15

Elizabeth recovered quickly, pulling back and wiping her eyes with a quick hand. “Goodness, I don’t know what came over me. I’m very sorry.”

Heaven forbid a Corey should show emotion. “Mother, you don’t have to apologize for being upset. Your husband—my father—has just been hauled off to the police station under suspicion of who knows what, and you haven’t heard a word from him. You should be upset.”

“Oh, dear. Do you really think this is serious?”

“I’m afraid I do. Daddy told me that the police chief was going by the book with him, but it has been several hours now, and I know Daddy wouldn’t want you to worry if he could prevent it.” Exactly like you’re doing. “I hate to say it, but I think my instinct was right. There’s something going on here that we don’t know about, and all the events of the past week are probably connected. We just don’t know how yet. What can you tell me about Arthur?” Maybe a change to a more neutral topic would calm her mother down.

Elizabeth managed to pull herself together and sat back against the couch cushions. “I can’t say that I know him well. He was with the same New York firm as your father, and when Phillip decided to leave and set up his own firm, he invited Arthur Ackerman to join him—they’re close in age. I assume that meant that he respected Arthur’s abilities, or needed his areas of expertise to complement his own. They’ve been working together for a few years now, but until they became law partners we’d never socialized.”

Funny that the first description Elizabeth gave was of the man’s professional abilities, not his personality. “Have you met him?”

“A few times, mostly at legal functions. His wife died a few years back, and he never remarried. He has a couple of children, but they live in other states. I’m sure Phillip had lunch with him now and then, in New York, but I wasn’t included. I think Arthur specialized in municipal law—we didn’t talk much shop the few times when the three of us were together.”

As far as Meg knew, municipal law offered multiple opportunities for legal—or more like not-quite-legal—skulduggery. “Was he honest?”

“Meg! How should I know? I would like to think that Phillip would not have formed a partnership with him if he was not. To the best of my knowledge Arthur had more than enough money, and he didn’t seem particularly greedy—he just wanted to keep busy, since there was little else in his life. That is, I admit, a judgment based on very little information.”

“Did you like him?”

“What kind of a question is that?” Elizabeth said sharply, and then she slumped and waved her hand. “Never mind—I think I know how your mind works. Yes, I guess I did. He seemed like a kind, thoughtful man—I know, not the type you expect to see dealing with government agencies and their legal concerns. Maybe that was why he was effective: he seemed harmless. But he had a lot of valuable experience to offer.”

Meg digested that for a moment. “Did he have any baggage? Anyone from a past job who wasn’t happy with him?”

Elizabeth looked bleakly at her. “Meg, as I’m sure you know, your father and I don’t talk business. I know what their legal arrangement is, between the two of them. I know what happens to the partnership if one or the other should die unexpectedly—I inherit Phillip’s share of the assets of the firm, and Arthur has first right of refusal if I wish to sell that share. But Phillip has not said anything about Arthur’s past history, nor would I ask. I realize that’s of little help to you now.”

Meg was stymied. How could her mother know so little about her own husband’s professional life, which occupied the major part of his time and always had? How could she be ignorant of the character of her husband’s partner of the last five years? Did she have so little curiosity? Or did she really not care? But for the moment all that was irrelevant. Elizabeth and Phillip had muddled along through more than thirty years of marriage, a marriage that would be judged successful by any outsider, and who was she to argue? She’d been married about three minutes. And she’d probably looked equally ignorant if asked about the details of Seth’s business dealings.

Seth wisely chose this moment to step in. “Elizabeth, I think what Meg is trying to get at is, do you know of any reason why someone would attack Arthur?”

Elizabeth turned to him. “No, I don’t. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”

Seth nodded once. “So this is the harder question: do you think this attack was directed at Phillip rather than Arthur?”

Elizabeth looked startled at that idea, then stopped to consider it. “It could be that whoever did this expected the office to be empty, especially if it was early in the morning. I’m sure Phillip and Arthur made some provision for keeping an eye on the office—maybe someone who manages the building, who would stop by periodically. I didn’t have the chance to ask if there were signs of a break-in, although it seems that anyone who wants to can get into anything these days without leaving much evidence. I don’t know what state the office was in—messy or untouched. But to give you the narrowest answer to your question, if someone came upon Arthur from behind, unexpectedly, he could probably not distinguish him from Phillip. Both are men of a certain age, with fairly short silver hair, of similar height and build, and partial to nice suits. So if someone did not know them well, he could have lashed out, mistaking one for the other.”

“But someone who knew one or the other would not have made that mistake,” Seth said, almost to himself. “Did Phillip say he had an appointment this morning?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “No. As I told you, he gets restless when he’s away from his work for too long. You might even call his behavior compulsive. That’s always been true. Add to that these other problems, and I think he wanted to get back to something familiar, that he understood—his comfort zone, his office. Just to center himself again. As far as I know he didn’t expect to stay long, although he’s been known to lose track of time. But the short answer? There was nothing unusual about his going in for a few hours, whether or not he was meeting someone.”

“But why isn’t he back by now?” Meg asked of no one in particular. Could he still be at the police station?

Her question was answered when she heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. Elizabeth was out of her chair before Meg could even react, and she hurried toward the kitchen and the back door. Meg and Seth exchanged glances. “Let’s give them a moment,” Meg said.

“Of course. At least we know he wasn’t arrested.”

“Or he was arrested and he’s already out on bail,” Meg shot back.

“Meg, you don’t seriously think your father has anything to do with whatever is going on, do you?”

“Did he commit all or any of these crimes? No, I don’t believe that. But is there something that he did that might have pushed someone to do him harm? Something that’s been festering for a while, maybe years? That I can believe. Not that Daddy has ever done anything malicious or cruel, not deliberately, but he might have been oblivious enough to not think through the consequences of his perfectly legal actions, and that could be a problem.”

“I see your point. So how do we fit the pieces together?” Seth asked. “We’ve got a fender bender in Amherst, the killing of the handyman, whether or not that was planned, and an attack on his law partner. Three incidents, and three different times and places. How would you connect the dots?”

“I don’t know—yet. Let’s see what Daddy has to say before we start theorizing. Maybe Arthur is a womanizer and somebody he’d rejected wanted revenge. Maybe he’s a secret gambler. Maybe he’s fronting for a drug-smuggling gang. Or maybe he woke up and explained everything and we’re worrying about nothing.” Unlikely, Meg thought.

Meg’s mother and father came into the living room, arms entwined. Phillip looked exhausted.

“What happened, Daddy?” Meg asked. “How’s Arthur?”

“Conscious, thank goodness, although that’s of little help. He can’t remember much of anything. The doctors said the specific memories might come back, or might not.”

“But no lasting damage,” Elizabeth was quick to add. “Can we all sit down?”

“Oh, sorry, of course,” Meg said.

“Would you like a Scotch, Phillip?” Elizabeth said.

“Thank you, that would be very good.” When Elizabeth had left the room, Phillip slumped back on the couch and rubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t recognize my own life anymore.”

Meg sat down in a chair adjacent to the couch and leaned forward to look at his face. “I know you’ve just been over all this with the police, but can you tell us what happened? What you saw?”

Elizabeth returned with a crystal highball glass holding an inch of brown liquid. Phillip took it from her with a smile. “Meg wants to review the case,” he said. “Again.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Elizabeth said as she dropped down beside him and took his hand.

“Look, I’m just trying to help,” Meg said hotly. “If you want me to butt out, just say so and we’ll be out of here.” Seth laid a hand on her shoulder from behind, as if to hold her back. It worked.

Phillip didn’t seem to take offense. “Sweetheart, I understand,” he said, “and to tell the truth, at this point I’d be happy to have your help. The first two episodes, if you want to call them that, I could ignore as random events, but with what happened to Arthur I find now that I have to agree with your suspicions.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Mother has been filling us in on what she knows about Arthur—”

Elizabeth jumped in. “Which was surprisingly little, I’m sad to say. Phillip, you’ve known the man for years—why don’t I know anything about him?”

Meg stopped her—that was a subject for later. “Mother, please—you two can discuss that some other time. Right now, let me cut to the chase. Daddy, do you know of any reason, personal or professional, why anyone would want to do harm to Arthur?”

Phillip shook his head. “He’s a good and decent man. I can’t think of any reason.”

Meg had expected that answer. “Then I assume you know what my next question is: do you think what happened to him was the work of someone who thought he was you?”

“Probably,” he admitted. “Let me fill you in on what happened, or at least, what I know. I told your mother that I was going to the office just for a short while—I wanted to make sure there was nothing that required immediate attention, after my absence. I did not tell Arthur I was coming, because he had said he was taking some vacation time himself, I think to visit one or the other of his children, and I assumed he was still away. And since we were both going to be gone, I gave Miriam—that’s our secretary—the week off as well. Our business has not been so busy that a call can’t wait a week. But I thought I’d check in anyway, see if there were any messages. Mainly I wanted to get away from this other mess. Obviously that didn’t work.” He took a large swallow of his drink.

“So you went to the office bright and early,” Meg said. “Was the door open when you arrived?”

“It wasn’t locked, but Arthur probably left it open—he’s often careless that way.”

“I’ve never seen this office. What’s it like?”

“Essentially three rooms: a reception area, where Miriam sits, but with seating for perhaps six to eight people, and an office for Arthur and one for me. Oh, and a file room, which isn’t very large. Many of the files there date back years, and we’ve asked Miriam to sort through them and come up with some sort of plan to archive them.”

“Okay, fine,” Meg said, suppressing her impatience at the pace of his story. “So when you walk in, you’re in the reception area with Miriam’s desk. What did you see this morning?”

Phillip shut his eyes briefly, and Meg thought he suddenly looked older than his years. “I saw Arthur lying on the floor, facedown. There was a little blood on the back of his head. Red, so fairly fresh. He wasn’t moving. So of course I went to him and checked for a pulse, and when I found one I called 911 immediately, then waited for them to arrive. I didn’t attempt to move him because I didn’t know the extent of his injuries, and I thought I might do more harm than good.”

Arthur was facing away from the door when he was hit, Meg thought, and he fell forward. So he’d been surprised by someone? Someone who hadn’t expected to find anyone there? And who had lashed out with whatever was handy? Would the police buy two panicky attacks associated with the same person?

“Could someone have hidden behind the office door and waited to attack?” Meg asked.

“It’s possible,” Phillip admitted, “although no one went dashing out when I walked in. He must have been long gone.”

“Did you see a weapon?”

“I didn’t think about that at first. But when the EMTs arrived, I think they had to kick aside one of those heavy brass bookends—you remember those, don’t you? The reclining lions?”

“Oh, of course. You’ve had them in every office of yours that I’ve visited.”

“Those are the ones. One was lying on the floor, the other was where it should be, on a shelf. It never occurred to me to tell the EMTs to handle it carefully, as evidence. My first thought was that Arthur had fallen and hit his head, so I wasn’t looking for weapons. For all I know it’s still lying on the floor.”

“Did the police seal off your office?” Meg asked.

“They may have. I thought I should stay with Arthur, and I haven’t been back to check. Nor do I know whether they searched the place.”

Meg had a sneaking suspicion that if the police chief felt as much resentment toward her father as he had described, then the cops had probably been all over the so-called crime scene, looking for evidence that could implicate Phillip. She wondered how recently he had handled the lions—she had nicknamed them Castor and Pollux when she was about ten, because they were identical twins—but she wasn’t about to bring up the fact that unless Miriam was a manic cleaner his fingerprints would be all over them. There were more important issues to think about.

“What state was the rest of the office in? Papers scattered around, file drawers hanging open? Did Miriam have a computer, and was it still there?”

“It was only after the EMTs had left that I realized there was some mess, but the police were already there. I didn’t have a chance to see what had been tossed around.”

“Throughout all the rooms?”

“No, only the reception area, I think. As I said, I didn’t go through the entire office. I thought it more important to accompany Arthur to the hospital.”

“Were there any papers under Arthur?”

Phillip shut his eyes again, but this time to better picture the scene. When he opened them he said, “I think not. So you’re suggesting that they were tossed about after the intruder discovered Arthur in the office and knocked him out? That they weren’t actually searching for anything?”

“It’s possible, isn’t it? Did the police take pictures of the scene?”

“Not while I was there, but they might have done so later.”

Meg thought for a moment. “Okay, so Arthur unlocks the door and walks in, and startles this unknown person, who manages to get behind him and hits him with the bronze lion sitting on your shelf. Then he realizes what he’s done, when Arthur goes down and he sees it wasn’t you, and he decides to stage the space and make it look like an ordinary break-in. And then he ducks out, before accomplishing whatever he was after. Which could have been something in your files, or it could have been you personally. Was Arthur an early bird?”

“You mean, did he prefer to arrive early in the day? Yes.”

“So the intruder could have been there before most of your building’s tenants arrived, and planned to leave before they did. What kind of security is there in the building? Cameras? A guard?”

Phillip actually smiled at that. “Clearly you haven’t seen the building. Arthur and I opted for lower cost and what we called ‘period charm,’ to put our clients at ease. It’s an older building, nicely maintained, with a mix of small offices. But it has not been retrofitted with state-of-the-art electronic security devices. None of the tenants has ever seen the need for them.”

“Street cameras?”

“Meg! I have no idea. If there are cameras outside the building that might have captured images of whoever came and went, I have never noticed them. Can we simply look at this without hoping to find convenient pictures of our criminal? Don’t tell me you have such cameras on every tree in Granford.”

That comment made Meg smile, if briefly. “I think we have to assume there are no pictures.” There was a pause, and Meg looked at her watch. How had it become six o’clock? And she felt a stab of guilt: Seth and Elizabeth could have been playing gin rummy, for all the attention she had paid to either of them. “Look, guys, why don’t we take a break? Get some dinner?”

“That’s a nice thought, dear,” Elizabeth said, “but I don’t think I can face going out.”

“Let me go find some takeout,” Seth volunteered quickly. “If you’ll tell me what you want and point me in the right direction.”

“That’s a wonderful idea, Seth,” Elizabeth said. “Would Chinese do?”

Nods all around. “Let me give you something—” Phillip began, but Seth stopped him.

“I’ve got it. Just tell me where to go.”

After discussing directions, Meg walked out to the car with Seth, leaving her exhausted parents sitting on the couch. “You are a saint, Seth. There are a lot of men who would have disappeared rather than sit through something like that.”

“I’m not a lot of men. I think you’re asking the right questions, and you’re not sugarcoating them. Both your parents need to hear what you’re saying. But we definitely need some food.”

“Then go and slay the dragon, or the lo mein and egg rolls—whatever looks good. I love you, Seth Chapin.”

“I know. That’s why I’m still here.”