by Raven Snow
On trips like these, he was fine. If Rowen didn’t know better, she would almost say that he was happy there had been a murder. It gave him something to focus his attention on. He reviewed the facts with her as she drove.
“So, what do we know about the family?” he asked, looking at Rowen’s laptop screen with the document she had put her notes in.
“A lot,” said Rowen. “I’ve known them for most of my life. Well, I’ve known Ben’s immediate family, anyway. I’m not all that familiar with his extended family. My aunts knew them though.”
“Do any of them have a criminal record?” asked Eric.
“Not that I know of. And not that Willow or Peony could find. I haven’t actually asked Ben. I’m sort of afraid to. I’m not sure how he would react to me accusing someone in his family of murder.”
“Probably not well,” Eric reasoned. “Well, do any of them have any violent tendencies that you know of then?”
“Let’s see,” Rowen thought back on what she remembered from school. She knew Eric hadn’t really met the family beyond the few minutes he had spent with them the night Willard had died. “There’s Terrance. He’s the oldest brother. He was a real jerk in high school. Dated the prom queen. Super popular. He was on the football team and everything. He would have been a cliché if our football team hadn’t completely sucked. Either way, people liked him.”
“People don’t usually like jerks,” Eric pointed out, raising an eyebrow at Rowen.
“Fine, maybe he was only a jerk to my family,” Rowen admitted. “But that still makes him a jerk. He was always picking on us. He always called the teachers on us, told them we were doing black witchcraft and putting hexes on other students. It was nonsense, of course.”
Eric smirked. “Was it?” he asked.
“Well, we hexed him,” Rowen said, not seeing that as a very big deal. “But that was hexing in self-defense. It wasn’t the same.”
“What did you do?”
Rowen smirked. “Why do you think the football team sucked?”
“What about the sister?” he asked.
“Caitlin,” said Rowen. “I don’t know. She was all right, I guess. After her brother and I broke up, we didn’t really get along. Before that, she never really gave me the time of day. After we broke up though?” Rowen whistled. “You’d think I’d gravely insulted her family or something.”
“Didn’t you hex her mother?” asked Eric. “You know, make her lose her hair? And apparently, you hexed one of the brothers too. Sounds like she might have been well within her rights to hold a grudge.”
“She didn’t know either of those things for sure,” Rowen said in her own defense. “Whose side are you on?”
“And the last brother?”
“Archie,” said Rowen. “He’s the youngest. He’s an all right guy, I guess. I think he had a crush on me back in high school. He was sort of distant when I was dating Ben, but I don’t think that had anything to do with me.”
“Any violent tendencies?” asked Eric.
Rowen laughed. “He was a total nerd. He had his nose in a book most of the time. Text books, mind you. He didn’t even read anything interesting.” Rowen gave a shrug. “He was a really boring, white bread sort of guy. That’s why I dated Ben and not him…Well, that and Ben was older and had a car. That counted for something.”
“What about the dad?”
“He wasn’t really in the picture when I knew Ben,” Rowen said. “Honestly, I’m not sure what happened to him. They’re divorced, I think. She kept the last name and the house. He moved somewhere else. Ben never really talked about him and Rose has never mentioned meeting him. If he’s still alive, I don’t think he keeps in touch.”
Eric nodded and typed something on the computer. “What about the rest of the extended family?” he asked. “On Mrs. Williamson’s side, I mean. Aunts, uncles, grandparents. You know, those kinds of people.”
“I know less about them,” Rowen admitted. “I know they didn’t really get along.”
“Why?” asked Eric.
Rowen shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out today.” That was if there was a comfortable way to bring it up in conversation of course. Rowen had a sneaking suspicion that now that the solemn occasion of the funeral was over, everyone was going to be a lot more open to speaking their minds.
It turned out that Rowen was right. Her first interview was with Ted and Jeff. She met them in the park across from their department store. There were food vendors there, so they got hot dogs and all took seats on the benches around a white stone fountain. Immediately, Ted launched into just what he thought of Mrs. Williamson.
“Willard never liked talking about her,” said Ted, shaking his head at the memory. “Meeting her at the funeral, I can see why. That seems like one heck of a selfish woman.”
Jeff nodded. It was a hard point to argue with. “It wasn’t that he hated her,” he said in Willard’s defense. “I can’t rightly say how he felt about her. I mean, it’s hard to just hate family, isn’t it?”
Rowen shrugged. She had seen families fall apart before. The idea of family members turning on each other no longer seemed so unusual to her. “What would he complain about?”
“Everything,” said Ted. “Not that he was a big complainer,” he added quickly, realizing that probably reflected poorly on Willard. “This isn’t going in the article is it?”
“No, no,” Rowen assured him. “The article is going to be a kind of memorial piece. Given what’s going on back in Lainswich, we expect it to get a lot of attention regardless, but it’s not meant to be anything but a positive reflection of his life.”
“Good,” said Ted. “In that case, he complained about just about everything that sister of his did.”
“Not Trish,” added Jeff quickly. “He liked Trish a whole lot. They were real close.”
Ted nodded. “Right,” he said. “Not Trish. It was only—what’s her name? Anita? It was only Anita he complained about. It was always little stuff, like how she skated by with everything. He hated that she lived in his home, that she had a family of her own, all that. He said she hadn’t earned any of it. He seemed real resentful of her.”
“She lived in his home?” Rowen asked. That was the first she was hearing of that.
“Seems like he got left the house when their parents died,” Ted explained. “That’s the way he made it sound anyway. I’m not sure it was quite that cut and dry. There must have been a whole lot of red tape if she was still living in it. He wanted her out of that place. I don’t think he wanted to live in it, but he wanted to sell it. Can’t blame him. I would too.”
“She didn’t have any other place to go,” Jeff pointed out. “He did mention that. I really do think he cared about her deep down. The last time we talked, he was telling me he was going up there for a visit. It was some special thing.”
Somehow Rowen doubted that “special thing” was meeting Rose. More likely Willard and Trish had been visiting for something else. “Did he say what it was?” she asked.
“Just that he was hoping they could make things right,” Ted said with a shrug. “I hope he did, but somehow I doubt it.”
“Did you say Anita didn’t have anywhere else to go?” asked Eric, stepping into the conversation. He’d been letting Rowen handle it. It was her job and all. Apparently, something about that statement had captured his attention.
“That’s what Willard said,” Jeff replied.
Ted considered the question and nodded. “Yeah, he did. I remember. That deadbeat husband of hers left her high and dry back in the eighties. She’s been skating by on money her parents left her and a settlement from the divorce ever since. Sounds like that’s about to run out though. There weren’t really options left to her.”
“Sounds like you’re implying something there,” Eric said.
Jeff frowned at Ted. Ted, in turn, looked a bit sheepish. “Look,” he said to Jeff. “They asked.” He turned to Rowen and lowered his voice considerably. “Look,
this is totally off the record, but my money is on Anita being the one who murdered poor Willard.”
“Oh?” Rowen wasn’t so sure about that herself, but this she wanted to hear. “Why do you think she did that?”
Ted frowned at her. “Look, I’m not the sort of guy who comes up with wild conspiracy theories. I’m not crazy. I just…Someone clearly murdered Willard, and I think it was her. I think she was hard-up for cash. I think she needed the house or she was out on the streets. I think she was willing to kill her own brother to keep up appearances. The way I heard Willard tell it, she was awfully concerned about the way she looked over there in Lainswich.”
Rowen wasn’t sure what public opinion was like on Mrs. Williamson. It wasn’t worse than public opinion of the Greensmiths. She couldn’t really speak as to what Mrs. Williamson thought of the way she was perceived by others. All Rowen knew was what kind of a woman she was. As lousy a person as she was, Rowen still didn’t see her doing something like that. “Honestly, I’m still hoping it was a mistake.”
“Not sure how poisoning someone with a plant like that can be a mistake,” said Ted, which was fair. This not being murder seemed very unlikely. Still a girl could hope.
“Let’s get back to happier talk,” said Rowen, steering things back toward the article. Normally, she would have fished for every clue she thought she could get out of these guys. She had a feeling they had already told her all they knew. At this point, anything they could tell her was likely just a whole bunch of speculation. She didn’t want to go into this mystery any more biased against Anita Williamson than she already was.
The remainder of the interview was a pretty straightforward and cheerful affair. Ted and Jeff had plenty of happy stories about Willard. Of course they all carried overtones of some issues on his part. From the sound of it, Willard really had hated his job. Rowen had suspected as much before, but she knew for certain now.
It seemed like Willard had had a lot of ambition once. He’d wanted to work as some kind of general practitioner. It sounded like he had once had dreams of moving back to Lainswich and opening a family practice there. He had missed small town life and had hoped to return to it someday.
Rowen hated that he hadn’t gotten to live out his dreams. Instead, he’d worked at a department store that he hated all his life and had been murdered. Rowen supposed that sort of thing was common. Well, obviously, being murdered wasn’t common. Wasting your life on some dead end job was though. Rowen had been lucky it seemed.
Chapter Six
“Makes you think,” Eric said as they drove to their next destination. They had an interview with Trish Lydell to get to.
“About what?” asked Rowen, glancing over at her husband in the passenger seat.
“About life. How we spend it.” Eric sighed. “I feel like I’ve wasted a whole lot of time working for my family. They think I’m a better worker than my brother, but I’ve never really had a passion for it, honestly. It’s not something I earned. I just inherited the position. It doesn’t seem right, you know? It’s not like I’ve made any kind of mark on the world. I could drop dead tomorrow, and it wouldn’t make a difference.”
“Geez,” Rowen groaned. “That escalated quickly. You don’t have to make a difference. If you’re happy living your life, just live your life.”
Eric flopped back in his seat with a groan. “I think I need a hobby.”
“Ya think?” Rowen continued on to the subdivision where Trish lived. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a whole lot of time to deal with Eric’s burgeoning existential crisis. They would have to talk about it on the drive home.
Trish’s home wasn’t the nicest Rowen had ever seen. It was a trailer at the edge of a subdivision that sat on a little plot of land that was mostly red dirt and gravel. There was a good effort at a little garden out front and some lawn ornaments had been put up to maybe brighten the place a bit. Still, it was more than a little dreary.
Rowen parked in the narrow drive and made her way to the front door. Eric followed close behind. He seemed to have gotten past his gloomy outburst in the car since he was all smiles when Trish opened the door.
“Right on time,” said Trish, beaming at the both of them. Out of her funeral clothes, she was much more casual. She wore a baggy t-shirt and jeans. Her hair was back in a ponytail. “Well, come in. Please excuse the mess. I’m moving some things around.”
Rowen and Eric entered. The trailer didn’t have any overhead lights. It was lit by lamps, which made everything a bit dim and depressing. The carpet was shag. The furniture looked like it had come out of the seventies. This place felt an awful lot like a home an old person moved into when they were just waiting to die. There were even little porcelain knick-knacks on the wall. Trish wasn’t all that old. She was younger than Mrs. Lydell anyway though Rowen wasn’t entirely sure by how much. That would probably be a good question to ask.
“I’m packing up some of Willard’s things,” explained Trish, indicating the brown cardboard boxes lining the halls and piled in the living room.
That caught Rowen off guard. “You lived together?” she asked.
Trish nodded. “We both got out of foster care at about the same time,” she explained. “We became roommates after that. We both wanted to be independent, and…well, living together just made sense. Neither of us ever married, so there was never a real reason to go our separate ways.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Rowen said again, meaning it now more than ever. She hadn’t realized how close they had to have been. If they had lived together their whole lives, suddenly living alone was going to take some getting used to for Trish. Rowen couldn’t imagine.
“Hmm?” Trish glanced over to her. “Oh, yes. Thank you.” She motioned to the sofa. It looked a lot like the one in Mrs. Williamson’s home, except not covered in plastic. “Take a seat,” she said. “Do either of you want anything to drink?”
“Water, if you don’t mind,” said Rowen, sinking down onto the sofa. Eric took a seat beside her.
“I’ll be right back.” Trish headed to the kitchen.
“This place is creepy,” Eric whispered.
Rowen elbowed her husband in the ribs. “Hush,” she said. “It sounds like they had a hard life. Not everyone grows up with everything handed to them, you know.”
“Ouch,” said Eric. “Fair enough, but ouch.”
“Sorry,” said Rowen. “This is just bumming me out.”
“It’s kind of weird though. Isn’t it?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“She lived her whole life with her brother, and he died suddenly. I mean, most likely, he was murdered. That’s a lot to take in.”
“What are you getting at?” Rowen asked, even though she had a pretty good idea.
“What I’m saying is she really seems to have it together.”
“People grieve in different ways,” Rowen said, though she knew that Eric had a point.
Eric didn’t have a chance to respond as Trish entered the room again, carrying a couple of glasses filled with water and ice. “So, how was the drive down here?” she asked.
Rowen took the water. “Long, but scenic. We already interviewed Ted and Jeff. We met them in the park across from the department store Willard worked at. It was really nice there—the park, I mean. Not the department store.”
Trish smiled and took a seat in a rocking chair across from them. “I used to love that park,” she said. “We had family up here when I was a kid. Every time we visited, we’d stop by that park. Don’t care to revisit it now, which is a shame. It always had the prettiest flowers. Too many bad memories now though. You understand.”
Rowen really didn’t. “Don’t like thinking back on your childhood?” she asked, assuming what she hoped was an appropriately sympathetic expression.
“Not particularly,” said Trish. She looked hesitant to go into too much detail. In the end, she went ahead and launched into an explanation. “We were coming back from Terricvi
lle when our parents died,” she said. “Car accident.” Trish looked at the floor. She frowned, looking rather shaken for a moment. Rowen had to admit that that was odd. She almost looked more upset about a tragedy that had happened decades ago than the one that had happened only recently to her brother.
“You and your brother were there too?” Eric asked.
Trish nodded. “We were there visiting our uncle. Our parents were picking us up. It was late and, well, everything changed that night.”
“Were you hurt?” Rowen asked. She wasn’t trying to be nosy. She felt terrible for Trish. She wasn’t sure how asking whether or not she had been hurt at the time would help, but it was the first thing that had come to mind.
