Death at a Premium

by Valerie Wolzien

  “Leslie even bought the little cream and jelly-filled ones that you like so much,” Vicki pointed out.

  “That’s great,” Josie said. She looked at Officer Petric. “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “I wanted to check out the crime scene again,” Trish Petric answered. “There were a few things that didn’t make any sense to me.”

  “What things?” Josie asked, accepting the Styrofoam cup of coffee that Mary Ann offered with a nod.

  “That’s police business.” Trish’s answer was abrupt and in striking contrast to her friendly manner a minute before. “And I’ve got to get going. More tourists are arriving every day. I have things to do.” She slipped off the sawhorse she had been perched on and smiled at the group. “Thanks for the snack. I’ll return the favor sometime,” she said.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” Josie spoke up.

  “If you don’t have anything better to do.”

  Josie waited until they were together on the sidewalk with the door to the house closed behind them, although she was pretty sure her crew was looking out the wide windows at them, before asking her questions. “Why are you here?”

  “I told you. I had some questions about the crime scene. I wanted to look at it again.”

  “If by the crime scene you mean the place where the body was found, that’s upstairs. You were on the first floor laughing with my crew when I arrived.”

  “I don’t know what—if anything—you’re implying. But for your information, I had finished upstairs, and when I came back down I was offered coffee and doughnuts. Being hungry, I accepted. Just what are you objecting to?”

  “I’m not objecting. You have every right to do what you’re doing,” Josie answered. “But I have a job to do here, and you’re interfering.”

  “I don’t see how that can be true. I made a point of coming here early. You hadn’t even shown up for work. No one on your crew had arrived yet. I . . .”

  “How did you get in?” Josie interrupted.

  Officer Petric hesitated. “The police department has a key. I assumed you had given it to them . . . to us.”

  Josie was sure she had done no such thing, but decided this was something to take up with the Rodneys. “You know this is private property.”

  “I know this is a crime scene and that, if the Rodneys thought it was appropriate, they could prevent you and your crew from working here until our investigation is complete.”

  Josie had no answer for that so she changed the subject. “You were questioning my crew.”

  “In the first place, I wasn’t doing anything of the kind. We were talking, taking a break. I didn’t mention the murder and . . .” She hesitated for just a moment. “And neither did anyone else.”

  Josie didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t like this woman being here and talking to her crew, but in truth, she knew she couldn’t do anything about it. She didn’t like this woman talking to her son either, but again, there seemed to be nothing she could do about it, short of ordering Tyler to avoid her. “I have to get to work” was all she said.

  “As do I,” Officer Petric answered, “but I may be back.”

  “I won’t hold my breath.”

  Josie stamped back up the sidewalk knowing she was being irrational and maybe slightly immature. All she was sure of was that this woman irritated the hell out of her and that she didn’t trust her one bit.

  FIFTEEN

  THE CONTINUING DEMOLITION of the upper floors went smoothly. Walls were torn down, warped flooring torn up, closets that had been jury-rigged into odd corners vanished, leaky radiators were pulled out. Early in the morning a large overflowing Dumpster was taken away; an empty one of equal size was delivered within the hour. The new arrival was filled and ready to go before lunchtime. It wasn’t until they all sat down to their meal that Josie realized they had been too busy to talk about the murder or a possible arrest. But the topic came up before the first hoagie was unwrapped.

  Vicki, who to Josie’s knowledge had been working hard ripping up rotten floorboards in the hallway all morning, looked down at her ham and salami on a hard roll and began to sniff. “I can’t believe we’re sitting here eating lunch when Leslie might be arrested any minute now.”

  Sitting by her side, Leslie slipped an arm around her shoulder and hugged her. He left a dark handprint on her T-shirt, but they were all so filthy that no one commented—or noticed. “I’m not going to be arrested. I didn’t even know the dead guy. Why the hell would I kill him?”

  Mary Ann put down her turkey with mayo on white and looked at him. “I watched this show on Court TV a few nights ago—it was real interesting—all about innocent people who were convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. If it weren’t for new DNA testing, all of them would still be in prison.”

  Tears dripped down Vicki’s cheeks and onto her lap.

  “Not gonna happen to me. My DNA and that dead guy have yet to meet.” Leslie took a big bite from his overflowing Italian hoagie and grinned, shredded lettuce falling on the floor.

  Vicki jerked away from him. “You’re joking around and you should be taking this seriously! You don’t know what prison is like.”

  “I don’t, and I’m not going to find out. I didn’t kill anyone. No one is going to arrest me for anything. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  Vicki looked at him and then around the group. “I don’t see how you can be so sure.”

  “No one is going to arrest me because I’m gonna figure out who the murderer is.”

  Nic looked up from her liverwurst on rye. “Just how will you do that?”

  Leslie shrugged. “I don’t know right this minute. But the cops on this island don’t seem all that smart. It shouldn’t be hard to do better than they do.”

  Josie swallowed a bite of her egg salad on whole wheat before answering. “You’re right about that. The Rodneys are idiots, and I’m not sure this new woman is a whole lot better.”

  “And you’ve solved murders before, so you’ll help me, right?” Leslie continued.

  Josie put down her sandwich and looked at him. “How do you know about that?”

  “Everyone knows about it. You find a body, you discover the killer—at least that’s what was being said in the hardware store the other day when I went in to pick up some new work gloves.”

  “Yeah, and Mary Ann and I heard the same thing at Sullivan’s when we were eating breakfast,” Vicki added, perking up a bit.

  “Even Officer Petric mentioned it this morning, although I don’t think she approved. She sort of suggested that we leave the police business to the police, and they would leave the remodeling to us,” Mary Ann explained.

  “She didn’t sort of suggest, she flat-out said it,” Vicki added.

  “Do you think that’s why she was here?” Josie asked.

  Vicki looked puzzled. “I don’t know. She was here when Mary Ann and I arrived.”

  “She and Leslie were sitting on the porch talking when we got here,” Mary Ann pointed out.

  Leslie picked a thin crescent of hard salami from between the slices of bread and popped it in his mouth. “She was here because of me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Leslie took a deep breath, his strong shoulders rising and falling, before answering Josie’s question. “She was here to warn me . . . about speeding. To tell the truth, I find staying under twenty-five miles an hour a little difficult. Trish has pulled me over a few times.”

  “A few times?” Mary Ann asked.

  “Three.”

  “No wonder you’re on a first-name basis with her,” Mary Ann said.

  “Yeah. Well, she hasn’t given me a ticket yet. She just came over to tell me that I’ve gotta get rid of my lead foot.”

  “She followed you here?” asked Vicki.

  “Followed me? I don’t think so. She probably just saw my car out front and decided to stop in.” He grinned. “Some women just can’t seem to get enough of me.”


  “Les . . .”

  “But I’m faithful to the one woman I love,” he added, moving closer to Vicki and putting his arm around her.

  Josie wasn’t about to let the topic die there. “But Mary Ann said that Officer Petric suggested we leave police business to the police, right?”

  “Yes, you see, we started talking about the murder— well, we’re all thinking about it, right? And she wouldn’t answer any questions.”

  “That’s not true,” Vicki said. “She answered some of our questions. She told us that the autopsy was complete . . .”

  Josie had to interrupt. “Wait a second. Who brought up the murder and who asked the first question? And what was it?” she added.

  Leslie’s frown matched those on his crew members’ faces. “Can’t say that I remember exactly.”

  “I don’t either,” Mary Ann agreed.

  “Now that I think about it, I believe Trish and I were talking about it when you all got here,” Leslie said. “I think I brought it up—to change the subject. I asked her if there were any developments since last night or something like that.”

  “Was she reluctant to tell you anything about the police investigation?” Josie asked.

  Leslie frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  “She sure didn’t seem reluctant to me,” Mary Ann spoke up. “She was talking about the autopsy in . . . well, in more detail than I was interested in hearing, that’s for sure.”

  “He was stabbed, right?” Josie asked.

  “He was stabbed many times,” Mary Ann answered, pushing her unfinished sandwich away. “The medical examiner told the police that he . . . he didn’t die easily. I think that’s how Officer Petric put it.”

  “Where?”

  “Where what?”

  “Where was he stabbed? In his chest or in the back?” Josie asked.

  “I don’t think she mentioned that,” Mary Ann said. “Why would it make any difference?”

  Josie, who had been watching her share of television shows involving forensics over the last few years, wasn’t quite sure why she had asked this particular question.

  But Vicki spoke up. “I think if you’re stabbed from behind it means you didn’t know the person who killed you, but if you were stabbed in the chest, it means you waited for the killer to walk up to you—so you know him, if you know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t,” Nic said. “Why wouldn’t someone you know walk up behind you and stab you? And why would the dead person necessarily move away from an unfamiliar person who walks up to them? The knife could have been hidden until the last minute, right?”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t a regular knife. It was a mat knife that killed this guy,” Leslie pointed out.

  Josie hadn’t heard that before. “Which sort of directs attention to one of us, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t see that,” Leslie said stubbornly. “Lots of people use those things.”

  “But I’ll bet we all have one in our toolboxes—sort of convenient,” Josie answered.

  “That’s what we should do: We should make sure our tools are in order,” Mary Ann said, jumping up. “At least that’s what I’m going to do right now. My stuff is upstairs.”

  “I don’t think . . .” Josie began, but Mary Ann was beyond hearing.

  “You may as well let her go check out her tools. She won’t be comfortable using them until she’s satisfied herself that nothing she owns was used to kill that poor guy,” Vicki said.

  “But there wasn’t a weapon found with the body. He must have taken it away with him,” Nic said.

  “He?” Leslie spoke up. “Exactly why do you think the killer is a man?”

  “I don’t. I was just talking generally,” Nic answered. “Anyway, the killer—he or she—could have used something, cleaned it off, and put it right back in one of our toolboxes. Not that I think he or she did—it would take too much time and effort. If I killed someone on an island, I’d just chuck the murder weapon in the water.”

  “The tide might bring it right back to the shore,” Vicki pointed out.

  “Okay. On the bay side of the island then. You could just toss it off one of the public docks. It would land in that muck on the bottom and vanish completely.”

  “Someone might see you,” Vicki pointed out.

  “So what? People are always chucking stuff into the bay—crab lines, minnow traps, old bait, shells, whatever. It would be easy to pretend to be crabbing or fishing and get rid of most anything small.”

  “You seem to have given this a lot of thought. Maybe you’re the killer,” Leslie said, only half-joking.

  Josie stepped in immediately. They had a job to do, and accusations of murder wouldn’t make for a congenial workplace. “Look, none of us killed the guy, but that doesn’t mean we’re not all suspects. The Rodneys aren’t bright enough to do a real investigation and I promise you, they would be thrilled to pin this thing on one of us, so we need to stick together and be careful.”

  “No, it’s like I said, we gotta investigate it ourselves,” Leslie insisted.

  “What we have to do is finish this project on time and on budget,” Josie reminded them all. “That’s what we’re being paid to do. I think we should leave finding the killer to the police and get on with our work.”

  “Is that an order?” Nic asked.

  “I can’t stop what you do in your spare time, but I don’t want you investigating when you should be working.”

  Mary Ann appeared in the doorway, a half-smile on her face. “There’s someone here.”

  Josie jumped up immediately. “Who is it?” she asked, wiping her hands on her pants.

  “Two women. They’re all dressed up like they’re going on some sort of fancy cruise or something, but they know you, Josie. The one wearing sunglasses with all these little diamonds on the frames asked if you were busy. I said we were on lunch break, but they just walked right in and started on up the stairs. I didn’t know if I should try to stop them or what, but I warned them to watch out—that the floors were torn up and the ceiling was coming down—but they ignored me.”

  Josie wasn’t hanging around to hear more. She knew the women were Tilly Higgins and her future mother-in-law, but she couldn’t imagine why they had shown up here together. And she wasn’t going to waste another minute before finding out. Her work boots pounded up the stairs, and she arrived on the second floor in time to see Carol lifting up the yellow police tape so Tilly could duck beneath it and enter the room where the body had been found.

  “Carol!”

  “Josie, my dear. Lovely to see you.” Sam’s mother paused long enough to greet her future daughter-in-law before bending down and following the other woman.

  Josie didn’t hesitate before joining them.

  “You’d never know there was a body here just a day ago, would you?” Tilly said, sliding her sunglasses onto the top of her head and peering around.

  The room had been cleared of all evidence of the crime. Sunlight was streaming in through the stained-glass windows in the gables onto a decidedly dusty floor. The door hadn’t been closed and the residue of ripped Sheetrock, plaster, and horsehair insulation liberally coated everything in the room. Carol pulled her Lilly Pulitzer sweater close about her, but Tilly ignored the filth and leaned against a windowsill to peer out at the street below.

  “You really shouldn’t be here,” Josie protested. “Besides, there’s nothing to see, and the police . . .”

  “The police on this island are fools. You and I know that, Josie. And I’ve been explaining the situation to Tilly. She is very concerned.”

  “There will be no evidence that anything happened here once we’re finished,” Josie said to reassure her client. “The room is being stripped down to the studs and completely rebuilt. Your grandson has plans for wide window seats in each gable, built-in cabinets along that wall, and double closets at this end of the room.”

  Tilly Higgins looked around and nodded slowly. “This will be one of three doubl
e rooms for the youngest grandchildren,” she explained to Carol. “There will be two bunkbeds in each one and lots of storage for games, toys, sports equipment, computers, and all the stuff that kids seem to need these days.”

  Carol nodded sagely. “We had so much less when we were young,” she said.

  “Some people still have much less,” Josie couldn’t resist pointing out.

  “True, true,” Carol agreed absently, then turned her attention to the other woman. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think we need to think about this very carefully,” Tilly answered seriously. “Dear Seymour was stopped by the island police—for going less than fifteen miles over the speed limit—and he had nothing good to say about them. In fact, if you believe my husband, the police here are incompetent, and I’m afraid he might be concerned about us moving into a home famous for an unsolved murder as well as a ghost.”

  “The ghost isn’t real,” Josie protested.

  Tilly Higgins opened her eyes wide. “And just how do you know that?”

  “Because there isn’t any such thing as ghosts,” Josie answered.

  “But there is a law requiring a Realtor to explain to potential buyers that a house is considered to be haunted,” Sam Richardson’s deep voice explained.

  SIXTEEN

  “THERE IS, SAMMY? I had no idea!” Carol Birnbaum said in response to her son’s statement.

  “This is your son? The lawyer you were telling me about?” Tilly Higgins asked, smiling and looking from mother to son.

  “Yes, this is Sammy, my son and Josie’s fiancé. As I told you, they’re planning a Labor Day wedding and . . .”

  “Carol, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m working here,” Josie pointed out. She was more than a little disturbed by Sam’s appearance—and his statement. “And I don’t see why you’re here talking about some obsolete law,” she continued, scowling at him.

  “The law’s not obsolete. In fact, it’s barely over a decade old,” Sam explained.

  “Tell us about it,” Tilly suggested.