Chapter 12 #2
Reggie heard Whistler’s voice and came out of the library and grabbed him by the arm. “We’re in here, Beau. The boss is dead.”
Whistler froze. “What? What happened?”
“I found him, dude,” Reggie said. “He shot himself.”
Whistler’s eyes widened, and the stricken look on his face would have won him an Oscar.
“Well damn,” he muttered. His shoulders slumped as he lowered his head and followed Reggie into the room.
Detective Sheets was well aware of Burgess Dixon’s background and near miss at winding up in prison.
He also knew there was gossip about Dixon being behind ordering a hit on another cop.
And if that big dude who called himself a chauffeur worked for Dixon, he’d bet his retirement that he did more than drive a limo for the man.
He gave them all a hard look and went back upstairs.
A few minutes later, Sheets came back to the library. “There are security cameras inside and outside this place. Where is the main system housed?”
“It’s the door down the hall past the boss’s bedroom. Everything is in there,” Whistler said.
“Thanks,” he said and went back up the stairs.
A few moments later, another detective walked into the library and sat down with the trio.
“I’m Detective Blake. I need to get some info. Names and contact information, and are you three the only staff that live on-site?”
“I’m Beau Whistler, but I don’t live here. I just spend my workday here, or wherever the boss wants…wanted to go,” Whistler said, then gave him his phone number.
“I’m Reggie Townsend. This is my wife, Linda. We live here,” Reggie said. “We have a small suite of our own down the hall from the kitchen.” He gave them his phone number.
“And what is your job here?” Blake asked.
“Groundskeeper, basic repairs on the property,” Reggie said.
Blake nodded. “And you, ma’am? What is your position here?”
Linda was still teary and shaken. “Personal chef and minor household stuff. We have a weekly cleaning crew who cleans the whole house. I do the little stuff in between.”
“So, you made dinner for him last night? How was he behaving? Did he seem different in any way?” Blake asked.
“Oh, he wasn’t here for dinner last night. He had a big to-do at the Cattlemen’s Restaurant for his Dixon Down and Dirty managers.”
Blake shifted focus to Whistler. “And where were you last night?”
“As his chauffeur, I took Mr. Dixon to the restaurant, then parked in the lot to wait for it to be over.”
“How long were you there?” Blake asked.
“Right at three hours, sir.”
“Do you know who he was dining with?”
Whistler shrugged. “Like Linda said…the managers. Not sure how many of them were there because I didn’t go inside. The list is probably on his laptop, but that was not in my job description.”
Blake made a couple of notes. “Okay… So, when the dinner was over, what was his mood. How was he behaving?”
Whistler shrugged again. “He has a temper. I got the impression that something at the dinner set him off. He was kind of wound up, but the boss and I did not have a chatty relationship, so he would not have shared anything with me. I am an employee, not a friend.” Then he wiped a hand across his face.
“Was an employee. I still can’t believe he’s dead. ”
Blake frowned. “So, you expected to take him to work today?”
“He didn’t tell me not to, but he also didn’t tell me goodbye last night, either. He just told me to park the limo and go home, so I did.”
“What do we do now? We live here,” Reggie said. “If this is a crime scene, do we have to leave?”
Blake frowned. “Do you have someplace else to go for a few days?”
“No. It’s here or a hotel. We could stay in a hotel, I guess,” Linda said.
“Nobody is going anywhere until we’ve viewed security footage. Sit tight. I’ll be back,” he said, then spoke to an officer in the foyer and headed up the stairs.
Whistler knew the drill. The officer was standing guard on them until they were cleared, and he already knew what they would see—him letting Dixon out, parking the limo, and driving away. Then sadly, nothing more.
* * *
Upstairs was a whole other scene. It was the list of informants lying beneath Dixon’s elbow that had caused the biggest stir. The congealed blood all over the desk, wall, and floor, and the gun still in his hand took second place.
The forensic team had already bagged the list as evidence, along with the gun and everything on the desk.
They’d bagged his laptop and were in the act of gathering DNA from every surface, knowing full well that they would also have to take samples from the staff as a process of elimination, because their DNA was all over the house and in every room.
Sheets and another officer located the security system, but to their dismay, realized the system had been turned off.
They booted it back up and then began watching within the time they left to go to the business dinner, to right after they came home.
At that point, there was nothing more. They’d been hopeful answers would be in that video, but it was blank after that.
Either Dixon had done it before he did himself in to keep from having his suicide revisited on video forever, or someone came into the house and did it to him and erased the evidence.
But there was no evidence of forced entry, and the Townsends had already told the first officers on the scene that the house was still locked up when they awoke, and the security alarm for the doors was still set.
The missing time frame seemed to suggest that Dixon turned it all off upon entering, then did what he did.
“But why the informant list?” Detective Blake asked.
“Maybe he knew something we don’t. Maybe he knew the Feds were coming after him again.
We need to find out. Maybe this list was his suicide note.
‘Yes, I’m dirty, but so are you’.…meaning cops.
If he killed himself without outing them, then they would be free and clear.
Maybe he’s just mean enough and resentful enough to want to take them down with him.
We need to talk to the managers before any more suppositions are made,” Sheets said.
“What about the staff?” Blake asked. “The Townsends live on-site.”
“And they heard nothing. Seems fishy,” Sheets said.
“Their suite is on the lower level, and down a long hall behind the kitchen area. They may have had the television on or were already asleep. The door to the office was shut when Reggie found him. It was a small revolver. Easy to believe they heard nothing,” Blake said.
Sheets nodded. “Okay… If you have the staff’s contact info, let them go for now. Warn them not to leave town and that we’ll be in touch if we have more questions.”
“On it,” Blake said and went down to give them the word. “You two are free to go pack a bag before heading out. Stay with friends or family or at a hotel. But don’t leave town. And you, Whistler, are also free to go, but same rules. Don’t leave town.”
The trio stood up. Reggie and Linda went to their suite to pack while Whistler walked out the front door and drove away, remembering the cop who had downed him like a felled ox. It still rankled, and he wasn’t sure what he was going to do about that.
* * *
Detective Blake frowned as he watched Whistler driving away.
There was no way he was “just” Burgess Dixon’s chauffeur, but there didn’t seem to be an obvious reason for him to want his boss dead, and his alibi checked out.
This left the managers who’d been at dinner with Dixon last night.
Before he left the scene, he made a call to the precinct and had another detective begin contacting the managers and get them into the precinct ASAP, with orders not to tell them Dixon was dead.
They were only to say there were some questions about their boss.
* * *
The phone calls to each manager had them in a panic. They were all afraid of getting charged with some crime related to their boss again, but none of them wanted to end up like Freddie Welsh. Being the good guy got him killed.
Blake was ready and waiting when the first of the managers began to arrive. None of them knew the others had been contacted until they began to gather.
Finally, a man named Wilson Case was the first to speak up. “What the hell’s going on? We get called here with no explanation, and I have a job to do. Unless I’m under arrest for some unknown reason, I’m leaving.”
At that point, Detective Blake entered the room. “My apologies to all for the delay. We were given to understand that you were all present at a dinner last night with your boss, Burgess Dixon. Were you all there? Just hold up your hand if you were not.”
“We were there,” they echoed.
“During the dinner, did you see Mr. Dixon exhibit any unusual behavior or mention that he wasn’t well?” Blake asked.
They all looked at each other, shrugged, then shook their heads.
“Nothing,” Wilson Case said. “He was fine, conversing with all of us. We had steaks with all the sides, and the wine and champagne kept coming. It wasn’t a business dinner.
It’s just something he does for his managers a couple of times a year.
Now, that’s enough. We have a right to know what this is all about. ”
Blake decided to blurt it out and see their reactions.
“Burgess Dixon was found dead in his office this morning. First look is that he committed suicide. We’re still waiting for test results.”
The communal gasp was encompassed by cries of dismay, and then Wilson said what everyone else was thinking.
“I don’t believe it! That man would never kill himself.”
Blake was surprised. The vehemence of their denials was a little hard to ignore. Maybe they needed to take another look at the scene.
“Why are you so certain?” Blake asked.
“If you had known him as well as we did, you wouldn’t have to ask. He was actually proud of his cleaning services. We just had a grand opening for a new location. Dixon Down and Dirty was his baby. Did you check his finances? His bank accounts? The man was loaded.”
“What about the manager who was going to testify against him?” Blake asked. “You know the FBI fingered him for all of that.”
“Well, of course we knew it. We were all grilled mercilessly for months by them. But asking if we knew anything again changes nothing. So, what do we do? Are we all out of jobs? There’s no one left to run the businesses,” Wilson asked.
The other managers were waiting, obviously satisfied that Wilson seemed to have constituted himself their spokesperson.
“I couldn’t say. This will all be adjudicated through the courts,” he said.
Wilson frowned. “If we aren’t going to be paid, then we aren’t going to work.
Before we shut down, we will do payroll for money already owed to our employees and to ourselves, and then we’re out of there.
This is your official notification that we are shutting down today.
The fleet of vans will be in the parking lot.
The buildings will be locked with the keys locked inside, but you need to go back to the drawing board.
No way did that man kill himself. Are we done here? ”
“I got the answers I wanted,” Blake said. “You’re free to go, but be aware that an audit will be done of property and debts if he died without a will or an heir.”
They walked out in silence, afraid to look back. That cop was actually looking for a killer among them, but they didn’t have a motive. They’d just lost their jobs because of this.
Blake watched them leave, then shoved his hands in his pockets. He was about to return to the crime scene when he got a message from their captain.
In my office. Now.
Blake frowned. Now what? He headed down the hall to the captain’s office and walked into a wall of federal agents.
“Captain?”
“The informant list found at the scene throws this back to the federal case they were working on with Dixon to begin with. One of the names on this list is quite likely the man responsible for giving away the location of their safe house, and for the death of four special agents and their material witness. We are stepping back and giving them access to all the evidence we gathered. They will run their own tests, but we’re not investigating a murder, so—”
Blake interrupted. “According to the managers of all his Dixon Down and Dirty sites, they are certain he would never kill himself.” Then he shifted focus to the agents.
“You might want to review all of the evidence. You may be looking at a murder, after all, and there are three full-time staff members. Two who live on the premises, and the chauffeur who drives to the estate every morning. The husband and wife are presently at a hotel. Their info is in the file, as is the chauffeur’s address. ”
The agent frowned. “What’s the chauffeur’s name?”
“Beau Whistler,” Blake said.
The agents gave each other a look. “He’s not Dixon’s chauffeur. He’s the clean-up man we couldn’t nail, and thank you for the info. We’ll be reviewing everything,” the agent said, and then they were gone.
Blake looked at his captain and shrugged. “Oof… I did not see that coming. But I’m not going to lie; I’m glad to be rid of this case.”
“As you were,” his captain said.
Blake went back to his desk while the agents from the FBI were gathering up boxes of evidence to take with them.