Calypso (The Harry Starke Novels Book 8)

by Blair Howard

  The food—traditional US breakfast fare except for the Johnnycakes—was quickly dispensed with and the table cleared. It was time to get back to reality, at least for an hour or two.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I began, once everyone had refilled their coffee cups, “that this investigation is more than I want to fool with, especially here and now, but I made a promise, and I’ll keep it, but on my… I should say our terms.” I looked at Amanda. She shrugged, seemingly unconcerned.

  “Hey, Tommy,” I said as he walked up onto the patio. “Grab some coffee and take a seat. We were just about to get started.”

  He nodded, said hello to everyone, and sat—no coffee.

  “Mornings only,” I said. “We’ll try to get done each day by one o’clock. Hopefully we’ll get ’er done in two or three days at the most. How? You may well ask.” I looked around the table. No one did. “Okay, I’ll tell you anyway.” No one laughed. Hell, can’t say as I blame ’em.

  “First, we need to get the rest of the interviews done. Kate and I will do that this morning. Bob, we don’t need you for that, but if you want to sit in, you can. The more the merrier.”

  “Sure,” Bob said. “Might as well. I’ve got nothing else to do.”

  “Good,” I said. “What I’d like you to do then is sit across the room from me, where I can see you. You know the drill.” He grinned. He did know it. It was a routine we used to both intimidate and look for tells.

  I sat for a moment, thinking, sipping on my coffee, then said, “We now know, or at least we think we know, that our Gabrielle was not the saintly creature we assumed her to be, or at least that I assumed her to be. Now we know for sure, from what Sebastian told us, that she was playing the field. Lucy suggested Jeffery Margolis and just about everyone else in pants. When we put Jeff Margolis’s name to Carriere, he didn’t deny it. So that one at least looks good. We’ll have to see about the others. Any thoughts, Kate?”

  She started to shake her head, then said, “It would be a good idea to talk to the butler again, don’t you think?”

  I grinned at her, and shook my head. “You really think the butler did it?”

  She shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

  I had no answer for that. It would indeed be strange if the butler had done it, but in the light of what we knew now…. Hell, she could be right.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll talk to Moore again, but first let’s get the rest of the interviews completed. There’s no telling what else that family has been up to, and right now, with the exception of Leo Sr., everyone we’ve talked to seems to have had motive and possibly opportunity.

  “Tommy.” I looked across the table at him. “How did your interviews go yesterday?”

  He opened his iPad, flipped through several screens, and said, “These are some rare folks, Harry. The only normal one I talked to was Caspian, Leo and Vivien’s son. He seems like a well-adjusted kid. The rest… well, I’ll start with Georgina Walford, Evander’s girlfriend. She’s from New York, twenty-five, about as flighty a piece of work as I’ve ever come across. She’s interested in only one thing: herself. They’re planning to marry at Christmas.”

  “That’s strange,” I said. “Leo never mentioned it.”

  “No,” Tommy said. “I don’t think he knows. Anyway. As giddy and flighty as she is, she seems harmless enough, and she’ll look good on his arm. I’d say her physical charms are probably more important to Evander than her brain. As far as I can tell, she’s clean. She claims she was on the golf course with Alicia Margolis at the time of Gabby’s death. Apparently they play a couple of times a week together. Georgina claims to be a very good golfer, which is how she met…. Ah, that’s not important.” He flipped through several more screens.

  “Michael Collins, as you know, is Vivien Martan’s son by her previous marriage…. I’m surprised you haven’t met him. He’s the general manager here. Anyway, I found him virtually unreadable. He answered my questions in monosyllables when he could and two or three word sentences when he couldn’t. He was here at the resort when Gabby was killed. I haven’t checked that yet, but it should be easy enough to do. As far as I could tell, though, he’s clean too. Mrs. Collins….”

  “Wait,” I interrupted him. “Talk to me a little more about Michael Collins. Could he have been romantically involved with Gabrielle, do you think?”

  He thought for a moment, shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t know about her affairs. If I had, I would have questioned him further, but I didn’t, so….”

  “Okay,” I said. “Maybe we’ll need to talk to him again, as well the butler.” I cut Kate a look; she smiled back. “Go on with what you were about to say, Tommy, sorry.”

  “Yeah, so, Mrs. Collins, Laura, is a first-class bitch. She didn’t like Gabrielle at all, or any of the Martans, for that matter. She thinks Gabrielle was a spoiled brat, and she’s insanely jealous of her sister-in-law Alicia. The Collinses live in the suite of rooms directly below Gabrielle’s—another thorn in Laura’s side; she figured they should have been given the top-floor suite. Anyway, she claims that that’s where she was when Gabby died. Which means she has no alibi. And that’s about it.”

  “Do you have any suspicions about any of them?” I asked.

  He thought for a moment, then said, “As I said, they’re a nasty bunch, and all of them would be capable of killing, I think, but… I don’t think any of the ones I interviewed did it. None of them had motives, other than Laura, and that would be a hell of a stretch.”

  “Okay, Tommy. So what I’d like you do today is start chasing down alibis. Start with Sebastian. Here’s a list in the order I’d like it done. When we get finished with the interviews, there’ll be more, and we’ll help.” He started to rise, but I stopped him. “Stay here until we finish up. I want you to be fully in the loop, to know what we know.” He sat down again.

  “Next,” I said. “Tim. How about prints? Did you find anything out of the ordinary?”

  He was ready for me, iPad open. “Just one thing, which I’ll get to in a minute. I downloaded everything from the scanner onto my laptop: Ms. Patel’s findings and the scans of the family, friends, and staff. First, Ms. Patel’s people lifted latent prints on just about every surface inside all of the rooms and on the balcony. Whoever does the cleaning needs to be replaced. I ran comparisons and I found that everyone in the family, with the exception of Caspian and Georgina Walford, is represented, and I’m including Moore. The only anomaly is Jackson, the gardener. His prints were found in several places, including on the balcony rail.”

  “Whew,” I said. “Jackson too? All of them?”

  “Yup. At some time or another, they’ve all been in that room.”

  I looked at Kate. She raised her eyebrows.

  “Better add Jackson to the list,” I said.

  “Um, I… uh….” Tim hesitated, looked worried.

  “What?” I asked. “Spit it out.”

  “I…. uh. I ran all of the prints through AFIS,” he said, very quickly.

  “You did what?” I shot a quick glance at Tommy. He didn’t seem bothered, but Tim’s… hobbies… weren’t something I needed a sworn officer to know about. “Damn it, Tim!”

  “Well I had to! It’s a murder case, right? I was looking for criminal matches.”

  “What did I tell you?” I growled. “I should fire your ass right here and now.”

  “Oh leave him alone,” Kate said, smiling. “He was just doing his job.”

  I glared at her, then at Tim. He grinned back at me.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I got in and out without anyone knowing. I used Kate’s codes and passwords—”

  Kate stopped smiling very suddenly. “You did what?”

  “Well he said we’d get you to do it, so I thought—”

  “That’s your problem!” Kate yelled at him. “You think too much.”

  “Oh leave him alone,” I said dryly. “He was just doing his job. You said so yourself. So, did
you find anything?”

  “Not… really. In 2009 Georgina was charged with stealing a $3500 bracelet from a Nordstrom in New York. She copped a plea, did no time, just five years’ probation. That’s all. Everyone else is clean.”

  I looked at Tommy. He rolled his eyes and smiled.

  “She was just a kid, nineteen,” I said. “Otherwise she wouldn’t have gotten off so lightly, which is what you won’t do if you pull any more of that hacking stuff. You understand?”

  “Yes, boss. Never again.”

  “How come I have a hard time believing you?”

  He shrugged, grinned at me, then looked at Sammie, who smiled fondly at him.

  Jeez.

  I slid my arm out of the sling and laced my fingers together behind my neck, leaned back in my chair, and stared up at the slowly rotating fan directly above. What the hell have I gotten myself into?

  I had no answer to that, so I leaned forward, slipped my arm back into the sling, and looked at Kate, my eyebrows raised in question. She did that thing she does with her mouth, and said nothing.

  “Yeah, right?” I said, to nobody in particular. “What a friggin’ mess. Look, I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t agreed to do this, but I did, and now I’m stuck with it. You guys, however, are not. I know, I know,” I said, as both Kate and Bob opened their mouths to protest, “but I mean it. This is just not fair on you. I do want you to know how much I appreciate you doing it, though, all of you.”

  “What the hell else would we be doing for Christ’s sake?” Bob asked sarcastically. “Lying around on the beach, swimming, fishing, golfing, drinking, and eating? You know how much I hate all that stuff.” That brought a snicker from the rest of the group.

  “Okay, let’s get to it. Jacque, Wendy, Tim, Sam, you guys go enjoy yourselves. The rest of us, let’s get to work. Let’s get it done.”

  Chapter 14

  Monday November 14, 10am

  We arrived at the Mount to find most of our principals sitting in the dining room waiting for us. The mood of the room was one of resentment, even hostility.

  “So, you finally decided to turn up. About damn time too.” Leo Jr. looked as if he might have been drinking. I looked at my watch. It was just ten minutes to ten; we were, in fact, a few minutes early.

  I ignored Leo. “I could do with some coffee, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” I said to the gathering.

  “In the pot on the sideboard. Help yourself.” It was Vivien who spoke. I helped myself to a cup, put it down on the sideboard, opened my iPad, and then turned to face them.

  “This morning we need to interview Jeffery and Alicia Margolis, you, Vivien, Evander, Mr. Collins, Mr. Jackson, and Mr. Moore, and we’ll take you in that order. The rest of you may leave, but please stay close in case we need to talk to you again.”

  “Why me?” Michael Collins asked. “Why do you want to talk to me again? I already talked to Lieutenant Quinn.”

  “Yes, you did,” I told him, “but we have come into some new information, and we just want to run a couple of things by you. You too, Mr. Moore. So, if the rest of you will take a seat, watch TV or… something. We’ll get to you all as soon as we can. Now, Mr. Margolis. If you wouldn’t mind following us through to Mr. Martan’s office, we’ll get started…. Er… no, Mrs. Margolis,” I said, as she began to get to her feet. “We need to talk to your husband alone.”

  “But I—”

  “It’s all right, Alicia. I’ll manage.”

  I once again seated myself behind Leo Martan’s desk, opened my iPad, laid it down, and set the recorder beside it. Kate sat just to my right at the end of the desk. Bob took a seat beside the window to my left, where I could see him and he could see Margolis, whom we placed in front of the desk some six feet away from it, in the center of the room, isolating him and hopefully making him very uncomfortable.

  I turned on the recorder and stated the date, time, and those present for the record, and then asked Margolis if he would mind answering a few questions. He didn’t.

  “Kate,” I said, picking up my iPad, “would you mind taking the lead?”

  She picked up her own iPad, looked at Margolis, flipped through several screens, looked at him again, flipped through several more. I smiled to myself. I knew exactly what she was doing, and it worked. The longer she took, the more uncomfortable he became.

  “Jeffery? Is it alright if I call you that?” she began. “Or would you like me to call you Mr. Margolis?”

  “Jeff. Please call me Jeff.”

  She flipped through several more screens, then looked him directly in the eye, and for several seconds he held her gaze, and then he broke; he looked away.

  “So, Jeffery,” she said quietly. “I see from our background checks that you work for First Georgia Bank, and have since you graduated from college, correct?”

  He nodded.

  “Out loud, please, for the recorder.”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “And you’re quite well off: good credit, money in the bank, investments. You’ve done well.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “So, tell us about your affair with Gabrielle Martan.”

  The question hit him like a hammer. The color drained from his face, his knuckles whitened against the arms of the chair, and he visibly began to sweat.

  “I… no…. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t—I never….”

  “Yes, you did,” Kate said gently. “You don’t think you could keep that kind of thing secret, do you? In this house? No. It seems everyone knows.”

  “No… no…. No!” He began to get to his feet.

  “Sit down, please, Mr. Margolis,” I said. “There’s no point denying it. We know. Everyone knows.”

  “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God….” He looked up at me, then at Kate. “Alicia?” he asked. “Please don’t tell her. She’ll…. Oh my God.”

  Kate shrugged. “She probably already knows,” she said. “So why don’t you get it off your chest. Tell us about it.”

  “I told you. There’s—there’s nothing to tell.”

  “Bob,” Kate said. “Would you mind going to the dining room and asking Mrs. Margolis—”

  “No!” Jeff shouted.

  Bob smiled and stayed put.

  “I’ll tell you,” Jeff said. “Just keep Alicia out of it, okay? All right?”

  No one said anything. We just sat there and watched him sweat.

  “It was just… it was…. I don’t know what it was.” He was wringing his hands, staring down at them. “She… I…. It was about a year ago. I was on the balcony. Alicia was out, gone somewhere, I don’t know. Gabby was out there too. Sunbathing. She didn’t have a top on…. She caught me watching her. I couldn’t help it. She was… beautiful.” He looked up. “I didn’t kill her. I loved her.” He looked down again. We waited.

  Finally: “Go on,” Kate said gently.

  “Well, she didn’t seem to care, about me watching her, I mean. In fact, she seemed to enjoy it. I tried not to look, but… and then she started touching herself….”

  Again, he stopped talking.

  “Go on,” Kate said.

  “She had her hand inside her bikini bottom. She asked me over for a drink. I knew what would happen if I went, but I couldn’t help myself. That’s all. That’s how it began…. I… loved her. After that… well, we saw each other often, several times a week, whenever Alicia….”

  “And you’re sure Alicia didn’t know,” I asked.

  He looked up, seemingly surprised by the question. “No, she didn’t know. We were careful, very careful.”

  I looked at Kate. She grimaced and shook her head. Fortunately, he was staring down at his hands and didn’t see her. I looked at Bob. He was smiling broadly.

  “Jeff,” Kate said. “How can you say that? Sebastian Carriere, her fiancé, he knew. Your sister-in-law Lucy knew, which means Leo Jr. knew, and that….”

  “No. Alicia didn’t know. She couldn’t have. If s
he knew, she would have said something. She would have done something. You have no idea what she’s like. Her temper… she…. I would have known. I would have,” he insisted. “I would have known.”

  “You say you didn’t kill her. Do you have any idea who might have?”

  He started to shake his head, then stopped, thought for a moment. “Sebastian. You said he knew. He did it. He killed her. If he knew, he must have been jealous. She was going to dump him. She told me. She also told me he wanted money. Hell, they all did. Leo, Evander—but she wouldn’t give it to them.” He paused, looked at Bob, then me, and finally Kate. “It wasn’t me. I loved her. I loved her so much….” And then the tears came: just watery eyes at first, and then he was sobbing uncontrollably. We looked at each other, embarrassed, and then he seemed to snap out of it.

  “I think I need to call my lawyer,” he said, and again he started to get to his feet.

  “There’s no need for that,” I said. “You’re not being charged with anything. I have just one more question for you, and then you can go. Where were you between noon and two o’clock on Saturday?”

  He looked down, shaking his head. “I don’t have an alibi, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Fine, but where were you?”

  “I was with… I was….” He sighed. “I went for a run. I needed to be alone, to take some time to think…. I’d talked to her early that morning, from the balcony. It must have been around ten, maybe a little later. She said she wasn’t going to see me anymore. We argued. She wouldn’t listen. I didn’t know what to do…. I walked for miles. I walked the golf course, to the ninth green, and from there to the beach, and then I followed the shore until…. I don’t know. When I came back, the police were here. You were here. I couldn’t believe she was… that she was… dead.”

  “Why don’t you go clean yourself up before someone sees you?” I said. “But stay close. We may need to talk to you again.”

  He stood slowly, nodded twice, and then turned and walked to the door, his shoulders slumped forward, like an old man. I kinda felt sorry for him.

  “Okay,” I said, when the door had closed behind him. “Unless he’s one hell of an actor, I’m inclined to believe him: I don’t think he did it. What do you think?”