Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 05 - Trouble on the Doorstep (9 page)

“Nope.
He was so busy building that business that he didn’t date much.”

George looked up.
“Had the business been going well?”

Bill shrugged.
“We didn’t talk a lot about it, but he did say that he hoped that the Silver Times work would really establish their reputation.” He hesitated for a moment. “The thing is, I kind of wanted to ask Jolie to keep her ears open. You, too, of course,” he looked at George.

I didn’t wait for George.
“I don’t mind keeping my ears open, but Sgt. Morehouse read me the riot act up one side of the police station and down the other. I really can’t do much more than listen.”
And that’s the smart thing, right?

“I kind of figured.
I just,” he spread his hands in front of him, and then rested them on his knees. “I feel so damned helpless. I know the cops will investigate the daylights out of Eric’s murder. Of course they will. But unless they trip over a confession, they’ll hardly look at Steve’s death.”

“I’m sure there will be a lot of conversations.
I’ll listen,” I said, as gently as I could.
And I’ll talk to Elmira and anyone else I please.

ON WEDNESDAY MORNING I FLIPPED through files of completed appraisals as I sat at Harry’s desk. I could not remember the name of the person whose duplex I’d appraised at Silver Times. I only remembered that she was moving into the assisted living building.

T
here she was. Margaret Chasworthy. She was almost eighty and had retired as a teacher when she was in her early sixties to take care of her husband, who had dementia. He had died about two years after she retired, and she told me that, while she missed who he was before he got sick, she had had a “heck of a lot of fun” since he died. I know all this because she talked to me the entire time I measured her rooms and took photos.

I leafed through her file.
I had told her that if I was doing another appraisal at Silver Times I would visit her. She was smart enough to know that was a lie. Now it was the truth. I left her folder on Harry’s desk and walked out to my car.

You can drive along the ocean for a number of blocks before you swing west to the part of town where Silver Times is.
It was not possible to see repair progress at the buildings that faced the ocean, but there was lots of work underway on the buildings along B Street that had their backs to the boardwalk and water. Even in my car I could hear the drilling of the machines that were boring holes for new boardwalk pilings.

Aunt Madge recounts how the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 destroyed the old boardwalk, which boasted a Ferris wheel and small merry-go-round, and most of A Street.
It’s why the Cozy Corner was her choice of a B&B after Uncle Gordon died when I was five. It’s three blocks from the ocean and she won’t live any closer than that.

A fire fueled with scrap lumber burned in an oil barrel and a couple of hooded men in work clothes were warming their hands.
The smell that drifted into the car told me it was treated lumber, probably old pieces of boardwalk. The men were standing in a vacant lot that had been a really tiny ice cream and hamburger place that dated back to the 1930s. It was one of the few Ocean Alley buildings that was totally flattened.

The empty lot had piles of bricks and what looked like bags of sand.
I remembered that the lot was so small the owners decided not to rebuild and were donating the land for a postage-stamp sized park that would hold maybe five benches. Thank goodness for Ocean Alley zoning laws. In another town someone would build a ten-story condo that was forty feet wide with a parking lot on the roof. Or something ugly, anyway.

I turned left and was soon beyond most visible damage.
A couple houses were in the middle of having their roofs replaced, and there were houses with pieces of siding missing. I thought again how lucky we were that Sandy made landfall eighty miles south of us.

It was a dreary day, and it didn’t help my mood at all.
If I wasn’t thinking of something else I was seeing Eric on the kitchen floor. “Focus,” I said aloud. “You can’t figure out anything if you sit around like a dull dolt. And it’s not your job to figure out anything,” I added for good measure. So why are you driving to Silver Times?

The Silver Times Senior Living Complex was very quiet, and it looked as if all the debris from the damaged gazebo was gone.
I drove around for a couple of minutes. There were many places where small numbers of shingles had been replaced, probably a temporary repair. Several units had blue tarp with strips of two-by-fours over what were probably larger gaps in shingles.

At the edge of the property, about one hundred yards behind the assisted living building, there was a huge pile of tree debris that I figured was to be hauled to the landfill or burned.
That seemed like something that could have been done by now, but maybe it was the fifth pile and the others were gone.

There was no one in the lobby of the assisted living building.
I looked around for a place to sign in and realized these were separate apartments, not nursing home rooms. The problem was, I didn’t know which unit was Margaret Chasworthy’s.

The sound of feet shuffling on carpet reached me and I saw a very elderly man coming toward me, pushing a walker.
Since it looked as if it would be about five minutes before he got to the lobby I walked around and looked at the shelves that had knick knacks of all shapes and sizes. A center shelf held Christmas decorations and a table in the middle of the lobby had a manger scene and a Menorah.

“Are you looking for someone?”
The man’s voice had a reedy quality, but it was far from tremulous.

“Yes, thanks.
I stopped by to see Margaret Chasworthy, but I haven’t visited since she moved in here, and I don’t know her apartment number.”

“Come closer,” he ordered.

I walked over and stood in front of him. Eyes made white with cataracts looked me up and down, with the man craning his head so he could look at me through what fields of vision he had. “You look familiar,” he finally said.

“Guilty as charged,” I said, with false cheeriness.
“My name is Jolie Gentil and…”

“Madge Richards’ niece.
I thought that was you. I saw you at First Prez with her a couple of times, but it was many years ago. I’m Hank Bauer. I’m kind of the mayor of Happy Acres here.”

“Oh.
I didn’t know this building had a formal name,” I said.

“It doesn’t.
And it’s not too happy, either. I’ll walk you to Margaret’s.” He turned and started back down the hall he had just come from. With an established mission his pace had picked up a bit.

I started to say he could just tell me the apartment number, but my guess was that the somewhat surly self-appointed mayor would not like that.
“Have you lived here long?” I asked.

“Only been open two years,” he said, slightly out of breath.

We walked in silence past two apartments, then he stopped and pointed at the knocker of the third one we got to. I lifted the knocker and bumped it against the metal plate on the door.

“Who is it?”
I remembered that Mrs. Chasworthy had a voice that matched her role as a grade school teacher who knew how to maintain order.

“It’s Hank, Maggie.
I have Madge Richards’ niece here.”

“My name is…”

“I heard you,” he said.

How rude.

She opened the door and smiled. “Come in, come in, both of you.” She gestured toward a very old-looking set of rockers. “Elmira has told everyone you’re going to investigate the high repair estimates people got.”

A groan escaped before I could stop myself.
“Really, I didn’t promise…”

“Then why the hell are you here?” Hank asked.

“Do you ever let anyone finish a sentence?” I asked.

To my surprise, he smiled.
“Good. You don’t let people push you around.” He sat, being careful not to lean all the way back in the rocker.

“Behave, Hank,” Margaret said, but almost as an aside.
“I just put on a fresh pot of coffee. Decaf, of course. It’ll be ready in a minute.”

She and I sat, too.
“Mrs. Chasworthy, Margaret, I hope it’s okay to drop in,” I began.

“She didn’t throw you out, did she?”

“Hank,” Margaret and I both said.

“Humph.”
It came out sounding more like a curse.

“You may have seen that Eric Morton was found in the Cozy Corner, so you can probably understand my interest in whatever he had been doing just before he died.”

She nodded and Hank pretended to zip his mouth shut.

“Actually,” I continued, “I’m here more because of Eric’s partner’s death, Steve Oliver.
His bro…”

“About damned time somebody looked into that.
Must be a lot of ass-kissing going on to call that a hit and run.”

Tell me what you really think.

Margaret pointed toward the door, and Hank glared at her. She turned back to me.

“Steve’s brother Bill is a friend of mine.
He thinks it more than a little odd that Steve and Eric both got letters warning them not to bid on the repair project and then Steve gets hit and Eric was stabbed.”

“Are you helping the police?” Margaret asked.

“Not exactly. In fact they…” I began.

“Could use a lot of help.
Probably can’t find the way to the bathroom without a map,” Hank offered.

“Enough!” Margaret said.

“All right, all right,” Hank said.
He didn’t look the least bit chagrined.

“To be honest, Sgt. Morehouse gave me orders not to talk about the case.”
I saw Hank’s eyes light up but Margaret looked at him and held up one finger, so I continued. “So unless they ask you directly, it would help me if you didn’t mention I came by to talk to you.”

“Why did you pick me, for gracious sakes?” Margaret asked.

“You and Elmira are the only ones I know…” I stopped. “I forgot about my friend Lance Wilson. He’s here for a few months.”

Margaret nodded.
“In the independent living apartment building.”

“Lucky guy,” Hank said.
“Food’s a lot better.”

We ignored him.

“All I really wondered is if you had heard anybody talking about estimates for the storm-related repairs,” I said.

“Not in this building,” Margaret said.
“Aside from the fact that it has sturdier construction than the duplexes…”

“You should be here when they test the damn fire alarms.
All the hallway doors automatically close. Just when people need to be near their bathrooms, a lot of folks are stuck in the hall.”

“I’ll remember to bring plastic bags,” I said, having realized that Hank was trying to see if he could annoy me.
Two can play that game.

“Now Jolie,” Margaret said.
“Hank’s enough.”

I could tell she wasn’t irritated.
She probably just didn’t want to encourage Hank. He grinned.

She stood and walked to the tiny kitchen area where the coffee had now stopped perking.
“A couple of us go over to the independent apartment building for lunch. We can eat here or there,” Margaret said. “A number of people from the duplexes also eat lunch there, and several of them have wondered about the estimates.”

“Most of them don’t give a damn,” Hank said.
“They don’t have to pay the bills.”

Margaret ignored him.
“I doubt anyone would have talked much about it if the young man hadn’t died right after he tried to turn in his bid for the work.”

I nodded, slowly, trying to consider whether the dollar value of the repairs was really that big an issue.
Maybe there was a lot of overhead because it was an institutional setting of sorts. It still seemed as if Elmira’s repair estimate was inflated. “I wonder when they’ll reopen the bidding.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Hank asked.

This time we both looked at him.

“Tomorrow,” Hank said.
“Ten o’clock meeting for all bidders. Only be one.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Marky Markham,” Hank said. “Brat son of the guy who built the place.”

THOUGH I DON’T mind being in the proverbial doghouse with George when I don’t tell him something, I thought knowing that the expected bidder was the son of the man who lived next to Elmira might be something he could get information on. But first I wanted to do some digging of my own.

I made my way to the library.
Though it’s irritating not to have Internet access at the Cozy Corner, the web wouldn’t have much of what I needed. I would have to go through microfilm of old local newspapers.

Scoobie was in his usual spot at a table near the reference section.
He’s camped there for years, though now when he has a big test he goes to the college library. He acknowledged me with a preoccupied nod and went back to whatever he was writing.

The
Ocean Alley Press
goes back seventy-two years. The index has been computerized and it’s pretty good. First I keyed in ‘Markham,’ but there were too many options. I noted the name ‘Andrew Markham’ appeared a lot, so I tried that and the search yielded a list of fewer articles, but there were still about twenty-five.

It was generally hard to tell what the content was, since the index only had abbreviated article titles. I settled for reading mostly those that had the words ‘Markham Construction’ in the title.
One of the first ones I came across was about an award from the local area agency on aging, so there was some biographical information.

Andrew Markham had inherited a business from his father.
It sounded more like a home repair business than a construction company until Andrew graduated from college and joined his father. Within five years they had a number of contracts to build apartments, housing developments and the occasional school or public building.

Markham Construction donated to every charity in town, and soon there were awards for service to the community and something called ‘civic pride.’
There was a huge party when Andrew bowed out of the business and turned it over to his son Nathaniel Beaumont Markham.
Thus the name Marky
.