Half an hour later, Agent Ruth Noble stuck her head into Savich’s office. “I brought Alexander Rasmussen up, put him in the interview room. Ah, Dillon, he’s not a happy camper. Not that he wasn’t civil when I fetched him from downstairs, but he’s pissed off at your demanding he come here to our house. Said he was a very busy man and this was nonsense. Can I sit in?”
Savich swallowed the last bite of his veggie wrap. “Sure, come on.”
Savich, Sherlock, and Ruth walked back into the interview room recently vacated by Alexander’s brother, Rob.
“Alexander,” Savich said as he walked in, closing the door behind him. “Thank you for coming. You’ve met Agent Noble.”
Alexander stood up from his chair. “You insisted I come.” He didn’t spare either Ruth or Sherlock a glance. “Listen, you know I have a lot of demands on my time, Savich, so what do you want that’s so important you dragged me here?”
“Sit down, Alexander.”
He sat down, stiff and angry. “Well?”
“It’s obvious you’re here because you are one of the people who may be trying to murder your grandmother.”
As an opener, this one scored big with Alexander. He went pale, lurched back in his chair, then flushed red with outrage. “What? You believe I would ever harm a hair on Grandmother’s head? You’re a disgrace, incompetent, the lot of you! If you think you can frame me, railroad me into prison, you’re dead wrong.”
Savich’s voice remained calm. “You and your father were the only people with her all three times she got ill from arsenic poisoning.”
“Use your brain for a change—anyone could have gotten to her food. Her own flesh and blood trying to kill her? That’s absurd. You and I have never gotten along, Savich. It’s natural you would feel jealous of what I have and who I am, and I don’t hold that against you, but you need to get over yourself. I have no motive, nor does my father.
“Now, you’ve said what you wanted to say and I’ve responded to it. Over and done. There was no reason for you to demand I come here.”
“You say you have no motive?” Savich raised a finger. “You’re very angry at your grandmother for forcing you to work at the Smithsonian—with those bureaucratic morons I believe you called them. You consider it a rank insult.” He raised a second finger. “Two years ago you embezzled from Rathstone, Grace and Ward, and your grandmother made you pay back the money, convinced them not to prosecute, and I can only imagine how much you resented that.” A third finger went up. “Since she’s brought you into Rasmussen Industries, she’s kept a close eye on you, looks over your shoulder at everything you do to make sure you don’t fall back into old habits. How you must hate being on that short leash, under that constant supervision, of her belittling you in that way.” He raised a fourth finger. “You’ve disappointed her, Alexander, and that scares you because she could cut you off whenever she wishes. You want her position, you want to run the show, and you don’t want to risk losing that, but you don’t want to wait any longer. A prosecutor would have no trouble supplying a motive, Alexander, and you know it.”
Alexander rose straight out of his chair, leaned toward Savich, his hands splayed on the tabletop. “How dare you, you no-talent suck-up! The only reason Grandmother pays you any attention at all is because your grandmother was Sarah Elliott. She keeps you around because of her childhood friend, nothing more. And your talent? You whittle! You’re an embarrassment, a low-life cop.”
Sherlock smiled at the man she was tempted to cold-cock. “Dillon is an artist, he carves beautiful pieces, many of them at the Raleigh Gallery. And guess what? Dillon isn’t the only one with talent in our low-life cop family. I play classical piano. You should come hear me play sometimes.” And Sherlock cracked her knuckles.
Alexander lasered her with a look, but Savich raised his hand, cut him off. “I think that’s quite enough. We’re not here to talk about us, Alexander, or what you think of us. If you have nothing to hide, I suggest you check your insults and answer our questions.”
“I don’t have anything to say.”
Savich said easily, “I hope you do, Alexander, because more than your father, more than anyone else in your family, you’re the only one who stands to benefit if your grandmother dies.”
“I am not the one doing this! Listen, it’s got to be a competitor. The business world is a ruthless place. We’ve had to cut out the guts of more than one company in a merger or sale. That breeds resentment, even hatred.
“Anyone could have hired one of the staff to put poison in her food. That’s where you need to look, not at me, not at my father.”
“You believe Isabel could be poisoning Venus? That she’s being paid by a disgruntled business associate?”
“Why not? And there’s Veronica. I never trusted her, always sucking up to Grandmother, always agreeing with her. Why? She’s not family, she has no reason to be loyal to Grandmother. Question her. And there’s Aunt Hildi, Grandmother paid off her husband to leave her, and that had to burn.”
Off the rails. But interesting that Alexander had thrown his aunt Hildi under the bus.
Savich said quietly, “Do you know why Venus bailed you out of those charges at the Rathstone law firm?”
“She didn’t want her name blasted in the tabloids. She was afraid it would negatively affect Rasmussen stock. She was afraid for her own reputation.”
Sherlock said, “She saved you, Alexander, because you’re family. She loves you. It’s that simple.”
Alexander looked at them like they were mutts beneath his notice. He pulled his mesmerizing lawyer’s voice out of his hat. “Of course she does, and I love her. You want the facts about Rathstone, Grace and Ward? I had a disagreement with the partners about using my influence with Grandmother to bring them more business. I refused. They threatened they would let me go if I didn’t agree. I refused to. They came up with this malfeasance nonsense, threatened to report it to the bar. That is when Venus stepped in and made her own threats. Malfeasance? She never believed it for an instant.”
Savich said, “Specifically, it was a matter of siphoning off a client’s funds, actually two very wealthy clients whose finances the firm handles. Well, make that past tense—handled—because they left the firm. Venus must have been very disappointed in you.”
Alexander stared at him. There was a bead of sweat on his forehead. Savich said, “Venus kept quiet about what you did, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t find out about it. I know everything you did, every person’s name you did it to. Tread carefully, Alexander.”
Alexander swiped his hand over his forehead. He managed to kick in his lawyer’s voice again. “I will say this once and only once. This is idiotic. Neither I nor my father were poisoning Venus. As for that fool who tried to murder her outside our home yesterday, I know nothing about him.” He rose, shot his cuffs, and looked down at Savich. “I came believing that perhaps you would wish to have my help. Instead, you accuse me of wanting my grandmother dead. If I’d known the two of you were going to speak to me in this manner, I would have brought Rasmussen lawyers. Next time, I will. Don’t think I won’t tell Venus what happened here.” He stepped around the table, made a beeline for the door.
Savich let him go. He looked from Sherlock to Ruth, raised an eyebrow.
“I say we hang him up by his thumbs,” Ruth said, “and let him dangle above the floor for a couple of days. Come on, boss, let me do it.”
Savich said slowly, “It’s a lovely thought, Ruth.”
Ruth gave him a cocky grin. “Do you think we could run it by Mr. Maitland?”