“You have no proof he was having an affair with Rita,” the chief replied. “And it wasn’t David who was going to fire Rita. It was that head housekeeper of theirs. He doesn’t know which maid is getting hired or fired. He’s above all that.”
“You have to admit it all seems a little fishy, though, Chief,” Aggie observed.
“And that’s not even taking into account the death of his wife,” Joe added.
The chief frowned. “His wife was alive and well last I knew.”
“I’m talking about his first wife,” Joe said. “Dominique.”
“Oh, please, Foley—”
Joe grabbed a stack of papers on his desk and thrust them at the chief. “I’ve been going over Captain Hogarth’s testimony—”
“A lying sack of drunken shit,” the chief snarled.
“Why did he change his testimony to say he really had been at the helm of the yacht the night Dominique died? That she hadn’t gone out alone? That in fact, he’d taken her out and he had seen her husband on board with her?”
“Because he was trying to extort money from David.” The chief folded his arms over his chest. “The inquest discredited Hogarth’s second testimony. I called him Captain Hogwash.”
“Why would he change his testimony and risk being charged with reckless endangerment or involuntary manslaughter? He stated, for the record, that his conscience was troubling him, that he’d been paid off to hide the truth, to say that Dominique had gone out on her own.”
“I interviewed him,” Chief Davis said, flexing his muscles under his shirt and coming face-to-face with Joe. “I decided he was an unreliable witness. Are you questioning my judgment?”
Joe backed down, but just a little. “I just thought it was an odd thing for Hogarth to do, to try to change his testimony after the fact.”
“I’m sure his intent was to extort some money from David.” The chief shook his head, threw up his hands, and then turned away from them, indicating the conversation was done. “The death of Dominique Huntington has nothing to do with the current investigation,” he said over his shoulder. “Zero. Zip. Nada. Now get back to work.”
Both Joe and Aggie watched as the chief strode back to his office, slamming the door behind him.
“Well, we’re clear where he stands at least,” Aggie said.
“I did a little research into Huntington Enterprises,” Joe told her, sitting back down and sighing. “Guess who one of the major stockholders in the company is.”
“Not the chief,” Aggie said.
“Nope,” Joe told her. “His son.” He paused. “And his brother. Two of his brothers, in fact.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Aggie told him.
“No,” Joe said, but the tone in his voice made clear he didn’t believe what he was saying. “It doesn’t mean anything at all.”
56
Nicki stood at the top of the stairs, looking down into the marble foyer of Huntington House, the morning sun filling the room, reflecting off all the marble and the glittering chandelier. On the wall going down the stairs one of Liz’s photographs was hanging, but around it there remained an imprint of a much-larger picture than had once hung in its place. Dominique’s portrait, Nicki realized. How it must have tormented poor Liz.
At the moment, Liz was sleeping soundly. Nicki had given her a Xanax after finding her in such a state last night. What a strange welcome Nicki had gotten in this peculiar house. She’d found a flight as soon as she could, wanting to beat this hurricane that the forecasters were saying was getting close to the Florida coast. Liz hadn’t responded to her calls or texts, so she’d just come to Huntington House on her own, arriving late, and banging on the door. Had something happened to Liz? Nicki was getting frantic.
Finally the door had been opened by what looked like an automaton. Right away Nicki had known it was Mrs. Hoffman, the creepy housekeeper with all the plastic surgery that Liz had told her about. Nicki had the sense she’d roused Mrs. Hoffman from bed, though she was fully dressed. She’d introduced herself, and Mrs. Hoffman had asked her into the dark and quiet house. She’d known that Nicki was coming, she said, but hadn’t expected her so soon. Nicki explained she’d wanted to get a jump on the hurricane. Mrs. Hoffman had acted as if she hadn’t heard the weather reports. She explained that Liz had gone out to dinner with her brother-in-law, and she wasn’t sure if she was back home yet. But if Nicki would wait in the parlor, Mrs. Hoffman told her, she’d go upstairs and check.
Waiting in that dark room all by herself—Mrs. Hoffman hadn’t even turned on a light for her—Nicki had felt terribly jittery. But she’d practically jumped out of her skin when she’d heard a scream. She recognized the voice. It was Liz. Hurrying off in the direction of the sound—through the kitchen and up some back stairs—she’d found her friend cowering in a heap on the floor of a plain little room. Liz had been nearly impossible to console, babbling about a woman with a knife and a secret passageway. Then Mrs. Hoffman, drawn by the commotion herself, had come in. She had helped Nicki get Liz up to her room and into bed.
At that point, Liz had been too overcome to say much, and after the Xanax, she’d passed right out. Nicki had slept on the daybed in her room, despite Mrs. Hoffman’s offer to fix up a guest room for her. No way was she going to leave Liz alone for the rest of the night.
Now, standing at the top of the stairs, Nicki couldn’t help but wonder about her friend’s state of mind. All of this terrible, nonstop speculation on the news and online—speculation that her new husband might be a murderer—had sent Liz over the edge. She’d always been a bit of a nervous nelly—Nicki remembered how Liz would shake before going onstage the first night of a show—and all this had apparently been too much for her. For weeks she’d been imagining ghosts. Now she was imagining strange women brandishing knives coming out of the walls at her. Nicki needed to get Liz out of here. Her friend needed help. A therapist. A psychiatrist. . . a doctor . . . someone.
As she stood there, looking down, Nicki was surprised when the front door suddenly burst open, almost as if blown by a powerful gust of wind. A tall, gray-haired man barged in, barking orders even before he was fully in the room. “Hoffman! Get out here!” he shouted. “Hoffman! Where are you?”
Nicki pulled back at bit so that she wasn’t seen. But she kept an eye on what was going on in the foyer. That creepy Mrs. Hoffman emerged, and greeted the newcomer.
“Mr. Huntington,” she said. “I wasn’t aware you were coming.”
“I took an ungodly early flight and I’m flying back to New York in a couple of hours to avoid the goddamn hurricane that’s heading this way.” He was looking around the foyer impatiently. “Where’s this daughter-in-law of mine?”
So that’s David’s father, Nicki realized.
She knew she had better get Liz up and dressed. Old Mr. Huntington didn’t seem like a man who liked to be kept waiting.
Rushing back into Liz’s room, Nicki pulled open the drapes. Blindingly white light filled the room. “Come on, sweetie,” she chirped. “Time to rise and shine.”
Liz moaned in the bed.
“Liz, you’ve got to get yourself ready,” Nicki told her. “Your father-in-law’s downstairs.”
Liz opened her eyes. “My—father-in-law?”
“Yeah. And he’s impatient to see you. I just heard him talking with Mrs. Hoffman in the foyer.”
Liz sat up. “Oh, God, my head hurts.”
“It’s the Xanax, on top of the whole bottle of wine you drank.”
“Oh, God, I really drank all that . . .” Liz’s eyes suddenly opened wide. “I had the worst dream . . .”
“And that’s all it was, sweetie, a dream,” Nicki assured.
Suddenly Liz clutched Nicki’s blouse. “No, no, it wasn’t a dream. It was real. That woman—her face—she tried to kill me.”
“Sweetie, you were drunk. I found you by yourself in a room at the back of the house. You were hallucinating.”
“No, no, I wasn�
��t. It was real, Nicki. There’s a secret passageway in the closet, and she came out of there.”
Nicki’s heart broke. What had happened to her sweet, innocent, intelligent friend in this house of horrors? She stroked Liz’s cheek. “We can talk about it later, honey. You’ve got to get yourself ready to meet your father-in-law. I’m sure he’s here to talk to you about David.”
“I should tell him.” Liz said. “I should tell him about the secret passage and the woman—and how I smelled gardenias, Nicki!”
“Are you saying the woman you saw was Dominique?”
Liz shook her head. “No, that can’t be. Dominique was beautiful. This woman was a monster.”
Nicki smiled sympathetically at her. “Oh, sweetie, it was all in your mind. Just like everything else. We have to get you out of here. I want you to come to Atlantic City with me. We’ll both get on a flight as soon as this hurricane blows over, and you can spend some time with me setting up my new place. You need to get out of here, honey, away from all this craziness and the cops and the reporters at your front door.”
Liz was rubbing her temples. “It seemed so real . . .”
They were interrupted by a hard knock at the door.
“Mrs. Huntington?” came the brisk voice of Mrs. Hoffman.
“She’ll be down in fifteen minutes,” Nicki called out to her. “I’m getting her up and ready now.”
“Very well,” Mrs. Hoffman said through the door. “Please tell her Mr. Huntington is here to see her. Mr. Thomas Huntington.”
“Yeah, she knows.” Nicki turned to Liz and motioned for her to stand up. “You want to take a quick shower?”
“Yeah,” Liz said, swinging her legs off the bed. “Maybe that will clear my head.”
“Sweetie, I wouldn’t say anything to the old man,” Nicki advised her, following her into the bathroom. “I’m pretty certain this is a guy who has a battery of lawyers always walking two steps behind him.”
Liz slipped her nightgown up over her head and turned on the water full blast in the tub. “Why should I worry about lawyers?”
“Who knows? But this guy’s son might be arrested for murder . . . he’s going to look for anything you say as evidence to get him off.”
Liz frowned at her. “I have to believe that David is innocent, Nicki.”
“Maybe he is. Let’s hope so. I just want to make sure things don’t get more difficult for you.”
Liz sighed. “So if I start sounding crazy, talking about ghosts and women with knives . . .”
“Exactly. He’ll send the cops over here to investigate you.”
“But what if that crazy woman who attacked me is the same one who killed Rita? And the others?” Liz stepped into the shower, pulling the glass door to enclose her. “Shouldn’t the cops know about that?” she shouted over the rush of the water.
Nicki didn’t answer. Poor Liz. She really believed there was a woman coming out of the walls and running around the house with a knife. She had gone stir-crazy in this place. And who wouldn’t? With that asshole, absent husband of hers—whose innocence Nicki wasn’t convinced of—and that creepy housekeeper breathing down her neck?
The sooner Nicki got Liz out of this madhouse the better. Maybe they could even get out this afternoon. Why wait until after the hurricane? Even if they had to rent a car and drive, they should get out now.
Nicki was afraid if they waited any longer, it would be too late.
57
The buoys clanged as the waves slapped hard against the pier. Gulls were circling in mad sweeps through the dark gray sky. The air was warm and humid. The papers in Joe’s hands were curling from the moisture in the air, so he thrust them into his jacket pocket and continued on down the pier.
He scanned the line of boats off to his right. Leather-faced sailors were mooring them tightly to the pier. A few boats had been taken out of the water and were secured to metal contraptions. The pier was abuzz with activity, with a sense of urgency. The weather forecasters were calling the hurricane “Caroline,” and she was said to be a doozy.
Joe scanned the names of the boats, looking for the one that had been written on his paper. These captains sure could get creative. The Codfather. Boobie Bouncer. Marlin Monroe. Aquaholic. Joe smiled. The name he was looking for was simpler. The Kathleen Marie. He spotted it finally, close to the end of the pier. As he hoped, a man was tying her up.
“Ahoy there,” Joe called down to the man.
The man, who appeared to be seventy but was probably younger, looked up at him. His eyes were black. His face was like snakeskin, brown and rough and scaly. Large, sandpapery hands gripped a thick stretch of rope. He didn’t smile. “Who you looking for?” he asked.
“Captain James Hogarth,” Joe said. “Is that you?”
“I don’t know anybody else by that name.”
“Wonder if I could speak with you for a minute.”
“Kind of busy, as you see. Trying to get ahead of Caroline.”
“Yeah. They say it’s going to be a big one. Some talk of evacuations from low-lying areas.”
Hogarth shrugged. “We’ve been through hurricanes before. We’ll get through this one as well.”
“I imagine we will.” Joe opened his hand to reveal his badge. “I promise I won’t take up much of your time.”
Hogarth studied him with his black eyes. “I thought I was done talking to cops.”
“Well, you never talked to me.”
The captain threw down the rope. “I’ll be up in a second.”
Joe watched him as he climbed around his boat, a surprisingly agile old man. The wind was whipping along the pier, and caught Hogarth’s long, thinning white hair, sending it flying upward, making him look for a moment like one of those toy trolls Joe remembered from his childhood. With his big, strong hands, Hogarth gripped the ladder and hauled himself up the pier. He took his time, but Joe didn’t note any resentment in the old man’s walk toward him. It was almost as if he had expected to be questioned again, and welcomed it.
“So I presume this is about the Huntingtons,” Hogarth said when he reached Joe.
“Why do you presume that?”
“Because their names are back in the news. Another murder of one of their people.” Black eyes danced under bushy white brows. “This time maybe David’s got himself caught.”
“You say that as if you think he’s guilty,” Joe observed.
“Everyone knew he’d been carrying on with that girl.”
“Did his wife know? His first wife, I mean.”
For the first time Hogarth smiled, revealing a mouthful of broken, missing teeth. “Dominique knew everything.”
“Why did your change your testimony?”
Hogarth laughed. “I thought that case was closed.”
“You originally said you hadn’t taken the boat the day Dominique was killed, then you said you did. Which is true?”
The smile disappeared from the old man’s face. “Am I going to be arrested for something?”
“Not if you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Isn’t giving false testimony a crime?”
“We have ways of overlooking that if you can give us other helpful information.”
Hogarth shook his head, as if he was disgusted by the whole conversation. He yanked out from his stained white T-shirt a small gold cross on a thin gold chain. “I believe in Jesus Christ, Detective. I believe that telling lies is a sin. That’s why I changed my testimony. Because I couldn’t live with the lies I told.” He looked back down at his boat. “She was not a good woman. But she didn’t deserve to die. No one deserves to have their life ended by someone else.”
“So you did take the yacht out that day? And Dominique was on it?”
“It’s just as I told your chief. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky, and Dominique wanted to go out on the water. I took her, sir, yes I did.” Hogarth’s face clouded. “But Chief Davis wouldn’t believe me.”
“Why do you think he wou
ldn’t believe you?”
“Because of what else I said.”
“And that was?”
Hogarth looked at him. “Surely you know, if you’ve come to see me now.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I told him that once we were out at sea, I saw that David Huntington had come along for the ride as well. I hadn’t seen him board. Perhaps he’d already been on board, waiting for us.”
“Did you speak with him?”
“No, sir. But I heard him. I was up on the bridge, and I heard loud voices, a man and a woman. That surprised me, because I thought Dominique was the only one on board. I peered down into the cabin as I saw her with him.”
“With David.”
“Yes, with her husband.”
“Are you certain it was him? You were looking from above, and from photographs I’ve seen, the Huntington yacht was a rather large vessel. Are you sure you got a good look at him?”
“Who else could it have been? It was him. It was David Huntington.”
“Then how do you account for him being at the house, that same day?”
“I can’t account for it. Just like I can’t account for that storm that suddenly whipped up.” Hogarth gripped the cross in his hand tightly. “The sky got as black as night and the waves were so high they were coming up onto the deck. I couldn’t keep the boat steady. Within no time it was breaking apart underneath me. I called down to Dominique but she didn’t respond. It was like she wasn’t on board anymore. Like neither one of them was. They would have answered me in such a storm. The boat’s not that big. But I never saw her or him after hearing them argue.”
“What happened then?”
“The storm was raging. I figured I was a dead man, that I’d go down with the ship.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I had my life jacket on, and though I went under, I came up again and managed to grab ahold of some of the debris, and finally made it to shore. The storm ended just as quickly as it had come up. Suddenly the seas were calm again. Still, it was late before I made back it to land, and when I got there, I went straight to Huntington House to tell them what had happened.”
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