything shady.
I sent the text to Russ, and wriggled the sign out of the dirt to make sure it was what I thought it was.
His text came back. Rush job maybe. Short notice. Or higher quality materials.
I flipped the sign over. It was for a roofing company alright, but not Dean’s.
And if another company installed their new roof, that meant Dean and his client had lied to me.
12
I went back to the front door and rang the bell again, but the woman didn’t answer.
I snapped a picture of the sign with my phone and headed on to the next “client.” The young man who showed me the gazebo in his back yard had a strong Hispanic accent. The fact that he answered the door in the middle of the day, wearing pajama pants and a t-shirt, made me think he worked the night shift somewhere and didn’t want to disrupt his sleep schedule on the weekends.
After some of the same questions I’d leveled at the first client to warm him up, I asked why his gazebo cost so much.
He gave me a convoluted story about special wood and extra foundation and the long hours Dean put in himself and on and on until I could barely keep his reasons straight in my head. One thing I knew for sure, the gazebo looked like plain old normal wood to me. The varnish job wasn’t even that great. I could see spots where it’d dripped and dried without anyone bothering to smooth it out.
I ran a hand along the rail. “It’s a very pretty gazebo. I’ve been thinking of building one. What kind of wood is it?”
He raised his shoulders. “I don’t know the word in English.”
I flashed a smile that I hoped would make him think I believed him. I pulled my phone out. “I’ll get a picture then and ask someone else.”
I snapped the shot before he could object and backed away. “Thanks so much for your help. I’ll be back in touch if I have any more questions.”
I turned around, waited two steps, and peeked back over my shoulder. He was striding toward the house like he was late for an appointment. He probably wanted to get away before I asked anything else.
I couldn’t prove it, but Dean wasn’t running an honest business. Something else was going on here.
Dean had agreed not to lie to me. Or, at least, I thought he had. That meant he was more afraid of telling me the truth and what would happen if he did than he was of being caught in a lie. Or he was cocky enough to think I wouldn’t catch him.
Why would a man who wanted to see his wife’s killer brought to justice hide information that could solve the case?
I slowed my steps. Maybe I’d been looking at this wrong even though Mark had tried to warn me. Dean cared about Dean. He didn’t care about justice for Sandra or finding her killer. He cared about not going to prison.
A shiver wracked my body like someone had dropped an ice cube down my back.
The most logical explanation for it all was that whatever Dean was hiding would also result in him going to prison if anyone found out.
Time to give myself a back-up plan before I talked to Dean’s partner. I sent Hal a text.
I’m headed to the office of Dean Scott’s construction firm to talk to his partner. I think their business isn’t what it seems. Could you look at his partner, as well as these clients?
I attached the names of the two I’d spoken to. It’d be next week before he’d get me anything on them since it was the weekend, but at least the process was underway.
Even though I should be safe in a public place like an office building, texting Hal also covered my back. Someone now knew where I was and what I suspected—phrased in a way that wouldn’t make me seem weird and paranoid if I turned out to simply be weird and paranoid.
I reached the front of the house. Sometime since I arrived, the mailman had delivered the mail. A couple letters stuck out the top of the box on the front of the house.
I glanced around. No one from the house had followed me or seemed to be spying on me from the windows the way Dean tended to do. It wouldn’t hurt to take a quick look at the letters to see if anything unusual jumped out at me. It was a long shot, but I had to do something to unravel this.
It wasn’t like I was doing anything wrong, either. I didn’t plan to steal their mail or open it. There wasn’t a law against touching someone else’s mail, after all.
I edged sideways, hopped up the two cement steps, and grabbed out the mail. One looked like a credit card bill. It was addressed to the same name as was on the receipt.
The other piece was to a Wendy Steel. Her name wasn’t Hispanic like the client’s, but the letter to her was post mark
ed from Mexico.
I dropped the letters back into the box. I’d become a mail peeper, and all I’d really learned was that Jose was probably living with a girlfriend or fiancé who wrote letters to his family in Mexico.
I texted the name to Hal as well, just in case.
Not my finest piece of detective work, but hopefully I’d have better luck when I talked to Dean’s partner.
***
Pulling into the small parking lot for G&D Construction immediately answered one of my questions. A black motorcycle rested in a spot marked for the owner.
That was a letdown. I’d secretly been hoping that Dean’s business partner was the one who killed Sandra so I could be done with this case. Unfortunately, the woman who lived across the street from them was certain the motorcycle hadn’t shown up the night Sandra died.
Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t our guy. He could have parked his motorcycle somewhere else and walked, or he could have driven a car that night. Even checking to see if he owned another vehicle wouldn’t be definitive. He could have borrowed one from a friend.
For now, I’d keep him on my list of suspects.
I checked the information Dean had given me. His business partner’s name was Griffin Podleski. G&D Construction—Griffin and Dean. Not the most inventive of names, but every town couldn’t be Fair Haven.
Another car parked on the opposite side of the door from my car and Griffin’s motorcycle. That meant Griffin had a customer.
I hesitated with my hand on the door handle. I had two options. I could go in quietly and hope to overhear something incriminating, or I could go in boldly, announce who I was, and watch the reaction of the customer.
If their construction business was legitimate, the customer should express curiosity or concern about hiring them, but they shouldn’t look scared or guilty.
It’d be too much of a gamble to hope to overhear something pertinent.
I drew my shoulders back and strode in.
The building felt smaller on the inside than it’d looked on the outside. The door opened right into an office with a desk. Two other doors led off from the back. One bore the label Restroom. The other must lead into a room that made up the rest of the depth of the building.
The men sitting on either side of the desk stopped their conversation and looked up at me. Even if I’d intended to sneak in, it wouldn’t have been possible.
I marched straight to them and held out my hand to the man behind the desk, since he must be Griffin.
“I’m sorry to interrupt. I’m Nicole Fitzhenry-Dawes, an attorney working on Dean Scott’s criminal case. Do you think you’ll have time to speak to me after you finish this appointment? I’d be happy to wait.”
I left out that I was Dean’s defense attorney and kept my face serious.
Griffin’s face gave nothing away. His handshake, however, moved the bones in my hand.
The customer pushed his chair back. It screeched across the concrete floor. “I was leaving anyway.”
No question about what Dean had done, and he avoided eye contact like he didn’t want me to be able to remember his face.
Not the reaction of a man’s whose conscience is clear.
I took the seat the man vacated without waiting to be asked.
The door whapped shut behind him, and the silence in its place felt almost heavy. I’d expected there to be other people here. A receptionist, maybe, or another employee. Or for the office to be part of a shared building.
None of those things turned out to be true. Instead I sat in a building alone with a man who might be a criminal. I could scream, and no one would hear me.
I’d have to pray that the fact that I was Dean’s lawyer would mean that I was safe even if I might otherwise not have been.
Just in case, I’d have to be careful how I played this. I couldn’t come across as a threat to him. I had to be a co-conspirator. As much as it made me want to slither out of my skin, I’d approach it as if I knew all about the true nature of their business and I simply wanted to make sure they’d thought of everything to cover their butts.
To start with, that meant throwing Dean under the bus. “You look like you didn’t know I was coming. Dean was supposed to inform you.”
Griffin had the kind of low, heavy brow line that made people look like they were scowling even if they weren’t. It made it harder to tell if my words had any effect on him.
All he said was, “He didn’t.”
I rolled my eyes to make myself seem less threatening. “He should have told you. Basically, my job is to either disprove or cast doubt on each piece of the prosecution’s case against Dean. If the prosecution subpoenas your tax records, whether personal or business, will they be in order?”
I tried to give him a wink-wink-nudge-nudge look without going over the top.
The man had mastered the deadpan look. “The IRS hasn’t had a problem with us so far.”
In a way, it was like trying to interrogate a rock. A tickle of panic clawed at my throat.
Woman up, Nicole. You’ve dealt with scarier, less accommodating people. You can handle this. “Great. I’ll just need your accountant’s name.”
“I do our taxes.”
There went that idea for figuring out what was really going on here. And clearly I wasn’t going to figure out anything useful by talking to Griffin. “I just need to see your back room, then.”
I made sure to say it casually, like it was perfunctory. If the back room was full of wood, tile, and granite samples, it would be. At that point, I’d have to admit that I was seeing animals in the cloud shapes.
He got up without a word and headed for the back.
I trailed along behind him. That he hadn’t hesitated about bringing me to the back room made one of two scenarios likely. He either figured I was safe because I was Dean’s lawyer or he figured there wasn’t anything there to incriminate them, either because they were a legitimate construction business or because he figured I wouldn’t know what I was looking at. He might be right about the second.
Or maybe he planned to murder me and dump my body in a large freezer. But that was probably simply me being paranoid. He hadn’t showed any signs of wanting to hurt me, and I’d become pretty good at recognizing them.
He unlocked the door to the backroom and moved out of the way.
I stepped inside. The room was almost…sterile. No samples. No obvious signs of nefarious activities, either. It looked more like I would have expected a technology start-up to look than a construction company. Two top-of-the-line computers rested against one wall on separate desks. Other equipment that I couldn’t name sat nearby.
“Satisfied?” Griffin asked from behind me.
No, but I had to play my part. “Thanks for letting me cross my I’s and dot my T’s.”
It wasn’t until the words were out that I realized I’d mixed it up. I internally shrugged. In this case, having him underestimate me probably worked in my favor. The last thing I wanted to become was a threat to another criminal.
Especially since I didn’t actually know anything concrete at this point. I knew Dean was up to something, and seemed to be extorting money from his “clients.” It might be electronically based, if their office was any indication, but beyond that, it was all still question marks.
They could be hacking people’s computers and stealing their dirty secrets, using them to blackmail them. I doubted they were hacking people’s bank accounts and straight-up stealing the money, but I couldn’t come up with any other options at the moment. Once Hal provided me with some background information on Griffin and their clients, that might help generate new possibilities.
I stopped beside my car and reached for my keys, but my purse wasn’t hanging on my shoulder.
I cringed. I’d hung it on the back of the chair when I sat. If I wanted Griffin to think I was an airhead, I was probably doing a great job of it. Forgetting my purse wasn’t a professional move.
He wasn’t in the front
room when I entered. The door didn’t seem to have a bell—electronic or otherwise—so hopefully I could sneak in and back out without drawing too much attention to myself.
“What were you thinking sending her here?” Griffin’s voice drifted from the back room. “She scared away a potential client.”
A pause.
Griffin cursed. “She can’t turn you in to the police, but she’s not my lawyer. She doesn’t have to protect me.”
He had to be talking to Dean. Their conversation confirmed my suspicions about their business. It also meant I needed to get out of here before Griffin caught me unintentionally eavesdropping.
I grabbed my purse strap and edged toward the door. My purse snagged on the chair and dragged it an inch across the floor. The screech sounded like I’d scraped glass over a chalkboard with a microphone next to it.
Griffin appeared in the doorway, phone still to his ear.
My heartbeat hit a syncopated rhythm, and my head felt full of air. I had to pull it together. He assumed I already knew too much, and he hadn’t said anything on the phone to Dean, at least that I’d heard, that could send him to prison.
I had to take back control. What would my dad do in a situation like this?
Stupid question. My dad wouldn’t have gotten himself into a situation like this in the first place.
I’d been playing this like I was here on Dean’s behalf to make sure nothing here could be used against them. The best plan I could come up with was to stick to that.
I shook my head like I was disappointed in him and pointed toward the door. “Get a bell. This time it was only me. Next time it could be anyone.”
I pivoted on my heel and strode out the door, back straight, like I wasn’t afraid of him. I climbed into my car, and it took me two tries to get my keys into the ignition.
He stood in the doorway of the building and watched me drive away.
As I reached the edge of town and hit my signal to turn onto the highway that’d take me back to Fair Haven, a tingle went down my scalp. The faint drone I’d been hearing got closer, and what had been a black dot in my rearview mirror grew large enough that I could make out what it was.