No Place Like Home (16 page)

C
harley Hatch lived in one of the smallest houses in Mendham, a nineteenth-century, four-room cottage. He had bought it after his divorce. The attraction of the property was that it had a barn that housed all his landscaping and snowplowing equipment. Forty-four years old and mildly attractive with dark blond hair and an olive complexion, Charley made a good living out of the residents of Mendham, but had a deep-seated resentment toward his wealthy clients.

He cut their lawns and trimmed their hedges from spring until fall, and then plowed their driveways in the winter, and always he wondered why their positions weren't reversed, why he hadn't been the one to be born into money and privilege.

A handful of his oldest customers trusted him with a key, and paid him to check their homes after a heavy rain or snowstorm when they were away. If he was in the mood, he sometimes took
his sleeping bag to one of those houses and spent the night watching television in the family room and helping himself to whatever he liked from their liquor cabinets. Doing this gave him a satisfying feeling of one-upmanship—the same feeling he had when he agreed to vandalize the house on Old Mill Lane.

On Thursday evening, Charley was settled in his imitation leather recliner, his feet on the ottoman, when his cell phone rang. He glanced at his watch as he took his phone from his pocket and was surprised to see that it was eleven thirty. I slept through the news, he thought. He'd wanted to see it, knowing there probably would be a big story about the Grove murder. He recognized the number of his caller and mumbled a greeting.

The familiar voice, now crisp and angry, snapped, “Charley, you were a fool to leave those empty paint cans in the closet. Why didn't you get rid of them?”

“Are you crazy?” he answered heatedly. “With all that publicity, don't you think cans of red paint might be noticed in the trash? Listen, you got what you wanted. I did a great job.”

“Nobody asked you to carve the skull and crossbones in the front door. I warned you the other night to hide any of those carvings of yours that you have around. Have you done it yet?”

“I don't think—” he began.

“That's
right.
You
don't
think! You're bound to be questioned by the police. They'll find out you do the landscaping there.”

Without answering, Charley snapped shut his cell phone, breaking the connection. Now fully awake, he pressed his feet against the recliner's ottoman, forcing it to retract, and stood up. With growing anxiety, he looked around the cluttered room and counted six of his carved figures in plain view on the mantel and tabletops. Cursing quietly, he picked them up, went into the kitchen, got a roll of plastic, wrapped them, and carefully stacked them in a garbage bag. For a moment he stood uncertainly, then carried the bag out to the barn, hiding it on a shelf behind fifty-pound bags of rock salt.

Sullenly, he went back into the house, opened his cell phone, and dialed. “Just so you can sleep tonight, I put my stuff away.”

“Good.”

“What did you get me into anyhow?” he asked, his voice rising. “Why would the police want to talk to me? I hardly even knew that real estate woman.”

This time, it was the caller who had disturbed Charley's nap who broke the connection.

“T
he hour of death is nigh. 'Tis time to drop the mask . . . ”

I don't know why that quote kept running through my head the rest of the day, but it did. Alex had to cancel appointments when he rushed home, so after the prosecutor and detective left, he went into his office and began to make phone calls. I took Jack outside and let him have a long ride on the pony. I didn't go through the farce of asking Alex to help me with the saddle. He had seen that I was perfectly capable of tacking up the pony myself.

After a few times of walking around the enclosure next to him, I gave in to Jack's pleadings and let him hold the reins without me. “Just sit on the fence and watch me, Mom,” he begged. “I'm big.”

Hadn't I asked my mother something like that when I was Jack's age? She started me on a pony when I was only three. It's funny how a flash of memory like that will come over me. I always
tried not to think about my early life, even the happy times, because it hurt too much to remember it. But now I'm in the house where I lived for the first ten years of my life, and it feels as if the memories are crashing around me.

Dr. Moran, my psychologist, told me that suppressed memories never stay suppressed. But there's still something that I've tried to remember about that night, and it always seems as though I can't dig deep enough in my mind to find it. When I woke up, I thought the television was on, but it wasn't. It was my mother's voice I heard first, and I am sure she called my father's name or spoke of him.
What did she say to Ted?

Then, as though I'd pushed a remote and changed channels, Georgette Grove's face loomed in my mind. I could see her expression as it was the first moment I laid eyes on her. She had been distressed and on the verge of tears. I now realize that much of her distress had been for herself, not for me. She didn't want to lose her sale. That was why she had rushed to make an appointment with me to see the house this morning.

Did that appointment cost Georgette her life? Did someone follow her in, or was someone already hiding in the house? She couldn't have suspected anything. She must have been on her knees working away on the stain when she was shot.

That moment, as Jack rode by, smiling joyfully, starting to wave to me then quickly putting his
hand back on the rein, I made the connection. Was that paint on the floor of that house from the same batch of paint that someone had used on this house?

It was. I was
sure
of it. I was sure also that the police would not only come to that conclusion, they would be able to prove it. Then they would not only be questioning me because I found Georgette's body, but because her death may have been tied somehow to the vandalism of this house.

Whoever killed Georgette had carefully placed the pistol on that splotch of paint. The paint was supposed to be tied to her death. And tied to me, I thought.

The hour of death is nigh. 'Tis time to drop the mask.

The hour of death has come, I thought—Georgette's death. But unfortunately I can't drop the mask. I can't inquire about getting a transcript of my trial. I can't get a copy of Mother's autopsy report. How can I possibly be seen walking around the Morris County courthouse looking for that information?

If they find out who I am, will they think that I had a gun with me, that when I got to that house and saw Georgette cleaning up the paint that I connected her with the vandalism and shot her?

Beware! Little Lizzie's Place . . .

Lizzie Borden had an axe . . .

“Mom, isn't Lizzie a great pony?” Jack called.

“Don't call her Lizzie,” I screamed. “You can't call her Lizzie! I won't have it!”

Frightened, Jack began to cry. I rushed over to him, encircled his waist with my arms and tried to comfort him. Then Jack pulled away. I helped him down from the pony. “You scared me, Mom,” he said, and ran into the house.

O
n Friday morning, the day after Georgette Grove was murdered, Jeff MacKingsley called a meeting in his office for the team of detectives assigned to solve her homicide. Joining Paul Walsh were two veteran investigators, Mort Shelley and Angelo Ortiz. It was apparent to all three that their boss was deeply concerned.

After the barest of greetings, Jeff went straight to the point.

“The red paint used to vandalize the Nolan home came from Tannon Hardware in Mendham and was custom mixed for the Carrolls, the people who own the house on Holland Road. It shouldn't have taken a phone call from me to Mrs. Carroll in San Diego to find
that
out.”

Ortiz responded, his tone defensive: “I looked into that. Rick Kling, with the Mendham police, was assigned to check out the paint stores there. The kid on duty at Tannon Hardware was new and didn't know anything about checking records on paint sales. Sam Tannon was on a business trip
until yesterday. Rick was planning to see him, but then we found the empty cans in the Holland Road house.

“We knew Tuesday afternoon that whoever vandalized the Nolan home used Benjamin Moore paint,” Jeff replied firmly. “Since Tannon Hardware is the only store in the area with the franchise to sell that brand of paint, it would seem to me that Detective Kling might have decided it was worth a phone call to Sam Tannon, wherever he was, to see if he would remember a purchase that involved mixing the Moore red color with burnt umber. I spoke to Mr. Tannon an hour ago. Of course he remembered the sale. He worked with the interior designer, mixing all the paints for the Carrolls' home.”

“Kling realizes that he dropped the ball,” Ortiz concluded. “If we had known that the red paint was part of the overage on that redecoration, we would have been on Holland Road on Wednesday.”

The weight of what he was saying hung in the air. “That doesn't mean we could have saved Georgette Grove's life,” Jeff acknowledged. “She may have been the victim of a random robbery attempt, but if Detective Kling had followed through, we would have opened that storage closet and confiscated the remaining paint on Wednesday. It looked pretty stupid to acknowledge at the press conference that we couldn't trace the source of the red paint immediately when in fact it was purchased right here in Mendham.”

“Jeff, in my opinion the importance of the paint is not
when
we found it, but that it was used on Little Lizzie's Place. I think that the murder weapon was centered on the splash of paint to emphasize that fact, which brings us back to Celia Nolan, a lady I think needs a whole lot of investigating.” Paul Walsh's dry tone bordered on insolence.

“That gun was deliberately placed on the red paint,” Jeff shot back. “That was obvious.” He paused. His voice more emphatic, he said, “I do not agree with your theory that Mrs. Nolan is concealing something. I think the woman has had one shock after another in the past three days, and naturally she is nervous and distressed. Clyde Earley was in the squad car that rushed to the house after she dialed 911, and he said that she couldn't have faked the state of shock she was in. She couldn't even speak until she got to the hospital.”

“We have her fingerprints on that picture she found in the barn and gave to you. I want to run them through the database file,” Walsh said stubbornly. “I wouldn't be surprised if that lady has a past she might not want us to find out about.”

“Go ahead,” Jeff snapped. “But if you're going to be in charge of this investigation, I want you concentrating on finding a killer, not wasting your time on Celia Nolan.”

“Jeff, don't you think it's funny that she talks about her kid being at St.
Joe's?
” Walsh persisted.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“She said it like someone accustomed to saying it that way. I would think that someone new to the town and to the school would call it ‘St. Joseph's.' I also think she was lying when she said Georgette Grove gave her directions to Holland Road. If you remember, Nolan contradicted herself when I asked her that question. First she said ‘No,' then in a heartbeat said, ‘Yes, of course.' She knew she had blundered. Incidentally, I checked the time she called 911 from her home. It was ten after ten.”

“Your point is . . . ?”

“My point is that according to her testimony, she went into the house on Holland Road at quarter of ten, and walked around the main floor calling Georgette's name. That's a big house, Jeff. Mrs. Nolan told us that she debated about going upstairs, but remembered the door in the kitchen to the lower level was open, went back to the kitchen, went downstairs, checked the doors to the patio and found them locked, then walked down the hallway, turned the corner, and found the body. She then ran back to her car, got in, and drove home.”