This Old Murder

TWELVE

JOSIE WAS NOT accustomed to anyone other than herself ordering her crew around. But she had to admit that Bobby Valentine was doing a good job of it.

“She is not here. She probably had important personal business to attend to. That’s the key phrase for you all to remember. Courtney had important personal business to attend to. That’s what you say if anyone asks. But nobody, and I mean nobody, is to say anything to the press! Understand? Now we’re going to continue work on the show as though Courtney was still here.”

“And how the hell are we going to do that? Do you have some sort of Courtney dummy that you’re going to lean against the wall to watch us work?” Dottie sneered.

“We have already shot some of Courtney’s cutaways, and we can do interviews without her. You don’t have to worry about that part of it. We know what we’re doing. We do this all the time.”

That got Josie’s attention. “She’s disappeared like this before?”

“Not like this. No, not like this. But Courtney Castle is a very busy woman with many diverse demands on her time. She’s frequently called on to be someplace else while we tape a show, and when that happens, we are required to work around her absence.”

“Really? It’s interesting to know how television works, isn’t it?” Annette asked her colleagues enthusiastically.

Apparently the other women weren’t so impressed. “So what do we do now?” Jill, ignoring Bobby Valentine’s lecture, asked Josie the question.

“Let’s get to work out back,” Josie answered. “If that’s all right with you?” she asked the producer rather sarcastically.

Apparently he didn’t notice or care. “Whatever. I’m going to be in the trailer if anyone needs me. But, remember, no talking to the press!” With those parting words, he turned and left the house.

Jill leaped to her feet and, grabbing an imaginary microphone, said, “Please, no interviews! No interviews!”

Annette joined in, laughing and protesting to a crowd of imaginary paparazzi. “No pictures, please, no pictures!”

“Yeah, as though the press would be interested in the likes of us,” Dottie said.

“Well, let’s get to work,” Josie said, standing and stretching. “Courtney can do her thing and we’ll do ours.”

The women picked up their assorted tool belts and boxes and headed out of the house and toward the bay.

“Am I the only person who thinks it’s a little strange that Courtney has vanished?” Annette asked.

“Hey, she’s not a carpenter. She’s on-air talent. Probably thinks she can do anything she wants to do.” Dottie slung her heavy belt across her shoulder and followed Josie.

“Sure, but still…” That was Annette’s only comment. The intern was sitting on the dock, writing furiously in a spiral notebook. He jumped to his feet and brushed his too-long hair off his forehead. Annette unconsciously mimicked his movement, smiling nervously.

Josie grinned. “Why don’t you see if he… what is his name?… needs anything from us before we start work?”

“I’ll… Oh, you’re asking me to do it?” Annette was flustered by the suggestion.

“Yup.”

“Chad. His name is Chad Henshaw,” Annette said, hurrying down the path to the dock.

“An adolescent crush. Why do you encourage them?” Dottie asked rhetorically.

“I think they’re sweet,” Jill said.

“I do, too. And as long as Annette keeps working, I don’t see what harm it does,” Josie commented.

“God, you’re all romantic fools.” Dottie sneered. “Wake up and smell the coffee, as my dad used to say.”

“What I think is that they’re both young and a summertime romance is appropriate.”

Jill put down her toolbox and looked back at the house. No one could hear them. “Doesn’t anyone else think it’s strange that Courtney has disappeared? I mean, today that producer is acting like it’s normal, but yesterday he was real panicked when she wasn’t around. What happened to all that police interest? What happened to dredging the bay?”

“Heaven knows,” Josie answered slowly. What had happened to dredging the bay? “Listen, you all know what to do and I’d appreciate it if you’d go on without me. I left my phone in the truck. I need to make a few calls.”

“While you’re at it, you might give the lumberyard a nudge about the gutter they should have delivered last week,” Dottie reminded her.

“There’s always something. If it’s not a missing television personality, it’s a missing piece of gutter.” Josie sighed dramatically and started back to her truck. She was pleased to hear chuckling behind her. Courtney’s disappearance was making her nervous. And she was afraid she wasn’t the only one who felt like that. Dottie seemed to be affected and it didn’t surprise her. But she was surprised by how jumpy Jill seemed to be. Of course, Annette was in the midst of summer love. Josie grinned at the memory of Annette’s expression when Chad Henshaw appeared.

The police line was still protecting the work site, but Josie had been allowed to pass through this morning and her truck was parked behind the row of trailers queued at the curb. She grabbed her phone from under the seat and sat down on the runningboard to make her calls. The first one was not to the lumberyard. It was answered on the first ring.

“Sam! Thank heavens you’re there. Do you have a moment?”

Happily enough, he claimed to have as many as she needed.

“Sam, there isn’t any dredging going on! Do you know why? Well, could you find out? Well, I know, but… If you could just make a few calls. Maybe Basil knows something? No, she hasn’t shown up yet. Bobby Valentine says it’s normal. Apparently she’s disappeared like this before. Well, that’s what he claims. And he doesn’t want anyone to talk to the press. What do you think?”

She was silent for more than a few moments while he shared those thoughts with her. “Well, what I think-” She tried to interrupt, but he wasn’t finished.

The gist of Sam’s thoughts was that Josie should go on with her work and ignore anything having to do with Courtney Castle or her disappearance. And that she should be quiet concerning their mutual past.

She frowned and listened to his suggestions. But he wasn’t saying anything surprising and so her attention wandered… to a very interesting conversation that seemed to be taking place right behind her truck.

“… look, you’re not going to be able to keep it quiet forever,” a deep male voice was insisting.

“I’m not talking about forever. I’m talking about now. Right now.” The second speaker was also a man.

“What about her friends? Her family? Her masseuse? Her hairdresser? Her therapist? Won’t they all wonder where she’s gone?”

“Courtney is seeing a therapist?”

“I don’t know. I just assumed-”

“Just because someone is crazy doesn’t mean they’re doing something about it. But that’s not the point. We’ll just tell anyone who calls that she’s not available and that she’ll get back to them.”

“But what happens when she doesn’t?”

“Hey, anyone who knows Courtney knows that she doesn’t spend a whole lot of time worrying about other people. Her not returning a call is par for the course.”

“Yeah, I won’t argue with you about that. The promises she made us, you wouldn’t believe.”

“Oh, I’d believe it. I’d believe anything. She’s talent, remember.”

Josie was fairly sure the second speaker was Bobby Valentine. It sounded like the other was someone he trusted with his problems. She wished she knew who it was. But, more important, it was obvious that Bobby Valentine was more concerned with Courtney’s disappearance than he had claimed to be. Josie bit her lip and thought for a moment.

Sam was apparently waiting for a response to something he had said. “Josie?” his voice called out of the receiver.

“Sam. Shh!” she hissed back at him. “I’m listening.”

But the two men had either stopped talking or moved away. Josie got up cautiously and looked around. No one. Then she noticed an open window in the trailer. The voices could have come from inside; if so, the speakers might still be there.

“Hang on, Sam. I’m just going to go into the house and… get those specs you want.” Resisting the urge to look over her shoulder, she hurried up the sidewalk, chatting into the receiver as she went. “I’m going to the house. There’s no one around. Don’t hang up. I need to talk to you some more. Sam? Are you there? Sam?”

“I’m here, Josie. What’s going on? Are you in trouble? Is something wrong?”

“No. No. We’re… I’m… Everything’s fine. I’m in the house and… I don’t want…” She looked around. She was alone. “Sam, you’ll never guess what!” Without waiting for his response, she related the conversation she’d just overheard. “What do you think?”

“Nothing. It seems to me you don’t really have any new information. We knew yesterday that the people who worked with Courtney were shocked by her disappearance. It was just today that they regrouped and decided to present it to the world as a normal event.”

Josie was silent. “That’s true. But…” She paused. “Yeah, that is true,” she repeated slowly.

“Maybe it means nothing,” Sam said. “Or maybe it’s a problem, but it’s not your problem.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” Not that she believed it for a second. “I suppose I’d better get back to work.”

“I’ll see what I can find out about the dredging.”

“Great.” Josie leaned back against the wall and propped one foot up on the frame protecting the artwork. She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to find out more about what Courtney had been doing during the past… what was it? Sixteen years. Sixteen years and seven months to be more exact.

Sixteen years and ten months since she had been in contact with her family. Well, to be more accurate, seventeen years and ten months since they had been in contact with her. Sixteen years and one month since she had gotten her courage together and sent them the short, perky letter announcing the birth of Tyler Clay. The short, perky letter that had not been answered. For a moment, she relived that pain.

Did she want to feel it again? Did she need to feel it again? Could she find out what Courtney had been doing during this time without evoking those feelings? Sam had once hired a private detective who could probably have done it all easily, but she couldn’t afford to pay for a detective and she didn’t want Sam involved. She had chosen to move beyond her past. If she was going to return to it, she sure wasn’t going to drag the man she loved along for the ride.

There was one other person she didn’t want following her into her past: Tyler. Her son had gone through periods when he was curious about his heritage. He’d asked more than a few questions about his father, who he was and where he was. But Josie had insisted on keeping her secret and Tyler had become interested in other things. His fifth-grade class project had been to make a family tree and so the question arose once again. With the insecurity of his teen years approaching rapidly, Josie had been about to panic when Risa had come to the rescue. “You are a lucky child. You choose your own family. You make a tree anyone would be proud of,” she had told him.

Tyler had done just that. From baseball players to presidents, he had collected relatives and hung them on his tree. The end result was the envy of his peers-and it amazed the adults in his life. While Albert Einstein might look like a great-grandfather to many people, only Tyler would have claimed him for his own.

When Noel Roberts died, Tyler had lost the closest thing he had to a father, but Josie’s relationship with Sam had provided him with a surprisingly good substitute at an age when he desperately needed a male role model. Josie really believed her son had come to terms with and accepted a life without a traditional family. She sure didn’t want her slightly abnormal relatives to enter the picture and screw everything up.

Why had she ever agreed to do this damn television show?