My Brother's Keeper
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My Brother’s Keeper | Abigail Roux
envelope heavy in his hand. He dreaded the trek back up to
the office, and he was tempted to call Daniel to come back
and have a drink with him just so he’d have an excuse not to open it.
Finally, he couldn’t make himself stall any longer, and
he turned woodenly to walk back up the stairs. He was
sitting back in his chair before he really knew where he was going or what he was doing. It was like he was working on
mental auto-pilot, he mused to himself. He wondered if that was how Sonny functioned all the time.
His small smile fell quickly with the thought. He licked
his lips and looked back down at the envelope in his hand.
His name was written on it in block print. The package
wasn’t very thick or exceptionally heavy, but the contents
worried him. He set the envelope down as if it might contain something explosive and pushed out of his chair, walking
slowly to the door like a man whose muscles were too sore to be used. He stood with his hand on the knob and his head
cocked, listening.
The click of the lock as he turned it resounded in the
silence of the nearly deserted club, and Brayden’s stomach
turned over nervously.
Ever since he’d been a little boy, Brayden had both
loved and despised being alone in the club at night. It was somehow freeing to feel like he was breaking the rules or
seeing something after hours that no one else got to see. But it could also be oppressively lonely, like he was the only
person left in the world. Walking the halls that were
normally so full of life and sound in the silence of darkness 35
My Brother’s Keeper | Abigail Roux
left a hollow feeling that Brayden had never been entirely
comfortable with.
His best memories from childhood were of the nights
when he and Addison had snuck off the grounds of their
home together and come to the club. They would creep
across the golf course, feet and ankles getting wet from the dew on the grass, holding hands so as not to lose each other in the darkness, one of them clutching the key swiped from
their father as if it would unlock a treasure chest full of gold rather than a massive old country club door.
They would spend all night snooping through the
hidden passages and nooks of the club, playing in the areas that were supposed to be out of bounds to them, pretending
that they ran the place and soliloquizing about what they
would do when they really did run it. Addison’s plans had
always included hiring someone else to run it and sailing off into the sunset.
That had been before the high-tech security had been
installed, of course. Brayden and Addison had been clever
kids, but they wouldn’t have been any match for the motion
sensors.
Brayden blinked away the fond memories and headed
back for the desk and the responsibility he had inherited
from his father. He sat down heavily and picked up the
envelope once more.
He allowed himself another long moment to worry over
what he would find. Then he reached for the antique, ivory-
handled letter opener at his wrist and sliced through the
seal.
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My Brother’s Keeper | Abigail Roux
III
ADDISON heard the commotion before he pushed through
the heavy oak doors of their father’s office. Brayden knew he would, but he still looked stunned when he stepped through
the door and saw all the people milling about inside.
“What the hell?” he questioned as he looked around.
Several men in uniforms were rifling through the shelves
that lined the hexagonal room, and two more were going
through the antique ship captain’s desk that sat in the
middle of the floor.
“Sonny,” Brayden murmured as he waved him over.
Addison dropped his duffel bag and looked around in
outrage. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded.
“They’ve got a warrant,” Brayden said to him calmly as
Addison walked over to him, his eyes never leaving the
people going through their father’s papers.
“Terribly sorry for the intrusion, Mr. Bainbridge. We’ll be done in no time,” Detective Walker told them with a smile
that said he was enjoying the intrusion a little too much.
“Perhaps if you would tell us what you were looking for,
we could be of some assistance,” Brayden said through
gritted teeth. His voice was still pleasant, though.
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My Brother’s Keeper | Abigail Roux
“Don’t you have the warrant?” Addison asked him as he
reached for the sheet of paper Brayden held in his hands.
“It just says they can look through the office and all his
papers,” Brayden mumbled to him as Addison scanned the
document.
“Sir?” one of the uniforms called as she held up her
hand. “I think you should see this.”
Walker and his partner both moved to look over the
woman’s shoulder as she knelt in front of the desk. Brayden craned his head to see what the woman had found. He saw
her reach into the top drawer on the left side of the desk and put her hand up into the top of it. There was a loud click
from inside the drawer. Addison shifted beside Brayden
restlessly.
“It’s a secret compartment of some sort, Detective,” the
uniform murmured.
Walker straightened up and looked over at Brayden and
Addison inquiringly. “You know anything about this?” he
asked neutrally.
Brayden found himself surprised that the man’s tone
wasn’t more challenging or suspicious when he asked the
question.
“That’s a ship captain’s desk from the mid-1800s,”
Brayden answered grudgingly.
Addison turned to look at him warningly. Anything they
said to these men could hurt them; they both knew that. But Brayden knew that helping them went a long way to ending
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this sooner. And judging from the physical state of his
brother this morning, the sooner this was over, the better.
“It’s full of secret compartments and hidden drawers,”
Brayden continued as he crossed his arms over his chest
and looked at the desk with a frown. “We used to sneak into his office as kids and search it, looking for them all. I doubt Father even knew where they all were,” he murmured.
“Well, he knew where this one was,” Detective Morgan
murmured as he knelt and reached into the drawer with a
gloved hand. He rummaged for a moment and then stood
once more with a thin file of papers, bound by two rubber
bands, in his hand.
The room was silent as he removed the rubber bands
and opened the folder to read the top page. After roughly two minutes of examining the documents, the man looked up at
them with an unreadable expression.
“What is it?” Brayden demanded finally, tired of playing
the game the detectives seemed to be enjoying.
“It’s what we were looking for,” Morgan answered almost
regretfully.
“SO, what’ve we got?” Captain Adelio Gonzalez inquired as
Detective
Sam Walker sat at his desk and rubbed his eyes.
Sam glanced up at the man and sighed.
“Two very sneaky brothers,” he answered in a low,
rumbling growl.
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“Talk to me,” Gonzalez requested as he sat opposite Sam
and cocked his head.
“All right. We got a victim who was poisoned with
ethylene glycol—antifreeze,” Sam started with a huff. “On the surface, it looks like the man drank himself to death. That is until the autopsy is performed. All the people we interviewed claim he wasn’t a heavy drinker—just a bourbon every night
before he left the club to go home—until about two months
ago. Even the sons confirmed that. Then, about two months
ago, he starts showing up in public uncoordinated,
confused, slurring his speech,” he rattled off as he counted off the points on his fingers. “All are symptoms of ethylene glycol poisoning. As are tachycardia, headaches, decreased
visual acuity.”
“All of which Bainbridge was diagnosed with during his
last checkup, two weeks ago,” Sam’s partner, Detective Ray
Morgan, supplied. “According to his medical records. All are relatively minor problems and pretty common in a man of
Bainbridge’s age, so they weren’t followed up immediately.”
Gonzalez nodded to signal he was following and
motioned for them to continue.
“Another result of ethylene glycol poisoning is kidney
failure,” Sam went on. “Which is ultimately what the man
died from. Acute, pretty damn immediate kidney failure. The ME says the stuff metabolizes fast, and in small enough
doses it would wear off before anything could be done to
reverse the effects.”
Morgan was nodding as he chewed his mouthful of
sandwich. He swallowed heavily and pointed at the report on 40
My Brother’s Keeper | Abigail Roux
Sam’s desk. “He also said that the shit has no smell and a
sweet taste to it, so it could be slipped into a drink without anyone ever noticing. So, basically, every little dose did a little bit more damage to his insides. They were mimicking
the damage done by years of heavy drinking, which we’ve
established the victim never did, in just a few months.”
“Sounds like a pretty decent plan, if you’re patient and
your victim’s predictable,” Gonzalez murmured with a frown.
“Which it sounds like they were. So why, if the killer was
slipping it to him a little at a time—”
“Killers,” Sam corrected.
“Okay, why did they suddenly dump enough poison into him to show up on the ME’s tox screen during the autopsy?”
Gonzalez questioned.
“We wondered that too.” Sam nodded. “Then the doc
told us that when someone ingests antifreeze, the standard
procedure to combat the poisoning is to give them an
alcoholic drink,” he told his captain with a grin.
Gonzalez raised one expressive eyebrow but remained
silent, waiting for the rest of the explanation.
“The alcohol binds with the shit and ushers it out of the
system,” Morgan explained.
Gonzalez gave them both a confused frown. “Okay,” he
said slowly, “so we think they did just enough research to
know how to kill him, but not enough to know that when
they slipped him antifreeze in his nightly bourbon it was
actually saving his life?” he asked, more to sum up the
report for himself than anything else.
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“Pretty much, yes,” Sam answered with a shrug. “For
God knows how long, they patiently waited for the old man’s kidneys to give out, then they either realized their mistake or they ran out of time or patience or both. We think two
months ago they started slipping him bigger and bigger
doses.”
“The motor pool manager,” Morgan interjected as he
turned the page of his file. “Grace? He said that he had
noticed last month the club was a half-gallon short on
antifreeze at the end of the month.”
“This guy is ex-military,” Sam added with a nod. “He
runs that place tight as a drum. He knows what his people
are doing before they do it, and he keeps stringent records of all his supplies.”
“He says they’re going to need a gallon a week, they
need a gallon a week. No plus or minus,” Morgan added
before biting into his sandwich. “And he said that this month they were a whole gallon short. Plus,” Morgan said through another full mouth of sandwich, “he said the supply shed
has security.”
“You remember that rash of robberies a few years back?
Million-dollar houses around the golf course getting jacked, and no one saw nothing kind of thing?” Sam asked Gonzalez,
who nodded. “Well, during that deal the club set up all their outbuildings with keypad security systems. Reggie
Bainbridge, Daniel Grace, the two brothers, and a few other high-level maintenance people at the club are the only ones with access to the outbuilding’s security codes.”
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“But the club missing antifreeze is flimsy,” the captain
pointed out. “I mean, you can buy it at any auto parts store in Miami. Who says he was—”
“They,” Morgan interrupted with a smirk.
Gonzalez glared at him briefly. “Who says they were using the country club’s antifreeze?” he asked.
“Forensics matched the chemical makeup,” Sam told
him grimly.
“Makes the list pretty damn short,” Gonzalez
murmured.
Sam nodded and leaned back in his squeaky chair.
“We like the brothers for this, Cap,” Morgan asserted
confidently. “They had motive, they had opportunity—”
“If you plan to arrest two of the community’s wealthiest,
most influential sons within weeks of their father’s death, you’d better have a water-tight case, got it?” the captain told them seriously. Both detectives nodded obediently. “What
else is there?” Gonzalez asked.
“We found the old man’s will,” Morgan told him with a
grin.
“Is it not a matter of public record?” Gonzalez asked
dubiously.
“Not this one,” Sam murmured as he pulled out a scan
of the original document they had found hidden in Reggie
Bainbridge’s desk. He slid it across his cluttered desktop and pointed at the date.
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“It’s hand-written,” Gonzalez said incredulously as he
reached for it and picked it up.
“Right,” Morgan agreed with a sage nod, concealing his
grin with another bit of his sandwich.
“This is far from official,” Gonzalez muttered with a
troubled frown.
“Granted,” Sam agreed.
“But it’s also the last known version of his intentions, if you’ll notice, and his intentions are clear,” Morgan
responded through his last bite of sandwich.
“This was a rough draft of a letter he was sending to his
lawyer. He wasn’t planning on leaving his sons a dime of his fortune,” Sam stated grimly.
“Can we prove that they knew that?” the captain asked
keenly.
“The lab is trying to lift prints o
ff it. If we find either son’s prints on those pieces of paper, we’ll have them. We’re waiting for the results,” Sam answered with a shrug.
“Anything else?” Gonzalez asked, obviously not yet
convinced of the validity of their case. Sam didn’t blame him.
If they went after those boys and fucked it up, the captain would be hanging from the gates of the country club as a
piñata before sundown.
“When we visited the club that first time, we heard them
talking in their office,” Morgan offered. “They thought we
couldn’t hear them. And then again when we were
questioning Grace. The older one was pretty calm about the
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investigation, but the younger was freaking out. I mean
really freaking out. Watching us like hawks and twitchy as all hell.”
“He’s also blocked us from exhuming the body,” Sam
added.
“I thought we had all we needed from the body,”
Gonzalez said with a frown.
“We do,” Sam affirmed with a smile. “But the kid didn’t
know that.”
THE sound of the waves crashing against the strand of white sand was the only thing impeding upon the buzz Addison
had created with his stash of pills and booze. He lay
sprawled in a lounge chair he had dragged out onto the
beach, his half-empty bottle nestled into the sand at his
fingertips.
The fragrant smell of the cigar he held mingled with the
salt air and the booze to make an oddly pleasant scent as
Brayden approached him. But the smoke of his cigar haloed
around him in the moonlight, creating an eerie aura around
him that Brayden found himself hesitant to intrude upon.
Finally he cleared his throat and moved forward out into
the sand.
“There you go,” Addison drawled, “skulking in the
shadows again.”
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My Brother’s Keeper | Abigail Roux
“There you go,” Brayden responded bitterly, “stoned out
of your mind again.”
“Go fuck yourself, Brayden,” Addison muttered without
moving.
Brayden shook his head and walked slowly over to sit