DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS (3 page)

“That’s something, I guess.”

Dixon shrugged. “They’re not finished with the penthouse suite or Laney Montgomery’s room yet, but there’s nothing conclusive.”

Ethan turned to look at him. “Anything on the gun or bullets?”

He nodded. “The gun is untraceable—big surprise. The bullets were fired from the gun that was found at the scene. The partial print on the gun barrel hasn’t been through the system yet.”

“What did you think about Whitley and Stamps?”

“I think they’re telling the truth, at least about where they were last night,” Dixon said.

“You know, Stamps is kind of pitiful, isn’t he? I mean his wife’s dead, and they never had any children. Apparently he’s got no one except a housekeeper.”

Dixon nodded. “It’s hard not to believe him, isn’t it? Home by himself. Can’t say whether his housekeeper can vouch for him because she went to bed early with a headache.”

“Yeah,” Ethan agreed. “That was either a sad but honest accounting of his lonely evening at home or a truly clever way to avoid having to depend on someone lying for him. The housekeeper went to bed early, therefore she can’t say if he was there or not.”

“I think I do believe him. He seems as though the kidnapping and his trial have taken all the starch out of him.”

“And I guess Whitley’s alibi is solid,” Ethan said wryly, his eyes on Laney as she uncrossed her legs, recrossed them and pulled her raincoat more tightly around her.

“I don’t like him a bit—and that goes double for his lawyer.”

“Pretty slick, aren’t they?” Ethan sighed. “But unless Whitley got his attorney to come over here and pop Sills, I’m not sure how he could be involved. At least we know he was where he says he was.”

“I wouldn’t believe Whitley if he told me his name was Whitley,” Dixon said. “But no matter what I think, those alibis are good. Still, that doesn’t mean one or both of them couldn’t have hired someone.”

“Stamps doesn’t have any money—or at least none we know about. And like I said, I can’t see Whitley.” He thought about something. “Who went through their financial records during the kidnapping case?”

“No idea, but I’m going to check,” Dixon said. “Seems like I heard that Whitley had a couple of big deposits and payouts that matched the time frame of the kidnapping. That’s when Whitley tried to implicate Sills, but the forensic accountants couldn’t find any proof of where the money came from.”

“The amounts matched exactly the amount of money that Bentley Woods deposited in Chicago. With all Whitley’s whining about Sills, I’ll bet the senator’s records were subpoenaed, too,” Dixon responded. “No sense reinventing the wheel, if they’re already there in the case file.”

“Good point. You want to check on that?” Ethan asked.

“Yep. And you’re going to tackle Elaine Montgomery,” Dixon said, not a question.

Ethan nodded toward the glass. “I’m going to find out what she’s holding back.”

“Holding back?” Dixon asked him. “What do you think she’s holding back on?”

“I don’t know, but I can see it in her eyes. She’s hiding something.”

“You can see it in her eyes,” Dixon said, his voice sounding choked, as if he were trying to suppress a laugh. “Those big blue ones?”

“Bite me,” Ethan muttered.

“Come on Delancey. You’ve seen her for what, maybe ten minutes total, and now you can read her mind?” He paused before continuing. “Or maybe it’s not her mind you’re interested in. Last night you were all about her legs.”

“Don’t be crass. She’s our only witness
and
she’s a victim. Look at her.” Ethan gestured toward the glass as Laney wet her lips, then clamped a hand tightly over her mouth as if she were holding back tears or a scream as she stared into space. “There’s something on her mind and it’s not just the murder of her boss.”

“She looks nervous, but lots of people are terrified of being questioned by the police.”

“Nope. She’s hiding something,” Ethan muttered, his gaze still on her. After a moment, he said to Dixon, “So what are you up to now?”

“You don’t want to double-team her like we did Whitley and Stamps?” Dixon pressed.

“No,” Ethan said with exaggerated patience. “I think I can handle her alone.”

“Okay, if you’re sure. One thing I’m going to do is check with the CSI folks about what they’ve pulled from the hotel room. I’m afraid we’re not going to have much, if all the guy did was sneak in, pop the senator, try to take her out, then hightail it out of there. We’ll probably be lucky to get anything other than what was found on the fire stairs. Then I’ll get started on pulling the Chalmet kidnapping file and see what they got on Sills.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you later then.”

“Watch yourself in there,” Dixon said as he left.

Ethan stepped out of the viewing room and into the interview room.

Laney Montgomery looked up from inspecting her fingernails. “You know, I was printed when I started work for Senator Sills,” she said, holding up her hands, palms out. “I tried to tell them but nobody would listen to me.”

Ethan sat down without speaking.

“In case you’re not familiar with state government policy,” she went on, “employees of any public official are required to be fingerprinted. My prints are on file, here and with the FBI.”

Ethan picked up one of the folders he’d brought into the room with him and paged through it. “According to the information I have, you’re not a government employee. You’re an independent contractor working directly for Senator Sills.”

“I still had to declare my allegiance to the United States and to Louisiana and be fingerprinted and photographed before I could go to work for him. About thirty seconds of listening to me could have saved the police department about a pint of ink,” she finished drily.

Ethan looked back at the page in front of him, waiting to see what she would say next.

She glanced around the room, then looked at the mirror. “Is everyone else staying in there to watch?” she asked, nodding toward the mirror.

“In there?” Ethan asked.

The look she sent him was equal parts disgust and irritation. A “you don’t think I’m that dumb, do you?” expression. “The room behind the mirror.”

“Nobody’s in there now,” he said as he sat down in a wooden straight-backed chair and tipped it backward onto two legs. He watched her.

She sat silent for a few moments, casting about for something to settle her gaze on, then she looked directly at him. “What?” she said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Stop trying to make me say something by being silent.”

He lowered the front legs of the chair to the floor. He liked that she wasn’t easily rattled. But he wasn’t fooled by her outburst. She’d turned a favorite tactic of his back onto him. Break a silence with a noncommittal comment or an attack on the other person. But he knew how to play this game. “Okay. I’ll stop being quiet. Is there something you want to tell me?”

Her gaze stayed on his face and her mouth turned up slightly. “No. Is there something you want to tell me?”

Chapter Two

Ethan was startled, and intrigued. With those few words, Elaine Montgomery had managed to turn his tactic around again. She was on a mission to stay in control, to manipulate him. Well, it wasn’t going to work. This interview was not going to be easy, but it was definitely going to be interesting. He liked a challenge, and Laney Montgomery was definitely a challenge.

“Sure,” he said. “I introduced myself earlier at the emergency room, but I think you might have been given something for pain. So in case you don’t remember, I’m Detective Ethan—”

“I remember,” she said flatly. “You were nicer then.”

“Delancey,” he went on as if she hadn’t interrupted. “My partner, Dixon Lloyd, and I responded to the murder of Senator Darby Sills this morning.”

“Detective Delancey, how long are you going to keep me here?”

He stood and stepped toward her, then propped his hip on the edge of the table, his thigh less than two inches away from her right hand. “It won’t be too long. I just want to expand on our earlier discussion. Why don’t you go through what happened from the moment you heard the noise from the sitting room? You told me that you walked in on the murderer within a couple of minutes of the sound of the first shot.”

She scooted her chair away from him and turned it toward him. “It was probably no more than twenty-five seconds,” she corrected.

“Twenty-five seconds,” Ethan said, jotting a note. “So what did the suspect do once he’d shot the senator?”

“During that twenty-five seconds? I don’t know. I was opening the door and going into the sitting room.”

Ethan sighed. He appreciated, but didn’t like, her type of witness. She wouldn’t let any fact slip by. Her account would be as accurate as she could make it. She wouldn’t voice any assumptions either, unless he specifically asked her to. “Fine. What did he do when he or she saw you?”

“He, I think, judging by his build. He was thin, but that was about all I could tell in the dark. He turned toward me, lifted his gun hand and shot me.”

Ethan knew the answers to a lot of these questions, from the officers on the scene, from the crime scene unit and from the few seconds he’d talked with Laney earlier, but he wanted to hear her version. “Right or left hand?”

“Right hand.”

“And what did you do?”

“I saw the gun and hit the floor,” she said, touching the bandage gingerly. “Not quite fast enough, though.”

“So you didn’t actually see him pull the trigger.”

“No, technically that’s true.” She lifted her gaze to his and lifted one brow. “But I would like to go on record as saying that I believe the same man who shot the senator shot me.”

Ethan laughed at Laney’s statement of the obvious. “Thanks for that insight, but that’s not what I’m asking. My question is, did he fire the weapon with one hand or did he support his gun hand with his other?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” she responded. “I wasn’t looking at him when he shot me. Why would that even matter?”

“Mannerisms. Sometimes we can eliminate people based on how they handle a gun.”

“When he first raised his hand, he just held the gun out, like this.” She demonstrated. “Then I dived, he shot and I felt a burning pain here.” She indicated the bandage.

Ethan waited a couple seconds, but she didn’t continue. “What happened then?”

“My face was flat against the floor, my eyes were closed and my head was throbbing. At first, I was sure the shot had gone right through my skull. I expected a second bullet.” She blinked and a small shudder vibrated through her shoulders. “But he didn’t shoot again. I heard him walking toward me,” she said, clasping her hands tightly together. “I heard one step, then two, then three. I knew he was coming to check me, to be sure I was dead. I remember praying,
Dear Lord, I don’t want to die.
”

Ethan hadn’t taken his gaze off her. Her eyes glistened with tears. Her fingertips and knuckles were white. She had believed that moment would be her last. He didn’t speak. He waited for her to compose herself and get back to her description of what had happened.

With a small shrug, she said, “Then the elevator bell rang.”

“The elevator?” Ethan echoed. She’d caught him off guard. He’d still been with her, in that awful endless moment when she’d feared dying. He’d been there, luckily only once or twice. But he’d known that helpless, hopeless fear. “What did the killer do?”

“He stopped and listened. I did, too. I was holding my breath. I mean, I didn’t know who was on the elevator. It could have been somebody from the hotel staff or his accomplice. Who had access to the penthouse?” She suppressed a shudder. “Then I heard those shoes again.”

“Those shoes?”

“What?” She seemed unaware of what she’d said. “Oh. Shoes. Right. His shoes sounded funny on the hardwood floor.”

“Funny how?”

She gave him a puzzled look. “I’m not sure.” Her voice held a tone of incredulity. Obviously, she wasn’t used to being flummoxed.

“Come on, Elaine. You noticed them. Try to remember why.”

Laney closed her eyes for a few seconds, then shook her head. “I don’t know. They sounded—” she spread her hands out in front of her “—hollow? No. That’s not quite right.”

Ethan wrote down what she’d said, then looked up. “What does that mean? Hollow?”

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

“Okay. You were saying he headed the other way when the elevator bell rang. Which way?”

She closed her eyes again, then lifted a hand and pointed toward the left. “That way, toward the service door. When I opened my eyes my head started hurting and I must have moaned, because he turned back around and pointed his gun at me again. That’s when the elevator doors started to open. He stood perfectly still for a second or two, like he was trying to decide whether to shoot me or run.” She barked a soft, wry laugh. “He ran. Out the service door.”

“He dropped the gun as he took off?”

She nodded. “Oh, and he was wobbly.” She held her hands out and waggled them side-to-side. “The way he ran. Awkward, like he was about to fall down.”

“Wobbly,” Ethan repeated. “Had he tripped? Maybe hurt an ankle or twisted a knee?”

“No. I didn’t notice anything like that. He just seemed unsteady on his feet.”

Disappointed, he wrote down “wobbly and awkward.” If the shooter had an injury, it might make him easier to find.

“The gun was found about halfway between the senator’s body and the service door, and about seven feet away from you. Why did he drop it?” It was one of those things he couldn’t figure out. Why leave the gun there? It didn’t make sense. It telegraphed to anyone who cared to think about it that the piece would be untraceable. But there was no logical reason for the shooter to have abandoned it.

“I don’t know.”

“So who was on the elevator?” he asked her.

“A bellman carrying a bottle of Dewar’s. Obviously, as soon as I left the room the senator called down and ordered it. I tried to tell the bellman that the killer was getting away, but my voice wouldn’t work right. He saw me, though, and tried to help me.” Her fingers went to the bandage. “I pointed toward the desk and told him to help the senator, but he was all freaked out by the blood, so I crawled over to the senator’s body, and yelled at the bellman to call the police.”

“You told him to call the police?” Ethan said. “Apparently he called hotel security instead.”

“Did he?” she asked. “Oh. That’s right. The security guard did show up first.”

Ethan went back to his chair again. “Tell me more about the shooter. You said he was thin. What else? What did he look like? What did he have on?”

“He was about my height, thin and bony and dressed all in black. Had a black ski mask that covered his whole head. He was holding the gun—until he dropped it on the floor.”

“Did you pick up the weapon or touch it in any way?”

“No,” Laney said. “I know better than that. I’ve watched my share of
Law & Order.
” Her hand went up to push her hair back, but her fingers skimmed the bandage and she grimaced.

Ethan scowled to himself. She was a little too sure of herself, a little too proud of what she knew. He’d love to tell her that about eighty percent of what she saw on
Law & Order
was as fictional as the names of the characters. But despite the fact that she got her forensic knowledge from a police procedural TV show, she was pretty smart. And despite the seriousness of the situation and his growing irritation at her attitude, he was fascinated by her. She had a confidence and a quick intelligence that he thought he’d like a lot under a different circumstance. For instance, if they were dating.

Forcing his attention back to the questioning, he watched her as he said, “But you did move the body, didn’t you?”

She started and brows shot up. “I did,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten. I touched his shoulder and turned him onto his back. I shouldn’t have done that, I guess.”

While he let her think about that mistake, he consulted the statement of the first officer on the scene as well as his own notes. “Officer Young said you recognized something about the suspect?”

“I recognized something he was wearing,” she corrected deliberately.

Ethan leaned back in his chair again. “What was that? I thought you said he was all in black.”

“I did. But right before he ran, when he turned back toward me, something caught the light. It was a belt buckle. It looked like silver, but it was big. I only saw part of it. It looked like his shirt was covering more than half of it, but it reminded me of the belt that televangelist guy wears. The guy that always dresses in black. He’s got that cowboy hat with the little silver things on it.”

Ethan paged to the officer’s report of his interview with her at the scene. She had told him essentially the same thing. He considered what she’d said and what was written in the statement. It was the closest she’d come to an outright lie. He’d bet next month’s salary that she knew exactly who Buddy Davis was. “So are you saying the killer was wearing a Buddy Davis Silver Circle belt buckle?”

“Buddy Davis. That’s him. Like I said, I didn’t get but a glimpse of it, but that’s what it looked like to me,” she said, then narrowed her gaze. “But it couldn’t have been Buddy Davis. He wouldn’t kill anybody, would he?”

Behind the narrowed gaze, Ethan saw that look again. That guarded caution. Combined with pretending that she didn’t know who Buddy Davis was, it made him suspicious. Was she holding back something about the killer? Something about the belt buckle or about something else he’d been wearing? “I don’t know. People are never predictable. The question is, do you think he would? Do you think it was Buddy Davis in that room?”

Laney looked down at the table. With one neat, unpainted fingernail, she traced a scratch in the scarred surface. “The guy was thin. But I can’t really tell you anything else about him.”

“Any other distinguishing marks? Did you recognize anything about the man?”

“If you mean about his appearance? No. I don’t think so.”

“What did you think when you first saw the buckle?”

“I guess my first thought was Buddy Davis, but I didn’t consciously think,
Oh, I wonder if that was Buddy Davis that just killed Senator Sills.
”

“Have you ever met Davis?”

She pressed her lips together again. “I have. Yes.”

“Where?”

Her fingernail traced the scratch again and she spoke without looking up. “He and Senator Sills are—were friends. Everybody knows that. They golfed together about once every week or two.”

Ethan was becoming more fascinated and more irritated with her every minute. Everything she said sounded perfectly reasonable, but it was obvious that she considered the consequences of every word she said first. He was more convinced than ever that she knew more than she was telling him. A lot more.

Now if he could only break through her confident demeanor and figure out what she was so carefully hiding from him. Would mentioning her father put a crack in that mask? “What about your father. Elliott Montgomery, right? He knew Senator Sills, didn’t he? Isn’t that how you got your job?”

Now she was the one caught off guard. And irritated at his implication. After a slight pause, she spoke. “My father. I wondered how long it would take before you brought him up. I assume you know he died last year. Heart attack.”

Ethan remembered, now that she’d mentioned it. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. But to answer your question, yes. He and Senator Sills had known each other for years.”

“Were they friends?”

Her face shut down. If he had not been certain before that she was not telling him everything, he certainly was now. He waited for her answer.

“I don’t think ‘friends’ is the word my father would use.”

“What word would he use?”

Her gaze snapped to his. “What?”

He knew she’d heard him. He didn’t answer.

“I don’t know,” she said finally. “Acquaintance? Business colleague?”

“Enemy?”

“No,” she said quickly. “Why would you say that?”

He changed direction. “Did your father know Buddy Davis?”

“I’m sure they’d met, at least,” she said. “I don’t remember Davis ever coming to our house. And I don’t remember ever seeing them together.”

Nice.
Clever, evasive answer. Ethan almost smiled at her sheer audacity. “So is that a yes or a no?” he persisted.

She looked at him in silence for a moment and he could see the wheels turning in her brain. “It’s a probably,” she said.

She was good. He had to give her that. He had to admire her careful consideration of every question before answering. No assumptions. No guesses. What could he do with a probably? He had to act on it. He picked up his phone and pressed a button.

“Farrantino here,” a brisk female voice said.

“Hey. Get Buddy Davis in here for questioning,” he said. “ASAP.”

There was a pause. “Buddy Davis?” Farrantino repeated. “The evangelist? That Buddy Davis?”

“That’s the one. Problem?”

“No, sir.” Farrantino’s crisp tone was back. “I’ll get right on it.”

Ethan hung up. Laney had listened with unabashed interest.