Blood Always Tells, Hilary Davidson [good book club books .txt] 📗

had no idea what was going on. Max was the one who drove Dominique and Gary to the house. It was in a white van, and the plate number was FAF-7-something.”

Westergren almost dropped his pen. “How do you know the plate number?”

“Dominique believed something was wrong.” Was it a mistake not to mention the mock kidnapping? Dominique had told him Gary set it up. Still, the couple had ended up dead, so maybe Max hadn’t been playing the same game Gary was. “Look, what Dominique said was that it felt like a kidnapping. The guy showed up at Gary’s house, put them in this van, and drove them for almost three hours into the middle of nowhere. Dominique only found out later that Gary set it up. She was pretty pissed off about it.”

“This is incredible.” Westergren made some rapid notes. “When did she last see him?”

“Dominique said Max drove off in the evening.”

“Max stranded them at the house. They had no way out.” Westergren shook his head as he wrote. “I knew something was screwy.”

“You saw something strange in the house?”

“The fridge.”

Desmond stared at Westergren, waiting for him to add something else. “What about the fridge?”

“Did you open it? The food in it was bought recently, but it rotted,” Westergren said. “Here’s the thing: there was nothing wrong with the fridge, and there was no power outage in the house. The lights were working and there were no fuses blown. You know why the food went bad? Somebody unplugged the fridge.”

Desmond took a moment to process that. “It was unplugged when you went into the house?”

“Right. Think about it: somebody got the house ready for them coming over, right? But then someone unplugged the fridge?” Westergren got more animated as he spoke. His Adam’s apple bobbed with excitement. “It was a guarantee they’d have no food, because they had no car and no way of getting out. I mean, they were basically trapped in that house. They had water and wine, and some chips and stuff, but no real food. Now, here’s the thing.” He leaned forward again. “I got the cell phone records. Gary Cowan's cell was used to make a bunch of calls.”

“To who?”

“You, and a lady in Brooklyn named Sabrina Turner—that call was less than a minute, so it might’ve gone to voice mail—and Trinity Lytton-Jones in Manhattan. You know, Gary Cowan’s wife. Before that, there was a call to a Thomas Klepper, also in Manhattan. It went on for more than half an hour. He called Gary’s phone a few times yesterday.”

Tom Klepper. Dominique had mentioned him as Gary’s partner in crime. Desmond couldn’t wait to hear what that man had to say for himself. “You call him back?”

“No. Tyson says that’s a waste of time.” He grimaced. “There were no other calls on that phone,” Westergren added. “Now, if you were at a house with no food, wouldn’t you be calling somebody to rescue you?”

“Unless you had a guy who was going out to get food for you.”

“Whoever unplugged the fridge did that days ago. That food wasn’t just rotting for a few hours.”

“Days,” Desmond said, not so much to Westergren as to himself. He’d noticed the fridge but missed the significance, but this gawky kid who was still wet behind the ears had picked up on it. “What does your partner think?”

Westergren deflated a little. “Tyson says the plug probably fell out of the wall. He thinks because nobody’s lived in the house for years, anything could happen there. To him, the key is that the deaths were obviously an accident.”

“Were they?”

“There’s no doubt about the cause of death. That was carbon monoxide exposure. The coroner doesn’t even think an autopsy is necessary because it’s so obvious. We don’t exactly do a lot of autopsies around here, you know. But, if somebody drove them to that house and left them there, maybe that somebody knew the furnace was faulty.”

“And that would be murder.”

Westergren nodded. “Tough to prove anybody knew the furnace was faulty, though.”

“What about the guy who rented them the house?”

“We talked to him. He was really upset when we told him what happened. He swears there was nothing wrong with the furnace when he leased the house.”

Desmond’s eyes narrowed. “I still find it hard to believe Gary rented that house. Did the agent ever meet him?”

“No. Everything was handled online.” Westergren flipped back through his notes. “The payments were made on a corporate card registered to a company called Sardanapalus.”

“Hold on. Sardanapalus.” Desmond rubbed his forehead. His mind was still not working quite as well as he expected it to, but he knew he’d encountered that name as he’s crawled the Internet into the small hours of the night at the hospital.

“Um, I already looked it up,” Westergren said. “Gary Cowan is an honorary board member.”

“Sardanapalus.” Desmond’s hand thumped against the table. “Of course. That’s the holding company that belongs to his wife’s family. Gary’s the honorary board member who isn’t even invited to board meetings. Dominique told me that.” The picture in Desmond’s mind was getting clearer. “So, either Gary made the transaction, or someone who worked for his wife did.” He could still hear the urgency in Dominique’s voice, her fear that Trinity Lytton-Jones was in danger. She couldn’t have had any idea that Trin was really the hunter. Gary and Dominique had been the prey.

Chapter 23

Okay, what are we actually looking for?” Westergren asked. He and Desmond stood in front of the old house together. The death house, as Desmond thought of it. The sun was shining, but that only made the decrepit old place look shabbier.

Westergren reminded Desmond of some young recruits he’d met when he joined the Army at eighteen. They sought direction, and they liked having someone to lead them. Desmond had been young and just as green, but he’d felt about a hundred years older, even then. He knew exactly why he was there, even if they didn’t. Waste no more time