“It’s not a lot to go on,” he said. “The fact that he was afraid of water.”
“I know.” Molly used both hands to wipe her eyes. “I know that.” She looked around the apartment, swallowing hard to get control of her emotions. “I just want the best for my baby. A parent always wants what’s best. Growing up… I wasn’t able to give her that. She didn’t have an easy life. I wonder if…” She didn’t have to finish the sentence this time. Zachary already knew what she was going to say. She wondered if that rough upbringing had caused Isabella’s mental fragility. Whether things would have turned out differently if she’d been able to provide a stable environment. Molly sniffled. “Do you have children, Mr.—Zachary?”
Zachary felt that familiar pain in his chest. Like she’d plunged a knife into it. He cleared his throat and shook his head. “No. My marriage just recently ended. We didn’t have any children.”
“Oh.” Her eyes searched his for the truth. Zachary looked away. “I’m sorry. I guess we all have our losses.”
Although hers, the death of her grandson, was clearly more permanent than any relationship issues Zachary might have.
In the end, he agreed to do the preliminaries. Get the police reports. Walk the area around the house and pond. Talk to the parents. He gave her his lowest hourly fee. She clearly couldn’t afford more. He wasn’t even sure she’d be able to pay on receipt of his invoice. He might have to allow her a payment plan, something he normally didn’t do, but something about the frail woman had gotten to him.
He put in an appearance at the police station, requesting a copy of the information available to the public, and handing over Molly Hildebrandt’s request that he be provided as much information as possible for an independent evaluation.
“You got a new case?” Bowman grunted as he tapped through a few computer screens, getting a feel for how many files there were on the Declan Bond accident investigation file and how much of it he would be able to provide to Zachary.
“Yes,” Zachary agreed. Obviously. He didn’t encourage small talk; he really didn’t want Bowman to start asking personal questions. They weren’t friends, but they were friendly. Bowman had helped Zachary track down missing documents before. He knew the right people to ask for permission and the best way to ask.
Bowman dug into his pocket and pulled out a pack of gum. He unwrapped a piece and popped it into his mouth, then offered one to Zachary as an afterthought.
“No, I’m good.”
Bowman chewed vigorously as he studied each screen. He was a middle-aged man, with a middle-age spread, his belly sagging over his belt. His hairline had started receding, and occasionally he put on a pair of glasses for a moment and then took them off again, jamming them into his breast pocket.
“How’s Bridget?” he asked.
Zachary swallowed. He took a deep breath and steeled himself for the conversation. Bowman looked away from his screen and at Zachary’s face, eyebrows up.
“She’s good. In remission.”
“Good to hear.” Bowman looked back at his computer again. “Good to hear. It’s been a tough time for the two of you.” His eyes flicked back to Zachary, and he backtracked. “I mean it’s been tough for her. And for you.”
“Yeah,” Zachary agreed. He waved away any further fumbling explanation from Bowman. “So, what have we got? On the Bond case?”
“Right!” Bowman looked back at his screen. “I’ve got press releases and public statements for you. medical examiner’s report. The cop in charge of the file was Eugene. He likes red.”
Zachary blinked at Bowman, more baffled than usual by his abbreviated language. “What?”
“Eugene Taft. I know, it’s a preposterous name, but he’s never had a nickname that stuck. Eugene Taft.”
“And he likes red.”
“Wine,” Bowman said as if Zachary was dense. “He likes red wine. You know, if you want to help things along, have a better chance of getting a look at the rest of that file, the officers’ notes and all the background and interviews. If you have to apply some leverage.”
“And for Eugene Taft, it’s red wine.”
“Has to be red,” Bowman confirmed.
“Okay.” Zachary looked at his watch. “Can you start that stuff printing for me? Is there anyone downstairs?” He knew he would have to run down to the basement to order a copy of the medical examiner’s report. Just one of those bureaucratic things.
“Sure. Kenzie should be down there still.”
Zachary paused. “Kenzie. Not Bradley?”
“Kenzie,” Bowman confirmed. “She’s new.”
“How new?”
“I don’t know.” Bowman gave a heavy shrug. “How long since you were down there last? Less than that.”
Zachary snorted and went down the hall to the elevator.
As he waited for it, Joshua Campbell, an officer he’d worked with on an insurance fraud case several months previous, approached and hit the up button. He did a double-take, looking at Zachary.
“Zach Goldman! How are you, man? Haven’t seen you around here lately.”
“Good.” Zachary shook hands with him. Joshua’s hands were hard and rough like he’d grown up working on a farm instead of in the city. Zachary wondered what he did in his spare time that left them so rough and scarred. He wasn’t boxing after work; Zachary would have been able to tell that by his knuckles. “Hey, how’s Bridget doing? Did everything turn out okay…?” He trailed off and shifted uncomfortably.
“Yeah, great. She’s in remission.”
“Oh, good. That’s great, Zach. Good to hear.”
Zachary nodded politely. His elevator arrived with a ding and a flashing down indicator. Zachary sketched a quick goodbye to Joshua and jumped on. He was starting to regret agreeing to look into the Bond case.
The girl at the desk had dark, curly hair, red-lipsticked lips, and a tight, slim form. She was working through some forms, those red lips pursed in concentration, and she didn’t look up at him.
“Hang on,” she said. “Just let me finish this part up, before I lose my train of thought.”
Zachary stood there as patiently as possible, which wasn’t too hard with a pretty girl to look at. She finally filled in the last space and looked up at him. She raised an eyebrow.
“You must be Kenzie,” Zachary said.
“I don’t know if I must be, but I am. Kenzie Kirsch. And you are?”
“Zachary Goldman. From Goldman Investigations.”
“A private investigator?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t usually introduce himself that way because it gave people funny ideas about the kind of life he lived and how he spent his time. Most people did not think about mounds of paperwork or painstaking accident scene reconstructions when they thought about private investigation. They thought about Dick Tracy and Phillip Marlowe and all the old hardboiled detectives. When really most of a private investigator’s life was mind-numbingly boring, and he didn’t need to carry a gun.
“And what can I do for you today, Mr. Private Investigator?”
“Zachary.”
“Zachary,” she repeated, losing the teasing tone and giving him a warm smile. “What can I do for you?”
“I need to order a copy of a medical examiner’s report. Declan Bond.”
“Bond. That’s the boy? The drowning victim?”
“That’s the one.”
She looked at him, shaking her head slightly. “Why do you need that one? It’s closed. A determination was made that it was an accident.”
“I know. The family would like someone else to look at it. Just to set their minds at ease.”
“You’re not going to find anything. It’s an open-and-shut case.”
“That’s fine. They just want someone to take a look. It’s not a reflection on the medical examiner. You know how families are. They need to be able to move on. They’re not quite ready to let it go yet. One last attempt to understand…”
Kenzi
e gave a little shrug. “Okay, then… there’s a form…” She bent over and searched through a drawer full of files to find the right one. Zachary had filled them out before. Usually, he could manage to do an end-run and Bradley would just pull the file for him. Officially, he was supposed to fill one out. He didn’t want to end up in hot water with the new administrator, so he leaned on the counter and filled the form out carefully.
She went on with her own forms and filing, not trying to fill the silence with small talk. Which Zachary thought was nice. When he was finished, he put the pen back in its holder and handed the form to Kenzie. To the side of the work she was doing. Not right in front of her face. She again ignored him while she finished the section she was on, then picked it up to look it over.
“You have nice printing,” she observed, her voice going up slightly. She laughed at herself. “No reason why you shouldn’t,” she said quickly. “It’s just that the majority of the forms that get submitted here are… well, to say they were chicken scratch would be insulting to chickens.”
Zachary chuckled. “That’s the difference between a cop and a private investigator.”
“Neat handwriting?”
“Yeah. Cops have to fill out so many forms, they don’t care. You can just call them if you need something clarified. Me… I know if I don’t fill it out right, it’s just going to go in the circular file.” He nodded in the direction of the garbage can.
“I wouldn’t throw it out,” she protested.
“If you couldn’t read it? What else would you do?”
“I would at least try to call you.”
Zachary indicated the form. “That’s why I printed my phone number so neatly.”
Kenzie smiled and nodded. “It’s very clear,” she approved.
“You’ll call me?”
“I’ll let you know when it’s ready to be picked up.”
Zachary hovered there for an extra few seconds. He was enjoying the give-and-take of his conversation with her but didn’t want her to accuse him of being creepy. He wasn’t the type who asked a girl out the first time he saw her.
He gave her another smile and walked away from the desk. Maybe next time.
Chapter Three
Zachary had expected that he would need to meet with Spencer Bond, Declan’s father, at his office. Men tended to want to act from a position of power, so he would want Zachary to see that he was well-respected and had some kind of influence. Spencer had surprised him by inviting him to the house. In the middle of the day. Surely, so long after Declan’s death, he would be working again. Men tended to throw themselves back into their jobs.
Zachary decided Spencer must have taken the day off, or at least the afternoon, in order to meet with Zachary and answer all his questions.
The man who came to the door was similar to Zachary in age. Somewhere in his mid-to-late thirties. He had a young face. Dark hair. Clean shaven. He wore a suit and tie, so maybe he hadn’t taken the day off work. Maybe he worked close by and had just taken an hour off to meet with Zachary. That was a little disappointing since Zachary figured he’d need more time than that to go over all the pertinent details.
“Mr. Bond?” Zachary asked politely.
“Yes. You must be Mr. Goldman of Goldman Investigations.”
“That’s me. Just Zachary, please.”
“Zachary.” Spencer looked at him for a moment and didn’t offer to shake hands. He nodded and opened the door farther, motioning for Zachary to enter.
It wasn’t a huge house, but it was simple and spacious. Bigger than anywhere Zachary had ever lived. Well, any house he had lived in, anyway. A few coats hung on pegs at the door. A blue man’s coat. A couple of short women’s jackets. There were a couple of umbrellas in an umbrella stand.
Looking around as Spencer led him through a living room with deep greens and pink pastels, Zachary couldn’t see any sign that a child had lived there. No toy boxes or shelves. No fingerprints or crayon pictures on the coffee table. Declan Bond had drowned months before, at the end of the summer. They wouldn’t have just left everything out. Maybe for a few days, but not for months.
Spencer led him into an office. Large windows, the afternoon sun streaming in. The room was warm, so either the windows had high-efficiency ratings, or they had a good furnace.
“Have a seat,” Spencer muttered, going around the desk to sit.
Zachary selected a chair. Spencer reached over to a bottle of antibacterial gel cleaner and pumped a squirt into his hand. He rubbed his hands together, distributing it. All of this was done in an automatic gesture as if he wasn’t even aware of it.
“Do you work from home?” Zachary asked, looking around.
“Yes.” Spencer’s dark eyes met Zachary’s. “Didn’t you already read our police interviews?”
“No. I’m still waiting to get everything. The police haven’t allowed me access to their investigation notes yet, just the public releases. I’ll talk to you and any other witnesses first, and then I’ll go back over the police documentation, looking for any inconsistencies or new information. Okay?”
Spencer nodded, seeming satisfied with that.
“At this point, all I have to go by is your mother-in-law’s initial statement to me, and a bare outline of what was in the news. Yours is the first detailed interview.”
“I’ll help you all I can.”
Zachary looked over the neat desk and filing cabinets. “I didn’t find any mention of what type of work you do.”
“I am a reviewer.”
Zachary wrote a note in his notepad, considering the answer. “What kind of things are we talking about? What do you review?”
“Product reviews. Anything. Food, cleaning products, toiletries, car accessories, books… anything and everything.”
“Really. That must be interesting. Companies just send you products, and you test them…”
“I test them and post product reviews,” Spencer completed, nodding.
“That lets you work from home. You don’t have another office?”
“No. I work from here.”
“And your wife is The Happy Artist. Does she spend a lot of time out of the home, or are both of you generally around?”
“Normally she’s gone in the mornings. Then we’re both around in the afternoon. It depends. She doesn’t like to lock herself into a schedule.” Spencer’s eyes went to the big calendar on his wall, with carefully marked starting and ending times and columns of tasks. Zachary glanced over it.
“What were your child care arrangements? Whoever was home took care of Declan?”
“I was his primary caregiver. Isabella had to be away from the home more than I did. Taping, touring, doing interviews. She had her own artwork aside from the show. Painting, attending showings and schmoozing with the right people…”
“What happened the day Declan died? Can you walk me through the events of that day?”
Spencer swiveled his chair and gazed out the window. His office looked into the back yard.
“Deck was playing out back. Isabella was watching him. In the afternoon. She looked away, and when she looked back, he was gone. She thought he was just out of sight… waited a few minutes… looked out again… called him… I’m not sure how long he was gone before she started to worry. She came and got me. We both searched the house inside and out. Then we called the police. They started a search of the neighborhood.”
Spencer stopped speaking. His voice had a flat tone to it, not what Zachary expected from a father talking about his only son’s last hours on earth.
“The police organized a search. At what time?”
“I’m sure their records will be more accurate than my memory. I wasn’t looking at a clock at the time. Four-thirty. Five o’clock. Something like that.”
“And how long did it take to… find his remains?”
“Seven-fifteen. I think it was seven-fifteen.”
“So only a couple of hours. You didn’t have to deal with days of searchin
g. That’s a blessing, anyway.”
Spencer stared out the window. “I suppose.”
“Did they attempt to revive him?”
“At that point… they think he’d already been dead a couple of hours. There was nothing they could do.”
“They put time of death at five o’clock?”
“Or thereabouts.”
“By the time you started looking, it was already too late.”
“Yes. So they said.”
“I’m waiting for the medical examiner’s report, but I assume they found water in his lungs. Were there any signs of… assault of any kind?”
“No. Nothing.”
“How deep is the pond he was found in?”
Spencer turned his gaze to Zachary. “I’ve never waded in to find out.”
“Natural or man-made?”
“Natural. Why does that matter?”
“If it was man-made, it probably has a gentle slope and fairly stable sides. If it’s natural, it could be more treacherous. Deeper. Eroding banks. Maybe… sinkholes. I don’t know.”
“Oh.” Spencer shrugged. “I see.”
“Did Declan like to go to the pond? Is that somewhere you went regularly? To feed the ducks, maybe?”
“No.” Spencer gave a definite shake of his head, looking almost angry at the thought. “We never went there.”
“Molly said Declan was afraid of the water.”
“It’s a normal fear.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t a normal fear, but it was a fear he had?”
“I suppose, yes. Molly makes it out to be a lot worse than it was.”
“She’s brought it up with you as well?”
“Of course.”
“What is your opinion? Do you think that he would have been too afraid to get close enough to the pond to drown?”
“No. Kids are unpredictable. He might have seen something that interested him… a dog or a rock… I don’t know.”
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