Jerry and Anne Heath lived in a modest ranch house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in Geneva. There was a flagpole in the front lawn and a big F350 diesel parked in the driveway in front of a two-car garage. Jerry Heath was raking leaves when we pulled in behind his truck, and he gave us a long look but didn’t stop raking right away. He finished the stretch between the driveway and the pile he was accumulating and then walked into the garage and hung the rake up on a peg. He was a tall man, wide through the shoulders, with gray hair that hung over the back of his neck and a mustache that hooked down to touch his chin on each side. He wore a plaid flannel work shirt and olive cargo pants and boots. Joe and I were out of my truck and standing in the driveway, but he didn’t say a word, just walked past us and hung the rake up and took off his gloves. Then he came back outside and squinted at us.
“You the detectives?”
We’d called after leaving George Hilliard’s office.
“Yes, sir. Joe Pritchard. I spoke with you on the phone.”
“Uh-huh. Well, let’s go on inside. Mother’s waiting. She’d like to talk to you.”
Somehow it was clear that he was referring to his wife, and it didn’t seem at all demeaning to call her “Mother,” simply appropriate in an old-fashioned way. He took us in through the garage, walking past neat rows of tools and an old but spotless Buick sedan, and then we entered the house. He stopped and dusted his feet off carefully on the mat inside the door, and Joe and I did the same. The house smelled of potpourri, and there were handmade baskets hung on the walls. We walked through the hall and past the kitchen and out into the living room. A petite blond woman was washing windows with her back to us, spraying Windex on the glass and wiping it clean with a cloth, entirely focused on her work and unaware of strangers in the room.
“Those detectives are here, Anne.”
Anne Heath turned to us and smiled, set the Windex and the cloth down in a plastic bucket at her feet, and walked across the room to shake our hands and exchange greetings. She had strong hands, and her face was creased with laugh lines.
We sat on one couch, and they sat together on another. The furniture was worn but comfortable and clean, which went for the rest of the house as well. Everything spoke not of money but of a high level of care.
Joe took the lead, since he’d already spoken to Jerry Heath on the phone, and explained again that we’d become interested in Andy Doran’s background through a case unrelated to their daughter’s death.
“There are some people we’re curious about,” he said. “People who were involved in the investigation a few years ago. I know it must be a difficult topic for you, but if you could tell us what you remember about these individuals—”
“We wanted her to go to college, you know.” Anne Heath smiled at us. “Her grades were good, and she could have gone. Money might have been a little tight there for a while, but that’s how it goes with college. We had some savings. But she said no. She said she couldn’t go sit in a classroom again, not so soon. So we agreed that she’d take a year or two off, take a break and work and save some money, and then she’d go back to school.”
She was talking more to Joe than to me, and I was glad of that. He had an ability in these situations that I’d never had, a way of talking to victims that comforted them somehow, and it wasn’t through anything excessive or dramatic, no tears or hand-holding or blundered sympathies. It was just a quality he had, maybe a quality he’d always had, of looking people in the eye and letting them know that he understood.
“I’m sorry she didn’t have that chance,” he said now, and Anne Heath smiled again and nodded.
“Thank you. I think she would have done well with it. But God took her, and we’ve made our peace with that. Have to do it again each day, you know, but we do.”
I looked at Anne Heath and then back around the house, and I pictured a twenty-year-old girl growing up here, nurtured and cared for and living clean, and I could understand the desire for a touch of rebellion, smoking a little pot and dating an older guy like Andy Doran and feeling like it’d never catch up in any way that really counted. In fact, if Joe and I were right, dating Doran hadn’t. Not in the way her parents thought, at least. Not in the way the police had decided.
Jerry Heath put his hand on his wife’s knee and said, “Who was it that you had questions about?”
“There was an attorney who came to see you,” I said. “A man named Alex Jefferson.”
Jerry and Anne nodded in tandem.
“He came with Fenton Brooks,” Anne said. “They brought flowers, and Mr. Brooks was so kind. He told us how awful he felt about it happening at his party, and how he was going to put all the resources he could behind the investigation.”
“Jefferson brought a detective,” her husband added. “The attorney suggested that he could, you know, help the police out and keep us aware of what was happening.”
“Help the police out,” I echoed. “Do you remember this detective’s name?”
“Robert Walker. He was retired from the Cleveland police. Well, maybe not retired, because he was a pretty young guy, but he’d stopped working for them.”
I looked at Joe. “Know a Robert Walker?”
“Nope.”
“Me, neither. Mr. Heath, what did this man look like? I’m trying to place him. Joe and I worked with the Cleveland police, too. We should know him.”
Jerry Heath turned to his wife with a frown. “He was, what would you say, maybe forty?”
“Or younger. He was Italian, or very Italian-looking. A quiet man. He just listened and took notes, mostly.”
“An Italian man named Walker,” Joe said, and glanced at me, one eyebrow raised.
“Can I ask whether he was ever alone in your daughter’s room?” I said.
Jerry Heath’s face went hard and curious, but his wife answered.
“Yes, he was. The police had already searched it, but he wanted to take a look himself, make sure they’d done a thorough job. Wanted to know what they looked at, if they took pictures of anything or wrote down a, uh, what do you call it? An inventory. Said he wanted to be sure it was all being done by the book. I guess he was pretty experienced at that sort of thing.”
“He was alone for this?”
“Yes. Mr. Jefferson said he didn’t want to make us go through it again, you know, because it was so difficult to go in there and look at everything.”
“Why do you ask about that? Whether he was alone?” Jerry Heath said.
“Just trying to understand the situation,” Joe said.
The phone rang, and Jerry Heath got to his feet and went into the kitchen and answered. He talked in low tones for a few minutes while Joe and I sat with his wife, waiting on his return. When he came back into the room, his face was dark with anger.
“You fellas got about ten seconds to get the hell out of this house.”
“Excuse me?” Joe said.
“That was George Hilliard. The prosecutor. Told me he just got off the phone with the police back in Cleveland. Called to ask about you boys. They told him you’re working without police approval or even a client.”
He turned from Joe to me, and jabbed his rough index finger at my chest. “And they said you are a suspect in a murder investigation.”
“What?” Anne Heath stood up fast.
“Somebody killed the same attorney that came in here, trying to help us. The one they’ve been asking about, Jefferson. Police said this guy’s trying to use Monica as a distraction. To use our daughter as a way to keep the police off his own back.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “We’re trying to prove what really happened to your daughter, Mr. Heath. We think Andy Doran—”
“I will go open this door for you, and you best walk through it with a spring in your step, mister. Because if you don’t, I will gladly throw your ass right through it. Now get out.”
When we left, Anne Heath was crying.