Save Her Soul (Detective Josie Quinn #9)(34)

“Not at all,” Josie told him, handing her phone over.

He studied the document for several minutes before saying, “Looks like my dad filed for the permit on this one. This is his signature. They had some pretty extensive plumbing and sewage problems. We had to tear up the whole basement and lower it, re-pour the foundation.”

Gretchen asked, “Is your dad still around?”

“No, I’m sorry. He passed last year.”

Josie said, “I’m so sorry to hear that. Do you have any records of your own from this job?”

George shook his head. “We only keep records going back seven years. I’m sorry.”

“Do you know anyone who might have been on the crew who did the job on Hempstead?” Josie persisted.

“I couldn’t tell you,” he admitted. “I was probably on the crew. You’ve got to understand, we work hundreds of jobs a year and this is going back, jeez, almost twenty years.”

Josie took her phone back and pulled up the last existing driver’s license photo for Vera Urban to show him. “Do you remember her?”

He rubbed his chin. “She looks familiar.”

Gretchen used her own phone to show him Beverly’s yearbook photo. “How about her?”

He stared at the photo. “Oh, her,” he said. “Yeah, I remember her. She was a real pain in the ass, that one.”

Josie felt a tug of excitement at her core. “Why do you say that?”

“I remember this job now. Look, I don’t remember a lot of jobs. Like I said, we do hundreds every year. Can’t remember them all. It’s the ones that are a pain in the ass that stick in your mind, you know?”

“Yes,” Gretchen and Josie said in unison.

“Her mom was sick or something. Disabled. I don’t know. She had a hard time getting around. We never saw her. She was up in a bedroom all the time. But this girl was there to let us into the house in the morning and then she’d come home from school and hang around. We couldn’t get a damn thing done. She had a thing for one of our guys.”

“Which guy?” Gretchen asked.

“I don’t remember his name. He was only with us a couple of months. My dad hired him. We tried to train him, but he wasn’t interested in learning the work. He just wanted the money to put up his nose.”

“He had a drug problem?” Josie asked.

“Big time. Like I said, he lasted like two months and then one time, the day after payday, he was a no-call, no-show for his shift. Never heard from him again and then saw in the local paper he overdosed.”

“So he is deceased,” Josie said. Another dead end. “What did Beverly want with him?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t have time to spy on them. We had to get the job done. But whenever she was there, he’d be off in another room with her or outside with her, their heads together.”

“You don’t remember anything else about him?” Josie asked.

George took a long moment to think it over, rubbing his chin again; his eyes squinted as if the act of calling up the memories was strenuous. Finally, he said, “Name began with an A. Andrew, Ambrose, something like that.”

Gretchen took out her notebook and jotted the names down. “How old was he then? Do you remember?”

“Probably my age, so back then he would have been in his mid to late twenties.”

Josie asked, “Do you know if he saw Beverly outside of work?”

“No, sorry. I wasn’t friends with the guy. Only reason I remember him is ’cause he was such a bad hire, and I wanted my dad to get rid of him. It was bad enough he was slacking off on the job. Then he was flirting with a high school girl? That’s not cool. I didn’t like him.”

“Do you know, Mr. Newton, if that gentleman owned any firearms?” Josie asked.

“I don’t think so, but I couldn’t say for sure.”

“How about you?” Gretchen asked. “Do you own any firearms?”

“No, not me,” he answered.

“How long did the job take?” Josie asked, before he could ask why they were so concerned with whether or not he owned guns.

He shrugged. “I don’t remember specifically. Probably the same amount of time they always do. Coupla months.”

“Were there any interruptions to the job?” Gretchen asked. “That you remember now? Anything unusual?”

He looked from Gretchen to Josie and back. “You think someone buried this girl under the foundation while we were in the middle of the job? And we didn’t notice?”

They said nothing.

Again, he gave them the grimace that indicated he was searching his memories. “A couple of times we had to stop because they were having plumbing work done, if I remember correctly, and we didn’t work weekends. There was some time at the end of the job that the house was empty. My dad had to get the key from the landlord, I think. Back then, we just figured the mom and daughter were on vacation or something. We just wanted to finish the job. That’s all I remember. I mean, I guess it’s possible someone could have put her in there while we were in the middle of the job if they did it at the right time and left everything looking the way we left it.” He shuddered. “That’s a terrible thing. I’d hate to think we poured concrete over that girl and didn’t even know it.”