Death of a Bean Counter, page 17
While I didn’t regret the addition of Pavlik – and more recently Mocha – to our household, Frank and I had made a series of adjustments, not least of which was sharing both our bed and our pizza.
At one time it had seemed pathetic that Frank was the one I told my troubles to and who always had my back no matter what. Now I kind of missed that closeness and imagined he did the same.
‘Loving others just increases our capacity to love,’ I told him, as I opened the passenger door for him.
He sat down on the sidewalk and refused to move.
‘Yeah, I think it’s kind of bullshit, too. But you’ll like riding shotgun today, right?’
Non-existent tail wagging, he galumphed up onto the seat.
I went around and got into the driver’s side. ‘You’re going to have to duck your head so I can see the mirror, OK?’
He circled and managed to lay on the seat, his butt just hanging off.
‘That’ll work.’
I’d told Jayden I’d meet her at the house at ten and she was out front as I pulled up. She waved for me to turn into the circle driveway and park behind a bright, yellow-green Porsche. As I did, I saw a Kingston Realty sign had sprouted on the lawn.
‘Sarah re-started her company?’ I asked Jayden, as I climbed out.
‘I think she just had an old sign left over. If you look closely, she’s turned the “o” in Kingston into an “a” with a marker and down below written “not to be confused with Kingston Realty”.’
Kingstan Realty. ‘That makes no sense.’
‘I didn’t think so either, but she seems to think it’ll keep the woman she sold the realty to from suing her.’
Good luck with that. I wondered if Sarah had even bothered to do a title search and make sure there was a clear title. ‘I’m sure Sarah couldn’t resist coming out of retirement for this one. It is gorgeous.’ Or it would be, if they just left it alone.
‘Well, I think this one is gorgeous,’ Jayden said. ‘Yes, you are. Yes, you are.’
She was talking to Frank, of course, who had stuffed the entire front of his gorgeousness out the window to lick her face.
Jayden giggled. ‘Oh, what a sweetie. What’s his name?’
‘Frank. You can let him out if you want.’
She swung the door open and Frank jumped out.
The girl was immediately on the ground with the sheepdog, scratching him behind the ears. ‘You are such a lover. I should get a dog.’
‘Are you going to move out of your apartment?’
‘I think so,’ she said, straightening. ‘It’ll probably depend on how much is left after the estate is settled. I’ll have college to pay for on my own, too.’
‘But surely you don’t have to worry. I mean, look at this place.’ Even as I said it, I felt disingenuous, knowing what I did.
Jayden shrugged, like somebody who had lived on ‘this place’ all her life. ‘Daddy had lots of stuff, but he also had lots of debt. Jason is the executor, so he has to sort it out, thank God. I’m just glad it wasn’t me.’
Actually, given Jason’s reputation for partying, I was surprised her father hadn’t chosen her as executor. But she had given me my opening. ‘Jason is the executor and you and he are the beneficiaries? No Amy?’
‘No, I guess I was wrong about that.’ As she said it, a blush rose. ‘Daddy must have said he was going to do it, not that he had.’
An odd thing to get wrong, especially when Jason had gotten it right. Jason had called her attitude ‘wishful thinking’, said that Jayden had always wanted a sister.
But had she wished for one she’d have to split her inheritance with, at best?
Who was that generous? Certainly not me. ‘When did you all talk about it? When you had lunch the day before your dad died?’
‘Yes,’ she said, looking surprised. ‘You know about that?’
‘She probably even knows what we ate for lunch.’ Jason was coming down the porch steps.
‘Chicken salad,’ I said, turning with my most pleasant smile. ‘Curried. With grapes.’
‘Very good,’ he said, passing the three of us to get to the Porsche. ‘But red or green?’
I raised my hands in surrender. ‘I’m good, but not that good.’
‘Apparently not.’ He touched the door handle to unlock the door and then opened it. Leather seats, leather-covered steering wheel, pretty much leather everything.
The lettering on the side said GTS not GT2, which was the model Amy said Kip drove. Was this Jason’s car? If so, I couldn’t help but wonder how much it cost. And if it was paid for.
Not that it was any of my business, of course.
Sure was pretty though.
‘Why can’t we have nice things?’ I whispered to Frank as Jason waved his sister over to talk to him.
‘Was he telling you to be careful what you said to me?’ I asked her as we watched the Porsche roar out of the driveway.
‘Actually, he was asking why you were here at all.’ She’d been scratching Frank again and looked up. ‘I had to tell him I didn’t know. Why are you here?’
‘Because I think you’re the one who hid the gun under the tree.’
Her eyes went a little buggy. ‘You think I killed my father?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ I sat on the porch step and motioned for her to join me.
She stayed where she was. ‘Then what are you saying?’
‘Exactly what I told you. You put the gun in the hole Rafael had dug and then pushed the tree in to hide it.’
‘I’m all of a hundred and five pounds. Sure, I could drop a pistol in a hole. But how would I move a tree? And when? And also why? You said you don’t believe I killed my father.’
I took one question at a time. ‘First’ – I raised my index finger – ‘the nursery placed the trees in a row. The first one was fairly close to this particular hole.’
‘You know how much those things weigh?’
‘You’d roll it,’ I said, watching her face. ‘I’m sure you’ve seen it done.’
She didn’t deny it. She didn’t say anything.
‘Second question’ – the middle finger joined the index –‘when?’
‘I wasn’t here on Wednesday night. My roommates already told the sheriff.’
‘You didn’t do it Wednesday night. You did it Thursday morning when you found your father’s body.’
‘Rafael saw me go in the front and then come running out that same door. I didn’t go into the backyard.’
‘Somebody did,’ I said.
‘The killer, of course.’ She was still petting Frank, but a little frenetically. Frank had his head cocked, like what’s with this broad? Not that he talks like that. ‘The glass was broken in the kitchen door.’
‘Right. The sheriff thinks that’s how the killer got in.’
‘It makes sense.’ She seemed to be settling down a bit, thinking I was buying the narrative. ‘And it explains why the gun was stashed in back.’
‘Of course,’ I said, patting the step next to me. ‘The killer left the same way they came in.’
She came over to sit. Frank stayed where he was, turning to lick the place she’d been petting, probably hoping there was still fur there.
‘Where did your dad keep his gun?’
Her head swiveled toward me and then away, like she’d caught herself. ‘His gun? You’re saying it was my dad’s?’
‘The sheriff didn’t tell you that?’ I wondered whether I’d get in trouble for dropping this nugget of information. Probably so, which made it important for me to get the truth out of the girl right here and now.
‘No.’
I studied her face. ‘Then how did you know?’
‘Know?’ She shifted a little away from me. ‘I just told you that I didn’t know it was my dad’s pistol.’
‘But you knew it was a pistol.’
‘You said it was.’
‘I said it was a gun. I didn’t say it was a pistol, which is by definition a semi-automatic.’
‘I don’t know gun terms.’ Her face had gone white. ‘Besides, this isn’t the Wild West.’
She did know at least a little about guns if she knew the alternative to a pistol would be a revolver. ‘So where did your dad keep his pistol?’
‘I … well, I’m not sure. He used to keep it in his nightstand when I was little, but—’
I held up my hand. ‘Wait. Your father kept a loaded gun in his nightstand when you were a little girl?’
‘I assume it was loaded.’ She shrugged. ‘Why else have it there?’
So your kids could accidentally shoot themselves? ‘That’s really dangerous. He—’ I broke it off. Not exactly the time to be talking about gun safety. ‘Was your father afraid of somebody?’
‘Who, somebody?’ She didn’t seem to understand.
‘I just mean, he kept a gun in his nightstand. I wondered whether there was somebody in particular that he was afraid might want to do him harm.’
‘Oh.’ Her face cleared. ‘Not that I know of, but there have been times like when the stock market went down and stuff that I think customers might have gotten mad at him.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘He said it was just the business.’
I wondered what part of ‘the business’ the Feds were looking into right now, but I moved back to my main line of inquiry. ‘Whoever shot your dad would have to have known the gun was in the drawer.’
‘Frank, come here,’ she called, presumably buying time.
My sheepdog looked at me, and I chin-gestured for him to acquiesce.
I think he sighed.
‘Anyway,’ she said, when she had Frank sitting next to her. Animal therapy. ‘That was where he kept the gun when we were here. Maybe with no kids in the house he didn’t bother to put it in the drawer.’
And left it out on the nightstand for the housekeeper to clean around. ‘I’m sorry about Mrs Gilroy.’
Jayden’s hand on Frank’s back stopped. She seemed surprised and not just a little relieved at the apparent change of topic. ‘It’s so sad, but she was getting up there, I suppose. She’d been with us all my life.’
The faithful retainer. ‘She probably could have answered our question easily. Or at least could have when she was younger.’
‘What question?’
‘Where your dad kept his gun. If it was out in the open, she – or whoever cleans nowadays – would have seen it.’ And I wouldn’t mind talking to whoever that was.
‘Oh, Mrs Gilroy still cleaned. Until she died, of course. Now we’ll bring in a cleaning service to get the place ready to sell, do a deep clean.’
I frowned and glanced behind me at the sprawling house. ‘Mrs Gilroy must have been eighty. She cleaned the whole house?’
‘The whole thing?’ Jayden said. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Oh, good. Then who—’
‘She’d just do a room or two a day. Eventually the whole thing would get done, but not all at the same time, of course. Sometimes it drove Daddy crazy.’
Poor Daddy. Poor elderly woman couldn’t clean his 4500 square feet house in one day. Even spread out over a week, it seemed a lot, especially when you threw in the cooking, too. I hoped they had paid her well. Though given what I’d heard about Kip stiffing servers, contractors and CPAs, I feared not.
‘We can’t ask her now, unfortunately,’ I said. ‘Both you and Jason must miss her a lot. She seemed to dote on him.’
‘He was definitely her favorite,’ Jayden said, relaxing again. ‘But then it’s hard not to love Jason, even when he gets himself into scrapes.’
‘Scrapes?’
She glanced over at me. ‘At school and stuff. He’s smart, but always preferred having fun to studying. He’d be off at a party and we’d be doing his special credit project at the end of the semester just to keep him from getting booted.’
‘Special credit projects?’
‘Oh, things like papier-mâché topical maps and science experiments in grade school. Mrs Gilroy and I would do them together. Then we wrote papers in high school and college. He had no time for that sort of thing.’
‘I’m surprised he graduated.’
‘Like I said, Jason is smart and must be a good exam taker. But I always told him that our projects were the only reason he graduated.’ She grinned. ‘He owes me big time.’
‘I bet he does.’
Something in my tone made the hand that was stroking Frank pause for a moment. ‘I should really go in. I have things to do in the house.’
She stood up and brushed imaginary dog hair off her jeans. Frank doesn’t shed.
At least, not much. ‘You do know why he told you not to talk to me.’
‘Who?’ She was standing on the porch above me.
I twisted to face her. ‘Your brother.’ Duh.
‘He doesn’t know …’ She swallowed. ‘I mean, he didn’t know what you wanted. That’s what he asked me. Not anything else.’
‘He didn’t ask you to keep protecting him, like you did in school? If your brother is so smart, he should have thought about disposing of the gun, not left it there for you to hide.’
‘He just didn’t think—’ She put her hand to her mouth.
‘He never did, did he? You had to do that for him. And when you found your father dead, you realized immediately what had happened. After all, Kip had told the two of you not twenty-four hours earlier that he was getting married and changing his will. If Jason wanted the good times to keep on rolling, he had to kill your dad.’
‘That’s just not true.’ She was backed against the brick wall that hid the front door.
‘No?’ I stood up. ‘Then why did you lie about the will?’
‘What do you mean?’ Frank had nosed up to her, sensing something was wrong. She tangled her hand in his fur, seemingly for support.
‘The night of your father’s death when you came by Amy’s place, you told us your father had already changed his will in favor of her. That meant that it was Amy who had the motive to kill Kip, not Jason.’
‘But I came to help Amy.’ Tears were filling her eyes and Frank gave me a reproachful look.
‘Because you’re not a bad person, Jayden,’ I told the girl, gently. ‘You wanted to save Jason, but not at the expense of Amy.’
She didn’t answer so I kept going, admittedly making up parts as I went. ‘You knew it had to be Jason because the doors were all locked when you arrived.’
‘But the window in the kitchen door—’
‘You broke it. You realized that if there was no sign of forced entry it would be clear to the police – as it was to you – that the killer had a key.’
‘But what about the damage? The lamp? The broken mirror?’
‘Also your work and, frankly, a little clumsy compared to the broken window. Your father was in bed, wouldn’t he have heard the lamp fall? And only one shot was fired and that was still in your father’s head. How was the mirror broken?’
She didn’t answer, just kept petting my sheepdog.
‘But then you didn’t have much time to think. You’d already had to wipe the gun of what you supposed were Jason’s fingerprints and go out the back door and hide it. If you didn’t “find your father”’ – air quotes – ‘and run outside screaming while Rafael was still working out front, you wouldn’t have a witness. Luckily for you, he was busy and not looking at the clock. He didn’t realize you’d been in the house just a little longer than necessary if you’d simply done what you said.’
‘What I’d said?’ She seemed to be sliding down the wall.
‘Gone into the house to find your dad. And, sadly, found him.’
‘It, it … Oh, God. I’m so sorry.’ Fully collapsing onto the porch floor, she sobbed into my surprised sheepdog’s back.
SEVENTEEN
‘You would make an excellent emotional support animal,’ I told Frank, as we watched Pavlik talking to Jayden.
I’d called him when Jayden had broken down and, happily, her brother Jason – aka the killer – hadn’t returned before the sheriff’s department arrived.
‘What is happening?’ A voice at my elbow asked.
I turned to see Rafael, his work gloves in one hand and a bucket in the other.
‘Is Jayden being arrested?’ As he asked it, he reached down to give Frank a scratch.
‘Not sure,’ I said. ‘At worst it probably would be for accessory to a crime or tampering with evidence. She’s the one who hid the gun.’
Genuine astonishment crossed his face and then understanding. ‘Before she came to me out front.’
‘Exactly.’
He shook his head. ‘But then she is a very good actress. She was exceedingly shaken up.’
‘Wouldn’t you be if you found your dad dead, killed by your brother, and then hid the gun?’
‘It is a point. So it was Jason then.’ This time he didn’t sound so surprised.
‘Yes. Kip told him he was changing the will. Jason didn’t want that to happen.’
‘Or couldn’t afford it,’ Rafael, said, watching the girl with Pavlik.
‘He had debts?’
‘I assume so. Fancy car, when he’s still in school. Nice clothes.’
‘How fancy?’
‘What?’
‘That pretty car. How much does one of those go for?’ OK, so I was curious.
‘The Targa that looks like a caution sign? I’m told maybe two hundred thousand?’
‘For a car for a kid?’ Though I supposed that was dirt cheap compared to Kip’s own GT2. The Fargo men had expensive taste in cars. And what else? ‘You didn’t seem surprised when I said that Jason killed his father.’
‘I am surprised, but more so because I thought he was at school, with witnesses.’
‘Two girls he was having sex with,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure that counts.’
Rafael’s head snapped back. ‘But one would certainly remember it.’
The roar of an engine made us turn our heads and downshifted to a gurgling rumble as the ‘caution sign Targa’ pulled into the driveway.
Three grown men and a woman – that would be Pavlik, his two deputies and me – turned to look. Rafael, who had seen it a million times, was less impressed.
Jason got out of the car. ‘What’s going on?’
