Westhausen glanced over my shoulder in dramatic fashion, letting his gaze linger. “And yet you didn’t bring the police or FBI with you. Not even your tagalong hick sheriff.”
“Mort’s on his way. To pick me up. I used Uber to get over here.”
“I could have sent a car.”
“I prefer to keep this all business.”
“Your business is accusing me of these murders without a shred of proof?”
I just looked at him. “Who would believe a combination of Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk was capable of murder?”
“Heady company for sure, Jessica.”
“I doubt Branson and Musk would think so, especially once you’re charged and the truth comes out. Then your assets get drained and, in a perfect world, returned to the victims you stole from.”
Deacon Westhausen looked at me strangely, cocking his head to the side the way a dog might. “But this is far from a perfect world, isn’t it? Tell me something. How is it someone who makes stuff up for a living thinks they can take someone like me down? Well, I suppose there’s a first time for everything. Just not today.”
“I figure we’ve got five minutes before Mort arrives,” I told him. “Just enough time.”
“For what?”
“For me to tell you about my visit in New York with one Mark Falco. Falco was one of your stooges who stole data off the cell phones of marks like Hal Wirth after being matched with them on a dating service. He claimed he knew nothing, and he was telling the truth. He didn’t know a thing, but something he gave us—well, that helped a lot.”
Westhausen remained silent, his expression remaining flat and fixed.
“Nothing about the information he collected going out, but from the money coming in. The money that magically appeared in Falco’s account thanks to an offshore, off-the-books bank in the Caymans. Impossible to trace with one exception: the most obtuse of links to that same shell company that owned the boat Armand Dejong was living on in Cabot Cove Marina. Probe a bit deeper and I’m sure we’ll find that account is yours.”
“No one’s going to believe it, Jessica. You’re smart enough to know that.”
“I guess I have more faith in people’s ability to believe the truth than you do, Deacon. See, you thought this all out so well, covered your tracks at every juncture, except one.”
I watched him stew, enjoying the upper hand I was holding even as I stalled just a bit for Mort and his deputies to arrive.
“Hal Wirth trusted you, considered you a friend. But you saw him as nothing but a mark, a dollar sign followed by a whole bunch of zeros to add to your coffers.”
“I barely even knew the man.”
“You came to his Labor Day party.”
“Everyone in town came to his Labor Day party,” Westhausen sneered, recovering a measure of his bravado. “You can’t prove any of this and you know it.”
“You’re right. I can’t. But Hal can.”
Westhausen’s expression seemed to crack as he tried for a laugh and then a smirk, failing both times. “Hal’s dead, Jessica. Do I need to remind you about that? And he was little more than a total stranger to me.”
I nodded at him, taking the bait. “The thing about books, Deacon, is that they live on, published or not. And Hal Wirth dedicated his memoir to you.”
The moment froze between us; even the air stilled, until I resumed.
“That dedication reads, ‘For my friend Deacon, who understands that life is about more than money.’” I stopped to let those words sink in. “Strange for a man you didn’t know to dedicate his book to you, instead of to his wife and daughter. Then again, you were someone he trusted, someone he considered a friend, someone who recommended a matching service called LOVEISYOURS to him,” I told him, recalling the words from the manuscript of Hal’s memoir:
A good friend, a man whose judgment I trusted, recommended I give them a try, swearing by his own experience. I won’t mention his name because you probably wouldn’t believe he’d ever need to use an Internet dating service. And if it was good enough for a man like him, what did I have to lose?
Only his life, I thought sadly, returning my attention to Westhausen.
“You owned LOVEISYOURS, didn’t you? The whole site was a setup. You hired Larry Dax, aka Sean Booker, to be your stooge. He might not have known exactly who he was looking for, or maybe he was afraid to tell me in so many words because he knew the FBI was listening in on our conversation. So he slipped me that boat registration he knew would lead me to you.”
Westhausen stood before me motionless, not seeming to even breathe.
“So, Deacon, how many of these victims did you know personally, like you knew Hal?”
He smirked at me, the gesture lacking all measure of confidence.
“Let’s try another question, then,” I resumed. “How long have you been doing this?”
“I honestly can’t say.”
“But it’s how you made your initial fortune, isn’t it? The nest egg from which you built an empire. So here’s what I really can’t figure out: Why keep doing it once you became rich beyond comprehension? Why take the risk, especially of personally selecting a victim?”
Westhausen’s eyes flashed as he processed his options. I knew those eyes all too well from my experiences over the years: the eyes of a predator sizing up its prey, assessing its size and strength and whether it was vulnerable to attack.
His smirk stretched into a thin smile. “With all your money and success, why do you keep writing?”
“Because I enjoy it.”
Deacon Westhausen didn’t speak, only nodded and let a tight grin claim his expression as Mort’s cruiser headed up the drive, trailed by a pair of his deputies. Lights flashing but no sirens.
“Tell me one thing, Jessica,” Westhausen said to me. “Have you ever encountered anyone like me before, in fiction or fact?”
“No,” I said as I heard tires grind to a halt behind me. “But you’re right, Deacon. There really is a first time for everything.”
About the Authors
Jessica Fletcher is a bestselling mystery writer who has a knack for stumbling upon real-life mysteries in her various travels. Donald Bain, the author of more than one hundred and twenty books, collaborates with Jon Land on this bestselling series.
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Murder, She Wrote--A Date with Murder Page 24