“Mornin’,” she said as she approached the lawn maintenance man. The name embroidered on his shirt read Rance and the company, Done Right Landscaping. He looked to be the kind of man a mother would warn her daughter to stay away from. Tall, dark, tanned, dressed in Wrangler jeans and a bicep-hugging shirt. He swaggered with too much confidence and had the ability to ignore without the least sign of regret, or beguile with charm if the occasion dictated. He took one look at gender-blended Pat Beerhalter and gave a dismissive nod.
Heather smiled to show off her yellowed teeth. “Doing a little compostin’ of the beds today?”
“Yeah.” He gave her a longer look. A cold look. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Pat. Pat Beerhalter. I’m the aide to Mr. Smiley. Do you know Mr. Smiley? He’s blind.”
He looked away and scattered mulch. “Don’t know him.”
“You must be Mr. Doneright of Done Right Landscaping. That’s a funny name. Ain’t never met anybody named Doneright.”
He made no attempt to correct her and turned to insure his view didn’t include Pat Beerhalter.
Heather needed to turn up the heat. “Mr. Smiley is smart as a whip and a real good friend to Mrs. Logan. In fact, I overheard ’em sayin’ he’s the one that’s going to be in charge of seein’ who gets what and when from Mr. Logan’s will.”
Rance jerked upward, spun to face her and demanded, “What did you say?”
His reaction spoke louder than words. Eyes flashed with something akin to accusation. Rage couldn’t be far behind.
“Oh, nothin’. I’d best be getting back to Mr. Smiley. He likes me to be handy when he has something important to do. Sometimes he has me read things for him. I had to read the will to him yesterday in the lawyer’s office. Man-o-man, you shoulda’ seen some of them words. I had to spell a bunch of ’em.”
She turned and walked toward the house. The grin came as soon as she was sure Rance couldn’t see her face.
◆◆◆
Heather made it back inside and sat discreetly by an opening leading to the kitchen. She chose a place where she could hear Rance if he snuck in to eavesdrop but he couldn’t see her unless he stepped into the living room. Steve and Kate had been joined by Connor, who slouched on the living room’s gold love seat still wearing running shorts and a tank top. Carey eased into the room and had to be prompted to sit near her mother.
Kate took a verbal swipe at each of her children before Steve could begin. “Connor, do sit up straight. And Carey, must you always dress like a refugee from a malt shop? You both knew we were expecting company this morning. Don’t you care what people think?”
Connor straightened his posture while Carey rolled her eyes.
The faint sound of the opening and closing of the door that led to the laundry room brought Heather on point. The scuff of socks approached and stopped on the opposite side of the wall from where she sat.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet with me so early,” began Steve. “Today will probably be a difficult day for each of you.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Kate.
“The police will be here this morning to question you individually. If you haven’t heard, Ned’s death has been ruled a homicide. I know they already questioned you once, but this will be different. There are a very limited number of suspects. Unfortunately, each of you had the opportunity to commit the crime.” He went on quickly. “I’m not saying any of you did, but you were all here during the window of time the police think it happened. You can’t deny it and I’m advising you not to try. You each have already admitted to being at home or were filmed on the security cameras.”
“How do you know about the security cameras?” asked Connor.
“I still have connections.”
Kate asked, “What should we expect?”
Steve’s voice conveyed a mix of concern and authority. “They’ve already determined each of you had the opportunity. What they’re looking for now is means and motive. The most uncomfortable questions will deal with motive. They’ll get personal, real personal.”
Kate’s eyes shifted left to right. “What do you advise us to do?”
“I’d like to talk to each of you one at a time. I’ll ask you the same type of questions they will. I won’t go easy on you because they’re not going to. This way, you’ll be prepared. There are two things you don’t want to do. The first is lie. The second is allow them to put words in your mouth. Be as succinct as possible with your answers. Watch out for open-ended questions.”
Carey came out of her shell long enough to ask, “What if one of us killed him?”
Steve’s expression didn’t change. “Get a lawyer. You’re going to need a good one.”
Before the first interview began, Heather rose and entered the kitchen. “Mr. Doneright, did you need something? Looking for a drink of water? That sure was nice of you to take off your boots so you didn’t track up the floor.”
His scowl could have melted tempered steel. “Yeah. I needed a drink of water.” He turned on the heel of a white sock and made for the door.
Heather seated herself again in the same chair and waited for Steve to begin with Kate. It didn’t take long before tissues piled up on her lap. Connor came next and held up surprisingly well under intense questioning.
Carey sat across from Steve with crossed arms and legs.
“Tell me about your relationship with your father,” said Steve.
“What do you want to know?”
“Did you love him?”
“I guess.”
“Did you hate him?”
“Sometimes.” Her flat affect made her appear uncaring, cold, even disinterested.
“Why did you sometimes hate him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. You’re a very bright young woman. More than bright–everyone says you’re brilliant. Your dad told me your I.Q. is out of sight.”
“So? I’m smart.”
“Smart enough to murder your dad and get by with it?”
“If I wanted to.”
“Did you want to?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
Carey had shown no sign of emotion that Heather could detect. Her posture remained relaxed but motionless, no movement of any facial muscles save the mouth to give answers and the occasional normal blinking of her eyes. She didn’t fidget. There were no alterations in volume or inflection in her speech. Her responses might as well have come from a robot.
“We’ve come full circle,” said Steve. “Why did you sometimes hate your father?”
A crack formed in the armor. She clasped her hands together and dipped her head. “He…he stopped being a dad.”
Steve’s voice softened. “When? When did he stop being a dad?”
The crack found its way to her voice. “About five years ago. Mom was going through some sort of weird woman thing and Dad didn’t know what to do with her. He started working more and more. He worked like crazy. Mom had her first plastic surgery. Then, two more. Finally, Dad moved to the apartment over the garage.”
“And that left you alone, didn’t it?”
“Mom was sort of around, but she’d changed. She got a bunch of strange ideas about how my life was going to turn out.”
Steve leaned forward. “Paint me a word picture of how your mom thinks your life should look.”
Carey’s voice reverted to a monotone. She stared out the window, apparently without interest in what she saw. “I’m to be Ivy League educated…married into an incredibly rich family…New York high-rise apartment…Broadway plays…summer in the Hamptons with trips to Martha’s Vineyard and winter skiing in Aspen. And, of course, there are film festivals in Cannes and Telluride.”
“Is she with you?”
Carey’s next words came out jagged, each word enunciated crisply and separated. “Every–step–of–the–way.”
“I see,” said Steve. “Now paint me a word pict
ure of how you want your world to look.”
She glanced at him and returned her gaze out the window. “I’m a research chemist wearing a plain white lab coat. I’m in a small lab at the end of a long hallway. I’m doing important work. Work that will save lives. My hair is pulled back into a ponytail and I’m not wearing any makeup.”
“What are you working on?”
“Alzheimer’s–a cure.”
“Why that disease?”
Carey continued to look out the window. A single tear slid down her cheek “When I was four, I saw what it did to Grandpa Logan.”
Steve’s next words sent a shiver of admiration down Heather’s spine. “You want to be like your dad and bury yourself in work because, just like him, you’re not happy and you don’t know how to fix it.”
A look of astonishment came across Carey’s countenance. “I never thought about it like that.”
“Do you think your dad abandoned you?”
She hesitated, her twenty-year-old’s face contorted with a wrinkled brow and eyebrows pinched together. “I…I don’t know. All I’m sure of right now is that I miss him.”
“Thanks, Carey,” said Steve. “We’ll let ourselves out.”
The unmarked car of Detectives Lowe and Hall pulled up to the curb as Heather backed down the driveway.
CHAPTER 11
The tearing and shredding sounds of feline nails caused Steve to lift his chin. “What in the world is that cat tearing up now?”
“Nothing,” said Heather. “He’s sharpening his nails in a special box I got him. I’ll bring it to you so you can feel.”
Max finished his grooming with an immodest tongue-bath as Heather took his box across the living room for Steve’s inspection by fingertips. His grunt of approval came as a surprise, but he didn’t dwell long on his four-legged roommate’s pedicure.
Rising to his feet, Steve went to the cork board. His hand moved to the picture of Connor Logan and traced an unseen line with his finger from Connor to the newly acquired photo of Sunny LaForce, the Dixie cupcake and receptionist at Logan Law Firm. “How long has Connor been seeing Ms. LaForce?”
“I don’t know,” said Heather. “Long enough for her to lay claim to him. Those baby-blues turned green with jealousy when she saw me talking to him at the gym. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a box like Max to sharpen her claws.”
“Hmmm.”
She guessed what would come next. If Steve had an assignment for her, he sometimes preceded his request with, “Hmmm.”
“Connor owes you,” said Steve. “You saved him the embarrassment of having to move back in with his mother after squandering every penny he had or could borrow. Give him a call and find out what you can about his relationship with the Scarlett O’Hara wannabe.”
“Right now?”
“No time like the present. Put it on speaker so I can listen.”
The phone rang twice before she heard, “Hello?”
“Hey, Connor. Heather McBlythe. I wanted to check up on you and see how everything went with the FBI.”
“Great. They pumped out every drop of information I had in me and told me what a bullet I’d dodged. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
Max made a figure-eight path through Steve’s legs while issuing a deep bass “purrrr.” To her surprise, Steve made no attempt to kick him or even move. In her mind she issued her own, “Hmmm?”
“Listen, Connor, how about that dinner my buddy at the FBI suggested? My treat.”
“Uh…uh…I don’t think I can do that. You remember Sunny from the gym, don’t you? Well…you see…it’s like this, we’re kind of getting serious, and—”
“Say no more. I don’t want to do anything to get in the way of true love.” She paused. “How long have you two been an item?”
“Not long. I knew her from Dad’s office, but she pretty much ignored me until fairly recently. She started coming to the gym about four months ago and…what can I say? She’s got it all and then some. That accent of hers is something else, isn’t it?”
“It definitely is.” Heather looked at Steve. His nod told her he’d heard enough. “I’ll let you go, Connor.” A thought ran through her mind. “By the way, have you given any more thought to going back into real estate?”
“I thought about it, but to tell you the truth, Sunny and I are considering other possibilities. It all depends on how much I get after Dad’s will is probated.”
Steve’s expression of concern sealed her lips from the snarky comment that longed to escape. They both knew Connor’s chances with a woman like Sunny to be somewhere between poor and none. She also knew Steve had new demands of parental responsibility weighing him down.
Steve’s cell phone blowing up parted the weighty gray cloud hanging over him.
“Hello, Ms. Brown.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“I have a phone with an app for blind people. It announces who’s calling. Since it could only be you or Ms. LaForce calling from the Logan Law Firm, I knew I had a fifty-fifty chance. What can I do for you?”
“Please, call me Brittany. I need to apologize for the way I acted. There was no need for me to take out my frustration with Ned on you.”
“I understand. Stress in these situations is high.”
Brittany sighed. “Thank you for understanding. The other reason I’m calling is because I can’t find the will I left for you to examine. Did you take it?”
“Yes. I brought it home to study.”
Relief seasoned her next words. “Thank goodness. That’s the original and the only other copy is on Ned’s personal computer. He never told anyone his password.” She paused. “I could have sworn he told me he kept a copy of the will in his personal file in his office.”
“If you need the will, I can send it over to you. As for the password, Ned told me what it was several years ago. It’s complicated enough I doubt anyone could ever hack it.”
“I’ll probably need the password, but not today. I was afraid something happened to the will last night.”
Something about the last statement didn’t sound right. Steve caught it too and asked, “Did something happen last night?”
“I think someone broke into Ned’s office.”
“What makes you think someone broke in?”
“I may be wrong, but you know how meticulous Ned kept everything. He couldn’t stand anything out of place or the least bit messy, not even a sticky note on the outside of a file. I unlocked his office today looking for a copy of the will. It looked like someone had gone through his file cabinet. His personal file wasn’t pushed down where you could read the label of the file behind it. That used to drive Ned up the wall.” She paused. “Do you think I should call the police?”
“There’s no cash missing?”
“No.”
“Or anything else?”
“Not even a paperclip.”
“Was Ned’s personal file the only one that looked disturbed?”
“That’s it, and nothing missing other than a copy of the will. Sunny said her files haven’t been touched and she can’t find anything missing either.”
It didn’t take Steve long to come up with an answer. “If someone was in Ned’s office and they were good enough to get past all the security in the building, they were bound to be wearing gloves. The police aren’t going to do anything but take a report if you’re sure nothing is missing but a copy of a will. Call them if you want to, but I think you’re wasting their time and yours.”
“I’ll follow your advice. When do you want to have the reading of the will?”
“Late tomorrow afternoon in your conference room. I’ll send you a text with the names of everyone I want to have present.”
CHAPTER 12
Heather checked her email before she went to feed Max his morning breakfast. Steve, fully dressed except for shoes, sipped a cup of coffee at the bar as his sock-covered foot ran a path down Max’s back. The cat arched up in a sign of much-deserv
ed contentment. She couldn’t help but smile. Max had done the impossible and won Steve over, one purr at a time.
“Where are we going for breakfast?” asked Steve, his voice buoyant and his hair neatly combed.
Heather regarded his appearance and concluded he cleaned up pretty darn good. “Wherever you want to go, but I’d better keep you away from middle-aged widows or divorcees. As handsome as you look, they might kidnap you and take you to Vegas for a quickie wedding.”
“Are you trying to spoil a perfectly good day? That sounds like a nightmare involving a ball and chain.”
“Speaking of,” said Heather. “Did you think of something we might have missed last night? Any new thoughts or revelations come to you while Max and I snoozed away?”
“No. I think we covered everything during our marathon session at the cork board. ” He chuckled. “You must sleep pretty deep. Max came visiting me about three a.m.”
“I must have been out of it. I didn’t hear him squawk when you shot him with your water bottle.”
“I held my fire last night.”
She shook her head and stood in wonder of how much Steve had changed. The case had brought out dimensions in him she didn’t know existed. “Grab your cane. I’m starving.”
Heather snatched her purse from the hook by the door. “By the way, Mr. Cat-Lover, I got the lab results back on the water from Ned’s exercise pool. Nothing unusual other than the salinity of the water wasn’t up to factory recommendations for a salt-water pool.”
He slipped on a pair of loafers. “That’s interesting.” Then he moved on to another subject. “I don’t care where we go, but let’s find a place that serves huge portions.”
Steve had no more stepped across the threshold when he jerked to the left. The crack of a rifle shot followed a half-second later. Grabbing his shoulders, Heather yanked him backward, sending them both crashing to the floor of the tile entry. She continued to drag him backward until she felt carpet.
“Steve! Are you hit?”
“My face.”
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