Chapter 12

12

Audrey is feeling much better, having mostly recovered from her nasty flu. The only sign of it is a lingering redness around her nose. She’s in the car on her way to the grocery store to pick up some milk and bread. She has the radio on, and she’s humming along when the news comes on. The lead story is about a wealthy couple murdered in Brecken Hill. She turns the volume up. That’s a little too close to home, she thinks.

There is no name or address given for the victims. She pulls over into a plaza and calls Fred to see what he knows about it. When there’s no answer on the landline, she tries his cell, which goes to voice mail. Still, she’s not really concerned. She doesn’t live far away, although her home is in a much less wealthy neighborhood, and out of curiosity she decides to head to Brecken Hill.

She drives through the familiar winding enclave of wealthy homes. It’s only when she’s approaching Fred and Sheila’s house that she sees all the activity. There are police cars stationed at the end of the driveway, and as she tries to pull in, her heart thumping hard now, she’s turned away. She catches a glimpse of an ambulance and other vehicles up closer to the house, yellow tape, and swarms of people, and it suddenly hits her.

She has to pull the car over to the side of the road for a few minutes to process it, her hands trembling on the steering wheel. Fred and Sheila are the murdered couple. It seems impossible. Fred, murdered. He’s the least likely murder victim she can imagine—he’s always been so powerful, so intimidating. He must be furious, she thinks.

This changes things. She’s going to get her windfall a little sooner than she expected.

She reaches for her cell and calls Catherine’s house—she doesn’t have her cell number. There’s no answer, but Audrey realizes she’d be at work. She forgets about the groceries. She decides to drive to Dan’s house first since there’s no answer at Catherine’s. If there’s no one there, she’ll try Catherine’s. She knows there will be a gathering of the family at either Dan’s or Catherine’s, and no one is going to tell her.

---

•   •   •after leaving catherine Merton’s office, Reyes and Barr return to the crime scene. The vultures are still circling overhead, dark against the pale-blue sky. Reyes catches Barr glancing up uneasily at the birds. He spots the medical examiner, Jim Alvarez, and he and Barr walk over to speak to him.

“Quite a messy one,” the ME says, as Reyes nods agreement. “We’ll move the bodies in a bit, get to the autopsies later this afternoon. Probably start with the female.” Alvarez adds, “Why don’t you come by tomorrow morning, we should have something for you by then.”

Inside the house, in the kitchen, Reyes approaches May Bannerjee. Fred Merton is still lying on the kitchen floor. “Anything interesting?” he asks, Barr at his elbow.

“I think we found the murder weapon for him,” Bannerjee says. “Here, take a look.” She leads them over to the sink and shows him a knife in a clear evidence bag lying on the adjacent counter. “It’s the carving knife from the knife block there,” she says, pointing to it. “It was all cleaned up and put back in the knife block.”

Reyes glances down at the knife and then at the knife block. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Any prints?”

“No. It’s been thoroughly washed and wiped down. But there are still microscopic flecks of blood—it’s harder to wash those away. We’ll know for sure in a bit.”

Reyes looks at Barr, who is as surprised as he is. This doesn’t fit with the kind of crime scene they found here. You would expect the killer to take the knife and throw it away somewhere it will never be found—in the Hudson River, for instance. Why clean and return the knife to its place? “Any sign of what was used as the ligature on the wife?”

“No, but we’re still looking. Anyway, I’m not finished about the knife,” Bannerjee tells him. “Look, here,” she says, squatting down and pointing out some markings in the blood on the floor. “The knife lay on the floor beside the body for quite a while—you can see the outline of it, where the blood dried. It was there for perhaps a day or more before it was picked up, cleaned, and returned to the block.”

“What?” Barr exclaims.

“So—not by the killer,” Reyes says.

Bannerjee shakes her head. “Not unless he came back, and there’s no evidence of that.”

“The cleaning lady,” Barr says. “Her bloody footprints go right to the sink.”

Reyes nods thoughtfully. “Maybe she did it. And there’s only one reason she would do that.”

Barr completes his thought. “To protect somebody.”

Reyes bites his lower lip. “What about the rest of the house?” he asks.

“We’ve got several sets of prints to eliminate—probably from family over for dinner on Easter, and the cleaning lady.” She adds, “Won’t get any tire tracks off that paved drive.”

“Okay, thanks,” Reyes tells her. “Let’s take a closer look around,” he says to Barr. They head back upstairs. There are two technicians in the master bedroom, still dusting for fingerprints. One of them looks up when he sees the detectives. “Blood smears but no prints on the wallets, handbag, drawers, and the jewelry box—whoever it was wore gloves.”

Reyes nods, unsurprised, and he and Barr move into the en suite bathroom. Reyes opens the medicine cabinet with his gloved hands and looks at the medications on the shelf. There’s an assortment—the kinds of things you’d expect to find in the medicine cabinet of an older couple. There’s a prescription for strong pain medication for Fred. He picks up another vial, for Sheila Merton. He checks the date. The prescription was filled less than two weeks ago. Alprazolam. He turns to Barr. “Do you have any idea what Alprazolam is?”

She looks at the vial in his hand and nods. “Xanax. It’s a powerful antianxiety medication.”

“Look at the date,” Reyes says. “What was Sheila so anxious about lately?” He places it back inside the cabinet, and Barr notes the name of the medication and the doctor who prescribed it in her notebook.

Together they systematically go through the rest of the house, but other than the downstairs and the master bedroom, the place appears to be untouched by the intruder. On the same floor as the master bedroom is a spare bedroom, another bathroom, and another large room with an attached sitting room and an en suite bath that used to be Irena’s when she lived with them. They know this from their earlier walk-through with Irena. Reyes enters Irena’s old bedroom now, his mind turning to the cleaning lady.

She moved out long ago. The dresser drawers are empty, the closet is bare; there are no books, no trinkets on the shelves, nothing in the adjoining bathroom or sitting room. The rooms haven’t been inhabited for years. He wonders what it was like for Irena when she lived here. It’s a luxurious suite, but she was still the hired help. Ready to wake up in the night if one of the children called out in their sleep and needed to be soothed. Up early to get the breakfasts ready, to make the school lunches. Then the cleaning, taking orders. He wonders how close Irena really was to the family. Perhaps she was closer to some of them than others. What were the dynamics here? Do any of the adult children confide in her? He thinks about the carving knife, returned to its place.

He turns away from the room and climbs up the stairs to the third floor. These are the children’s old rooms. There are three spacious bedrooms up here, a former playroom, and two bathrooms. They have been emptied of anything from the Mertons’ childhoods. They have been done over as attractive guest rooms, redecorated so they look like they never had children living in them at all. Reyes thinks of his own cluttered house and wonders where all their stuff is—their pictures, sports equipment, books, school projects, Lego models, dolls, stuffed animals. Is it all packed away in the basement somewhere?

“Not exactly sentimental, were they,” Barr says.