The Witness (28 page)

He turned toward the garage. Murder scenes always felt slightly off, like the details of life had gotten recolored with a touch of the horror in the house and made more starkly obvious that death pulled a person out of this life abruptly. Rich or poor, they left everything they had behind, even the last set of clothes they wore.

Marsh came back into the room. “Tax returns going back thirty-plus years show Benton Group as his sole employer. Granger wants us in his office for the 6 a.m. update.”

Connor winced.

“Yeah, my thoughts too. He’s in court at seven, the last round of that civil assignment board’s lawsuit where he got pulled in as a witness. He did promise to bring real coffee.”

“I’ll crawl in with my eyes half open to be moral support,” Connor promised. “Let’s get those forensics guys working here and go find Daniel and a few people to interview.”

“Already a step ahead.” Marsh held up a manila folder. “Last year’s Christmas cards complete with original envelopes. We’ll start with the brother over on the north side of town. The guy sends a funny card and a fish photo of the two of them out on some rickety boat; the odds are good the two talked occasionally about what was going on in their lives.”

“Anything show as recent phone records?”

“Just last month’s bill; I’ll have the phone company pull the recent calls. At least it looks like he was not into the twentieth century with a cell phone and e-mail, which makes this a bit easier. The calendar on his desk was a washout—two appointments in the last sixty days and both to the dentist.”

“Better if it had been a barber,” Connor agreed. “It’s hard to gossip about things going on in life when you have a mouth full of instruments.”

A white-paneled van pulled into the driveway. Marsh stepped to the door. “It looks like we caught Rachel and Joe for the forensics. That will be a plus.”

Connor followed Marsh outside, relieved to get farther away from the smell. It was going to take a good hour under a hot shower to soak the traces of odor out of his skin and the clothes. It wouldn’t be the first shirt he pitched as unrecoverable. The smell clung a lot harder than cigarette smoke ever did.

Daniel settled on the chair across from Connor and Marsh at a private table off the racquetball court, having come off the court to find the police waiting for him. In the first rush of adrenaline and fear he’d thought it was bad news about his cousins, but the reality felt just as rotten.

“Nolan Price worked for my uncle for thirty-four years. I finally talked him into retiring this spring when it was clear Henry would not be leaving the hospital for more than a few weeks at most and no longer coming into the office. As far as I know Nolan has lived in that bungalow most of those thirty-four years, and the closest I think he came to marrying someone was when he was courting one of the ladies who worked for my aunt as a part-time secretary. This hurts, Connor. I remember the guy giving me one of my first driving lessons when I was so young I could barely reach the foot pedals.”

Daniel tried to absorb the fact his friend had come from Nolan’s murder scene, but the image wouldn’t settle. It was hard at times, adjusting to the fact Connor was a homicide cop. Connor didn’t look particularly comfortable at the moment, but not that stressed either. How did he walk away from blood and death and not carry it around with him?

“Nolan was Henry’s chauffeur all that time? He got along with your uncle?” Marsh asked.

Daniel looked at his friend’s partner and considered the question, trying to remember those details. “I think he may have been a handyman, a groundskeeper at first, but the last couple decades he’s simply been Henry’s chauffeur. Nolan was a nice man, very proper and punctual, and he treated those cars like they were his children. He would speak with me occasionally about Henry’s health—‘He seemed short of breath today, Mr. Daniel,’ ‘He seems tired today, Mr. Daniel’—that kind of comment, when I would meet my uncle arriving at the office. Nolan seemed genuinely fond of Henry.”

“We spoke briefly with Nolan’s brother.”

“This news must have hit him awfully hard; I know he’s in a nursing home now. It’s one of the reasons Nolan agreed to the retirement; so he could spend more time with him.”

“Were there any problems that you know of after Nolan retired?”

Daniel shook his head. “Nolan retired, but he still insisted on coming by the estate to start the cars every other day, keep them polished—they are destined to be museum pieces, and he wanted them in perfect condition. Nolan would stop and have coffee with the housekeeper who stayed on, then talk to the groundskeeper about the sports they both loved. He was over at the house two weeks ago Sunday when I showed Tracey and Marie around, and he proudly talked about where and when their dad had bought the various cars. I had the impression but for spending more time with his brother, Nolan hadn’t settled on what he wanted to do with his time beyond exactly what he was already doing.”

Marsh closed his notebook and pushed it back into his pocket. “Any idea what that message might mean?”

“‘I know the family secret’—not a clue. To the best of my knowledge Nolan had no remaining family beyond his brother, and other than a few years spent in the service, had always lived in the area. Nolan wasn’t the kind of guy to have a murdered wife buried under his house or kids of his own out of wedlock like my uncle did. His parents died of natural causes as far as I know, and he wasn’t a drinker, didn’t seem the type to gamble, rarely raised his voice. The household gossip would have brought things like that to my uncle’s attention, and Henry had no tolerance for that kind of behavior in others, although he appears to have allowed it in his own life.” Daniel shifted in his chair, aware that answer didn’t settle well with the cops or with himself, for the note left at the murder scene clearly did mean something—
I know the family secret
. “Nolan’s brother doesn’t have an idea?”

“We’ll talk to him again tomorrow.”

Daniel nodded, understanding reality. The murder would have been a deep enough shock for one day. “As far as Nolan’s ties as an employee to Henry—the only secret I’m aware my family had was what Henry revealed to the world in his will. There’s no missing cash showing up as probate goes through, nothing unusual showing up in the independent audit of the Benton Group accounts, no second marriage Henry was covering up—there’s nothing of interest that Nolan Price might have known about that I can guess at.”

Daniel shook his head. “That’s not to say there isn’t something there; I’ve given up figuring out my uncle’s behavior, but nothing has shown up to date. I’m just beginning to get through the extensive boxes of paper Henry kept stored in his home office—my uncle’s retired bookkeeper kept receipts from having the draperies in the house cleaned twelve years ago to phone-call notes to the florist for the Christmas party at the house four years ago—but so far there’s nothing that would be considered more than just a curiosity. You’re welcome to look if you think it might help you. I’ll give you a key to the estate and access to the papers Henry left.”

“There’s no need yet, but I would like to see where Nolan spent most of his time at the estate, if there were phone calls he made recently from there or a note he jotted down about meeting someone.”

“Sure.” Daniel pulled out his key ring. He slipped off the oval clip and handed it to Connor. “The housekeeper can show you around. Current phone bills—try the red in-box on the office desk. She tries to keep things that need my attention in that pile. I’ll be glad to ask the phone company for the last couple weeks of records for you.”

“It’s appreciated, Daniel.”

“I was helping you move Monday night while some guy was killing a former employee of my uncle’s—that doesn’t sit well.”

“You know someone who drives a tan or beige Lincoln, maybe ten years old or so?” Marsh asked.

“No.”

Marsh shrugged. “Maybe someone saw it at the scene, maybe not. The neighbors are not that clear on the matter. We’ll be telling the estate security guys to keep an eye out for it as a precaution.”

“You think this was someone Nolan knew from working at the estate or through the people who worked there?”

“When his life is his job it’s the place you begin searching. Did he leave anything as far as next of kin in his retirement paperwork besides the brother?” Marsh asked.

“I don’t think so, but I’ll find the file and fax you whatever there is.”

“I don’t need to tell you, Daniel, that that note and the other details you heard tonight don’t get repeated. Even to the sisters.”

“I won’t go beyond the basics, that I learned he had been killed and that you asked to see where he had worked on the estate.”

Marsh nodded. “I’ll keep you to that.”

Connor got to his feet. “Sorry to interrupt your evening this way. We’ve got a few more stops to make tonight.”

“You’ll let me know when I can stop by and see the brother and maybe offer a hand with the funeral arrangements?”

“I will,” Connor agreed.

Daniel rose and retrieved his gym bag. “I don’t envy the day you two just had. You need anything else, however remote, to help solve this please call me.”

“We will,” Connor replied.

Daniel held up his hand in farewell and resolved to clear his calendar for the weekend to try and make more progress on those files Henry had left behind. That message meant something. And the simple fact was Nolan Price had worked for Henry for thirty-four years, and there had been secrets kept by Henry in the past. The paperwork hadn’t been as important as dealing with Marie and Tracey and getting them settled in with the new reality of being wealthy, but the priorities had just changed. He wanted no more surprises coming from his uncle’s past that he didn’t discover first.

Connor knew he’d missed calling Marie as promised, but sometimes the best-laid plans fell apart. The eighth interview took them until the end of the late news, and in deference to the time, they stopped ringing doorbells.

“What do you think?”

Connor tossed his notebook on the car dash and looked at his partner. “I think we’ve been running in circles. Nolan’s brother is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s; you don’t need a doctor to figure that out. Nolan had no other family according to the county birth and death records. There’s no history in our records of family abuse between the two boys and their long-departed father. That message is a red herring. We just got spun by some schmuck who gets his jollies out of stabbing an old guy to death and sending the cops down a wild-goose chase.”

“How many other stabbing deaths do we have open right now?”

“Only one, but it was a knife picked up in the middle of a barroom fight where the guy got his throat slit and bled to death. We know what happened, why; we just haven’t found the guy that swung the knife. So mark that one off.”

“We need to talk to the surrounding towns tomorrow.”

“This could have been the first murder. He brings the knife with him; he’s overly aggressive with the killing, leaving blood everywhere; he’s thought to try and wash up afterward and use bleach, but he doesn’t finish that cleanup. He has a message he wants to leave scattered around the house as a distraction but wants to write it in a clever way. I put all those pieces together and I get the picture of a young man wanting his fifteen minutes of fame with his crime across page one of the newspaper. Forget the fact Nolan was a retired chauffeur for Henry Benton—think old man, retired, living in a reasonably safe area of town on his own, and not all that cautious about strangers with a line to spin—I put our guy as seeing a soft target he could go kill for the thrill of it. And it was a full moon Monday night.”

Marsh started the car. “Are you comfortable giving that assessment to Granger tomorrow morning?”

“It sure fits this case a lot better than some buried family secret and somebody finally snapping and killing the old man. About the only thing that might type that way was if Nolan had a leaning toward boys and had molested someone years before. The fact he never married is a touch of a red flag, but if that happened, there would be more justification in that message the killer left.”