by Dete Meserve
Rebecca severed the deal with Ben to buy Paragon.
Ben killed Rebecca Stanton.
The gun in the garden is the murder weapon.
Or is the gun I found in the nightstand the murder weapon?
My mind is racing so fast to process it all that I excuse myself and stumble into the bathroom in a fog. I find a washcloth and run it in cold water, then press it hard against my upper lip to stop the waves of nausea.
I cannot accept their conclusion that Ben killed Rebecca Stanton. He couldn’t have actually pointed a gun at anyone and pulled the trigger.
Once when Ben and I were returning to our car after dinner in Koreatown, two teens approached us and demanded money, their fists balled up in their sweatshirt pockets as if they might have guns in them. When the bigger one shoved me, Ben’s face reddened and the veins bulged in his neck. He grabbed that kid by the arm and twisted it sharply. “Don’t you touch her,” he growled in a voice I didn’t recognize. If he’d had a gun then, I could imagine he would’ve brandished it. But I still can’t see him pulling the trigger.
I can’t breathe. My lungs feel like they’ve turned to concrete, and I can’t draw a breath.
I try to remember what Ben did—what he said to me—when he returned home Saturday morning. We were together for only thirty minutes before I left for the airport. When I told him I’d been unhappy in our marriage for months, his face had turned parchment white, but I had been so consumed with what I had to say that I don’t remember if he had been acting different before that.
How does someone act if they just murdered someone?
I glance at a set of photos tucked in the corners of the bathroom mirror. A friend had thrown a Halloween party and took photos with a vintage Polaroid camera. We’d been too busy to find costumes, so Ben and I went as California cowboys. Ben wore a dusty cowboy hat, a faded blue handkerchief looped around his neck, and a suede jacket that made him look like he was straight out of The Magnificent Seven. Only in this picture, his hat is tipped forward, casting a shadow on his face. His lips are pressed together in a straight line. At the moment the camera captured his image, he looks decidedly grim.
I lift the photo off the mirror and shudder. It’s like looking at a stranger.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
An hour later, four agents wearing black FBI vests descend on my house and produce a search warrant. After giving me a minute to make sure it’s referring to our property, they instruct me and Zack to wait in the living room with Elizabeth while they search the premises. When I explain to Zack why the FBI is here, his eyes widen and he looks like he might cry.
I hug him tightly and force a calm in my voice that I don’t feel. “We’ll figure this out.” Then I call Stuart, who tells me I must comply and instructs me not to give them any information that isn’t contained in the warrant.
I hang up and scan the paper—now smudged from my sweaty hands—but my mind cannot focus long enough on the words to make any more sense of it. I can see that it gives them the right to search everything on the property plus Ben’s texts, emails, and phone calls, but since his phone is not here and his laptop is at work, they focus their attention on going through every room in the house as well as the front and back yard.
“Beautiful tree,” Elizabeth says, running her fingers through the silver tinsel. “You and Ben do this every year?”
This is not a casual question, even though she asks it as though we’re old friends. I know she’s starting the conversation to gather more information about Ben and our family.
“If you think Ben had something to do with Rebecca Stanton’s murder,” I say, “how does that explain everything that happened to him—to us—since then?”
She looks at me, her lips pursed.
“You know he was poisoned?” I continue. “That he and his bodyguard were shot Tuesday night. And there have been a number of intruders on the property—once when Ben was here and once when Zack and I were alone at night. In light of your theory about Ben, how do you explain any of that?”
She answers slowly, carefully choosing her words. “We’re investigating those incidents, too. It’s possible they are in retaliation for Rebecca’s murder. By someone who knows what your husband did.”
Zack looks up from his phone, a startled expression on his face. I don’t like him hearing any of this about his dad, but I’m powerless to shield him from it.
“What they think he did,” I say. “Where does the FBI presume my husband is now?”
Her voice is flat, devoid of emotion. “That’s why we’re here. We’re looking for information that may help us find him.”
Or convict him, I want to say, but I clamp my mouth shut.
I can’t take the stress any longer. I lean my head against the back of the couch and close my eyes, signaling that the conversation is over.
I hear occasional thumps overhead as two men search the second floor. But I’m focused on the sounds the agents are making in the backyard. My hearing seems heightened, and I think I can actually hear their footsteps shuffling on the garden brick, even though the geography of the grounds makes that scientifically impossible.
I hear the garage door squeak open. Are they lifting the shovel off the wall, or is that scuffle and scrape the sound of them pushing a metal cabinet around? Fortunately there isn’t much to see in the garage. A few years back, Ben and Zack had organized it like something off of GeekDad.com so they could build crazy gadgets. Most of the time their projects didn’t work, but after many failed attempts to get it right, they did manage to make a small drone quadcopter one summer and a wooden catapult the next.
The sound of heavy footfalls on wet grass in the garden brings me back to the moment. I imagine the agents unearthing the gun and feel like a knife is twisting in my gut. Do FBI agents dig up an entire backyard looking for evidence? I wonder if they have metal detectors and whether I’ve buried the gun deep enough to avoid detection. Or if my fingerprints will still be on the gun even though it’s been buried in the loamy dirt. The logical part of my brain knows that’s impossible, but that doesn’t stop my heart from banging against my ribs.
The clock on the mantel announces the eleven o’clock hour—sixteen notes of the Westminster chime melody, whose sweetness seems to be mocking the grim circumstances. The song is followed by eleven delicate tones marking the hour, each of which grows progressively louder, beating out my destiny.
If they find either of the guns, should I pretend to be shocked? That would be the best course of action, but I’m a lousy actor.
“Almost finished here. You got a recorder hooked up to the camera security system?” Samuel asks, stepping into the living room.
“We just got the system. But the DVR malfunctioned and wasn’t recording anything.”
That answer seems to satisfy him, but it takes nearly a half hour for my pulse to return to normal.
I feel prickly impatience as the minutes then hours tick by slowly. I don’t see Samuel or the other agents again until they rush down the stairs toward the front door. I catch a glimpse of the black bags in their hands. Whatever is in there must be what they think is evidence—but I have no idea what it is.
DAY FOUR
My sister is crying. Her eyes are red and swollen, and her voice is thick and raw from tears.
“I had to come.”
It’s early Saturday morning and Rachel has arrived on my doorstep, dragging a shiny blue metal suitcase behind her.
“I know you said you’d tell me when you needed me to come, but I thought that even if you weren’t going to ask for help, you probably needed it.” She pulls me into a hug, and the tears fall some more. “I took the first flight out this morning. Is there any news?”
“There’s a lot to tell you.”
She steps inside and rolls her suitcase into the corner. “Can I stay in your guest room? You won’t have to entertain me or anything. I’m here to help out.”
I hesitate. “It’s been chaotic. You might be be
tter off getting a room at that hotel a few blocks away.”
I’m not entirely sure I want her at the house. My sister is nosy. When we were teens, she’d steal into my room and read my diary. She once ratted me out to our parents after I wrote about sneaking out at midnight to watch a meteor shower with some friends.
Her prying will appear innocent, of course. She’ll say she’s looking for a brush or moisturizer and look through all my cabinets and drawers. And she’ll definitely sneak a peek at the texts on my phone and eavesdrop on my conversations.
She’s also a perfectionist. She would notice that the lilac bush was tilted or the soil was disturbed. Her garden won some award and was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle—so I wouldn’t put it past her to dig around the lilac to give it some extra fertilizer or make it stand straight.
And find what’s buried beneath it. If it’s still there.
She senses my reticence. “I’ll only stay as long as you want me to.”
Now I feel bad for hurting her feelings. Both our parents had died in the last three years, and since then Rachel has been more needy, more quick to tears. “We’re orphans,” she’d often cry in panic when we talked on the phone. “Things will never be the same again.” It’s not that she missed them more than I did, but she definitely spent more time focusing on our loss.
“It’s good to have you here,” I say with surprising calm. My mind is still racing to figure out what evidence the FBI took away last night. I knew it wasn’t the Glock that I’d hidden in the telescope case. After they’d left, I’d checked and the weapon was still there, hidden beneath the gray foam. Now I’m anxious to head into the garden—alone—to see if the FBI has dug up the gun. I’d wanted to look ever since they’d left, but I’d resisted the impulse, determined to wait until daylight when I could more easily see what they’d done.
“Have you even been eating?” She asks, bringing me back to the moment. She places her hands on her hips. Even after enduring a flight from San Francisco and without a stitch of makeup, she looks like she could be a model—glossy red hair that falls in waves to her shoulders and pale white Irish skin. “You look like you’ve lost weight. Let me fix you something.”
“I don’t have much of an appetite right now.”
“What can I do, then?”
“I’d love a quiet soak in a bubble bath,” I say, remembering lounging in bubbles for hours when we were kids, soaking until our hands turned pruney. “Then I’ll tell you everything.”
She rubs her hands together, excited to have something to do. The minute she heads for the bathroom to fill the tub, I rush outdoors and into the garden. In case she’s watching from one of the windows, I stretch my arms over my head and yawn, as if I’m just out there getting some relief from the stress. I pluck a tangerine off one of the trees, cast off its thick skin, and sink my teeth into its juicy flesh.
Fruit in hand, I inspect the lilac bush and feel a surge of relief when I see it’s exactly where I left it, undisturbed. The entire flower bed and the soil around the bush look completely untouched.
The agents had not found the gun. But they’d found something else inside and taken it away.
What was it?
As I shove the telescope case back into the corner the doorbell rings, and I hear my sister scurry down the stairs to answer it.
“Yes, she is, but I don’t . . .” I hear her say quietly. Then she calls out to me, her tone demanding. “Sarah, you need to come down here.”
When I arrive at the door, Rachel looks more than a bit overwhelmed as Brad stands in the doorway, his hand firmly gripping Shane’s right arm.
“Sarah, tell him I’m a friend of yours,” Shane says.
“He’s okay, Brad.”
“He looked like one of those reporters that try to sneak up here all day long,” Brad says, releasing Shane’s arm.
I thank Brad again and close the front door.
“Wow, that’s some security you have there,” Shane says, rubbing his arm.
Rachel clears her throat. “I’m Sarah’s sister, Rachel. Visiting from San Francisco.”
“Shane,” he says, shaking her hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you from Ben. I’ve been friends with your sister and Ben since college.”
He gives me a brief hug. Even though it’s Saturday, he’s dressed like he’s headed to the boardroom, wearing a navy-blue power suit that highlights his broad shoulders. I can see why Brad might have mistaken him for one of the better-dressed reporters. “Pecan sticky buns. Straight out of the oven,” he says, presenting me with takeout from a nearby bakery.
“Smells delicious.”
My sister takes the bag and heads to the kitchen to find a place for it on the counters overflowing with food and flowers.
“I just want to check to see how you’re holding up. Do you need anything?”
“I’ve called his voice mail about thirty times just to listen to him speak. Does that make me crazy?”
Shane shoots me a half smile. “I think that’s pretty normal, actually.”
“The longer he’s missing, the harder it’s getting . . . but I’m hanging in there.”
We head into the living room. He nods at the camera in the corner. “With all the security you guys have, you’d think they might have seen something.”
“Yeah, we probably went overboard when we put in the system. And somehow its hard drive was completely erased.”
I fill him in on the latest from the FBI, and he looks at me in utter disbelief when he hears Ben is a suspect in Rebecca Stanton’s murder.
“There’s no way Ben murdered anyone,” I say. “He couldn’t have pulled the trigger. I’m sure of it.”
Shane’s face turns ashen. When he finally speaks, his voice is low and shaken. “Sarah, you might want to sit down.”
“Why?” I ask, but I don’t sit.
He rubs the back of his neck. “Ben owned a gun. Guns. I never saw them or anything, but he told me he bought a few. Said he stored them at one of the gun clubs in Manhattan.”
My voice is not much louder than a breath. “He stored guns in Manhattan? What for?”
“He never told me. And I would never have believed he could pull the trigger, either. Except when I saw him Friday night he’d been drinking . . . and when Rebecca backed out of the deal at the last minute, he was slamming his fists on the table. Knocking over glasses. Yelling at Rebecca. Saying stuff like ‘You can’t do this to me,’ and ‘You’re going to regret this.’ Good thing she ran out or . . . I don’t know what would’ve happened.”
My words sound wooden. “Are you . . . are you saying you think it’s possible Ben killed her?”
His face softens. “I can’t imagine Ben hurting anyone. I mean, c’mon, this is Ben we’re talking about, right? Even back in college when we’d hit the bars and the parties, remember Ben was the golden boy. He never got into any kind of trouble, even when the rest of us did. But that Friday night? That’s a Ben I’ve never seen before. That’s someone who was really angry. Amped up on drugs and had too much to drink. He was capable of anything.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It’s ten o’clock in the morning, and both the sun and a pale half-moon ride high in the sky. The moon is visible in daylight nearly every day with a few exceptions, but most of us don’t take time to notice it. I gaze at the two spheres, feel the warm sun on my skin, and then I’m grounded in the familiar. The constant.
A casual observer of today’s sky might assume that the sun and the moon are the same size. They certainly appear that way. But in reality, the moon is so tiny compared to the sun that it would take sixty-four million moons to fill up the sun. They only appear to be the same size because in a unique coincidence, the moon is 1/400th the size of the sun, but it’s also about 1/400th as far from us as the sun.
Most things are not as they appear.
Ben appeared to be a successful restaurant owner, married for fifteen years with a teenage son and well-liked by everyone who knew him.
But behind that facade lurked evidence he murdered Rebecca Stanton.
And then there was Shane’s description of Ben being drunk and angry the night she was murdered. That didn’t seem like the man I knew, either. Sure, he liked to relax with a few beers or shots of his favorite Japanese bourbon, but I’d never seen him go much beyond that. Was Shane exaggerating, or was this who Ben really was?
I had no idea how to explain the FBI’s accusations to Zack. This was his dad, the man who used to frighten away monsters that hid under his bed, who was an all-star at the hiding part of hide-n-seek, and who made breakfast waffles smothered in whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate, straight out of a young boy’s dreams.
So when I told him, gently explaining why the FBI had come to our doorstep, his face crumpled and he cried thick tears, like glassy jewels that slipped out of his brown eyes.
“You don’t believe any of it, right, Mom?” he’d asked.
“I don’t,” I’d whispered, hugging him tight.
My thoughts are interrupted by a swift knock at the garden gate. “Sarah?” a woman’s voice calls out to me. The gate is tall—six feet—so I can’t see who’s on the other side. “It’s Elizabeth Elliott. From the FBI. I tried ringing your doorbell . . .”
The scents of lilac and lavender rise up in the midmorning heat as I head through the garden and unlatch the gate. I’m not sure why Elizabeth thinks it’s okay to stop by again unannounced, but I also know that I haven’t been answering my phone, either.
Even on a Saturday, Elizabeth is dressed in a conservative gray suit with a white blouse, her dark hair falling in gentle waves. It’s a carefully cultivated look that makes her seem far more imposing than her five foot three inches.
I point out the half-moon and the sun in the sky. “Is that . . . normal?” she asks. I get the impression she spends little time looking at the sky, because she seems almost spooked by the sight.
“Pretty much every day, except for when it’s close to a new moon or is a full moon.”