Chapter 24

24

You walked out? Why?” Lisa asks, concerned.

She watches Dan carefully as he tells her about the interview at the police station. They’re in the kitchen, seated at the table. His leg is jiggling nervously. As she listens, her own anxiety surges. The look of near panic in his eyes unnerves her. He tells her he has to get an attorney.

She swallows, her mouth dry. She thinks he’s probably right. Even though this is outrageous—Dan couldn’t harm a flea. But what if his fears are justified, and they zero in on him because of the circumstances, and they can’t find the guy in the truck, and they try to make Dan look guilty just so they can get a conviction? People are wrongfully convicted all the time. How can this be happening?

And she’s going to have to lie to the police.

“How will we pay for an attorney?” she asks, worried.

Dan looks at her, his eyes wild. “Catherine will help,” he says. “She has to. She can afford it. And she won’t want the precious family name dragged through the mud. She’ll want the best that money can buy.”

---

•   •   •a short time later, Dan drives them the short distance to Catherine’s house, his mind racing. He needs to talk to Catherine and Jenna. He turns to Lisa just before they exit the car. “Don’t tell them that I went out that night—that’s just between me and you. They don’t need to know. What if they let it slip to the police?”

She nods back at him, her brown eyes big.

Ted answers the door and they enter the house. Jenna is there, as expected, but he’s surprised to find Irena in the living room as well. Maybe she’s helping with the funeral preparations, too, he thinks. “I’ve just been interviewed by those detectives,” he blurts out, “at the police station.” They look back at him warily. He throws himself into an armchair. “They were acting like they think I killed them!”

He notices a glance being shared among the others. Do they think he did it too? Surely not. Fear suddenly floods through him. “What? What is it?”

Catherine says, “They interviewed Irena this morning too.”

Irena tells him what happened at the police station. Dan hears it all with mounting dismay. He and Lisa sit for a moment in stunned silence, the only sound the ticking of the clock on the mantel.

Then staring at Irena, Dan says, “Why did you do that? What have you done?” He looks around the room at all of them, distraught. “I have to get an attorney,” he says. “Today. Except—I can’t afford one,” Dan says plaintively, looking directly at Catherine.

“We can help with that,” Catherine says, without even looking at Ted to see what he feels about it. “Please don’t worry about it. I’ll pay.” At that moment, Catherine’s cell phone buzzes. They all stare at it on the side table. Catherine picks it up.

---

•   •   •audrey is noting how long each of the interviews lasts. From the short time Dan was in the police station, she concludes that they didn’t get much out of him. He probably refused to talk to them. Unlike Irena, Dan had left in a hurry, his car tearing out of the parking lot as if he were angry.

Audrey tries to kill time while keeping an eye on the entrance. She plays with her phone. She risks another pee break at the donut store and buys another coffee and hurries back just in time to see Catherine arrive and park her car. She is also alone. Audrey notes the time—it’s almost 2:30 p.m.

How she wishes she could be a fly on the wall in there. What Audrey wants to know more than anything is: Who knew that Fred planned to put her in his will?

---

•   •   •catherine seems perfectly composed as she takes a seat in the interview room the day after her parents were discovered murdered. Seeing her now, without her white doctor’s coat, Reyes gets a clearer picture of her style. Expensive and classic. She’s wearing dark trousers and a printed blouse. No pearls today, but a gold necklace with a diamond at her throat. A diamond tennis bracelet. A designer handbag.

“Can I get you anything? Coffee?” Barr offers.

Catherine smiles politely. “Coffee would be lovely,” she says.

She is more self-possessed than her brother.

Barr returns with the coffee, and Reyes explains that she is here voluntarily and can leave at any time.

“Of course,” Catherine replies. “I want to help anyway I can.” As the interview proceeds, she again denies that anything unusual happened at Easter dinner, despite the apparent mass exodus. She tells him that she and Ted remained at home together the rest of the night.

“We know Dan had problems with his father,” Reyes says. “That he was having financial problems. You all stand to inherit a lot of money.” Her expression remains impassive. He waits a beat and asks, “Did Jenna have any problems with your parents?”

She shakes her head, as if impatient. “No.”

“Did you?”

“No.” She adds spontaneously, “If anything, I was the favorite.”

Reyes leans back in his chair again. “So you were the favorite, Dan was the least favorite, and Jenna was somewhere in the middle? Your parents played favorites?” He detects a flicker in her eyes; perhaps she regrets what she said.

“No, it wasn’t like that. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that my parents were happy that I was a doctor. Dan—our father had very high expectations of Dan, and he was a bit hard on him. And Jenna—well, they didn’t like her art. They felt it was obscene.”

“Obscene?”

“Yes. She does sculptures of female genitalia and the like.”

Reyes nods. “I see. And that didn’t go over well with your parents?”

“Not particularly.” She adds, “But these were minor things. We were a perfectly ordinary family.”

Reyes doesn’t respond to that. “Your former nanny, Irena—are you all close to her?”

“Of course. She looked after us for years. She’s like a mother to us.”

“Does she have a favorite?”

“Look, I know what you’re getting at,” Catherine says, her voice even. “Irena came over to my place a little while ago and told us about your interview. I can’t explain what she did. All I know is, none of us had anything to do with this. And you need to find out who did.”

---

•   •   •catherine leaves the police station with a sense of relief, feeling that the interview went well. She was perfectly relaxed, convincing. She hopes that’s the end of it, for her anyway. As she walks into the parking lot, she glances up and spots Audrey in her car, alone at the back of the lot. Catherine stops in her tracks for a moment, surprised to see her there. Audrey catches her eye and looks down, as if at a cell phone. For a second, Catherine debates whether to go over and talk to her, ask her what she’s doing here. Is she spying on them? Or have the police asked her to come in for an interview?

She walks directly to her own car, her earlier confidence gone.