Not a Happy Family

by Shari Lapena

  56

  Despite having her attorney beside her as she enters the police station the next morning, Jenna is uncharacteristically nervous. She’s furious at Jake for betraying her. He’s nothing but a coward. At least she won’t have to pay him anything to keep him quiet. He has nothing to hold over her now; he’s told them everything he knows. Perhaps he will come to regret his decision when he can’t make his rent. That gives her some small satisfaction. Maybe it’s all for the best. It’s not like she really has anything to worry about.

  They settle in the interview room, Jenna and her lawyer beside her on one side of the table, and Reyes and Barr on the other. Jenna composes herself while the introductions are going on for the tape, before the questions start.

  Reyes begins. “Your boyfriend has sold you out.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend anymore,” she says, with a small, tight smile.

  “He says he wasn’t with you the night of the murders, that you asked him to lie for you,” the detective says.

  She glances at her lawyer, and then looks back at Reyes. “That’s true. I did ask him to cover for me. But I didn’t kill my parents. I drove him to the train station after dinner, then went back to my place alone.”

  “Why did you lie?”

  “Why do you think? So you wouldn’t think it was me. Same reason my brother and sister lied.”

  “You’re all going to be millionaires,” Reyes says.

  “Exactly. We all knew we’d be suspects.”

  “Jake told us about the argument you had with your father that night. I understand it was very heated. He told you he was planning to leave half of his wealth to his sister, Audrey.”

  “We had an argument,” Jenna admits. “He might have said that. But my father always said things like that when he was angry. I didn’t take it seriously. It probably looked worse to Jake than it was.”

  “Right now, you’re the only one we know for certain knew about your father’s intention.”

  She shrugs. “I wouldn’t be so sure. If he really meant to do that, Mom must have told Catherine. She would have told her if she knew.”

  “Why Catherine, particularly?”

  “She told Catherine everything. She was the favorite. Our mother never told me and Dan anything.”

  “Are you aware that your aunt Audrey has been poisoned?” Reyes asks.

  “I heard. I wonder who she pissed off this time.”

  “She’s fine, by the way,” Reyes says.

  * * *

  • • •

  ellen cutter is downtown running a few errands when she spots Janet Shewcuk on the sidewalk heading toward her. She’s walking with her head down and doesn’t see her. But Ellen recognizes her daughter’s friend from law school, the one who got a job at a fancy law firm in Aylesford when her daughter didn’t. She decides to give her a wide berth, keenly aware that it will soon be known far and wide that Rose has defrauded a client and broken the law. She’s about to veer around her when Janet happens to look up and stops dead, her face frozen as she recognizes Ellen. Ellen moves to go around her, but Janet reaches out and puts her hand on her arm. “Mrs. Cutter.”

  She’s stuck now; she can’t pretend she doesn’t know her.

  And then it gets worse. Janet looks at her, eyes filling up with tears, and whispers, “I’m so sorry.”

  Ellen looks back at her in confusion. Does she already know what Rose has done? Has Rose told her? She doesn’t want her pity. Before she can wrench her arm away and walk on, Janet speaks again.

  “I know Rose is in trouble, and it’s all my fault. I never should have told her she was in Fred Merton’s will.”

  Ellen feels her knees start to buckle, but she has to hear it all.

  * * *

  • • •

  later that day, Reyes and Barr and the forensics team, armed with a search warrant, head to the small house Jenna Merton rents on the outskirts of Aylesford. It’s a rural property, a wood-frame house that needs painting. It’s out in the middle of nowhere. No immediate neighbors. No one to notice her come and go. She’s not surprised to see them.

  Reyes isn’t sure what he was expecting—a mess inside with ashtrays and bongs and detritus from a dissolute artist’s life—but what he sees surprises him. Inside, the rooms are bright and well kept. The walls have been freshly painted white, and there are bright canvases on the walls—he wonders if they are from her boyfriend, Jake. But then he thinks, if they were they’d probably have been taken down and shredded by now. They’re modern, abstract, but somehow pleasing. Behind the living room is a sunny back room she has turned into a studio that looks out onto the fields. There are various pieces of sculpture in the studio, and he studies them with interest. He sees an entire row of female torsos without heads, just breasts of all shapes and sizes.

  “My busts,” she says sardonically.

  Some of the pieces are recognizable as female genitalia but others are more conventional. Perhaps she’s branching out. They are certainly experimental. One appears to be the head and shoulders of a man that she’s been working on in clay. It’s unfinished. Or maybe it is finished—he can’t tell. He has no understanding of modern art.

  “Do you like art?” Jenna asks him, as if reading his mind. She doesn’t seem perturbed by them being there.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it,” he admits.

  She shakes her head at him as if he is a philistine. Perhaps he is. But she may be a killer, and she’s in no position to judge him, Reyes thinks. He focuses on the task at hand.

  He knows she’s smart. If she killed her parents, they’re not likely to find anything. They go through the entire house. No sign of blood anywhere. None of her mother’s jewelry is there. But then, Jenna has entirely different taste.

  Her Mini Cooper has been taken away for examination; a rental car is already parked to the left of the house. As they go outside, Reyes recognizes a familiar figure sitting in a car on the dirt road in front of the house. It’s Audrey Stancik. Jenna steps out from behind Reyes when she sees her father’s sister. She strides over angrily. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Jenna asks.

  “It’s a free country,” Audrey replies, smiling nastily at her niece.

  “Fuck off,” Jenna snaps. She turns back to Reyes and calls, “Can’t you get rid of her?”

  “Never mind,” Audrey says. “I’m leaving.” She starts her car and drives off.

  Reyes and Barr follow the tech team to the backyard. There, they immediately become interested in the fire pit.

  The detectives come closer and watch as the team collects every last bit of ash and debris from the fire pit to take back for study at the lab. Reyes feels Jenna come up beside him and turns to look at her.

  “It’s a fire pit,” she says. “So what?” He turns his attention back to the blackened circle at his feet. “You’re not going to find anything there,” Jenna says.

  * * *

  • • •

  the next day is saturday, and Audrey is at home, feeling lonely and frustrated. She misses Ellen.

  What’s wrong with those detectives? she thinks. Obviously one of the kids murdered her brother and his wife, but they can’t seem to figure out which one. And one of them has tried to kill her, as well—who’s to say they won’t try again?

  She wishes she still had Ellen to talk to. Ellen is so steady, so calming. But Audrey is still angry at her—how could Ellen not tell her, all these years, that Rose is Fred’s daughter? Audrey has trusted Ellen with her darkest secret. Perhaps that was a mistake. And Ellen’s own daughter may be the murderer.

  She’s not going to let her brother’s killer get away with this. She’s obsessed with finding the answer. As she broods, she realizes that, besides the killer, there’s one person who might know the truth.

  * * *

  • • •
<
br />   ellen sits at her kitchen table and stares into space. She knows everything now, and it isn’t her daughter who’s told her. Ellen has been practically catatonic since she ran into Janet the day before and learned the awful truth. She can’t bring herself to call Rose.

  She puts her face in her hands and weeps as if she is broken, her heart seizing in fear. Rose had lied to her repeatedly, and she’d had no idea. She couldn’t tell. That either makes her daughter an extremely good liar or makes Ellen extremely stupid. She’d always thought her daughter was honest and openhearted. She never would have thought her capable of stealing that much money. She didn’t know her at all. And Rose had lied to her face when she said she didn’t know she was in Fred’s will, when the truth is, she’d known for months. What else does she not know about her daughter?

  Audrey has put a terrible fear into Ellen’s heart, with her stories about Fred and what he did. She is afraid there is an unknowable darkness at the center of her daughter. She doesn’t know if she will ever be able to look at her in the same way again.

  57

  Audrey pulls into Irena’s driveway. The house looks quiet. She sees a flit of the curtain in the front window as Irena peeps out to see who is there. Audrey wonders if she’ll let her in.

  Audrey and Irena know each other, of course, but not particularly well. Both are strong women and were willing to stand up to Fred Merton if necessary. Audrey had always admired Irena, while she despised Sheila. Irena did her best for those kids, no one could deny that. She stepped in and did the mothering that Sheila wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do. As the kids got older and were less interested in their aunt and more interested in their friends, and as Sheila made it clearer that she didn’t like Audrey coming to the house, she saw less of the family, and less of Irena. She doesn’t know how Irena will react to her now.

  She has always been protective of the kids. And Audrey’s here to try to find out which one of them is a murderer.

  She steps out of the car and makes her way to the front door. Before she can knock, the door opens and Irena’s pale face looks out warily at her.

  “What do you want, Audrey?” Irena says.

  “I just want to talk.”

  Irena stares at her for a long moment. “Okay,” she says and lets her in.

  Audrey breathes an inward sigh of relief. At least she got in the door. She hadn’t counted on even that much. “How are you holding up?” Audrey asks sympathetically. Irena, when she sees her up close, looks awful, with dark rings under her eyes, the graying ponytail too severe for her lined face. She looks older, but of course, Irena must be thinking the same thing about her.

  Irena says, “I’m okay. Would you like coffee?”

  “Yes, that would be lovely, thanks.” She follows Irena into her tidy kitchen. As Irena prepares the coffee, Audrey takes a seat at the kitchen table and says tentatively, “I was so glad to hear you got a bequest. It’s only right that Fred and Sheila recognize you for all your years of service.” It sounds awkward, and she feels awkward saying it. “You did so much for the kids.”

  “Thank you,” Irena says.

  “Will you retire now?” Audrey asks, for lack of any other way to keep the conversation going.

  “I don’t know. I’ve told my clients I’m taking some time off while . . . you know. They understand.”

  Audrey nods. At least Irena has turned and is facing her now, while she waits for the coffee to brew. Audrey has to broach the elephant in the room somehow. “It’s so awful, what happened,” she says. “I can’t stop thinking about it.” Her own voice sounds hollow.

  Irena nods and says, “I know.” She confesses, “I’ve been having nightmares.”

  A large tabby cat comes into the kitchen and jumps up on the table. “Oh, he’s gorgeous,” Audrey says, reaching out to pat the friendly cat.

  Irena smiles for the first time. “Isn’t he? But he’s not supposed to be on the table.” She lifts him down to the floor, where he rubs against their legs in turns.

  Audrey wonders if she and Irena can be allies. “You found them—it’s no wonder you’re having nightmares,” she says. Irena nods. “Anybody would,” Audrey assures her, seeking to build rapport with the one person who knows those kids best. She looks around the small kitchen, her mind working on how best to coax Irena into revealing her secrets.

  * * *

  • • •

  late in the afternoon, an officer approaches Reyes with an excited expression. “Sir, we may have a lead on that truck we’ve been looking for.”

  Reyes perks up.

  “A woman just called. Said her neighbor has a truck matching the description we put out to the media. She says she noticed he hasn’t been driving it the last couple of weeks.” He hands Reyes an address as Reyes grabs his jacket. “She wouldn’t give her own name or address.”

  Reyes fetches Barr and explains on the way to the car. They drive to an area of run-down homes with garages and unkempt yards, where money goes for necessities rather than niceties. Why would someone who lives here be driving around in Brecken Hill?

  They pull up outside the address they’re looking for and park on the street. “I don’t see a truck,” Barr says. “Maybe it’s in the garage.”

  Reyes nods. The garage door is closed. He feels a beat of excitement. They need a break in the case so badly—perhaps this is it. They exit the car and approach the front door.

  A woman in her fifties answers the door, looking dismissively at them. “Not interested,” she says.

  Reyes and Barr hold up their badges. “Aylesford Police,” Reyes says. “May we come in?”

  She looks nervous now and steps back, opening the door. “Carl!’ she calls over her shoulder.

  A man in his early twenties, needing a shave, comes up behind her. “Who are you?” he asks.

  Reyes makes the introductions again, and the man shifts his eyes to their badges apprehensively.

  “What’s this about?” the woman asks, but she’s looking at Carl, rather than at the detectives.

  “I don’t know, Mom,” Carl says. “I swear.”

  Reyes says, “We’re investigating the murders of Fred and Sheila Merton.” The woman freezes. Her son looks worried. Reyes addresses Carl. “Are you the owner of a dark pickup, with flames painted on the sides?” Carl hesitates, as if considering his options, then nods. “We’d like to see it,” Reyes says.

  “It’s not his truck you’re looking for,” the mother says.

  “It’s in the garage,” Carl says. He puts a pair of sneakers on his bare feet and leads them through the kitchen and out the door into the garage, his anxious mother following. Carl flicks a switch, and the garage fills with light.

  Reyes walks toward the truck, looking it over. It’s a dark-colored pickup, with orange and yellow flames painted along the sides. Just like Hot Wheels. Reyes doesn’t touch it, but looks in the windows. It’s messy and dirty and doesn’t look like it’s been cleaned in a long time.

  “Do you mind telling us where you were on the night of April twenty-first?” Reyes asks.

  Carl answers nervously. “I don’t remember. I don’t remember what I was doing on whatever day.”

  “It was Easter Sunday,” Reyes says.

  “Oh. I imagine I was home, right, Mom?”

  Now his mother looks scared. “I-I’m not sure,” she says. “I can’t remember exactly.” She fumbles. “We had dinner at my sister’s. Then we came home.” She turns to her son, a wobble in her voice. “Did you go out after?”

  She knows he went out, Reyes thinks, but she’s leaving the lying up to him. She doesn’t know what he might have done. She looks at her son as if she’s used to being disappointed, he’s just leveled up, and she’s preparing herself.

  “No, I’m pretty sure I stayed in that night.”

  “Let’s go down to the station and have a chat,”
Reyes says.

  “Do I have to?” Carl asks.

  “No, we just want to talk to you. But if you don’t, I might arrest you and read you your rights and take you downtown anyway. And then we’ll come back with a search warrant. Which would you prefer?”

  “Fine,” he says, sullen.

  58

  Here’s the thing,” Reyes begins, when they’re all seated in the interview room. “Your truck matches the description of the vehicle seen driving away from the Merton house on the night of Easter Sunday, the night that Fred and Sheila Merton were murdered. We know you’ve been keeping that truck in the garage since the description of it went out to the media after the bodies were discovered. So—what were you doing in Brecken Hill that night?”

  He shakes his head. “It wasn’t me.”

  “It was your truck.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “What were you doing there, then?” Reyes asks.

  “Fuck,” Carl says. Reyes waits. “I want a lawyer.”

  Now it’s Reyes’s turn to say fuck, but he says it to himself.

  “I got somebody,” he says. “Can I call him?”

  “Of course,” Reyes says, and he and Barr leave the room.

  An hour later, Carl Brink’s attorney arrives and they begin the interview again after Carl has spoken privately with him.

  Carl looks nervously at his lawyer, who nods reassuringly. Carl says, “I was out there that night. I took a wrong turn and went past that house. I went to the next house—it was a dead end—and turned around and went back past it again.”

  “What time was this?” Reyes asks.

  Carl shakes his head. “I don’t know. Eleven? Twelve?”

  “Can you not pin it down a little better than that?” Reyes asks.