Deceived (30 page)

Joe responded, “Then I’ll start talking here. In front of your important guests.”

A man with an earpiece approached with a questioning look. George gave a slight head shake to the man, and said, “Find Andrew and Tom.”

George gestured to Brandon and Joe to follow him though a thick-paneled doorway, off the foyer, and into a study. Taylor, for a fleeting moment, was at Brandon’s side, then, as Brandon slowed his pace to allow her to step ahead of him, he detected a faint wisp of her gardenia-scented perfume. He wanted to take Taylor away from there, to take her anywhere where decorum didn’t strip the life out of her eyes. George’s superior attitude had inspired a banal reaction, and he felt like telling George that Taylor belonged with him.

She’s mine now.
Mine.
And with me, she can be whatever the hell she wants to be.

The thought sent panic through his gut, because, once in the study, where Taylor deposited her small evening bag on a desk, then stood closer to her father than to him, the message in her body language made him realize that merely claiming her wouldn’t make it so.

Brandon watched George look at his daughter. “Taylor, I need you to tend to the guests.”

She shook her head. “I’m general counsel. I need to be here.”

“If this were anything serious,” George said, with a slight shake of his head, “that would be true.”

“It may not be serious to you, Mr. Bartholomew, but,” Joe said, “I can assure you that this murder investigation is very serious.”

Joe’s words inspired the full wrath of George’s glare. Brandon and Joe had discussed how they would proceed, with Joe taking the lead, but Brandon didn’t have patience. He pulled a copy of the Hutchenson letter out of his pocket and pressed it into George’s hands. George looked at the piece of paper. He put it down on his desk, dismissing it as though it was yesterday’s newspaper. Taylor reached for it. Color left her face as she read the first few sentences, then her eyes held Brandon’s, as George started to chuckle.

Son of a bitch.
Brandon said, “You think this is funny?”

“You do know, Mr. Morrissey,” George said, “that the letter is a fraud. A hoax.”

“No,” Brandon said, his eyes bouncing from George to Taylor. Her eyes conveyed pain, but not surprise. “I don’t know that.”

“It is quite simple,” George said. “Andrew Hutchenson did not write this letter.”

Brandon’s heart did a stutter beat. “Then who the hell did?”

“Your father.”

“No,” Brandon said, feeling the world tilt off-kilter as Taylor glanced at him, then looked away. “My father would not have done this.”

“Your father was a sick, pathetic man who was unable to make anything of himself, except what his obsession with his own father’s purported innocence would allow.”

The study door opened. Three men entered the room. “Andrew Hutchenson,” George said, to a man who was dressed in a seersucker suit, “meet Brandon Morrissey and NOPD Officer Joe Thompson.” Andrew Hutchenson was a little bit shorter than George. He had a full head of gray hair and blue eyes. He looked to be about George’s age and seemed like a kinder, more genteel version of George. At least he didn’t automatically look down his nose at Brandon. Unlike George, Andrew had the good sense to look curious, as though actually wondering why Brandon and Joe were there. The other older man, who wore white linen, was Lloyd Landrum. He had thinning salt and pepper hair and brown, expressive eyes. He wore frameless eyeglasses. Like Andrew and George, he was fit and seemed younger than his age. Tom Hood, the director of HBW security, a man who Brandon guessed was about his age, had auburn hair and dark brown eyes.

George explained, “Mr. Morrissey has brought us a copy of a letter that he believes was written by the first Andrew Hutchenson. I’ve explained that the letter is nothing new to us, that it is a hoax that was created and perpetuated by his own father.”

Focus, Brandon thought, as he watched Andrew Hutchenson grow pale, swallow, reach for the copy of the letter, then sit down hard in a chair and read it. It was a curious reaction for a man who was staring at something that he knew to be a fraud, but, at that moment, Brandon didn’t care about Andrew or what he thought. Lloyd stood behind the chair where Andrew had plopped, and, at Andrew’s shoulder, read the letter. Brandon didn’t care about Lloyd, either. Brandon cared about Taylor, who still didn’t seem surprised by what her father was saying. When Taylor looked away from Andrew, to Brandon, Brandon asked her, “You knew about this?”

Taylor gave him a slow nod. “I just learned about it.”

His stomach twisted, as his heart sank. He should have listened to the warning signals that Sebastian had been blasting his way. “A heads-up would have been nice.”

“Minutes before you walked through the front door, I asked my father about the Hutchenson letter.”

He shook his head. “You believe that it’s a hoax? Without question? After what Rorsch told us today? The letter confirms his suspicions, which he had decades before the letter was written. Rorsch documented those suspicions, in his affidavit and in the pardon request. Aren’t you at least questioning whether the content of the letter is the truth?”

Taylor didn’t answer him. She didn’t have to. He saw in her eyes that this inquisitive woman, who asked question, after question, after question of him, believed her father, without one. Disappointment, in himself, and in her, pierced his heart. He had fallen for the woman who he thought that she was. Evidently, he’d given her too much credit. At least when she was around her father, she wasn’t the woman who he had believed her to be. She might never be that woman.

“How is it that you have the right to question my daughter about any of this?” George asked, glancing at Taylor, then back at Brandon. “As a matter of fact, how exactly do you two know each other?”

Brandon hoped that his glare told the man to back-the-fuck-off, but he wasn’t sure, because George didn’t look intimidated. His dark eyes were sharp, his cheeks were flushed, and he just looked pissed. “I’ll let Taylor answer those questions.”

Tom, who had been standing in the corner of the room, approached George. He spoke into his mic, received feedback through his earpiece, then said, “Senator Landusky has arrived. She will be here for thirty minutes, exactly. You wanted to deliver your speech while she is here, correct?”

George nodded. He asked Joe, “Are we done?”

“No,” Joe said. “We’re not here to debate whether the letter is true,” encompassing George and Brandon in his gaze. “We believe that whoever killed Lisa believes that the Hutchenson letter is the truth, and if we’re correct, we think that you could be in danger.”

“This is crazy,” George said.

“My brother, Victor, may have recently acquired an original of the letter,” Brandon said. Taylor’s deep breath interrupted him.

“As of yesterday you believed that Victor was dead. Right?” Taylor asked.

Brandon bit back a flash of irritation as he understood the rules by which Taylor played. Those rules gave her license to doubt him and question him, again and again, but not her father.

“New intelligence indicates otherwise,” he said to her. “If Victor believes the letter to be the truth, if he believes that the HBW Board acted to conceal it,” Brandon glanced at George, Andrew, and Taylor, “you aren’t safe. If he believes that you caused my father pain, he will hurt you. Financially, emotionally, whatever it takes. My brother is a killer. He gets paid to do it. He makes deaths look like accidents,” Brandon said, stating as facts concerns that he had never stated to anyone other than Sebastian. “That’s his calling card.”

Brandon expected skepticism. He expected, damn it, he expected questions. Yet he was greeted with stoic silence, from George, Andrew, Taylor, and Lloyd. Brandon looked at Joe, who met Brandon’s eyes with a wide-eyed,
what-the-fuck
expression.

“Based upon the information that Brandon has provided,” Joe said, “and recent developments in the Smithfield murder investigation, we’re considering whether Victor Morrissey was involved in Lisa’s murder.” Taylor gave a surprised gasp. Finally, Brandon thought, there was an appropriate response from her. “We have forensics doing a sweep of Collette Westerfeld’s home.”

“And who the hell gave you permission to do that?” George asked.

“Last I checked,” Joe said, “I don’t need permission to investigate a possible homicide. Ms. Westerfeld’s brother and my partner are at the house with the crime lab technicians.”

“It wasn’t a homicide. It was an accidental overdose,” George said. “Obviously, you haven’t done your homework by speaking to the coroner.”

“The coroner didn’t know what we now know.”

“You are invading the privacy of a troubled young lady. I will see to it that the chief of police is aware of how you acted.”

“Go right ahead,” Joe said, “because there’s nothing wrong with anything I’ve done. Besides, last time my superiors didn’t listen to Brandon Morrissey, we had an ugly situation on our hands.” Joe focused his attention on George, then Andrew. “Lisa Smithfield was researching the Morrissey treason case. If anything unusual has happened in that regard in the last few weeks, days, I need to know now.”

There was silence. Andrew stood. He placed the letter on George’s desk. George, in turn, placed it in the top desk drawer. Andrew walked to the window, which overlooked the rear yard, and seemed to be interested in the party. Lloyd sat in one of the chairs, glanced from George to Andrew, then his eyes settled on Brandon, who wondered what, if any, exchange had occurred between his father and this man who gave the appearance of being sophisticated and scholarly.

Joe repeated, “Has anything happened?”

George asked, “In what regard?”

“Don’t play with me,” Joe said. “If Victor Morrissey stole the original of the Hutchenson letter from Lisa, it stands to reason that he’d have contacted you. So, let me be perfectly clear. If anything has happened in the last few days that is related to this letter, and you’re not telling me about it now, I will consider your silence to be interference with a police investigation and I will see that you are prosecuted. I can, and I will.”

Andrew turned from the window, his attention focused on George. Lloyd also was focused on George, who was silent for long enough that Brandon knew, no matter what George’s answer was going to be, that the real answer was yes. Something had happened. A threat. A demand. Something. Yet George shook his head. “You’re threatening me for no reason. This letter is a hoax. It is nothing more than a bad joke that is more than thirty years old. Even if I were somehow threatened with this letter, I would not make the threat a matter for the New Orleans Police Department to investigate. I will not allow it to become such. Once I talk to your superiors, you will understand that this letter is a private matter.”

George’s words, though full of bluster, didn’t fool Brandon. He glanced at Taylor, who was staring at her father with worry in her eyes. He wondered whether George was fooling his daughter. Brandon said, “You haven’t answered Joe’s question.”

George glared at Brandon. “This conversation is ridiculous. I have given you enough time. I have a speech to give.”

As George walked towards the door, Brandon said, “I think that Victor believes that, after my father received the Hutchenson letter, someone from HBW, set fire to our house in 1981 to destroy all of my father’s documents, including the Hutchenson letter.”

George turned to Brandon. “That’s preposterous.”

Brandon shrugged. “I’m not saying that it’s true. I’m saying that my father painted HBW as the bad guys. Victor was and is imbalanced. Right or wrong, he believed what my father said. My sister died in that fire. My father never recovered from his grief.” Brandon locked eyes with Taylor, then turned back to George. “Victor knows what the death of a daughter does to a man.”

Andrew’s gasp stole Brandon’s attention. Brandon detected a shake in Andrew’s hand as he watched the man wipe his brow.

George asked, “Are you suggesting that Victor would go after our daughters to get to us?”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

Brandon wanted George to be so scared that he’d ask Brandon for help. He waited. No request came. Instead, George narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “Taylor indicated that as of yesterday, you believed that your brother was dead. Is that correct, Mr. Morrissey?”

Brandon nodded, ready to explain more, but George continued, “Sanity, or the lack thereof, runs in families. There’s a gene, you know, the absence of which can make people delusional. Simple tests determine the presence or the absence of the gene. Given your father’s delusions, you, Mr. Morrissey, should avail yourself of those tests, or, at a minimum, undergo a psychiatric evaluation.” Brandon would have crossed the room to strangle the man, except Joe grasped Brandon’s forearm and kept him anchored. George continued, “Leave my house,” he drew a deep breath, “and leave my daughter alone.”

George, Andrew, Lloyd, and Tom left the study. A security guard stepped in, holding the door open for Taylor, so that she could follow her father, and, Brandon assumed, for Brandon and Joe to exit the premises. Brandon turned to Taylor. Her cheeks were flushed red.

“I’m sorry that he insulted you.”

Molten anger coursed through Brandon’s veins. He tried not to direct it at Taylor, but hell, he was almost as angry with her as with her father. She was looking at Brandon with doubt in those hazel-green eyes, as though she believed her father, as though Brandon was destined for an asylum. “You don’t question anything that he says?”