Best Laid Plans(36)

“Thought what?” Lucy asked.

“We were very close, Agent Kincaid, but Daddy is a southern gentleman. He didn’t like troubling me with personal problems. If it was business, he’d tell me. I started working for him when I was in high school, and I came on full-time after college. I’m not a numbers person like my dad, but I understand people and public relations, and work with our clients one-on-one. So it had to be something personal. And—” She hesitated again.

“Jolene, you need to be open with us,” Lucy said. “We’re trying to find out not only how your father died, but why he was in San Antonio in the first place. No one at HWI knew about the spontaneous flight, there is no record of the meeting at the White Knight, and his wife didn’t know.”

“After what happened last night, if I say it’s personal and had to do with Adeline, you’d tell me it was sour grapes. And it’s not,” Jolene said.

“Everything is relevant,” Barry said, “until we rule it out.”

“First, I want to make it clear that I did not attack Adeline last night. She made it seem that way, but I did not.”

“Jolene, you need to be completely honest with these agents,” Scott spoke up for the first time. “Tell them exactly what happened.”

Jolene drank from her water bottle with unsteady hands. “I should never have gone over there.”

“You’re right,” Scott said. He turned to Lucy and Barry. “I had to go to the hospital to check on a patient who was in post-op. There had been complications, otherwise I would never have left Jolene alone last night.”

Jolene patted his hand. “Of course you needed to go. It’s my fault. I pretended to be asleep.” To Lucy and Barry she said, “Scott is a pediatric surgeon. His patient was a toddler; he saved her life.” Even through her grief, she beamed pride at her husband.

Jolene continued. “I heard from a friend that Adeline had had people over to the house all day, receiving them, playing the grieving wife. She hadn’t told me anything about it. I didn’t care, at first, until I heard that she was planning the funeral. She emailed me—emailed!—that I should come to the house to approve her arrangements. I just … lost it. She was married to my dad for eight years—and I knew Daddy wasn’t enamored with her anymore. He used to glow about Adeline. How smart she was, how proud he was of her for running for office, how thoughtful she was. But lately—he didn’t talk about her at all. And he wouldn’t tell me because, well, I wasn’t really that supportive of him getting married in the first place.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “You don’t care about that.”

“What happened last night?” Lucy prompted.

“I went in and she was drinking a bottle of my parents’ anniversary wine. It was a special collection Daddy had bought for my mom, and after she died, he would open a bottle on their anniversary to remember her. And she was drinking it and Daddy was dead and I was crying. It makes no sense to anyone else, but to me it was the worst betrayal. She told me that … that he was with a prostitute, she said that I didn’t know my dad at all, that he—he—he was a pervert.” She pounded her fist on the table as her eyes moistened again. “I will not let her destroy my father’s name. I won’t.”

Scott said, “The sheriff’s deputies told me that the alarm had been tripped and they responded. Adeline baited Jolene into throwing that bottle. But she didn’t throw it at her. She aimed at a wall.”

“But you weren’t there,” Barry said.

“No, but I believe my wife. I don’t know how the press found out about it. They were at our house when the police brought Jolene home.”

“Because Adeline called them,” Jolene said emphatically. “You know, I don’t care about the house. It’s just a house. It’s what’s inside that I want. My memories. Photographs. My parents’ wedding album. I can’t stand that Adeline will have her hands on it.”

Scott said, “You said you’re investigating Harper’s death as a homicide. Please, be honest with us, was he with a prostitute?”

Lucy didn’t say anything mostly because she wasn’t certain what she truly believed anymore. Barry said, “Our investigation is ongoing. We don’t know why your father went to that motel room or what that girl was doing there. We have evidence that she is a prostitute, but no evidence that your father had sexual relations with her.”

“How did he die?” Scott asked. “Adeline originally told Jolene that it was a heart attack.”

“We’re waiting for toxicology.”

“What does that mean?” Jolene asked, turning to her husband.

Scott said, “Blood and tissue samples. To see if he’d been drinking or on drugs.”

“Daddy didn’t drink much, and he absolutely didn’t do drugs,” she said.

“We’ve already determined that he had no alcohol in his system and none of the common illicit drugs were found in his blood or in his possession,” Barry said. “We’re waiting on additional tests. It appears that he was injected in the back of his neck.”

Both Jolene and Scott stared at them, confused.

Barry said, “Technically, he died of asphyxiation—he couldn’t breathe. But there was no evidence of strangulation or suffocation. That’s why the coroner is pursuing a chemical reason. But we haven’t released that information, because we don’t have a final report from the ME’s office. So I’d appreciate if you kept that to yourselves until the official word.”