"TURN OFF THAT damn camera!” Josie glared over Bobby Valentine’s shoulder at the cameraman.
“Yeah, cut! Why don’t we all take a coffee break? We can continue this later.”
Josie wasn’t accustomed to taking breaks before work had even begun, but she didn’t see that she had any choice. “Just let me get my crew back in here working and we can find someplace more private to talk.” She didn’t wait for him to argue; she had a responsibility to the homeowners and her employees. She hurried out the back door to where the women were waiting for her. She had expected to find them idle. To her delight, they were prefabricating new frames for all the windows. She had a twinge of guilt; she should be working alongside her crew.
“How’s it going?” Dottie asked, standing.
“Not well,” Josie admitted. “Bobby Valentine knows that I grew up with Courtney.”
Annette gasped, and Josie realized she had just explained more than she had planned to. “I… I can’t imagine that my past has anything, anything at all, to do with Courtney’s murder. I know I’m asking you to take my word for it, but-”
“Who else knows she’s dead?” Dottie interrupted to ask.
“I… I didn’t tell anyone. As far as I know, no one else knows.”
“You should keep it that way,” Dottie stated flatly. “And maybe we should all get together later to talk.”
Josie stared at the other woman for a moment, taking her time to decide. “You’re right.” Annette’s and Jill’s faces also displayed concern. “I have to talk to Bobby Valentine and I won’t tell him about… Courtney, but I hate to lose more work time. Would it be possible for us to meet for dinner tonight at the office? Pizza and beer? My treat.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Me, too.”
“Count me in.”
Annette and Jill agreed with Dottie.
“Good. I’d better get going then. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll go ahead and demo the south wall and then we can start framing in the second-floor addition.”
“Great.” With a new crew, there was always a moment when Josie realized that either she had hired the right people or she hadn’t. This was the moment. And she had.
She left to find Bobby Valentine, knowing that she could depend upon these women to keep going.
Chad was near the front deck. “Mr. Valentine said he would be waiting for you in Courtney’s trailer. It’s the one with the show’s logo stenciled on the doors.”
“Thanks.” She started toward the street and then turned back to the young man. “I hear you and Annette are dating.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“I don’t want to be a busybody, but I think it’s nice. I mean, that you two are seeing each other. You’re both new on the island and it can be lonely.” She realized she sounded like an idiot and changed the subject. “Courtney’s trailer is the one with the logo on the doors? Is that what you said?”
Chad looked at her as if he thought she had lost her mind. “Yeah. That’s the one. I… I’ll see you.”
“Yes. Sure.” Why didn’t she shut up? Her father had said she babbled like a brook when she was nervous-and after all these years she could still feel the sting of his comments. Well, she had more important things to worry about now. She continued on her way.
There were two trailers on the street, but only one carried the gold castle with COURTNEY CASTLE printed in a circle around it, and that one also displayed an open door. Josie climbed the two steps that hung from its side and called out, “Hello. Bobby?”
“Josie. Come on in. Close the door behind you.”
She did as he ordered, again amazed by the interior of Courtney’s trailer. But apparently she wasn’t going to have a lot of time to look around.
“Sit down. I think we need to have an honest talk.”
Josie sat on the edge of the plush chintz-covered couch. She wasn’t going to get comfortable until she found out exactly how much he knew about Courtney’s past-and hers.
But it seemed that he was the one who was going to ask the questions. “So, Josie Pigeon, how much do you know about all this?”
“I… To be honest, I have no idea what you’re asking me. What do I know about the show? About why you’re here? How you all found Island Contracting? I don’t know anything. And I think I should be the one asking the questions and you should be providing the answers.” She leaned back and felt something stabbing at her spine. Glad to have something to do in the awkward silence that seemed to be forming, she pulled out a pillow and examined it carefully.
“A gift from a fan. Courtney gets hundreds, thousands, every year.”
Josie stared down at the pillow in her lap. She didn’t know much about handwork, but this elaborately embroidered throw pillow displayed dozens of different (and complicated-looking) stitches in even more hues of threads. The part that had stabbed her was worked in metallic threads. It was Courtney’s castle. But the words around the logo were different. “ ‘Courtney Castle’s Crewel Work?’ ” she read, then turned and picked up another pillow. This one was needlepoint- that much she knew from the endless floral monstrosities her mother had worked on for years and years. The castle was the same (although slightly tilted), but the script around the seal read “Stencil with Courtney Castle.” She looked up at Bobby Valentine. “This isn’t Courtney’s first show?”
“Not by a long shot. But we think she’s finally found her niche. Or I suppose I should say that’s what we did think.”
“What do you think now?”
“I don’t know what to think, frankly.” Bobby Valentine looked her straight in the eye and Josie wondered if he was about to lie-or tell the truth. “You and Courtney grew up together.”
She didn’t know what he knew, but she didn’t feel obligated to increase his knowledge. “We lived in the same town.”
“I understood you were friends.”
“Our mothers were friends.”
“You went to high school together.”
Josie remembered the question he had asked about home economics class. No reason to deny it. “Yes.”
“And college.”
“We started at the same college,” she admitted.
“But you were never close.”
“Bobby, I don’t know what Courtney told you, but we hated each other.”
He didn’t respond.
“What did she tell you?” she asked.
“That you were good friends.”
“What?” Josie squealed. “No way!”
“Well, not friends exactly. She said she was sort of your mentor. That you were one of those shy, awkward, unpopular kids-”
“Did she mention my adolescent acne?”
“I don’t think so.” He squinted at her freckled face.
“I was kidding.”
“Oh.”
“And isn’t a mentor someone who supports another person, helps her along in life?”
“Sort of.”
“Then Courtney wasn’t mine. Believe me, she didn’t want me to get ahead and she didn’t help me to get ahead. Ever.”
“She said…” Bobby Valentine stopped without revealing what Courtney had said.
“She said what? What about me? What about my relationship with her? And when did she say it to you?”
“Excuse me?”
Josie stuffed all the pillows behind her back and relaxed a bit. “Tell me,” she demanded. “Tell me what Courtney said about me.”
“Well, she said a lot, but not in any particular order. I mean, I just might have confused or forgotten some of the details.”
“What did she say?” Josie repeated.
“Let me think. If I tell you how the story came out, maybe you’ll understand why I’m sort of reluctant to tell you. It wasn’t a cohesive tale.”
“Do me a favor. I have work to get done. Just tell me the general idea and I won’t blame you for leaving out the many details.”
“Well, I don’t think she told me anything about you when we were first talking about the project.”
“How did you come to choose this job to feature on your program?”
“I don’t remember. We’re always looking for something unusual. A house of historical interest. A conversion of an industrial site into homes. A job that takes place in Hawaii in the middle of winter.”
“You’re kidding.”
“About Hawaii? Nope. Courtney Castle’s Castles has taped remodeling jobs in Maui, Honolulu, and St. Thomas-three winters, three shows. Why freeze when you can get a tan while you work?”
“I suppose. So, how did you find those jobs?”
“Well, we get lots of letters from people who think their remodeling job should be on television. Some think it would be interesting to get the publicity, some think they’ll get special deals from workmen and suppliers if they’re on the show. Others want free advice from experts.”
“So you pick from the people who write?”
“Not always. We’ve been doing this show for almost four years. We have lots of professional contacts looking out for interesting projects.”
“But this job. How did you hear about it?”
Bobby Valentine shook his head. “I don’t remember exactly. It seems to me that we got a message from someone here in town. A neighbor maybe.”
Josie thought for a moment before asking the next question. “Did you hear about the job itself or about Island Contracting?”
“Frankly, I don’t know. But I do know that what makes this an interesting story is you and the women on your crew. I can’t imagine any other big selling point, so I would assume that’s what we heard.” He gave her his intent “I’m telling the truth here” stare.
“But you don’t know who you heard it from.”
“No.”
“Or who was contacted at the show.”
“Well, come to think of it, that was probably Courtney herself. I think I first heard about it from her. She was excited about the idea of an all-women contracting company. Thought we could sell it to a station for their fund-raising period. Financing like that is important for us. Our productions aren’t produced by a single station, and while we have a few backers-a charitable foundation, a paint company, and a chain of hardware stores at present-we still need station support if we’re going to keep producing shows. And the stations are always looking for something to put on during their fund-raisers that won’t drive away the audience.”
Josie wasn’t interested in the financial woes of public television; she returned to the subject at hand. “So you think someone from the island called Courtney and told her about me.”
“About Island Contracting. I know I didn’t hear about you until fairly recently.”
“But Courtney might have known about me earlier and just not spoken about it, right?”
“It’s possible.”
“Look, what sort of relationship do you and Courtney have?”
“If you’re asking if we’re lovers-”
Actually, she would love to know if that was true, but it really wasn’t the question she meant to ask. “No. I mean, is she always honest with you?”
It was a simple question but it seemed to give him pause. “Courtney is talent.”
“So?”
“Have you been around television people before?”
“I remodeled a house for a director and his… well, I always assumed she was his wife while I was working, but later I heard that his wife wanted the house as part of her divorce settlement. And he claimed she had no right to it as she had never seen it; his poor mistress had had all the wear and tear of remodeling. Weird.”
“Compared to the ego of your average on-air personality, that’s nothing. Courtney isn’t the worst of the lot, but she has her moments. Well, all you have to do is look around this place and you know that. Her life story is here.” He waved to the wall behind her, which was covered with awards and photographs. They were reflected in the mirrors across the way, but Josie hadn’t had the time to examine them. “And the first thing Courtney does when anyone comes to interview her is go around this room and relate what she considers the fascinating high points of her life.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with her honesty- or lack of it.”
“It’s not that this stuff is lies, it’s more like it shows only the side of things that Courtney wants to present to the world. And that’s kind of the way she lives. If there’s something negative in her past, you won’t hear about it from her. And that’s the way she lives her life-with an emphasis on the positive. Which means she doesn’t always tell the truth. Period.”
“Oh.” Josie thought that was interesting. “So you first heard about this project from Courtney, but you don’t know how she heard about it. And, really, you don’t know if she would have told you the truth even if she had told you.”
“I guess you could put it that way.”
“Do you think she wrote the note?”
“The one that was interpreted as being about her murder?”
“It’s the only one I’ve heard of.”
“I’m sure she wrote it. It was in her handwriting. But, Josie, it had nothing to do with her disappearance or anything. The note was just part of a piece of paper; the other half was found on the floor when the place was searched. The entire note was “Kill Courtney Castle’s Castles segment three.’ It was no big deal. Courtney was making notes about the show. She had decided to leave out one segment and put in another.”
“What were they? The segment she wanted left out and the substitution?” Josie asked.
“The original segment was a short tour of the neighborhood, probably a comparison of all the similar houses. She was substituting a segment about the background and training of your workers.”
“Which is why she wanted so many questions asked about that subject,” Josie mused. “Did Courtney really have that much power? Did she choose what subjects you covered?”
“Hey, she’s the talent.”
Josie thought for a moment. He still hadn’t answered her original questions. “So what exactly did she say about me?”
“She said that she had helped you and that you betrayed her.”
“What?”
“She claimed you seduced her boyfriend.” He looked skeptical.
“And you believed her story?”
“Hey, she’s talent,” he repeated.