A Penny for Your Thoughts

by Mindy Starns Clark

  I folded up the blanket into a square and used it as a cushion against the hard wooden floor. The tree house seemed sturdy enough, with room to sit fully upright beneath the child-sized ceiling. It certainly provided me with an excellent view. It was built almost like a watchtower, with window openings on all four sides. By shifting around, I could see the house, the barn, the poolside cabana, and nearly everything in between.

  I settled down and waited, watching the house, listening to the night sounds, and wondering if this lost night of sleep would be in vain. As I peered across the quiet lawn, I wished I had a good pair of binoculars. I knew Eli would never have set out on a job like this without first stocking up on the necessities: binoculars, camera, recorder, Thermos full of coffee, and a little food.

  I thought about Eli now, tangoing his way across his living room in Florida. The last case he took before his retirement had been to track the movements of a wealthy widow, helping her children to prove that the woman was mentally unfit and ought to be declared incompetent. Instead, he found himself falling in love with the woman, who absolutely had all of her faculties and was just a bit eccentric. After the trial, during which she succeeded in putting to rest any and all questions of her mental capacity, she asked Eli to marry her. They now lived in a condo in a retirement community, deliriously happy, taking long walks on the beach every morning and playing cribbage at the local Senior Center on Tuesdays.

  I shivered, thinking that I could do with a little Florida sunshine right about now. It felt as though it was getting colder up in the tree house, and it didn’t help that the wind was poking its way down my back and chilling my neck. I was just adjusting the blanket so I could half sit on it, half use it as a covering, when I spotted some movement near the cabana.

  With a shock, I realized it was Carlos. He was climbing out of his bedroom window—one of the windows that had earlier that day been coated with fake blood, but had since been washed clean. He was wearing what looked like army fatigues, and he carried something small and black in his hand that looked like a boom box or a radio. With my heart pounding, I watched as he quietly pulled the window shut and then set off across the lawn.

  He was coming straight toward me! As he got closer, I peered down at him, wondering what he could possibly have in his hand. A camcorder, I finally realized. Carlos was carrying a camcorder, and he was heading for the tree house.

  I didn’t know what to do. My gut feeling was that he had come out here to do a little surveillance of his own. Why else would he be bringing a video camera? Unfortunately, if he climbed up in the tree, pulled himself through the hole, and came face-to-face with me, he might nearly scream his head off, alerting the entire family to our presence here.

  With no other choice, I silently positioned myself next to the hole across from the tree trunk, so that as he emerged into the room his back would be toward me. Kneeling, muscles taut, I waited until he was almost completely through the opening, and then I grabbed him, clamping one hand over his mouth and wrapping the other around his chest, pinning his arms to his sides. I jerked us both backward, safely away from the hole, as his camera dropped onto the wooden floor. He thrashed about wildly, trying to get loose, trying to kick me, but unable to make a sound. I held on tight, surprised at the strength of an 11-year-old boy, whispering as urgently as I could, over and over, “It’s Callie; I won’t hurt you…calm down.” When he finally stopped thrashing and began listening, I spoke more softly.

  “It’s Callie. Don’t make any sound. Do you understand?”

  He nodded, my hand still firmly over his mouth.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m an investigator, Carlos. I’m out here on surveillance. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

  Again, he nodded. Under my right arm, I could feel his heart pounding against his chest. I had very nearly scared the poor boy to death.

  “I’m going to let go now,” I whispered. “Don’t make any noise.”

  I did as I said, releasing him from my grip and sliding back against the wall. He scampered across the wooden platform to the safety of the tree trunk, which he held onto like a shield. But he didn’t climb back down; he merely stared at me around the tree with wide, terrified eyes.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “You’re an investigator?” he finally whispered. “You mean, like a spy?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I wasn’t going to hurt you. I just didn’t want you to scream.”

  It seemed to take a few minutes for him to digest this information, but when he did, he seemed to relax somewhat. He reached out for his camera and busied himself by examining it, making sure it hadn’t gotten damaged in our scuffle.

  “A spy?” he asked finally. “Like James Bond?”

  I shrugged.

  “Not exactly,” I replied. “More like the Hardy Boys.” He looked at me blankly so I added, “Sherlock Holmes?”

  That one seemed to ring a bell. He scooted closer toward me.

  “Are you trying to find out who’s been doing all those things to my mom?” he asked.

  I nodded, not bothering to add that primarily I was trying to find out who killed his grandfather.

  “That’s why I’m here, too!” he whispered. “I got the camera and everything.”

  “You’re certainly prepared.”

  “I have to be,” he said, taking a seat next to me on the blanket and peering through the camera lens toward the house. “This time, I’ve just got to catch her on tape.”

  “Her?”

  “My Aunt Judith. She’s the one who’s doing it.”

  I sat back and exhaled slowly, remembering my conversation with Carlos at the funeral home. I have some ideas, he had said then. Apparently, I realized now, he really did.

  We sat there side by side in the darkness, watching the house and grounds, while Carlos gave me his version of all that had been happening. He told me about the incident with the sable coat that started it all and the other weird things that occurred as the situation escalated. Carlos described how, as the incidents continued to happen, the family slowly began to take sides. Wendell thought Derek might be the one doing these things; Marion thought it was Sidra who was doing them and then trying to make everyone think it was Derek. Though everyone in the family seemed to blame either Derek or Sidra for all of the hateful incidents, Carlos had felt certain that neither one was involved. Finally, Carlos had had an idea: He decided to stay up all night and try to catch the person himself.

  It had taken a while, but finally he did it: Waiting in the tree house one night last week, Carlos had watched in shock as his Aunt Judith snuck out of the house, right about this same time, and placed a bouquet of black roses on the doorstep of the cabana before running back in. Knowing no one would believe him, Carlos didn’t say anything to anyone. Instead, he decided to wait until after his weekend at the soccer tournament and then catch her on videotape. That was what brought him to the tree on this night. As he talked, I thought of the paintbrush I had found in Judith’s closet, and I knew unquestionably that it must’ve been used to paint the fake blood on Sidra’s window sills.

  “I have to wait until Mom is asleep before I can sneak out,” he said. “Tonight she was up really late.”

  “What makes you think Judith will do something tonight?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Just a hunch.”

  I waited with him, thinking how difficult this must be for a young boy. Despite Ian Quinn’s elegant quote about families keeping things private, I couldn’t understand why the Smythes—as moneyed as they were—hadn’t set up some surveillance cameras of their own. I finally decided their reasoning was twofold: For one, the perp was surely some member of the family; sometimes it seemed better not to know things like that. The second reason was more complicated; for Derek, at least, it probably felt easier to let the marriage slip away than to get out there and do something about it.

  “Callie, look!” Carlos whispered. I followe
d his gaze to see someone stepping out of the door of the house—someone who looked a lot like Judith. She was dressed in black, and in her hand she carried some sort of bottle.

  She crept past the pool and the cabana until she was no longer in our sights.

  “Go, go, go!” Carlos said as he struggled to slip through the hole of the tree house with the camcorder in his hand. He jumped the last five steps and then ran; I followed more carefully, just catching up to him as he passed the greenhouse and rounded the corner near the garage. We both froze along the side of the building, catching sight of Judith as she stepped inside the garage.

  There was no way to see inside the garage without being seen, no windows except a small one on the door. I took a chance and peeked inside, but in the darkness all I could see was Judith standing at the far corner of the four-car garage, waving her arms, her back to me.

  “What do we do?” Carlos whispered, the camera still whirring quietly in his hands. We crept back to the shadows together.

  “Just film the door,” I said quietly. “We’ll get in there once she’s gone.”

  It didn’t take long—maybe a minute at the most. From our hidden spot along the wall, we watched as Judith stepped back out of the garage and then quickly sprinted across the lawn toward the house. Once she was inside the house, we headed into the garage.

  We smelled its scent before we could see it—paint thinner or nail polish remover.

  “Callie!” Carlos whispered, waving me over as he stood filming the hood of a pale green Mercury. As I got there, I realized that Judith had poured the chemical all over the hood of the car, and that the paint was slowly bubbling up, ruining the finish.

  “That’s my mom’s car,” Carlos said, lowering the camera. He looked at me with wide dark eyes, stunned at the destruction created by his own flesh and blood.

  I couldn’t think of a word to say that would comfort him.

  Twenty-Eight

  “No way!” Carlos said, a forkful of pancake headed for his mouth. “They actually shot at you? With a real gun?”

  I smiled and nodded and told him to keep his voice down.

  “When it was all over with,” I said softly, recalling one of the more exciting cases in my investigative past, “they found a bullet in the wall, only three inches from where my head had been.”

  He let out a low whistle.

  “Did you dig it out? Did you keep it?”

  I responded by taking out my car keys and setting them on the table between us. The spent bullet was encased in Plexiglas and hooked to my keychain, a farewell gift from Eli, who told me I should always carry it around as a reminder of how close I had come to danger.

  “Awesome,” Carlos said for about the hundredth time. He held up the bullet and studied it closely, twisting it back and forth in the light.

  I had been regaling Carlos with stories of my investigative past for the last hour. We were sitting at a corner table of a nearly empty diner, the sun just coming up outside. After the incident with Judith, I knew neither one of us would’ve been able to sleep, and so I had Carlos leave a note for his mother saying that we had gone for an early breakfast and would be back later. Then he and I had gotten in my car and headed here. What Carlos didn’t know was that while he was changing his clothes and getting cleaned up, I had also taken a moment to run into the main house and sneak into his father’s room; I had left a message for Derek propped against his mirror, asking him to please meet us here as soon as he woke up.

  Carlos had been an engaging breakfast companion, pumping me eagerly for information about “spy tools” and exciting assignments. I didn’t tell him that most of my investigations these days rarely involved much more than sitting at a computer, poring through legal data. Let him think I was the next 007 if it would get him to cooperate with me and keep my identity a secret. In time, I would find the murderer of his grandfather, and then his life could return to normal—or as normal as could be expected, under the circumstances.

  As we talked, I found myself watching the door. Then finally, at about 7:30, it swung open and in walked Derek. He came straight to our table, his face stern.

  “What the heck is going on?” he asked, thrusting my note at me. It said, Please meet us at the Town and Country Diner as soon as you get up. Don’t tell anyone. Come right away. I had signed it, Callie Webber and Carlos.

  “I think you should sit down,” I said calmly. “Carlos and I have something to tell you.”

  Concerned, he slid into the booth next to his son. In the light from the window, I could see that he hadn’t shaved or even brushed his hair.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Carlos.

  Wide-eyed and excited, Carlos nodded back.

  “Callie’s a private eye, Dad,” he said. “Did you know that? She’s here on an investigation!”

  Derek looked at me.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I came here to deliver some money to Feed the Need. Then your father was murdered. I stayed for an investigation.”

  “Okay, take it back a few,” Derek said. “You’ve both caught me totally off guard.”

  A waitress appeared then and poured Derek some coffee. Once she was gone, I tried to explain everything in terms that were simple and direct.

  “I do investigations for the J.O.S.H.U.A Foundation,” I said. “Programmatic investigations. Verifying the integrity of nonprofit organizations, making sure they do what they say they do, seeing that they spend their money in a responsible way. As you know, I came here to deliver a grant to your organization.”

  “A grant? To Feed the Need?”

  His question threw me.

  “Of course,” I said. “You mean you didn’t know about it? But you’re the CEO.”

  He shook his head.

  “I knew you were here on some sort of business with my father, but I never thought to ask what it was.”

  “But your mother told you that I work for Tom, for the foundation.”

  “I guess I just never put two and two together. I’ve been a little distracted.”

  “Your father asked us for $250,000. He said it was for a building you all wanted to buy.”

  “I can’t imagine that,” Derek said. “There’s no building that I know of. My father never breathed a word of this to me.”

  “Is that unusual?” I asked.

  “I would say so,” he replied indignantly. “I should know everything that’s going on with Feed the Need.”

  “Well,” I continued, “anyway, when your father was killed, Tom asked me to investigate the murder. My background is in criminal work.”

  “Is that why you’re staying at the house?”

  “Partly,” I answered. “The police won’t let me leave town because I’m a material witness to your father’s murder. But your mother knows that I’m investigating.”

  “What does my son have to do with any of this?” he said. “Why have you brought him into it?”

  I smiled at Carlos.

  “Well, as it turns out, Derek, Carlos has been doing a little investigating of his own. Why don’t you tell him about that, Carlos?”

  Suddenly shy, Carlos recounted the story of how he had seen Judith with the black roses and then set about trying to catch her mischief again on videotape.

  “I got it on tape this time,” he said, holding up the dark cassette for his father to see, telling him about the damaged car. “Now everybody has to believe me.”

  “It’s Judith alright,” I added.

  Derek seemed truly stunned, and I felt for him as he looked from me back to his son. I told him that we needed to keep this information to ourselves for just a bit longer. Of course, if he wanted to go ahead and let Sidra know, that was up to him.

  “Okay, buddy,” he said, finally reaching out to squeeze Carlos’ hand. “Thanks for telling me. Now Ms. Webber and I need to talk. You want some quarters for the game room?”

  “Sure!”

  Derek gave Carlos a ten-dollar bill and sent him to the cashier for
an entire roll. Then Carlos ran to the little room at the back of the diner where we could watch him playing video games through a glass door.

  “Unbelievable,” Derek said finally, resting his head in his hands. “I couldn’t imagine what was going on here this morning, but I can say this was the very last thing on earth I expected. Judith. My gosh, why?”

  I wanted to trust Derek, but I still had some reservations.

  “I have to ask you a question,” I said, thinking back to the argument that I overheard that first afternoon. “Why did Sidra say that your father’s death would be ‘convenient’ for you?”

  He looked at me, confused.

  “Your big argument. The day he died?”

  “You heard us?”

  I shrugged.

  “It wasn’t hard,” I said. “You were practically yelling.”

  Not to mention the fact that I was hovering right outside the window, straining to catch every word.

  The waitress came with more coffee, and Derek paused to order a full breakfast. When she was gone, he shook his head.

  “We were about to file divorce papers. My father was going to testify on Sidra’s behalf. No big surprise—he always had a soft spot for Sidra, especially once she took over his dialysis. He thought I was doing all of these nutty things and then trying to make it look like she did them.”

  “I see.”

  “I guess when he died, she lost the one person in the family who believed in her.”

  He looked out of the window, his mind a million miles away. I sipped my coffee, leaving him with the quiet of his thoughts, wondering if he was the murderer, if he had killed his own father.

  “How does it all get so far offtrack?” he said finally, softly, more to himself than to me. I didn’t respond, and after a moment, he spoke again, his voice distant and lost.