Not Quite Dead Yet, page 12
Jet narrowed her eyes and Andrew licked his lips. Must have enjoyed the confusion on her face, ate it up, a substitute for her brother. This couldn’t be true, could it? Andrew was making shit up; he was a drunk, maybe even a murderer.
“How do you know this?” Billy asked, stepping in.
“She told me herself. Nell.”
“The chief’s wife?” Billy asked.
Andrew nodded. “She’s got a construction business too, out of town. Makes sense she’d want to expand here, in Woodstock, now they live here, now he’s running the police. She’s going to buy Mason Construction—they’ve already started talking, she and your daddy.”
Jet blinked, coming through the shock, recovering just enough to ask: “Why wouldn’t my dad leave the company to Luke?”
Andrew inhaled the air from his beer bottle, long empty. “Nell said Scott doesn’t think it would be fair, to give the company to one of you, when he has two kids. Well, two kids still alive.”
And now Jet did almost believe him, because that sounded exactly like something Dad would say. He was all about fair. But this wasn’t fair: Jet would never want the company—she’d wanted to do her own thing, something big to prove that she could, and Luke was dying to take over. Dad knew that—everyone knew that, even this drunk fuck sitting across from her.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, a lie of her own.
“You’re not the first to say that.” Andrew grinned.
“What do you mean?” Billy piped up. “Who else have you told about this?”
Andrew shrugged. “I’m not good with secrets. Never tell a drunk your business plans. I like Nell, she’s nice.” He rolled the empty bottle away from him. “I need another drink.”
Jet stood up, righting the bottle, slamming it down with a thud. She’d had enough of his face, of his wheezing laugh, of collecting reasons why this man might have killed her.
“Come on, Billy,” she said, walking away, past those stripey legs that came from another world.
Billy came, caught her by a lamp with the body of an ostrich, shade covering its head.
“What are you thinking?” He lowered his voice, eyes on Andrew at the bar.
“I’m thinking he has no alibi for the time of my murder, and he has motive. A few to choose from, actually.” Jet sniffed. “Blames my family for losing his house, for his daughter’s death. Maybe he thought it was Mom’s head he was bashing in, I don’t know, got me by accident.”
Jet glanced back at Andrew. He’d ordered a harder drink this time, whiskey, nursing it on the way back to his table.
“He’s going to be drinking down here for a while,” Jet said. “We could just go upstairs, break down his door, search for my iPhone in his apartment, prove it that way.”
That should have got more of a reaction from Billy, more alarm, but he must have been distracted, eyes spooling through some unknown thought.
“What?” Jet demanded the thought from him.
“Just thinking. If he brought the phone home with him, why did it last ping on River Street? That’s nowhere near here, and definitely not on the way from your house. What’s the connection?”
Now Jet was distracted by Billy’s thought too. It was a good point.
“Fine,” she said, marching back over to Andrew’s table, not taking a seat this time.
“You’re back,” he laughed, choking on the amber liquid.
“One more thing,” Jet said, sharpening her voice, aiming for the back of his head. “River Street. You know anyone who lives there?”
“River Street?” he repeated, spinning in his chair to glance up at her. “Yeah, I know people. Used to be my neighbors.”
“What?” Jet said, too breathy, forced out by her quickening heart.
“I used to live over there. My old house, it was on North Street. Just off River Street, the only way to get to the house.”
Jet’s head snapped to the side, finding Billy’s eyes. Now the alarm was there, where it belonged, a coating over that watery blue. Probably a matching look in hers.
“You’re saying there’s a Mason Construction site on North Street?” Jet asked the back of Andrew’s head, still intact. “Your old house?”
“It’s your family’s company.” Andrew took a large gulp. “Down the end. They’re only just starting the new building now.” Another. “Why you asking me about River Street?”
Because it had been the wrong question, and the wrong street.
North Street.
That blue dot hanging in the road right on the corner, where River met North, and Jet had been chasing down the wrong one.
She hooked her arm through Billy’s, dragged him away.
“We were looking at the wrong street,” she hissed, heading for the exit. “Maybe Andr—th-the killer turned the phone off, then headed down North toward the construction site. Didn’t continue along River like we thought.”
“You think it is Andrew, then?”
“Well, he’s connected to that location.” Jet glanced back at the man, sitting in shadows, seeing off his glass of whiskey. “Probably doesn’t know we have the phone data, that we can see it was turned off there, the idiot.”
“And if it’s not Andrew?”
Jet gave Billy his arm back. “If it’s not Andrew, if someone else killed me, then maybe it’s not about the killer’s connection to that site. Maybe it’s about mine.”
Billy stopped by the door, a glint in his eye as he paused to ask: “To North Street?”
“To fucking North Street,” she answered.
Thirteen
Here it was. Fucking North Street.
The road stopped abruptly in front of them, choked up with vans, some white, some branded with the Mason Construction logo. A low growl of heavy machinery, shaking the ground and Jet’s truck with it, as a yellow digger rolled up the hill toward all that mud. A rickety wire gate pushed off to the side, two signs attached to it: CAUTION: Construction Area and DANGER: Hard Hat Area.
They couldn’t get any closer than this, parking behind a tree less than fifty feet away from her phone’s last known location. Jet cut the engine and the truck sighed as she stepped out, Billy on the other side. The sound of their slamming doors was lost in the uproar of clanging metal.
Jet picked their way through the vans and sleeping machinery, heading toward the site, through the open gate.
“There used to be two houses up here?” Jet asked Billy, eyes ahead.
“Apparently.”
Now it was just a field of mud and men in silly yellow hats.
They moved past a cement mixer, spinning and churning, being fed by the spadeful, one man doing all the work, another just watching.
“This must be Luke’s big project,” Billy said, scanning the chaos, avoiding a track of the sloppiest mud. “Sophia was telling me about it at the fair. His first project that’s all him, not your dad. That’s why he’s so stressed about it, needs it to go well.”
Jet shrugged. “Luke’s always stressed.” The same thing she’d said to Sophia at the fair, shrugging her off too.
“Well, this one’s important, Sophia said. Apparently, construction was already delayed a while back, a floor collapsed or something, so Luke had to change his plans. Decided to demolish, start again. I guess combining it with the lot next door. I get the impression that this is his baby.”
Jet wrinkled her nose; it didn’t look like much. An outline of wooden trenches carved out of the mud, buttressed by planks. The new foundations. Fucking hell, Luke, this was going to be a stupidly big house, look at the size of that. Most of it was just an empty track right now, only one small section at the front filled with concrete. Looked like they were getting ready to fill the rest.
“Maybe that’s why he was being extra assholey at the fair,” Jet said.
“Yeah, Sophia said he was nervous because they were starting on the foundations—no going back now.”
“And yet, according to Andrew Smith, Dad isn’t even going to let Luke have the company.”
Billy chewed his lip. “Well, I don’t think Luke knows that.”
No, he definitely didn’t. And it probably wasn’t even true.
“Hey!” a voice cut through all the noise. Uh oh, they’d been spotted.
A man was hurrying toward them, in a neon jacket that clashed with his hard hat, waving his arms. It wasn’t a hello, but Jet made it one, waving back with a grin.
“What are you doing here?” the man yelled, catching up to them. “You can’t be here. This is a construction area.”
“Yeah, I saw the signs,” Jet told him.
The man pushed up his hard hat, falling into his meaty eyes.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave. This is private property, and it isn’t safe.”
He pointed them back toward the road, a hand on Jet’s back.
“I’m going to have to ask you to stop asking us to leave,” Jet countered, pulling away. “Scott Mason is my dad.”
The man hesitated. “And Luke, he’s—”
“—My brother, yeah,” Jet said.
The man nodded, retracted his arm. “He’s not here right now.”
“That’s OK.” Jet smiled. “It’s you I came to see.”
His mouth folded down, merging with his chin. “M-me?”
“What’s your name, sir?”
He pointed to his own chest, a silent question. Jet nodded.
“It’s Jimmy.”
“Hi, yes, Jimmy,” she said. “Just the man I was looking for. You’re the foreman, right?”
“Right?”
“Great,” she said, moving toward the outline of the new house, through the mud. Her poor Birkenstocks. “I’m just here to ask you a couple of questions about the site. It’s a company policy thing.”
“But I—”
“—That gate across the road.” She pointed. “I assume that’s shut and locked at night?”
“I—Of course.”
“But it’s not like there’s a fence around it, so even if nobody can drive through, you could easily walk around, onto the site.”
“Yes, well, Luke didn’t think we needed a fence, as these are the only properties up here and it’s not a through road. No one ever comes up here.”
Jet pursed her lips. “But if they did, you guys got any cameras set up here? You know, for security?”
A blank look on Jimmy’s face. “Why would we need cameras?”
“A great question. Billy, my associate, will write that down.”
Billy’s face stirred, taken aback.
“He’s new,” Jet said to Jimmy, in a loud whisper behind her hand.
“If you’re on site, you really should be wearing hard hats. It’s the rule.”
Jimmy doubled back to an open van, grabbing two yellow hard hats from the pile.
“Your associate?” Billy whispered out the side of his mouth, watching Jimmy return.
“Don’t talk back to your boss.”
“Here.” Jimmy passed one to Billy, one to Jet. “Accidents happen all the time on site. We had a floor collapse here a while ago, brought some of the roof down with it, some guy still working inside. I wasn’t here then, wouldn’t have happened if I was here. But my point is, anything can happen. Gotta protect those heads.” He knocked against his own hard hat.
Billy blew out his cheeks, something he did when he was uncomfortable, hadn’t grown out of it yet. He rammed the hard hat onto his head, avoided Jet’s eyes.
Jet dropped hers in the mud. “I’m not putting this on, Jimmy, because, quite honestly, it doesn’t match my outfit. And I don’t see any roofs that might collapse anytime soon—doesn’t even have foundations yet.”
And there was no way she was forcing that hat over her bandages, to press against the pain, magnify it. There was only so much the codeine could do.
“Speaking of the foundations,” Jet continued, breezing past the horrified look on Jimmy’s face, “when did you start pouring the concrete? It’s already set here, on this front part.”
The point closest to the road and what Jet imagined would be the future driveway, about fifteen feet across, blockaded at the corners by more wood.
“Yeah, that’s the garage we started on,” Jimmy answered, but that’s not what she had asked.
“When did the concrete go in, Jimmy?”
Because what if it was—
“—Saturday morning, I think,” Jimmy said, speaking over her thoughts. “Finished the trenches Friday afternoon. We started on this”—he pointed to the channel of hardened concrete—“Saturday morning. Would have finished too, but the boss wanted to be here, and he had to take a couple of days, for personal reasons.”
“Hi,” Jet said, “I’m Personal Reasons.”
Jimmy narrowed his eyes, clearly had no idea what she was talking about and didn’t want to know. “We’re only just back today, really,” he said, for something to say. “I can make up the time, don’t worry.”
“What time did you start work on Saturday—start pouring the concrete?”
Jimmy shrugged. “Probably about eight a.m.”
“Great,” Jet said, grin widening with the word, trying to cover for her eyes, for her quickening heart. This was something, she knew it. “And it’s just mud underneath, right? You’d already dug the trenches, so you wouldn’t have known if there was anything in the mud?”
Jimmy stared at her, confused. “Did you lose something?”
“Only my mind. Could you give me and my associate two minutes, please, Jimmy? Yeah, you go just over there, that’s great.”
“Jet?” Billy looked down at her.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” she hissed.
“Probably not.”
“That concrete was poured, what, like nine hours after my murder? And we know the killer was here with my phone. Like, right there.” She pointed beyond her truck, to the street. “If you knew that was going to happen, that the foundations were going in the next morning, wouldn’t this be the perfect place to hide it?”
“Hide the phone?” Billy eyed the concrete.
“And the other thing missing from the scene,” Jet said. “The murder weapon. If they’re under concrete, in the foundations of a house, who would ever find them?”
“Ah, shit.” Billy fiddled with his hair, tucked it under his hard hat. “Should we call the cops?”
“And let them have all the fun?”
Jet winked and Billy swallowed, her eyes tracking the movement, the lump in his throat, up and down.
“Why are you smiling like that? You can’t be serious?” he hissed.
“Dead serious,” she said, and not just to make him nervous, though that was fun too. “The police would have to wait, apply for warrants or something. Could take days. Longer.” She patted Billy on the shoulder. “I don’t have time for paperwork, bud. Sorry.”
Billy’s head dropped back, blinking at the sky. “You’re not sorry, though, are you?”
“Hey Jimmy!” Jet called, mud squelching, soaking into her socks as she ran over to the man. “How deep does that concrete go?”
Jimmy looked even more confused now. “About three feet deep. Why?”
“Three feet,” Jet muttered to herself, studying the new foundations. “That’s doable. OK, guys!” she called, cupping her hands to send her voice farther. “Break time! Everyone take five. Or…a few fives. Hey, shut that digger off!”
“You can’t tell them to do that,” Jimmy said, his confusion thawing, melting into something like anger.
“I just did. You’re working too hard, Jimmy. Go grab a coffee, or go take a piss, I don’t care. Hey you!”
Jet stopped a young-looking guy who was walking toward one of the vans, a sledgehammer in his hands.
He widened his eyes, deer in her headlights.
“Hey,” Jet said. “You mind if I borrow that?”
He didn’t say anything. Passed it over and skittered away, into the safety of his van.
The sledgehammer was heavy.
Jet held it with two hands, the handle sleek and orange, rubber grips at the end. The dense metal end was well used, marked with scratches and dents.
“I guess I’m really doing this,” Jet said to Billy and to herself, carrying the sledgehammer over toward the new foundations. She climbed down and over the trench, standing in the footprint of the garage-to-be.
“What are you doing over there? Get out!”
“Sorry, Jimmy,” she called back, raising the sledgehammer. “I don’t think you and me are going to be friends.”
She brought the hammer down, double-handed, into the center of the concrete channel. It cracked, the pressure locking her wrists, riding up her arms, the thud ringing in her ears.
A large chunk came loose, a crater where it used to be.
“What are you doing?!” Jimmy screamed, voice finding a new octave. “Stop that!”
He barreled toward Jet, sliding in the mud, hands out to reach across the trench and grab her.
“No!” Billy got there first, stood in front of Jet, blocking Jimmy’s way. A barricade made of arms, flexing his shoulders. “You leave her alone,” Billy said, straightening up to his full height, leaning over a red-faced Jimmy. “Please.”
“But she’s—”
“—I know she is,” Billy said, calmly. “But neither you or me are going to stop her. Believe me, she can’t be stopped.”
Jet swung again, another thwack, another slice of concrete, the size of her hand.
“Please.” Billy doubled down, too damn nice sometimes, should have just told Jimmy to go fuck himself. Give Jet a second to catch her breath and she’d do it herself.
Jimmy growled and Jet glanced up, ready to swing at him if he dared to hit Billy. But he wasn’t, he didn’t. He spun on his boots, walking away, pulling a phone out of his back pocket.
