All the Beautiful Lies(19)

“Is there some place we can talk?” the detective asked.

Harry led him into the living room, where they sat on opposite-facing sofas. “What’s going on?” Harry asked.

“We got a preliminary report from the crime scene investigators this morning, Harry,” he said, hands on his knees. “And although we are not ruling out an accident, we are presently treating what happened to your father as a suspicious death.”

“Oh?”

“It’s inconclusive right now, but there is a possibility that your father was hit on the head before he fell off the side of the path.”

“You think someone hit him?” Harry said, trying to absorb what he was hearing.

“That’s what we think.”

“What does that . . . ?”

“What does that mean? It could mean many things. He could have argued with someone along the path. It could have been an attempted mugging, although your father was found with his wallet on him. It’s possible that some kid threw the rock that hit your father and it was a complete accident. We just don’t know. That’s why I’m here, just to ask you some questions.”

“Okay,” Harry said, then added, “Should I text my stepmother? Should she be here?”

“I’d like to hear from you right now.”

“Sure,” Harry said. He watched as the detective pulled a spiral-bound notebook and a pen from the inside of his jacket. Harry thought that he couldn’t have been more than forty years old, although he had a receding hairline, noticeable even though his hair was cut very close to his scalp. He had a long nose and thin lips, and his dark eyes were set deep in their sockets.

“Can I ask you some questions about your father?” he said.

Harry nodded.

“Had anything changed in his life recently? How was his marriage?”

“Honestly, I don’t know that much about my father’s marriage.”

“How long had they—”

“Since I went to college, so about four years.”

“Can you think of anyone who might have had a reason to harm your father?”

“No.”

“Disgruntled customers from the store? Old girlfriends?”

Harry shook his head.

“Do you know anything about your father’s financial situation?”

“You mean, did he have money?”

“That. Or did he have money problems? How was the store doing?”

“Fine, I think. My father did okay in his business, well enough to send me to college. He had some family money, as well, I think. And my mom had some money from her parents. My biological mother.”

“Your mother is . . . ?”

“She died. About seven years ago.”

The detective jotted that fact down in his notebook, as though it was the first thing he learned that he hadn’t known already. “How did she die?” he asked.

“Of lung cancer.”

“Did your father have close friends here in Kennewick that you knew of?”

“He was friends with John Richards, who works for him.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Not much. He’s a retiree who started out by volunteering to help out at the store, but now he pretty much co-manages it with my father.” Harry stumbled over the words, aware he was using the present tense.

“And they were friends?”

“Oh, yeah. I don’t know if they were social with each other, if they did things outside of the store, but my father relied on him.”

“What about other employees?”

“I know that he sometimes got someone to help out during the summer, when there was the most foot traffic in the store, but they were usually teenagers or college students.”

“You never came up and helped out during a summer?”

“No,” Harry said.

“Okay. What about other friends? Did your father and his wife socialize with other couples at all?”

“I don’t really know, but I don’t think so. Alice has a friend named Chrissie Herrick—that’s where she is right now—and she’s married but I don’t know if they did ‘couple’ things together.”

The detective pulled a vibrating phone from his pants pocket. He checked the screen, then put the phone into his suit jacket pocket. “Sorry,” he said, then slid forward fractionally on the sofa. “Anyone else you can think of that your father had regular contact with? Anyone he kept in touch with in New York?”

“His old business partner, Ron Krakowski, was there, and they were still close, but he never even leaves the city.”

He jotted the name down on his pad, then put it back in his suit jacket. It was clear that he was getting ready to go. “You’ve been very helpful, Harry,” he said as he stood.

Harry stood, as well, and accepted the card that the detective was holding out to him. “If you think of anything else, even if it seems insignificant, give me a call. That’s my cell number on the card,” the detective added.

At the door, Detective Dixon asked Harry if he was planning on staying in Kennewick awhile.

“I have no other plans,” Harry said. “I’ll probably help out at the store.”

As soon as the detective turned to go, Harry watched as he pulled his cell phone out, thumbed the screen, then lifted it to his ear. He was talking as he got into the maroon Impala and shut the door behind him. The car’s glass was tinted.