Suspicion (19 page)

  "She wouldn’t have worked in the hotel, Mrs. Mays. Gina Lamont was a call girl."

  "A call girl?" This time, Maddy’s reaction was one of pure amusement. "My dear Mrs. Logan, I’m afraid your sources are not as reliable as you may think. I used to be a call girl myself, as I’m sure you know, but for someone

  to imply that I’m back in that line of business, and as a madam no less, is simply ludicrous."

  Kate was impressed. If the woman was acting, she was doing a damn good job. "Could she have worked the hotel without your knowledge?"

  "’I suppose that’s possible, but highly unlikely. You see, I’m a hands-on type of owner, Mrs. Logan. I spend a great deal of time in the hotel. If a call girl was using my establishment to pick up customers, believe me, I would have spotted her a mile away."

  ‘"I wonder…" Kate kept her gaze level. "Would you have any objections to my questioning some of your staff?"

  "Not at all. But I would have to insist that it be done discreetly, here, in my office."

  "That would be fine. Thank you."

  Minutes later, five employees were ushered into Maddy’s office-the desk clerk who had greeted Kate in the lobby, two bellboys, a bartender, a waitress and the hotel detective. All of them had worked at the hotel for more than four years. Kate couldn’t have made a better selection herself.

  Standing nearly at attention, they took turns looking at Gina’s picture. Kate watched closely for a sign of recognition, or any sort of reaction. There was none.

  After a while, they all shook their heads. They had never seen the woman, in or out of the hotel.

  When they were gone, Maddy leaned comfortably in her chair. "I trust you are convinced that what you heard about me was nothing more than a malicious rumor meant to discredit me."

  "Why would anyone want to do that? You give hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity every year, you’ve

  built a halfway house for runaway girls and you own one of the classiest hotels in town. People adore you."

  "Jealousy, Mrs. Logan. Sometimes the more you do, the more you are despised." The blue eyes softened. "But thank you for the compliment. It’s always nice to know that your work is appreciated." She was cool enough to look almost disappointed when Kate rose to leave. "I’m sorry I was unable to help you, Mrs. Logan. If there is anything else I can do for you, arranging an elegant luncheon or a romantic stay for two in one of our suites, please don’t hesitate to call me. I’ll give it my very special attention."

  "That’s kind of you, Mrs. Mays. Thank you."

  "Not at all." Maddy stood up. "May I call you a cab?"

  "That won’t be necessary. I drove."

  As Kate walked across the antique Aubusson rug, she could almost feel Maddy Mays’s gaze burning into her.

  Reclining in his chair, Mitch listened patiently to a hardware salesman in Thaxton, Virginia, telling him he had just spotted Eric Logan on a Greyhound bus bound for Clay Ridge, West Virginia. After a while, he thanked him and hung up.

  There had been dozens of such calls in the past eight days, and although none of them had led him to Eric, he’d had to check each one as thoroughly as he would have any other.

  Fortunately for him, the sheriff in Clay Ridge turned out to be a jovial kind of guy who listened attentively as Mitch reported the sighting. "I’d appreciate if you could check the motels in your area, Sheriff," Mitch said after giving him Eric’s description. "And the restaurants."

  Sheriff Mercer seemed to find the request amusing. "We ain’t got no motels here, son," he said in a slow,

  lazy drawl. "And the only restaurant, if you want to call it that, is Betty Jo’s truck stop on Route 9. This here town ain’t nothing but a crossroad. You blink and you missed it." He laughed, a big belly laugh that brought a smile to Mitch’s lips. "Tell you what, though," he added when his laughter had subsided. "I’ll check with the sheriff in Waneta. He’s a buddy of mine. Maybe he seen something."

  "Thanks, Sheriff. I’ll be sure to put you on my Christmas mailing list."

  "You do that. And don’t you send me none of them sissy cheese baskets you city folks fancy so much, you hear? This here is man country, son. We celebrate the holidays with Brother Jack. Jack Daniel’s, that is."

  "Sheriff, you get Eric Logan back to me, and I’ll send you a case of the stuff."

  No sooner had he hung up than his phone rang again. This time, it was Brad Carpenter whom he hadn’t seen since the funeral.

  "I came across something you might want to take a look at," the photographer told him.

  Mitch was instantly alert. "What is it?"

  "I’d rather not discuss it over the phone."

  "I’ll be there as soon as I can."

  Brad met him at the door and shook Mitch’s hand. As soon as they were inside the small room Brad used as an office, the photographer opened a desk drawer, took out a small black book and handed it to Mitch. "I found this in Gina’s bag."

  "What bag?"

  Brad produced a black canvas backpack with the word "Lancome" printed on it. "The girls like to keep a change of clothes and some toiletries in the dressing room. I didn’t remember that until after the funeral."

  The palm- size notepad contained detailed household expenses Gina had incurred during the last six months of her life. According to her figures, she was behind in almost all of her bills, from the mortgage payments to her hairdresser. But it was the entry a few pages farther on that held Mitch’s attention.

  There were three names, three first names. Next to each name was a dollar sign followed by a number and a date. The fourth name, however, only had a question mark after it.

  Mitch read aloud, "James: $2,000, August 8. Duncan: $850, September 15. Jason: $1,500, October 30. Sander: question mark." He looked up. "You know any of those men?"

  "Never heard of them."

  Mitch searched quickly through the backpack. It contained a hairbrush, a tube of lipstick in a brilliant shade of red and a pair of black lacy underwear. "Gina never mentioned them to you?"

  He shook his head. "I told you the other day that Gina and I didn’t talk about her Johns."

  Mitch glanced at the feminine handwriting once again. "They could be people Gina owed money to," he reflected. "Or the names of some of her customers. And then again…" He looked up, his eyes watchful. "They could be the names of men she was blackmailing."

  "Could be." Brad folded his powerful arms across his chest. "Gina was very resourceful when she needed money."

  "What about you, Brad?" Mitch kept his tone casual. "Did she ever try to get money from you?"

  The photographer’s expression didn’t change. "Yes, I gave her money from time to time. But not because she

  had anything on me if that’s what you’re driving at. I told you, Gina and I were friends, nothing more."

  "You don’t seem surprised that she may have been blackmailing her customers."

  "I’m not. In fact, I suspected it, and I was worried one of her Johns would turn on her. She didn’t listen, though." His tone turned mournful. "She never listened. She was the most stubborn woman I knew."

  Mitch tapped the book with the back of his hand. "Those amounts are chicken feed, Brad. Hardly the kind of money she needed to keep up her lifestyle. There had to be others. Men with money, men who would have paid anything, done anything, even murder, to keep her quiet."

  "If there were, she never told me."

  Mitch snapped the notepad shut and slipped it into his jacket pocket before picking up the backpack. "Thanks for the call, Brad."

  "Don’t thank me. Find Gina’s killer." He walked to the door with Mitch. "She was a good person, Detective. A little misguided perhaps, but a good person. Her killer should be punished."

  Back in his car, Mitch sat behind the wheel for a few minutes. The first three names in Gina’s book were fairly common, which would make finding their owners a near impossible task. Sander, on the other hand, was not common at all. To his knowledge, there was only one prominent man in the District bearing that name: U.S. Senator Sander McKackney, a wealthy, influential politician whose son had once been brought up on rape charges. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Mitch made a quick U-turn and headed for the police station.

  "You son of a gun!" Randy Vargas exclaimed when his secretary put Mitch through. "I was beginning to think you had forgotten me."

  Mitch laughed. "How could I forget a prince of a guy like you?"

  "You were supposed to call me weeks ago."

  "I’ve been busy. Some of us aren’t as fortunate as you are, you know. We actually have to work for a living."

  "Hey, you say the word and you’ll be enjoying the same perks by month’s end. That partnership offer we discussed a few months ago is still on the table."

  "I appreciate it, Randy, but-"

  "It’s too soon. I know, I know." Randy sighed. "Just thought I’d mention it."

  Mitch hated to let Randy down. The two of them went back a long way, before Mitch had even joined the force. Randy, twenty-two years his senior, had been part of the elite SWAT team at the time and a close friend of Mitch’s father. In 1980, Randy had resigned from the force and started Vargas World Wide Investigations. For a man with a penchant for adventure and danger, the job was tailor made for him. But he was a grandfather now and he wanted more time to spend with the kids. When his partner retired a few months ago, Randy had made Mitch an offer most men would have found difficult to refuse. But Mitch had turned him down. Money wasn’t important to him. Not anymore.

  "So, kid," Randy said with his usual straightforwardness, "what’s up?"

  "I need some information, Randy."

  "Shoot."

  "You remember that rape case Senator McKackney’s son was involved in sixteen years ago?"

  "How could I forget? The victim was my daughter’s

  best friend, and Detective Jarvis, now Lieutenant Jarvis, was the arresting officer."

  "Give me your recollection of the case, will you?"

  "It’s all in the files, Mitch."

  "I know. I read them. Now I want your personal input."

  "Okay, let’s see." Mitch could picture the wiry, gray-haired former police sergeant leaning back in his swivel chair, eyes on the ceiling. "Sean McKackney had just graduated from med school and was doing his residency at Washington General. Peggy Bertram was a senior at Mount Vernon College. One night, the two of them went out on a date. Sean got a little fresh and Peggy quickly set him straight-no sex. So he raped her. They didn’t call it date rape in those days, but that’s exactly what it was."

  "Why did she wait twenty-four hours to report the crime?"

  "That was a bad move on her part. But you’ve got to understand, the kid was embarrassed, and scared the police would say it was her fault, that she had led Sean on. And the McKackneys intimidated the hell out of her. If it wasn’t for my daughter, Suzan, Peggy might not have gone to the cops at all. As it turned out, she went through all that humiliation for nothing. An hour after Sean McKackney was picked up, his lawyer showed up with a girl who gave Sean an airtight alibi."

  Mitch glanced at the file spread out on his desk and read the name of Sean’s attorney-Douglas Fairchild. "Tell me about the girl."

  "Her name was Mary Sweeney. She was a model with some hotshot agency in town."

  "The Carteris Agency."

  "Right. But when she showed up that day, she looked

  more like the girl next door than a sexy, sophisticated model. She was beautiful, clean-cut and so soft-spoken you had to strain to hear her. I don’t know if that was an act or not, but it sure worked. When she told Jarvis that on the night Sean was supposed to have raped Peggy, he was in bed with her, the poor bastard actually blushed."

  "And he let McKackney go."

  "Yup. My daughter tried to convince Peggy she should still press charges, but she didn’t want to. I even offered to do some investigating for her on my own time. She turned me down. The poor kid just wanted to forget the whole thing. Shortly after the incident, she transferred to a small college in Alabama and Suzan lost track of her."

  "What was your impression of McKackney?"

  "Sean?" Randy chuckled. "He was a sleazy little bastard. A rich boy who thought the world owed him a big favor for just being part of it."

  "You think the girlfriend was a phony? Someone Sean paid to lie for him?"

  "Not Sean. His father. Sander McKackney. He was the one who came up with that girl, I’m sure of it. I can’t prove it. But he did it, Mitch. I’d wager a year’s salary on it."

  "If you knew the alibi was a phony, why couldn’t Jarvis see it, too?"

  "Jarvis was under a lot of pressure in those days. Imagine, a junior detective having to deal with the great and powerful Senator McKackney. He might have acted differently if Peggy hadn’t dropped the charges, but once she did, everyone figured she had made up the whole thing."

  "You’re the only one who believed her?"

  "That’s right. I was at the station the night Sean was brought in and I saw how smug he looked when he walked out an hour later. And I saw the look he gave

  Peggy. I could have smashed my fist into that arrogant face of his. I was even more convinced of his guilt a few days later when I found out he and Mary Sweeney were no longer an item."

  "What do you mean?"

  "They broke up. I talked to a couple of his friends, trying to find out what happened, but they claimed they didn’t know anything."

  "Maybe this whole thing was just too much for her."

  Randy laughed. "Yeah. And maybe the moon is made of green cheese."

  "Why don’t you describe Mary Sweeney for me?"