Seeds of Deception

by Sheila Connolly

  26

  Getting everyone settled took a few silent minutes, and Seth had to retrieve one of the chairs from the waiting area. The time appeared to allow Miriam to get her story straight. Is that good or bad? Meg wondered.

  And then she realized that she and her father hadn’t really worked out a strategy for this discussion. He was the lawyer, and Miriam’s employer, but she was the one with both answers and questions. Still, she was relieved when Phillip made the first move.

  “Miriam, you’ve been working for Arthur and me for a year, and we’ve been more than pleased with your work. But there have been some recent incidents involving both my family and this office—serious incidents, in one case fatal—and it seems possible that you may have been inadvertently or deliberately involved. My daughter Meg has raised some questions about these incidents that I can’t answer, and I’m hoping you can help us.”

  “She’s the one with questions?” Miriam sputtered. “Why her?”

  Meg answered her directly. “Miriam, for reasons I don’t really understand, I’ve been involved in a couple investigations in the town where I live. Maybe I’m just oversensitive to crimes these days, but I would appreciate it if you’d tell us what you know. If you aren’t involved in these recent events, I’ll be the first to apologize.”

  “We’d like to help you, if we can,” Phillip added.

  Meg watched as Miriam’s expression changed and changed again. She almost felt sorry for her. If she was right, Miriam was torn between loyalty to her family and doing what was right, for an employer who had been nothing but kind to her. Miriam couldn’t know how much the rest of them knew or suspected. She looked at Phillip, who nodded at her, signaling her to go ahead.

  Miriam looked down at her hands. “Yeah, you got it right, Meg. Joe’s my brother, and he told me he’d run into you this week, big surprise.” She looked up then. “Mr. C, Dad always respected you, so I grew up knowing who you were, and that you’d tried to help him. He felt bad that he had to shut you down on his case, but that was business. And I knew who Meg was back then in school, too—one of the smart ones, going places. You’ve got to believe me when I say I applied for the job here because I knew about you from before, from my family.”

  “But you didn’t mention the connection to my father?” Meg asked.

  Miriam shrugged. “I didn’t see the point. I didn’t even know if Mr. C would remember it—it was a long time ago. And I was happy he wanted to hire me because I was qualified. It’s been good, working here. Hasn’t it?” she appealed to Phillip.

  “It has, Miriam,” Phillip said gently.

  Miriam turned back to Meg. “You know about Ricky and his dad?” she asked. Meg nodded. “I like Tony—that’s my father-in-law. He’s a good guy, and he’d make a good governor. And he’s respected in the state, so he’s got a real shot at getting elected. Then when Joe and I were going through some old stuff of our dad’s, we found his file on what he asked you to do, Mr. C. There wasn’t much in it—nothing that made you look bad. You did what you could for him. But my brother filled me in on the whole story. I guess Dad shared it with him, but not me because I was a girl and younger and he didn’t think I needed to know. Joe told me about the ‘family’”—Miriam made air quotes when she referred to what Meg assumed was the Mafia—“and how they leaned on Dad, made him do things he didn’t want to, just to stay in business. It got worse after he told you to shut down, Mr. C. They wanted more than money.”

  “Miriam,” Phillip said, “we have some guesses about what that might have been. But even if we’ve guessed correctly, I don’t see how that led to the attacks. Can you explain that?”

  “I asked Tony about it, because he’d been involved in those Mafia trials back around then. I’d never thought much about what he did then—he defended the accused, and he got them off, which nobody thought could happen. That was before he got to be state attorney, but it helped him get there. But I figured he had to know what was really going on with his clients then, so I asked him for the story on my Dad and his business, and he told me that he’d learned that it wasn’t just a shakedown for some money from Dad. That the guys pressuring him wanted a foothold in the sports community, so they could sell drugs to the kids.”

  “And he never did anything about it?” Meg asked, incredulous. “Reported it to someone?”

  “You’ve got to remember what it was like back then, Meg.”

  “I wasn’t paying much attention when all this was happening, and then I left the state. Fill me in,” Meg told her.

  Miriam nodded. “Okay. Tony was in the middle of a long, hard trial that was getting a lot of press attention, even national, because mostly nobody took on the Mob. A couple of junior wiseguys hassling my dad was peanuts in comparison to that. And there weren’t any records of anything about it, just talk. So, yeah, he let it go. There were probably a lot of things like that, that people kind of swept under the rug—not just Tony. The prosecutors had to pick their battles, you know?”

  “So why was finding that file of your father’s so important?” Meg asked.

  “I didn’t think it was, but it mattered to Ricky. My husband, Tony’s son. You know about Ricky?”

  Phillip spoke up. “I told her that Ricky has had some trouble with the law, although usually he has escaped penalty.”

  “Yeah, right,” Miriam said contemptuously. “Ricky’s got a temper, and he doesn’t always stop to think. Tony tries to keep him close these days, so he doesn’t get into any more trouble. But I made the mistake of telling Ricky about Dad’s files, and he gets it into his head that maybe that could come back and bite Tony in his campaign, and maybe he should do something about it. I told him there was zip in those files, and he asks, ‘What about that lawyer? Maybe he’s got records on what went on. You work for him—you can find out.’

  “Mr. C, I didn’t want to drag you in. You and Arthur have been good to me. But Ricky wanted to do something—I don’t know, impress his dad, or something like that. I told him I knew what was in the office files, and I hadn’t seen anything that old, so he said, ‘What about their house?’. And I said, ‘How am I supposed to know what he keeps there?’. And he said, ‘We can get in there—they’re out of town, right?’. See, I’d told him about your wedding, Meg, and how your dad had given me time off since he and Arthur would be gone. So Ricky knew the house was empty, and he could get in and out without anybody knowing.”

  “But he hadn’t counted on running into Enrique,” Phillip said.

  Miriam hung her head. “That’s your gardener guy? Yeah. Told you Ricky doesn’t think things through. He didn’t expect to find anybody there, and then this Enrique pops up and Ricky panics and hits him with the first thing he finds. And Enrique goes down and hits his head, and that’s that. Ricky panics and says, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ By the time he calms down and remembers he never got to look for the file, you were back, Mr. C, and there were cops all over the place, and we never tried to get back in.”

  “Was Ricky ever inside the house?” Meg asked suddenly.

  “Yeah, for a couple of minutes, and then suddenly Enrique shows up out of nowhere—he had a key, I guess. So Ricky goes after the guy and had to shut him up. But Ricky never got very far in the house before that, just around the first floor, poking at things.”

  So Mother was right—someone had been in the house, Meg thought. “Where were you, Miriam, while this was happening?”

  “I was . . . inside, I guess.” She couldn’t meet Meg’s eyes. “Ricky said I had to come with him to identify the file. But we never even got as far as the office.”

  “So you betrayed me, Miriam,” Phillip said, his voice cold. “You and your husband broke into my house, and Enrique died.”

  “I’m sorry! I know it was wrong, but Ricky said it would help his father, and I figured if I went in with him it would go quicker, because I knew what I was looking for. Yo
u’d probably never even notice—it was an old file. We didn’t expect to run into anybody else.”

  “That’s not an excuse,” Phillip told her. “Why did you have to break into the office? You know the files here better than anyone.”

  “Yeah, but Ricky was really manic by then. He couldn’t go back to the house because there were too many people around, so I guess he was hoping it was in the office and I’d missed it. So we went. We didn’t expect to find Arthur there, Mr. C! He told me he’d be gone all week.”

  “You could have killed him, too, you know.” Phillip did not appear to be in a forgiving mood. “You and your husband together have committed multiple criminal acts. And I’m not going to accept the flimsy excuse, ‘he made me do it.’ You’re a grown woman with a mind of your own. I had no proof, Miriam,” Phillip said more slowly. “I liked your father. I thought he was a good man, and he didn’t deserve to get into trouble. Your father never admitted to anything—he may have thought he was protecting me by not involving me. He asked me to help him with the letters, and then at some point he backed off. It took me a while to understand why, but I hadn’t lived in New Jersey long then. I decided after the fact that he had figured out what was really going on, so I put the file away and didn’t think about it again. I didn’t even remember I had it—until Meg found it in the attic.”

  “So if Ricky had just left this alone, none of this would have happened?” Miriam asked.

  “I’d say so, Miriam. And I never made the connection between you and your father-in-law. Del Monte is not an uncommon name. Unlike Caffarelli.”

  “Miriam, why did you think my father’s dinky case with your father back then could possibly be important now?” Meg asked.

  “I didn’t, but Ricky did. He thought there might be records of the guys who were stiffing my dad. Companies, shippers, whatever, who had Mob ties back then, even if it wasn’t widely known. And if one of those names was connected to one of the defendants in one of Tony’s cases—who kept on with business as usual while that trial dragged on for, like, years—and could be linked to Tony, it could be a problem. Something his opponents could use against him. So it seemed like a good idea to get rid of the file—if it existed—just in case. That’s what Ricky thought. And he thought it would be easy to get in and out without you ever knowing.”

  “But surely you must know I would never use something like that for political blackmail or dirty tricks,” Phillip said.

  “Yeah, I know, Mr. C. And I know you’re not exactly political, right? But, see, it was out there, and that made it a threat. Or that’s how Ricky saw it.”

  “Let me ask you one thing: is Anthony Del Monte an honest man?” Phillip asked.

  Miriam nodded vigorously. “Yeah, I think he is.”

  “Was he involved in this attempt to retrieve the file?” Meg asked.

  “No! He doesn’t know anything about it. He wants to run a clean campaign, based on his record. Yeah, he hung out with some sketchy characters back in the day, but he was doing his job, giving them the best defense he could. There was nothing underhanded about what he did. No bribes, no witnesses who conveniently disappeared. He won fair and square, mostly by making the other team look like a bunch of idiots. Didn’t make them happy, so it took him a while to climb back up the ladder. But he did it the right way.”

  “Is he getting any help from the Mob now?” Phillip asked.

  “For his campaign, you mean? No. Sometimes he takes on clients from the old days—although mostly now it’s their sons or even grandsons—but only if they have a good case, and he’ll tell them to their face if he thinks it’s hopeless. He’s clean. Really.”

  It was at that moment that they heard the front door of the office open. “Anyone home?” Arthur called out.

  “In here, Arthur,” Phillip replied.

  Arthur opened the door to Phillip’s office and stopped on the threshold “When you asked me to meet you here today, I thought it was to be just the two of us. I assume this is Seth Chapin?”

  Seth had gotten to his feet. “I am. Good to meet you, and to see you looking so fit.”

  “You’re looking well, Arthur. No aftereffects?”

  As her father talked, Meg studied Arthur. He looked much better than he had the last time she had seen him. He’d been lucky, or at least lucky compared to Enrique.

  “I’m ready to get back to work. The house is too quiet. What have I missed?” Arthur gazed around the room once again. “Meg, it was nice of you to come visit during your honeymoon. I’m glad to say I’m fully recovered. But what’s going on here? Don’t tell me you’re just having a friendly chat.”

  Phillip sighed. “Find yourself a chair, Arthur, because this conversation concerns you, among other things.”

  Arthur didn’t protest, but merely went into the front room and retrieved a second guest chair—but not before locking the door to the outer office. He set the chair down firmly as the others shifted to make room, then sat in it. “What’s this all about?”

  “Your attack, for one thing,” Phillip began. It took the combined efforts of both Meg and Phillip to bring Arthur up to speed on what they had come to suspect, and what Miriam had just confirmed. Miriam remained silent throughout the explanation, until the end.

  “I’m really sorry, Arthur,” she told him. “You didn’t deserve what happened. And like Mr. C says, I can’t blame it all on Ricky.”

  27

  “Your husband Ricky?” Arthur asked.

  “That’s him.” Miriam struggled to find words. “Look, I know this sounds dumb, and maybe I was too stupid to see it. When I married him right after high school, I thought he was exciting. You know, kind of a bad boy? And I wanted something more than working for my dad in the sports store, but he couldn’t afford to send me to college. Ricky’s dad was kind of cool, and I thought maybe Ricky was going places. But he didn’t.” She seemed to stall again.

  “Do you have children?” Meg asked, hoping to break the logjam.

  Miriam shook her head. “We were waiting ’til we were more settled, and then . . . well, I decided that Ricky wasn’t exactly father material.”

  “Did that bother him?” Meg asked.

  “Maybe. I think he would have been happy if I’d stayed home with a couple squalling kids while he went out and did important guy things. But I made sure that didn’t happen.”

  “What does he do, professionally?” Phillip asked.

  “I know it sounds stupid, but I really don’t know. He gets paychecks—or direct deposit these days—from a high-end auto repair and detailing place. He spends his days out of the house, but anytime I ask him about work he changes the subject. His dad wanted him to go to college, even junior college, but Ricky just plain wasn’t interested. Maybe if he’d tried he would have done all right, but back then he really wanted to stick it to his dad.”

  “But he and his father are on good terms now?” Meg asked.

  “As long as nobody brings up certain subjects, like race, and privileged rich people.”

  “What about the Mafia? And politics?”

  “We don’t talk about the Mafia. If you want my opinion, I’d guess Ricky has been, well, what you might call ‘muscle’ for them, but only small-time. He liked to beat on people, but he’s not smart enough to be a hit man, and there aren’t a lot of job openings for that these days anyway. You’ve got to be connected, and he isn’t, or not in the right way, and that really ticks him off. That’s why Tony is trying to keep him close these days, gave him a campaign job to keep him out of trouble. Like that worked,” Miriam said bitterly. “I think Ricky likes the idea that his dad could be a big man in the state, bigger than he is now, and some of that would trickle down to him, so for a while he tried to clean up his act. But Ricky doesn’t have a lot of skills that would be useful in a campaign, unless somebody needs a driver. And he’s lousy at sucking up to people, being cha
rming. Forget about him asking them for money or any other kind of support. Tony keeps him on a short leash, in case he goes off on someone and screws things up. I feel kind of bad for Tony—he doesn’t deserve a kid like Ricky.”

  “Does he ever talk to you about Ricky?” Meg asked.

  “Sometimes. I don’t tell him everything, but I think he guesses a lot. He’s smart.”

  Arthur had been following the discussion carefully, and now he spoke for the first time. “Miriam, from what you’ve said, it sounds like your Ricky is responsible for one death, plus the attack on me.” Meg noted that Arthur didn’t mention that Miriam was an accomplice.

  “Look,” Miriam began, “I think what happened is this. Sometimes Ricky can be pretty shrewd, especially if he sees an advantage for himself. I think he decided he could do his father a good turn and clear up that old mess, only that meant he had to find the evidence and get rid of it. Thing is, he doesn’t think well in the moment—he just lashes out. Which is what happened with Enrique, and with you, Arthur.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Phillip interrupted. “You were willing to participate in an illegal break-in?”

  Miriam wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Well, yeah, at your house. But I figured you’d never find out. And I’ve got a key for here, so that’s not breaking in, right?”

  “Miriam, your husband killed an innocent man,” Phillip said coldly. “You knew it, and yet you did nothing.”

  “And of course you didn’t think to call the police at the time?” Arthur asked. “Perhaps Enrique could have been saved.”

  “How was I supposed to explain what we were doing there? Ricky told me to shut up and let him think. Then he calmed down and decided that we could get rid of the body, but maybe we should find the guy’s car or truck or whatever and use that, and nobody would know he was ever there. So we kind of covered him up out back and figured nobody would notice him, and we’d come back later when we found the truck. Ricky got the guy’s keys out of his pocket, and we went off looking for the truck, only we never did find it and Ricky worried someone would see us wandering around the neighborhood. But by the time we got back, you were there, you and your wife, in some rented car, so we split. When we drove by the next day there were cops there. We figured somebody had found the body, so we just kept going.”