“Her brother, Hugh, inherited her share of the house. But Linda was happy to let Hugh make all the decisions about the place, and since he didn’t want to sell it anyway, that doesn’t seem like much of a motive.”
“And it’s hard to imagine Linda inspiring a passionate sort of rage—she hasn’t been involved with anyone for years, right?”
“Not that we can tell.”
“So, if greed and jealousy weren’t the motive for her death, that leaves covering up a crime. And the only crime we know Linda was involved with was the family tragedy. Do you agree with Shel, that Sidney might not have been the killer?”
“I really don’t know. But Shel’s smart.”
“It would explain a lot. For instance, no matter who I talk to, the neighbors or business colleagues, Hugh—none of them had any sense that anything was wrong with Sidney. They describe him as a loving father.”
“Just to play devil’s advocate,” said Annette, “I’ll say that it’s not that strange. You must have seen all those scenes on TV, where some guy’s been stashing bodies in his crawl space for thirty years yet all the neighbors report he was ‘quiet’ and ‘seemed like a nice guy.’” She shook her head. “I don’t think there are necessarily any outward signs.”
“But the family would have seen his temper at least, wouldn’t they? At some point? Wouldn’t there be some evidence? Child abuse, spouse abuse . . . losing his cool with his coworkers, anything?”
“Usually you do see something, some sort of buildup; it’s true. But people are often unwilling to speak ill of the dead. They might have seen flare-ups, that sort of thing, but not mentioned them to investigators just as a matter of course.”
“Even after what he did?”
“In these sorts of cases, shock and horror set in. People don’t always want to speculate on what was going on in the mind of a seemingly sane man that would lead him to such a thing—personally, I wonder whether people are secretly afraid they might one day snap under the pressures of work and family themselves, do something crazy. Besides, Sidney was fighting with the neighbors, remember? And there were the embezzlement charges looming against him.”
Once again I considered what it must be like to be Annette and see the seamy underside of the world every day when you go to work. It made me ever more content to be dealing mostly with issues of molding choice. Even the really hard stuff, like the nitty-gritty of payroll and workman’s comp and health insurance, was taken care of by Stan.
“Do you really believe that Sidney killed his family?”
Annette let out a deep sigh. “No. And what if Linda, the single eyewitness, was the only one who knew who did?”
• • •
Caleb sat up on a high stool, shirtless, while I snipped at his hair. Normally I cut his hair outside on the patio, but it was too cold tonight, so we laid down newspapers in the front room. Unfortunately, this was where his video-game system was set up.
“So, kiddo, I was wondering if you would do me a huge favor. I was hoping you could talk to a girl; she’s a teenager, and she’s been hanging around the Neighbors Together house, and it’s possible she has some information, but she’s not wild about talking to adults.”
“What, like you want me to go up and ask this girl, like, if she wants to play?”
“Well . . . I wouldn’t use those exact words. . . . I just thought that you might be able to talk to her, teen to teen.” I cringed. Did that sound lame?
Yep, I was pretty sure it did.
Caleb stared straight ahead, mouth slightly ajar, intent on the video game in front of him. I was always amazed how my sometimes sensitive and apparently intelligent ex-stepson was turned into a grunting automaton whenever he spent time with his electronics.
But I reminded myself how my father sounded when he started going off about “how things were when I was growing up.” Last thing I wanted was to start sounding like a middle-aged grump—like my dad—so I tried to clamp down on my impatience. Still, I couldn’t stop the wave of nostalgia that threatened to engulf me.
I remembered, back when Caleb was little, how I would cut his hair outside and we let his dark tresses fall onto the broken concrete patio and waft in the breeze. Afterward we would watch from the kitchen window while birds swooped down and gathered up the soft material to line their nests. I loved imagining the fragile eggs nestled securely in fluffy beds made of Caleb’s soft hair. I remembered how Caleb’s shoulder blades would poke out of his tan skin like the fragile buds of wings; his neck had been so slender I wondered how it held up his head. But now ropy muscles were forming, his shoulders broadening, his neck thickening. Along with the whiskers, these were irrefutable signs that he was no longer a child but becoming a man.