When I returned to the house, the surviving Terrells were ready to leave. I set the alarm on my way out. Eric drove a boxy silver SUV, new and expensive, with a license-plate holder from an Oakland dealership. He’d parked to the left of my Toyota, so close it was as though he was marking territory by taking up as much of the driveway as possible. He must be one of those irritating people who parked his car straddling two spaces in parking lots, so that his car wouldn’t get hit. I squeezed into the gap between the vehicles. When I opened my car door, it brushed against his.
“Watch it,” Eric said sharply. “Do you have any idea how much it costs to repair the finish on one of these?”
I didn’t say anything. It’s childish, I know, but I found myself fighting down the urge to key his car. It would have been enormously satisfying to scratch that expensive silver finish. But I didn’t.
“That’s their version,” Pamela Allen said that evening when I told her what Eric and Erin Terrell had said about their father’s plans to divorce Pamela’s mother. “Mom and Claude were happy, as far as I know.”
We were in the living room of Pamela’s house in Hayward. Her husband Ralph and their young daughter were outside, washing the family car.
“Would your mother have confided in you?” I asked.
“I don’t think she would have kept something like that to herself. On the other hand, she may not have wanted to burden me with her troubles. I have enough of my own right now.” Pamela glanced out at her husband. Did her troubles have something to do with her own marriage?
“Whether they were having problems or not,” she continued, “I can’t imagine Mom killing Claude — or anyone, for that matter. My brother and I were devastated by this. Our father wasn’t around after he and Mom split up. So she was all we had.”
“What about the possibility that Claude killed your mother, then himself?”
She shook her head. “I just can’t see it. I suppose it’s possible, but why? None of this makes any sense.”
“How did you get on with Claude’s children?”
“We weren’t close,” she said. “We tolerated each other for our parents’ sake. Erin and I don’t have much in common. Eric’s a pompous ass. His wife’s all right. I haven’t seen them since shortly after the funeral. Neither Eric nor Erin wanted their father to remarry. They never accepted my mother.”
“This insurance policy leaves you and your brother a lot of money.”
“I know. And we could use it. Six months ago my husband got downsized. My brother’s between jobs. So yes, things are tight right now. We’re living on my salary as a teacher and our savings. That insurance money, and what Mom left us in her will, would really come in handy. But neither Colin nor I had anything to do with Mom’s death.”
“What about Claude’s kids?”
She shrugged. “As far as I know, they had good relations with their father. I don’t think either of them have any financial problems.”
Whether any of the heirs had any financial problems was something I intended to find out. I started a background check on both sets of offspring. Later that day I went back to the neighborhood where Claude and Martha Terrell had lived. The big Victorian across the street, with a view of the Terrells’ yard from its upstairs windows, was owned by the Brandons, who both worked. They hadn’t been home the day of the deaths, and their two teenaged daughters had been in school. I got similar stories at other houses. The only people who were in the neighborhood that day were the housecleaner who had discovered the bodies and the gardener who had called the police.
I met Estrellita Mejia the next day at her Oakland home, as she returned from cleaning other people’s houses. She sat down in her living-room recliner and flipped up the foot rest. “When you called earlier, I didn’t want to talk with you. But I decided I should.”
“Why didn’t you want to talk?” I asked. “Are you afraid of something? Or someone?”
“It’s not that. What happened to the Terrells was awful. It was horrible.” She shuddered. “Finding them like that. I’d like to help. But I wonder if I’m breaking a confidence to talk about them, even under these circumstances.”
That sparked my interest. I wondered what Mrs. Mejia might have overheard in the Terrell household that fell into the category of confidences.
“I know this is difficult for you. But I need some answers. What time did you get there that afternoon?”
“About one o’clock that day. I went there every Friday, though usually later in the afternoon. One of my regulars had canceled that morning, so I was early. I walked to the back of the house, heading for the laundry room, where the cleaning supplies are kept.”
“Before you saw the bodies, did you see anything out of the ordinary?”
“The sliding door was open.”
“Did you see anything on the floor between the end of the counter and the plant?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t see the gun. Believe me, I would have noticed a gun.”
“Then what?”
“I came around the end of the counter. From the corner of my eye I saw something on the floor in front of the sink. I looked down—” She grimaced. “I saw two people lying there, covered in blood. I didn’t even realize who it was. I just saw all that blood.”
“What did you do then?”
“I backed away. I had my hands up, like this.” She held her hands up as though warding off a blow. “I backed into the plant. It scared me. It was as tall as me. When I felt the leaves brush against the back of my head and my face, I screamed. I thought someone had grabbed me from behind. I panicked. My foot kicked something. I thought it was the pot. But it must have been the gun. I looked down and saw something moving across the floor toward the table. I didn’t stick around to see what it was.”
That explained how the murder weapon wound up in the breakfast nook.
“I ran out the front door,” Mrs. Mejia continued. “The gardener was next door. He called the police. Later I gave my statement. Then I came home.”
“How long had you worked for the Terrells?” I asked.
“The whole time they were married. And before. I used to clean for Mrs. Terrell before she married Mr. Terrell.”
“So you knew Martha Terrell fairly well?”
“As well as you can know someone you work for.”
“Had you seen or heard anything that might indicate that Mr. and Mrs. Terrell were having marital difficulties?”
“No, it was a good marriage. Mrs. Terrell once told me she was happier with Mr. Terrell than with her first husband.”
That might cover Martha’s feelings, I thought, but it didn’t account for Claude’s perspective.
“Did they have disagreements about money? Or about their children from their previous marriages?” I asked. Finances and offspring were two of the biggest frictions in any marriage.
She hesitated.
“I know you don’t want to speak out of turn, but anything you overheard might be important.”
“Well, there were arguments. About money.”
“Between Mr. and Mrs. Terrell?”
“Sometimes. But it wasn’t disagreements between the two of them. It was mixed up with their children.”
Now we were getting somewhere. “How so?”
“Mr. Terrell didn’t like it that Mrs. Terrell gave money to Colin. He said Colin should learn to stand on his own two feet.”
Mr. Terrell may have had a point. But I didn’t have enough information yet to make that call. “So Colin had money troubles, and Mom kept bailing him out.”
Mrs. Mejia nodded. “Mrs. Terrell told me some of it. The rest I overheard. Colin can’t decide what he wants to do with his life. He dropped out of college, then he went back. He got a degree and a teaching credential, like his sister. After teaching for a few years he signed on with a dot-com company. He hadn’t been there very long when the tech boom went bust and he was out. Then it was law school. He stuck with that for a year before he quit. Since last summer he’s been working temp jobs. He couldn’t afford to pay rent on his apartment, so he moved in with his girlfriend. He has trouble making ends meet.”