Fullepub 
Chapter 59
59
Dan learns of the arrest when a breaking news report comes on TV that night. He can’t believe it. He yells for his wife.
She comes running in from the kitchen.
He turns to her, queasy with a strange mixture of horror and relief. “They’ve arrested Irena.” Lisa looks from him to the television, stunned. “Now do you believe me?” he says bitterly, but with a note of triumph. He fumbles for the cell phone in his pocket. “I have to call Catherine.”
• • •catherine is still up when Dan calls, reading in bed with Ted. They find it hard to sleep these days, often reading late into the night, until they turn off the light and their fear keeps them awake.
She sees that it’s Dan, and reluctantly accepts the call. She’s surprised Dan is calling her—he’s been doing his best to avoid her.
“Catherine—have you heard? They’ve arrested Irena.”
“For what?” she says stupidly.
“For the murders.”
She sucks in a breath. “Irena?” She feels Ted moving beside her.
“It’s on the news. Look online.”
She taps the app for local news on her phone and sees the headline, Former Nanny Arrested in Murder of Merton Couple. Ted is now looking over her shoulder at the phone.
She glances at her husband as the reality of it sinks in. Then she puts the phone back to her mouth and says, “You’d better come over. I’ll call Jenna. We need to decide what to do.” Her mind is racing. What now? Do they stand behind Irena? Say nothing? Or vilify her to the press? She disconnects the call and looks up. Ted is staring at her.
“I can’t believe it,” she says, her voice a whisper. “I honestly thought Dan had done it, all this time.”
• • •ted holds his wife in his arms for a moment, hugging her tightly. He can’t quite believe it either. Irena? If they’ve arrested her for the murders, they must have good reason. They must have evidence. He’s been wrong about his wife, whom he had begun to deeply distrust. He’s been wrong about her—and she’s been carrying this awful burden, all this time, thinking her brother murdered her parents. He kisses the top of her head and feels the terrible tension that he’s been carrying around the last couple of weeks begin to release. Of course she’s not a monster. She will make a wonderful mother. Now they can move forward, focus on the baby. His thoughts turn to Lisa, how she must be feeling the same way right now. He thinks of their furtive meeting in the Home Depot parking lot. Maybe they can both relax now, and they will never speak to each other of their doubts ever again.
Catherine pulls away from his embrace to call Jenna. Then they both hurriedly get dressed.
• • •it’s another strange family meeting. They’re all here, back in Catherine and Ted’s living room—only Irena is missing.
Lisa feels as if she’s holding her breath. She wants so much for this to be true, for the police to be right. She desperately wants Irena to be guilty. She wants her husband exonerated, and Catherine, too, whom she loves like a sister. She wants her family back and she wants the money and she doesn’t care about Irena—she barely knows her.
When she and Dan arrived, she caught Ted’s eye, and they immediately looked away from each other, as if ashamed. Catherine had been on her laptop looking for any information she could find on the arrest. There isn’t much, only that new evidence has emerged putting Irena at the scene of the crime at the relevant time. That’s all they know.
“I can’t believe it,” Jenna says again, voicing what they all feel.
“I wonder what the evidence is,” Dan says. It’s what they’re all thinking.
“We have to decide how we’re going to handle this,” Catherine says. The three siblings look at one another, uncertain. At length Catherine says, “I think we say nothing, to the police or the press. Don’t we owe her that?”
Slowly, Dan begins to nod, and then Jenna does too.
Lisa knows what they’re thinking. They’re all thinking the same thing: Thanks to Irena, we’re all going to be rich.
• • •the next morning is sunday, and Reyes and Barr are at Irena’s house bright and early with a warrant and the forensics team. Irena was held overnight and remains in custody. They take a quick look at the car before it is taken away. There are no obvious signs of recent cleaning, or of staining. It will take time to have a more thorough look. Then they go into the house.
The cat is hungry. Reyes finds the cat food and fills its bowls with food and water and watches as it begins to eat. Irena had requested that someone put it in its carrier and take it to Audrey’s house to be cared for. Reyes assigns the task to a young officer.
They impatiently watch the crime team do its meticulous work. But they find nothing at all.
• • •later that day, Irena has something to say. They all reconvene in the interview room, the detectives and Irena and her attorney. Reyes and Barr resume the interview.
“I’ve remembered something important,” she tells them. “I had a phone call late that night—from a friend of mine, wishing me a Happy Easter. I don’t know when, exactly, but it must have been after eleven. We’re both night people, and we often call each other late. We talked for a while, on my landline. If you get my phone records, that will prove I was home that night, won’t it?”
They’ve already ordered those records. Reyes turns to Barr. “Check on how much longer till we get them, can you?” She leaves the room. They wait for her return.
She comes back shaking her head and says, “I’ve asked them to hurry them up.”
“I wasn’t there,” Irena insists.
“We have a witness who identified your car. With your vanity plate.”
Irena, pale, but with a new firmness in her voice, says, “I think I know what might have happened. I think someone else must have used my car that night.”
“One of the Merton kids?” Reyes says. She nods. “That’s a convenient idea, isn’t it? Were any of them in the habit of using your car?”
“No. But if any of them wanted to, they could have taken it. I always left a spare copy of my keys in the back, on the patio, under the planter. A full set of house keys and car keys. They all knew. I started doing that because I’d lost my keys twice.”
“Does anyone else know about those spare keys?”
She shakes her head. “No. It was just Fred and Sheila and the kids.”
“And where do you keep your car?”
“On the street.”
“So you’re suggesting that one of them took your spare keys from the backyard on Easter Sunday, after you were at home, and drove your car to the Mertons’ house, committed the murders, and returned your car?”
“I’m saying it’s possible. I can’t think of any other explanation. I didn’t drive the car out there that night.”
“Did you ever let Catherine or Dan or Jenna borrow your car, ever drive them anywhere?” Reyes asks.
She shakes her head. “No, they all have much nicer cars than mine.”
• • •audrey had been astonished when a police officer brought Irena’s cat and all its supplies to her door that morning. Now she sits with the big tabby on her lap, listening to it purr as she pets it gently. The traitorous cat doesn’t seem to miss his owner at all. Its bowls and its litter box are on the floor in the kitchen. Audrey looks at them and wonders how long the cat will be here.
She can’t believe Irena killed Fred and Sheila. Irena seems so grounded, so sensible. The police must have it wrong. When she and Irena spoke, they were in perfect accord—one of the Merton children must have done it. But Irena, like Audrey, didn’t know which one.
She wants to know why the police have arrested Irena. There are no details on the news—just that they have new evidence implicating her.
This is all such a surprise; she was so sure it was one of the kids.
• • •the phone records confirm that Irena was at home, on the phone, from 11:11 p.m. until 11:43 p.m. on Easter Sunday. She could not have committed the murders if Carl saw her car there sometime between eleven and midnight, as he claims. She would not have had time. Reyes has to let her go. He doesn’t have enough to prosecute her for double murder. He doesn’t have enough to prosecute anyone. Now, he stares moodily into space, tiredly trying to make sense of it all.
If Carl Brink is telling the truth, someone drove that car to the Mertons’ that night. Rose would not have known about Irena’s hidden car keys. But he knows that all the legitimate Merton offspring did, and they are all liars. He has three suspects. None of them have alibis. All had motive. He stares at the grisly pictures of the crime scene up on his wall, of Fred and Sheila, murdered in cold blood, and asks himself for the hundredth time—Who did this?
