Phillip Margolin - Ties That Bind

"I'm sorry."

Deborah flashed a tired smile. "Don't be. I wasn't. Our marriage was a mistake from the beginning, but we were both so busy with medical school and law school and our careers that we weren't together enough to notice. When I finally took a look at our marriage, it dawned on me that I didn't really know Harold at all." For a second her eyes darted down. When she looked up, Tim saw defiance. "I also learned that he was cheating on me every chance he got. Probably had been since we met."

"Why did you stay with him?"

"I don't know. Inertia, I guess. And I was too busy to take time out for a divorce, which would have hurt Harold's career. I didn't want to do that. I didn't hate him. We didn't know each other well enough to have intense emotions in either direction."

"Can you think of anything that will help us find Harold's killer?"

"I'm sorry, Tim. I can't give you a name. I didn't know any of his girlfriends. I do know that he was agitated for the past week. I asked him if something was wrong but he was evasive. I chalked it up to the excitement of sewing up the nomination."

"Do you think someone had threatened him?"

"He never said anything like that to me, but we didn't confide in one another. Besides, Harold was a United States senator. They have tremendous resources. If someone was threatening him he would have gone to the FBI."

"So you have no idea why Harold was upset?" McCarthy asked.

"No."

"Did you know that Harold owned the cabin where he was killed?" the detective continued.

Deborah flushed but her voice was steady when she told them that she knew nothing about the A-frame.

"Have you ever heard Harold mention a man named Jon Dupre?" Tim asked.

"Is he mixed up in this?"

"You know him?"

"Not personally, but his parents are members of the Westmont; Clara and Paul Dupre."

Tim's brow furrowed. "I don't think I know them."

"I'm not surprised. I don't either, except to say hello. They're much older than Harold and me. They had Jon late in life."

"Did Harold know Jon?"

"I'm sure he knew who he was, but I've never seen them together."

"Sean?" Tim asked.

"I don't have anything else."

"Then we'll leave you alone. If you think of anything else, or if you just want to talk, call me."

Sean McCarthy followed Tim out of the living room and Deborah's friends returned to her side. Carl Rittenhouse walked over and was about to ask a question.

"Let's go outside," Tim said. "I need some air."

The seasons were starting to change, and the wind was stirring the gold and red leaves that blanketed the lawn. Tim had worn a suit with no overcoat and he felt chilled, but the cold was refreshing after the stifling atmosphere in Travis's house.

"Did Deborah help?" Carl asked.

Kerrigan was about to reply when a car pulled past the barricade. Stan Gregaros got out and trudged up the driveway on the thick legs of a Greco-Roman wrestler. He spotted Kerrigan and McCarthy and waved a meaty hand that held a manila envelope.

"I got the pictures," he told Kerrigan.

"Carl, let's go some place quiet," Kerrigan said.

Chapter Eleven.

Jon Dupre's starkly modern house perched on the edge of a steep hill, separated from his neighbors by woods and facing an expanse of rolling hills and the low mountains of the coast range. The front of the house was curved tan stucco but the back was mostly glass, to take advantage of the spectacular view.

Two patrol cars pulled in behind Sean McCarthy's unmarked car. When McCarthy and Stan Gregaros walked toward the house, several officers grouped behind them. Gregaros grinned and loosened his jacket so his gun showed.

"Jon's not going to be happy to see me," he told McCarthy. Then he rang the doorbell hard and fast, three times. When the door opened, Gregaros flashed his badge at a bikini-clad blonde. She glared at the detective as soon as she recognized him.

"Is the gentleman of the house in?" Gregaros asked.

"Go fuck yourself, Stanley."

She started to shut the door but Gregaros stopped it with his foot.

"Don't be that way, Muriel."

The blonde turned her back on the detective and walked away without a word.

"Lovely young lady," Gregaros told McCarthy in a voice loud enough for the blonde to hear. "Her real name is Muriel Nussbaum, but she's Sapphire when she's working. The blond hair is a dye job but her blow jobs are the real McCoy."

Muriel didn't give Gregaros the satisfaction of a word or a glance as she waded through the deep carpeting that covered the floor of a high-ceilinged living room. She stepped aside when she arrived at a sliding glass door that opened onto a massive wood deck. Gregaros brushed past her. Dupre and a glassy-eyed brunette were chest-deep in a bubbling hot tub. A look of intense hatred suffused the pimp's handsome features as soon as he spotted Gregaros. A cell phone was lying on a low glass table. Dupre muscled his way out of the tub, grabbed it, and angrily speed-dialed a number. His eyes never left Gregaros as the detective crossed the deck.

McCarthy studied Dupre. He had the type of sleek, muscled body that is developed in a gym. His hair was short and styled. McCarthy was certain that Dupre's nails had been manicured. Then he shifted his gaze to Dupre's earlobe. There was a diamond stud in it.

"The motherfucker is here. He's in my house," McCarthy heard Dupre say into the phone, his anger under tight control. As soon as Gregaros got within arm's length, Dupre thrust the phone at him.

"My lawyer wants to talk to you."

"Certainly," Gregaros answered with an accommodating smile.

Dupre handed Gregaros the phone and the detective let it slip through his fingers.

"Oh, gee," he said, as he watched the phone sink to the bottom of the hot tub. "How clumsy of me. And I did so want to chat with Mr. Baron."

"Fuck you, Gregaros," Dupre answered with a low growl as every muscle in his body tensed.

"You're under arrest, Johnny boy," Gregaros informed Dupre, suddenly all business.

"For what?" Dupre asked belligerently.

"The murder of United States Senator Harold Travis, scumbag."

McCarthy thought that Dupre's shock was genuine, but he'd seen savvy crooks fake every emotion known to man.

"I didn't kill Travis," Dupre protested.

"I suppose you didn't argue with him at the Westmont, either."

Dupre started to answer, then clamped his jaws shut. Gregaros grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and turned him around so a uniformed officer could slap on a pair of cuffs. Dupre was wearing a low-cut swimsuit and nothing else.

"I'm not going downtown like this. Let me dress."

"Afraid someone will buttfuck you in the lockup? Funny, it doesn't bother you when someone does it to one of your girls. It'll do you good to learn how the other half lives."

Gregaros was trying to goad Dupre into attacking him, but McCarthy stepped in when Dupre tensed.

"I think we can let Mr. Dupre dress, Stan," he said, calmly moving between the detective and Dupre. Gregaros turned red with rage but held his tongue.

"Take Mr. Dupre inside and let him get dressed," McCarthy instructed a patrolman. "Watch him carefully, then cuff him."

As soon as Dupre had been hustled inside, Gregaros whirled toward Sean. "Don't ever do that again," he said.

"I know you'd like to kick the shit out of Dupre," McCarthy answered calmly, "but I don't want to hand Oscar Baron any more ammunition than you did by dropping that phone in the hot tub."

"Listen . . ."

"No, you listen to me, Stan," McCarthy cut in, his voice suddenly and uncharacteristically hard. "This is my case. You're along for the ride because you know a lot about our suspect. But I won't tolerate you letting this get personal. If Dupre killed Senator Travis I want him on death row, not back in his hot tub because you need to blow off steam."