Death's Door (24 page)

The girl followed Madison back to her office.

“Jade, why didn’t you tell me you knew Luis Estevez?”

Jade fluttered what had to be false eyelashes that fringed her Cleopatra-style eyes. Color seemed to leach from her pale cheeks, which had been powdered several shades lighter than her natural color to enhance the Goth look. “I—I don’t know him. I—I mean, I never met him. I did work at one of the clubs he owns.”

“You were never introduced?”

“Never. I saw him once…maybe twice. That’s all. I swear.”

Madison found that hard to believe. “How many employees were at the club?”

Jade thought a moment. “Dozens, I guess. I was one of six bartenders on a shift. Then there were waitresses, busboys, a maître d’, three bouncers, parking valets and who knows how many in the kitchen. A lot.”

“Has Mr. Estevez ever come here to Total Trivia before?”

Jade hesitated. “The day your friend was killed, I worked late. When I left, I forgot my cell phone in my desk. I came back and Mr. Estevez was talking with Chloe in Aiden’s office.”

Chloe again. Why wasn’t she surprised?

“Was Aiden around?”

“No. I grabbed my cell and slipped away. They didn’t see me.”

Madison believed Jade. Not only did her words have the ring of truth, but there was something straightforward in the girl’s gaze that said she was being honest. Just because she worked at one of Estevez’s clubs didn’t necessarily mean she knew the man.

Why was Chloe meeting with Luis Estevez without Aiden? she wondered. Then a faint bell dinged somewhere in the back of her brain. She decided to call Pamela Nolan, the friend from MIT who’d been at Stanford with Chloe. It was time to get the full story on what had caused Chloe to drop out of graduate school.

P
AUL TRIED
to concentrate on what Garrison Holbrook was saying, but it was difficult to take his mind off—his eyes off—Madison. She was wearing a pale lavender halter dress. The lilac color made her eyes appear to be a deeper shade of blue than usual. And he couldn’t help noticing she wasn’t wearing a bra.

Every time his gaze met hers, something inside him seized up. He’d been attracted to other women, but not like this. Madison meant so much to him that he was willing to risk his career by not revealing what he knew about Aspen—for her.

Garrison’s voice interrupted his thoughts and Paul tried to appear interested even though he’d rather be in bed with Madison. Garrison kept rattling on about nature’s treasure trove of medical cures just waiting to be discovered.

“I say we invest a little money at least,” Garrison told his father. “That way we’ll have our foot in the door.”

“Colombia has long been suspicious of bioprospecting, as we call it.” Wyatt directed his comment to Madison, the way he had all evening. “But the U.S. has put enough pressure on them to stop growing opium poppies or coca leaves for cocaine. Allowing farmers to grow crops like medicinal herbs will generate a lot of cash.”

They were sitting on the terrace of the main house near the infinity pool, having finished a dinner only someone richer than Midas would call a barbecue. The steaks and grilled vegetables had been barbecued—somewhere—and served by a
maid. A chocolate soufflé with espresso gelato the Holbrooks’ chef had made had been dessert.

From his chair, it appeared to Paul that the pool was cascading into the ocean nearby. It was just an optical illusion, of course, but in the dim light of early evening, the Holbrook mansion seemed to be surrounded by an endless sweep of water.

“Didn’t Merck cut a deal with Costa Rica that gave them the rights to all the naturally occurring substances in that country’s plants?” asked Madison.

If the conversation bored her, it didn’t show. She kept asking questions and listening attentively. Wyatt hadn’t said much, but when he did, most of his remarks were for Madison. Paul had the feeling Garrison harped on his father a lot about investing in nature-based medicines.

“You bet they did,” Garrison answered for his father. “Way back in the early nineties. Just cost them a cool million back then. In today’s market, the Costa Ricans could get a lot more.”

“Why’s that?” Paul asked.

“Other countries closed their borders to bioprospectors. Colombia’s just opened a crack. It’s a real opportunity,” Garrison told them.

“Have any discoveries come out of Merck’s Costa Rican deal?” asked Madison.

Good question,
Paul thought. He was fairly sure she already knew the answer. She had an amazing arsenal of facts in her cute little head—which he imagined on a pillow. No, he didn’t think about sex all the time. But when he was around Madison, it was hard to keep his thoughts on anything else. Wasn’t it time they got out of here?

“I’m not aware of anything Merck’s developed yet,” conceded Garrison, “but it takes years of research and testing to bring a new drug to the market. They’re probably onto a number of things. Remember, aspirin was originally isolated from the bark of a tree.”

“And the Germans were the ones to bring it to the market, right?” Madison asked.

“Right,” Wyatt said with a proud smile and Paul had the feeling the older man glimpsed something of himself in Madison. She didn’t look much like him but she had his keen intelligence. He reminded himself that like the other Holbrooks, Madison was left-handed and stubborn.

“Why not sell some of the remedies as herbs? Wouldn’t that cost a lot less?” Paul asked.

“It would, but it’s such an unregulated industry that you’d have knockoffs and phony herbs on the shelf alongside the real deal. People wouldn’t trust the herb because sometimes it wouldn’t work since they’d taken a counterfeit product. Nope,” Garrison concluded with an emphatic shake of his head. “The big money is in prescriptions.”

“Some herbs can be really dangerous,” Wyatt added, again directing his comment to Madison. “Enebro, a seed from a tree, can be used to successfully treat weight loss, but if you take too much, it causes cardiac arrest.”

“Yikes!” exclaimed Madison.

Paul was about to make a sarcastic comment but his cell phone vibrated. He pulled it out and checked caller ID. It was a Boston area code. He rose and walked away so he could talk to the detective who’d worked on the deaths of the two other donor-conceived children.

Detective O’Malley had a thick New England accent. That combined with a three-pack-a-day rasp made him a little difficult to understand at first. Paul walked out onto the footpath along the beach and listened to the man explain how the cases were assigned to him because he had a record for closing files fast and these two seemed simple.

“So you looked into Heidi Thomas’s drug-overdose death and Jared Anderson’s car accident?” Paul asked.

“Right you are.”

“Did either of them seem a little off to you? You know, like perhaps something else was going on?”

Two beats of silence became three. Paul knew cops didn’t like being questioned about closed cases. Having a case reopened because you’d screwed up the initial investigation was a humongous black mark.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Paul said. “Both cases in the Boston area were children of the same sperm donor.”

“They were? I just pulled the files when I got your message. There’s nothing about them being conceived by sperm donation.”

“It may not have come up, but check with the parents and you’ll see I’m correct.”

Paul could hear the other man light a cigarette and suck a puff deep into his lungs. “Now I’ve got another case down here, which, if we hadn’t gotten really lucky, would have appeared to be a death by natural causes.” He went on to explain about the succinylcholine murder. Paul figured the more he talked, the better chance he had at putting this detective at ease. Maybe then, he’d speak more freely.

“Well, I dunno. Heidi Thomas’s fiancé and roommate swore, and I mean
swore,
she never used drugs. Same thing with her parents. Still, there was no question that she ODed on heroin. There was drug paraphernalia in the room and a stash of heroin hidden in the box springs of her bed.”

“Could the stuff have been planted there?”

“It’s possible. Hell, anything’s possible,” the detective admitted. “The parents, the boyfriend were so insistent that I looked into it. But I couldn’t find a motive. Heidi was a student with her share of student loans. She had no money and no life insurance policy. There wasn’t any reason to kill her.”

“What if I told you her biological father is a fantastically wealthy man who is looking for his offspring because he needs an organ donation that must come from a blood relative?”

This time there were three long beats of silence, then, “Aw, shit! How many people knew he was looking? I suppose someone stands to gain—”

“I’m not sure. I’m working on it.”

“You think it’s someone down there or up here?”

“Good question. I’ll get back to you when I know more. What about the auto accident?”

O’Malley sucked in another deep puff and exhaled it into the phone. “A new Lexus. Anderson crashed it. The car was pretty mangled. Nothing obvious had been done to the car that would indicate tampering.”

“Did an expert check it?”

“Nah. We didn’t spend the money because it didn’t seem necessary. The kid had a history of speeding. Tickets up the ying yang. It seemed obvious he was driving too fast in the rain, lost control of the car and rolled it down an embankment.”

Great. They didn’t want to spend the money. What did he expect? Police budgets everywhere were tight.

O’Malley sighed. “If we’d known about this sperm donation connection, we might have handled these cases differently. Especially since…”

“Since what?” Paul heard something in the man’s voice.

“Since they died within days of each other.”

Paul lurched forward as if the air had been knocked out of him. Why hadn’t he caught that? It must have been in the report his father had given him. He’d read it too fast, too carelessly. He knew better. “Let me do a little checking and I’ll call you back. If anything comes up, you have my number.”

He snapped his phone shut and stared out at the horizon where two huge cruise ships—floating hotels—were streaming toward the Bahamas. It could be coincidence, he told himself. There was nothing to
prove
any of the deaths were murder, but still…What were the odds of two of Wyatt’s children dying in the same week?

Could be that someone in Miami went to Boston—or hired someone to go there—to get rid of children who could possibly save Wyatt. The most obvious suspects would be his children. Possibly Nathan Cassidy. Tobias Pennington was another suspect.

He recalled the conversation after dinner about developing new drugs. Could a rival want him dead for some reason? It seemed unlikely, but stranger things had happened.

He could ask Wyatt, but that would mean getting him alone. It might also upset him and make him suspicious needlessly. This was his father’s case, he reminded himself. All he was supposed to do was deliver Madison, which he’d done.

He opened his phone again and punched speed dial to reach his father. As usual, Mike was still in the office. No doubt he’d ordered a pastrami sandwich from the Bayside Bistro and had eaten it at his desk. Paul explained what he’d learned from O’Malley.

“Mmm-hmm,” his father grunted. “I’m not liking this. Not one damn bit.”

Paul had known he wouldn’t. Mike had a cop’s view of coincidences. “Do you know who will inherit Wyatt’s money?”

“I have no idea,” his father replied. “I assume his children, but a chunk of it is going into the foundation Holbrook is setting up. I can tell you one thing. Holbrook has a small firm as far as drug companies go. Most are megacompanies that are publicly held and traded, of course, on the stock exchange. Wyatt’s had offers, but he refuses to sell his company.”

His father said something else but laughter like a donkey braying came from behind him. He turned and saw Nathan howling at something someone had said. What a fun guy.

“Would you have any objections to me asking Wyatt about his will or trust or whatever?”

“Well, I hate to alarm him needlessly. I mean, we don’t really know anything for sure, do we? Why don’t you wait and see if you can find out more?”

It wasn’t like his father not to immediately jump in, but maybe this account was too important for him to make waves. “I might be able to get him aside and casually ask him. I’m out at his place right now. I was invited for a barbecue.”

“Really?” Was it Paul’s imagination or did his father sound a little testy?

“Yeah. Madison wanted me to come with her. She’s a little nervous around the Holbrooks.”

“She’s not thinking of backing out, is she?”

“No. She’s already taken the preliminary tests.”

“Okay. If you think you can ask Wyatt without making the poor guy wonder if his children want him dead, do it. You might also ask about his company or anything they’re working on that would make someone want to kill him.”

Paul thanked his father and walked back to the terrace where Nathan and Savannah had joined the group. “Sorry, I had to take that call,” he told everyone with what he hoped was a sincere smile.

“Official police business?” Nathan asked.

That’s a lawyer for you,
Paul thought. “I’m still on leave.”

“We were just telling everyone how great the new restaurant The Bungalow is,” Savannah said, lowering her lashes and leaning toward him slightly so he couldn’t miss her impressive cleavage.

Through clenched teeth, Nathan asked him, “Have you tried it?”

Paul shook his head and his gaze strayed to Madison. Savannah in her low-cut black gown and vibrant red hair might be drop-dead gorgeous to most men. But Madison was prettier in her own way and classy. That’s what bothered him about Savannah, he decided. Coming from so much money, she should exude class, not flash. There was something in her manner, the way she kept looking at her father and trying to get attention by flirting, that told him the woman was insecure.

He listened to Nathan talk. What the jerk lacked in intelligence he compensated for with enough bullshit to bury Miami. What did Savannah see in him?

The French doors from the house just behind the terrace swung open. Tobias Pennington rushed out. The little weasel was puffing and red in the face. He was fanning himself with a manila file folder.

“I hate to interrupt,” Pennington told Wyatt, “but this is important.”

“That’s all right. We’re finished with dinner. I’m a bit tired. I was just about to excuse myself to go to bed,” Wyatt said. “I’ll talk to you in my study.”

“Are you feeling all right?” Garrison asked.

“I’m fine. I was up early. That’s all.”

“You’re sure?” Savannah asked with a concerned expression on her face. She touched her father’s arm and he smiled at her.

“Positive. Don’t you worry about me.”

“We’ve gotta run, too,” Savannah said as she tugged Nathan’s arm and turned to leave. “We’re meeting friends at a club.”

Madison stood. “Thanks for dinner. It was great.”

Paul opened his mouth to add his thanks, but Garrison spoke up and said he was leaving, too. Paul shook Wyatt’s hand, thanked him and headed toward the guesthouse with Madison.

“Alone at last,” he whispered.

“Alone. You want to be alone with me. Why, you naughty man.”

Paul laughed and it felt great. Not only was Madison adorable and sexy, she had a quirky sense of humor. He walked her down the path toward the guesthouse. As soon as they rounded a bend and were out of sight, Paul pulled her into his arms. He planted a tantalizing kiss on the hollow of her neck. “I’ve been dying to do that all night.”

“I’ve been waiting all night for you to kiss me. Don’t stop now.”