The next morning, I picked up the files from Dean, drove to the nearest fast food restaurant, and turned my car into a mini mobile office. I didn’t want to drive all the way back to Fair Haven only to drive back here to interview his clients if I decided I needed to talk to them. Today was Saturday, so more people would be home over a weekend than on a weekday, making it the ideal time to try to reach them.
The stack of invoices Dean gave me seemed to have no order to them, either alphabetical or chronological. It was almost like he’d printed them off, shuffled them up, and tossed them into his box. Hopefully his partner kept better records or they’d be in trouble come tax time.
There also weren’t as many as I’d expected for a company that’d been in business a year and was making enough for Dean to start paying off all his debts and helping Elise with the kids’ expenses.
I sorted the invoices by date, and wrote down each client’s name, address, and phone number on a separate sheet of paper. I’d start with the most recent and work my way back.
I added the contact information for Dean’s partner at the top, then I went through the invoices one more time. This time I didn’t care about the names. I paid attention to the amounts billed and the description of the work.
The work descriptions themselves looked legit. Repairing water damage, replacing a roof, building a gazebo, building a porch.
The amounts though…I wouldn’t have paid those prices even in DC.
The prices explained how they’d made such a large profit without working a higher number of jobs, but it created the new question of why people hired them at all. I could see Dean and his partner duping a customer here or there into paying an exorbitant price, but every customer?
Calling them was an option, but my instincts said I should go in person. I needed to see the work Dean and his partner did and read the reactions of the people I spoke to.
I plugged the first five addresses, including Dean’s partner, into my GPS. It set out the most efficient route. I’d keep track of anyone who wasn’t home and swing by again some weeknight evening.
Then I sat in my car for a few minutes even after the GPS told me to drive to the highlighted route. I needed a game plan. Anytime I tried to operate by the seat of my pants, it ended in embarrassment for me.
I had to be careful, too. If Dean was doing something illegal under the front of his construction business, I didn’t want to tip his clients off to my suspicions. My knowledge of building things was limited enough that I couldn’t pass for a building quality control inspector. It seemed like my best tactic would be another version of the truth. I’d be Dean’s defense attorney, trying to establish that he was a reliable, conscientious businessman.
Putting that spin on it should make them believe that all I cared about was whether Dean showed up on time and did a good job.
The first two clients didn’t answer their doors when I rang the bell, and they didn’t have cars in the driveway. I lucked out on the third.
A woman whose wrinkles put the lie to her dyed black hair answered the door.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
I’d worked out my spiel carefully on the drive. I handed her my card—I’d had some printed specifically for this case at Fair Haven’s print shop. “I’m representing Dean Scott against an accusation made against him, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to talk to me about the work he did for you.”
Hopefully she’d assume I was representing him in a lawsuit having to do with his business.
She squinted at my card in a way that said she normally wore reading glasses. She kept holding the card in both hands even after she looked up. “What do you need to know?”
Her voice had the same hesitation people tended to get when they answered a call and weren’t sure if the person on the other end was who they said they were or a scammer.
I gave her a calculated smile—not too small, because that would make me look nervous, and not too big, because that’d make me look like I was trying too hard. My mom called it the Goldilocks smile.
“Nothing invasive or personal. I’m only interested in whether you were satisfied with his work.” I flipped through the notepad I’d brought with me as if I were looking for something even though I already knew the answer. “What exactly did he do for you?”
She glanced up. “Our roof. New shingles.” She looked down quickly and examined my card again.
That part of my questions shouldn’t have made her nervous, but it had. “About how long did the work take?”
“I don’t remember.” She worried the edge of my card with her fingers. “It was a while ago.”
Theoretically, she could be having memory issues. I’d have placed her age somewhere in her early seventies. But I had a feeling it was something else. “Were you happy with the quality of his work?”
“No problems.”
I wrote that down as if I actually needed to take notes, so as to give myself a little time. There wasn’t anything obviously wrong with her answers, but they were so short that I couldn’t read much into them. It was almost like she kept them brief on purpose.
“He completed the work with integrity?” I asked without looking up.
A slight hesitation. “Yes.”
I pasted my smile on again and met her gaze. All my training, all the years watching my parents work, told me there was something more here, but what? It all sounded legitimate on the surface.
I stopped myself in time to keep from chewing on my bottom lip.
“Would you be willing to testify if we need a character witness?”
She shook her head rapidly. “My husband supervised the work, really. I only met Dean Scott once. I don’t know him well enough to vouch for him.”
Her voice edged a little toward panic. Not far enough to be obvious, but her tone was higher-pitched than before.
“If your husband supervised, then it’d be better to have him testify anyway—”
“My husband’s too busy. I’m sorry, but we can’t help any more than we have.”
She raised a hand in goodbye and closed the door.
The impish part of me wished I’d thought to wedge my foot in the door so she couldn’t close it on me. Then again, I didn’t want to end up arrested for harassment, either.
I shuffled slowly back down the walkway. I stopped halfway to my car and looked up at the roof.
It seemed like a good roof as far as roofs went. As far as I could tell, it was relatively new as well. Though, a roof probably looked new for years.
Maybe I was also reading too much into her reaction. It was possible somewhere deep down I wanted to prove Dean guilty rather than innocent. Even though I loved Mark and wouldn’t trade him for anyone, it still hurt when I thought about what my ex-boyfriend Peter did to me. Cheating husbands pushed my buttons in a way few other things did. It felt like Dean should have been punished more than he had for what he did to Elise.
Maybe it was time I checked my motives so that I wasn’t chasing figments of my imagination. If Dean was doing something that might have resulted in Sandra’s death, that was one thing. If I was now on a witch hunt to punish him because he reminded me of Peter, that was something entirely different.
I hadn’t ever had work done on a home, so maybe I was underestimating what things should cost. And perhaps the woman was nervous because she wasn’t convinced I was who I said I was. She had kept checking my card. I couldn’t blame her for not trusting me. I was a stranger who showed up at her door, and I had been kind of lying to her.
I pulled out my cell phone and texted Russ. What’s the average price for a new roof?
I went to put my cell phone away, but it chimed before I could.
What happened? Which building needs a new roof?
Oops. It’s for the case I’m working. House looks like it’s about 1600 sq ft. Rancher with a basement.
The number he sent back was half what the woman I’d just spoken to paid Dean.
I was halfway through writing a reply to Russ, asking if there was any reason he could think of why a roof would cost double, when a large white square of cardboard-like material in the garden caught my attention. It had metal rods sticking out of the bottom as if it were supposed to be standing up. Dead leaves, dirt, and a few fresh weeds hid it, as if it’d fallen over and been forgotten sometime during the past winter.
It reminded me of the signs construction companies often asked their clients to display after a job. If Dean had asked them to advertise his company, then he couldn’t be doing anything shady.
I sent the text to Russ, and wriggled the sign out of the dirt to make sure it was what I thought it was.
His text came back. Rush job maybe. Short notice. Or higher quality materials.
I flipped the sign over. It was for a roofing company alright, but not Dean’s.
And if another company installed their new roof, that meant Dean and his client had lied to me.