* * *
Rob studied the photo of Vincent Willig, his eyes drugged and vague, fresh out of surgery. He frowned, cocked his head to the side, a mannerism Savich had seen Venus do when she was curious or worrying a problem. “Is this the guy who tried to kill Grandmother yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“I think he looks familiar.” Rob tapped his forefinger on the phone. “But I can’t remember from where.”
Savich said, “His name is Vincent Carl Willig and he has an impressive rap sheet—spent ten years in Attica. He got out six months ago. Think about where you could have seen him, Rob. It’s important.”
Rob nodded. “I’m not sure I have, but I’ll think about it. What about employees? Would Veronica have any reason to want to poison Grandmother?”
Sherlock said, “Veronica has been with Venus fifteen years. Her finances are sound, since Venus invests most of her pretty substantial income for her. And she has free room and board in a mansion. She’s dependent on Venus for her livelihood. I can’t see a reason for her to want to do away with her meal ticket.”
“She must be nearly forty now, isn’t she?”
“She’s thirty-six,” Savich said. “Only five years older than you.”
“Grandmother speaks highly of her, says Veronica makes her laugh. And she’s always been completely loyal to her.”
“Were you in love with her when you were a teenager?” Sherlock asked.
“Sure, she was a young guy’s wet dream, blond, beautiful, a superb body. Is Alexander sleeping with her?”
Savich said, “Evidently not.”
Rob laughed, shook his head. “I doubt it, too—Alexander wouldn’t ever dip his quill in company ink. He always used to preach to me to keep away from the Help, always said it with a capital letter. He actually used those words—the Help. Veronica never liked him anyway.”
Savich said as he rose, “That would sure make things neat, now wouldn’t it? Not a Rasmussen behind this. Only the Help.” He added more formally, “Sherlock and I will see you this evening, Rob. Thank you for coming in. I’ll call if we have more questions.”
Rob splayed his palms on the table, leaned toward them. “I’m not only angry, Savich, I’m scared. I just found Grandmother again and I don’t want to lose her. That shooting yesterday, if you guys hadn’t been there, if MacPherson hadn’t been there—she’d be dead. Please find out who’s doing this.”
“We will.” Savich turned to Griffin. “Let’s show Mr. Rasmussen to the elevator.”
“You know, Savich, both my dad and Alexander wrote me off years ago—Alexander ever since I stole his new Mustang and took it for a spin. A pity I wrecked it.”
“You were thirteen, Rob,” Savich said, as the group of four walked together down the wild hallway.
“And a spoiled little idiot. I remember Alexander had just turned eighteen, the Mustang was his graduation present from Father. A fine car, that Mustang. Then after I nearly killed that guy in the bar fight, Alexander wanted me sent away forever.”
Sherlock knew all about the bar fight, but she wanted to hear what he would say about it. “What happened?”
“I hate to own up to it, even now, but I was treating my girlfriend like dirt because I was drunk and I’d heard she cheated on me, and this older guy—around twenty-five—took exception. We got into it and I hurt him, ended up in jail. Then my girlfriend hauled off and whacked me in the jaw. I was lucky, she didn’t break it, even though I deserved it.
“Venus arranged the army option, she has friends everywhere who’ve helped me out more than once.”
“There were other times?” Sherlock asked.
He cleared his throat. “Well, I did a bit of shoplifting when I was a kid, a bit of pot when I was in high school, some speeding, well, okay, a couple of DUIs when I was old enough to know better. But beating up that guy, that was the biggie. His name is Billy Cronin, he’s married and has three kids, lives up in Philly. I, ah, check on him every couple of years.”
When they reached the elevator, Savich pushed the button. The doors opened almost immediately and out stepped Agent Hammersmith’s sister, Delsey Freestone, singing a twangy western song Savich didn’t recognize, thought she’d probably written it herself. Two agents on the elevator stood behind her, obviously enjoying themselves.
She broke off, mid-verse, turning to the agents behind her. “I’ll catch you guys later, thanks. Dillon! How nice to see you. I’m here to take Griffin to lunch. Hi, Sherlock.” She stopped cold, blinked at Rob. “Who are you?”
Griffin laughed behind Savich. “Delsey, what’s that song you’re singing?”
Delsey sang a couple of bars, never taking her eyes off Rob Rasmussen. “I call it ‘Lamebrain at the Hoedown,’ classic country and western, all the way down to the twang and the head in the toilet the morning after. I’m hoping you’ll sing it at the Bonhommie Club, Dillon.”
Savich saw that Rob stood staring back at Delsey, his eyes a bit unfocused, looking shell-shocked. Tell me this isn’t happening. Savich didn’t want to, but he had no choice. “Delsey, this is Rob Rasmussen.”
Delsey looked up at him, and slowly, she smiled. “Have you had lunch yet?”
Rob shook his head, ran his tongue over his suddenly dry lips. “Well, no, and I’m starved. But what about your brother?”
“Who? Oh, Griffin, I’ll bet he’s going to take Savich and Sherlock to lunch, right, Griffin?”
Griffin looked from Rob Rasmussen to his sister. He was no match for her blazing smile. “Sure, Dels, right.”
“Let’s go see what we can find,” Rob said, and offered Delsey his arm. “Savich, Sherlock, please keep me in the loop. Please find out who’s doing this. Agent Hammersmith, it was very nice to meet you.” He gave Savich a little salute. “See you tonight.”
Savich watched the elevator doors close behind Rob and Delsey, neither of them speaking, only smiling at each other like loons. “Well, Griffin, it looks like you’ve been kissed off.”
Sherlock shook her head. “Let’s just hope Rob has nothing to do with the attempts on his grandmother’s life.”
22
* * *
Half an hour later, Agent Ruth Noble stuck her head into Savich’s office. “I brought Alexander Rasmussen up, put him in the interview room. Ah, Dillon, he’s not a happy camper. Not that he wasn’t civil when I fetched him from downstairs, but he’s pissed off at your demanding he come here to our house. Said he was a very busy man and this was nonsense. Can I sit in?”
Savich swallowed the last bite of his veggie wrap. “Sure, come on.”
Savich, Sherlock, and Ruth walked back into the interview room recently vacated by Alexander’s brother, Rob.
“Alexander,” Savich said as he walked in, closing the door behind him. “Thank you for coming. You’ve met Agent Noble.”
Alexander stood up from his chair. “You insisted I come.” He didn’t spare either Ruth or Sherlock a glance. “Listen, you know I have a lot of demands on my time, Savich, so what do you want that’s so important you dragged me here?”
“Sit down, Alexander.”
He sat down, stiff and angry. “Well?”
“It’s obvious you’re here because you are one of the people who may be trying to murder your grandmother.”
As an opener, this one scored big with Alexander. He went pale, lurched back in his chair, then flushed red with outrage. “What? You believe I would ever harm a hair on Grandmother’s head? You’re a disgrace, incompetent, the lot of you! If you think you can frame me, railroad me into prison, you’re dead wrong.”
Savich’s voice remained calm. “You and your father were the only people with her all three times she got ill from arsenic poisoning.”
“Use your brain for a change—anyone could have gotten to her food. Her own flesh and blood trying to kill her? That’s absurd. You and I have never gotten along, Savich. It’s natural you would feel jealous of what I have and who I am, and I don’t hold that against you, bu
t you need to get over yourself. I have no motive, nor does my father.
“Now, you’ve said what you wanted to say and I’ve responded to it. Over and done. There was no reason for you to demand I come here.”
“You say you have no motive?” Savich raised a finger. “You’re very angry at your grandmother for forcing you to work at the Smithsonian—with those bureaucratic morons I believe you called them. You consider it a rank insult.” He raised a second finger. “Two years ago you embezzled from Rathstone, Grace and Ward, and your grandmother made you pay back the money, convinced them not to prosecute, and I can only imagine how much you resented that.” A third finger went up. “Since she’s brought you into Rasmussen Industries, she’s kept a close eye on you, looks over your shoulder at everything you do to make sure you don’t fall back into old habits. How you must hate being on that short leash, under that constant supervision, of her belittling you in that way.” He raised a fourth finger. “You’ve disappointed her, Alexander, and that scares you because she could cut you off whenever she wishes. You want her position, you want to run the show, and you don’t want to risk losing that, but you don’t want to wait any longer. A prosecutor would have no trouble supplying a motive, Alexander, and you know it.”
Alexander rose straight out of his chair, leaned toward Savich, his hands splayed on the tabletop. “How dare you, you no-talent suck-up! The only reason Grandmother pays you any attention at all is because your grandmother was Sarah Elliott. She keeps you around because of her childhood friend, nothing more. And your talent? You whittle! You’re an embarrassment, a low-life cop.”
Sherlock smiled at the man she was tempted to cold-cock. “Dillon is an artist, he carves beautiful pieces, many of them at the Raleigh Gallery. And guess what? Dillon isn’t the only one with talent in our low-life cop family. I play classical piano. You should come hear me play sometimes.” And Sherlock cracked her knuckles.
Alexander lasered her with a look, but Savich raised his hand, cut him off. “I think that’s quite enough. We’re not here to talk about us, Alexander, or what you think of us. If you have nothing to hide, I suggest you check your insults and answer our questions.”
“I don’t have anything to say.”
Savich said easily, “I hope you do, Alexander, because more than your father, more than anyone else in your family, you’re the only one who stands to benefit if your grandmother dies.”
“I am not the one doing this! Listen, it’s got to be a competitor. The business world is a ruthless place. We’ve had to cut out the guts of more than one company in a merger or sale. That breeds resentment, even hatred.
“Anyone could have hired one of the staff to put poison in her food. That’s where you need to look, not at me, not at my father.”
“You believe Isabel could be poisoning Venus? That she’s being paid by a disgruntled business associate?”
“Why not? And there’s Veronica. I never trusted her, always sucking up to Grandmother, always agreeing with her. Why? She’s not family, she has no reason to be loyal to Grandmother. Question her. And there’s Aunt Hildi, Grandmother paid off her husband to leave her, and that had to burn.”
Off the rails. But interesting that Alexander had thrown his aunt Hildi under the bus.
Savich said quietly, “Do you know why Venus bailed you out of those charges at the Rathstone law firm?”
“She didn’t want her name blasted in the tabloids. She was afraid it would negatively affect Rasmussen stock. She was afraid for her own reputation.”
Sherlock said, “She saved you, Alexander, because you’re family. She loves you. It’s that simple.”
Alexander looked at them like they were mutts beneath his notice. He pulled his mesmerizing lawyer’s voice out of his hat. “Of course she does, and I love her. You want the facts about Rathstone, Grace and Ward? I had a disagreement with the partners about using my influence with Grandmother to bring them more business. I refused. They threatened they would let me go if I didn’t agree. I refused to. They came up with this malfeasance nonsense, threatened to report it to the bar. That is when Venus stepped in and made her own threats. Malfeasance? She never believed it for an instant.”
Savich said, “Specifically, it was a matter of siphoning off a client’s funds, actually two very wealthy clients whose finances the firm handles. Well, make that past tense—handled—because they left the firm. Venus must have been very disappointed in you.”
Alexander stared at him. There was a bead of sweat on his forehead. Savich said, “Venus kept quiet about what you did, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t find out about it. I know everything you did, every person’s name you did it to. Tread carefully, Alexander.”
Alexander swiped his hand over his forehead. He managed to kick in his lawyer’s voice again. “I will say this once and only once. This is idiotic. Neither I nor my father were poisoning Venus. As for that fool who tried to murder her outside our home yesterday, I know nothing about him.” He rose, shot his cuffs, and looked down at Savich. “I came believing that perhaps you would wish to have my help. Instead, you accuse me of wanting my grandmother dead. If I’d known the two of you were going to speak to me in this manner, I would have brought Rasmussen lawyers. Next time, I will. Don’t think I won’t tell Venus what happened here.” He stepped around the table, made a beeline for the door.
Savich let him go. He looked from Sherlock to Ruth, raised an eyebrow.
“I say we hang him up by his thumbs,” Ruth said, “and let him dangle above the floor for a couple of days. Come on, boss, let me do it.”
Savich said slowly, “It’s a lovely thought, Ruth.”
Ruth gave him a cocky grin. “Do you think we could run it by Mr. Maitland?”
23
* * *
MALIBU
TUESDAY
Cam picked two big bottles of ketchup off the shelf in Ralph’s Organics, really only a grocery store with inflated prices. Should she buy a third bottle? Heinz was a must-have for the cookout her parents had planned that evening. Her father had shooed her out of the house, along with an order for more beer and chips.
“Cammie! Cammie Wittier! Goodness, is it really you?”
Cam turned to see an incredibly beautiful young woman wearing chic ripped cut-offs, a tight tank top, and a perfect tan topped off with a head of glorious blond hair, streaked and full. And then she recognized her. Mary Ann Duff, a high school classmate she hadn’t seen since she’d left for college. She looked amazing, no longer carrying twenty extra pounds, and she’d lost the glasses and the dull, brown hair. She’d always been pretty, but now, she was flat-out glamorous. Cam remembered she was smart, too, and a good writer, the two of them thick as thieves on the high school newspaper their senior year.
“Mary Ann? You look stunning! Goodness, all that incredible hair—I swear, if I were a guy, I’d jump you.” The two women laughed and hugged.
“I’m so glad you recognized me. I mean, I was such a dog in high school.” She paused, fluffed her hair. “I’m Missy Devereaux now, have been for nearly eight years. A guy I met in a bar in Santa Monica, Anthony Margoulis, suggested it. He turned out to be a jerk, but he changed my life. But enough about him. Think you can call me Missy?”
“Sure, not a problem, and call me just plain Cam.”
“You here to visit your parents? Do they still live in the Colony?”
“No and yes,” Cam said. “Actually I’m an FBI agent now, on assignment from Washington.”
“I guess I’m not surprised. You had your heart set on that for as long as I’ve known you. Cammie— Cam, you’re so pretty, how do you get all the guys you work with to stop staring and listen to you? I mean, you’re the spitting image of your mom, and I’ve seen guys do a double take when she walks down the street here in Malibu. I even saw Ben Affleck stop once to stare after her. You said you were here on assignment. Can you tell me what it is?”
“I’m in charge of the serial killer case—the murdered actres
ses.”
“Oh my goodness, you mean the Starlet Slasher?”
Cam rolled her eyes. “Trust the media to come up with something alliterative that makes you want to throw up.”
Missy shuddered. “Whatever, it’s scary. This monster is all my friends can talk about. Cam, I was there! In a show with Molly Harbinger at the Mandalay. To die like that, Cam—it’s horrible.”
“Yes, it is. Wait a minute—Missy, you’re an actress? I never even knew you wanted to act.”
“That’s because I never told anybody back in high school. Fact is, Cam, I was a dog and I was too insecure, afraid I’d be mocked, but yes, I always wanted to act, even as a little girl. I’m not exactly a success yet, but maybe, in time. Who knows when some fairy dust will fall on my head? I’m working on and off, small roles in TV shows and commercials mostly, but it’s steady enough I can support myself.” She paused a moment. “I guess I brought both the killer and my stalker with me to Las Vegas.”
“What? You have a stalker? What’s that about?”
Missy gave her a huge grin, showing even white teeth. “You’d have been proud of me. I ran him down, I caught that loser myself in Las Vegas last weekend. And then—I couldn’t believe this—the cops let the jerk go.”
“He followed you to Las Vegas?”
“Yes. I saw his reflection in a store window on the Strip last Saturday, and I just snapped. I’d bought myself a Ka-Bar, you know, one of those big, scary military knives—”
“Yes, I know them.”
“Of course you’d know. I was so mad I was spitting, and so I took off after him, ran him down in the Wynn hotel garage. The cops came; the stalker said he didn’t do anything, that he’d never seen the crazy woman chasing him with a knife before, never in his life. Then the creep said he wouldn’t press charges because he realized I was upset, but I’d made a mistake; he wasn’t a stalker. Can you believe that? Then that night Molly was murdered. She was a longtime dancer in the Beatles show I’d just snagged a role in. People called her Legs—yep, she had legs all the way to her tonsils. I met her only once in Vegas, to say hello. She was nice, Cam, and she wanted to make it so bad, just like I do, like all of us do.”