Killer Crab Cakes (17 page)

Everyone turned to look as a tall, silver-haired man in an expensive suit strode into the parlor. Phyllis hadn’t heard him arrive. He must have opened the door and marched right in. He carried himself with the imperious air of a man who believed it was perfectly fine to do that because of who he was. The newcomer had to be Leo’s lawyer, Phyllis thought.

But she was wrong, because a wide-eyed Raquel Forrest looked at the man and said, “Daddy!”

S
o this was Charles Jefferson, cofounder of the Jefferson-Bartell Group, Phyllis thought. Leo’s boss and Raquel’s father. A very rich, powerful man whose expensive suit and arrogant bearing confirmed his status. Phyllis didn’t know what he was doing here, but she figured that if they all waited, Jefferson would tell them.

He was followed into the room by a smaller, mostly bald man who carried a briefcase. That would be Leo’s lawyer, Phyllis told herself. She wondered if he or his firm represented Jefferson-Bartell, too. That would explain how Charles Jefferson knew that Leo might be in some sort of trouble. The lawyer would have run to Jefferson as soon as Leo called him.

“Charles!” Leo said. “What are you doing here?”

“Roger told me there was a problem,” Jefferson replied. “I thought I had better come down here and see what I needed to do to straighten it out.”

Every silver hair on his head was in place. His face was tight and unlined. He didn’t really look old enough to have a daughter Raquel’s age, and Phyllis figured that he’d had some help from cosmetic surgeons to look that way. Vanity oozed from every dermabraded and avocado-scrubbed pore. Instinct made her dislike him, just as it had prompted her to like the much more down-to-earth Tom Anselmo.

“There’s no problem—” Leo began.

“You told Roger there’d been a murder,” Jefferson interrupted. “I come in to find you being pummeled by a couple of women, including your own wife, as well as being surrounded by the local police.”

“These cops are crazy! They come in here with some Mickey Mouse search warrant and start pawing through our stuff and throwing around accusations—”

Jefferson turned his head and said, “Roger.”

The bald-headed lawyer stepped forward. “Don’t say another word, Leo,” he ordered. He turned to Chief Clifton. “Have you interrogated my client without the benefit of counsel, Chief ? If you have, I can promise that you’ll be sorry.”

Clifton didn’t look overly impressed by either Jefferson or the lawyer. He said, “I haven’t interrogated anybody yet. All we’ve done is execute a search warrant.”

Roger frowned. “Highly questionable tactics. I should have been here to protect my client’s best interests before any search was carried out.”

“You can look at the warrant if you’d like,” Clifton offered. “You’ll find that all the t’s are crossed and all the i’s are dotted.” His voice hardened slightly. “We’re not quite the yokels that you seem to think we are, Counselor.”

“I certainly do intend to examine the warrant, and nothing should be removed from the premises until I’ve done so.”

“Fine by me,” the chief said with a shrug. “I’ve got plenty of time to waste if you do.”

Leo said, “Don’t let him take my camera, Roger. You’ve got to stop him.”

“Camera? Camera? What’s this about a camera?”

“It belongs to your client,” Clifton said. “And it’s got nude pictures of a young woman on it. I happen to know she’s of legal age . . . but not by much.”

“Leo, for God’s sake!” Charles Jefferson said with contempt in his voice.

“It’s not what you think, Charles,” Leo hurried to say. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

Jessica slugged him on the arm, hard enough to make him yelp in pain.

Raquel sidled up to Jefferson. “Hello, Daddy.”

“Sweetheart.”

Despite the endearment, Jefferson’s tone was a little chilly and he barely glanced at his daughter. Not much love lost between those two, Phyllis thought, at least on Jefferson’s part.

“I want to see this camera,” Roger said to Chief Clifton.

The chief nodded to one of his men, who held up a clear plastic evidence bag with a tag attached to it. “That’s it,” Clifton said.

“I’d like to examine it to make sure that it hasn’t been tampered with.”

Clifton shook his head. “Request denied, Counselor. You’ll have a chance to take a look at it later, if you want.”

“After you’ve manipulated the images on its memory card?” It was Roger’s turn to shake his head. “A competent trial judge would throw out any such images that you tried to introduce into evidence.”

“Who said anything about a trial? At this point, we’re just trying to figure out what happened.” Clifton paused. “Unless you’re assuming that your client’s going to be charged with something . . . ?”

“No, no, of course not. Leo’s innocent of any wrongdoing. Aren’t you, Leo?”

“Of course I’m innocent,” Leo said, gingerly touching his nose as if he were the only injured party in the room.

“What about what he did to my daughter?” Tom demanded.

“I never touched the girl!” Leo insisted. “And she’s not underage. That hick cop admitted that himself. I didn’t do anything wrong.” He turned to Jessica and added hastily, “Legally, of course. Morally, I shouldn’t have ever listened to her when she started trying to tempt me—”

Clifton moved a little to get between Leo and Tom again, and Jessica said in disgust, “Just shut up, Leo. You’re only making yourself look more foolish.”

Jefferson put his hands in his pockets—being careful not to spoil the line of his trousers, Phyllis noted—and said, “I’d like for someone to tell me exactly what’s going on here. Who was murdered?”

“And I’d like to know who you are and what your connection with this case is,” Clifton shot back.

Jefferson smiled. “Of course. I haven’t actually introduced myself, have I?” Clearly, he was accustomed to everyone he came in contact with just knowing who he was. “My name is Charles Jefferson. I’m the president and CEO of the Jefferson-Bartell Group, headquartered in Houston. Leo works for me. And so does Roger Fadiman here, of course.”

“And he’s my father,” Raquel said.

“Yes, that’s true,” Jefferson said. “Now, Chief, if you’d be so kind as to tell me what’s going on here . . .”

Clifton’s answer was blunt. “A murder investigation. One of the guests staying here was poisoned sometime yesterday morning or late the night before.”

“Who was the victim?”

“A man named Ed McKenna.”

“McKenna!” For the first time, Jefferson’s air of perfectly coiffed and dressed composure appeared to be shaken. “Of McKenna Electronics in San Antonio?”

Roger practically sprang forward. “Don’t say anything else, Charles! Not a word!”

Anger flared in Jefferson’s eyes, probably at the notion that one of his employees would speak to him in that tone of voice, Phyllis thought, but he followed Roger’s orders and didn’t say any more.

Frances Heaton did, though. She stepped forward and demanded of Jefferson, “How do you know our father?” When Jefferson just gave her a stony stare in return, Frances turned to her brothers. “What do the two of you know about this? Have you been keeping secrets from me about the company?”

“I’m the CEO of McKenna Electronics,” Oliver told her. “I don’t have to answer to you, Frances.”

“He doesn’t know anything,” Oscar scoffed. “He never knew anything except what Dad told him. He’s always been content just to be a figurehead and a yes man. I wasn’t, and that’s why Dad canned me.”

“That’s a damned lie!” Oliver said. “You don’t know anything about it, Oscar.”

“I know you’ve never been anywhere near as smart as you think you are.”

The twins clenched their fists and glared at each other. Phyllis wondered if they were about to start throwing punches. It wouldn’t have surprised her a bit. With all the tension and anger in this room, she was sure that chaos would have ensued by now if not for the presence of Chief Clifton and the other officers.

Clifton acted to make sure that didn’t happen by saying, “All right, everybody settle down. We came here to conduct a search, not to referee a free-for-all.” He glanced at Charles Jefferson. “Although I
am
mighty curious about your connection with Ed McKenna.”

“Don’t say anything, Charles,” Roger Fadiman warned. “Not a word.”

Jefferson lifted his chin defiantly but followed his attorney’s advice, keeping his mouth shut.

Clifton looked around the room. “I’ll be talking to all of you later,” he said. “If you’d like to have a lawyer present, of course that’s fine. We’ll be in touch.”

“You can’t take any potential evidence with you until I’ve seen that warrant,” Roger reminded him.

Clifton took a folded document out of his pocket and handed it over to the lawyer. Roger studied it for several minutes with a frown on his face, flipping through the several pages. Finally, with a grimace, he handed it back.

“Everything appears to be in order,” he said, sounding disappointed.

“Just like I said.” Chief Clifton put the search warrant away and motioned for the other officers to leave the room. They filed out, taking the evidence bags with them, and Clifton brought up the rear of the procession.

He paused in the foyer and looked back at the group gathered in the parlor. “I really don’t want to be called back here to break up a riot,” he told them. “Keep that in mind.”

He went on out, heading for one of the cruisers parked in front of the bed-and-breakfast. The search was over.

But the case was far from concluded, Phyllis told herself.

And a moment later, that riot Chief Clifton had warned against seemed to be on the verge of breaking out, as seemingly everyone in the parlor began talking loudly and angrily at once.

Not all of them were arguing, though. Consuela left the room, heading toward the kitchen, and Phyllis went after her.

Bianca had gone in that direction when she fled the parlor, and Phyllis found mother and daughter in the kitchen. Bianca was dry-eyed now, but the streaks left behind by the tears she had shed were still visible on her cheeks and she was obviously shaken and upset. Consuela was speaking to her in rapid Spanish. Phyllis caught only a few words, but they were enough to indicate to her that Consuela was demanding to know what in the world Bianca had been thinking by posing in the nude for Leo Blaine.

“He was lying, Mama,” Bianca insisted when her mother let her get a word in. “I never offered to pose for him. It was all his idea.”

“It doesn’t matter whose idea it was! You should have told him no! You should have told me what he asked you to do!”

Bianca looked like she might start crying again. “But you would have told
Papi
, and then he would have hit Mr. Blaine and there would have been a lot of trouble—”

“You think there’s not a lot of trouble now?” Consuela asked with a disgusted snort. “What were you thinking?” she asked again, in English this time.

Bianca began to sob again and didn’t answer.

Consuela shook her head and turned to Phyllis. “I’m so sorry, Señora Newsom. We’ll all quit and leave this house. We’ve brought shame on Oak Knoll—”

Phyllis didn’t let her go on. “Don’t say that,” she said. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Consuela, and I’m sure that if Dorothy were here she’d tell you the same thing. She certainly wouldn’t want you to leave. Any of you.”

“The shame is that I raised my daughter to be a
puta
.”

“Mama!” Bianca cried. “That’s not true. I didn’t do anything with Mr. Blaine. I swear it!”

“You let him take those pictures of you!”

“For the money! I didn’t think it would do any harm. I didn’t think anybody would ever find out about it.”

Phyllis said, “Did Mr. McKenna find out about it, Bianca?”

The young woman blinked teary eyes in confusion. “Mr. McKenna? The old man who died?”

“Chief Clifton thinks that if Mr. McKenna knew about the pictures Mr. Blaine took of you, he might have threatened to tell Mr. Blaine’s wife, or your parents.”

Bianca shook her head. “He didn’t know about it. Nobody knew about it except me and Mr. Blaine. Unless . . . I guess he could have found out somehow. Maybe Mr. Blaine told him.”

Leo wouldn’t have done that, Phyllis knew. Leo wanted the whole thing kept secret, and for good reason.

“He didn’t accidentally come in while Mr. Blaine was taking pictures of you or anything like that?”

“No, ma’am.”

Phyllis believed that Bianca was telling the truth . . . as far as she knew it. But it was still possible that Ed McKenna could have stumbled over Leo’s little photography session and threatened to expose him. Considering what was going on between Leo and Jessica, and Sheldon and Raquel, some people might think that Jessica didn’t have any right to be upset with Leo over a few pictures, but from the way she had attacked him downstairs, clearly she had been. Leo must have known that she would be.