Best Laid Plans(35)

But it couldn’t have been someone high up or directly involved with the investigation—the responding officers knew that their chief had requested FBI assistance.

Barry walked through the squad room and dumped his briefcase and keys on his desk. “Kincaid, Jolene Hayden is here early. I assume you read the article?” He motioned to the newspaper on her desk.

“Yes. Is she upset?”

“Understatement. Let’s go, interview room two.”

Lucy reached into her bottom desk drawer and pulled out a minibag of peanut M&M’s. As she passed Zach’s desk, she tossed the bag to him. “Thanks,” she whispered.

He grinned without comment and immediately opened the bag.

“Who talked to the press?” Lucy asked Barry.

“Don’t know. I’ll find out, but dealing with it is Juan’s problem. To keep the peace, he’ll probably let it pass. I’m very interested in what happened last night between the daughter and the congresswoman. It puts another spin on the case.”

“We should talk to Mrs. Worthington again.”

Barry stopped outside the door. “Why?”

“She called the police on her stepdaughter. That doesn’t say happy family to me.”

Two people were waiting in the interview room—Jolene and her husband, Scott Hayden. Barry introduced himself and Lucy and slid over a set of business cards to each of them. “Thank you for coming down,” Barry said.

Jolene had made an effort to pull herself together in a businesslike way, but her blond hair was limp and her face pale, even under the makeup. Her husband was dressed in a suit, sans tie, and held her hand.

“Tell me what happened to my father,” Jolene said. “I have to know.”

“We’re sorry for your loss,” Barry said.

Her eyes teared, but her jaw clenched. “You told Adeline, but didn’t tell me.”

“It’s policy to tell the next of kin, which in your father’s case was his spouse.”

“I’m his daughter.”

“Honey,” Scott said quietly. He didn’t need to say anything else. Jolene nodded, her bottom lip quivering. Scott said, “Harper and Jolene were very close. Harper raised her after her mom died. The last forty-eight hours have been extremely difficult.”

Barry said, “I’ll share everything we know, but in turn, I need you to be completely honest when answering our questions.”

“Of course—why wouldn’t I be? I need to know what happened. It’s not what she said, I know it. And the paper—they said he was murdered.”

“That isn’t public information,” Barry said. “We don’t have a definitive cause of death, but we are treating the investigation as a homicide.”

Jolene sucked in a breath and squeezed her husband’s hand.

“San Antonio PD called the FBI into the investigation, and we’re working closely with them to find out exactly what happened.” Barry glanced at Lucy and gave her a brief nod. At first she wasn’t certain what he wanted, but decided he was asking for a gentle touch with Jolene.

Lucy assessed the woman and determined that Jolene was stronger than she’d first appeared. Her posture was straight, and she was working hard to keep her emotions in check. She was a professional businesswoman, and her husband was there for support, so Lucy decided to be as blunt as possible, but also to walk Jolene through the facts as they knew them.

“I want to give you the big picture first,” Lucy said, “because there are several things we don’t know about the events prior to your father’s death.”

Jolene nodded. “I can take it. I just want the truth.”

“Here are the facts. Harper Worthington bought a round-trip plane ticket from Dallas to San Antonio on Friday night. The tickets were purchased last minute—only hours before the plane left. It appeared he only planned on staying in San Antonio for a few hours before returning to Dallas. He told the taxi driver that he had a meeting at the White Knight Motel and requested that the man return for him one hour after being dropped off. The flight times confirm the timeline.

“When the driver returned and suspected something was wrong, the manager opened the room and found your father deceased. The police were called, and when his identity was learned, the police chief contacted the FBI.”

“Adeline said he had been with a prostitute. She’s lying,” Jolene said.

“The taxi driver saw a young woman dressed immodestly leaving the motel room. Because the girl propositioned the driver, he determined that she was a prostitute—we have a surveillance tape with her picture and concur with the assessment. We’re looking for her now.”

“No,” Jolene said. “You think that I can’t see the truth, but I know my dad, and he would never hire a prostitute. You don’t know him like I do. Ask anyone—anyone who knows him, and they’ll say the same thing. There has to be another reason my daddy was there.”

“Did you know he planned on flying to San Antonio Friday night?” Barry asked.

“N-no,” Jolene said, her voice cracking. “We had dinner with clients earlier. Daddy was a little preoccupied, said he was tired. He called me around ten thirty, said he was sorry about cutting dinner short, but we’d have breakfast together and he wanted to talk to me about something important. I thought—” But she cut herself off, and didn’t finish the sentence.