Chapter Twenty-Four
Juliette sighed. “I already told like five different officers what happened.”
Detective Marks matched her sigh. “And I just got here, so now you’re gonna tell me.”
“Why are you here?” Juliette said, instead of answering his question. “Isn’t that like a conflict of interest, since you also investigated Warren’s murder?”
“Warren Ellingham’s death was ruled natural causes,” Detective Marks said, his gaze steady.
“And I was actually put on this case because it’s Warren’s son.
Awfully suspicious—you go poking around his funeral stirring up questions, his son pitches you out and threatens to sue, and you happen to be here when he’s killed.
Standing over the body. Holding the murder weapon. ”
“Please,” Juliette said, rolling her eyes.
“If I were going to murder somebody, I wouldn’t be dumb enough to get caught.
And definitely not like this. If you had done your homework, you would know I saw Chipper Floyd running out of here like a bat out of hell just a few moments before I discovered Brad’s body. ”
“I did do my homework, Ms. Winters, and Chipper Floyd has an alibi for the time of the murder. Several alibis, in fact,” said the detective, peering around the crowd gathered outside the main desk of the club.
Police officers dotted the crowd of potential members, taking statements and corroborating alibis, as blue and red lights bathed everything in a hypnotic pattern.
It was like a rave, except it was more like the tail end when you’re sweaty and dehydrated and don’t remember your name or what year it is.
“Those alibis wouldn’t happen to be the middle-aged ladies in visors with too much turquoise jewelry and Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds perfume, would they?” Juliette asked. “Because I would say their testimony is as trustworthy as the age on their dating profiles.”
“I can’t divulge details of an ongoing investigation,” Detective Marks said, though he looked askance at the ladies. “Regardless, we’ll be checking on Mr. Floyd as well.”
June Piedmont stood to the side, glaring daggers at Juliette as she argued with a police officer about making such a scene.
She’d already invoked her close personal friendship with the mayor, several prominent lawyers on the Pacific Pines membership rolls, and inexplicably a connection to former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that Juliette couldn’t quite parse the meaning of.
Maybe he was going to terminate the poor officer?
June was in high dudgeon, though not swooning into hysterics like last time.
Probably because she hadn’t been dosed with digitalis this time around.
“What about the whiskey bottle?” Juliette demanded, as if she were the detective conducting the investigation. “Have they turned up anything yet?”
“The whiskey bottle?” Detective Marks said, caught off guard. He flipped back a couple of pages in his notebook, nodding. “Ah, right, the reason you said you were in the locker room.”
“Because that was the reason I was in the locker room,” Juliette said flatly. “I told the other guys, Duffel Bag—”
“Duffel Bag?” the detective interrupted with a frown.
Juliette sighed. “I don’t remember the guy’s name, ask Charlie. Anyway, he works here, and he was the one who stole the stacks of cash from Warren’s safe the night of the party. The same safe where the manuscript was stored.”
“So, you recovered the stolen manuscript?” said Detective Marks, surprised.
“Not yet,” Juliette groused. It was a sore point.
“But I’m pretty sure the whiskey bottle will test positive for digitalis, which at this point is how I think Warren ended up with the drug in his system.
It will prove that Warren was dosed on purpose, and someone also engineered that electrical shock to cause a heart attack and discharged the AED to make sure he couldn’t be revived.
I’ve already lined up several suspects if you want to cross-reference notes.
Of course, Brad Ellingham’s death throws a total wrench in the works and his lifeless eyes will haunt me to my deathbed, but I had already started to suspect that he might have been working with someone to stage his father’s death.
Are you getting this? You’re going to want a bigger notebook than that little thing. ”
Detective Marks’s only reply was a long, slow blink.
“You know, when I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. Parents sent me to space camp and everything. I decided to switch to criminal justice in college because I thought the math classes would be too hard. You think they let forty-five-year-olds with high blood pressure go to space?”
“I’m not sure you’d pass the psych eval,” Juliette said honestly.
Detective Marks sighed. “I suppose not, after twenty years of doing this job. Now, before we get into your suspects list, which I’m sure is extra-thorough and cross-referenced, explain to me again what you were doing in a restricted section of the club at the time of the murder?”
“Uh, because I needed medical care after the chef guy sucker-punched me in the jaw in the lunch tent,” Juliette said.
“The lunch tent, right,” said Detective Marks, making a note in his woefully undersize notebook. “Where several witnesses claim that you and the victim were arguing less than an hour before he was killed.”
Juliette snorted. “He had like four different public altercations going at the same time. I don’t know how anyone could keep track.
And this is a waste of time and police resources.
You should be talking to those suspects about their motives and connections to Brad.
You have to know his death is connected to Warren’s, come on.
Troy Pham had a bad business deal with Warren, then he literally threatens to kill Brad in front of a whole crowd?
June and Robert Piedmont were definitely hiding something, and she also argued with Brad about plans for the club.
Clayton Westminster was upset with him about this new hire at the Ellingham Group, and need I remind you I saw Chipper Floyd fleeing the scene of the crime? Why aren’t you talking to them?”
“Because none of them were found with the victim’s body while holding the murder weapon,” said Detective Marks, exasperated.
“And I already told you, if I were going to murder someone, I wouldn’t be so obvious about it,” Juliette said, just as exasperated. “What evidence have you gathered from the crime scene? Do you know who the golf club belonged to? Any video surveillance?”
“Ms. Winters, I am the investigating officer here, not you,” Detective Marks said.
“Well then, do your job!” Juliette crossed her arms defiantly.
“Stop bothering me and go do some actual investigating. Find that bottle, talk to the suspects I’ve given you, follow the evidence trail.
Are you even allowed to be talking to me right now?
I was basically concussed at the time of the murder, and I might still be now.
You can’t interrogate me when I’m incapacitated. ”
“If this is you incapacitated, I’d hate to see fully capacitated,” said the detective.
“We’re looking into all angles, but I have to warn you, Ms. Winters, it doesn’t look good for you.
You were stirring up trouble at Warren Ellingham’s funeral where you were ejected by Bradley Ellingham.
You then show up here, accusing several high-profile members of being involved in Warren’s death.
Then you’re caught by security—and again, I can’t believe I have to keep reiterating this—standing over the murder victim while actively holding the murder weapon.
You were so keen on a murder investigation?
Well, congratulations, you got yourself one. And you’re the prime suspect.”
“Are you arresting me?” Juliette demanded, mostly to hide the fact that she was afraid she might actually be in some very serious trouble this time.
Her mouth had always been quicker than her personal judgment in school, but she’d learned early on how to walk the line between sassy and insubordinate, and despite her flagrant disregard for rules she’d always had a knack for avoiding real punishment.
Even when her parents had toyed with an oppositional defiance diagnosis at eleven because she’d staged a hunger protest when they wouldn’t sign her up for horseback riding lessons, she’d learned to couch her arguments in cold logic to avoid being labeled hysterical.
But this was something she couldn’t logically find her way out of, not yet, and the idea that she might actually be on the hook for a murder that she didn’t commit was sitting heavy in her gut.
“Not yet,” Detective Marks said. “But you’ll have to stay in town. And please, Ms. Winters, for the sake of my blood pressure, try not to get caught up in any more deaths while I’m on the clock.”