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“I would come here as a child,” said Baron, gazing at the water as they neared the edge. “We could never swim in it. You see the plant growth? The vines reach all the way to the bottom. Youcan easily become entangled. Indeed, one of my ancestors nearly drowned in there. Ever since then we would only come down to admire it. Or take a little rowboat across to the other side. It’s quite deep in the center. And it used to have fish stocked, but that was a long time ago.”
“And your parents?” prompted Jamison.
“My parents died in there,” he said simply.
“But you just said no one went swimming in there.”
“They weren’t swimming. They were in their car.”
Decker said, “How did a car get here?”
“Back then there was a road leading from the house to here. A long time ago my great-grandfather had it put in. That was when money was more plentiful. They would drive their cars here and picnic. They’d spend the whole day here,I was told. When I was a child, I remember my father bringing me and my mother down here, though we never had the luxury of an all-day picnic. But it was still very nice. Some of my happiest times here were with my parents.”
He sat down cross-legged on the grass. Decker and Jamison remained standing.
“Now I come here sometimes just to think. And look at the water. And drink,”Baron added. “I was in college at the time, just beginning my second year, when I got a call from the police. They had found my parents in their car at the bottom of the pond. They were quite dead, of course.”
“My God,” said Jamison.
Baron looked up at her. “I doubt God had anything to do with it.” He glanced back at the water.
“What did the police say at the time?”asked Decker.
“They were convinced it was either an accident or, more likely, some sort of suicide pact. Even back then we were paupers, though I didn’t know it. My parents were feeling the strain of keeping up the Baron image without the financial resources to do so. You see the house the way it is now. Back then it was better and we could still afford help both in the house and withthe grounds, but it was difficult. My father was a good man. He could see the handwriting on the wall. He went to college and law school. He made a good living as an attorney, but it wasn’t nearly enough to maintain all that the Barons had accumulated. My mother brought some money to the marriage, but it wasn’t enough either.”
“So why not sell the house and grounds and move?” asked Jamison.
“Even back then the house was crushed under a mortgage, which really made it unmarketable. And there were tax bills and other debts, all of which accumulated interest. It seemed like the harder my father worked to pay them off, the faster the debts grew. He kept going, but he ended up robbing Peter to pay Paul. I know they were thrilled when I received a baseball scholarship to college.”
“He could have declared bankruptcy,” suggested Decker.
“To him it was a matter of honor. He was not going to walk away from it.”
“So he might have felt desperate,” observed Jamison.
Baron abruptly stood. “Not desperate enough to kill himself. And even if he had come to that decision, he certainly would never have suggested that my mother join him in the hereafter.”He paused. “I would like to think that the subject of their only child might have come into any such decision-making process, and that my parents would not have wanted to leave me all alone.”
“Could it have been an accident, then?” said Jamison.
“I don’t see how. You couldn’t accidentally drive your car into the pond. It had to have been deliberate.”
“But you thinkit was deliberatemurder?” said Decker. “Did your parents have enemies?”
“They had enemies simply by being Barons.”
“What did the police conclude?”
“I’m not sure they ever officially concluded anything. They did tell me that they suspected my parents had died either accidentally, or intentionally by their own hand. But no suicide note could be found.”
Deckernodded. “Could they have been incapacitated first and then placed in the car? With the slope, all someone would have to do was put the car in neutral and it would roll right into the water.”
“I asked the police that.”
“And what did they say?”
“That it was still an ongoing investigation and they couldn’t provide those details.”
“And when the investigationno longer was ongoing?” asked Jamison.
