“Which files did the burglar seem interested in?” McCarthy asked.
Joan indicated a wood file cabinet whose drawers were splintered as if they had been pried open with a crowbar. “This is where Mr. Flint keeps files on the wills and estates of the most prominent families in the Philadelphia area.” She pulled a drawer open, with a palm wave worthy of a game show hostess. “The burglar tore through the files on the Compton family in your hometown of Laurel Springs.” McCarthy’s camera clicked away, documenting the mess of papers hastily stuffed back into manila folders. Joan’s voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. “The original wills of Priscilla Compton and Ruth Ellis were taken.”
Chapter Eleven
“Were any other wills—” McCarthy started to say, when a voice boomed from the doorway, “Joan! What are you doing in my office?”
Richard Flint, Esq. stood in the doorway, gazing at us with revulsion.
Joan turned a remarkable shade of red and stammered, “Newspaper photographers.”
McCarthy shot me the barest glance, possibly wondering what my relationship to the father of my ex-fiancé consisted of. Then he plunged right in, as usual. He held out his hand. “Sean McCarthy, from the Laurel Springs Daily Chronicle.” Another quick glance in my direction. “This is my assistant, Daria. We heard about your recent break-in, and realized that your firm represents the folks at Compton Hall. The whole town is fascinated with the reality show filming there, so the paper sent us here to get some pictures of your offices. Your lovely receptionist has been so kind as to show us all around.” He beamed at Joan, whose cheeks were gradually returning to their original shade. “You must be Richard Flint.”
Flint nodded, and slowly advanced into the room. The spitting image of Randall, with a couple of decades added on, Flint exuded the same cold superiority as his son. He set his briefcase down on the desk. His eyes flicked over the open file drawer. “Did you see everything you needed to see?”
McCarthy glanced at the silent figure of Joan Miller, caught with her hand almost literally in her boss’s files. “Could I get a shot of you here in your office, Mr. Flint, with the file cabinet that was broken into in the background?” Without waiting for consent, he snapped a few pictures of Flint standing by his desk, frowning. McCarthy chattered away. “Please forgive me for intruding like this; I’m like a kid in a candy store when it comes to photographing break-ins. I imagine you’ve been through the whole rigmarole with the police photographers, as well. Us newspaper photogs are always the last to hear the news.” He circled around Flint to snap another photo. “How would you like your name to appear in the newspaper?”
If McCarthy expected Flint to warm up at the prospect of his name and picture appearing in the newspaper, he was disappointed. This ploy had the opposite effect. Flint took a swift step toward McCarthy and held up his hand over the camera lens.
“Enough! Let’s get one thing straight, young man. Flint, Perkinson and Hubbard is a prestigious law firm with an illustrious seventy-seven-year history. We are uninterested in the negative publicity that could be generated by publishing photographs showing the vulnerability of our offices. If you must report on the break-in, you will not include any images of myself or any other senior staff. A police report has been filed, and you may request access to that as a member of the press.” He held out his hand, indicating the camera. “Kindly delete the photographs of myself that you just took.”
McCarthy took a step backward. “Delete?” He pulled the camera to one side, out of reach of Flint’s hand. “Oh, no, I never delete an image. Rule number one in the photographers’ manual: never press Delete, because as soon your picture is gone, you’re going to want it.” He flashed a charming smile at Flint. “That actually happened to me once, early in my career when I was doing wedding photography to make ends meet. I was in the middle of a perfectly ordinary series of photographs of the bride dancing with her father when the brawl erupted. I got some fantastic action shots of the groom busting the heads of three of his guests. Those pictures could have launched my journalistic career the very next day, but the bride’s father forced me to delete them all.” He paused, waiting for Flint to respond. He was not disappointed.
Flint crossed his arms on his chest and frowned at McCarthy. “And how did the father of the bride convince you to delete the photos?”
McCarthy grinned. “You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you that the entire wedding party was made up of Mafia hit men who had Uzis stuffed in their cummerbunds, so let’s just say he persuaded me with all the weapons at his disposal.”
I stared at the two men, wondering what exactly McCarthy was hoping to gain by stalling Flint off with this ridiculous story.
Incredibly, Flint started to chuckle. “Fine. The weapons at my disposal are dry, legal ones, but I am very skilled at wielding them. I would much prefer to come to an amicable arrangement.”
“Ah. Well said. I can almost hear the bailiff calling the court to order.” McCarthy turned the camera over and scrolled through the pictures he’d just taken. He held it out to Flint while he highlighted the four images that included the senior partner, and pressed Delete. He held out his hand. “No hard feelings?”
Flint shook hands like a gentleman.
McCarthy held out his hand to Joan as well. “It’s been a pleasure. I do apologize for coming in here and running rampant all over you.” He winked at me. “Daria’s favorite name for me is ‘obnoxious photographer,’ after all.” He retrieved the notebook from my hand. “Time for us to go.”
Both Flint and Joan accompanied us to the outer door of the office. As it closed behind us I punched McCarthy in the arm. “What was that all about? That stupid story of Mafia hit men in the wedding party, of all things? You obviously didn’t care about those pictures of Flint, or you would never have deleted them.”
He grinned at me. “You’re very perceptive, my nosy seamstress.” His grin faded. “Did you see the way Flint looked at poor Joan, who was in the middle of sharing his confidential legal files with us? He could have fired her on the spot for breach of confidentiality. But he got a taste of how obnoxious and persistent I could be, and then he got to win in his conflict with me. I’m hoping his taste of victory will allow him to overlook her lapse in judgment and let her keep her job.”
“Wow, the obnoxious photographer saves the day!”
He laughed. “My cape is at the dry cleaner’s.”
He preceded me out the door and down the sidewalk to his car. “Anyplace else you want to go while we’re in the city?”
I shook my head. “I should get back to work.” I had just enough time to buckle myself in before McCarthy eased out of his parking spot and headed down the road. He waited until we were back on the highway to ask, “What do you make of our visit to the illustrious law firm?”
I swiped a strand of hair out of my mouth and hollered above the noise of traffic, “Lots to think about.”
He gave me a swift glance, and hit the buttons to roll up the car windows. “I’ve got a bunch of questions. First one is for you. I thought you dated this guy Randall for a long time, but his dad didn’t seem to recognize you.”
“Was there a question there?” With the windows now closed, my voice came out overloud, sounding even more belligerent than I felt.
He chuckled. “Who, what, where, when, and why, huh? Okay, was I right in my observation that Richard Flint, Esquire did not recognize you after you went out with his son for a long time? That’s a yes or no question. Then there’s a follow-up: If I was right, why didn’t he recognize you?”
“That’s better.” It wasn’t really, but at least the stalling gave me a chance to ponder this uncomfortable fact of my recent relationship. “No, he did not recognize me, so yes, you are correct in your observation. He did not recognize me because we, in fact, had never met before.”
McCarthy rolled his eyes at my evasion. “I met the d
ads of all the girls I ever went out with. One of them came with a waiver outlining my rights to any photographs I took of his daughter. Another one skipped the niceties and invited me into his living room for a chat while he was sorting out his ammunition. He made sure I knew he had seven different types of bullets, for a variety of weapons.”
I couldn’t come up with a light and witty response to this comment, as my brain went into overdrive wondering how many girls we were talking about here. McCarthy and I had never really talked about former boyfriends or girlfriends. Not that it mattered to me anyway, right? I settled for a somewhat strained laugh and a lame remark. “You must present a more threatening picture than I do.”
“No doubt.” He grinned, obviously waiting for something more. I had nothing. After a minute I asked, “What were the other questions you had?”
Traffic slowed in front of him, and he turned his attention to the road. “Aside from the obvious, ‘who broke into the law office,’ I’d really like to know what they wanted with Priscilla Compton’s and Ruth Ellis’s wills, and how that ties in to the murder of Professor Burbridge.”
“You think the two are related?”
“They have to be. Well, they don’t have to be, but chances are they’re connected.” He maneuvered into the left lane to bypass whatever was holding up traffic. I could practically see him champing at the bit to get back to flying down the road. “What do we know about Burbridge in relation to the Compton sisters?”
I leaned back in my seat, freed for the moment of my worry about spinning out of control on the freeway. “He was hired to go through the library at Compton Hall. I don’t know if he had any prior connection to Priscilla or Ruth. I don’t even know if they hired him or if it was the TV people.”
McCarthy looked at me thoughtfully. “That’s an interesting point. Who is paying for all the work going on at the Hall? It’s for the TV show and the chance to win a million dollars, but if they don’t win they’ll have a lot of renovations to do just to get the house back to a livable condition.”
I nodded. “It’s like what Pete has told me about moviemaking in this area. The film company will scope out a house or neighborhood that looks like what they have in mind for their movie, and then they might gut the house to turn it into a restaurant or something. Pete says the production company would pay to return the house to its original condition. But in this case, I don’t know if the production company would pay all the construction costs, or if Priscilla would be on the hook for some of them. It must be an expensive TV show.”
“So who’s paying you, Priscilla or the TV folks?”
I busied myself with my seat belt, which was pulling on my shoulder. I didn’t want him to see my face. “Priscilla’s paying me. She’ll give me her final payment after the TV show airs and the vote is taken.”
“How much is she counting on winning that million dollars, Daria?”
I shrugged. “You know Priscilla. She doesn’t have a good grasp on reality. I’m sure she has no idea how much a million dollars is worth, or what all this work is costing her, or how much money is in her bank account.” And if she didn’t win the million dollars and couldn’t afford to pay me, I’d just write it off as a business expense on my taxes. No way was I going to take that sweet, daft old lady to small-claims court.
Traffic finally let up, and McCarthy resumed speeding down the highway. He hit the button to roll down his window, then reconsidered and rolled it back up again.
“So who takes care of her accounts for her? Does someone have power of attorney?”
I hadn’t given this question any thought. “I don’t know, it could be Ruth, or maybe John, Ruth’s son. That wouldn’t surprise me.”
“John, Ruth’s son? Presumably the heir to Compton Hall? What’s he all about?”
I tried to call up a mental image of John, whom I had met that one time after finding Professor Burbridge’s body. A portly man in his fifties, professional looking, who had inquired about a cleaning service while a man lay dead in the library. He had been in the group three days later when the police revealed that the professor had been murdered. I remembered his sharp eyes evaluating me, as if I were a suspect in the killing. “I’ve only seen him twice. I don’t even know what he does for a living. He lives down the street from Compton Hall.”
McCarthy dodged past a car that was driving too slow for his liking. “Want me to check him out?”
“Sure, if you want.” McCarthy had all the resources of the newspaper at his disposal. But I intended to check out John Ellis as well. All of a sudden I had a renewed interest in learning about the Ellis family, from Ruth’s husband, the victim of arson, to the two sons, one of whom lived right down the road from the location of another unexplained death.
We heard the sirens as we neared downtown Laurel Springs. I almost expected McCarthy to speed up to get out of their way, but he pulled over like all the other law-abiding citizens to let the fire engines pass.
“It looks like they’re heading for your neighborhood.” He eased back onto the road and followed the fire engine.
A flash of fear swept over me at the sight of a thick plume of smoke rising from the direction of my street. I had witnessed a house fire once as a child, and it had made a deep impression on me. In high school chemistry I made my lab partners light the Bunsen burners, afraid that I might somehow start a conflagration that would burn down the building.
My fear intensified as we rounded the corner to see the fire trucks parked on the street in front of my house. I gripped McCarthy’s arm. “Hurry!”
He angled into a spot on the street two houses down, and I was out of the car before the wheels stopped turning. I sprinted down the sidewalk, pushing past a firefighter unrolling a hose, to stop in front of my house.
The smoke and flames were coming from a pile of brush strewn across the front porch steps. It didn’t look like any part of the porch structure had caught fire yet. Through the thick smoke I saw Aileen, barefoot in a black trench coat with a towel wrapped around her head, wielding a wimpy fire extinguisher on the blaze. There was no sign of Pete.
The firefighter instructed Aileen to go back into the house and come out the back door. When she disappeared, he turned his hose on the flaming pile. The volume of water quickly knocked down the flames, to my vast relief.
McCarthy came and stood next to me, an arm around my shoulder. “Looks like they’ll get this under control pretty quickly.” He squeezed me tight for a moment, and then pulled out his camera to document the scene in his own particular fashion.
I couldn’t say a word. As the flames receded, I could see the pile of brush more clearly. Clearly enough to recognize my new Japanese maples that had been uprooted, thrown onto my porch steps and set on fire.
Chapter Twelve
It felt like a violation. I registered that Aileen had come out of the house to stand next to me, but I couldn’t see her clearly through my tears.
Aileen, of course, did not indulge in tears. “What the hell is going on here, Daria? Who in this town is out to get us?”
I shook my head, swiping at my eyes. “Where’s Pete?”
She pulled the towel off her wet hair. “He’s not home from work yet. He’s doing sixteen-hour days, remember?” She shook her head like a dog, sprinkling me with droplets of water. “I was having a shower before my gig tonight. Good thing I had the window open, or I’d have missed all the excitement.”
We stood watching McCarthy circling around the porch, capturing every angle of my poor burnt-up Japanese maples. I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t start crying again. Pete and I had worked so hard to save those little trees from the dump, giving them a new lease on life in my front yard. It killed me to see them destroyed after all that.
A police cruiser drove up, and a middle-aged officer with a gleaming bald head got out and came over to me. I recognized him as Officer Carson, whom I h
ad encountered at another crime scene a month ago.
“Daria Dembrowski,” he said by way of greeting. He pulled out a small notebook and looked at me expectantly. “What happened here?”
I took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I just got home to find the fire trucks here and my Japanese maples torn up and set on fire on my porch steps.” I bit my lip and pointed at Aileen. “Aileen was home; maybe she saw something.”
Aileen shook her head. “I was in the shower. I heard the fire crackling and smelled the smoke and ran out. Damn—I left the shower running!” She darted back into the house.
“The thing is, this isn’t the first thing that’s happened.” I took another deep breath, and told Carson all about the eggs and the dead mice and the dark figure who tried to break into my house in the middle of the night. “I feel like someone is targeting us—but I don’t know why. It could have something to do with Professor Burbridge’s murder. I don’t know.”
Officer Carson took down everything I told him, and went on to interview Aileen when she came back outside. McCarthy finished photographing the smoldering pile and snapped a few shots of Aileen and me being questioned.
Carson clicked his notebook closed. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Wait!” I clutched him by the arm. “Do you think we’re safe here in the house? What if something else happens?”
“Your brother still live here with you?” He glanced over at Aileen, who had slipped on combat boots when she came back outside. Her jet-black hair hung limp on her shoulders, not yet gelled into spikes all over her head. Carson gave a satisfied nod. “I’m guessing between the three of you, you can deal with this. The perp’s not going for violence so much as intimidation.”
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