House on Fire

45

When we returned to the Lenehans’ house, Brendan went back upstairs and I checked my phone.

Seven calls, a couple of messages.

Dorothy had called; nothing urgent. Another call came from a different clinical supervisor at Phoenicia Health Sciences with instructions for the upcoming clinical trial.

Gabe had called four times, finally leaving a message: Was it okay if he kept the car a little longer so he could spend the night with a camp friend from Albany?

I made a quick call to his mom, and she was okay with that. I called him back and said it was fine.

The seventh call was from that same Westchester County phone number: Detective Goldman. He wanted me to call as soon as I could.

I did.

“Mr. Heller, I got a call from a Liz Rodriguez of the Massachusetts State Police, vouching for you.”

“Good.”

“Liz says you’re a trained investigator.”

“Right.”

“And that you’ve been very helpful to law enforcement.”

“Okay.”

“Same class at St. John’s, Liz and me.”

“Ah.”

“So if she trusts you, so do I.”

“Thank you.”

“So I wanted to tell you, the medical examiner has just determined that the victim, Ms. Benson, was a homicide.”

“Cause of death?”

“She broke her neck in a fall from a height. There appears to have been a struggle, a scuffle.”

“I see.”

“So I’m hoping you can help me.”

“Happy to. Let me ask you a question.”

“Actually, I was thinking I’d ask the questions, Mr. Heller.”

“Allow me one.”

A pause. “Go.”

“You’ve seen the security camera footage, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Were the cameras all off at the back of the house?”

A pause. “How’d you know?”

“Because of what you don’t know. Maggie and I met in the back of the house in the middle of the night. To talk. And you didn’t ask me about that. Which means you didn’t see it. We would have been picked up by the exterior cameras.”

“You’re right. All the cameras on the back of the house were off. So why were you meeting outside in the middle of the night?”

“Because we wanted to talk. We hadn’t seen each other in years, and I wanted to know what she was doing. She wanted to know what I was doing. This was the only way for us to talk further without everyone else in the house knowing that we knew each other. Why were the cameras off?”

“Excellent question. So Ms. Benson told you what she was doing?”

“She said she was interested in some documents that she suspected were in storage in the house there. Old-fashioned hard-copy documents.”

“Did she ever find them?”

“Yes.”

“Really? And where were they in storage? Did she tell you?”

I paused a long moment. “In the old man’s study.”

“You think that might have something to do with her being killed?”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

“Was she afraid for her life?”

I exhaled, long and hard. He’d asked that before. “No,” I said. “Not when I talked with her.”

“You’re pretty sure of that?”

“Yes.”

“And you still like Frederick Heston for this?”

“That’s Fritz? Yes, I do.”

“Here’s the problem,” Goldman said. “Everyone saw him leave after dinner, right? He lives twenty miles away, in Scarsdale. And only one vehicle pulled up to the front of the house in the middle of the night, a Camaro belonging to Cameron Kimball. Not Fritz Heston’s. Meaning he didn’t return to the house. Plus his wife confirms he was at home after midnight. And he says he has time-stamped security footage at his home backing all this up.”

“Huh.”

“Meanwhile, anyone who spent the night in the house could theoretically have done it. Gone out the back door and killed Margret Benson.”

“So you have a houseful of suspects, is that it?”

“A regular Agatha Christie — type deal. But there’s also the possibility that someone was lurking in the woods behind the house, maybe even for a couple of days.”

“Maybe so. But why would Maggie have gone all the way back there in the dark? Makes no sense.”

“To meet someone, I figure.”

“Could have been one of the houseguests.”

“Coulda. Did you happen to notice whether Ms. Benson had a phone with her?”

“She did.”

“I figured. But that’s missing. Our crime scene guys searched the woods in case it fell out of her pocket, but they found nothing. You know, it’s also possible that she fell. As for now it’s classified as a possible homicide.”

“You have her blood alcohol level, I’m sure. From the autopsy.”

“She wasn’t drunk. Not even close.”

“Like I said.”

Patty Lenehan and I took her kids out to Montanaro’s for pizza. My treat. Patty drove the family Jeep Cherokee, which was old and dented and smelled a little funky, like something electrical was burnt. The three kids sat in the back seat, surprisingly quiet. I expected them to all be fighting over something. Brendan looked somber, and you could see he’d been crying. I was glad we’d had that talk and wondered what he’d be like, whether his behavior would be any different. Mostly he seemed quieter than usual.

I ordered a white-clam pizza, which nobody wanted to share. Their loss. It was excellent. Patty ordered a mushroom pizza for her and her family, and some pasta with butter and cheese for six-year-old Andrew, who kept singing “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round” over and over. Brendan said to him, “You’re being annoying,” and I had to agree.

When the pizzas arrived, he scowled. “I don’t want mushroom,” he said. “I hate mushroom.”

“What are you talking about?” Patty said. “You love mushroom pizza.”

“You don’t know me at all,” he spat back. “I hate it. Why do you have to get the one thing you know I hate?”

I was surprised to see Patty’s face redden and tears well up. She covered her eyes with her left hand.

His sister, the eight-year-old, said, “Why do you have to spoil everything, Brendan?” She got out of her chair and went to her mom and hugged her. “It’s okay, Mom,” she said, glaring at Brendan.

Meanwhile, the wheels on the bus went round and round.

When the kids were in bed, or allegedly in bed, Patty and I shared some Buffalo Trace, the bourbon Sean preferred. We drank it out of chipped blue water glasses, sitting at the Formica-topped kitchen table.

“Thanks for dinner,” she said.

“Sure.”

“Sorry it was so awful. I don’t know what to do about Brendan. He’s angry at Sean for what he put us through. And who can blame him? You think I’m not angry at Sean, at what he did?”

“We all are.”

“Not Molly. Not Andrew.”

“They’re just dealing with their father’s death differently.”

“But why the hell is he angry at me?”

“He’s angry at you for not protecting him.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Of course not,” I said. “But it’s natural. He’s overwhelmed. He’s thinking he has to step into his father’s role. People keep telling him he’s now the man of the family. That it’s his job to take care of his siblings and you. You gotta let him know he can be a kid.”

“Yeah,” she said, but it didn’t sound like agreement, and I’m not a therapist. She finished her bourbon and splashed some more into her glass. She tipped the bottle at me, and I shook my head. I was still working on my first.

“Oh, Nick, I’ve been approached on this huge class-action lawsuit against Kimball Pharma and the Kimball family.”

“What kind of lawsuit?”

“Supposed to be the biggest class-action lawsuit since tobacco, twenty years ago. The lawyer told me that Kimball knew how addictive Oxydone was.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“I think so. I need to make money any way I can.”

I was sorely tempted to tell her what I’d seen and what I was on the hunt for. What if I could deliver to her lawyers the very proof they were seeking? But I didn’t want her talking, possibly endangering herself — how did I know? So I kept silent. She stood up and said it was late, and I stood up too.

Suddenly she was kissing me, urgently at first. Her mouth was hot on mine, and I could taste the bourbon. I kissed back. Patty was so sexy, and I’m human. I’d always found her attractive. She held my face with her hands. Her tongue, cold from the bourbon, probed my mouth.

Then I pulled away. Her eyes were large. “What?”

I whispered, because sound carried far in that small house. “Look, you know I’m attracted to you, Patty, that’s obvious. Maybe a little too obvious.”

“So what are you—?”

“You’re a little drunk.”

“I have the right to get drunk. I just buried my husband, for God’s sake.”

“Of course you do. But I think maybe this is too soon.”

It feels like a betrayal, I thought, but didn’t want to say it.

Patty was looking for comfort, that was all, and I had just denied it to her. It felt like the right thing to do, but that didn’t mean it felt good.