by Rene Fomby
Seven pairs of eyes stared expectantly at him, waiting impatiently for the answer. Gavin tossed a bland smile in their direction as he decided to tease them just a little while longer. “And what do you have to say about that, Mrs. Cutler?”
54
Hotel Bar
Every eye in the room turned to stare at Tara, who had blanched stark white, and was already holding up her hands in protest. “What? You’ve got to be kidding! Of all the people in this room who might have had a motive for killing Katy—”
“Are you saying you didn’t? Because in some eyes, you might just be the one person with the greatest motivation of all,” Gavin responded, watching her carefully for any sign that she might be thinking about jumping up and fleeing, even as Espinosa circled away from the bar to better position himself to block her.
“Why, I hardly knew her!” Tara protested again, turning to her husband for support but only getting a confused look in return. “I mean, other than these scuba trips, I almost never saw her. She’s just my husband’s ex-girlfriend, is all.”
“Ex?” Gavin asked, emphasizing the one syllable. “Are you sure that’s an accurate description, Mrs. Cutler? Because it seems to me that Katy and your husband were anything but exes. Especially quite recently.”
“I assure you I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tara said, quickly regaining control over her composure. “Sure, Brett had been helping her out with her legal issues, especially all her estate planning after her father passed away, but that’s—”
Gavin smiled again, a predatory smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Oh, he’s been helping her, all right. And of course, you knew all about that, didn’t you? As I recall, you were the one handling all of the filing in his office, weren’t you? So you knew all about Katy Mulcahey’s plans for getting a divorce from her husband.”
It was Trevor’s turn to react. “Divorce? What do you mean, divorce? Katy and I had never been happier—”
Gavin shook his head sadly. “You know, it’s amazing to me how many spouses never see it coming until the sheriff shows up at the door with the papers in hand. But yes, it’s true. Brett had everything wrapped up and ready to go except for that one final step, serving the papers. Evidently, Katy had finally decided you just weren’t worth the trouble of avoiding anymore. Particularly given the new developments.”
“What new developments?” Trevor and Tara asked almost simultaneously.
“Why, the fact that whoever killed Katy didn’t commit just one single murder. No, in fact, one might very well say that two people were killed that night. You see,” Gavin paused to give his next verbal jab its maximum impact, and watched Tara’s face closely as it landed, “it appears that Katy Mulcahey was well over two months pregnant the night she was murdered.”
55
Hotel Bar
Gavin’s news hit the small bar like a bomb had gone off, but he carefully observed how four members of the little group didn’t seem at all surprised. Jillian wasn’t one of them.
“Pregnant?” Jillian asked, the shock showing plainly on her face. “Are you sure? Because she told me—”
“That she and Trevor haven’t had sex since well before her son Paxton was born. Eight months before, to be exact.” He turned to face the now unshackled Trevor Johnson. “You want to share what you know about all that with the group, Mr. Johnson?”
Trevor suddenly morphed from looking worried to now looking slightly queasy. He stared down at his hands before answering. “Well, it’s like I told you before, Paxton isn’t my kid, not by a long shot. Katy went off on a trip to Vegas, supposedly some kind of bachelorette party, and she came back knocked up. About a month later she pulled me into her bedroom, the first time I’d been in there in years, then banished me back out to the guest room as soon as she was done with me. Eight months later Paxton was born, all seven pounds nine ounces of him, ten fingers and ten toes, and then she tried to convince me he was one month premature. Like I was buying into any of that nonsense, but I didn’t ever say a word about any of that to her. Truth be told, I needed the money. My stock brokerage business had hit the skids just as soon as her old man died and I stopped getting his stock tips and a steady flow of his old cronies as customers. But if you’re right and she had got herself pregnant again, it sure as hell wasn’t by me. Maybe it was the same guy, or maybe it was somebody else. Hell, for all I knew she had a steady stream of boyfriends waiting in line for her on the side. But I figured it weren’t none of my business, she could sleep with pretty much anyone she wanted, just as long as she kept on writing the checks.” He laughed, a sharp and sudden sound that made Gavin flinch ever so slightly. Trevor looked back up, his eyes scanning the others assembled in the bar, a crooked smile hanging on his lips. “And I guess from here on out she’ll keep writing those checks, now won’t she, and I no longer have to pretend I give a rat’s ass about her or that bastard child of hers anymore.”
Gavin looked pointedly at Brett Cutler. “Uh, Trevor, I think you may be in for a bit of a shock as far as that’s concerned. The money, that is.”
“Yeah, maybe more than just a bit,” Brett said with a laugh of his own. “Turns out, Katy left you around two hundred thou from an insurance policy, and that’s pretty much the whole shooting match, as far as you’re concerned. Everything else goes to her estate, which is all earmarked for Paxton.”
“But—but I get half of her estate, don’t I?” Trevor protested. “I mean, I’m the husband and all.”
Brett shook his head, still smiling broadly. “’Fraid not, buddy. Under Texas law, everything she brought into the marriage and everything she inherited in the meantime is all separate property unless she mixed any of it in with yours. Which I made sure she didn’t, so that leaves you with the insurance money and nothing else. Unlike our so pleasantly well-endowed Katy, my friend, you are flat busted.”
Trevor sat stunned by the unexpected news of his impending poverty, now finally confirmed by his old friend, so Gavin moved on. “Of course, that still leaves us with the question of who’s the proud papa, and what to do with the boy. Paxton could go live with his grandmother, I suppose—Trevor and his parents won’t have any real claim to the boy under the circumstances—but for several reasons it might be better if he was raised by his biological father. The same guy Katy met up with in Vegas on her supposed bachelorette party.” He locked eyes again with Brett Cutler. “As Katy’s lawyer, do you have any idea who that person might be? The name of Paxton’s real father?”
Brett just sat stone faced and quickly looked away, so Gavin continued. “Well, we might want to go back and look at various travel records for way back when—which is in fact a pretty easy task one of my associates back in Houston has already handled for me—but it probably wouldn’t be too big a leap to say that the same guy who fathered Paxton also got Katy pregnant the second time around as well. And, pulling back the curtain on door number one, that would be…”
All eyes in the room were now locked on Gavin, even Brett Cutler’s, all anxiously awaiting Gavin’s next words. He paused, drawing out the suspense, before turning his own eyes toward Tara. “Brett Cutler.”
As he suspected, Tara’s face flashed a moment of surprise, but that look didn’t actually make it up to her eyes, the one human organ that in his experience very seldom lied. She knew.
“When did you first find out?” he asked her.
“What? What do you mean?” she stammered.
“It’s a simple question, really. When did you first find out that your husband was the father of Katy Mulcahey’s little boy?”
“I never—”
“Oh, I’m sure you could do the math as well as anyone,” Gavin continued, his earlier smile now replaced by a grim, determined set of his mouth. “Paxton was born supposedly one month premature, but he came out as fat and sassy as any full-term boy. Then you backtracked nine months, and compared that to whatever lies your husband had told you at the time about hi
s so-called business trip, and there you have it. There were probably other signs, as well, business meetings with Katy that lasted just a little too late in the night, maybe a growing coolness in the old marital bed—a good-looking girl like you, something had to be up when Brett stopped chasing you around the kitchen, right? Is that when you decided to start helping out in your husband’s law office? I’ll have to give it to you, becoming the go-to file clerk was a smart idea, it gave you free rein to dig into all of his dirty little secrets. Including the fact that he was planning on divorcing you and running off to spend the rest of his days with dear sweet little Katy Mulcahey. Who, as it turned out, was no longer his ex at all. Is there such a thing as an ex ex?”
“I swear, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Tara protested loudly, trying all the while to keep one eye on Gavin and the other on her husband.
Gavin’s smile was back at full glory. “How about that little safe behind the painting in his office? Did you know about that? Were you able to figure out the combination? It was pretty straightforward, really, once you knew the code. Katy Mulcahey’s birthday. Not very original, I’m afraid, but conveniently easy for your husband to remember. A newlywed hubby never wants to forget his wife’s birthday, after all. Especially when she’s paying all the bills.”
Brett’s face had gone pale at the mention of the divorce papers in his desk, and paler still at the mention of his secret safe. He decided he’d heard enough. “Where exactly are we going with all this, Agent Larson? My wife couldn’t have killed Katy. Like I said, she was at my side the whole time we were down there.”
“But was she?” Gavin asked, stepping up closer to face him, his head now cocked to one side. “Was she, now? I know that’s what your wife told us, but I never actually heard you give a full and complete accounting of your own activities during the dive. So tell me, can you say with absolute certainty that you had your eyes on Tara the entire time? Or were there a few minutes here and there where your attention was diverted from her just a wee little bit, where your attention was more focused on all the fishes and coral formations, instead? Remember you’re talking to a federal agent, here, and any dishonesty on your part will have serious legal consequences, consequences I’ll be more than happy to pursue once we’re back in the States. Ten to fifteen years worth of consequences, to be precise.”
Cutler rubbed his bottom lip, slowly, and appeared to be thinking through his answer just as carefully. Whether he was thinking about the dive, or just working out a way to avoid the question, it wasn’t all that clear to Gavin. Maybe both. Finally he looked up, his mouth drawn into a tight line. “I can’t be sure, it was several days ago, and a lot has happened since then. My memory, though, is that I kept checking on her pretty regularly, like any buddy diver is supposed to do. But, no, I can’t promise you there weren’t moments when I didn’t know where she was or what she was doing.”
“Fair enough,” Gavin said, turning back to Tara. “Let’s cut to the chase, then, shall we? You knew all about the two divorces, and I’m pretty sure you knew about the three million dollars Katy had stashed away in the Caymans as a payoff to keep you quiet and content about the whole thing, content with Brett leaving you and running off with his old flame.” The way Tara’s eyes flicked in Brett’s direction when she heard that little tidbit about the hidden money suggested she might have actually been caught completely flat-footed by the news of the whole payoff scheme, and Gavin considered that maybe, just maybe, if she had known about the payoff beforehand they might not all be sitting here right now discussing Katy’s murder. Three million dollars might have been just enough incentive for Tara to let bygones be bygones and watch her cheating husband ride off into the sunset in Katy’s arms. Just another prime example of how keeping secrets can often be a deadly mistake to make in the end.
“Okay,” Gavin continued, breaking away from his wandering thoughts, “why don’t we return our attention to the night dive, shall we? According to everyone’s stories, Mrs. Cutler, you were down there swimming along with your husband, and Katy was bringing up the rear. I seem to recall that Billie, Casey and the dive master were way out in front of all of you. So, somewhere around thirty minutes into the dive, you saw your big opportunity and took it. Turned off your dive light, then swam back in a wide circle, avoiding Trevor somehow and coming up behind Katy. It was easy enough to quickly twist her air valve closed, then cut the air hose to her BC with the little dive knife you plucked from your husband’s wing and bleed off all her buoyancy. She must have struggled like a banshee the whole time, swinging her dive light around and kicking at the coral, and that forced you to drop the tiny little dive knife in order to hold onto her with both hands. And then pull her dive light off her wrist so she couldn’t use it as a weapon against you. Stop hitting you on the head, causing all that bruising on your forehead we talked about earlier. But finally she went limp on you, and then it was just a simple matter to carry her to the edge of the underwater cliff and push her over, letting her drift down, down, until either the current carried her far out to sea or she wound up thousands of feet below the surface of the water. Either way she would never have been seen again, and you would have gotten away with the perfect murder. Does that sound about right?”
He stopped, another final piece of the puzzle suddenly falling into place. “Oh! I see it all, now! Yes! You did know about the money in the Caymans, after all. Yes, it’s all crystal clear now. With Katy out of the way, you no longer had a contender for Brett’s attention, and since nobody knew about the money except for you and Brett, you could keep it all to yourselves. You’d get to keep the money and your husband, all in one fell swoop. A pretty clever plan, indeed!”
Tara crossed her hands carefully in her lap, looking nonplussed for all of Gavin’s accusations. “A brilliant analysis, I’ll give you that, but it’s all just idle speculation on your part. You don’t have a shred of evidence connecting me to her murder, and as for the evidence you do have, everything points to one person and one person only. Katy’s husband, Trevor Johnson. He was the one person closest to Katy that night, he was the one person missing a dive knife, he was the one person who didn’t have an alibi for the time you were thrown overboard—and I don’t need to tell you that I am far too small to be able to lift a big fellow like you over the edge like that. Plus, let’s also not forget that he was under the albeit mistaken impression that he had hundreds of millions, if not billions to gain by her death. So it turns out you made the correct decision last night after all. Trevor did it. He murdered Katy.”
Trevor jumped up out of his seat, his eyes narrowing dangerously as he glared at her. “Why, you lying little whore—”
Gavin stepped in and pushed Trevor back down into his seat before he could do anything rash. “Hold on, now, hold on!” Gavin bellowed, trying to restore some semblance of order in the room. “Everyone just sit down and shut up for the moment! Hear me out!”
He stepped away from the group as they slowly settled back into their seats, and as they did so he studied each of them carefully, one by one, eyeing them the way a fox might eye a clutch of chickens. When he was sure he had finally regained control over the group, he continued.
“Okay, Mrs. Cutler, you make some fine points, for sure, but unfortunately that doesn’t account for all the evidence here, not by a long shot. No siree, my associate back in Houston, he had a field day searching your husband’s office, looking for clues.” Gavin noticed Brett Cutler opening his mouth to say something and held up a hand to ward him off. “No, no, Mr. Cutler, no need to get your tail over your back, no need at all. We did it all by the book, I assure you, sir. Search warrant from a federal judge, no less. So if you have any complaining to do here, go tell it to the judge, as they say.”
He refocused his attention on Tara. “Like I said, there were some other clues that popped up in this case, some tantalizing clues, indeed. You see, it turns out there are some folks out there who are dreadfully lax in their atten
tion to security. Dreadfully lax, I tell you. Particularly when it comes to computers and the Internet. Yes siree, some folks just never learn to shut their computers down when they’re done working at the end of the day, or at least never learn to not store their ding-dang passwords in a way that allows hackers, lurkers and lawyers armed with far-reaching search warrants to just open up all their files and emails willy-nilly and take a peek. And fortunately for my own associate, and equally unfortunately for the two of you, Mr. and Mrs. Cutler, it appears you are both red-handed guilty of that particular little sin.”
“What did you—” Tara barked, almost coming up out of her chair again.
Gavin held up his right hand, waving her back down. “Now, now, Mrs. Cutler, like I said, we’re getting to it. Anyways, as I was saying, my associate was able to open up your recent browsing history, as well as your little emails, and by golly did he pull up some doozies, Mrs. Cutler! It seems you were quite busy in the weeks leading up to your little dive trip looking up things like deadly drugs, locations on the body that were especially susceptible to bleeding out from minor cuts, all that sort of thing, all obvious ways of doing away with someone you’d grown kind of tired of seeing. But one little thing that really caught his eye was the search you made for night dive operators in Cozumel, and in particular the web page for the dive master the six of you wound up using on the night Katy was killed. What was truly amazing about that dive master was the fact that he only garnered three stars out of five. Reading through all the comments, that was apparently because a lot of folks complained that he wasn’t paying enough attention to them during the dive, that he seemed to just drift along down there doing his own thing. Seemed to me a quite curious reason to pick this particular dive master out of the long list of five stars, don’t you agree? Curious, indeed. Particularly for a night dive.”
