Christy Barritt - Squeaky Clean 07 - Mucky Streak (9 page)

“I don’t expect you to have the answers. I’m just trying to gain insight into the family. I was hoping you could help.”

“The only reason I agreed to meet was because of Garrett. I know he needs answers.
Anyone in his shoes would. I’d hate to seem unsupportive.”

I had a feeling that if I weren’t a woman,
Sebastian Royce would have suggested we meet in the sauna to discuss this. With cigars. He just seemed like a guy’s guy who was stuck in a mindset prevalent many decades ago.

“Can you tell me about your
friendship with Edward Mercer?”

The man stared out the window. “We met through a mutual love of polo. It was a stress reliever for both of us. We met here at the club a few times a we
ek to shoot the breeze.”

“Had anything been troubling Mr
. Mercer in the weeks leading up to his death?”

“Nothing other than the usual.”

“And what was the usual?”

“Being a successful CEO or Vice President of a company comes with a cost. There are long hours, hard decisions, people who like you just for your
money, charities that stick to you like a tick to a hunting dog. You trade one set of problems for another. When you can find people who are in similar places in life and whom you can relate with, it’s a welcome respite.”

“I see.”

“That was ten years ago. Ten years ago, I was just getting started and making my way up. We had a lot in common.”

“Had
Edward ever mentioned moving?”

He
raised his bushy eyebrows. “Moving?”

“There was something that Edward Mercer wanted to talk to his family about.
It must have been big if he wanted the whole family there.” Maybe Edward was going to own up to his own scandal. Doubtful, but maybe. “Perhaps it was about his job.”

“No, he loved his job. Talked about it all the time. Believed he could be making a difference. They were talking about him making the head honcho one day.” He leaned closer,
amusement sparkling in his eyes. “Head honcho. Sounds like a big deal, huh?”

I nodded, not wanting to offend the man, whose personality was an odd mix of self-
absorption and peculiar humor. “I suppose. So he wasn’t going anywhere?”

“Not that I was aware of. And he would have told me.”

“Do you think he was getting divorced?”

“I doubt it. They
didn’t have a perfect marriage, but Edward and Elizabeth seemed in it for the long haul. They’d adjusted.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “By adjusted, do you mean that
Elizabeth had come to terms with Edward’s unfaithfulness?”

He shrugged, as if I’d asked him about the weather. “I suppose.
”

“So, in your opinion, their relationship wasn’t caustic?”

“It may have been years ago when things first began to crumble. But they’d both gotten to the point where they accepted things for what they were. They were married in name only.”

“Excuse me. Mr.
Royce?” a new voice said.

I looked up and saw a man, probably in his
mid-thirties. He wore a button up shirt and khakis, and as he stood there tapping his foot and cradling an electronic tablet, he was the living, breathing definition of high strung.

“Yes, Kevin?”

“One of the board of directors is on the phone. He wants to speak with you.”

Sebastian shrugged. “Tell him I’ll call him later.”

“Sir, he says it’s important.”

Sebastian scowled this time. “I said, tell him I’ll call him later.”

Kevin stared at his boss for a moment and then scurried away. Sebastian scoffed when Kevin was out of sight. “He’s a faithful employee. Not necessarily a good one, though.”

“He’s your assistant?”

Sebastian nodded. “Has been for the past twelve years. Started as an intern. Surprisingly, he’s stuck with me.”

“You always bring him with you here to the country club?”

“I started coming here as a stress reliever from work. Now I bring my work here with me as a stress reliever. I handle my calls and correspondence here as often as possible. In between polo and golf, of course. So, yes, I do.”

I nodded and decided to ask the question pressing on my mind.
I wasn’t sure if it had to do with the case or my curiosity. “Are you married, Mr. Royce?”

“I tried four times. Now I’m thinking that maybe Edward and Elizabeth were on to something.”

His words made my heart feel heavy. Most of the time I still felt hope for my future. I wanted a marriage built on love and respect. I wanted to spend forever with someone.

What I didn’t want was to treat marriage like buying a car, enjoying it for a while, and then trading it in for something better or more exciting. I wanted to grow old with someone. I was even okay with the fact that one day the butterflies might wear off. That I’d see the other person at their worst. That there would be bad days and hard times and moments of angst. Even knowing that, I still wanted to be committed.

Mr. Royce wasn’t done. “Are you married, young lady?”

I fingered my engagement ring. “No, I’m not.”

“Smart girl. You’ll be even smarter if you stay single.”

“No offense, but that’s a horrible thing to say.” If I said “no offense” before an offensive statement, that made it okay, right?

“Not horrible. It’s the truth. People ask me my advice on success, and that’s always what I want to say. Of course, I never do. But what I really want to tell people is that in order to achieve big things, you’ve got to be focused. All my ex-wives did was take my money and make my life miserable. Whatever temporary happiness we had … it wasn’t worth it.”

Was that Riley’s thought process, also? He had to be focused in order to achieve his healing? Maybe this was everyone’s secret to success, and I was just now hearing about it.

I’d never considered myself idealistic—at least, not to the extreme—but that’s how I was feeling now. I wanted to believe that you could be focused
and
relationship minded.

Then I thought about my own life. Was the reason I wasn’t successful because I’d let people hold me back? I’d dropped out of college to help my dad. I hadn’t explored other job options
with my degree because I wanted to stay local and be closer to Riley.

Both of those things had gotten me nowhere. They’d left me with a crime scene cleaning business and a flash in the pan P.I. assignment.

“I made you think, didn’t I? There are people who’d pay big bucks to get advice from me, young lady. I gave you that one for free.” He snapped his fingers and pointed at me.

I couldn’t bring myself to
say, “Thank you.” No, make that I
refused
to thank him. People always trumped other things in life. As a Christian, that should be obvious to me.

I shook my head, feeling sorry for the man. I decided not even to acknowledge his statement.
“What were your thoughts on who committed the crime?”

“As a businessman, I don’t make assumptions.” He raised his hand and a waiter refilled his wine glass.

“As a businessman, certainly you make projections—on how much you’ll make for the year, amongst other things. You just assumed if you raised your hand, the waiter would refill your glass. We all make assumptions. Certainly you’ve given the murder of your friend some thought.”

Apparently, that entertained him because he chuckled. “I suppose it is all a matter of word choice.
Of course I thought about it. Who didn’t?”

“And?” I prodded.

“Edward did tell me—and I passed this on to the police—that his wife had felt uncomfortable with the way the tile man looked at her. I guess there was one occasion where she caught him in her bedroom.”

I perked. I hadn’t heard that yet. “What did he say? I’m assuming she confronted him.”

He nodded. “She did. He said he wanted to check out the tile work he’d done in the master bath to make sure the patterns matched.”

“Was he going through her things or simply in the room?”

“I seem to remember that he was looking at the pictures on her dresser. Despite that, she fired him. He wasn’t happy about that. Said he was depending on this job in order to pay his bills, that he’d turned down other jobs in order to complete the one at their home.”

“Didn’t they have a contract?”

“People like the Mercers knew how to write a contract, how to get out of them, how to make complicated clauses work in their favor. This worker knew that. He knew he wouldn’t stand a chance and that a lawsuit would be too expensive.”

“Sounds like they were sharks.”

He raised one of his bushy eyebrows again. “I call it survival of the fittest.”

By fittest, I
figured he meant richest. I didn’t dislike rich people, nor did I feel entirely comfortable around them. But rich, arrogant people who took advantage of the poor did bother me.

Despite
my thoughts on the social classes, one thing became clear. Perhaps the most promising suspect in my investigation was the same as the police’s: the tile guy. But since he was dead, no one might ever know the truth as to his guilt.

One other thought remained.
I’d heard of this man’s sporting goods stores before. And I knew they sold guns.

Which meant that
Sebastian Royce most likely owned some.

CHAPTER 10

As soon as I got back into the car, my phone rang. It was Jamie again.

“Perfect timing, girl. What’s going on?”

“Get this. Before Sebastian
Royce was a business mogul, he had several failed businesses. I’m not sure there’s any tie in to those businesses at all, but I figured it was worth mentioning.”

“You never know when those facts can come in handy.”

“I also discovered that the man used to be a sharpshooter several years ago. Won some contests even before abruptly dropping from the scene. He definitely had the know-how when it came to pulling the trigger with precision.”

“What would his motive be, though?”

“Okay, so you know he owns this chain of stores called Winners. He originally started the company fifteen years ago with a man named Warner Crush. Twelve years ago, the company had some problems and nearly split over differences and financial problems. Two years after that, Edward Mercer and his family died. Coincidence?”

“
Probably. But something about that timeline bothers me. Whatever happened to Warner Crush?”

“I was hoping you might ask. He actually started a new company, specializing
in just batting cages. His small chain of stories isn’t nearly as successful as Sebastian’s market-dominating enterprise. But he’s local. In fact, his headquarters is off of 21
st
St.”

“I know where I’m headed next.”

I pulled off into a gas station, typed the address into my phone, and ten minutes later, I pulled up at Swingers, an interesting name for a batting cage chain. The place wasn’t especially polished, but maybe batting cages weren’t supposed to be. I knew little about baseball.

I walked toward the building, which apparently operated as not just the company headquarters, but also one of their flagship locations. Everything was white,
accented in a hideous shade of orange.

Inside, I ignored the smell of leather and sweat,
I went straight for the desk. I pulled out my wallet and flashed my driver’s license, hoping the guy wasn’t paying attention. “I need to see Warner Crush about an investigation.”

The man raised his eyebrows and nodded behind him. “Go through
the door in the back. You can talk to Mr. Crush’s secretary.”

I’d gotten past one gatekeeper. Would I make it past two?

I bypassed the sporting equipment, entered a hallway lined with painted cement blocks, and searched the names on the doors until I saw Warner Crush’s. I pushed inside and flashed my driver’s license again at the fresh-out-of-high-school girl sitting behind the desk, staring at her phone.

“My name’s Gabby. I’m a
P.I., and I need to talk to Mr. Crush.”

She stared at me, never moving her head, and her phone still raised. “I’m sorry. He’s busy.”

“This is important.” I stared at the door behind her, wondering if that’s where Warner was now.

She blinked, her head still not moving. “You’ll need an appointment.
”

“You do understand I’m in the middle of an active investigation, right?  This is a little more serious than a game of Candy Crush.”

Her bottom lip dropped down. I’d hit the nail on the head. But her moment of awe was short lived.

“He has a very busy schedule.”

“It’s about Sebastian Royce.”

Suddenly, the door behind her opened. Warner Crush stepped out. Bingo!
“You’re investigating Sebastian?”

“In
relation to the death of the Mercer family.”

He looked a
t me a moment, and I could see something simmering in his gaze. Finally, he nodded. I was pretty sure that was satisfaction I saw in the depths of his eyes. He was trying to disguise it as duty and responsibility, though. “I can give you a few minutes. I need to go test out one of the machines. You mind if we talk out there?”

I smiled. “If that’s what it takes.”

**
*

“So, how did you and Sebastian know each other?” I asked Warner Crush, who in the few minutes since I’d met him had already become “The Crusher” in my mind.

Through the course of our initial
chitchat, I’d learned that The Crusher was a former minor league baseball player who’d done a number of jobs throughout the years, including being a high school baseball coach. Later, he managed some travel baseball teams. Then he’d started the business with Sebastian, and now he ran these batting cages.

He was
well over six foot tall, had the build of a wrestler, and closely cropped blond hair.

He took a swing at the ball.

If I knew anything about baseball, I might try to impress him now. But I didn’t, so I didn’t. I just tugged my helmet in place as I watched him swing and grunt and avoid eye contact.

“
Sebastian Royce and I met because we were both on the board for a local sports association. We started talking. I had managing experience and a history in playing the minors. He had business sense and some cash.”

“How’d he get that
thus stated cash? From what I understand, he lost money on his past businesses before hitting it big with Winners.”

That earned me a glance and a snort.
“He has a way of schmoozing with the right people. He can find investors faster than Everth Cabrera can steal a base.”

I had no idea who Everth was, but I assumed the man was a baseball player and that he was fast.
“I guess it didn’t work out that well. At least not in the early years.”

The Crusher
hit a ball even harder. Was he really testing the machine or was he getting out some pent up anger? I didn’t know the man well enough to say.

“Sebastian
may have been able to raise capital, but he didn’t have a lot of sense. At least, not back then.”

“What happened between the two of you?”

He missed a ball and let an expletive escape. He quickly recovered and got himself in position to hit again. “He thought I was ruining the store. I thought he was ruining the store. I guess he was right. We split ways and the store succeeded.”

“Why would you think he was ruining the store?”

“I thought he wanted to grow too fast. All the capital we had disappeared in the first year. We weren’t turning a profit. He, in the meantime, thought the solution was to borrow more, to open more stores, to expand rapidly. He thought I’d done a poor job at managing employees, that we’d hired too many, that we were paying too much.”

“What happened after you guys split?”

The Crusher shrugged. “I only heard rumors. I sold my share of the company to him, so officially, I was out of the loop.”

“Unofficially?”

“I heard a few things. Nothing confirmed. But you said you’re investigating the murder of the Mercers, right?”

I nodded. “That’s correct.”

“I always thought it was strange. I have a hunch that Sebastian took a loan from Edward Mercer. We had a couple of social events over at their house, and I saw them in some heated discussions.”

I tried to remain expressionless. “Is that right?”

He hit a button and the machine must have stopped. He set his bat against the wall and turned toward me. This was really what this meeting was all about, wasn’t it? The Crusher couldn’t stand the fact that Sebastian had created a successful business for himself while his had floundered. With that knowledge, I had to try and ascertain the truth from anything he told me.

“
I know Sebastian and Edward had a huge fallout about a week before the murders. I wonder sometimes if Edward’s death was the only reason the company was successful. Since Sebastian didn’t have the money to pay Edward back, it was practically free cash.”

“What kind of loan are we talking about here? How big?”

“To keep the stores open, he needed around ten million.”

My eyes widened.
“That’s a nice chunk of change. Did Edward Mercer have ten million to loan?”

“
I couldn’t tell you that. I know his wife was loaded, but she kept a tight rein on her money. I heard rumors that it was off the books, thanks to some foreign bank account.”

I leaned a
gainst the metal cage behind me. I wondered exactly what Elizabeth Mercer would have thought about a risky loan like that. “Do you think your friend—former friend—is capable of murder?”

“Something
always seemed a little off about him. Some people called him eccentric. But maybe the line between eccentric and crazy is thin.”

“Did you ever tell the police about your theory? About this rumor?”

“No, I didn’t. I had no proof. Without proof, you have nothing.”

He should have gone to the police because maybe they could have found proof. I didn’t voice my thoughts aloud.
“What about the person who told you that information? Did they have proof? I’m assuming the information came from someone who still worked for Sebastian Enterprises.”

“Sebastian’s assistant spilled the news.”

Kevin?
“How do you know his assistant?”

A smirk formed across his face. “He uses the batting cages here.”

“What?”

“I know. It’s odd. But
he said he has to get away from the toxic environment where he works. He comes in every day after he’s put in his hours. I guess this is his way of rebelling. He has to be a ‘yes man’ all day. Depending on how stressful his day was, he might say too much sometimes.”

“Why doesn’t he quit then?”

“Sebastian pays too well. This guy knows too much. Besides, I told him to go to the police, but he refused. He was afraid he might end up dead if he did.”