“This will allowed Spencer Murphy to live in peace for the remainder of his life,” Alice added, “and ensured the truth would die with him. I suppose he thought it was a good bargain.”
“Does the fact that Nora predeceased him negate their contract? She can’t publish in any case, now.”
“Mr. Murphy might have destroyed this testament, had he lived. But this remains his last will, and its trust provisions are perfectly enforceable. Nora Murphy never benefited from the trust directly, so her life or death cannot affect it.”
“So who’s supposed to run the foundation?” Merry flipped further through the binder to the section of the will that pertained to the charitable trust.
“Mr. Murphy’s former daughter-in-law, Kate Murphy.”
Merry frowned at Alice. “I’m surprised Nora would trust anyone even remotely connected to the Murphys. Why Kate?”
Alice smiled a little sadly. “She was a compromise candidate both Nora and Spencer could accept. Spencer thought it was important that a family foundation be represented by a member of the family. Nora didn’t want her brothers to have any fiduciary or executive authority whatsoever. They are explicitly barred from the foundation board by the provisions of the trust. If Kate were still married to David, I’m sure she would never have been named.”
“What happens to all this money if Kate declines to act—or dies?”
“I am authorized to conduct a search for a suitable nonprofit director, and all connection with the Murphy family ends.”
The lawyer glanced at her watch. “And now, Detective, I’m afraid I’m going to have to close our meeting. I expect the Murphys to arrive in ten minutes—and much as I’d love police protection until this will is probated—”
“Don’t joke,” Merry said. “Two people have died for it already.”
Chapter Twenty
“So thirty million in assets and real estate were just stripped from two guys who thought they were going to inherit everything,” Bob Pocock summarized. “Too bad, if one or both committed murder for it.”
“We can only assume that David and Elliot Murphy were Spencer Murphy’s heirs,” Merry cautioned. “We haven’t seen his previous will.”
“And it’s moot, anyway, because that will won’t hold up.” Pocock glanced up from her report. “Cui bono?” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Who benefits? Find out which of these guys needed the money most, Detective, and then build your case. Is the Boston lawyer’s firm going under? Does he have a nasty online betting habit or pay a fortune each week in prostitution? What’s his Achilles’ heel, and why would he want his father dead sooner rather than later? Or is the queer from Manhattan with the chocolate Boy Toy looking for a way to retire early? Maybe real estate isn’t keeping him in cocaine in the manner to which he’s become accustomed. Maybe the Boy Toy wanted to walk, to a guy with deeper pockets. Cui bono. Track that, and you’ll track your killer.”
Merry opened her mouth to explain that it was a bit more complicated than that—and then decided to save her breath. Pocock had worked in a city with one of the highest murder rates in the United States. He had seen organized crime hits, contract killings, gang initiation shootings, and every sort of death pact under the sun. She wasn’t going to convince him that the obvious course was not the only one.
“Yes, sir,” she said, and barely counted to eighteen, this time, before she was dismissed.
Now that the holiday was over, Howie Seitz was off beach blockade and able to assist Merry in her investigation. She told him to run credit checks on all the Murphys, including Kate and Laney. Howie liked this sort of background work, combing databases and search engines for pieces of a puzzle. Merry had learned over the past several years that she could rely on his results.
Back in her own office, she glanced at her watch. It was important to interview David Murphy immediately after he left Alice Abernathy’s briefing, before his probable shock and anger about the will had completely faded. She judged that the lawyer would keep them until 10 a.m., and it was only nine-fifteen.
Nora Murphy’s laptop was resting on her desk. She opened it.
Merry was no longer interested in the book outline or the few passages Nora had managed to draft. She was looking for something else: evidence of a hidden relationship. She clicked on Nora’s email icon and opened her inbox.
She had found David Murphy’s contact email address online through his law firm website, and had done a similar search for Elliot’s through his real estate company. Merry ran a search for any correspondence between Nora and her brothers. She came up blank. If Nora had informed either of them that she was returning home, she hadn’t used their professional email addresses. Merry next ran a search for the brothers’ first names, to see whether any hits surfaced within the bodies of messages sent and received. And there, she found what she was looking for—only not in the way she expected.
There were numerous Davids referenced in a slew of emails Merry quickly dismissed as contacts in Asia and elsewhere, stretching back over nearly three years. But since January, only one David was mentioned in Nora’s email correspondence—in a message she’d sent to Kate Murphy.
Whose personal email address, surprisingly, was not her name—but [email protected].
Merry opened it.
Dear Kate—
You were so thoughtful to reach out last year through Facebook when Barbara died. Even if it was too late for me to fly home for the funeral, it was helpful to read your family news and your description of the service on Nantucket. Of all the places I’ve loved and left, Step Above is the one I miss most.
I’ve moved back to New York. I see from your profile that you and David have parted ways, and you’re in Brooklyn. If you’d like to meet for coffee or a drink, let me know.
Nora
Merry scrolled forward from January. Kate had answered Nora. The two had met. And they appeared to have formed a friendship. The emails became less formal, less full of background and more functional—a vehicle for setting appointments and meeting places where the real conversations had taken place. They had probably communicated by text through Nora’s phone, too, although Merry couldn’t check that—Phil Potts had yet to circumvent its security controls.
The third Tuesday in May, Nora had sent an email that was merely a subject line of text—Arrived. Merry opened the attachment. It was a photograph: the view of Nantucket Harbor from Step Above’s roof walk on an afternoon in late spring, when the tide was out and the dim shape of Whale Rock could just be discerned in the shallows beyond Steps Beach.
A view from the spot where Nora would die, a little over one week later.
Merry checked back through all the emails she had sent her former sister-in-law, and the answers Nora had received. She even checked Nora’s trash file. But the email she had hoped to find wasn’t there.
Kate Murphy had flown to Nantucket in March, presumably to see Spencer Murphy. But unless they had spoken about it face-to-face, Kate had never told Nora about the trip.
“Detective Folger?”
Jennie, a staffer who’d worked at the station for as long as Merry’s father.
“There’s a man asking for you at the desk. Andre Henrissaint. Want me to tell him you’re busy?”
“No,” Merry said quickly. “Thanks, Jen. I’ll be right out.”
“I took the island shuttle to the Rotary,” he said. “Elliot drove everybody else to the lawyer’s. Would you have time for a cup of coffee?”
Merry glanced at her watch. “I can give you twenty minutes. How about the Downyflake?”
There were several reasons to take Andre over to the institution on Sparks Avenue—there was plenty of parking; the Scotch Irish cake was unparalleled; and at this hour on a summer Tuesday morning, there’d even be a table. Most important in Merry’s mind, however, was her duty to Bob
Pocock. If the new chief demanded she eat lunch at her desk, she was damned if she’d have breakfast there, too.
“Oh, yeah,” Andre said. “I have this thing about the Sconset omelet.”
“Good. I’ll be having ham, eggs, and baked beans. I recommend it on a rainy day.”
“You forget: my girlish figure.”
“—Which can easily bench-press twice my body weight,” Merry said scathingly. “I’ll drive.”
They were lucky enough to nab a table in a corner, against a wall, where the din of morning breakfasters was lessened. Merry knew their server by sight—the Downyflake was a family-owned diner, and she’d grown up with half of them.
“Brian,” she said. “Here’s our order—but can we start with Scotch Irish and two coffees?”
“Of course, Mer. I’ll bring some blueberry crumb cake, too.”
“I’ve got to take some back for Elliot,” Andre murmured, “as a peace offering. He’s going to be inconsolable when Alice is done.”
“You know about the trust?”
He set down his menu. “In a manner of speaking. I didn’t know that Spence had actually drafted a new will until we ran into Alice Abernathy last night. But I knew Nora intended to persuade him to do so. Kate told me as much, this weekend, after we’d found Nora’s body. Elliot will be crushed that he loses the house. He loves Step Above more than anybody alive.”
Merry’s eyes narrowed. So Kate had known about the will and never mentioned it to her ex-husband. She wasn’t surprised. Kate and Nora had probably worked out the terms of the trust between them, before Nora ever arrived on Nantucket.
She removed her watch and placed it on the table. Andre should know he was on the clock.
“So why are we here?”
“After you and I talked last night, and I understood it was murder, I thought you should have all the facts.”
“—Or as many of them as you know.”
“Elliot refuses to accept that one of us killed his father.”
“But you don’t have that problem.”
Brian, the server, who had once eaten warm cookies in the Folger kitchen with her brother, Billy, after school, swooped down with a platter of Scotch Irish and blueberry crumb cake. He filled their mugs with scalding coffee. Without having to be told, he had brought a pitcher of steamed milk.
“My background was a little less sheltered than El’s.”
“Why did you fly here in March with Kate?” Merry asked.
He smiled suddenly. “You don’t miss much, do you? Elliot had to show listings to a Russian oligarch all over Manhattan that weekend. I said I was spending it in Miami with family.”
“You lied to him?”
“Yes.” He met her gaze. “Kate wanted me to assess Spence’s cognitive state. Unofficially. On Nora’s behalf.”
“You knew Nora was in the United States?”
“For the past few months, I’ve been serving as her private therapist.”
Merry sighed and mixed steamed milk in her coffee. “You’d better start at the beginning.”
“Kate asked me to have a drink sometime in February. I hadn’t seen her in a while, so I took the subway to Brooklyn. Nora was with her.”
“Why did Kate want you two to meet?”
“Nora was planning to confront her father about her adoption in Laos—she called it a necessary part of healing her abandonment issues. Kate thought that as a psychologist—and one who knew Spence—I might have some useful insights.”
“And you were okay with that? It must have put you in an odd position with Elliot.”
“It did. Nora explicitly asked me not to tell him I’d seen her. She wasn’t ready to get back in touch yet. Her emotions were pretty volatile.”
“What did she tell you about Laos?” Merry asked carefully.
“That her father’s life was a lie.” Andre served himself some blueberry crumb cake. “And that she planned to expose him with a book.”
“And your advice?”
Andre lifted his hands in a gesture of futility. “Her Hmong mother . . . Spence . . . the man, Thaiv, who was married to her mother and died a horrible death—that happens in war zones all over.”
“Huh. That’s the best you could do?”
“Look, Detective—I’ve spent my professional life among the homeless,” he said. “I’ve seen the pain of living on the streets. I told Nora that she was a product of American privilege, just like I am. That Spence hadn’t been forced to adopt her and raise her in First World comfort. That she could have lived out her life as a half-Hmong, half-white orphan in Vientiane—and that her life there would probably have been short. That she didn’t know Spence had deliberately betrayed her mother’s husband to the Pathet Lao. That maybe he had done Nora a favor, in fact, by saving her mother’s life. Maybe Spence was scared shitless when Thaiv was ambushed, and crossed the Mekong with Paj as fast as he could. And then dealt with the consequences—badly, very badly—afterward. Spence made some terrible mistakes. But he also tried to atone for them.”
Merry stared at Andre. “He made a bloody fortune by fabricating his escape.”
Andre shrugged. “Two wrongs don’t make a right. Nora was willing to break a lot of lives. She was looking for some sort of psychological justice—and that meant publicly shaming a man she’d loved, the man who’d brought her into the world and eventually raised her well. I thought there were better ways to achieve justice. By urging Spence to help other people torn by war, like her family. She had the power to do that. I believe in speaking truth to power.”
“Did she throw her drink in your face and walk away?”
“From that first meeting, yes.”
Brian paused again at their table, dropping platters of eggs and omelets and baked beans and ham. Andre thanked him. “A few weeks later, Nora asked Kate for my contact info. And we met on our own. I hope I helped her come to terms with the past. Maybe the trust is evidence of that.”
“You never told Elliot.”
“No. She’d become a client. There were issues of confidentiality. And as you know, El was never one of Nora’s fans. I thought I could keep my sessions with her separate. I thought when the time was right—when Nora reached a certain closure about the past, I could broker a meeting with El. He’s not the person she thought. He was wounded by that family, too.”
Elliot had insisted he hadn’t seen Nora in ten years. “Did Nora ever meet with him?” Merry asked.
Andre shook his head. “She died before it was possible.”
“Did you know that she was here in Nantucket, in May?”
“No. The last time I saw her was in April.”
“Ah,” Merry said. “After you’d flown here with Kate at Easter, and assessed Spence’s cognitive function. You reported to Nora what you’d found.”
“I told her Spence missed her. And that if she wanted to have an important conversation with him, she should do it sooner rather than later.”
“You never mentioned that Easter trip when we talked last night.”
“I did say that I’d noticed a decline three months ago. And that I’m not a medical doctor. I could only give Kate my personal opinion.”
“She wanted to know whether Spencer was competent to change his will. In legal terms.”
“Yes,” Andre said.
“And you told her?”
“Yes.”
“Andre,” Merry attempted. “You urged Nora to set up a trust. To benefit victims like herself, displaced by war around the world. Did you know she’d convinced Spencer to appoint Kate to run it?”
From the stunned expression on Andre’s face, this, at least, was news. He had been frank enough about everything else that Merry was convinced he wasn’t faking.
“Kate? She’s in charge?” He pushed aside his plate. “Jesus. It was supposed to be me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
She drove Andre back to the house as soon as their meal was over. He talked little during the fifteen-minute drive, his gaze fixed on the rain beyond her Explorer’s window, his fingers laced in his lap. Then, as Merry mounted Cobblestone Hill, he said, “A significant number of New York’s homeless are refugees from war-torn places, Detective. I had planned to do a lot of good through Spence’s foundation.”
“Maybe you still can,” Merry suggested. “You have a long relationship with the proposed director. She’ll need places to put her funds.”
Andre smiled. “And even if the director’s agenda differs from mine—there are always ways to do good. I’ll just have to be more creative, that’s all.”
Merry recognized that Andre had admitted a motive for Spencer Murphy’s murder. He had expected to be named head of a charitable organization that would have raised the profile of his work among the homeless, and his professional reputation throughout New York City. Moreover, as foundation director he might have found a way to save Step Above from immediate sale—perhaps by defining it as an appreciable asset within the charity’s endowment. Who knew what plans for the house he might have formed with Elliot, plans that might have lessened the sting of his partner’s disinheritance? But none of that was possible, now.
Merry did not ask herself whether the genial Andre was capable of murder. In her experience, almost everyone was—provided the circumstances were enticing or threatening enough.
“They’re back,” he said as she pulled into the drive at 32 Lincoln. A black Audi was parked in front of the door. When Andre turned to thank her, Merry said, “I’d like to come in for a moment and talk to David Murphy. Would you be kind enough to tell him?”
“Of course.”
She followed him into the house. “Thanks. I’ll wait here in the hall.”
The Westie, MacTavish, ran frisking to greet Andre and stood on his hind legs to busk Merry’s knee. She rubbed his shaggy head. She had visited the place enough that he recognized her scent; in Tav’s mind, she was a friend. Few of the other occupants of the house would view her that way.
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