Chapter 4 - The Inventory of the Credenza
The Ridgeview house was dark at 2:00 PM on Thursday afternoon. The snow on the driveway had been cut into deep, dirty ruts by the tires of three unmarked black Ford Explorers that were parked crosswise across the lawn, their engines idling in the freezing air, their exhaust pipes throwing long, white plumes toward the pine trees.
My mother sat on the velvet sofa in the grand living room, her hands folded over a small silver tea tray that she hadn't touched since the federal agents had entered the front door. She was wearing her mink coat inside the house, her eyes wide, dry, and fixed on the young man in the windbreaker who was currently systematic-ally removing the books from my father’s study shelves.
"Daniel," she said as I walked through the archway, my boots leaving small, wet rings of gray slush on the Persian rug. "Tell these men to stop. They are touching your father’s first editions. They don't have the white gloves on."
I didn't answer her. I walked into the dining room where Detective Vance—Richard’s brother’s colleague from the county police—was standing by the antique credenza with a small electronic screwdriver in his hand.
"We found the lens, Commander," Vance said, pointing to a tiny, pinhole opening situated exactly between the two carved oak leaves on the center molding of the unit. "It’s a commercial-grade Nest cam, wired directly to an external server in Arlington. The account belongs to your mother, but the monthly bill was paid from the same trust account Vanessa was clearing out."
"Did you get the Christmas logs, Detective?" I asked.
"We got them," Vance said, pulling a small black flash drive from his pocket and dropping it into my hand. "The whole sequence is right here. Your mother lunging around the table, the strike, the kid dropping onto the floor. It’s clean, high-definition footage with full audio capture. Your sister-in-law’s comment about the 'scrap metal' is audible down to the decibel."
My brother, Mark, came out of the kitchen, his tie missing, his white shirt stained with coffee from the pot he had dropped when the agents knocked the lock off the back door. He looked at me with a desperate, pleading expression that belonged to the boy who used to let me take the blame whenever we broke a window with our baseballs.
"Dan... please," he whispered, his hands reaching out toward my sleeves before he saw the look in my eyes and pulled his fingers back. "Mom’s seventy-two. She can't go to a detention center in Richmond. The medical wing there doesn't have the right climate controls for her back. You can have the house. We’ll sign the property release today. Vanessa has the forms in her car."
"The house belongs to the trust, Mark," I said, my voice dead. "It always did. The temporary occupancy agreement you signed before I went to sea was conditional on the maintenance of the estate. Assaulting my wife and terrorizing my daughter doesn't qualify as maintenance under Section 9."
"It was just a family fight!" Mark cried, his voice breaking as one of the federal agents walked past him carrying a large, clear evidence bag containing the four green plastic footlockers from the master closet. "We’ve had a hundred of them! We always get over them by New Year's!"
"Emily isn't getting over this one, Mark," I said. "And neither am I."
I walked back into the living room and stood in front of my mother’s sofa. She didn't look up at me; she was watching the agent who was now logging the serial numbers from my father’s old silver service set into a digital tablet.
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"You’re a Hale, Daniel," she said, her voice dropping into that low, rhythmic rasp that had managed my life for thirty years. "You cannot do this to your own blood. What will the neighbors say when the trucks are still here at five o'clock? The Andersons are having their holiday cocktail party tonight."
"The Andersons aren't going to see you there, Margaret," I said, reaching down to pick up the silver hairpin that Detective Vance had recovered from the wastebasket and laid on the side table. I wiped the small bit of dust from the turquoise stone with the sleeve of my uniform jacket and tucked it safely into my breast pocket next to my medals. "Because the federal marshal’s vehicle is already waiting at the bottom of the hill. And they don't look at the country club listing before they turn the keys."
