04 Lowcountry Bordello(19)

“That might well come in handy later. We can hope neither of us ends up on a witness stand, but I wouldn’t put money on it.”

“Purely as a hypothetical exercise, if there was a body, the only person who couldn’t’ve been responsible is Aunt Dean. She was upstairs with Olivia while Robert was wandering around downstairs in the dark with a flashlight. At that point, there was no body. Aunt Dean was still upstairs when Olivia came down and found the body.”

Nate canted his head towards his shoulder, looked skeptical. “If we believe everything our clients have told us thus far. They have both been less than forthcoming.”

“Right.” I inhaled deeply. “So for the moment, I see Seth as suspect number one.”

“Agreed. He had the means and the opportunity. But what was his motive?”

“Based on the information we have right now, the only thing I can come up with is mistaken identity. He could’ve seen Robert come into the house and mistaken Thurston for Robert. If Olivia could confuse the two, surely Seth could.”

“And he’d be thinking if Robert showed up at the house it was to put a stop to the blackmail.”

“Exactly,” I said. “But what would Thurston Middleton have been doing in that house to begin with? I’m going to have to talk to Aunt Dean as soon as the ladies are back from their outing.”

“Talking to her is just as likely to send rats scattering as Sonny going in there with a search warrant. If she’s an accessory to whatever Seth has done in his bouncer capacity over the years, she’ll tip him off. And surely she’s protective of her paying customers.”

“But she’ll be more protective of Olivia. Olivia is her partner, unwilling though she may be, and her heir. If I can convince her my only agenda is to protect Olivia, she might talk to me and keep it quiet.”

Nate was quiet for a moment. “That will work better if Olivia goes with you.”

I winced, shook my head. “That’s too risky. She’s too much of a loose cannon. But by then we’ll have cameras live and the landline tapped. With Olivia’s consent, it’s like putting the whole house on a nanny cam. What Miss Dean does after I leave will tell us a great deal.”

Nate pulled the binoculars out of a black duffle bag, adjusted the focus, and scanned every angle available from the window. “So if Seth is suspect number one, who do you make for suspect number two?”

“As much as I wish we could, we can’t exclude Olivia.”

“No, we cannot. She had means and opportunity. It’s possible she killed Thurston for some unknown motive, but if it was her, it’s more likely that she mistook him for Robert, even when he was upright.”

“I just can’t see that. Olivia is volatile, no doubt. But she seems crazy about Robert, and vice versa. She was nearly catatonic when she thought he was dead.”

He raised both eyebrows, then pulled a chair up to the camera so he could sit and look at the flip out screen. He adjusted the camera. “I can get shots of the license plate from any car turning into the drive. If someone street parks, I may have to go downstairs to get the right angle. Bring me up to speed. What else’ve you come up with so far?”

I filled him in on Seth and the house, how Olivia’s story held up that far. “I got Olivia’s email with the girls’ first names and the last names they go by—those of their benefactors. Suspects three through seven are Amber Calhoun, Wendi Gibbes, Dana Huger, Heather Prioleau, and Lori Russell.”

“And there are five other men, patrons of the establishment all, with last names of Calhoun, Gibbes, Huger, Prioleau, and Russell, who may also have had a motive to kill either Thurston or Robert.”

“When you say it like that I get queasy.” I turned back to my laptop.

“So first we need to figure out if Mr. Middleton expired inside that house. The next two questions: If he did, was he the intended victim, or was he in the wrong place at the wrong time; and who had a motive to kill him or Robert.”

“What a godawful mess.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Scanning my notes, I said, “In addition to the previously mentioned twelve suspects, it’s possible one of the residents had an old boyfriend or other family member who was on a mission to get her out of there and somehow had an altercation with Thurston. You can never rule out the spouse, of course. And then there’s the final possibility, an unidentified third party was in the house for reasons unknown, with intent to kill one of the two men, or who possibly fell into a misunderstanding.”

Nate stared at the camera screen. “And then there’s Raylan.”