They made their way quietly inside. The front room was empty. They cleared each subsequent room before moving on to the next.
Michelle heard the noise first, a grunting sound, appearing to come from the back of the house. They hustled there and looked around. They saw no one, but the sound repeated itself, followed this time by a clanking noise of metal on metal.
Michelle motioned to a door at the end of the hall. King nodded, moved forward and slowly pushed it open with his foot while Michelle covered him. King peered inside, tensed and then relaxed. He opened the door and motioned for Michelle to join him.
Canney was seated with his back to them, earphones on and doing leg presses in his nicely equipped home gym. King pounded on the door, and Canney snapped around and ripped off his headphones.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I called this morning. You said one o’clock was fine. It’s one o’clock. Nobody answered the door and it happened to be open.”
Canney stood and put his CD player down and toweled off. “I’m sorry. My housekeeper has the day off, and I must have lost track of time.”
“Happens to the best of us,” said King. “We can wait if you want to clean up.”
“No, I think we can just get down to it. I can’t imagine this will take long. Let’s sit outside. I made some lemonade.”
They went into the large backyard, which had a lap pool, spa and a small cabana-style building as well as intricately planned landscaping.
“Beautiful,” commented Michelle.
“Yes, I love it back here.”
“It all looks fairly recent,” said King. “And you haven’t lived in this house that long, have you? What, three years or so?”
Canney stared pointedly at him as he drank his lemonade. “How did you know?”
“Public records are just that, public. You’re retired now. From accounting?”
“Twenty years seemed long enough to worry about other people’s money.”
“Well, now you have plenty of your own to worry about. I guess accounting pays better than I thought.”
“I’ve made some good investments over the years.”
“And your late wife worked too, at Battle Enterprises. She was executive secretary to Bobby Battle, wasn’t she? In fact, she was working there when she died in that car accident?”
“Yes. It’s not exactly a secret.”
“I didn’t see you at Battle’s funeral.”
“That’s because I didn’t go.”
“You hadn’t kept in touch with the family?”
“Just because my wife worked there doesn’t mean we were friends with them.”
“I found a picture of your wife while I was doing my background research. She was a very beautiful woman; had even won some local beauty pageants.”
“Megan was extraordinarily attractive, yes. Does this line of conversation have some point?”
“The point being that I had to hunt up pictures of your wife because there are none of her in your home. Nor are there any of your son.”
“You mean, not out in the public areas.”
“No. When no one answered the door and we found it open, we thought there was something amiss, so we went room to room, including your bedroom; there are no photos at all of your family.”
Canney stood, enraged. “How dare you!”