CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Joe and Mary Doyle lived in a large, two-story house on a ten-acre lot where Boondoggle Road met Old Yourkeville Highway. A smooth, oil top driveway curved its way through the pasture to the four-car garage at the back of the house. Jack watched two mares and a colt bolt from their positions at the barbed wire fence when his patrol car passed. The older horses slowed down and stopped by the small pond in the middle of the field. Lagging behind, the colt finally made it, running around the two, mimicking their frolicking. The two older horses, done with their spurt of playfulness, put their muzzles down into the startling green grass and grazed.
Jack parked his patrol car at the end of the line of sedans, Suburbans, trucks, and minivans and got out. He let two middle-aged ladies carrying casserole dishes go ahead of him on the sidewalk and waited patiently behind them as they rang the doorbell. The aroma of roast beef surrounded their little threesome, making Jack’s mouth water. Before the chime faded, a man opened the door. He wore khaki dress pants, an oxford shirt, and a sport coat, all well cared for but twenty years out of style. Jack immediately pegged him as a deacon.
“Ladies. Go on into the kitchen. Mrs. Pritchard is in there making sure everything is organized.”
“Taking charge, more like,” one of the women said.
“I told you we should have come earlier,” the other countered.
“Well, you can’t rush a roast, now can you?”
The women continued to bicker in the way old friends do all the way across the living room.
The man turned his benevolent attention to Jack. Jack knew his type. Ingratiating and selfless to an unnatural degree masking his true need to be in the middle of things. Useful. Indispensable. “Chief McBride. Don McNatt. Deacon at First Methodist. The Doyles’ church. We met at the Rotary Club last month.”
“Of course. Good to see you again,” Jack said, though he didn’t remember the man. Shocking considering McNatt wore an obvious, ill-fitting toupee.
McNatt grasped the collar of his suit jacket like a nineteenth-century robber baron standing for a dour picture and gazed down at the terrazzo tile. He made no move to escort Jack out of the entry hall. “Terrible, terrible thing.” McNatt shook his head for emphasis. “I suppose you’re here to talk to the family.”
“Yes.”
“Well, Mary’s in bed. Old Doc Poole gave her a sedative yesterday. Joe’s in his office with Brother Dobson. Our pastor. And Norman Davie.”
“Where are the children?”
McNatt’s head jerked up. “You can’t possibly want to talk to the children.”
“No, but you didn’t mention them. Are they here?”
“Oh. I believe they’re with Amy’s mom. She came in from Houston.”
“Where?”
“At a hotel in Yourkeville. The Best Western, I believe.”
“Huh,” Jack said. “I need to speak with Mr. Doyle.”
“Can’t it wait? It’s all so fresh.”
“I spoke with Joe yesterday and promised I’d keep him updated.”
McNatt’s eyes lit up. “Of course. Follow me.”
They walked out of the entry way and into an open plan kitchen and living room. Floor to ceiling windows looked out over a swimming pool with a slide and diving board. Beyond lay a pasture the mirror image of the one Jack drove through earlier.
Though it was barely ten in the morning, the house smelled like a restaurant in the middle of a lunch rush. The reason was easily apparent; in the kitchen, elderly women with tightly permed gray hair were organizing enough food to feed the entire population of Stillwater: platters of sandwiches, barbeque, meats and cheeses, casseroles, cookies, cakes, brownies, bags of chips and dips, coffee cakes, Danish, donuts, urns of coffee, coolers of sodas and waters. Groups of men and women stood and sat all around, drinking coffee and talking in low murmurs. Their expressions on seeing Jack varied from curiosity, to relief, to suspicion, to outright hostility.
Jack knew better than to catch anyone’s eye. He kept his gaze on Don McNatt’s toupee. McNatt knocked twice on the door under the stairs, heard an abrupt “Come!” and opened the door.
Joe Doyle’s office was what Jack expected. Wood-paneled walls, a large desk, leather chairs, bookshelves with more memorabilia and framed photographs—mostly of the hunting variety—than books. A small hammerhead shark hung on the wall behind Doyle’s desk. The aroma of food couldn’t banish the masculine scent of sandalwood and pine, as much a part of the room as Joe Doyle.
Doyle and a bald, hefty man sat in the two chairs in front of the desk. A slight man with thinning hair and small, square, gold-rimmed glasses hovered behind Doyle and to the side. The bald man stood when Jack entered. Doyle walked behind his desk and sat down. Don McNatt left and closed the door noiselessly behind him.
The bald man shifted his Bible to his left hand and extended his right. “Chief McBride. Frank Dobson.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“It’s about damn time you showed up,” Doyle said. “I want to know what’s going on with the case.”
Jack ignored Doyle’s outburst and stared at the hammerhead shark on the wall. Doyle followed Jack’s gaze. “Caught it in the gulf. Fishing for swordfish. Fought me like hell, but I got the best of it in the end.”
“Fishing with Pollard?”
Doyle narrowed his eyes. “As a matter of fact.”
“Talked to him lately?”
“Pollard’s dead. We had the funeral to prove it.”
Jack chuckled. The funeral of the century. Technically a “Celebration of Life,” it’d been held at the football stadium to accommodate all the people. Town leader after town leader spoke about Pollard’s contribution to Stillwater, his multiple Man of the Year awards, the low crime rate the town boasted while he was in charge (a not-so-subtle dig at Jack’s short tenure), his philanthropic contributions. By the end, Buck Pollard’s reputation had been burnished to a blinding shine. Jack had watched the mourners leave and couldn’t detect a hint of sorrow or grief on even one face. Most looked relieved. Reading Pollard’s journals every night for six weeks, Jack knew why.
“Never found a body.” He turned to Dobson and Davie, “Would you excuse us?”
“They don’t have to leave.”
“Yes, they do.”
“This is my house …”
Jack sighed, knowing every conversation with Doyle was going to be a battle. “And, my investigation.”
Norman Davie spoke up, “I’m Joe’s lawyer.”
“It’s fine, Joe. I’ll be outside.” Dobson put his hand on Jack’s shoulder and bowed his head. “Lord, bless Chief McBride with the gift of discernment. Amen.” He patted Jack on the shoulder and left.
When the door was closed behind Dobson, Doyle said, “Well?”
Jack sat down though Doyle hadn’t invited him to. He crossed his legs and studied Doyle, trying to find the grieving father Miner alluded to the day before and couldn’t. Doyle seemed to have jumped to the anger stage of grief in record time. Jack imagined Ethan sitting in a chair, his brains blown out, and understood.
“Matt and Amy were killed by one gunshot wound to the head, each, sometime between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. Sunday morning. Matt was probably killed first, with a silencer, since the position of Amy’s body suggests she was asleep. Nothing of value was taken and their home office wasn’t disturbed in the least, which rules out robbery. Do you know, did Matt and Amy always lock their doors?”
“I assume so. Amy was from Houston. She was afraid of her shadow. Why?”
“There was no sign of forced entry. A keypad opens the garage door. Any idea who knows the code?”
“I do. Mary. The kids. Michelle and Chris.”
“Anyone else?”
“Barbara Dodsworth cleans their house once a week. She might.”
Jack jotted the information down on his notepad. “Was the garage door up or down when you showed up yesterday?”
“Up. But Madison was there before me.”
“She would have gone in through the garage, not the front door?”
“The whole point of the keypad is so they don’t have to keep up with a key.”
Jack counted to five before he asked the next question. “Mr. Doyle, did you know of anyone who might want to harm Matt or Amy?”
Doyle glared at him for a full thirty seconds before answering. “Of course not.”
“Matt had been working for you a little less than a year, correct?”
“Yes.”
“How was the business?”
“More successful than I expected.”
“Were you involved in the produce business?”
“Only generally, during the weekly management meetings. Managers for all four divisions met with me and Michelle to discuss business issues.”
“And was Matt having any issues with his business? With employees, suppliers, customers?”
“No.”
“What about with Eric Sterry, Matt’s former employer? Any animosity when he left?”
“No. He understood Matt and Amy’s desire to move back home.”
“What about issues with employees, suppliers, and customers there?”
“You’d have to ask Sterry.”
“Amy subbed at the high school, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did she have any run-ins with students or parents?”
“Not that I’m aware of, but I didn’t talk to Amy about her job.”
“Why not?”
Doyle looked at him like he was insane. “Mary might have.”
“I’ll need to talk to her.”
“Not today, you won’t.”
Jack didn’t push it. Mary Doyle wasn’t going anywhere. “When you saw Matt and Amy’s bodies, what was your first thought?”
Doyle twisted his head, looked at Jack from one eye. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, your instinctual reaction. A name, perhaps?”
Doyle sat back in his chair and clasped his hands together, resting them on his stomach. A tuft of gray chest hair peeked out from the top of his dress shirt. His hair was perfectly coiffed, but Jack noticed a patch of stubble on his chin he had missed when shaving.
“My instinct was to find my granddaughter and get her out of there.”
“When Madison called you, what did she say?”
“Mary couldn’t understand anything she said. I heard her screaming and sobbing through the phone. I told Mary to tell her I’d be right there. The call lasted seconds. Ten at the most.” Doyle sighed. “I’ve told you all this.”
“Mr. Doyle, in investigations like this you’ll have to answer the same questions over and over.” Jack wrote down the call details and asked, “What happened when you arrived at the house?”
“I went inside.”
“Front door or back?”
“Back. Madison left the garage door up.” Doyle swallowed and struggled to continue. In a weak voice he said, “I called out to Madison. Then I saw Matt”—he cleared his throat—“and Amy.” Doyle put his face in his hands. “I can’t believe that little girl saw that.”
Jack remained silent to give Doyle time to compose himself. Doyle scrubbed his face with his hands and sniffed. His eyes were red and watery and his face was a mask of despair.
“I’m not sure what type of counseling services the county offers,” Jack said, “or if they have a victim’s advocate on retainer or not, but I have the name of one in Dallas that might be able to help Madison, or at the very least help you and Mary find someone to help Madison.”
“Thank you,” he said, his voice husky.
Jack cleared his throat. “After you found Matt and Amy, what did you do?”
“I went to find Madison. When we came downstairs Starling was in the living room, gun drawn.”
“What did Madison say to you while you waited for Starling to check the house?”
“Nothing. She was practically comatose.”
“When you were standing there, comforting your granddaughter, what was going through your mind?”
“Nothing.”
“No name jumped out at you, no one who might be responsible for killing your only son and daughter-in-law?”
“Matt and Amy didn’t have any enemies.”
“What about your enemies, Mr. Doyle?”
In the following silence, the floor-to-ceiling grandfather clocked ticked away ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds. Doyle’s eyes bored into him, the short truce they’d had over his grief gone. “I can’t think of anyone who hates me enough to kill my children.”
Jack raised his eyebrow in disbelief, made sure Doyle saw it, and moved on. “Are Amy’s parents local?”
“No. She’s from the Houston area. Her dad’s dead. Her mom’s here, though. She’s staying at the Yourkeville Best Western. The kids are with her.”
“Why?”
Doyle narrowed his eyes. Jack could tell he was about to lie to him. “Bea wanted them with her, and they wanted to be as far away from the crime scene as they could.”
“Are Michelle and Chris here? I need to speak to them, as well.”
“Michelle’s at the office. I have no idea where Chris is. Probably playing golf.”
“The day after his brother- and sister-in-law are murdered?”
“We all deal with grief in different ways.”
“Michelle works, Chris plays golf, Mary takes to her bed, and your grandkids try to get as far away from you as possible. Why did Matt decide not to use Brian Grant as the contractor for his lake house?”
“It’s news to me.”
“Was the house being built with Matt’s personal money or company money?”
Doyle smirked. Jack knew he wouldn’t admit to laundering money through a construction project, but wanted to ask anyway. “His personal money.”
“Then why would Michelle care who he used?”
“Michelle’s controlling.”
“Was that a source of contention in the family?”
“No.”
“It seemed to be Saturday night.”
“You said they were drinking.”
“Not that much.”
Doyle sat forward. His leather chair creaked. “What are you driving at?”
“How involved are you in the business these days, Mr. Doyle?”
“I’m the president and CEO.”
“So, all decisions run through you. What’s Michelle’s role?”
“She’s the CFO.”
“So, she would be the final word on what happens with company money. What was Matt and Michelle’s relationship like?”
“Typical brother and sister.”
“Fights?”
“They were adults.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“This is the direction of your investigation? Doyle Industries? Family issues?”
“Most murders are perpetrated by family members, Mr. Doyle. What was Matt and Michelle’s relationship like?”
“It’s because of your ineptitude we’ve had more crime in Stillwater in the last two months than in the last twenty years. It’s because of you Matt and Amy are dead.”
“As you know, the increase in crime is drug related. Once Pollard stopped protecting the local organization, the cartel moved in. You mentioned Mexicans yesterday. Are you saying Matt or Amy were involved in drugs?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“It’s what I’m hearing. I mean, my impression of Matt and Amy is they were about as straight-arrow as you could get. Now, I could see them being caught in the cross fire. Innocents are used to get to the core of the organization. Looks like they overestimated Matt’s importance in the family. No one seems to be mourning them. At least, not the immediate family.”
Doyle stood, placed his fists on his desk, and leaned forward. “You son of a bitch. After I win tomorrow—”
“Speaking of the election, I can’t believe you’re not dropping out.”
“So that liberal can bring in a bunch of hipsters to take over my town? Over my dead body.”
“I assumed after the death of your only son, your favorite child according to many, you would want to focus on your family.”
“Get out.”
“You never have answered the question about Matt and Michelle’s relationship.”
“We’re done here,” Norman Davie said. Jack had forgotten he was in the room. Davie walked to the office door and opened it.
Jack closed his notebook and stood. “Joe, you can rest assured, I’ll do everything possible to find their killer.”
“Why does that sound like a threat?”
“It’s the same promise I make every family. I’ll be in touch.”
Davie held out a business card. “If you need to speak to Mr. Doyle again, you go through me.”
Jack took the card and stepped out of the office. “Mr. McBride,” Doyle called out.
Jack turned. The sun was shining through the partially opened wood blinds, throwing alternating stripes of dark and light across Doyle’s face. His eyes were cold, hard and calculating. “You will answer to me. When I win tomorrow, my first order of business will be to destroy you.”
Jack opened his car door and heard someone call his name. Norman Davie speedwalked toward him.
“Chief!”
Jack waited in the gap between his car and open door. Davie arrived out of breath. He put his hands on his hips and, with a sheepish chuckle, took a couple of deep breaths. “Don’t get much exercise,” he said.
Jack waited for Davie to say what he chased after him to say.
“Whew. Better now. About what Joe said when you left.”
“Vowing to destroy me? I thought it was a bit melodramatic. What did you think?”
“Mr. Doyle is understandably upset at the death of his only son. You shouldn’t put much weight in what he says.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“Do you want him to threaten you?”
“I’m thinking of the answers he gave. Are you saying I shouldn’t believe him?”
“No, no.” Davie’s expression hinted at panic. “Mr. Doyle was truthful in everything he said.”
“I’m more interested in what he didn’t say.”
Davie shifted on his feet. “You mean about Matt and Michelle.”
“Yes.”
“You have a sibling. You know how volatile those relationships can be.”
“Matt and Michelle had a volatile relationship?”
“No.”
Jack didn’t smile but he wanted to. Davie might be a good business lawyer, but Jack supposed he’d never been in court, much less questioned by the police.
“Did Matt ever come to you with a problem?”
Davie stiffened. “Why do you ask that?”
“You’re the family lawyer. I assumed if Matt had a problem with someone or someone threatened him, maybe, he would come to you.”
“Oh. Right. There was the issue with his former boss when he left East Texas Produce.”
Jack sighed. Why couldn’t people tell a story without dramatic pauses. Fucking Law & Order. “What was the issue?”
“Matt signed a noncompete when he went to work for Sterry—Eric Sterry, the owner—and Sterry sued him for violation when Matt left.”
“What happened?”
“Since Sterry’s business includes organic and nonorganic, we were able to get the noncompete voided because Matt’s company was solely organic.”
“How was Matt’s relationship with his father?”
“You can’t possibly think Joe …”
Jack knew better than to answer the question either way. Everyone was a suspect, especially this early in the investigation. But, if Davie and Doyle wouldn’t tell Jack about Michelle and Matt’s relationship, maybe insight into Matt and Joe’s relationship would.
“They were close. Joe adored Matt. He’d been trying to get Matt to come to work for him for years, but Matt always resisted. Until a year or so ago when he came to him with the idea.”
“Why did he resist, before?”
“Matt didn’t want to have the business handed to him. He wanted to make his own way.”
Jack struggled not to roll his eyes. Only silver-spooned spoiled brats ever thought that way. Jack would have been thrilled to have his way in the world paved with a few more golden bricks than potholes. “Would the business have been handed to him? I would imagine Michelle would have something to say about it.”
Davie laughed. “Oh, yeah.” Davie waved at a couple walking to the house holding a grocery bag and a tray of sandwiches. “Michelle promised to give him full autonomy and he agreed.”
“So, Matt didn’t want to work with Michelle.”
Davie turned his attention back to Jack and narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t say that.”
“What about Chris?”
“Chris?”
“Michelle’s husband? Doyle’s son-in-law.”
“I know who he is.”
“How does he fit in? He doesn’t seem very ‘engaged’ does he?”
Davie rolled his eyes. “Chris is a former athlete who can’t get over the fact he wasn’t good enough for the NFL.”
“What’s his side business at the country club?”
Davie furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
“Come on, Norman. You and I know a small-town country club is the closest these bumpkins get to a casino.”
“Shreveport is an hour and a half away.”
“You don’t need to go to Shreveport to run numbers. Or place bets on games. He have a five-card stud game going on the secret room off the locker room?”
“I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”
“Trying to get a bead on the pecking order in this organization. How involved different family members and employees are in the—” Jack paused as if choosing his words, “operation.”
“What does that have to do with Matt’s murder?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. I’m going to take a close look at everything, personal and professional, to figure out who would want to murder in cold blood two of the nicest people I’ve met in Stillwater.” Jack put one foot in his car. “You can tell Joe Doyle to take that as a threat.”