Death at a Premium (22 page)

“Who’s there?”

“It’s Josie. Josie Pigeon.”

“Why did you scream?”

“I thought—I know this sounds stupid, but I thought you were the ghost—you know, the bride. The rumor on the island is that she walks the halls of this place at night,” Josie explained, feeling like an idiot.

“Believe me, I’m no ghost. Why are you here?”

“I saw a light on the top floor and I was just checking it out. What about you?”

“I saw a light too—maybe the one you saw—but I’ve been through the entire building. If anyone was here, they’re gone now.” Trish was putting her gun back in her holster as she spoke. Josie’s heart was still beating at double time, but she tried to sound in control.

“Yeah, maybe, but I suppose I’d better look around and see if the intruder took anything . . . Why are you carrying that dropcloth?” Trish, Josie realized, was wearing her police uniform—that was the black shirt she had seen—and carrying one of Island Contracting’s heavy cotton dropcloths, which Josie had seen as the floorlength skirt the bride was supposed to have worn.

“I thought I heard something,” Trish explained.

“Something hiding under the dropcloth?”

“It was draped over a sawhorse. I thought someone might be hiding, crouched down behind it.”

“Listen, my flashlight is out in my truck,” Josie said, not bothering to explain that its batteries were probably dead. “Could you walk through the place with me while I check everything out?” She didn’t want to start messing with circuit breakers—the last thing any of her workers needed was an electrical surprise first thing tomorrow morning.

“No problem. I wouldn’t mind another look around myself. We can start upstairs and work our way down.”

“Great.”

The women went through the house carefully, disturbing some mice nibbling on old pizza crusts torn from garbage bags on the top floor, closing a shutter that had been blown open by the sea breezes, but discovering nothing out of order.

Josie was tired, and Trish didn’t seem inclined to chat, so they arrived back on the first floor having exchanged few words. Josie was ready to lock up and go home when the police woman spoke up.

“You grew up here, didn’t you?”

“On the island? No. I moved here when I was in my twenties, but I came here for family vacations when I was a kid.”

“Do you remember this place back then?”

“Not really. I think I heard the story of the bride’s ghost, but I wasn’t particularly interested. When I was young, all I cared about was swimming and crabbing. As a teenager, the romantic story might have appealed to me, but most of the time all I cared about was getting the perfect suntan—not easy for a redhead.”

“I know what you mean. I burn easily, too.”

Josie yawned. It seemed a bit late for small talk. “How do you think the intruder got in?”

“What intruder?”

“Whoever you saw,” Josie explained. Apparently she wasn’t the only exhausted person there. “In fact, how did you get in? I unlocked the front door.”

“Through the back door—it was open.”

“Really?”

“I should have said
unlocked.
I saw the light on the top floor, so I parked and checked all the doors. The door into the kitchen opened when I turned the knob, so I walked in to check things out . . . and probably scared away our intruder.”

“Strange things seem to happen in this place,” Josie commented, yawning again.

“You mean the murdered man.”

“And those dummies that someone hid behind the walls—I’ve never seen anything like that. Although, of course, carpenters frequently find things people have stashed behind walls.”

“Like what?”

“Notes, toys; I even found an old real estate sign behind the walls of a bathroom installed in the early fifties once. It’s like signing wet cement—some people seem to feel the need to mark places where they have lived.”

“Did you find anything like that here? Notes or anything?”

“Just the dummies—and they were enough.”

“Yes, of course. I guess we’d better be going.”

“Yeah, I need to go home and get some sleep. I guess you’re still at work.”

“Oh, yes. I’ll circle the island a time or two and then head on back to the station.”

“Great. I’ll lock up the front if you’ll make sure the back door is secure,” Josie suggested.

“Great. See you.”

“Yeah, see you.” Josie left the Bride’s Secret Bed and Breakfast, locking the front door behind her, and hurried back to her truck. She got in and drove off quickly, circling the block before parking and taking off on foot through the alley back to the Bride’s Secret. She was in time to watch Officer Trish Petric check the latch on the back door, walk down the steps and stroll to her police car parked in the driveway of a nearby vacant home. The police officer looked around, got in her car and drove off—traveling, Josie noted, more than a few miles above the speed limit.

The evening had given Josie a lot to think about besides appetizers and alcoholic beverages. Trish Petric may have seen something suspicious in the Bride’s Secret Bed and Breakfast, but her choice of parking place was equally suspect. Rental properties were frequently empty for weeks at a time; any police officer worth his or her salary would know which ones were unoccupied. By using the driveway of one of these homes, Trish had parked where no one would mind—and few would notice.

But why? The only reason Josie could come up with was that Trish had lied to her: her search of the Bride’s Secret Bed and Breakfast had not been police business— at least not legitimate police business. Besides, if she had seen a light, why hadn’t she called for backup instead of investigating on her own? Josie puzzled over this on the short drive to her apartment, but she arrived home with more questions than answers.

The sunroom where Risa spent much of the day smelled deliciously of an Italian feast as Josie passed through on her way to the stairs leading to her second-floor apartment. There was a note taped to her door, and she pulled it off to read in private. She headed straight for the small kitchen at one end of the large room where she and her son ate and lounged in front of the television. She realized she was actually hungry, and she unfolded the note as she opened her refrigerator door and peered inside. When she had left home that morning her refrigerator had contained a few out-of-date cartons of yogurt, an almost-empty quart of milk, some wilted carrots and squishy leaves of lettuce, and one very soft cantaloupe. It was now completely filled with Tupperware. Josie put down the sheet of paper unread and removed a few of the plastic rectangles. They were all labeled in Risa’s flowery script: scungili in marinara sauce, homemade sausages with sweet peppers, sauces for pasta and polenta. Josie cracked open the lid of the squid, stuck in an exploratory finger, and tasted the contents. Delicious. Incredibly delicious. She pulled open a cupboard and located a plate, which she filled and placed in the microwave. As her snack heated, she cleared a spot on the counter so she could eat and read in comfort.

The note was from Risa and explained the stuffed refrigerator. Risa suggested Josie taste as many dishes as she could and choose enough for a four-course traditional festive Italian meal. The squid, tender and delicious, satisfied Josie’s stomach and her fatigue returned. She placed the dirty dishes in the sink and headed for a quick shower and bed.

“Mom? Do I smell food?”

Tyler wandered out of his room. He was wearing an old pair of boxer shorts and a ragged Fish Wish Bait Shop T-shirt. His red hair was tousled and he needed a shave. His mother thought he looked adorable. “Are you hungry?” she asked needlessly. Tyler was always hungry.

“Starving.”

Urchin jumped up on the counter and stretched a paw toward the tomato-covered seafood.

“No, Urch.” Tyler picked the cat up and dropped her gently on the floor. “That’s for us.”

“Do you want the squid or something else? Risa has left a ton of food here,” Josie commented. Now that her son was awake, she was discovering a second wind.

“Who do you think carried all this stuff up here?” Tyler asked, opening the refrigerator door and peering in. “I think veal meatballs and arugula sounds weird, but it’s really delish,” he assured his mother. “I can heat it myself,” he added, popping the container in the microwave. “You and Sam were out late tonight,” he commented sociably, opening the freezer and pulling out a carton of ice cream to tide him over while his main course heated.

“I stopped at the Bride’s Secret on the way home,” Josie explained.

“Any more dead bodies around?”

“No.” Josie scratched Urchin’s bony little head. “Tyler, what do you know about Officer Petric?”

“Why should I know anything about her?”

“I just thought you might. You always seem to hear things that I don’t.”

“We did talk once or twice,” he admitted reluctantly. “I know that she summered on the island when she was a kid—like you did.”

“Really? She’s never mentioned that to me—not that we’ve had a lot of heart-to-heart conversations.”

“Oh? Well, she had relatives here, and she stayed with them. But I don’t know much more than that. She did say that there was only one pizza place here back then.”

Josie smiled. “Guess those weren’t the good old days.”

“Yeah, can you imagine the long line of people waiting for pies on weekends?”

“I wonder if Chief Rodney worked here then.”

“Yeah, maybe he gave her tickets and now she gives other people tickets . . . that would be weird.”

“I suppose.”

Tyler pulled a hot dish from the microwave with his fingertips and slid it down on the table. “There is one thing I don’t get about her.”

“What’s that?”

“She just happened to mention to me once that she was first in her graduating class at the police academy.”

“Good for her. What don’t you get?”

“I don’t get why she’s working here when she could have gone anywhere.”

Half an hour later Tyler’s question was one of the three keeping Josie awake. The other two were why Trish hadn’t mentioned summering on the island as a child when she and Josie were talking about their childhoods, and how could Josie possibly explain to Risa or Basil that she had chosen one and not the other to cater her wedding reception?

TWENTY-SEVEN

THE PRESENCE OF home owners rarely improves a work site—at least in the opinion of contractors and their crews. An architect’s appearance can bring with it problems or solutions. Unfortunately, Christopher and his grandmother walked into the Bride’s Secret Bed and Breakfast a second or two after the elegant mahogany wainscoting in the living room had separated from the cracking plaster and smashed onto the floor.

“I thought your plans called for that lovely old wood remaining in place, dear,” Tilly Higgins said, looking at Christopher through the plaster dust.

“They do, Grandmother.”

“The plaster was separating from the old lathes. This way we can replaster the walls and refinish that old mahogany before reinstalling it,” Josie spoke up, hoping the old mahogany hadn’t been damaged beyond repair in its sudden contact with the floor.

“Do you think perhaps you should move it?” Tilly asked, waving her hand before her face.

“Moving it will stir up more dust—maybe you would prefer my crew to wait until you’ve left the building?” Josie asked.

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Christopher said, taking his grandmother’s arm and leading her toward the stairway. “We’re here to walk through the bedrooms and bathrooms on the second and third floors.”

“And closets. I don’t think your grandfather has any idea about closets,” Tilly added. “Every time I mention adding storage, he just says it’s under control, don’t worry, there will be plenty of space for everything. I’d like to see for myself while I’m here.”

“Actually, he was here checking storage in the bedrooms a few days ago,” Josie pointed out, relieved that the subject had been changed. She would wait until they were alone to examine the woodwork more closely. “Did your grandfather talk to you about the possibility of adding to the master bedroom suite and decreasing the size of the room next door?” she asked Christopher.

“He said something about it on the phone, I think. I’ve been away visiting my old roommate’s family cottage up in Maine for a bit of sailing and clam digging.”

“Poor Christopher works so hard during the school year; he certainly deserves a break this summer. I always say summer isn’t summer unless there’s an opportunity to take a nice vacation, don’t you?”

Josie didn’t answer. She didn’t want Christopher hanging around and looking over her shoulder constantly, but she worked hard—harder than most students, she suspected—and she hadn’t had a summer vacation in decades. “Well, your husband thinks that adding storage to the master bedroom suite is worth giving up some space in the smaller suite next door.”

“Seymour is always complaining about my clothing. He thinks a woman can own a half dozen or so outfits and then somehow manage to appear perfectly dressed on all occasions. He’s always telling me how his mother owned one little black dress that she dressed up or dressed down with a few accessories. Completely absurd. The woman’s jewels and furs were famous from Manhattan to Paris. No one even noticed what she was wearing underneath all that glitter and hair most of the time.”

“Did she vacation here?” Josie asked.

“Lord, no. She hated the beach—so much sand and surf—unless it was in Nassau or Bermuda or possibly the South of France, and she was looking at it out the window of a deluxe hotel suite. But she believed in work— for everyone other than herself—and insisted on Seymour having summer jobs, which is how he ended up here.”

“Grandfather is always saying that he inherited a fortune and was taught a work ethic,” Christopher commented.

Josie had a work ethic, but she wasn’t sure whether or not it would have been quite so strong if she had been lucky enough to inherit a fortune. “What sort of fortune? I mean, where did the money come from?” she asked.