Monument to Murder - Margaret Truman [77]
Okay, he thought, let’s assume that Jeanine Montgomery was at Augie’s that night. If so, could Mitzy Cardell have been with her? There was nothing to indicate that she had been, but they were known to have been close friends since their early years. Bosom buddies. Their families were undoubtedly close. Augie’s was a notorious dump, hardly the sort of place to which someone like Jeanine Montgomery would have ventured alone. Chances were that if she had, indeed, been at Augie’s that night, she’d had a friend with her, a friend like Mitzi Cardell.
Both the Cardell and Montgomery families had plenty of money; paying ten thousand to protect one or both of the girls wouldn’t pose a hardship.
He poured wine into his glass and rapped his knuckles on the table out of frustration. This was all a game of supposition and speculation, a what-if exercise. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t useful. He’d played what-if myriad times while with the Savannah PD and it had paid off big on occasion.
He continued with his imagined scenarios and two-finger typing.
He thought back to what his roly-poly journalist friend, Willis Sayers, had said about Ward Cardell “owning” Warren Montgomery. What had that been about? What were the possibilities? Had Cardell arranged to pay off Louise Watkins not to protect his own daughter but to protect her best friend, Jeanine Montgomery, who now happened to be America’s first lady? Wow! That represented the biggest if of all.
He picked up the battered file folder. Why would Cardell’s PR guy, Jack Felker, have a file labeled “Watkins”? Had Felker been involved in some way in choreographing the payoff to Louise?
Speaking of Felker, Brixton was convinced that the former PR man had been murdered, the mess in his study and the telltale tiny red dots on his inner eyelid testifying to it. Why? Who? Had Felker told someone that he’d agreed to speak with a private investigator who was delving into the Louise Watkins case more than twenty years later, and had that person made sure that Felker couldn’t go through with the meeting?
Then there was Wayne St. Pierre’s urging that he, Brixton, drop the matter and leave Savannah. He took it at face value, that St. Pierre had his best interests at heart. But was there more to it? St. Pierre ran with the city’s elite when he wasn’t getting down and dirty as a cop. Warren Montgomery had been a guest at St. Pierre’s party that Brixton and Flo had attended, surrounded by Savannah’s A-list, for which Brixton had disdain—or for any so-called A-list, for that matter.
Connect the dots, he told himself, only do it better than the government is capable of doing to thwart terrorism.
His office had been broken into, but nothing had been taken. A warning?
Eunice Watkins, Louise’s mother, had received calls from an anonymous person who’d said, “Don’t be stupid,” before hanging up. Stupid about what, reopening the question of her daughter’s imprisonment and murder twenty years ago?
Brixton had been mugged, his briefcase containing his camera and recording equipment stolen. Just a random street crime? Probably. Or did it have to do with the Watkins case, or what the photos on the camera’s disk showed? If the latter was true, it had nothing to do with Watkins.
Had the driver of the red pickup been nothing more than a moronic bubba who showed up once too often, or had he been following Brixton?
And what about the nicely dressed, ferret-faced guy who’d been looking for him at Lazzara’s Restaurant,