Calypso (The Harry Starke Novels Book 8) Read online

  “They have also agreed that Lieutenant Quinn will be made available to work with you, to act as liaison….” And then he ran out of steam, slumped back in his seat, and put his hands over his face. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he might have been crying.

  I put my hands behind my neck, closed my eyes, and leaned back in my chair. This is not happening. What the hell did I do to deserve this?

  I looked at my father, then at Amanda. Their faces were like stone. Well, August’s was; Amanda’s not so much.

  For several minutes I just sat there, staring at the wall, thinking: What the hell? What the hell?

  I looked again at Amanda, shook my head, and shrugged. I just didn’t know what to say. I wanted to say no, but… as August had said, we owed the man. I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “You have to do it, Harry,” she said quietly. “It’s the right thing to do; you know it is.”

  She was right. I knew she was, but…. Hell, it’s our wedding day.

  I looked at my watch. It was almost nine o’clock and pitch dark outside, but if I was going to do this, it couldn’t wait until morning. I had to go right then.

  “I need to talk to the others. I can’t do this alone. Just give me a couple of minutes. I’ll be right back.” I rose from my seat and went out to the patio. Bob was back.

  I gathered Bob, Jacque, Tim, and Kate together and explained the situation and what I planned to do, and yes, it was my hope that I could rope some if not all of them in: many hands make light work, right?

  All I needed Jacque for was to keep track of things, document the investigation: light work that wouldn’t take up too much of her and Wendy’s time.

  Tim I needed for his computer expertise. I’d need background checks done, and maybe more. Kate and Bob…. At that point I had no idea what I was in for. In the initial stage I knew I wanted at least one more pair of eyes and ears—Kate’s, if possible—and two would be a blessing. So I filled the four of them in, described my observations up at the Mount, and my analysis, and what I was planning, and then I asked for volunteers.

  “Look, I know we’re supposed to be on vacation—well, you are; I’m supposed to be on my honeymoon—and I know that it sounds crazy that I’d even consider taking this on. But it’s what I… no, it’s what we do, right? And how long can it take, anyway? Whoever did this has to be a member of the family or an employee. It’s a gated property, for God’s sake. So, Kate? What about it? Will you lend a hand? Tim?”

  “It’s your party, Harry,” Kate said. “Whatever you ask. You know that.”

  I’ve known Kate for more than seventeen years. She was officially my partner when I was a cop, and unofficially from time to time ever since. Except for Amanda, she’s my best friend. And I’ve always been able to count on her.

  The other three were nodding, and I felt like… well, I didn’t feel good about it.

  “You okay with this, Bob?”

  Bob’s an ex-Chicago PD cop who’s been with me almost since the first day I opened the agency. If Kate was my best friend, Bob came in a very tight second. He’d saved my life on more than one occasion, and Amanda’s too. So although I could tell he wasn’t happy about it, he nodded anyway.

  “Thanks, Bob,” I said. “Jacque, if you and Wendy are okay with it, I’d like you to coordinate everything over the next couple of days.”

  “Of course. No problem.”

  “Tim, what equipment do you have with you?”

  He grinned at me.

  Stupid question.

  I smiled back at him and said, “I’ll need some background checks done and probably a whole lot of deep digging; is that possible?”

  “Yep. The resort has Wi-Fi, so I can connect with my servers back at the office.” I stared at him, awed. He grinned, shrugged, looked sheepishly down at the ground, and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his forefinger. Geek or not, the boy is a treasure.

  Tim is my IT expert, computer geek, whatever. He’s been with me since before he dropped out of college, when he was seventeen and only one small step ahead of the law. Yeah, he was a hacker—still is, when he needs to be. The boy scares the hell out of me sometimes.

  “You can do that from here?” I asked. “Everything you can do back at the office you can do here?”

  “Pretty much, with a few limitations. The screen on the laptop is kinda small, and—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it, Tim. That’s good, very good.” I took a breath. “Kate, how about this: you and I’ll go on up there tonight, now, and take a look around the scene, particularly the girl’s room. That’s where it happened. The rest of you stay here and enjoy what’s left of the evening. We’ll get together first thing in the morning. Yes?”

  They all agreed, and so we had a plan, and Kate and I went back to the cottage, where Amanda, my dad, and the others were still waiting.

  “Amanda,” I began, “are you absolutely sure you want me to take this on?” She didn’t say anything. She simply nodded. I looked at my father, shook my head, and rolled my eyes. He simply stared right back at me, stone-faced. Finally, I turned to face Leo Martan.

  “Mr. Martan. This is Lieutenant Catherine Gazzara. She works homicide in the Chattanooga PD Major Crimes unit. She and several others in my party have agreed to help. Here’s what I’m prepared to do: I’ll do this, but first, Mr. Martan, there’s something I need to know you understand. Someone at the house, someone in your family or someone who works for you, killed your daughter. It wasn’t an accident. Someone hit her over the head and then threw her off the balcony. That takes a very special type of person, a very dangerous person—a psychopath, maybe even a sociopath.”

  I looked first at Martan, then at the two police chiefs, then back at Martan. No one spoke.

  “Finally….” I stared hard at him. “When I find who did this, I’m turning them over to the police to be prosecuted. That means a member of your family could be charged with capital murder. Do you understand?”

  “I do, and I expect no less. How do you intend to proceed? I also need to pay you a retainer….”

  “No, sir. There will be no fees.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but saw the look I gave him, closed it again, and nodded.

  Next I looked at Amanda. She knew what was coming, and she smiled. I’m not sure if she meant it, but she did it anyway, and she nodded.

  “Kate and Lieutenant Quinn and I will go to the house now and conduct a survey of both scenes. Tommy, I’ll need copies of the crime-scene videos and photographs.”

  “I need to change first, Harry,” Kate said. I nodded. She was wearing a bikini bottom and a T-shirt that had been torn in half, leaving her midriff bare. Not exactly crime-scene attire.

  “Ok,” I said. “We’ll wait.” I turned again to Leo. “I’ll need a list of everyone who was in the house or on the grounds from eight this morning until now. Everyone, including you and your wife. I want names, Social Security numbers, everything. We’ll start conducting interviews tomorrow morning. Do you have a problem with any of that?”

  “Well no, but my wife, surely you don’t….”

  “Anyone who was on the property when Gabrielle died is a suspect until we’ve eliminated them. Including you and your wife, sir.”

  He nodded. “I understand. I’ll draw up the list myself. You’ll have it within the hour.”

  “Just one thing, Mr. Starke,” Chief Walker said quietly. “Besides Lieutenant Quinn, how many of my officers will you need?”

  I had to think about that for a minute. “I’ll need the CSI team, at least for tomorrow morning. I may need to talk to that so-called ME. Can you arrange that?”

  He tilted his head slightly. “I’m not sure. She doesn’t work for us. I’ll have to ask her to call you.” He paused, looked at me, and said, “You know, usually, in cases of natural or accidental death, she or Dr. Hayes can do the job. We’ve never had a murder on Calypso Key. This is new ground for most of us.”

  “I’m sure,” I sai
d. “Where’s the body now?”

  “At the forensic center in St. Thomas. Dr. Wilson is the senior pathologist.”

  “I need to get an accurate time of death. Can we call him?”

  “I’ll do it,” Commissioner Walker said. He turned and walked out of the front door, taking his phone from his pocket as he went. He returned a couple of minutes later. “He agreed to do the autopsy first thing in the morning. Do you want to attend?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I would like to talk to him, though, as soon as he’s done. Can that be arranged?”

  “Of course. In the meantime, what else do you need?”

  “At the moment, nothing. I would like to thank you, though.”

  “There’s no need,” Walker said, a little dryly. “Mr. Martan is, well….”

  “Yes, of course.” I thought I’d save him having to say that Leo was getting preferential treatment because of who and what he was. Politics is, after all, the same the world over. “Now, if you don’t mind. We should head up to the house.”

  Chapter 4

  Saturday November 12, 9:30pm

  I left Amanda with Rose and my father. Bob wasn’t entirely happy about letting Kate leave, but he said he would go for a walk on the beach. Tim and Sammie… well, they were a couple of geeks, and as long as they had their electronics they would be happy wherever they were. The rest of the party would simply hang out and await developments.

  The house on the hill was ablaze with lights. We could see the glow of the floodlights almost as soon as we turned onto the road. As we got closer we saw that the white walls were lit up all around the house. There was also a light on in the tent on the rocks below Gabrielle’s balcony.

  “This is Moore, my butler,” Martan said as we reached the top of the steps, and the man waiting for us there. Moore inclined his head, opened the door, and stood aside to let us enter.

  The interior of the house was bright and airy. An open, circular foyer gave access to the first-floor living rooms. Two vast staircases—one on either side—swept down from the second-floor landing, which circled the foyer, the doors I saw up there leading, I assumed, to the bedrooms.

  “If you would like to see Gabrielle’s rooms first,” Martan said as we entered the foyer, “Moore will show you the way. In the meantime, I’ll get that list for you.”

  “If you’ll follow me sir, ma’am,” Moore said, leading the way toward the stairs.

  Victor Moore looked about as much like a butler as I did. He was wearing an expensive black jacket over a crisp white shirt and black pinstripe trousers, and there the resemblance to Jeeves ended. And then I realized who he reminded me of: this guy and Christopher Walken could have been brothers. Moore was a whole lot younger, maybe in his early forties, but the overall look and demeanor, everything, was the same. This guy’s bearing and overall appearance screamed ex-military. And he must have been able to read me, because as soon as we reached the landing he turned and gave me a grin that made my skin crawl; I’d seen friendlier smiles on barracudas. I instinctively looked at the cut of his clothing.

  “No, Mr. Starke,” he said. The voice was deep, quiet, and smooth, like oil. “I don’t have a weapon. I don’t need one.”

  Damn. He read my mind.

  “Before we go any further,” he said. “I want you to know that I’ll do everything I can to help you find the person who killed Miss Gabrielle, and when you do… well, I’ll take over from there. She was…. Well, I was her friend, for almost eighteen years, and she was very special to me.”

  He turned and led the way along the landing to a door that provided access to a second, narrower set of stairs, which led up to the third floor. The techs must have already left for the evening, because the door we stopped at was closed, the frame crisscrossed with yellow tape, and there were a couple boxes of Tyvek covers beside it. Damn it. I wonder if they found anything.

  “Tommy.” I didn’t look at him. “I need those techs—well, the one in charge—back here tonight, as soon as possible. Make the call, would you, and ask them to bring whatever records they might have made: videos, photos, diagrams, everything.”

  “Sure. Her name’s Daisy Patel. Patel… petal, Daisy Petal, get it?” The look I gave him would have frozen pump water. “Um, well, okay,” he continued, “she’s of Indian descent. I’ll call her.” And he did. “She’ll be an hour,” he said, holding the phone away from his ear. “Is that okay?”

  “She’s here on the island, right?”

  “Yeah. They’re staying at the Windward until we’re done with them.”

  “Good. Then tell her to get up here, now. She doesn’t need to dress up for us, and I can’t do anything until she gets here. I don’t want to disturb the scene until I know she’s through with it.”

  I waited while he talked, then he shut off the phone and pocketed it. “Forty-five minutes. Sooner if she can.”

  “So,” I said, as I turned and headed back toward the stairs. “While we’re waiting, we might as well go see if Leo has that list for us.”

  We found him in his office, a ground-floor room with French windows that overlooked the spot where Gabrielle’s body had been found, though the site itself couldn’t be seen. The heavy green, yellow, and white-striped curtains had been drawn in front of the windows.

  The room was as much a library as it was an office. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined the walls and a vast mahogany desk, flanked by four Chesterfield easy chairs and a sofa, was the centerpiece of a room designed for a man of power and influence. The man himself was seated at the desk, his back to the windows, typing rapidly on a keyboard.

  “Ah.” He looked up. “That was fast. Come on in. Sit down. I have the list done. I just need to print it. How many copies would you like?”

  “A half dozen, if you don’t mind—and we’re actually not done. We haven’t even started. I’m waiting for the crime scene supervisor to arrive.”

  We sat. He hit a couple keys, stood, walked over to a cupboard, opened the door, and removed a couple dozen sheets of paper from the printer, and handed them to me. There were six sets of four printed pages: names, relationships, birth dates, occupations, socials, and addresses.

  “That was quick,” I said.

  “I’m a methodical man, Mr. Starke. I already had all that information in a computer file. All I had to do was print it. The first two pages contain the family information; the other two pages, the staff.”

  I handed a copy to Kate and another to Quinn, and then I scanned quickly through the family information.

  “This is everyone who was here today, right?” I asked.

  “With one exception, yes.”

  “And that would be…?”

  “Gabrielle’s fiancé, Sebastian Carriere. He wasn’t here on the property. My son Evander… Evan was here in the house. His girlfriend Georgina Walford, my stepdaughter Alicia and her husband Jeffery, they were all here, but they weren’t in the house. My eldest son, Leo, was not here; his wife, Lucy, was.”

  I continued to stare at the list; there were twelve names in all, including his own.

  “Sebastian… what? How do you say that again?” I asked.

  “Carriere.”

  I nodded, and repeated it.

  “Okay, so we have him, but he wasn’t here. Let me quickly run down the list and make notes as to who was here and who was not.” I looked up at him; he nodded again.

  “You and Mrs. Martan, Vivien, were both here, in the house?”

  “Yes, all day.”

  “Your son, Leo Jr., was not here but his wife was?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your son, Evander—Evan—and… Georgina?”

  “Yes. Evan was here; Georgina was around somewhere. On the golf course, I think.”

  “And Caspian, that’s your youngest son?”

  “Yes. He’s my son with Vivien. The only child we have together.”

  I nodded and continued to make notes on my copy. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Kate
and Tommy were doing the same.

  “And Mr. and Mrs. Collins, Michael and Laura?”

  “Yes, Michael is Vivien’s son by her first marriage. Laura is his wife. They were both here, and so were the Margolises. Alicia is Vivien’s daughter; Jeffery Margolis is her husband.”

  “These last two, Jackson the gardener and Moore the butler.” I looked up at him. “Both here?”

  He nodded.

  “And Carriere, you’re sure he wasn’t here?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  I leaned back in the Chesterfield, sucked on the tip of my pencil, and stared down at the paper.

  “I’m wondering, Mr. Martan,” I said, without looking up from the list, “what all these people do for a living—not the staff members, of course; the others. Why are they here? I know it’s a weekend, but other than the resort and the tourism industry, there’s not a lot of work on the island. How do they make a living?”

  I looked up just in time to see a discomfited look cross his face. It was there only for a second, but it told me more than I figured he wanted me to know. He was keeping them all.

  “Leo, my son, is a stockbroker—” He coughed as he said it. It was almost as if the words choked him. “Excuse me. He’s a stockbroker. Does most of his business from here, via the Internet. Cas—that’s Caspian—is only nineteen. He’s a freshman at Georgetown. He’s home for fall break. Evan is in real estate…. No. He’s not. He’s a lazy, no good—he’s not working right now. Michael is the general manager at the Windward Resort where you’re staying; the family owns it. And Vivien’s daughter’s husband Jeffery is in banking, I think. None of the women work, at least not in the general sense of the word.”

  What the hell does he mean by that? I wondered. But I wasn’t given the opportunity to find out. There was a knock at the door, and Moore opened it just far enough to look in.

  “The lady from the police is here for Mr. Starke, sir.”

  I got to my feet. “Thank you, sir,” I said to Martan. “That will do for now. I’ll want to see everyone tomorrow morning, first together as a group, then individually. We’ll also need to fingerprint everyone for purposes of elimination, should the need arise. If you could pass the word on to them, make sure everybody is here, including—” I looked at the list again “—Carriere, when we arrive, which should be around ten. That will give everyone time to get breakfast. Right now, I want to go and look at Gabrielle’s room.”