Big Easy Temptation (The Perfect Gentlemen #3)(19)
Her uncle had always been terribly good at giving lectures.
“I think his case is different,” she argued.
He sent her a cool stare. “Yes, it’s much worse. He thought his father was a hero. It turns out the man was a criminal. Which is precisely why I told you to stay away from this investigation in the first place. You did the right thing by recusing yourself. Why would you go back and screw things up now?”
She’d known she would have to endure this lecture. That’s why she’d put off seeing her uncle until this afternoon. But she planned to meet with Dax tomorrow and she wanted to have something to tell him. Otherwise, she might never have forced herself to come here. “This isn’t a formal investigation. This is me looking into a few questions for a friend.”
“A friend or a lover?” He managed to make the question sound like an accusation.
Holland sat up straighter, fingers curling around the arms of her chair. “Uncle Beau, I love you, but I’m an adult. My relationship with Captain Spencer is none of your business.”
“It damn straight is if he’s causing trouble for you at work.”
“There won’t be any trouble.” Sometimes, like now, Holland really missed her aunt Dixie. She’d divorced her uncle a few years back and moved to Texas with her sister. If her aunt was still here, Dixie could have reasoned with her stubborn uncle. Of course, his stubbornness had been one of the major causes of the divorce in the first place. “Uncle Beau, I’m asking as a favor. You’ll save me some legwork if you’ll let me read the file. Think of it as a professional courtesy.”
“I’m sure NCIS has the file somewhere,” he replied with a sour expression.
“Again, I’m not doing this on the clock. It’s why I came to you and not my colleagues. I want to peruse the file, maybe close some of those open-ended questions and make Dax feel more comfortable.” She wasn’t about to mention that she thought Dax could have a point. She didn’t want her uncle to think she was seriously considering building a case to bring to her superiors.
Uncle Beau ran a frustrated hand across his almost nonexistent hair and cursed under his breath. “Fine.” He picked up his phone and asked his assistant to get a hard copy of the file. “I still don’t understand what that boy thinks he’s going to prove. That his father wasn’t guilty? Because he was, Holland. I wouldn’t have sent the accusation to NCIS if I hadn’t found it to be credible. I didn’t like ruining the life of a man so many people admired.”
Finally they were getting somewhere. “I know you didn’t.”
“If I’d found even a hint that it might be false, I would have tried harder to disprove it before the press got hold of the story. I knew the minute I found out the admiral was involved that the incident would blow up in everyone’s faces. There are days I wished that call had never come in. Not on my watch.”
Yes, she had some questions about the call that had led her uncle to that seedy motel. “So the original tip came from an anonymous source?”
“Yes, we didn’t realize the tip involved a high-ranking Naval officer at the time.” Beau seemed to settle in as though he realized she wasn’t going away.
She could be stubborn, too. She’d learned through the years that she had to be if she was going to survive her uncle. He’d taught her to be like a dog with a bone. “So you got a call?”
“Yes, to this very precinct, shortly after midnight on the day in question. I’ve attempted to ID the caller, but it’s impossible. The caller reached out via a landline from somewhere inside the motel the admiral had taken that girl to.”
“But he was gone by the time you arrived?” She wanted to get the timeline down. “I’ve heard surveillance cameras caught him going into the motel but not coming out of it.”
“Yes. The cameras in the motel are stationary. Cheap security, nothing that you couldn’t buy at a local electronics store, so they don’t swing.” Her uncle rolled his eyes. “There were only a few cameras in high-traffic areas. Apparently the admiral left through a different door than he entered. Besides being captured by the security camera in the hall, the motel employee I spoke to identified him. As far as I can tell, the caller was most likely another guest of the motel. She didn’t leave her name because she was probably a working girl.”
The motel that had become the scene of the crime was well known for its hourly rates. A prostitute likely wouldn’t want to deal with the police on any level. It was surprising that anyone who frequented the place would call in at all. “I can hardly imagine the admiral going to a rattrap like that.”
“Men have their secrets, Holland. I believe I taught you that, too,” he said with a sad sigh. “What men present to the women they love tends to be a shiny, happy surface they don’t ever want their wives and daughters to scratch past. We’re dark creatures, especially someone like the admiral. You know he’d cheated on his wife for years.”
“I heard that rumor.” There had been any number of salacious bits of gossip floating around after the story broke. The tabloids had speculated about everything from numerous mistresses to orgies in the name of Satan.
Her uncle’s voice softened in sympathy. “No, honey. That was what his wife told us after his death. She accepted who her husband was, though she didn’t know about the underage girls. I think that’s what broke her. She thought she was the only one Hal Spencer was hurting.”