Chapter 22

22

Dan is in the garage tinkering. Despite his education and his executive ambitions, he actually likes getting his hands dirty, fixing things. He likes to keep busy, his mind occupied. Right now, he has the ride-on mower up on a hoist and he’s checking the blades. He loves the comforting smell of the garage, the oil on the cement floor near his head, even the old grass stuck to the mower blades, but it’s not enough to keep his mind off everything that’s happened.

He can’t stop thinking about the detectives who were in his house late yesterday afternoon with their questions and their insinuations. He knows what they’re thinking. What worries him most, right now, is the opinion they formed of him. How did he come across to them? Did he look as agitated as he felt? Did he look as if he had a guilty conscience?

Lisa is the only one he can talk to about this, the only one he can trust completely. He’s afraid to ask Jenna; he’s afraid of what she might say.

“I know this is difficult,” Lisa said quietly to him in bed the night before, “but they’re not going to think it was you.”

“What if they do?” he whispered. He could feel panic twisting in his guts.

She looked at him, her brown eyes wide. The lights were off but a faint glow from the moon filtered into the room. “Dan, you went out again that night, after we came back from your parents’. Where did you go?”

He swallowed and said, “I just went for a drive. Like I always do.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. Just around. I needed to clear my head. You know I like to drive when I have a lot on my mind.”

“When did you get back?”

“I didn’t check the time. Why would I? It was late, you were asleep.” He knew he sounded defensive. She must have been asleep, he told himself, if she didn’t know.

“The police are going to question us. We have to get our story straight.”

She was offering—was she offering?—to lie for him. “What?”

“I mean—I think you should tell them you were home all night, with me. And I’ll back you up.”

He nodded, grateful. “Okay.” This was something that had been bothering him. She’d solved this problem for him, and he hadn’t even had to ask. A small relief.

She touched his face with both hands. “You need to relax. You didn’t kill them. No matter what you felt about your father, I know you’re a good man.” She looked deeply into his eyes. “You could never do something like that.” She gave him a little smile and kissed him briefly on the lips. “Everything’s going to be all right. And when this is all over, you’ll get your inheritance, and we can put all of this behind us.”

Now Dan stares up into the darkness of the mower blades. He tries to think about the money. The freedom he will have. He tries to imagine a bright future.

---

•   •   •audrey fumes in her car in the parking lot in front of the police station, her hands clenching the steering wheel. She thinks of that smile on Jenna’s face outside the flower shop. They must know by now that Fred didn’t change his will. She’d like to kick something, but it’s hard to do that when you’re sitting in the driver’s seat. She thinks about getting out and kicking her own tires, but she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself. Her breathing is fast and shallow and she’s fighting tears—she still can’t believe it. To have something she’d counted on snatched away like that—just because Walter was away that week. She’s absolutely enraged.

But no, that’s not right. She hasn’t had wealth beyond her wildest dreams snatched away from her because Walter was away. It’s because Fred was murdered, in cold blood, before he could see Walter, and there’s fuck all she can do about it now. She’s pretty sure she knows why. She just wants to know who.

The promised money is gone. It’s going to go to those bloody kids. She can taste the bitterness in her mouth. She’s always wanted to be rich. That’s what growing up in poverty does to you. Fred managed it, she didn’t. This was her last chance.

Audrey wants to know who murdered Fred and Sheila. She wants to know who, exactly, has screwed her out of millions of dollars.

She’s been sidelined by the family, shut out. They aren’t going to tell her what’s going on. As soon as she arrived at Dan’s house yesterday, they’d all clammed up.

The police seem mostly concerned about this truck. She hopes the detectives don’t waste a lot of time on that. Of course valuables were taken—the murderer would disguise it as a robbery. They’re not going to make it obvious. But thieves don’t slit a person’s throat and stab them countless times. Whoever killed her brother clearly hated him.

She sits outside the police station now, watching to see if any of the family are going in for questioning. Surely they would be formally interviewed? Surely the day after the bodies were discovered is not too soon. She keeps her keen eyes trained on the police station, wondering if she’d missed anything already.

After a while, she sees a familiar woman walking up the front steps of the station. Irena has arrived.

---

•   •   •detective reyes watches Irena Dabrowski settle in to her chair. They’re in one of the interview rooms, bare but for a table and chairs. Barr is beside him, and she offers Irena water, which she declines.

Irena’s face is lined; her brown hair, pulled back in a short ponytail, is graying. Her hands are strong and rough-looking, devoid of rings, nails short and unpainted. A cleaner’s hands.

Reyes sits, taking his time. He says to her, “Thank you for coming in. You’re here voluntarily, of course. You can leave at any time.”

She nods mutely, pulling her hands into her lap below the table where he can’t see them.

“Now, you were the live-in nanny at the Mertons’ house many years ago.”

“Yes, I told you that.”

“How many years were you the live-in nanny?”

She appears to think. “I started soon after Catherine was born, so about thirty-two years ago. Dan came along two years later. And Jenna another four years after that. I lived in the house until Jenna started school, so altogether, probably about twelve years.”

“So you know them all pretty well,” Reyes says mildly.

“Yes, I told you—they’re like my own family.”

“And are you still close to them?”

“Yes, of course. But I don’t see them as much as I once did.”

Reyes asks, “Would you say you were closer to the children or to the parents?”

She looks as if the question has made her uncomfortable. “The children, I suppose,” she answers.

Reyes waits for her to say more. Silence is a great tool. He watches her think.

“Fred and Sheila were my employers—they kept me at arm’s length, in a way.” She smiles a little. “Children don’t do that. And they were all good, affectionate children.”

“Were there any problems in the family?” Reyes asks.

“Problems?” she repeats.

And right away, he knows there were problems, and he wants to know what they were. “Yes, problems.”

She shakes her head. “Not really. I mean, nothing out of the ordinary.”

“We know that Fred Merton had a falling out with his son, Dan,” Reyes says. “What can you tell us about that?”

“It wasn’t a falling out, really. Fred got an exceptionally good offer for his company that he felt he couldn’t refuse, so he sold it. He was all about making the right business decision.” She presses her thin lips together. “I know Dan was very disappointed.”

“How did the girls get along with their parents?” Reyes asks.

“Very well,” Irena says.

“Did anything unusual happen at that Easter dinner?”

She shakes her head. “No, not at all.”

“Why did everyone leave so quickly?”

“I’m sorry?”

Reyes knows that she’s trying to buy time. “Catherine and her husband and Dan and his wife and you all left within a couple of minutes of each other.”

She shrugs. “It was time to go, that’s all.”

“And you didn’t stay to clean up? Wouldn’t that be expected?”

She bristles. “She’d given it to me as a holiday. They invited me to Easter dinner. She didn’t expect me to stay and clean up.”

Reyes sits back in his chair and gives her a long, level gaze. “You seem very protective of the Merton kids,” he suggests. She doesn’t reply. “Maybe we should go over it again—what happened when you found the bodies.” He listens as Irena describes her discovery of the bodies the previous morning. When she’s finished, Reyes says, “I think you’ve left something out.”

“I’m sorry?” she says again.

He watches her face flush slightly. He says, “The bit about how you picked up the murder weapon off the floor, cleaned it at the kitchen sink, and put it back in the knife block.”