Seeds of Deception (15 page)

It took Elizabeth a moment to come back from wherever her mind had wandered, and she turned and looked up at Meg. “No, I don't think so.”

Meg quickly sat next to her on the couch. “What's wrong?”

“It's your father,” Elizabeth said, then stopped again.

“What—he's sick? Hurt?”

“No, neither. You know he went into his office this morning? He thought he should check in, see if there was anything important he should attend to. He'd given his
secretary time off while he was away, and his partner had decided to take a vacation too, while he had the chance. It seems that not many people seek legal help right before the holidays.”

Meg was becoming impatient. “So what's going on?”

“Your father is at the police station. When he arrived at the office, he found his partner Arthur on the floor there, unconscious. He wasn't even supposed to be in town.”

“Is he all right? Arthur, I mean?” Meg racked her brain to try to remember if she had ever met Arthur and came up blank. “Was it a stroke? A heart attack?”

“No, he was attacked. Just like Enrique. By someone who didn't expect to find him there, apparently.”

A string of questions raced through Meg's mind, and she tried to sort out which were the most important. “Daddy found him?”

Elizabeth nodded.

“Is Arthur all right?” Meg asked.

“He was still unconscious, the last I heard. Which was some time ago.”

“Why is Daddy at the police station?”

Elizabeth took a deep breath. “When your father found Arthur, he immediately called 911, and waited until the paramedics arrived. Then he followed them to the hospital. Arthur's a widower, so Phillip has as much personal information about Arthur as anyone around here. He was still at the hospital when the police arrived—apparently the paramedics had told them that Arthur had some injuries that were suspicious. Since there was nothing more that Phillip could do for Arthur, they adjourned to the police station. He was on the phone with me just as they arrived,
which is the only reason I know anything about what is going on.”

“When was this?”

“About eleven.”

“And you haven't heard from him since?” Meg asked.

Elizabeth shook her head.

“Did he say
when
Arthur was attacked? I mean, yesterday? This morning?”

“Most likely this morning. The, uh, blood was still wet.” Elizabeth shuddered. “Like your father, Arthur just couldn't stay away from the office.”

Meg sat down and put her arm around her mother. “I'm so sorry. Can I get you something? A cup of tea, maybe?”

Elizabeth leaned slightly against Meg, which for her was a major display of emotion. “That would be nice, dear.”

“I'll do it,” Seth said, and headed for the kitchen before anyone would say anything.

Meg didn't want to say out loud what she was thinking: that her father might be suspected of attacking his business partner. But why would anyone think that? Still, she knew nothing about Arthur, or about her father's relationship with Arthur, professional or personal. And he had been associated with more than one recent crime, one of those violent. And if Arthur had been attacked this morning, he had no alibi. If she had been a police officer, or perhaps one particular Montclair police officer, she probably would have taken him in as well.

Apparently her mother had arrived at the same conclusions. “Oh, Meg, I'm afraid the police think Phillip attacked Arthur.” And then she burst into tears.

Meg fought off her initial shock: she couldn't remember
ever seeing her mother cry, much less loud, sloppy, messy crying like this. She quickly drew Elizabeth closer. She could feel her whole body shaking.

Did Elizabeth believe Phillip had done this? Holding her sobbing mother, she couldn't be sure. Whatever was happening, it wasn't over yet.

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?”