Not a Happy Family

by Shari Lapena

Carl looks furtively at his attorney, as if for help. But the attorney has nothing to say. “That’s the best I can do. I may have been a little high.” The attorney gives him a little shake of the head. “I had nothing to do with what happened there,” Carl insists. He licks his lips nervously.

  “Bullshit,” Reyes says. “Then why didn’t you come forward when we put out the description of your truck? You obviously knew we were looking for it—you haven’t driven it since.”

  Carl hangs his head and says, “My license was suspended. I wasn’t supposed to be driving that night. And I’ve kept it in the garage ever since because I knew you were looking for it and I didn’t want to get stopped.”

  For fuck’s sake, Reyes thinks. “What were you doing out there?”

  “I was meeting a friend,” Carl says, averting his eyes.

  “You have friends in Brecken Hill? Really?” Reyes allows his disbelief to come through loud and clear. “Or maybe you were doing some dealing?”

  The lawyer clears his throat and says, “My client has some information that might be useful. Perhaps we could focus on that and not get too caught up in what he was doing there that night?”

  Reyes sighs heavily and asks, “What kind of information?” The attorney nods once at his client.

  “I saw something,” Carl says, “in the driveway where that couple was killed.”

  “What did you see?” Reyes asks intently.

  “There was a car parked at the end of the driveway, like near the road, not near the house. I thought that was weird.”

  “Did you see anybody?”

  He shakes his head. “No. Just the car. It looked empty. The lights were off.”

  “What kind of car was it?”

  “I don’t know. Just a car. But it had a vanity plate. IRENA D.”

  * * *

  • • •

  reyes and barr are on their way to Irena Dabrowski’s place. “She gets a million under the will,” Reyes says. “That’s a lot of money for a cleaning lady. We never even searched her car.”

  “Well, we can search it now,” Barr says.

  “She knew about the suits in Dan’s garage, too,” Reyes remembers.

  They arrive at Irena’s and park on the street. When Irena opens the door, she seems dismayed to see them.

  “May we come in?” Reyes asks.

  She steps aside and lets them in, suddenly pale, as if she might faint.

  “Maybe you should sit down,” Barr suggests and guides her to an armchair just inside the living room.

  “We have a new witness,” Reyes tells her. “Someone who saw something the night of the murders.”

  She looks back at them in apparent dread. “Which one was it?” she whispers.

  Reyes is impressed. She’s been acting all along. He’s annoyed at himself for missing it. “It was you, Irena. You killed them.”

  She stares back at them, aghast. “Me? What? No. I didn’t kill them.”

  “Someone saw your car at the end of the Mertons’ driveway that night.”

  She shakes her head in disbelief. “I didn’t kill them. You’re making a mistake!”

  Reyes says, as Barr cuffs her, “Irena Dabrowski, you are under arrest for the murders of Fred and Sheila Merton. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. . . .”

  * * *

  • • •

  irena has requested an attorney and it is evening when they begin formal questioning. Irena appears to be very shaken, almost in shock.

  Reyes watches her without sympathy. She has played them all along. Cleaning the knife when she went back to “discover” the bodies, to make them think she was protecting one of the children. Her reluctant admission that it might have been any one of the Merton kids, when it was her the entire time. She’d thrown them all under the bus.

  The attorney asks, looking worriedly at his distressed client, “What makes you think my client murdered her employers in cold blood? She was their cleaning lady, for Christ’s sake.”

  “We have a new witness who saw her car—with her very identifiable license plate, IRENA D—parked at the end of the Mertons’ drive on the night of the murders, sometime between eleven o’clock and midnight.”

  Irena shakes her head and mumbles, “I wasn’t there.”

  “You receive one million dollars under Fred Merton’s will,” Reyes says. “Correct?”

  “Yes,” she admits.

  The attorney says, “A reasonable enough bequest, considering the wealth of her employers and the length of her service.”

  “And motive enough for murder,” Reyes counters. “People have killed for far less.”

  “I didn’t do it,” she says again, with fear in her voice. “I didn’t even know they’d left me anything. Why would I kill them?”

  “Interfering with the murder scene—you did that to direct attention toward the kids, away from yourself.” She’s gone ashen. “You knew about those disposable coveralls in Dan’s garage, and that he left the door unlocked.”

  The lawyer breaks in. “I think we’re done here. You’re going to need more evidence than one questionable eyewitness. Unless you’ve got more—”

  “We’ll get more,” Reyes says.

  59

  Dan learns of the arrest when a breaking news report comes on TV that night. He can’t believe it. He yells for his wife.

  She comes running in from the kitchen.

  He turns to her, queasy with a strange mixture of horror and relief. “They’ve arrested Irena.” Lisa looks from him to the television, stunned. “Now do you believe me?” he says bitterly, but with a note of triumph. He fumbles for the cell phone in his pocket. “I have to call Catherine.”

  * * *

  • • •

  catherine is still up when Dan calls, reading in bed with Ted. They find it hard to sleep these days, often reading late into the night, until they turn off the light and their fear keeps them awake.

  She sees that it’s Dan, and reluctantly accepts the call. She’s surprised Dan is calling her—he’s been doing his best to avoid her.

  “Catherine—have you heard? They’ve arrested Irena.”

  “For what?” she says stupidly.

  “For the murders.”

  She sucks in a breath. “Irena?” She feels Ted moving beside her.

  “It’s on the news. Look online.”

  She taps the app for local news on her phone and sees the headline, Former Nanny Arrested in Murder of Merton Couple. Ted is now looking over her shoulder at the phone.

  She glances at her husband as the reality of it sinks in. Then she puts the phone back to her mouth and says, “You’d better come over. I’ll call Jenna. We need to decide what to do.” Her mind is racing. What now? Do they stand behind Irena? Say nothing? Or vilify her to the press? She disconnects the call and looks up. Ted is staring at her.

  “I can’t believe it,” she says, her voice a whisper. “I honestly thought Dan had done it, all this time.”

  * * *

  • • •

  ted holds his wife in his arms for a moment, hugging her tightly. He can’t quite believe it either. Irena? If they’ve arrested her for the murders, they must have good reason. They must have evidence. He’s been wrong about his wife, whom he had begun to deeply distrust. He’s been wrong about her—and she’s been carrying this awful burden, all this time, thinking her brother murdered her parents. He kisses the top of her head and feels the terrible tension that he’s been carrying around the last couple of weeks begin to release. Of course she’s not a monster. She will make a wonderful mother. Now they can move forward, focus on the baby. His thoughts turn to Lisa, how she must be feeling the same way right now. He thinks of their furtive meeting in the Home Depot parking lot. Maybe
they can both relax now, and they will never speak to each other of their doubts ever again.

  Catherine pulls away from his embrace to call Jenna. Then they both hurriedly get dressed.

  * * *

  • • •

  it’s another strange family meeting. They’re all here, back in Catherine and Ted’s living room—only Irena is missing.

  Lisa feels as if she’s holding her breath. She wants so much for this to be true, for the police to be right. She desperately wants Irena to be guilty. She wants her husband exonerated, and Catherine, too, whom she loves like a sister. She wants her family back and she wants the money and she doesn’t care about Irena—she barely knows her.

  When she and Dan arrived, she caught Ted’s eye, and they immediately looked away from each other, as if ashamed. Catherine had been on her laptop looking for any information she could find on the arrest. There isn’t much, only that new evidence has emerged putting Irena at the scene of the crime at the relevant time. That’s all they know.

  “I can’t believe it,” Jenna says again, voicing what they all feel.

  “I wonder what the evidence is,” Dan says. It’s what they’re all thinking.

  “We have to decide how we’re going to handle this,” Catherine says. The three siblings look at one another, uncertain. At length Catherine says, “I think we say nothing, to the police or the press. Don’t we owe her that?”

  Slowly, Dan begins to nod, and then Jenna does too.

  Lisa knows what they’re thinking. They’re all thinking the same thing: Thanks to Irena, we’re all going to be rich.

  * * *

  • • •

  the next morning is sunday, and Reyes and Barr are at Irena’s house bright and early with a warrant and the forensics team. Irena was held overnight and remains in custody. They take a quick look at the car before it is taken away. There are no obvious signs of recent cleaning, or of staining. It will take time to have a more thorough look. Then they go into the house.

  The cat is hungry. Reyes finds the cat food and fills its bowls with food and water and watches as it begins to eat. Irena had requested that someone put it in its carrier and take it to Audrey’s house to be cared for. Reyes assigns the task to a young officer.

  They impatiently watch the crime team do its meticulous work. But they find nothing at all.

  * * *

  • • •

  later that day, Irena has something to say. They all reconvene in the interview room, the detectives and Irena and her attorney. Reyes and Barr resume the interview.

  “I’ve remembered something important,” she tells them. “I had a phone call late that night—from a friend of mine, wishing me a Happy Easter. I don’t know when, exactly, but it must have been after eleven. We’re both night people, and we often call each other late. We talked for a while, on my landline. If you get my phone records, that will prove I was home that night, won’t it?”

  They’ve already ordered those records. Reyes turns to Barr. “Check on how much longer till we get them, can you?” She leaves the room. They wait for her return.

  She comes back shaking her head and says, “I’ve asked them to hurry them up.”

  “I wasn’t there,” Irena insists.

  “We have a witness who identified your car. With your vanity plate.”

  Irena, pale, but with a new firmness in her voice, says, “I think I know what might have happened. I think someone else must have used my car that night.”

  “One of the Merton kids?” Reyes says. She nods. “That’s a convenient idea, isn’t it? Were any of them in the habit of using your car?”

  “No. But if any of them wanted to, they could have taken it. I always left a spare copy of my keys in the back, on the patio, under the planter. A full set of house keys and car keys. They all knew. I started doing that because I’d lost my keys twice.”

  “Does anyone else know about those spare keys?”

  She shakes her head. “No. It was just Fred and Sheila and the kids.”

  “And where do you keep your car?”

  “On the street.”

  “So you’re suggesting that one of them took your spare keys from the backyard on Easter Sunday, after you were at home, and drove your car to the Mertons’ house, committed the murders, and returned your car?”

  “I’m saying it’s possible. I can’t think of any other explanation. I didn’t drive the car out there that night.”

  “Did you ever let Catherine or Dan or Jenna borrow your car, ever drive them anywhere?” Reyes asks.

  She shakes her head. “No, they all have much nicer cars than mine.”

  * * *

  • • •

  audrey had been astonished when a police officer brought Irena’s cat and all its supplies to her door that morning. Now she sits with the big tabby on her lap, listening to it purr as she pets it gently. The traitorous cat doesn’t seem to miss his owner at all. Its bowls and its litter box are on the floor in the kitchen. Audrey looks at them and wonders how long the cat will be here.

  She can’t believe Irena killed Fred and Sheila. Irena seems so grounded, so sensible. The police must have it wrong. When she and Irena spoke, they were in perfect accord—one of the Merton children must have done it. But Irena, like Audrey, didn’t know which one.

  She wants to know why the police have arrested Irena. There are no details on the news—just that they have new evidence implicating her.

  This is all such a surprise; she was so sure it was one of the kids.

  * * *

  • • •

  the phone records confirm that Irena was at home, on the phone, from 11:11 p.m. until 11:43 p.m. on Easter Sunday. She could not have committed the murders if Carl saw her car there sometime between eleven and midnight, as he claims. She would not have had time. Reyes has to let her go. He doesn’t have enough to prosecute her for double murder. He doesn’t have enough to prosecute anyone. Now, he stares moodily into space, tiredly trying to make sense of it all.

  If Carl Brink is telling the truth, someone drove that car to the Mertons’ that night. Rose would not have known about Irena’s hidden car keys. But he knows that all the legitimate Merton offspring did, and they are all liars. He has three suspects. None of them have alibis. All had motive. He stares at the grisly pictures of the crime scene up on his wall, of Fred and Sheila, murdered in cold blood, and asks himself for the hundredth time—Who did this?

  60

  The following morning is Monday, and there’s a crowd of press outside the police station wanting answers. Reyes has no answers to give them. He brushes past them with a terse “no comment” and makes his way inside. It’s been frustrating, this entire case.

  And then finally, midmorning, a break. Some actual physical evidence has been discovered.

  Reyes and Barr lock eyes when they get the news.

  Reyes says, “Let’s get all of them—Dan, Catherine, and Jenna—in here to give DNA samples. See if we get a match.”

  * * *

  • • •

  ted sits at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, staring at the newspaper. He’s not going in to work today. He feels like something dark and heavy is crouching on his chest. Two nights ago Irena had been arrested, and he thought this nightmare was over. Then yesterday they let her go. No explanation as to why either of those things happened, from the detectives or in the news. Catherine has tried to call Irena repeatedly, but she isn’t answering, and they know she has caller ID. Irena doesn’t want to talk to her. They need to know what the fuck is going on. Ted feels like going over there and pounding on her door himself.

  Catherine wanders into the kitchen, her hand resting protectively on her entirely flat stomach. He feels a twinge of anger. She wants sympathy and support, but he’s not sure he can give her that, baby or not.

  The phone rings, piercing t
he silence. Neither one of them has said much to the other yet this morning. He gets up and grabs the phone on the wall. His heart plummets when he recognizes Detective Reyes’s voice.

  “May I speak to Ms. Merton?” Reyes asks.

  “Just a sec,” Ted says, and hands the phone to his wife.

  He watches her as she listens, his heart rate escalating painfully. What might Irena have told them, he wonders, for them to let her go? Catherine’s face is very still as she listens, and the fingers of the hand not holding the phone grip the kitchen counter.

  “Now?” she says. Then, “Fine.” She hangs up the phone.

  “What does he want?” Ted asks.

  She looks at him, then quickly averts her eyes. “He says they’ve found some physical evidence. They want me and Dan and Jenna to come in to provide DNA samples.” She swallows and whispers, “Ted, what if they found the disposable suit, and Dan’s DNA is all over it?”

  The dark thing crouching on Ted’s chest shifts and settles, heavier than before.

  * * *

  • • •

  lisa knows it will all soon be over, one way or another. The detectives have found physical evidence related to the crime. They must have found the bloody clothes, or the suit. They have called Dan to come in to provide a DNA sample.

  Once Dan leaves to go to the station, pale but strangely calm, she calls Catherine.

  But it’s Ted who picks up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Ted. Is Catherine there?”

  “No. She’s at the police station.” She can hear the panic in his voice. “She has to give a DNA sample.”

  “Dan too.”

  “And Jenna. They’re doing all of them.”

  “What did they find, do you know?” she asks anxiously.

  “No idea.”