Admit One (36 page)

Torie laughed. “Like you can make me? I will
own
this place before I am through with the Hawbakers this time. I will
destroy you.”

“And your little dog Toto, too,” Mason said, coming around from behind her. “You need to leave, sober up and then find a good psychiatrist.”

Victoria started to sneer at him, seemed to realize who he was, and then her bottom lip began to quiver.

“Don’t even think about trying to play the damsel in distress now,” Mason told her, his tone singularly unimpressed. “I’m afraid you’re not a good enough actress.”

Expression changing to one of vitriol again, she refocused on Allison. “But you are, aren’t you,
poor little
sister Allison? Everybody’s sweetheart. Does he know you killed your own baby?”

Allie’s hand snaked out before she even knew what she was doing. Victoria’s head snapped back, her hand flying to cradle her cheek. Then she shrieked, launched herself toward Allie, but Mason caught her around the waist.

“Touch her,” Mason said in Torie’s ear “and I will forget that you are a woman. Now might be a good time to call Will,” he suggested to Allie while Torie fought and bucked against his hold.

“No need,” came a voice from behind her, and Allie turned to see Will emerging from the path that led to Josie’s.  “I’m already here.”

WILL
stood behind the two way mirror, watching Victoria, her expression sullen, sitting in the interview room next to her puffed up toad of an attorney. Her beautiful face was ravaged from alcoholic excess, lack of sleep, and alternate bouts of rage and hysterical weeping.

He had her for driving while intoxicated – her blood alcohol level was nearly twice the legal limit.

And while there was a certain poetic justice in that, the fact was that he needed answers. After talking to both Mason and Allie, getting their statements as to what had been said, Will realized that there was a bigger picture here, and that it wasn’t exactly the picture he thought he’d been piecing together.

Torie, no surprise, had lawyered up. And after several hours and several cups of strong coffee, seemed far more coherent than she had when he’d put her in handcuffs, spewing insults and accusations all the while.

The question, of course, was how to go about getting those answers. Her attorney had wisely advised her not to say anything, and so far she hadn’t. Alan emerged from the interview room, glanced at Will and shook his head.

“Sorry,” he said. “She’s still zipped up tighter than a nun’s habit.”

Will cast him a glance. “Probably not the best metaphor to use with this particular suspect.” Then he sighed and rubbed the tension from the back of his neck.

“I wonder what she had going with that guy.”

Will briefly closed his eyes. That guy. Tobias Abernathy.

Camellia’s husband.

Her face – and her son’s – swam into his mind’s eye, along with a flicker of guilt. But Will pushed that aside. He needed to concentrate.

Tobias Abernathy – or his suspected remains, at any rate. They were waiting on dental records for confirmation – had been pulled from the blackened shell of his antique store by Savannah firefighters last night. Supposedly out of town for the whole weekend, Abernathy had returned for reasons they didn’t yet know – though Will wondered if it may have something to do with the visit he’d paid to the man’s business, which his wife had apparently told him about – bypassing his home and heading straight for his store.

While his cell phone had been destroyed in the fire, the Savannah-Chatham PD had the LUDs which showed a thirty minute call earlier in the evening with the number associated with Camellia Abernathy’s account. They had confirmed that phone call, and its content, when they’d delivered the news of her husband’s presumed death.

Will was grateful that the Abernathys didn’t reside within his jurisdiction. The idea of having to tell Cam that her husband had died made him sick to his stomach.

Those LUDs had also shown a number of calls and texts between Tobias Abernathy’s phone and the number registered to Victoria Hawbaker.  A flurry of them having taken place around midnight on the night of the fire. According to the time the first nine-one-one call came in, the fire was estimated to have begun around twelve-thirty. GPS showed that both Abernathy’s and Victoria’s phones had been in Savannah at that time.

Will was going to have to turn Torie over to the SCPD soon, as their suspicious death – in which Torie was a person of interest, due to the timing of those texts – trumped his DWI. It was basically professional courtesy, and the fact that he sometimes shot hoops with the investigator assigned to the case, that had allowed him to keep her here this long.

“I’m going to try to talk to her,” Will said.

Alan shot him a sharp look. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Probably about as wise as climbing into a cage with a rabid pit bull.”

Alan shook his head. “Well, good luck to you. And watch your balls. I’m pretty sure I heard her saying something when you brought her in about wanting them on a platter.”

“Just make sure no one gives her fava beans and a nice chianti.”

The sound of Alan’s chuckle followed him through the door.

“My client has nothing more to say,” her attorney told Will, even as Torie’s eyes fixed on him, watching him stroll toward her. Will ignored the attorney, considered his approach, and then placed his palms flat on the table.

“I’d like to talk to you,” he told Victoria flat out as he leaned down to look her in the eye. “Just me and you. Before you’re transported to Savannah.”

Her attorney scoffed, telling Will to keep dreaming, but Torie’s eyes flickered.   

“Why should I talk to you?” she finally said.

“Ms. Hawbaker, I would advise you to –”

“Because I think you’ve gotten yourself into a heap of trouble,” Will said over the attorney’s protests. “And I’d like to see if I can help sort it out.”

“Help?” she gave a derisive snort. “More like set me up.”

“That’s not true, Victoria. You know me better than that.”

“Ms. Hawbaker, I have to strenuously advise you against –”

“Shut up, Harold,” she told the man without looking at him. She was too busy looking at Will. Less emotional – and far more sober – than she’d been before, Will could once again see her clever brain working. The fact that she had driven intoxicated to River Oaks, had gone after Allie and caused a scene, had actually tried to do physical damage to him when he’d been cuffing her as opposed to trying to turn it into something with sexual overtones, told him that she’d been truly out of her mind with rage – and possibly grief. In all the years he’d known her, he’d never seen Victoria act without calculation. Most of the emotions she displayed were faked or at the very least exaggerated, designed to manipulate her chosen audience. That she hadn’t considered the consequences of her actions suggested that something truly traumatic had happened.

He held her gaze while she studied his face. “Yes,” she finally said. “I do know you better. You’re a fucking Boy Scout.”

Will didn’t say anything to that. She’d either talk to him or she wouldn’t. It all depended on what she thought she had to gain.

“Fine,” she agreed after a moment, to the sputtering horror of her attorney. “You can leave now,” she told the man.

“Ms. Hawbaker –”

“I said leave,” she bit off.

The man gathered up his briefcase, his sour expression lending him the countenance of a toad who’d swallowed a lemon instead of a fly. He shot Will a nasty look, but left them alone without another word of caution to his client.

“May I?” Will nodded toward the chair.

“By all means.” Torie waved her hand graciously.

Will sat, and then they looked at each other across the table. “If you don’t feel comfortable, or you want your attorney back at any point, just say so,” Will said.

“Fat lot of good that idiot’s done me.” She slid down in the chair, eyeing him skeptically. “Not that I’m expecting any better from you.”

“Alan,” Will called out. “I’d like you to turn off the audio please.”

“Sounds naughty,” Torie said, though there was a bitter edge to her innuendo. She looked brittle, like the slightest bump would break her.

“I told you I wanted to talk, just you and me. If you want this on the record, I’ll have him turn it back on.”

She shrugged, the movement jerky.  “So talk.”

“Why did you think I was setting you up?”

She hesitated so long that Will almost thought she wouldn’t answer. But being a cop as long as he’d been, he’d learned the value of silence.

“Where did you get that key?” she finally said.

It was a gamble, offering her information, but Will figured that in this instance it was a calculated risk. “In an apartment belonging to Jimmy Owen.”

“The guy who delivered furniture for me?”

Will nodded. He’d checked out Owen’s employment record, such as it was, with the auction house. He’d worked for them as an independent contractor – which Will had taken to mean under the table.

“You said he was dead.”

Well, the lab results weren’t in, but judging by the amount of blood stains the Luminol had revealed on that boat, combined with the severed arm, Will thought it was highly likely. They’d gone over the video from Ms. Bushnell’s phone, and while positive identification wasn’t possible, the man on the motorcycle who’d cleaned out Jimmy’s apartment fit the body type of his cousin Brian. The motorcycle, Will guessed, could have suffered the same fate as Allie’s car. There’d been no sign of it at the house where they’d found Owen’s body.

“Looks that way.”

“What did he do? Why were you investigating him?”

“I don’t have all the evidence I need yet to say for certain.”

She shot him a look that suggested she didn’t have time for cop speak. “What. Did he do.”

“I
suspect,”
Will emphasized, “that he may have been involved in various types of burglary and theft as a means of subsidizing his income from the warehouse.”

“You think he was planning to burglarize my storage unit.”

Will shrugged. “Do you know of any other reason he would have had to be interested in the contents?”

Her brows drew together. “What other reason would there be?”

“You tell me.”

“I have no idea.
I
certainly didn’t give him the key, if that’s what you’re intimating.”

Will watched her across the table, letting the silence drag out. “That key,” he said eventually “it only had one ribbon on it when we found it. You said your spare keys – the personal ones you keep in your office – have two.”

“So? It’s a ribbon. Ribbons fall off.”

Will nodded his agreement. “We found a piece of that same ribbon next to Eugene Hawbaker’s grave.”

“That vandalism thing? I thought someone said that was teenagers messing around.”

“Someone was digging up that grave.”

Her delicately arched brows shot skyward. “I knew Allie was interested in finding out all about your ancestors, but that might be carrying things a bit far.”

“It’s called grave robbing,” he went on, ignoring her jibe. “Which is a felony in this state. And that,” he added softly “brings us to Tobias Abernathy, purveyor of fine antiques. And possibly stolen antiquities.”

“What?” She laughed, incredulous. “You can’t be serious. Why would Tobias waste his time digging up some moldering old corpse? I think
you’re
the one who’s digging. In fact, I think you’re just saying that because you know…” She trailed off, looking away. The breath she drew was shaky.

“Know what?” Will leaned forward. “What was he to you, Victoria?”

“Why should I tell you anything? You’ll only twist it around to fit the narrative you want to hear.”

“We’re not on the record now, remember? Nothing you say will be used against you.”

“He was…” Her bottom lip quivered and she pressed her lips together before continuing. “Everything to me.”

Will rubbed his chin. “You’re aware that the man had a family.”

“Of course I’m aware.”

“I’m just saying that if he was everything to you – and I’m assuming you’re talking in romantic terms, though you have a funny way of showing it, considering some of our previous conversations – that perhaps that sentiment wasn’t quite as reciprocal as you might have liked.”

If the daggers shooting from her eyes were real, he would have been flayed open.

“So you think I killed him, is that it? Because he chose to remain married?”

“Jealousy is not an uncommon motive for homicide.”

“The problem, Willis, is that you think so inside the box. Why should I care if Tobias has…had,” she swallowed again “his little hausfrau and his little brat. I have no intentions of ever being anyone’s wife again, let alone mother, and he – unlike your brother – understood that. Our relationship was completely separate from his domestic life. Why on earth would I want to kill him when our arrangement worked out so well for everyone?”