“C’mon, man. He’s had, like you know, other . . .” Seth lowered his gaze as if realizing where he was, the company he was keeping. His brother took a long pull from his bottle.
“Other women. Lots of them,” Macon finished. “Fine. But none of them would want to kill him. I mean, they weren’t psychos.”
“How do you know?” Seth skewered his brother with a hard look.
“Christ, Seth, you’re such a dumb shit!”
“Hey!” Pescoli said. This was getting them nowhere. “Why don’t we go see what the police have to say? You said you’d be in, right?” she asked Macon, who didn’t reply. “They just want a statement from you . . . from both of you.” She wagged a finger between the two brothers.
Macon said tautly, “You’re a cop. You know what happens and so do I. They’re going to grill me in some little interrogation room with no window, a camera recording me, and two-way mirrors and shit.”
“You think the police suspect you?”
“Yeah! Dad and me didn’t get along. At all. Everybody knew it. We got into it all the time when I lived at home. Ask Seth.”
No one had to. Seth shrugged and nodded as Macon continued to rant. “The cops were called a couple of times when I lived with Dad and Brindel. And that chick cop? I forget her name, something Asian.” He scowled as he thought. His phone vibrated loudly, but he ignored it. “Japanese, maybe. Lots of syllables.”
Pescoli supplied, “Tanaka.”
“That’s the one.” He nodded, near-black curls shaking. “Tanaka! She kept asking me where I was, y’know, when the shit went down. Like I was suspect numero uno.”
“They’re just weeding out anyone close to the family, checking alibis.”
“I know that. I’m tellin’ ya. But I’ve seen enough cop shows to know what’s going down. And if they’re looking at family members, what about Ivy?” he said.
Sarina gasped and Collette backed up a step.
“Like she’s so lily-white? Oh, come on. She’s been seeing a shrink for years.” A sideways glance at Regan. “Bet they didn’t tell ya that, did they? No bad words for little niecey, but I’m lettin’ ya know, she had nothin’ good to say about Dad. Nothin’.”
“He’s right,” Seth said, finally chiming in. “Called him a ‘perv.’”
Macon was incensed. “A goddamned perv, that’s what she said. About our father. Nice. Just real . . . nice. Psycho-bitch.”
“Stop it!” Collette ordered. “Ivy isn’t ‘psycho’ or a ‘bitch,’ for that matter. And she would never hurt her mother. They didn’t get along all the time, but . . . Sarina help me out here.”
“The idea’s ridiculous!” Sarina was flushed, as angry as Regan had ever seen her.
“No more ridiculous than me or Seth being looked at. And neither one of us was ever in the nut-house.” He chugged down the rest of his Coke and tossed the empty bottle into the sink as his phone buzzed again.
“Ivy was under psychiatric care? Hospitalized?” Pescoli asked.
Sarina sighed. “Severe depression after trouble with a boyfriend.”
“What did I tell ya?” Macon said. “Psycho.”
“But she was fine, after. Did some out-patient care but Brindel said she’d much improved,” Collette added.
“And the boyfriend?” Pescoli asked.
“That useless piece of shit?” Macon threw his aunt a get-real look.
Pescoli said, “Who is he?
”
“Troy Boxer,” Seth answered, his hair flopping over his eyes with the movement. “Macon’s right. Big-time trouble.”
Regan made a mental note.