Charley 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.