Page 53 of The Dead Come to Stay
“For a start, just how much trouble has the property been for the city? I’m told tensions were high, but how high?”
“As in, were they murderously high? I wouldn’t say so. We don’t get overinvolved in city disputes, but the Lord Mayor descended from on high to make sure we knew his feelings on the matter. So we did a bit of looking in.” Fernsby nudged his computer mouse to bring his screen to life. “All the permits arethere, and things were off to a banging start. They finished the first three or four floors—then things started to slow.”
He beckoned MacAdams to look at his screen, which boasted photographs of a rectangular building, finished with windows and all the trappings to floor four, but with a network of bare iron scaffolding above.
“That’s odd, isn’t it? Finishing as you go?”
“I’d think so, but the architects tell me differently. Apparently each finished floor level gets a concrete topping—a structural slab that more or less keeps everything below from being weathered on. Thing is, they use it for fast-track jobs, something they plan to complete well before any damage could occur.”
“But this job is behind schedule.” MacAdams took a cursory sip of espresso—found it better than expected and finished it off. “I don’t suppose you looked further afield? Any other jobs running behind?”
“We didn’t, no. But we did do an assessment of who was coming and going. Very minor surveillance, I suppose. Again, everything was aboveboard. Contractors were still turning up, machinery still rolling. Just at half speed for some reason. Another espresso?”
MacAdams didn’t trust himself to more caffeine at the moment—his brain was whirring fast enough.
“I need dates,” he said. “Job start, job slowdown, any protracted stalls.”
“Start was about a year and six months,” Fernsby said. “With the slowdown occurring in the last third.”
Which, MacAdams noted, would be when Burnhope gave the job over to Foley, perhaps as a last chance to prove himself? BurnhopeclaimedFoley was a bulldog, someone who knew what he wanted, a pushy job boss. Yet when his promotion was on the line, he utterly changed tack. Sold his house, spent time in the country with a (possibly now pregnant) lover, stopped doing the requisite work on the York property...
“Everything comes down to what happened six months ago,” MacAdams said out loud.
“And what’s that?” Fernsby asked.
MacAdams pushed his chair back. “I wish I knew,” he said. “It’s around when Foley got put on the job.”
***
MacAdams called Gridley on his way back to the hotel. No, no next of kin had turned up. No, they still didn’t have leads on Foley’s early years. One plus: theyhadtracked the other burner numbers Foley had contacted. Every last one had been disconnected, but they all lead back to Newcastle. They were still digging.
“Print the obit, send it to papers in Abington and Newcastle,” he told her.Someonemust know the man more personally, and perhaps the girlfriend might even turn up. He tucked the phone back into his jacket before heading into the Astoria hotel. There still wasn’t a desk clerk, and the day had darkened such that the lobby looked somehow more forlorn than before. Jo had picked it, and perhaps he ought not to have let her; it looked exactly like the place people went to be murdered. And that was a professional opinion.
MacAdams climbed the stairs and stepped into the third-floor corridor. He expected the assault of red-and-salmon zigzag carpet. He didn’t expect to see Jo Jones sitting on it, just opposite the stairwell door.
He was going to ask if she’d been locked out. That was before she looked up at him. Eyes swollen from crying, pink stains down both cheeks, the look she gave him wasn’t misery so much as defeat. He’d never, ever seen her that way. Would have thought defeat alien to her nature, even. He wasn’t sure what had happened, or what to do, so he knelt down next to her on the same awful rug.
“Hi,” Jo said. “I look like I feel.”
“And how is that?”
“Not good.”
A fair assessment. He set aside his hat and coat. “Can I ask what happened?”
“I think so,” she said, but didn’t try to get up.
MacAdams sank down next to her, both of them with legs outstretched and backs to the wall.
“Okay. What happened?” he asked.
Jo took a deep breath, then another, like a swimmer before a dive. Then, instead of speaking, she handed him her phone. MacAdams looked down at an obituary for Thomas Oliver Lofthouse, born 1966, died 1994. From the somewhat sanitized account, he gathered there was a car accident.
“That’s my father,” Jo said. She sounded like she had a head cold; MacAdams hunted fruitlessly for a handkerchief.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He wasn’t sure if she heard him; her eyes stared into the far corner of the hallway.
“Car accident, officially. Unofficially, he drove at high speed into a literal brick wall.” Jo took her phone back and flipped to another search window. “That’s the rest of the story.”
