by Kris Calvert
“No ma’am. I have certain duties. I check on each of the buildings multiple times during the day and night and I check the video feed to make sure the security cameras work and all.”
“Is there anyone else that does what you do?” Knotts asked.
“There’s a video security company Winter Bourbon pays, but I pretty much oversee that too.”
I nodded. “Take me back to that night, Mr. Lee. Did you see anything unusual on your rounds?”
He looked between the two of us and paused. John Lee wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, and he wore his lack of common sense across his face.
“It’s okay. We just want to know if you saw or heard anyone,” I said, trying to reassure him.
A smirk came across Lee’s face as if he knew a secret. “You mean like Mr. Page and Miss Presley fighting?”
I did my best not to seem intrigued. “Sure,” I remarked. “If that was out of the ordinary then yes, tell me about it.”
“I don’t wanna talk out of school or nothin’.”
I leaned across the old scratched up coffee table, placing my hand on top of Lee’s. “We’re not trying to accuse anyone of anything. We’re just trying to set the landscape that evening so we can get a handle on how the night unfolded.”
“Well,” he began with a sigh. “I always check each building, no matter what. It was gettin’ late, and I saw the lights were still on in the office building. That’s not unusual—since Mr. Page spends a lot of his nights up at the main house instead of going home.”
I did my best not to look at Knotts, but I knew his wheels were turning just as mine were.
“So Mr. Page is a regular guest in the evenings at Winter Haven?” I asked.
“Not any more than Miss Presley.”
“Miss Presley stayed the night at Winter Haven too?” I asked. “I was under the impression Miss Presley was forbidden in the house.”
Lee nodded. “Well, her and Mr. Holloway had a little thing goin’ on ya know. He would bend the rules when it suited him. I mean, he is the boss.”
“Yes, we know all about their relationship,” Knotts interjected coolly. “Miss Presley has been very gracious in opening up to us.”
“Good,” he sighed. “That makes me feel better about talkin’ to y’all.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Well, I only found out about Miss Presley and the boss man on accident.”
“How’s that?” Knotts asked.
“Walked in on ’em—buck naked and doing the wild thing on her desk. I heard screams and came rushing in—for all the wrong reasons,” he guffawed nervously.
“Sure, sure.” I said with a smile, trying to ease his apprehension in the telling of the story. “Were they together the night of the murder?”
“Mr. Page was with Miss Presley. They was fightin’ like cats and dawgs that night.”
“Did you happen to overhear anything?”
“It was hard not to. Miss Presley and Miss Lena don’t rightly get along. Those two women are like gasoline and matches I tell ya, but Mr. Page was always tryin’ to smooth things over between them and Mr. Holloway just tried to steer clear of the lot of them. But,” Lee sighed. “The boss man kept Miss Presley anyway.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I figured if he was gonna keep her on after she tried to cut up Mr. Win, he would keep her on no matter what Miss Lena thought of her. Mr. Magnus and Mr. Robert just did their best to keep the two of them apart.”
“Where were you when the murder happened, John?” I asked bringing my voice down.
“I was out back, walking the grounds. It was windy something awful—kinda like tonight. Lots of howling, so I was making sure none of Mr. Cecil’s flower pots were gonna end up in the ditch. He had just started to plant that day.”
“How do you know that’s when the murder happened?” Knotts asked.
“I don’t rightly know that, I only know I heard Miss Holloway scream.”
“And where were you then?” I asked, thinking back to Magnus’ answer to the same question.
“I was right behind the house, ma’am.”
“Did you call 911?” Knotts asked, shifting his weight on the old couch.
“I flipped the switch on my holster and pulled my firearm, sir. Then, I ran up to the house as quickly as possible.”
“Did you see anyone along the way? Any other employees or maybe Magnus coming from the office?” I asked.
“No ma’am.”
Either John Lee was weaving a web of lies, or Magnus Page hadn’t been honest with me. Looking at Lee, I had an inkling as to who was lying.
“Then what happened?” Knotts asked.
“I rushed into the house, Mr. Page was calmin’ Miss Holloway down. He took her to the library.”
“Did he say anything to you?” I asked.
“Told me not to touch anything. So I didn’t.”
“Then did you call 911?”
“No sir, Mr. Page told me not to. He got Miss Holloway settled and then Vernon came into the house to sit with her. Mr. Page called the police after that and I waited out front in the storm for them to arrive.”
“Did you find it odd Mr. Page didn’t want you to call the police?” I asked.
“Not really ma’am. I mean. The boss was dead—really dead. I was just following orders.”
I nodded, knowing the man sitting in front of me couldn’t figure out how to hang his own Christmas lights, let alone murder someone and leave no evidence behind. “How did you come to be employed at Winter Bourbon, Mr. Lee?”
“I was just a snot-nosed kid in foster care. Mr. Holloway picked me out of a group for a special program. We had the chance to work with someone in the community and learn a trade—I thought mine would be the bourbon making business, but it turned out to be more security. It’s okay. He’s always paid me well, kept a roof over my head and he was always interested in what I was doing. He was nice that way.”
He was nice to you because you were his son, you dimwit.
“Mind if I ask how old you are John?”
“I’m twenty-two ma’am—be twenty-three this year.”
“I have to ask this, son,” Knotts began. “Just because it’s in the file.”
John Lee hung his head. “You wanna know about Jennifer—my girlfriend.”
“Yes.”
“Well not much to tell. It was awful. Someone came into my house while she was sleepin’. We were living together at the time—her mother had kicked her out. Anyway, I was at work and came home and she was dead.”
I stared at him, the sadness showed on his face, but still I needed to ask. “Her throat was slit. Correct?”
“Just like Mrs. Holloway,” Knotts added.
“Just like the boss man too.”
“Any reason why you think that might’ve happened?” Knotts asked.
Lee did a double take. “What do you mean? I didn’t kill nobody.”
“And nobody thinks you did,” I said, reassuring him while giving Knotts a side eye. “But we’ve been watching you pretty closely Mr. Lee. Why were you at Churchill Downs today?”
“What?” he said, suddenly sitting up in his chair. “You been following me?”
I nodded. “We’ve been keeping a close eye on a lot of people, not just you.”
“Well, I was there on business. You can ask Mr. Page about that.”
I nodded calmly. Never had I questioned a witness and received so much honest information. John Lee truly had no idea what was unfolding around him. “I have a photo of you giving someone an envelope. Tell me what you know about it.”
Lee looked back and forth between the two of us and the feeling in the room shifted. The small beads of sweat that formed along Lee’s hairline were a decent indication he was nervous.
“I don’t know anything about it. I was asked to deliver a package and that’s what I did.”
“Do you know what was inside the envelope you dropped off?” I asked, showin
g him the photo on the screen of my phone. “That is you isn’t it?” I asked.
Taking the phone from me, he swiped his thumb and finger across the screen to get a closer look at himself in the photo. “Yeah. Am I in some kinda trouble? Maybe I need to call Mr. Page or something.”
“You just need to tell us everything you know,” Knotts added, taking the phone from him. “Listen, we don’t think you’re involved in anything. We’re here to protect you.”
It was a tactic employed by FBI Agents in the field. Explain to the subject they were in some sort of trouble and the FBI is their only protection—which of course we can only give if they tell us everything they know.
“I was just told to meet a man at the statue of Aristides in the paddock.”
“Who?” Knotts asked.
“The winner of the first Kentucky Derby,” I said, giving Knotts a frown.
“No. Who were you supposed to meet?” Knotts asked, not looking back at me.
“I didn’t know his name. Just supposed to meet the man in the red jacket in front of the statue in the paddock. He found me. Asked me if I was John Lee and I said yes and handed him the envelope.”
“And that was it?” I asked.
Lee began searching the table for a lighter after pulling a cigarette from his pocket. When the thunder rolled through the tiny house shaking it to its very foundation, he stopped to wipe the sweat from his forehead. John Lee was rattled. “Yes. That was it.”
“Did you get his name?” I asked, already knowing it was Pauly Moretti.
“I told you, no.”
Knotts stood and began to pace. “Mr. Lee do you have a computer in your home?”
Lee looked at me—he acted more like a frightened overgrown kid than a killer. Standing to meet Knotts he replied. “No. I don’t use one much—just the one at the distillery.”
“What about your phone?” I asked.
Lee procured the old flip phone from his pocket. “Here. Feel free to look through it all you want.”
I brought only my eyes from the phone to Knotts.
“Mr. Lee, do you have a Facebook or a Myspace account?” Knotts asked.
He shook his head. “Nope. I don’t like people all up in my business.”
“Do you know what a Tom Brown T3 tracker knife is?” he continued.
“Y-Yes,” Lee stuttered.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a huntin’ knife—it’s got a jagged edge,” he explained, following an uneven path through the air with his index finger. “Will cut clean through just about anything—good for guttin’.”
I raised my eyebrows at his answer. “Gutting?”
“Yes ma’am. Deer guttin’. You gotta field dress ’em before you drag ’em out of the woods. The big ones can weigh up to three hundred pounds.”
“Mr. Lee, do you own a knife like the one Agent Knotts is speaking of?”
“I did,” he said taking a long drag on his cigarette. “The boss man bought one for me for Christmas. I couldn’t afford it, but I’d talked about it with him—he’d been askin’ about my latest deer hunt. At Christmas, he gave me one. He was nice that way. Or maybe he just wanted to thank me for giving him the knife Miss Presley turned over to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Miss Presley turned over a knife she found to me—I gave it to Mr. Holloway. Well, first I asked if I could keep it. He said no, but maybe he could get a new one for me.”
So you own one?” I asked.
“I said I did. It’s gone. I lost it in the woods one night in the dark. We was huntin’ in the Winterbourne woods—you know it backs up to me right at the last fence post—Mr. Cee Cee gave me permission—killed a good one too. Got him with a bow,” Lee said pointing to the mounted head of the eight-point buck behind us.
“So you don’t have the knife,” I stated for him as he gazed at his trophy on the wall.
“No ma’am. I wish. I was too afraid to tell Mr. Holloway I’d lost it, too. He was really happy to give it to me.”
Too many possibilities floated through my head and all I could think to say was, “I’ll bet.”
I looked to Knotts as my phone buzzed in my pocket. “Excuse me,” I said standing to leave the house. “Grace”
“Agent Grace this is Agent Allen. We got the toxicology report back on the glass you sent in.”
“And?” Even though I was from the South, I was a little tired of not getting the info right from the start.
“It didn’t pick of traces of any drugs, But—”
“But what? For the love of Pete spit it out!”
“But it did pick up traces of blood and skin cells.”
“Whose?”
“Agent Grace, it’s the victim’s. The skin cells and blood are a perfect DNA match to Robert Holloway.”
25
WIN
The house was eerily quiet as the springtime storm brought a deluge of rain with the lightning show and raucous thunder. “Lena!” I called up the staircase. The only answer was my own voice echoing back to me. “Cee Cee?” I shouted, walking through the main entrance hall. “Vernon?” I dropped my hands to my side. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I was alone in Winter Haven.
I walked into the library and sat, watching the ominous clouds roll into view as the house grew darker. With a crack of lightning the windows shook as the thunder followed. I sat, only to stand again. The old set of keys stuck into my thigh and I cringed at the pain. Pulling them from my jacket, I took the photo I’d carefully stored in my back pocket back out for careful inspection.
“What am I supposed to do with this, Mom?” It was all I ever had of my mother, photographs and memories. I asked for her guidance all the time. I’d yet to hear back.
The house was as dark as pitch, the sun now completely obscured by the storm and late afternoon. Lightning struck once more and I took a shock from the socket as I tugged on the chain of an old lamp. The electricity went out.
“Shit,” I mumbled, shoving the keys and photo back into my pocket to look for a candle. It wasn’t completely dark, but it would be soon.
I walked through the kitchen calling for Vernon once again. “There’s no way I’m in this big ass house all alone and I don’t know where to find a flashlight or a damn candle and matches.”
Wandering through the rooms on the first floor, I suddenly remembered. “Phantom of the Opera,” I said aloud, recalling Ginny’s joke.
It was getting darker by the second as the storm picked up steam. Wandering into the front parlor, I picked up the five stem silver candelabra and looked to the fireplace for something to light the candles. Feeling my way across the top of the mantel, I fumbled my fingers into a silver case and found a handful of stick matches. When I struck the first match on the rough side of the old box, a spark ignited, but no flame. I had to wonder how old the matches were. “Damn.”
Another bolt of lightning thundered through the house and I hurried to strike one more match. The tiny flame lit up the room in yellow warmth and I cupped my hand around it, bringing it to the candles. One by one, the old wax lit and sizzled—the dust on the unused wicks burning off quickly.
Turning to leave, I faced the portrait of Marshall Winterbourne. There he was in all his glory. All these years the Winterbourne name was carried on in a grand and respectful fashion. Now, here I stood—both parents murdered, my heiress sister shacking up with a guy old enough to be her father, and me—a man who found the woman of his dreams and threw it all away.
“Don’t look at me that way,” I said to the painting. “I know I’m a screw up, but at least I figured it out and maybe it’s not too late. You know?”
I spoke to the painting as if he could hear me. God knew no one else in the house was listening. “And what’s all this thirty-three garbage? C’mon Marshall, I think I could’ve been privy to some things. Don’t you? Maybe if I’d known I wasn’t going to have a say-so in the business until now, I wouldn’t have tried so hard to
distance myself from it. Maybe I would’ve just taken a hiatus. Who knows,” I said, pacing back and forth in front of the picture.
Stopping, I stared into the green eyes of the man whom everyone at Winter Haven seemed to worship. “Or maybe if I’d had you as a father…” Trailing off, I studied the portrait. I’d never really looked that closely at it before, always thinking it was a creepy painting when I was a little kid.
Holding the candlelight closer to the canvas, I spied a shadow on the wall to my right. Turning around, I realized I was alone in the room—my mind now playing tricks on me in the empty house on a stormy night.
I leaned into the portrait a second time and again out of the corner of my eye was a shadow. This time I only turned my head and I saw it. It was the odd shape on the top of the skeleton key in my pocket—two hands interlocking.
“Well I’ll be damned.”
The closer I brought the candlelight to the portrait, the easier it was to make out the interlocked hands that created the bow of the key in the shadow. I lay my face against the cool canvas and spied an opening in the very intricate gold frame that surrounded the portrait, only visible when light was shown across the chest of Marshall Winterbourne.
Setting the candles on the piano, I pulled the key ring from my pocket, parsing out the special key. “What do you fit?” I asked it.
There were no doors in the red parlor, not even a door in or out. The walls were smooth, all of them stone with the exception of the back red wall where Marshall hung.
“It’s gotta be in here. Where else would it be?” I walked back to the portrait, running my hand under the frame. I needed to be careful. If I knocked off Marshall’s oil painting into the burning candles, I’d catch the whole damn place on fire. It wouldn’t matter what the secret was behind the key, they’d all kill me anyway.
Pulling at the frame, something miraculous happened. I let out an audible gasp as the eight-foot-tall portrait swung away from the wall on hidden hinges. Behind the frame, the wall wasn’t red like the rest of the room, but white. A single door was visible—no knob—one keyhole.
