“I knew something was fishy,” Susan said. “Vince played fast and loose with the facts. He loved to tell tall tales. Hell, he played fast and loose with his marriage. But he was good at his job. So how could he have messed up the Oriels’ cabin so badly that half of it collapsed into the gorge?”
She shook her head, her gaze turning inward.
“Did you confront him?” Alice asked.
“Not at first. Not even when he came home with more cash than I’d ever seen. ‘So, wait a minute, Vince. You screw up more than you’ve ever screwed up in your life, and your pockets are full of dough. What’s going on?’ That’s what I should’ve said, only I didn’t. Maybe I was glad to have the money. Maybe it was nice to pay the bills and still have enough money for a new TV, too.”
“But it wasn’t just a new TV.”
“No, it wasn’t. There were more jobs. He got more subtle, you know. Accidents would happen, but people no longer connected the accidents with the contracting work.”
Alice looked to Ona, and Ona mouthed the word, “Wow.”
But neither interrupted Susan, who went on: “I never knew if a job was legit or one of his sabotage jobs. Until after. Sometimes long after, when a building would fail an inspection. But as soon as he started on Blithedale Books, I had a bad feeling. Then—”
She gave in and pulled a cigarette out of the pack and lit it. She shoved the lighter and cigarette pack away from on the countertop, as if they disgusted her. Still, she inhaled.
She exhaled a cloud of smoke and said, “Then, a couple of weeks ago, I overhear him talking on the phone. Sweet talk, you know? Obviously, he’s talking to whoever his new lover is, and he’s bragging about how this big client is paying him to fix the bookstore so it’ll fall apart. Then backtracking, as if the story’s upset his lover—got her mad. ‘Aw, sweetheart,’ he’s telling her, ‘don’t worry—I wouldn’t do anything to hurt this town.’” Susan snorted, shaking her head in disbelief. “I wonder if she believed that load of bull.”
Alice’s heart thumped in her chest. This was incredible. The truth was coming out. “Did he mention the client’s name? Or the lover’s name? It wasn’t Andrea, was it?”
“Not Andrea, no. He dumped her the last time I threatened to leave him.” She fingered her necklace with the heart pendants. “I don’t know who his new lover was. But I did hear who was paying him to sabotage the bookstore. It’s not hard to guess.”
“Darrell Townsend,” Alice said.
Susan smiled a crooked smile. “Bingo.”