Open Season for Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery Book 10) (24 page)

David had escorted Rock Sinclair and Samuel Nash over to the lounge, which had yet to open for the day.

“I was beginning to think that you forgot about Jasmine,” Rock Sinclair was telling David when Mac joined them.

“No,” David said, “we don’t forget about murders that happen here in Spencer.” He glanced over his shoulder at Mac. “We also don’t like it when witnesses lie to us while we’re trying to solve those murders.”

“I didn’t lie to you,” Rock Sinclair said.

“We spoke to your wife.” Mac made a point of making eye contact with Rock Sinclair. “She told us
everything
about your marriage.”

Rock cast a quick glance in Samuel Nash’s direction.

“We’re going to go over this again, Mr. Sinclair,” David said. “You’re going to have a word with Mac while I talk to Samuel Nash out in the lobby. Then, maybe we’ll make some headway in this case—unless you two want to lie to us again.”

Mac watched Rock Sinclair squirm while David ushered Samuel Nash out of the lounge, leaving the two of them alone. He waited for the door to close before folding his arms across his chest. “Now, the truth; are you really impotent, or did you just tell your wife that because you were cheating on her?”

“Yes, I lied to Riva,” Rock said. “I was trying to spare her feelings.”

“We spoke to your doctor.”

“There are laws about that,” Rock countered.

“Okay.” Mac uncrossed his arms and stepped up to Rock Sinclair. “You do have a problem. Maybe not sexually, but you do have one. You’re a cheating liar. You didn’t have sex with Jasmine the night she died. Your DNA was not on or in her.”

“We used condoms.”

Mac shook his head. “There would have been evidence of it in the autopsy. So what was your relationship with Jasmine Simpson? You weren’t having sex with her. You left your wife for her. Explain.”

“What Jasmine and I did or did not do had nothing to do with her murder,” Rock said.

“That’s for us to decide,” Mac said. “Maybe you came to suspect that she was using you and that was why you decided to bug the suite—to catch her in the act … maybe with Samuel Nash, the director she had recommended for the job.” He watched Rock’s face for his reaction to the mention of the listening device found in their suite.

Rock’s eyes grew wide. “Listening device? Bug? Someone was listening to us?” His face grew red. His eyes darted around the lounge before his face turned white. “Oh, Lord.” He gasped out. “Had to be Riva. Wanting proof about … that witch.” Breathing heavily, the producer slumped in his seat.

Convinced that Rock Sinclair had not planted the listening device, Mac eased down into the seat across from him. “You and Samuel Nash compared notes to get your stories straight before calling the police after you had found Jasmine’s body. Why?”

“Why not?” Rock replied.

“It’s been my experience that only people who are lying about something need to get their stories straight.”

After uttering a deep sigh, Rock said in a low voice, “Samuel Nash knows about my condition. He and Jasmine were sexually compatible. He, and only he, satisfied her sexual needs, but she was with me. Before we called the police, we came to an agreement that Nash would keep our agreement to himself so no one would know my problem.”

“In exchange for his silence, Nash would take over the film project,” Mac finished. “Did you love Jasmine?”

“Yes!” The producer clenched his fists and pressed them against his temples. His face contorted in frustration. “And I wanted to please her so much, but I just couldn’t. So, I took those pills but they would only work so much. I loved her so much, but I could only satisfy her in one way.”

Mac waited in silence for him to continue.

“I opened the doors for her to become a producer,” Rock said. “For that, she loved me … and because I loved her and wanted to make her happy, I allowed her to be with Samuel.” He sank down into a chair. “You must think I’m a pathetic excuse for a man doing what he has to do to have a beautiful young woman on his arm.”

“So you knew all about Samuel Nash and Jasmine?”

“The three of us had an agreement,” Rock said. “That cocky twerp flaunted his sexual prowess every chance he got.”

“Did you see him in the suite that night?”

“I didn’t see him,” Rock said. “I heard them. He came up a little before midnight. I was in the guest room. I had drifted off the sleep. Then, I heard him leave shortly after one o’clock. I went back to sleep and found Jasmine the next morning.”

“Could Samuel have killed Jasmine to take over as producer and director?” Mac asked him.

“Sure,” Rock said without hesitation. “He was using her the same way she was using me.”

“You heard him come in and you heard him leave,” Mac said. “Did you see him?”

Rock shook his head.

“Did you hear them arguing?”

“Not over the jets,” Rock said with a shake of his head. “That’s how I knew he had left. The jets turned off and then I heard the door open and shut. I looked at the clock and it was five minutes after one o’clock.”

“That wasn’t Samuel Nash that Rock Sinclair heard,” David told Mac after he reported on the revision to the producer’s statement when they met in Hector’s security office. “According to Samuel Nash’s room keycard, he used it to enter his room at twelve forty-seven in the morning. Now that is within the kill zone, but there was someone else.”

David turned around in his chair to show Mac the monitor displaying the security recording for the hallway outside the Sinclair suite. “Nash told me that he and Jasmine drank a whole bottle of champagne while hooking up in the Jacuzzi.”

“There was that broken stem of a wine glass in the tub,” Mac recalled.

“I remembered that when Nash told me about the champagne.” David pointed at the monitor.

A man in a Spencer Inn service staff could be seen walking down the hallway carrying a tray with an ice bucket and two wine glasses. Keeping his face from the camera, he knocked on the door to the suite. The door opened and he stepped inside. The time on the recording was eleven-fifty-eight.

Mac waited.

“He doesn’t come out until much later, which is weird. Why wouldn’t she show him out?”

“Maybe he only pretended to leave,” Mac said. “Easy enough to do. The closet door is right there in the entrance hall. He opens the door. She turns her back for just a second. He jumps into the closet and closes the door.”

David fast forwarded the recording to show Samuel Nash knocking on the door. Jasmine answered the door and invited him inside. Few minutes later, the door opened, but they were unable to see who was on the other side. Then, Riva Sinclair arrived several minutes later, and hurried out. A half hour after she departed, Samuel Nash left the suite.

Twenty minutes after Samuel Nash left, the server stepped out into the hallway carrying the ice bucket with an empty champagne bottle and one wine glass on the tray. Keeping his face adverted from the camera, the server strolled down the hallway.

David froze the image. “Look at his sleeves. They’re wet.”

“Like he just killed a woman in a bathtub,” Mac said. “He must have been hiding in the suite the whole time waiting for the opportunity to kill Jasmine Simpson.”

David nodded his head. “Wearing a Spencer Inn server uniform.”

“No.” Reaching over David’s shoulder, Mac paused the video. “Take a closer look at his suit. That’s not a Spencer Inn server uniform. There’s no logo on the breast pocket. It’s close. It’s the same color and it’s a suit, but it’s not the same.”

Squinting, David peered at the blurry image on the security video. Mac was right. There was no logo on the suit jacket’s breast pocket. “Jasmine probably did the same things I just did. Noticed that his suit was the same color and didn’t look any closer. She assumed he was the server bringing up the champagne and let him in.”

“And she did order champagne?” Mac asked.

David checked his notes. “At eleven-forty.”

“Then what happened to the server who was ordered to deliver the champagne to their suite?”

“Good question,” David said.

“If you like that one, I have a few more,” Mac replied. “Who is this man? Why did he kill Jasmine? And did he murder Lindsey York, too?”

Chapter Twenty-Three

As the chief of police, David considered it his duty to keep the father of the victim informed about the status of their investigation, especially when that man was as rich and powerful as Randolph York. Since the murder occurred at his resort, Mac felt obligated to ride along to the York estate located down the road from the Spencer Inn.

With its stone and log front and a panoramic view of the lake at the bottom of the mountain and the valley behind it, the York summer home resembled a European ski chalet.

After David drove his cruiser through the stone pillars and wrought iron gate entrance to La Maison de York, they noticed an old, blue sedan with Illinois license plates parked in front of the stone walkway leading to the front door.

“Not what you would expect a billionaire to drive,” Mac noted.

“Randolph York is pretty down to earth,” David said.

“That car is at least ten years old,” Mac said. “That’s very down to earth.” He noticed a University of Chicago student parking decal on it. “I wonder if that belongs to Brian Gallagher.”

“Why Brian Gallagher?” David asked.

“He’s going to college at the University of Chicago.”

After being made to wait in the foyer, Mac and David were escorted by a casually dressed housekeeper into a rustic library. In contrast to his high-style daughter and luxurious surroundings, Randolph York was dressed in jeans and wore loafers on his sockless feet. He sported a fishing cap on top of his head. While they spoke to him, he practiced making fishing lures from diagrams displayed on a computer tablet.

“Have either of you ever fished?” he asked them with the enthusiasm of a child.

“I used to go fishing all the time with my father,” David said, while Mac shook his head.

“So did I,” Randolph said. “Haven’t fished in decades since he passed away. Decided recently to take it up again.” He held up a shiny new fishing rod. “Take a look at this baby. What do you think?”

With the eye of experience, David admired the fishing rod. “That’s a nice one all right.”

Peering out the window onto the patio, Mac asked in a casual tone, “Are you going fishing alone?”

“I’m taking a friend,” Randolph replied without offering any further information.

“Would that friend be Brian Gallagher?” In response to the fall of Randolph’s grin, Mac said, “What would you say if I recognized Brian’s car out front?” He cocked his head in the direction of the doorway leading out onto the patio. “I see your shadow out there, Brian.”

Clad in jeans, a polo shirt, and dock shoes, Brian Gallagher stepped through the doors to come inside.

David handed the fishing reel back to Randolph York. “Why were you hiding from us, Brian?”

“I told him to,” Randolph said. “It was foolish of me, I know. But my lawyers had advised that we try to keep his name out of this investigation as much as possible.”

“Hiding the truth in a murder investigation is never a good idea,” Mac said.

David agreed. “It makes you look guiltier when the truth comes out.”

“It also makes it harder to find out who the real killer is,” Mac said.

David asked, “Mr. York, are you aware that your daughter accused Brian of stalking her moments before she died?”

“Are you aware that my daughter had many issues, one being a pathological liar?” the businessman countered. “Brian did not kill Lindsey.”

“I didn’t even know she was there until the night of the Diablo Ball,” Brian said. “I heard Senator Fleming announce her and I went hiding in the kitchen. I knew that if she saw me that she’d make a scene, which she did, so I spent most of the night avoiding her.”

“You told me that she was poisoned,” Randolph reminded Mac and David. “I thought that Lander guy was supposed to have killed her by accident while trying to poison Carlisle Green.”

“We can’t find any evidence placing Lander at the hotel,” David said. “It very well could have been someone else—maybe even someone targeting Lindsey, who was mixed up with some major drug dealers.”

“Which means they all have more reason than Brian to want Lindsey dead,” Randolph said.

“Why are you protecting him?” David asked while looking from one of them to the other. “Lindsey was your daughter.”

“And Brian is your son,” Mac said. “That’s why you’re protecting him.”

Randolph York set the tablet aside. “How did you figure it out?”

“I made a few phone calls. Your lawyer’s wife and my lawyer’s wife have the same hair dresser.” Mac stepped over to Brian to study his reaction when he said, “You didn’t want us to know because then we would know that Brian had motive to kill Lindsey. With her dead, he’s your
only
heir.”

Randolph chuckled. “I disinherited Lindsey years ago. That’s why she threw a fit when she saw Brian. She blamed him because she was never able to take responsibility for her screw ups. She was just like her mother.”

Brian said, “She tried to make me out to be a fraud and got caught.”

Randolph sucked in a deep breath. “Brian’s mother was my executive assistant. Lindsey’s mother was a model looking for a rich husband. I was naive, but I caught on eventually to her being manipulative and conniving. I was ready to leave her when I realized that I was in love with Eve, Brian’s mother. Lindsey’s mother caught wind of it and got me drunk one night. She got pregnant—on purpose. She knew I was too much of a gentleman to leave a pregnant wife. When I told Eve, it broke her heart. She quit and I never saw her again until a few years ago.” He swallowed. “She never told me that she was pregnant. I didn’t find out until Brian contacted me that she was dying.”

Brian said, “She didn’t tell me until then. She admitted that he never knew.”

Randolph looked up at his son with affection in his eyes. “Brian and Lindsey were born three weeks apart, but there was a world of difference between the two of them. Brian inherited his mother’s work ethic. He works hard and gives his all to whatever he sets his mind to. All Lindsey ever learned was to take-take-take.”

Mac concluded, “So you started grooming Brian to take over SuperMart and Lindsey didn’t take it very well.”

“She hired a lawyer to sue him for fraud. She wanted a DNA test to prove that Brian was my son,” Randolph told him. “The test came back saying that he wasn’t.”

Mac and David shot suspicious glances in Brian’s direction.

Randolph said, “Then my private investigator found the lab technician whom she had paid fifty-thousand dollars to switch Brian’s DNA sample with another. That was the last straw. I cut her off. All she had left to live off of was her mother’s trust fund.”

Brian added, “She swore to get even with me.”

“In addition to dealing drugs,” Mac said, “Lindsey told some of her friends that she had gone into banking. I think she meant blackmail.”

“Sounds like my daughter,” Randolph grumbled.

“Any thoughts on who she was blackmailing?”

Brian confessed, “She tried to blackmail me. Didn’t work though. She found out that I had been pulled over when I was in high school with marijuana in the car. It belonged to one of my friends, but since I was driving and it was my car, I was charged and got probation. The record was supposed to be sealed, but she found out somehow. She said that unless I paid her five thousand dollars a month, she would tell our father. Thing is,” he grinned. “I had already told him. She went ballistic.”

David asked, “Do either of you have any idea who else she could have been blackmailing?”

“We really had no contact with her in the last few years,” Randolph said.

“I did see her fighting with a man,” Brian said. “It was not long after she’d been introduced. I was hiding in the kitchen.” His cheeks flushed. “That was how I ended up being there when Savannah was taken hostage. I had to get upstairs to check in with Senator Fleming, and was looking through the door to see if the coast was clear. That was when I saw Lindsey going ape at some guy who tried to take her drink.”

“Tried to take her drink?” David tapped Mac on the arm. “Someone else told me about an incident like that.”

“I saw the whole thing,” Brian said. “Lindsey was going toe to toe with Vincent Van Dyke. He accused her of screwing him over on this deal he had with Sinclair. He said she was squeezing him out and she wasn’t going to get away with it. She put her drink on that table next to where they were arguing and I saw some guy come up and take the drink. Lindsey was in the middle of a sentence when she whirled around and went off on the guy. He said he thought it was his and she just about hit him.”

“What type of drink was this?” David asked him.

“It was in a champagne flute.”

“What color?” Mac asked.

“Red. Sparkling.”

Mac’s mind was working. “If Lindsey wasn’t the target—then whoever put the poison in the drink may have been trying to retrieve the glass before she finished it to keep from killing her.” He grinned. “In which case, Archie and Chelsea might be able to find him lurking in the background in pictures of Lindsey.”

“The guy works at the Inn,” Brian said.

“He isn’t a guest?” Mac asked.

“I don’t know his name,” Brian said with a shake of his head, “but I know I’ve seen him around.”