Seeds of Deception

by Sheila Connolly

  Meg took a chair next to Seth and reached for his hand. “You’re quiet,” she said. “What are you thinking?”

  Seth glanced at Elizabeth’s back before answering. “I think I agree with you. There’s something going on here that doesn’t make sense. Elizabeth, what is it you’re not telling us?”

  Elizabeth stopped fiddling with tea bags and turned to face them. “Why do you think I’m hiding anything?”

  “Because you’re not acting like yourself,” Seth said quietly.

  “Seth, you’ve spent less than twenty-four hours with me in your life,” Elizabeth protested. “How do you know what my normal is?”

  “Sometimes someone who doesn’t know you can see more clearly. And Meg’s too worried to notice details.”

  “Seth, that’s not true!” Meg told him.

  “Isn’t it? Your father is wandering around like a caged bear, growling. Is that normal for him?”

  “Well, no,” Meg admitted, “but he’s never had to worry about a murdered employee.”

  “Exactly. Murdered.”

  The word hung in the air between them. Elizabeth turned abruptly and filled the teapot, slapped a cozy over it, then sat down at the table facing them. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you told Meg yourself that the man didn’t die a natural death. He was hit over the head from behind. Correct?”

  Elizabeth nodded once, her eyes not leaving Seth’s face.

  “I’m going to assume that this is a low crime area, at least in this neighborhood. I’m guessing someone keeps an eye on it? The police drive through? There’s a community watch?”

  “The former,” Elizabeth said.

  “They would have known about Enrique’s comings and goings, but there had to be someone else here. Unless you suspect one of your neighbors?”

  Elizabeth gave a short bark of a laugh. “That’s ridiculous. Most of them are our age, and I can’t imagine any of them wanting Enrique dead.”

  “Did he work for any of them?”

  “I think so. We used his services only occasionally, and we would have recommended him to anyone who asked.”

  “How much did you know about him as a person?”

  “He turned up when he said he would, he worked hard while he was here, he charged a fair rate by local standards, he cleaned up after himself. He was clean and polite and courteous.”

  “Do you know anything about his personal life?”

  Elizabeth cocked her head at Seth. “Seth, why are you doing this? The police covered most of these questions. We answered. We knew very little about the man. He came to us recommended by a family who no longer lives in this neighborhood, back when we first moved here and Phillip was too busy to mow the lawn. We’ve never had any complaints. Do we socialize with him? No. The closest we’ve come is when we’ve shared an iced tea on the patio on a hot day after he’d finished mowing. I think he mentioned a wife and children, but I have no idea where he lived.”

  “You paid him off the books?” Meg asked, surprised. “What about taxes? Social Security? Was he here illegally?”

  “Meg, he was an independent contractor—he didn’t work for a company or service. I handed him a check once a month, based on the work he had provided the prior month, which varied. I assumed he was dealing with his own taxes and licenses and such. Of course we checked his residency status, but we certainly didn’t interrogate him about his business practices. But the short answer is, no, we never had a home address for him because we never needed one. Is that a problem for you?”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that, Mother. But knowing so little about the man doesn’t get us very far, or explain why he’s dead and why he died here.”

  “Meg, isn’t that for the police to find out?”

  Meg smiled ruefully. “I suppose it is, unless you’re under suspicion. Are you?”

  Elizabeth didn’t answer immediately. Then she said, “I don’t think so.”

  “Elizabeth, you don’t sound very sure,” Seth said. “Is there something more?”

  “I . . . don’t know. I may be imagining things.”

  “Such as?” Meg asked.

  “Well, for one thing, when the car was damaged in Amherst. There was plenty of maneuvering room in that parking lot. It was reasonably well lit, although not glaringly bright because I’m sure some of the guests would have complained. I’m guessing that the police in Amherst have assumed that it was someone who had had a bit too much to drink and missed his turn or couldn’t focus well enough to see where he was going,” Elizabeth finished tentatively.

  “You don’t believe that?” Meg demanded.

  “I believe it’s possible, but I’m still troubled. The vehicle hit our car hard enough to do some significant damage, and that means he was going fairly fast in a small parking lot. And he didn’t just clip the back bumper, he hit head-on a few feet closer to the front of the car. It must have made some noise, but so far no guests have come forward to say they saw or heard anything that evening. It wasn’t even all that late.”

  “All right, there are some things that don’t seem quite right. You’re not suggesting that the Amherst police are trying to cover anything up?” Seth asked.

  “No, nothing like that. But what I’m envisioning is a single driver who was not drunk, who wanted to hit our car and do some damage, and who left in a big hurry.”

  “His car would have been damaged, too,” Seth said.

  “Yes, but it was dark, and maybe he knew how to get out of sight quickly. Or maybe it was already damaged. Or maybe it was stolen and he abandoned it fast. My fear is that the police don’t think it’s important enough to follow up on.”

  “Be that as it may,” Seth said, “you’re leaving out one important point: why would he do this? What’s the point? Did this person simply feel like bashing something to hear the bang, or did he know whose car he was hitting?”

  “Seth, I don’t know,” Elizabeth all but whispered.

  Seth reflected for a moment. “I don’t want to sound like I’m bullying you. I’m just trying to get as much information as possible. Let me ask you this: You seem to have jumped quickly to the idea that this could have been a deliberate act. Do you have some reason to believe that? Have there been other incidents like this?”

  “I’m . . . not sure.” Elizabeth stood up suddenly and went to get mugs and sugar and milk.

  Meg joined her and carried the teapot to the table. She added spoons, then waited until Elizabeth had settled herself again at the table. “All right, Mother. What else have you noticed?”

  Elizabeth concentrated on filling her mug. “Maybe I should start at the end and work backward. We told the police that this house hadn’t been broken into and nothing was missing.”

  “So you said. Have you changed your mind?”

  Elizabeth seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “There was no break-in, but Enrique did have a key, so if he was killed, then the person would have had time to enter the house and go through it, and let himself out again.”

  “What about the alarm?” Seth asked.

  “Enrique might have disabled it temporarily—we did ask him to check inside the house, in case the furnace was acting up or a pipe had burst. The . . . other person could have entered then.”

  “Say he got in,” Meg said. “Nothing was taken? Or even disturbed?”

  “‘Disturbed’ is kind of a relative term, Meg. I know I’ve always laughed when I’ve seen this kind of thing on a television show, but it felt as though someone had been in the house. Not Enrique—he was always very respectful of the place, and he rarely came past the kitchen, where I’d offer him something to drink. But I had the sense that someone had walked through, touching things, moving them half an inch this way or that. I know; it sounds paranoid. I’ll admit your father and I were tired after a day’s drive, and already keyed u
p because of the problems with the car, so it’s possible that I could have been imagining things. That’s why I haven’t mentioned it to your father. There’s nothing I can put a finger on, but something feels wrong.”

  “I suppose you haven’t checked all your paper or computer files, to be sure nothing is missing?” Seth said.

  “No, of course not. I probably wouldn’t even know what I was looking for. Phillip keeps his work files at his office, so they’re safe.”

  “An intruder might not know that,” Meg pointed out.

  “True, but there’s no way I can sort that out.”

  “What if this person wanted to leave something in the house, rather than remove it?” Seth asked.

  “You mean, like a camera, or a recording device? Or a bomb? Incriminating evidence? What? Seth, if you’re trying to help, so far all you’ve done is make me feel more upset.”

  “I apologize, Elizabeth. I don’t want to do that. If you’re right about someone being in the house, and I’m not doubting your word, there had to have been a reason. And if it’s true, it shifts the focus to you and Phillip rather than Enrique. Once this person got in, Enrique was an inconvenience, not a target. But maybe this person wanted no more than to walk through your home and lay hands on your possessions. Which implies that it wasn’t about the money, because I assume you have jewelry and other items that he could have taken and sold easily enough.”

  “We do, but nothing extremely valuable.”

  “Someone looking for money for his next fix wouldn’t care—anything he could sell would do.”

  Meg laid a hand on his arm. “Seth, a junkie wouldn’t have had the patience to plan and execute this so carefully. He’d be more likely to smash things and run.”

  “Good point. But say someone chose this house for a reason, and planned ahead. Maybe he slipped in behind Enrique and waited until he was gone, but Enrique forgot something and came back unexpectedly and messed up all his planning. And he had to be silenced.”

  They were quiet for a minute or more, each lost in their own thoughts, sipping the cooling tea.

  Meg didn’t have any reason to doubt her mother’s observations. She knew Elizabeth was meticulous about what she displayed and where she placed it, so if something had been disturbed she would have known, consciously or maybe subconsciously. But for someone to break in and not take anything was just plain creepy. An underwear-sniffer, maybe? Had Elizabeth inventoried her underwear drawer? Meg wasn’t about to ask such an absurd question. How about someone scoping the place out for a later heist? But she had to admit her mother was right: she had nice things but none that were particularly valuable or rare. Surely there were better targets if someone was going to go to the trouble to plan a burglary.

  Planting a listening device or a motion-activated camera? Possible, but why? There was nothing about Elizabeth’s life that the world couldn’t or shouldn’t see. Which left her father. How much did she really know about what her father did? Who he represented? He’d always been careful about drawing the line: his clients and anything pertaining to them stayed at work. He never talked about his cases at home, and the cases he took on seldom if ever appeared on the news. That was his job: to keep them off the news. So if he was willing to concede that there was something going on, he’d have to break that code, at least to her and Seth. Was he really prepared to blow all this off, ignore his wife’s concerns, pretend the death of the handyman was an unfortunate random act? Did he really believe that?

  She looked at Seth, trying to read his mind, but he didn’t give anything away. She turned back to Elizabeth. “Mother, you said you needed to go food shopping if we’re going to eat. Want me and Seth to come along and help?”

  Elizabeth looked momentarily startled at the change of subject, then smiled and said, “That would be lovely, dear. You can tell me what you’d enjoy eating. Why don’t we go now?”

  “That’s fine.” Interrogation deferred, Meg thought, but the break should give all of them time to digest what they’d heard and decide what they should do next.

  10

  They finished the shopping in under an hour. Elizabeth let Seth drive to the store, directing him to an upscale market a few miles from the house. Once inside, she took a cart but rambled aimlessly up and down the aisles, picking things up and putting them down, clearly distracted. Finally Meg got frustrated and said, “Why don’t I make dinner tonight?” Before Elizabeth could protest, Meg started grabbing things she thought she could use, and added some staples like milk and eggs. Seth was pushing the cart, and he cocked his eyebrow at her with a half-smile, as if he had figured out what she was doing.

  “Is anybody on a diet?” Meg asked as they neared the end of the shelves. She didn’t wait for an answer but laid some cookies and a small frosted cake on the pile in the cart. She and Seth would eat them if nobody else would, but she thought they could all use a treat, and she was in no mood to bake. Elizabeth didn’t appear to notice. They cleared the checkout line quickly, and Elizabeth didn’t even make a token effort to pay—again, unlike her, Meg thought. Her mother had very clear standards regarding hospitality: a guest did not buy the groceries and make their own dinner. Therefore, Meg deduced, Elizabeth was more upset than she was willing to admit.

  When they arrived back at the house, Meg said, “Seth, can you help Mother put away the groceries? I want to have a word with Daddy. Is he upstairs, Mother?”

  Elizabeth seemed to come back from some distant place to focus on Meg. “I suppose. He was using my car and it’s in the drive, and he spends most of his time up there.”

  Meg went upstairs to his home office, which was adjacent to the master bedroom at the front of the house. When she peered in he was seated at his antique kneehole desk, with papers spread in front of him, but he was staring blankly into space. She rapped on the open door. “Daddy?”

  He jumped, startled, then turned to her with a quickly mustered smile. “Meg. What have you all been up to?”

  “We were talking in the kitchen for a while, and then we went food shopping, since you were pretty much out of everything. I volunteered to cook dinner.”

  “Sweetheart, you didn’t have to do that. I’d be happy to take you all out tonight.”

  “Daddy, I think that would be wasted on us right now. We’re all tired and on edge. We need to talk. And don’t you dare say, ‘about what?’ Something’s wrong.”

  “I agree. Enrique’s death, for one thing.”

  “Yes, there’s that. Mother says he was a hard worker—dependable. Why is he dead?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing. The best I can figure is that he startled an intruder, who lashed out with the first weapon he could lay his hands on—a loose brick. Sadly, I’d asked him to replace a few in the patio, but he said it was too cold to do it now.”

  “Do you get a lot of intruders in this neighborhood?”

  “Well, no.”

  He’d barely finished answering when Meg pressed on. “When was the last murder here?”

  “Not in our time here. I can’t speak to before that, but in general there is little crime in this particular neighborhood. What are you getting at?”

  “Do you believe that Enrique’s death was a random event?”

  Phillip didn’t answer immediately, staring at her bleakly. Finally he said, “No.”

  Meg felt a small sense of triumph, mixed with dismay. Would she have believed him if he had said yes? “Why?”

  Her father smiled without humor. “It’s a shame you didn’t want to become a lawyer. Or maybe you’ve changed recently. You’re doing a good job of getting right to the point.”

  “Thank you. That’s not an answer. You do know that Mother is worried?”

  “She hasn’t said anything to me.”

  Were all men so clueless, or was he making a deliberate effort not to see? “Well, she is. I think she didn’t wa
nt to bother you, since you were already upset about your car. But she thinks there might have been someone in the house.”

  “Why would she think that?” Phillip looked startled. “Nothing’s been taken.”

  “Small details, things out of place.” Meg wasn’t about to say it was her mother’s “feeling” because she was pretty sure that her father would laugh at that. “Have you noticed anything?”

  “I . . .” he began, then stopped himself. “All right, I’ll admit I wondered if perhaps some papers on my desk here had been moved, but nothing was missing, and it had been more than a week since we’d been here. I could have forgotten exactly where things were. I didn’t think it was important.”

  Meg pushed away from the door where she’d been leaning and dropped into a straight chair close to the desk. It was a chair she’d always hated as a child, because it had a handsome but slippery leather seat rimmed with domed brass tacks, and she was always afraid that she would slide off it onto the floor. “All right. Say there was someone in the house. Why would anyone sneak in and not take anything?”

  “That I can’t tell you,” her father said, looking her in the eye.

  “Have you butted heads with any clients lately? Are you in debt up to your eyeballs to the casinos? Do you have a stalker?”

  “No to all of the above, my dear. My clients are no more contentious than they have ever been, we are financially solvent, and I haven’t noticed anyone skulking around and following me.”

  “Are you holding any valuable items or documents on behalf of one of your clients?”

  “Of course not. Anything of significance or value I would take to a bank for safekeeping. Meg, what are you getting at?”

  She ignored his question. “Do you have any reason to believe that the accident in Amherst is related to Enrique’s death and the hypothetical break-in here?”

  “Why for all that’s holy would I think that?”

  “I don’t know. But that’s two incidents that may have been directed toward you in a short span of time. Don’t you find that odd?”