Chapter Thirteen
Kate swept her hand across the category titles she’d written on the whiteboard. “So we’ve got Suspect, Motive, Means, and Evidence. As Loretta says, always start with the evidence. What do we have so far?”
“Whoever killed Warren went to a lot of trouble to make it look like a natural heart attack,” Juliette said. “But they slipped up on one thing. According to the autopsy report—”
“Which Charlie so helpfully deciphered for us,” Kate interjected.
“Which Charlie begrudgingly looked at and basically threatened to report me to the cops over,” Juliette said dryly.
“According to that report, Warren had digitalis in his system. It’s a heart medication for people in congestive heart failure.
Except Warren told me the night of his party that he’d just received a clean bill of health from his doctor.
Actually, what he said was his doctor told him he had the heart of a twenty-five-year-old, and last I checked twenty-five-year-olds don’t typically suffer from congestive heart failure.
Which means someone slipped him the digitalis. ”
“Digitalis,” Kate said, writing it under Evidence. “So how did he get dosed?”
“I don’t know that part yet,” Juliette said. “June Piedmont sent a bottle of whiskey to Warren’s room before the speech and apparently insisted on toasting with him. So, it could have been in his glass.”
“Didn’t you say his secretary guy also gave him a bunch of pills before he went on?” Veeta said. “Someone could have slipped it into the mix or replaced one of his regular supplements with a laced pill.”
“Or the food,” Kennedy suggested. “I thought I saw one of the servers take a tray behind the EMPLOYEES ONLY rope earlier in the evening.”
“But Charlie said the digitalis in his system wasn’t enough to trigger a full-blown heart attack, right?” Kate reasoned.
“Exactly,” Juliette said with a nod. “Which leads to phase two of the murderer’s plan—the electrical short in the entertainment system.
Detective Marks told me that it’s a known issue with that particular sound system, that it can sometimes short out and shock people.
According to the coroner’s report it wasn’t enough to kill someone ordinarily, but—”
“But with an irregular heartbeat caused by digitalis, it could easily throw someone into cardiac arrest,” Kate said, realization dawning. “Oh, that is devious.”
“So, the question becomes: Who had access to the sound system and could have rigged the microphone to short out like that?” Veeta asked.
“That’s the more difficult part,” Juliette said.
“Practically everyone and their brother touched the microphone before Warren gave his speech. Brad, his wife, the Piedmonts, Clayton. Hell, I think even the bandleader helped him plug it in at one point. Any one of them could have fiddled with the microphone to cause the short. And then there was the defibrillator, the final step of the plan.”
“What happened with the defibrillator?” Kate asked.
“It malfunctioned,” Kennedy said. “Oh, it was so terrible. Warren was just lying there, and that awful voice kept saying ‘Low battery.’”
“Except I found out from Detective Marks that it didn’t malfunction, it had been used previously,” Juliette said, feeling pretty smug about her sleuthing skills.
Sure, she didn’t have color-coordinated Post-it notes, but she had facts.
“Someone discharged it and put it back without recharging or replacing the paddles. I called the yacht company and implied that I was a potential buyer concerned about the upkeep on their safety equipment, and they helpfully informed me that the AED had been serviced just two days before the party, and according to the machine’s logs it was discharged during Warren’s speech.
There weren’t any other medical emergencies on board, so someone stole the defibrillator and discharged it while Warren was having his heart attack so it couldn’t be used again. ”
“Which means we’re looking for someone who was conspicuously absent during Warren’s speech,” Kate said, writing it up on the board as their third piece of evidence. “So, let’s talk suspects. Who do we like for Warren’s murder?”
“Definitely the son,” Veeta said, making a face. “That speech he gave right before Warren died? Screamed ‘daddy issues.’”
“And he threatened to sue the entire police department because they ordered an autopsy,” Juliette added.
“Plus, he benefits most directly from Warren’s death.
He inherits the Ellingham Group and all his father’s properties and holdings without prejudice.
Considering how Warren spoke of his son right before he died, I can’t imagine he would have done nearly as well if Warren were alive.
He had the microphone before Warren, and he was also the one who signed off on converting the helipad to a dance floor so we couldn’t radio for an emergency helicopter. ”
“Almost like he knew,” Veeta said meaningfully.
“Money, always the most powerful motivator,” Kate murmured, writing inherited dad’s estate under Motive. “Who else?”
“June Piedmont,” Juliette said, thinking back to her overreaction at Warren’s funeral.
“The woman is definitely hiding something. And she was practically bribing me to get her hands on an early copy of his manuscript. I’ve been looking into Piedmont Realty, and there’s something weird going on there.
It seems like they made their name back in the seventies by buying up a bunch of run-down buildings on 1st Avenue—or Flesh Avenue, as they called it, because of all the peep shows—and renovating them so they could rent or sell them to legitimate businesses.
Everybody thought they were crazy, but they ended up making a fortune after Pike Place Market got renovated in the eighties and become the tourist hot spot it is now.
You would have thought the 2008 recession hit them as hard as everybody else in the country, but for some reason they reported above-market returns that year.
And they’re still reporting steady earnings, despite the fact that it looks like they haven’t actually sold a property in four years. ”
Kate tilted her head to the side in consideration. “You think they’re cooking the books?”
“I think it’s possible June was worried Warren was going to expose their failing financial status in his memoir, and she killed him and stole the manuscript to keep him quiet.
She sent him the whiskey, insisted on making an introduction speech after Brad and handed the microphone directly to Warren, and obviously she’d have had access to the entire boat the whole party, including the AED. ”
“June and Robert Piedmont, you’re on the board,” Kate said, writing their names beneath Brad’s with the motive dirty secret exposed in manuscript?. “Oh, what about the guy you heard threatening Warren? Chipper something?”
“Chipper Floyd?” Kennedy said. “The Sultan of the Short Game?”
“You know him?” Juliette asked in surprise, though she supposed she shouldn’t be. Kennedy seemed to know everyone worth knowing in the Seattle metropolitan area.
“I know of him. I was on the amateur golf circuit for a bit in college. We used to host a charity golf tournament, and when I was a sophomore Chipper Floyd was the special guest. Floyd showed up drunk, threw his putter at the judges’ table when they made a call against him, and cursed out the reporters during the Q&A after the game because someone brought up his performance in the Masters the year before.
Then he dumped a water bottle full of vodka down the eighteenth hole and nearly crashed his golf cart into the spectator stands. ”
“So, he’s got a temper,” Veeta said, making the understatement of the century.
“More than a temper,” Juliette said. “I don’t know what he was arguing with Warren about, but Warren said he would make sure that Chipper never worked as a professional golfer again.
Whatever he had on Chipper, it had to be pretty bad.
He was drinking the whiskey with Warren before I showed up, so he could have dosed him there.
He was the only one who didn’t fiddle with the microphone before Warren spoke, but maybe he had help.
The bandleader, or somebody else he bribed to cause the short. ”
“Chipper Floyd, definite asshole, possible murderer,” Kate said, nodding as she wrote his name beneath the Piedmonts. For motive she wrote hothead/argument with Warren. “Anybody else?”
“What about the secretary guy?” Veeta asked. “The one who gave him the pills?”
“Clayton Westminster,” Juliette said with a frown. “He doesn’t have much of a motive, though.”
“But he gave Warren the pills, and he handled the microphone right before Warren,” Veeta said.
“Plus, he said he basically planned the whole party, right?” Kennedy added. “He would have known the layout of the boat to find the defibrillator, and no one on board would have questioned his presence in the employees-only areas of the boat.”
“Fine, sure, he goes on the board,” Juliette said with a shrug, leaving out the part where she’d been considering texting him and asking if he had dinner plans.
They didn’t need to know that she was potentially interested in a potential suspect, though it wouldn’t be her first criminal hookup if he was one.
“You know what all of this points to,” said Veeta, waving their hand at the board.
“Murder,” Kennedy said solemnly.
Veeta blinked. “Yes. That. But more specifically, it all points to that golf club. Pacific Pines. That’s everyone’s connection here.”
“I’ve been trying to get in there for two weeks, and they keep stonewalling me,” Juliette said.
“If I could talk to the staff, or at least some of the members who were there that night, I could figure out how Warren was dosed with the digitalis and whether or not anyone saw the defibrillator being used. But June Piedmont has completely closed ranks against me. Which makes sense, if she’s the murderer. I don’t have a way in.”
“That’s not entirely true, is it?” Kate said, a mischievous glint in her eye. “You do have one potential avenue. A tall, handsome, shy avenue with a great accent who’s been recruited by the club before.”
“Except you heard him say that he turned them down and has no interest in going back.”
Kate waved away her argument with a snort. “Please, Charlie is a delicate little cream puff. All you have to do is ply your feminine wiles.”
“I prefer to weaponize my sexuality,” Juliette said. “My approaches are mean and slightly meaner.”
“Well, maybe you could try a slightly nicer version of mean, then,” Kate said around a mouthful of cracker. “And out of all of us, you’re the most persuasive.”
“I’d use the term belligerent,” Veeta said, giving Juliette a delicate smile. “Said with love.”
“Relentless,” Kennedy added, nodding.
“Feel free to get out of my apartment now,” Juliette said.
“See? There’s that determination,” Kate said, not budging. “Just slap a little lipstick on it and he won’t be able to resist. Oh, and beignets. He loves a good beignet. Probably bring those along as well, just in case the lipstick and determination don’t work out.”