The Perfect Impression

by Pierce, Blake

  “We’ve had just about enough of this, Ms. Hunt,” she huffed fussily. “I keep waiting for someone to explain why I’m still here and all I get is the runaround. You should know that we’ve asked our attorney to be on standby. He assured us that he’s secured a helicopter and can be here in less than an hour if we say the word. So do we need to do that?”

  Jessie wanted to come back at her hard, put her in her place. But this was a delicate situation. If she pushed too hard, Lander likely would call the lawyer back, as would everyone else. They’d all shut down, refusing to talk at all.

  There was still crucial information to be gleaned from these people and as long as they thought they were viewed only as friends of the victim, being called on to help get her justice, they might play ball. The second they suspected they were in legal jeopardy, then that would be the end of it. So despite her instinct to push, Jessie smiled as she let a long, silent breath escape her lips.

  “Of course not, Mrs. Lander. We’re almost done here,” she said before addressing the entire group. “I understand your frustration at being stuck here while others are leaving. But I would ask for your patience and understanding just a bit longer. Your willingness to have your Sunday slightly inconvenienced could be the difference between us solving this murder or not. I know that getting justice for Gabby is as important to you as it is to us.”

  That silenced Lander briefly. Jessie took advantage of the lull to get Deputy Heck’s attention. When he came over, she whispered to him.

  “Take the folks who aren’t part of Gabby’s traveling party to the corner of the bar. Make it casual.”

  He nodded and did as she asked. When that was done, Jessie addressed those who remained.

  “Let me tell you our plan,” she said to them in a hushed tone that suggested she was taking them into her confidence. “Detective Peters and I need to wrap up our interviews with the other four folks over there. Then we plan to speak with all of you once more. You’ve been incredibly helpful in helping us lock down the timeline of Gabby’s movements last night. But we think that in the cold light of day, a few hours removed from the haziness of late-night drinking, you might able to clarify things even further. I’m asking that you give us this small window of additional time to figure things out. I know Steve would appreciate it. He’s lost his wife, the mother of his little boy, Ellis. Let’s not compound his loss by letting her killer escape when you might hold the keys to preventing it.”

  As she expected, no one had the gall to raise a fuss after that. They all moved to cocktail tables near the window, where they could see the ocean. Maura the bartender caught her eye and gave a silent golf clap in appreciation of her skills. Apparently her brief employee lounge nap was officially over.

  “I’m not sure how long that gives us but we better take advantage of it,” Jessie muttered to Peters. “Let’s knock out these other interviews before someone changes their mind.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  With the overriding pressure to wrap up the interviews before the next ferry departure weighing down on them, Jessie and Peters worked as fast as they could. They questioned the other four remaining guests, all of whom were staying on the same floor as Gabby. It became quickly clear to Jessie that none of them were credible suspects.

  By the time Jessie and Peters gave them permission to catch the next ferry, it was approaching mid-morning. They had Barksdale, who was working overtime until his boss arrived in another few hours, secretly usher the no-longer-suspects out a side entrance so the swingers crew didn’t see them and get riled up again.

  “Time’s running short,” Peters noted once they’d left. “Who do you think is our best bet to go at next?”

  “I’d like to take another shot at Steve Crewe,” she said. “We can start with the sympathy bit, and then use the beer mug attack to get under his skin. Once we’ve got him off balance, we can probe a little more. He’s the least likely to ask for a lawyer because of how bad it would look. We should take advantage of that.”

  Peters nodded in agreement. They took Crewe out back to the rose garden. It was a change of scenery that they hoped would avoid giving him the impression that he was being interrogated.

  “Again,” Peters began as they sat on metal chairs next to a fountain, “we are so sorry for your loss. I spoke to the medical examiner earlier and he’s hopeful that you’ll able to take Gabby’s body back with you on the ferry in the cargo hold. They’ll need to do a full autopsy once you return, but at least you can be with her for this journey.”

  “I appreciate that,” Crewe said blankly.

  Jessie couldn’t tell if he was in shock or unaffected by the loss. Either way, she aimed to wake him up.

  “So, Mr. Crewe,” she said mildly. “In light of this tragedy, we’re hopeful that the incident with the beer mug last night can be handled outside formal channels. I’m open to that possibility, assuming you are candid with us now.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked, sounding hurt.

  “Some of the questions we have to ask might seem…indelicate,” she explained. “But they have to be asked. The great thing is that, if you are open and honest, even if it’s painful or embarrassing, we can probably massage away any details that could haunt you later.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said, either dense or pretending to be.

  Realizing this was getting her nowhere fast, she decided to come straight out with it and see how he reacted.

  “We know why you and your friends come to this hotel,” she said flatly. “We don’t care about that. But you need to tell us what you were really doing during the time that you weren’t drinking in the bar with Rich Ferro. It’s one thing for us to know the truth. It’s another for you to tell it.”

  She shut her mouth and waited, hopeful that her hunch was right and that he’d buy the lie.

  Steve Crewe stared silently at her so long that she became aware of the waves crashing along the seawall not far behind her. They sounded like an audience clapping before the stage performance was over.

  “What are you accusing me of?” he asked carefully.

  Peters jumped in.

  “No one is accusing you of anything, Mr. Crewe,” he said. “But if you happened to be engaged in behavior with someone other than your wife last night, behavior that might look bad to the media or your family in the wake of her death, we’re just saying that such behavior need not come to light if it served to provide you with an alibi. Your son doesn’t have to ever know. But if you did engage in this behavior and chose to deny it, there isn’t much we can do to protect your reputation. We’d have to investigate fully and detail our findings in publicly available reports. We’d like to avoid that if possible. Wouldn’t you?”

  Crewe’s wounded expression turned to one of embarrassment, and then resignation.

  “Who told you?” he asked.

  “That’s not important,” Jessie said, hoping to move quickly from the finger-pointing stage to the fact-finding one. “Who were you with and when?”

  Crewe lowered his head for a moment, apparently contemplating the enormity of what he was about to say. When he lifted it again, he began talking quickly, as if speed would make what he said less objectionable.

  “Before I came down to the bar, I met up with one of the manicurists in the back room of the salon on the other side of the hotel. Her name is Grace. She’s new here and I—I wanted to try her out.”

  Jessie managed to keep her expression blank, not wanting to reveal the revulsion she felt at the comment.

  “What time was that?” Peters asked, moving straight past any blame to hone in on the relevant facts.

  “I left the bar to meet her there at nine thirty. We finished up by ten. I was back having drinks right after that.”

  “Did Gabby know about your appointment?” Jessie wondered.

  “She knew I would be busy from nine thirty to ten. We didn’t discuss the particulars but I think she figured it was Grace because I was flirting with h
er when I picked her up after her manicure in the afternoon.”

  “And she was okay with it?” Jessie asked, needing to hear the words even though she knew that was the whole point of the thing.

  “Ms. Hunt,” he entreated, “you have to understand. This lifestyle isn’t for everyone. But it worked for us. Yes, she was okay with it. Sometimes we even traded stories with each other. It was sexy for us. As long as everyone follows the rules, everything works out.”

  “What rules?” Peters asked.

  “Well, there’s really only one. No intermingling amongst each other. We have this group that we’re all comfortable with. We have fun together and all share this naughty little secret. But no one crosses that line. No one has sex within the group.”

  “If you’re already swingers, why is that such a big deal?” Jessie asked.

  “It’s one thing to have an encounter with a hotel employee who does this sort of thing, or a casual acquaintance or even a stranger. But we’re friends. We all live in the same neighborhood. We have barbecues at each other’s homes. Some of our kids play together. It would complicate matters if we involved sex. We’re a freethinking group, but that’s just asking for trouble.”

  Jessie didn’t say out loud what was blaring in her head. If someone had violated the one rule of the group, it might be a pretty good motive for the person who felt violated to act out, maybe even violently. Peters, who was clearly on the same page, must have feared she was on the verge of saying something because he interjected quickly.

  “And this thing with Grace the manicurist was your only ‘encounter’ last night? We heard that you were in and out of the bar quite a bit.”

  “Sure I was,” Crewes replied, unconcerned. “I was drinking like a horse so I had to piss like one too. I was in and out of the bathroom all night. I think I came out here to the garden at one point too. You saw me. I was pretty drunk. I wasn’t keeping track of all my movements.”

  “Were you keeping track of Gabby’s movements?” Jessie asked.

  “What do you mean?” he said, suddenly far less blasé.

  “I mean, do you know if your wife was with anyone last night?”

  He took a moment to ponder the question. It seemed like the first time he had.

  “I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t know for sure. But she didn’t say anything. Usually she’d give me a heads-up so I don’t come in the suite if she’s busy. She didn’t do that. She did say she wasn’t feeling great. That’s why she didn’t stick around at the bar that long. She told us she just needed a little quiet time to herself.”

  Jessie pictured Gabby Crewe going up to her suite feeling under the weather. It was possible that she’d just had too much to drink and felt unwell, though now that she thought about it, Jessie couldn’t remember anyone ever saying that Gabby actually drank anything that night.

  If she hadn’t been drinking, that suggested it was possible that she already knew she was pregnant and was abstaining. Maybe she was feeling the effects of morning sickness. The pregnancy might also explain her sudden late-night room service order of steak, eggs, and toast. Of course, she could have simply lied about feeling unwell as an excuse to go upstairs for a secret liaison.

  Whatever the reason for her absence, Jessie found it hard to believe that Steve Crewe was as casual as he appeared about his wife’s potential activities. She remembered how others had suggested that while Gabby was a nice person, willing to fight for the little guy, she often treated her husband like a little guy she didn’t respect. That had to gnaw at him.

  More troubling, wouldn’t he have doubted her story? If she was alone, how did she end up naked and dead on their bed? Wouldn’t he wonder if the perpetrator was someone she’d met with clandestinely? After all, that person would be the most obvious suspect. One explanation for why he wasn’t curious: he knew who the perpetrator was because it was him.

  She desperately wanted to ask him all those questions and watch his face as he tried to answer. Part of her even wanted to mention Gabby’s pregnancy. She was tempted to surreptitiously turn on her phone’s video so that later on, she could review how he’d reacted.

  But she couldn’t do any of that. Right now, even if it wasn’t sincere, he was least pretending to be a resource. And if he was an innocent man who learned his wife was pregnant during an interrogation, she’d never shake the guilt. More importantly, if she went down the road of accusation, he’d lawyer up. So would all the others. Then everything would get adversarial.

  Better to stop here so she could come back again another time. It was the exact same plan she intended to use on Richard Ferro, the man she was about to invite for a rose garden chat next.

  *

  It was getting late.

  By the time Richard and Melissa Ferro joined them in the garden, it was almost 11 a.m. Jessie chuckled bitterly to herself.

  That leaves barely more than an hour before full-time cruise director and part-time sheriff’s captain Ted Hawley shuts everything down.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ferro,” Peters said politely as he stood up to meet them, “but we’re doing this round of interviews individually. Since you already spoke with us, you needn’t be here.”

  “But I just thought I could help fill in some gaps—” she began to offer.

  “If we need you, we’ll definitely ask Deputy Heck to send you back out. But for now you can just relax in the bar. Have yourself a nice hot toddy.”

  Jessie was impressed. The little dig at the end was a subtle reminder to Ferro about the sensitive nature of their earlier conversation and how she might not want to make too many waves at this moment. She seemed to get the hint, as she gave her husband a kiss on the cheek and headed back toward the hotel.

  With so little time left before Hawley reappeared, Jessie decided to skip the niceties as much as she could without getting Richard Ferro to call his attorney.

  “We’re really putting a good picture together, Mr. Ferro,” she said, talking as if he was a valued member of their investigative team who needed to be updated. “So this is mostly a formality. We’re trying hard to lock in timelines for everyone in order to nail down when Gabby was unaccounted for. Of course, we’re also using the timelines to systematically clear all the guests. That’s what we did with the folks who left on the early ferry this morning. And that’s what we hope to do with you as well.”

  “I understand,” he replied, as amicably as one could when being courteously asked for an alibi.

  “Great,” she said, glancing at her notepad, which had nothing on it pertinent to what she was about to ask. “We also know all about the swinging and the sleeping with hotel employees. So folks who were initially reluctant to reveal their partners for fear that they might be charged with solicitation or just look scandalous to law enforcement types have been coming clean.”

  She watched as Ferro’s eyes widened significantly before he regained control.

  “That’s right,” Peters added, as if they were talking about something as mundane as a guest’s recent dental appointments. “We’re not focused on that. In fact, we’re finding that having these partners as alibi witnesses is really helping us clear a lot of folks as suspects.”

  “I see,” Ferro said inscrutably. Jessie followed up.

  “And since we’ve already established that you were in and out of the bar quite a bit over the course of the evening, you can feel free to tell us who you snuck off with and not worry how it will reflect on you.”

  He stared at them both as if he was struggling with an enormous personal burden.

  “I get all that,” he finally replied in a calm measure tone. “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why not?” Peters asked, clearly surprised.

  “I can’t tell you that either.”

  For a few seconds, both Jessie and Detective Peters sat in the garden, stunned into silence. She recovered first.

  “You understand that we can’t just leave it at that,” she replied, her voice as unr
uffled as Ferro’s had been, though she casually rested her hand on her right thigh, within easy access of her weapon. “It’s important that you at least explain your reticence to be forthcoming. Otherwise someone might draw the conclusion that you can’t tell us for nefarious reasons.”

  “What reasons?” Ferro asked, looking a tad offended, despite his unacceptable answer.

  Jessie debated whether to take the next step. It was a risk. If he reacted badly to her response, the whole lawyer scenario she’d avoided with Steve Crewe might rear its head again. And yet, something told her that he wouldn’t do that. She went for it.

  “Two reasons that I can think of: either you can’t tell us who you were with because it was Gabby Crewe and you stabbed her to death; or perhaps you were with someone else who would violate the group rule about intermingling. Maybe you’re worried about how your wife would react to that revelation.”

  He smiled, almost like he was taking pity on her.

  “I assure you it’s neither of those things.”

  Jessie smiled back.

  “And yet, we can’t just take your word for it. What kind of investigators would we be if we just checked you off the list based on your assurances alone?”

  Richard Ferro’s smile suddenly faded and was slowly replaced by something closer to wistfulness. All the haughty pretense was gone.

  “Yes, I was with someone,” he finally conceded. “But here’s the problem: if I told you who it was, it would destroy that person’s life. I don’t just mean it would ruin their marriage, it would destroy them, to the point that I fear the person would engage in self-harm. In fact, the person told me they would do as much if our time together was ever revealed.”