The Fregoli Delusion (2 page)

2

The front door was opened by a
slender, dark-haired woman who appeared to be about thirty years old. She wore
a black pantsuit, oversized eyeglasses, and sensible black shoes.

“I’m Megan Winterbottom,” she said,
“Mrs. Jarrett’s personal assistant.” She had large front teeth and spoke with a
British accent. “Mrs. Jarrett is with Mrs. Parris in the sun room.”

Hank followed her inside. As they
passed the circular staircases on either side of the grand entry hall, Hank looked
at the enormous oil portraits of Herbert Joseph Jarrett and his first wife, the
late Judith Wilson Jarrett. Until this morning, Jarrett had been the president
and chief executive officer of Jarrett Corporation, a health care company
headquartered in Glendale with annual revenues exceeding one billion dollars.
Now he was just a corpse being transported to the morgue in the back of an
ambulance.

The portrait revealed a small,
wiry man with a slightly oversized bald head, trim mustache, solid chin, and
cold eyes. He was dressed in black-tie formalwear and his left hand was shoved
into the pocket of his trousers. The pose conveyed the to-hell-with-you
attitude that Hank understood to have been typical of the man.

Judith had been his first wife.
They had married in 1969. She was a tall, slender woman with reddish,
shoulder-length hair and a kind, patient face. She wore a simple but beautiful
black gown and several strands of pearls. She had passed away, Hank understood,
two weeks after giving birth to her first child, Edward Wilson “Ned” Jarrett,
in 1970.

As Hank followed Megan
Winterbottom from the entry hall down a short passage into the sun room, he
glanced at a mahogany long-case clock that was probably worth about fifteen
thousand dollars. The clock told him it was nearly half past noon.

He was met at the doorway of the
sun room by Constance Mercer Parris, a friend of Mrs. Jarrett. She stepped
forward, embraced him warmly, and allowed him to kiss both her cheeks.

“Very nice to see you, Hank,
although I sincerely wish the circumstances were different. Chrissy’s over here.”
Constance led him across the room to an arrangement of wicker furniture and
side tables.

Christine Jarrett rose to greet
him with a firm handshake and a faint smile. Hank noticed that her eyes were a
little red and that she clasped a tissue in her left hand. Otherwise, she
presented a calm front.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,”
Hank said.

“Thank you.”

“Walter called me,” Constance
explained, “so I came over to break the news to Chrissy.”

“I understand,” Hank said.

“I’ve heard about you,” Chrissy
said, motioning him to a seat, “and your mother too, of course. I know she and
Constance have been friends for a very long time. I’m sorry we haven’t met
before. Would you like something?”

“No, I’m fine, thanks.”

“I’ll leave you two alone,”
Constance said, glancing at Winterbottom.

“Just a moment.” Hank looked at
Chrissy. “Uniformed officers are on their way. When they arrive we’re going to
secure the premises for the time being and control access to Mr. Jarrett’s
private rooms, including his bedroom and home office. We’ll be getting the
appropriate warrants before we search and remove anything to be used as
evidence, but right now we need to make sure that no one enters these rooms
until we’re finished with that part of our investigation. Can I count on your
cooperation, Mrs. Jarrett?”

“Of course.” Chrissy turned to
Winterbottom. “When the officers arrive, show them whatever they need to see.”

“We’ll do everything we can to
minimize the inconvenience,” Hank said.

“I appreciate that. Megan?”

Winterbottom left the room.
Constance followed.

Hank sat down and clasped his
hands between his knees. They were big hands, with long slender fingers and
large knuckles. His frizzy hair was medium brown and beginning to show some
gray. He had recently shaved off his quarter-inch beard, revealing a square jaw
and dimpled chin. His heavy brow gave his large brown eyes a brooding look. He
wore a charcoal worsted suit that was moderately expensive, a light cream
shirt, and a rust-colored tie that picked up the color of his hair and eyes.

Chrissy said, “Walter told Constance
that Herb was shot on the bike path. Is it true?”

“I’m afraid so. He was shot around
seven o’clock. It looks like he died instantly. Was it his habit to go for a
bike ride in the early morning?”

Chrissy nodded. “Every morning
when the weather’s good he goes out along the bike path. He’s up by five
o’clock, showers and has breakfast, gets some work done, then at seven or so
takes an hour to exercise before going to work. In the winter he rides a
stationary bike in the gym downstairs and in the summer, if it’s not raining,
he loves the bike path.” She grimaced. “Loved.”

“So this is a routine he always
followed?”

“We’ve been married six years and,
as far as I know, he’s followed it every day.”

“That’s very impressive for a man
of his age.”

“He’s in very good health.” She
lowered her head. “Was.”

Hank brought out his notebook and
pen. “You don’t mind if I ask a few more questions?”

“Let’s get it over with before the
circus starts.”

“All right.” Hank sat back, balancing
the notebook on his knee. “I’m wondering about his personal security. Didn’t he
have someone assigned to be with him whenever he went out?”

“I think so. I don’t really know
all that much about it. He owns the company that handles all his security, and
I know there’s a guy I can text if I want someone when I go out, but I’m not
really sure what Herb did himself. Our lives ran on separate tracks. I guess I
should have been more worried about kidnapping or getting shot or something,
but I really didn’t give it much thought. Nothing ever happened.”

“What kind of household staff do
you have?”

“We have a live-in staff of six
people. There’s Megan, a cook, two housekeepers, and two drivers. The guy who’s
head of security works out of the tower downtown, and I guess the people at the
front gate work for him. Everything else is electronic around here. Motion
sensors, cameras, intercoms.”

“His wallet was found empty. Did
he carry credit cards or cash with him?”

“Yes, he had a couple of credit
cards. He liked to be able to pay for little things himself if the impulse
struck him. You know, if he saw something in a store window when he was
traveling that he thought someone might like. He didn’t carry cash, though, because
he hated a bulky wallet. I suppose the cards should be canceled.”

“No, we’ll leave them as is for
now, in case someone tries to use them. I'm a little surprised, though. Did he
always take his wallet with him when he went for a bike ride?”

“Probably. He never went anywhere
without it.”

“All right.” Hank made a note and
looked up at her. “Does anyone come immediately to mind who’d want to do this?”

She glanced away for a moment,
looking out at the garden, then turned to him with a cool expression. “Well, I
didn’t. I think we should talk about that first.”

“Okay. You’re his third marriage.
There’s a difference of what, forty years?”

“You’re trying to flatter me. I’m
thirty-four years old, so there’s a difference of thirty-four years. I was born
and raised in Reno. My dad owns a hotel there. My mother died when I was young.
I went to UNLV and got a degree in business administration. When I was a
student I started modeling through an agency out of Los Angeles. For a while I
appeared in magazines on a regular basis and I also had a couple of billboards.
Just fashion and cosmetics. Everything above board. Shortly after I finished my
degree, there was a lull in the action and a couple of us got this gig as
hostesses at a conference at Lake Tahoe. A group of very rich people get
together for a week every year with their families and have a sort of retreat.
There’s stuff for the wives and kids, motivational speakers, and a lot of
private meetings to talk deals. I met Herb there. He’d been divorced for quite
a few years. We became friendly, he was surprised that I knew something about
business, and before he left at the end of the week he asked me if I’d be
interested in marrying him. That’s how he put it. I said probably, but could I
have a week or two to think about it? He gave me his private cell number and
told me to call him. I talked it over with my father, who told me to do
whatever I felt was right, so I called Herb and told him I’d like to fly to
Baltimore and stay there for a while. We could meet a few more times and talk
it over. That’s what we did. He gave me the name of a lawyer he said was hated
by his law firm and told me to call her. I did, we met a few times with the
lawyers, and negotiated a prenuptial agreement. When it was done we had a quiet
ceremony and that was it. We were married. It’s been six years now.”

Hank jotted a few notes. “Who’s
your lawyer?”

“Bethany Johnson.”

Hank wrote it down. Hated, indeed.
B-Jo was known to throw entire board rooms into an uproar just by walking
through the door. “Go on.”

“This year Herb decided to change
his will. It hadn’t gone through yet, so the old will is still in effect. That
might be a motive, someone who didn’t want the old will to change. I don’t
know. Anyway, after he made up his mind to go ahead with the changes, we had a
meeting about it. He said our prenup would still be in place and I wouldn’t
notice any difference financially. But I’d notice a difference personally
because he was changing the will so he could divest himself of Jarrett
Corporation right now and retire. He was very concerned about the estate tax
and what it would do to his children’s inheritance. I’m not a tax expert, so
you’ll have to talk to his lawyer about it, but he was going to buy a place in
St. Lucia and spend a lot of his time down there, and he wanted to know if I
wanted to come down with him or if I’d rather stay here. I told him I’d
probably spend some of the time down there with him but I’d have to talk to my
friend about it. He said that was fine. It was all very cordial. That’s how we
were. Good friends. Cordial.”

“You’d have to talk to your friend
about it?”

“I should explain our prenup,”
Chrissy said. “You’ll see a copy of it later, I guess. It paid me fifty million
dollars the day after our wedding and ten million a year after that. So that’s
a hundred and ten million I’ve received into my own personal bank account as
his wife, minus taxes, of course. On his death I receive this house and grounds
and also the baseball team. Bethany held out for that one, because I’m a huge
baseball fan.”

“Baseball team?”

“The Glendale Pirates. The team
here in town.”

“Oh. Right.” The team was a Class
A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates. “He owned that?”

She nodded. “So that’s everything.
Under the old will, as per the prenup, I’d get this place and the baseball team
and nothing else, even though he’s worth billions in total. It was going to
stay the same under the new will. I was happy with the prenup, and still am.
Who wouldn’t be? I’m interested in business, yeah, and I keep a close eye on my
own investments, but I have absolutely no interest in Jarrett Corporation. I
never have and never will. I should mention that, according to the prenup, if
we divorced I’d still get the team and this house.”

“You had to talk to your friend
about St. Lucia,” Hank prompted.

“Yes. The prenup also said our
marriage would be open, so that both of us could have boyfriends or girlfriends
and it wouldn’t be used against the other in the event of a divorce or for any
other reason. Herb was, um, kind of slowing down a bit and preferred to have
things out in the open. Apparently he had a long history of infidelity in his
past marriages and was tired of the trouble it caused. I didn’t see any problem
with it. As far as I know, there was someone at the beginning but nothing since.
I didn’t bother with any other relationships for the first few years, but then
I met someone. We became close friends, and we have a physical relationship. I
wasn’t sure how he’d feel about me spending a lot of time down in the Caribbean
with Herb, so I wanted to talk to him about it. Herb understood.”

“What’s his name?”

Her face clouded. “I’d rather not
say, if you don’t mind. He’s not involved with this, and I don’t want his
business hurt by negative publicity.”

Hank stared at her without
expression. “I’ll need to question him to verify his whereabouts this morning
and rule him out as a suspect.”

Chrissy returned the look, then
seemed to remember she was speaking to a police officer and not a social
acquaintance. She averted her eyes. “His name’s Perry Crocker. He owns
CrocComm, the telecommunications company.”

Hank wrote it down. CrocComm
generated over one hundred million dollars a year in revenue, if he remembered
correctly. Not exactly the kid who comes around to clean the pool. Chrissy
reluctantly gave him Crocker’s home address and cell phone number.

“Just to be sure I understand the
situation,” Hank went on, “you’ve been aware of the various relationships your
husband has maintained since your marriage?”