Fatal Care (24 page)

“There’s more,” Jake said.

“Like what?”

“Like an invitation list.” Jake reached into his coat pocket and took out a long sheet of paper. “Pay particular attention to the last two names on the list.”

Joanna quickly scanned the list of twenty. Her eyes widened as she came to the final two guests.

“Jesus,” Joanna breathed softly.

“I figure these two will know all about Edmond Rabb and the genetics award he gave to Alex Mirren.”

“That’s for certain,” Joanna said, handing back the list. “And for them to be invited to the party, they must have been pretty chummy with the Rabbs.”

“It gets more and more interesting, doesn’t it?”

Jake signaled over to the policeman standing near the passageway to the stateroom; then he came back to Joanna. “Remember, it’s the genetics business that’s important here. It’s the link between Rabb and Mirren. Don’t give these two guys coming up any wiggle room with their answers. Nail them hard if you have to.”

A moment later Brennerman and Hoddings came up on deck. They waved to Joanna and walked over. Their expressions were relaxed and unconcerned.

Joanna extended her hand to them. Hoddings took it, shaking it firmly. Then Brennerman did the same. Both men’s hands felt cool. “I hope we’re not inconveniencing you,” she said.

“Not at all,” Hoddings said promptly. “This is such an awful business. A fine man like Edmond Rabb getting murdered on his own yacht.” Hoddings paused, raising an eyebrow at Joanna. “It is murder, isn’t it?”

“Oh, it’s murder,” Joanna assured him.

Hoddings kept his eyes on Joanna, waiting, as if he expected her to give him all the clinical findings. Several awkward seconds passed. “I take it that the autopsy results were absolutely conclusive,” he prompted.

“Quite,” Joanna said tonelessly, letting both men know that this was not going to be some friendly academic discussion between colleagues. “The night of the party, when was the last time you saw Edmond Rabb alive?”

Hoddings’s face tightened around the jawline. “As I told the detective, we were at the bar having a drink.”

Joanna looked over at Brennerman. “And you?”

“The same,” Brennerman replied. “I believe we were discussing some recent advance in gene splicing. Mr. Rabb was surprisingly well informed in genetics for someone having no training in the field.”

“Was there any particular reason for his interest in genetics?” Joanna asked.

“He had twenty-five million reasons,” Brennerman said, and pointed at the flag blowing in the breeze above the wheelhouse. It had the Bio-Med logo emblazoned on it. “Edmond Rabb provided the venture capital to establish Bio-Med. He owned the vast majority of the stock.”

“I see,” Joanna said, trying to keep her expression neutral. The amount of money involved in this murder was almost too much to count. Bio-Med was thought to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and Rabb owned most of that. Joanna nodded to herself, remembering that big money always attracted big crime. “Who else has substantial holdings in Bio-Med?”

Brennerman hesitated, looking over at Hoddings. If the two men exchanged a silent message, Joanna didn’t see it.

“Well?” Joanna insisted.

“Is that also part of this investigation?” Brennerman asked back.

“It sure as hell is,” Jake growled. “Anything with Edmond Rabb’s name on it is a part of this investigation.”

“I guess it is,” Brennerman had to admit. “Mr. Rabb owned seventy-five percent of the shares, and I owned twenty percent. The remaining five percent was divided up among several others.”

Jake’s ears pricked. “Tell me about the others.”

Brennerman swallowed noticeably. “The Jeanette Hoddings Family Trust owns four percent and Mervin Tuch owns one percent.”

Joanna stared at Wallace Hoddings with contempt, making the man blush and turn away. So the high and mighty had been bought out, too, Joanna was thinking. Hoddings had placed the stock in his wife’s trust, hoping to hide it away from the public eye. That way he could have ownership in an outside medical enterprise and still hold on to his tenured professorship at Memorial.

“My—my wife’s family decided to invest,” Hoddings said apologetically.

“A wise investment,” Joanna said with a hint of sarcasm, all respect for the man gone. “What happens to the shares of an owner who dies?”

“That’s somewhat complicated,” Hoddings replied.

“Well, uncomplicate it for us,” Jake said.

“Th-there are buy-out clauses which I don’t fully understand,” Hoddings stammered, and looked over to Brennerman for help.

“They really are complicated,” Brennerman told them. “The stock passes to the heirs of the deceased, but the other shareholders have the option of buying the stock at fair market value. But no such purchases could occur without Edmond Rabb’s approval. And it would be Edmond Rabb who determined what the fair market value was.”

“So Edmond Rabb controlled everything?” Jake concluded.

“With an iron fist,” Brennerman added.

“But now it’s Lucy Rabb who has all the control,” Jake said, thinking aloud.

“Only if we decide not to buy her out.”

Jake looked at Brennerman quizzically. “But that has to be okayed by Lucy Rabb, right?”

Brennerman shook his head. “She inherits the stock, but not her husband’s veto power on stock purchases. That’s one of the complexities Wallace was just alluding to.”

A tugboat was coming into the harbor, its diesel engine chugging loudly.

Jake lit a cigarette, digesting the new information as the tugboat passed by. Everybody had their hands in this pot. There was a ton of money here, and a lot of hands were grabbing for it. Edmond Rabb had the biggest chunk, and that was now Lucy’s. Then there were Hoddings and Brennerman, two fine and distinguished physicians who were making millions on the side from their science. And there was Mervin Tuch, who got his one percent while screwing Edmond Rabb’s wife.

Jake puffed on his cigarette, while waiting for the noise of the tugboat to fade.
Who benefits from Rabb’s death
? he asked himself.
Cui bono? Lucy Rabb for sure and probably the lawyer she’s screwing
. And maybe the two doctors standing in front of him, too. Because with Rabb dead, they would control Bio-Med. Although Lucy Rabb owned most of the stock, she was too much of a twit to become involved with the scientific business.

Jake flipped his cigarette into the water and turned to Brennerman. “Was Rabb a good guy to work with?”

“Really good,” Brennerman said at once.

“Did he ever get in the way?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you mentioned earlier that he had some knowledge of genetics,” Jake said. “Did he ever insist on things being done his way?”

Brennerman shook his head. “Never. You have to understand something, Lieutenant. Edmond Rabb was first and foremost a venture capitalist. His only concern was making money, and he had the perfect formula to do it. He would pick the right people, set them up in the right environment, and turn them loose. His interest in genetics was money, not science.”

“But he must have had
some
interest in science,” Jake countered. “After all, he did set up a genetics award at Memorial.”

Brennerman smiled. “That was window dressing. Like most wealthy people, Edmond Rabb wanted to show the world that underneath all those millions was a pretty decent guy.”

“Was there?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Lucy Rabb came up on deck and walked quickly over to the group. She was wearing a yellow sundress, low cut to expose as much cleavage as possible. “Lieutenant, I hope you’re not going to be a lot longer. It’s becoming very stuffy in the stateroom.”

“We’re almost done,” Jake said, straining to keep his eyes off her breasts.

“The sooner the better.”

“Right,” Jake said, thinking that Edmond Rabb was already a distant memory to his widow.

Lucy turned to Eric Brennerman. “My lawyer and I would like to meet with you as soon as possible.”

Brennerman bowed his head slightly. “At your convenience, Mrs. Rabb.”

“Yes,” Lucy Rabb said condescendingly. “At my convenience.”

Jesus, Jake groaned to himself, wondering if Brennerman had any idea how much bullshit he was going to have to put up with.

The group looked over to the gangplank. The bald security guard accompanied by two policemen was stepping onto the deck. Jake waved them over.

The security guard glanced at Jake and swallowed hard. He gazed down at the deck submissively.

“You lied to us,” Jake said hoarsely.

The guard’s jaw dropped. “About what?”

“About not coming aboard the ship the night of the party.”

The guard thought back, concentrating. “I stayed at my post,” he said, raising his right hand. “I swear to God I stayed on the dock.”

“You came aboard to look for a shoe.”

The guard thought back again. “Yeah, yeah. But Mr. Rabb yelled down for me to come up. I’ll bet I wasn’t aboard two minutes before I found the damn shoe.”

“Where did you find it?”

“Right there.” The guard pointed at the stairs leading up to the wheelhouse. “Some old geezer had lost a tennis shoe.”

“A regular tennis shoe?”

“Yeah. You know, the white kind with the rubber sole.”

“Then Mr. Rabb told you to go back to your post?”

“He didn’t say nothing to me,” the guard answered. “He was busy talking to the blonde.”

The guard pointed at the brass railing at the stern. “They were standing there, Mr. Rabb and the blonde. They were looking out at the harbor.”

Jake turned to Lucy Rabb. “Did any of your female guests have blond hair?”

Lucy nodded. “There were a few—”

“She wasn’t no guest,” the guard interjected. “She was part of the catering crew.”

Jake asked, “How do you know that?”

“I let them up the gangplank. There were three or four guys and her.”

“What did she look like?”

“Tall, thin, blond hair,” the guard recalled easily. “I’d guess she was in her early thirties.”

“Was there anything special about her?”

“Naw. She was kind of plain.”

Jake and Joanna exchanged glances, both thinking about the blond hitter from the other murders.

“I’m telling you the truth,” the guard insisted. “I found the shoe and got the hell back to my post. Then the boat went out to sea and came back later. And I’ll swear to that on a—”

“All right, all right,” Jake said hastily, his mind elsewhere.

“Can we please leave now?” Lucy Rabb asked, losing patience.

“Yeah,” Jake said with a wave of dismissal. “Everybody can go. But don’t leave town without letting us know. We may have more questions for you.”

He turned to Lucy Rabb. “I need the name and telephone number of the catering company you used for the party.”

“For what?”

“Just get it.”

Lucy Rabb walked away in a huff, muttering under her breath.

Joanna waited for Lucy to be out of earshot and then asked in a whisper, “You think it’s the blond hitter again?”

“It sounds like her,” Jake said, keeping his voice low.

“If it is, she’s batting three for three: first Rabb, then the Russian, then Mirren.” Joanna ran a hand through her hair and then patted it in place. “An entrepreneur, a scientist, and a Russian immigrant carrying around dead fetuses. And somehow they’re connected to one another. But how?”

“You tell me and we’ve got all three cases solved.”

Jake glanced up as a squawking seagull flew over. “Are you having any luck finding the source of the dead babies?”

“We checked out the local hospitals,” Joanna told him. “They weren’t missing any fetuses.”

“Nor were the abortion clinics we looked at.” Jake waited for another squawking gull to pass overhead. “Where the hell did those fetuses come from?”

“Well, he sure didn’t find them in a Dumpster.”

Jake nodded. “He wouldn’t have gotten himself killed over that.”

Joanna concentrated on the well-planned murders. “This blond hitter really does her homework, doesn’t she?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jake agreed. “And she’s damn good at what she does.”

“I wonder how many other supposedly accidental deaths were in fact caused by this woman.”

“A lot, I’d bet.”

Lucy Rabb returned and gave Jake a slip of paper. Then she went back to her guests in the stateroom.

Jake used his cell phone to call the catering service. He spoke briefly and then hung up.

“Well?” Joanna asked.

“There was no blond woman on the catering crew that night,” Jake reported.

Dennis Green entered the forensic laboratory and wearily slumped down into a swivel chair. Perspiration was seeping through the front of his scrub suit and surgical cap. “I’ve got bad news from the OR.”

“What?” Joanna asked, looking up from her microscope.

“We now have three patients who developed cancer after receiving the enzyme preparation,” Green said, and propped his legs on another chair. “The guy’s kidney contained a highly malignant tumor. They’re trying to resect it out now.”

“Has it spread?”

“All over the retroperitoneum,” Green told her. “He’s as good as dead.”

Joanna pushed away from her microscope and walked over to a huge blackboard that listed all the data on the three patients who had received the enzyme preparation and had come down with cancer. She erased the question mark after the name of the third patient.

Stepping back, she carefully studied the data. The three patients were all Caucasian, all middle-aged, had received the enzyme preparation, and had cancer. Otherwise there were no common denominators. Joanna slid the front blackboard aside, exposing another blackboard. On it were written the physical properties of the various enzyme preparations the patients had received. The protein concentrations and biological activities of the preparations were almost identical. Her gaze went to the section on the preservative used in the preparations. The spaces were blank.

Joanna reached for the intercom button and asked Lori McKay to come back to the main laboratory. Glancing over at Green, she asked, “Was there anything unusual about the renal malignancy you just saw?”