“We have to consider all possibilities,” Kovac said. “Right now we’re just trying to get a picture of your parents’ life and the people in it. Had they mentioned having a problem with anyone? A neighbor, someone doing work on the house, anything like that?”
“The one neighbor, the Abrams, have already gone to Arizona for the winter. They’ve lived next door forever. My mother and Mrs. Abrams are friends. The house on the other side of them is vacant. It was sold over the summer. The new owners are renovating,” he said. “My father complained about the noise on the weekend.”
Kovac would set Taylor to the task of checking out the construction crew. Maybe someone had a record. Maybe someone had a temper, or a screw loose, or both.
“Had your parents had any work done on their own house recently?”
“Oh, well, there was the Yelp incident,” he said, as if they should know what that meant.
“What’s that?”
“My mother hired a handyman service to do some work around the house. My father didn’t like the job they did, and he went on Yelp and wrote a nasty review. I guess he and the guy running the business got into it over the phone a couple of times. But people don’t kill people over bad Yelp reviews.”
“You’d be surprised,” Kovac said. “You run into the wrong person, they’ll kill you for having blue eyes. That’s why we need to know anything at all that might fit into the picture. Even if it seems insignificant to you.”
Taylor stared intently at his phone, flipping through the photographs he had taken earlier. He stopped on one, enlarged it with his thumb and forefinger, and shot a look at Kovac.
“Handy Dandy Home Services. There was a notation on the calendar in the kitchen for last Friday.”
“The guy had offered to come back and do some work for free if my father took the bad review down,” Chamberlain said.
“Do you know if that happened?”
“I don’t know. My father said he wouldn’t take it down until he was satisfied with the follow-up work.”
“I’ll look it up,” Taylor said, tapping the screen of his phone.
“When did you last see your folks?” Kovac asked.
“Sunday. My father’s birthday dinner.”
“And how was that?”
He bobbed his eyebrows, looked away, and sighed. “It was the usual family gathering.”
“What does that mean?”
He didn’t want to say. He stared down at his hands and picked at the loose piece of cuticle.
“We’ve already spoken to your sister,” Kovac prompted. “You might as well give us your version.”
Another sigh as he considered what to say.
“My mother tried too hard to be festive. My father played the role of tyrant, my sister got belligerent, and we all ended up screaming at each other.”
“That’s the usual?”
“It is for us. In case no one’s told you, my father is a raging narcissist, and my sister is bipolar. It’s not a good mix. Our mother drinks to take the edge off.”
“And what do you do?”
“I try to keep my head down.”
“Have you spoken to your sister today?”
He shook his head and gave in to the nervous urge to bite off the offending loose cuticle. “She won’t pick up. She isn’t answering text messages, either. She’s punishing me for not taking her side Sunday. I didn’t take his side, either. But she didn’t care. You’re either for Di or you’re against her. She doesn’t believe in neutrality.”
“Who’s the oldest?” Kovac asked.
“She is.”
“But she’s still a student?”
“She had some . . . interruptions along the way.”
“Are you a student, too?”
“No. I’m a paralegal at Obern and Phipps. Family law.”
“Decided not to follow in the old man’s footsteps?”
“There’s more call for paralegals in the workplace than for scholars of ancient Asian history,” the kid said. “I didn’t have any desire to go into his field and be his rival.”
“But your sister felt differently?”
“We’re different people. She still has some idea that if she pleases him, he’ll be proud of her. The thing is it’s virtually impossible to please him.”
“So, you became a paralegal, and you don’t have to live up to your old man’s reputation or expectations?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” he mumbled. “He doesn’t limit his criticism to his own field of expertise. But I don’t care,” he declared in a way that made it clear he did care. “I figured him out a long time ago. Narcissists love themselves. The rest of us live on a sliding scale of pleasing them or displeasing them.”
“Where did you rank on that scale lately?”
“Somewhere on the lower end of center,” he admitted.
“What was his beef with you?”
He shrugged, as if to say, Take your pick. “I should have become an attorney instead of a paralegal. I should have become a doctor instead of a lawyer. I should have been him instead of me. That’s how it works. To try to live up to his expectations is a trap. He just keeps raising the bar—a lesson my sister refuses to learn.”
He went quiet for a moment. “I guess she doesn’t have to now.”