Chapter Twelve
Thursday morning I finally felt good enough to get back to work on the Boyers’ job site. My shoulder was still a little iffy, so I didn’t plan to go crazy with a sledgehammer or carry a bag of cement around. But I was perfectly capable of stripping old wallpaper or soaking balusters in paint-remover solution if the situation called for it.
I told myself that even if Joyce Boyer showed up today, I could handle her. I was stronger now, and surely enough time had passed that she had calmed down about Jerry Saxton and all of his women. At least, I hoped so.
“Hey, boss,” Wade said when I walked up the new front stairs to greet him on the porch. “What do you think?”
“Stairs look good and feel solid,” I said. “And I love that siding.”
“Better than the lattice, I think.”
“Much better.” I walked back down the stairs and, from the walkway, studied the new base of the house. “I’m glad it worked. The Boyers will love it, too, don’t you think?”
“Since it was your idea, I completely agree.”
I smiled. Many Victorian porches were built high above ground level and a common way to hide the underbelly was with latticework panels. We had gone a different route using thin vertical siding reminiscent of traditional wainscoting. When it was painted glossy white to match the front porch banister and railings, it would give a look of upscale elegance to the house.
He leaned against the post. “So, what’s up?”
“What needs to be done, Wade?” I asked. “I’m here to work. Nothing too strenuous because my shoulder’s still a little screwed up. But I had to get out of the house and I want to stay busy. I promise I won’t slow you down.”
“I’m not worried about that and, besides, it’s your call, boss. You can work on anything you want.”
I glanced at the front door, already stripped of six old coats of paint. “It’s a miracle we’re close to being on schedule after all that’s happened. I’d like to try to keep it that way.”
“Okay. I’ve got Todd and Billy starting on the foyer today, so let’s stick to that area. How about if you go to work on the newel post?”
“Sounds good.” He pushed the door open and we walked into the foyer. The thick carved post at the bottom of the main staircase was one of the highlights of the entryway.
“Most of the ornamentation is in good shape,” he said, “but a few of the carved pieces closest to the base are damaged. And there are so many coats of old paint, you can barely see the detail.”
“Okay.” I studied the newel post. While much of the damage to the wood was due to the normal wear and tear of aging, I also noticed some tiny termite holes and some shredding near the base, just as Wade had said. We’d already tented the house, so I wasn’t worried about termites anymore. The shredding could’ve been caused by a sharp-clawed family pet or a rambunctious child who liked to kick things. Either way, it would have to be fixed.
“I’ll remove the ornamental medallions first, strip off the paint layers, and get them cleaned up. Then I’ll deal with the post itself.”
He nodded. “I’ll leave you to it.”
It was a small but time-consuming job. It would have to be done by someone eventually, so given my current disability, it made sense for me to do it. That way, I wouldn’t be taking one of the guys away from a job requiring heavy lifting.
I went back to my truck to pull some tools out of the small chest I’d brought with me.
“Well, well, she finally shows her face.”
Joyce Boyer. My back straightened at the sound of her voice. She didn’t sound happy, but I knew I’d have to run into her eventually. I turned and said, “Hello, Joyce. Good to see you.” It was a lie, but a necessary one. She was my client, so it was past time I made nice with her. If I kept the conversation centered on the job, we would get along fine. “Things are looking good, don’t you think? And we’re right on schedule.”
“No thanks to you.”
I smiled, despite wanting to smack her. “True enough. I was on the disabled list for a while there, but Wade and the guys did a great job while I was gone. I’m back now and feeling a lot better.”
“Well, la-dee-dah,” she said nonsensically.
My smile was a tight line. I ignored her to rifle through my tool kit for a thin putty knife and a small hammer. So I guess Joyce knew how to hold a grudge. I just wasn’t sure why I was the focus of her rage. If she was so angry about Jerry cheating on her, she should’ve been relieved not to have to deal with him ever again.
I found the putty knife and also grabbed my favorite pink work gloves. I decided to take a utility knife, too, just in case the old paint was so thick that it might take off some of the wood when I pried the ornamental pieces away from the post. I could slide the utility knife in between the post and the ornamental piece and cut the paint without damaging either.
I pushed the tailgate closed and turned. Joyce was still there, standing right in my path.
“I’m not finished with you, Pinkie,” she said, exaggerating the nickname.
Pinkie. Because of my gloves? What. Ever. I couldn’t work with a client who hated me, though, so I decided to nip her attitude in the bud here and now.
“Look, Joyce, if you’re angry at me because of Jerry Saxton, you should know that—”
“Aha. So you admit you were trying to steal him.”
Steal him? “Are you kidding? I didn’t even know him. I definitely didn’t like him. I was set up on a blind date and you probably heard what a success it was.”
“I heard you kicked him.”
“Yeah, because he attacked me.”
“No way.”
“Oh, guess you didn’t hear that part.” I looked at her quizzically. “I’m not even sure why you care about him. He was a creep and a womanizer, and while I’m sorry he’s dead, I’m not sorry he won’t be around to attack another woman.”
Her hands fisted in frustration. “He didn’t attack women.”
“If that’s what you think, you’re deluding yourself.”
“You didn’t understand him like I did.”
“Really? You understood him? So you knew that he was dating numerous women at the same time and making promises he had no intention of keeping? And despite your claims, he did hurt women. He threatened them. I guess you’re lucky you weren’t one of them. But you didn’t understand him quite as well as you think you did.”
“You don’t know anything. Jerry was fun. He was a good listener. And he was a wild animal in the sack.”
“Stop.” My stomach pitched and I held up my hand. “Too much information.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Trust me, I’m not. Besides, you’ve been telling everyone in town that you hated him, so why are you suddenly defending him to me?”
“Because he cheated on me, the jerk! I could’ve lived with it, but thanks to you, everybody in town found out.”
They found out because Joyce had blabbered it all over the place, but she wouldn’t appreciate my pointing out the obvious. Instead, I said, “I truly didn’t know you were involved with him and, besides, I had no intention of ever seeing him again after that night.” Since her brain didn’t seem to be functioning, I added slowly, “He would’ve been all yours.”
“Except somebody killed him,” she said sullenly. “It was probably you.”
“It wasn’t.” There was no reason to continue this conversation. Joyce was unhappy and confused and I couldn’t convince her of the truth. “I’ve got to get to work. Despite your personal feelings toward me—which are unfounded, by the way—I still want to do the best job possible on your house.”
“I should fire you.”
I stopped and stared at her. “Why?”
She scowled. “Because I’m mad at you.”
“Please don’t be. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I suppose not.” Her shoulders slumped. “I’m just so bummed.”
“Why?”
She sighed. “You’ve met Stan, right? Well, Jerry was a Greek god compared to Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Stan.”
“I’ve really got to get to work.” I rushed back to the house and ran inside before she could give me one more appalling fact about Jerry’s prowess or Stan’s lack thereof.
Inside, I shook off the vibes from the confrontation and concentrated on the job. Folding a couple of old towels on the floor to protect my knees, I went to work on removing the newel post ornamentation. I was left blessedly alone for two whole hours, plenty of time to pry away the twelve carved wood medallions that had graced the four sides of the thick post for as long as the house had been standing.
I stood and stretched for a long minute to ease the stiffness in my legs from kneeling for that much time. Stacking the medallions on a sturdy piece of discarded drywall, I carried them out to the front porch, where a large plywood table and a couple of folding chairs were set up to do any of the detail work we occasionally had.
The table also held the stack of blueprints Wade and I referred to whenever there was a question of taking down a wall or ripping up a floor. The architect I worked with always redrew an updated, clean version of the blueprints whenever I started a new job, but I kept the old sheets as well, for reference.
Laying out the medallions, I took a closer look with a magnifying glass and decided that, yes, I could save them all. They would have to be soaked in solvent and stripped completely so that no layer of paint remained. When they were cleaned up, I would use wood filler to patch any damaged areas and then sand them until smooth. After that, the newel post itself would get the same basic treatment and then the medallions would be reattached to the post. Once the entire staircase was stripped down, we would stain and varnish everything to a high-gloss finish.
“Well, hello there.”
I looked up to find Stan Boyer grinning at me. “Hi, Stan. Good to see you.”
“House is coming along.”
“The guys are doing a great job,” I said, and brought him up-to-date on the work they’d done that he might not have noticed.
“I’m real pleased with everything, Shannon.”
“I’m glad. You’ve got the bones of a beautiful home here.”
He leaned his hip against the table. “I saw Joyce corner you earlier. What were you two talking about?”
“Oh.” I thought fast. “I was just telling her that we’re right on schedule. How are you doing? I saw you at the pub the other night but didn’t get a chance to say hello.”
“I’ve been around.” His eyes twinkled. “You’re the one who’s been missing.”
I smiled ruefully. “True. I’ve been nursing a shoulder injury, but I’m better now and happy to be back at work.”
He scuffed his shoes on the ground a few times. “Listen, I want to apologize for the last time we talked. I sent you on a wild-goose chase that turned ugly.”
“I’ll say it did,” I said lightly, trying to match his casual tone. But ugly was putting it mildly. Because of Stan’s phone call last week, I had come over here to do him a favor and found Jerry Saxton’s dead body instead. Both Mac and Eric had suggested that maybe I’d been lured to the basement to find Jerry’s body. If that were true, then Stan would’ve played a part in luring me.
“I heard you got called down to the police station,” he said.
“Sure did,” I said mildly. “They hauled me down there and asked me a lot of questions.”
He grimaced. “Yeah, they asked me a bunch, too.”
Since he seemed to be in a talkative mood, I went ahead and brought up the one thing I’d been dying to know the answer to. “What happened that afternoon, Stan? You told me on the phone that your neighbor telephoned you, but the police said later that none of them would admit that they called you.”
Frustrated, he raked his fingers through his sparse patch of gray hair. “I didn’t lie to you. I did talk to my neighbor’s daughter. Daphne said she was out walking the dog and passed my house on the way to the beach. The dog took off running and ended up sniffing around the side.” He pointed toward the back of the house. “Over there. He started barking and wouldn’t stop. When Daphne caught up with him, she could hear water running, so she called me on my cell.”
“Didn’t the police interview her?”
“Well, here’s the thing.” He looked embarrassed again. “She took off that night for San Francisco to catch a red-eye for her semester abroad in Spain. It was hell getting in touch with her right away because she was going to go hiking around the country for a week or so before starting classes. But they finally got hold of her and she told her story just like I said. So that let me off the hook.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“You and me both, girlie.” He gave a cursory glance at the medallions I was working on. “I’ll let you get back to whatever you’re doing.”
“Okay.”
Stan walked away and I went to work stripping the medallions. I placed them neatly at the bottom of a big plastic bucket and carefully poured the solvent over them. I estimated that they would need a few hours of soaking to get rid of the paint and varnish they’d been coated with. I tucked the bucket under a window on the porch and taped a piece of paper to the side that said, CAUSTIC SOLVENT AT WORK. DO NOT DISTURB.
I thought about my conversation with Stan. I hadn’t learned anything except that he hadn’t been lying about the reason he’d called me that day. I still didn’t know why he’d told me he was in San Francisco, but decided I didn’t want to know. I’d already heard way too much about his and Joyce’s personal relationship. I didn’t need to know more.
As I was stowing my tools back in my truck, my cell phone rang. I checked the number and groaned out loud. I didn’t dare let it go to voice mail, though, because that would exact a worse punishment than if I just faced the music and took the call. “Hello?”
“My family room ceiling is leaking. I’m having a very important dinner party tomorrow night and this has to be fixed.”
Gracious as always, I thought. “Hello, Whitney,” I said.
“I’ll expect you to be here in fifteen minutes.” She hung up the phone.
What a charmer. Here was the thing about Whitney Reid Gallagher. She and Tommy and their three children lived in a gorgeous, modern Victorian-style home near the Alisal Cliffs. Their beautiful, trendy housing development was called Cliffside. My father had built many of the Cliffside homes over the past twenty years, including Whitney’s. So in her little mind, this made it okay for her to call me whenever anything went wrong in her house.
The reason I always responded was not because I was the nicest contractor in town—which I was—but because I knew that if I didn’t repair the damage immediately, she would bad-mouth my father’s beautiful work to all her snooty friends.
She was just that kind of a bitch.
I looked around for Wade and found him clinging to the side of the house like a determined spider as he worked to replace several rows of cedar shingles underneath the second-floor gable. I checked to make sure he was securely belted to the scaffolding before yelling his name.
“Hey, Shan.” He waved. “Come on up.”
I laughed. “I would love to, but I’ve got to take off for a little while. The Gallaghers’ ceiling is leaking.”
“Oh, great.” I could see his eyes rolling from here.
“I might need to pull a couple of guys to help me patch it up, but I’ll let you know.”
“Whatever the princess wants. See you later.”
I jogged to my truck, stashed my tools in the toolbox, and took off for Whitney’s house a few miles away. It was still hard to believe that she and Tommy had stayed together all these years. The man had to have the patience of a saint, or maybe he just ignored her most of the time.
I realized that I would much rather deal with Joyce Boyer’s angry snark than Whitney’s cold bitchiness any day of the week.
I pulled to a stop in front of Whitney’s place and shoved my pink work gloves into my purse.
Before I could ring the doorbell, she whipped open the door. She wore a sheer black lace top with black skinny jeans and black high heels. Just a casual little something to wear around the house.
She scanned me, as well, from my worn denim shirt down to my scuffed work boots. “Took you long enough to get here.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said, and walked inside.
She laughed. It was a genuine shock to hear the sound of her laughter. I hated to admit it out loud, but once in a blue moon we actually managed to get along. Even crazier, we occasionally had the same taste in home styles and interior decor. I knew this because she had managed to get herself a wholesale license a few years ago and had convinced people around town that she was an interior designer. Consequently, I was forced to work with her every so often. Because we both wanted the work and wanted to do a good job, we feigned cooperation when the clients were around. Invariably, they were happy with our results. That’s what mattered most.
As soon as the clients would leave the vicinity or one of Whitney’s friends, especially Jennifer, would come around, Whitney would turn back into the Wicked Witch of the West.
“Where’s the leak?” I asked.
“In here.” Her stiletto heels click-clacked on the smooth oak floor as she led the way to the great room off the kitchen. As I walked through the house, I took a moment to admire my father’s work. The kitchen and large family room featured high ceilings with contemporary industrial lights that hung down over the bar. The kitchen was ultramodern, with stainless-steel appliances, mission-style cabinetry, and French doors leading to a small kitchen garden. There was a larger backyard off the family room, as well.
Whitney stood by the bar and pointed up. I stared at the ceiling until I finally found the minuscule water spot she was referring to. “I don’t see any water actually dripping. Are you sure it’s leaking?”
“It was earlier and it left that stain. I don’t want it to start up again.”
“Did you leave the bathtub running?”
“Of course not.”
“I’m going upstairs to see what’s causing it.” An hour later, I had tracked down the leak to the kids’ playroom on the third floor. The youngest little darling had spent all day pouring small buckets of water down the laundry chute. Some of it had leaked into the space between the first and second floors and had pooled, which had caused the tiny water spot to appear on the ceiling downstairs.
I called two of my guys to bring over our heavy-duty wet vac to suck up any remaining moisture, along with a few strong fans to help dry out the laundry chute. The guys would work here for the rest of the afternoon, until everything was dry.
I found Whitney in the kitchen and told her what the problem was and how we planned to fix it. “Todd and Johnny will be here for another couple of hours. Then Todd will come by first thing in the morning and touch up the spot on the ceiling. Will you be home?”
“I have to take the kids to school, but I’ll be home by nine.”
“Okay. He’ll meet you here at nine.”
“You swear the spot will be gone by the time my guests arrive?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes narrowed in thought. “What about the paint fumes?”
“That’s why I want him to get an early start. You’ll have to leave some doors open, but the smell should be gone within an hour or two.”
“It had better be,” she warned.
“You’re welcome,” I said dryly. I packed up my tools and headed for the front door. Whitney followed me to the door, just as her friend Jennifer was about to press the doorbell.
“Well, well,” Jennifer said, casting an accusing look at me and Whitney. “Isn’t this cozy?”
“Cozy? As in warm and friendly?” I snorted. “Hardly.”
I passed her on the front step and heard her mutter, “Nice hair.”
“Get over yourself,” I said wearily, and kept going. How many more years would I have to put up with her giving me grief about my wavy red hair? There were plenty of people around who liked my hair. And she needed to get a life.
Meanwhile, I wanted to shove a pry bar up her nose.
“God, Whitney,” Jennifer said loudly. “How could you let her walk into your house in those hideous dirty boots?”
I glanced back and saw Whitney shake her head. “It wasn’t easy. But you know how these townies are.”
“I’ll bet Penny likes those boots, though,” Jennifer continued snidely. “The two of them were pretty tight at the gym the other night. I even saw them hugging.” She gave Whitney a knowing look. “I think Shannon might like girls better than boys.”
I should’ve kept walking, but she was so infuriating, I had to stop and turn around. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but isn’t it time you learned to shut your mouth?”
“Ooh, defensive,” Jennifer said.
“You think she likes girls?” Whitney asked, egging her on.
“It makes sense,” Jennifer reasoned. “The only man she’s dated since Tommy dumped her back in high school is Jerry Saxton, and we all know what happened to him.”
I cocked my head to study her. “Will you ever grow up?”
“I don’t know,” Jennifer taunted. “Will you ever go to jail for killing Jerry?”
My eyes went wide. Where had that come from? I didn’t know how to respond, it was so offensive.
Whitney snorted with laughter.
I found my tongue and said in an innocent voice, “But gosh, Jennifer. I saw you hugging Penny, too. Maybe what I’m hearing from you is a little bit of . . . jealousy?”
Whitney roared with laughter and elbowed her friend. “Snap! She got you there.”
Jennifer’s eyes were narrow slits of fury as she jabbed her finger at me. “Everyone knows you killed Jerry because you were jealous of him sleeping with Penny.”
I was taken aback. “Jerry was sleeping with Penny?” I thought about the conversations I’d had with Penny. “I don’t believe it.”
“Shows you what you know.” Jennifer’s laughter sounded forced, but she didn’t back down. “It’s all true.”
“No, it’s not.” I met Whitney’s gaze and caught her aiming a look of pure contempt at her so-called friend. Wow. Things weren’t exactly perfect between Whitney and Jennifer.
Finished here, I turned and walked to my truck, leaving them to face off with each other.
But as I drove away, I was more confused than ever. Was Jennifer telling the truth? Had Penny slept with that jerk Jerry Saxton? It was impossible. Penny despised him as much as I did. Jennifer was lying just to annoy me. Or was she? Who knew what was going on in her spiteful little mind?
At this point I was certain of only one thing: I really couldn’t stand Jennifer Bailey.