Apples Never Fall

NOW

“How would you describe your parents’ marriage?”

Detective Senior Constable Christina Khoury flipped the page in her notebook and studied the man opposite her: Logan Delaney. The second of Joy Delaney’s four grown-up children. Thirty-seven years old. The slouched posture and relaxed drawl of a surfer dude, but the watchful eyes of someone with an agenda. Looked like a gardener but apparently taught business studies. She and Ethan were interviewing him in the lobby of the community college where he worked. He said his next class started in twenty minutes.

They sat across from Logan in low vinyl tub chairs with a small round table in between them. A noticeboard behind Logan’s head advertised evening courses: So you want to do your own soft furnishings? So you want to write a memoir? So you want to master small talk? So you want to get married? Some people actually did a course to get married? She must remember to tell Nico about that. Or maybe not. He might want to do the course. He had random bursts of enthusiasm for bizarre activities.

“I’d describe their marriage as normal,” answere

d Logan. “Good.” He rotated his right shoulder forward and then backward. “They’ve been married nearly fifty years.”

“Shoulder trouble?” Christina pretended to care. She cared about finding out what had happened to this man’s mother.

“It’s fine.” He stilled his shoulder and sat up straighter.

“So, they’ve been married nearly fifty years. That’s a long time.”

“It is.”

“Obviously every marriage has its ups and downs, its conflicts,” she said, and waited.

A beat.

Another beat.

He raised a single eyebrow. Still he didn’t speak. He was very much like his father. He didn’t rush to fill the gaps.

“Are you married yourself, Logan?”

He looked at his left hand as if to check. “No. I’m not. Never married.”

“In a relationship?”

He smiled wearily. “It’s complicated.”

“Would you say your parents have a complicated relationship?”

“No,” he said. “They have an excellent relationship. They’re doubles champions. You have to be good communicators to play doubles successfully.”

“What about off the court?”

“They ran a very successful business together for thirty years.”

“So their marriage hasn’t been…” She looked down at her notes. “Rocky at times?”

“Every marriage is rocky at times.” He peered over as if he were trying to see what she had written down. “Did someone actually say that to you?”

“I believe your sister told the police officers that things had been—what was the word she used?—a little ‘tumultuous’ lately.”

“Which sister?” He lifted his hand to stop her answering. “I know which sister.” He seemed to come to a sudden decision. “Look. Can I get one thing straight? Are you guys treating my father as a suspect?”

Of course I am, mate. You know I am.

She assumed Logan had seen the healing scratch marks on his father’s face. Stan Delaney said they came from climbing through a hedge to retrieve a tennis ball. They looked to Christina like classic defense wounds.

Yesterday’s search of Joy and Stan Delaney’s home had revealed little of interest. The house was clean and tidy. It was notably clean and tidy. No signs that remotely indicated a struggle, except for one thing: a faint crack that snaked across the glass of a framed photo in the hallway. The photo was of a child holding a tennis trophy.

“What happened here?” Christina had asked Stan Delaney, and he said, “No idea.”