Ice (A Chris Matheson Cold Case Mystery Book 1)

by Lauren Carr

  She tossed her head in the direction of the corridor on the other side of the common area. Chris turned down the hallway and through the double doors to the spacious outer office of the CEO, whose office occupied the entire corner of the floor. The muffled voices of Mason Davenport and both Sinclair men behind the closed office doors drifted into the outer office.

  Chris stepped through a second set of double doors on the other side of the outer office. He turned to smile at Helen.

  “What are you so happy about?”

  Chris pointed at the end of the hall. The corridor provided a straight shot to Peyton Davenport’s office. “I got him.”

  He brushed past Helen to step back into the executive’s outer office. At the same time, Elliott was holding the other pair of doors open for Doris. A sheepish looking man accompanied them.

  “Well, I finally found you two,” Doris said. “You’re missing a wonderful party upstairs. Thrilling dinner conversation. Helen, have you met Dr. Frederic Poole?”

  “No.”

  “Fred, this is Lieutenant Helen Clarke with the West Virginia State Police. She’s head of the homicide division in the area. Helen, Fred would like to make a confession.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Fred, have you lost your mind?” Steve Sinclair’s words bounced off Mason Davenport’s walls. He gestured at the police lieutenant, Chris, Doris, and Elliott, who had invaded the executive’s inner office. “They have nothing on you.”

  “Maybe not now,” Doris said, “but as soon as the police lab gets hold of Tamara Wilcox’s body, everything you’ve done is going to come out.”

  “Everyone’s going to find out what you’ve done,” Chris said.

  “Who the hell is Tamara Wilcox?” Victor Sinclair asked.

  “The woman whose baby Dr. Poole switched for Julie Davenport’s stillborn infant,” Chris said.

  “What the hell…” Victor Sinclair chuckled. “Good try, Matheson. Like you can entice the public into believing that cockeyed conspiracy theory to stay out of jail for killing Sandy Lipton and her unborn baby.”

  “Cockeyed?” Chris said. “Let’s see how cockeyed my theory is. Peyton Davenport’s body is right down the hall. Her blood is all over the bathroom floor. All we have to do is compare that to Mason Davenport’s. If it’s a match, I’m wrong. If it isn’t, then I’m right. Then, to be really sure, we’ll just compare Peyton’s DNA to Ethel Lipton’s—”

  “Whose DNA is already in the system,” Helen said. “If it comes back showing a familial match, that will prove that Peyton Davenport was Sandy Lipton’s baby.”

  “Sandy Lipton died during childbirth,” Doris said, “and Dr. Poole knew it.” She leveled her gaze on Steve Sinclair and Mason Davenport. “The three of you let the whole valley believe Christopher arranged for Sandy’s disappearance and that my husband covered it up. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

  “And Sandy’s mother played the role of the victim,” Chris said.

  “Ethel knew?” Doris cursed and then quickly covered her mouth. “Excuse me but—” She cursed again. “That evil little bitch—excuse me.” She sucked in a deep breath. “Okay, I’m through. Continue.”

  “The day before Sandy disappeared I confronted her at the Lipton home.” Chris pointed a finger at Steve Sinclair. “I’m sure you remember that day, Mr. Sinclair. You threatened to have me arrested.” He turned to Mason. “You hid in the kitchen, Mr. Davenport, but I still saw you. The other day, Carson told me that you were there to make a deal with Ethel for selling her property to the Stardust so that you could build the casino.”

  “That’s exactly what we were doing there,” Steve said.

  “You were there to make a deal, but not for real estate,” Chris said. “Dr. Poole must have known by then that your wife’s baby would be stillborn. Isn’t that right, Mr. Davenport? You were afraid she’d have a complete breakdown. She was emotionally fragile. Dr. Poole was Sandy’s doctor, too. She had no husband and, as Carson said just the other day, Ethel Lipton would sell her mother for a buck. So you asked Ethel to sell her grandchild to you.”

  Her eyes tearing up, Doris covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, dear Lord. She sold her grandchild?”

  Steve Sinclair grumbled.

  Mason Davenport looked down at his hands in his lap. “Ethel knew damn well that as soon as the baby was born that her suit against you would be dead in the water. She hoped that if she made enough noise, accusing your father of using his influence to tamper with the blood tests, that she’d get something to go away.”

  “Shut up, Mason!” Steve said.

  “Can’t you see it’s over?” Mason’s voice seemed to shake the walls.

  “Steve, they’re exhuming Sandy’s body,” Frederic said. “They’ll know what happened by close of business Monday. Better to confess and make a deal.”

  “Are you saying that Chris didn’t father Sandy’s baby?” Victor asked. “All these years—”

  “Sandy had been raped,” Chris said. “The trauma of the rape and her own fantasy made her imagine that I was the father because she couldn’t handle the truth emotionally.”

  “Who was the father?” Victor asked.

  “Carson told me it was you.”

  Victor’s eyes bulged. “I resent—”

  “He was lying,” Chris said.

  Victor uttered a sigh of relief. “Then who?”

  Steve, Mason, and Frederic exchanged glances filled with guilt.

  “Out with it,” Doris said. “You’d never have made an offer for a baby without knowing who the father was or at least something about him. Ethel knew Chris wasn’t the father. She had to have known who was.”

  “It was Carson,” Chris said. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Her brother?” Helen asked.

  “Half-brother,” Chris said. “Remember when you told me that scientists believe there might be a genetic tendency for violent crime? Carson told us his father was a rapist—something Ethel never let him forget. When I took Sandy home that night, she was on cloud nine. Maybe Carson had another fight with his mother. For whatever reason, he decided to take his rage out on Sandy.”

  “Ethel told me that she walked in on it,” Frederic said. “Sandy was in shock for days. By the time we found out she was pregnant, she’d created this fantasy about you making love to her and the baby being your love child. As soon as Ethel heard that, she saw dollar signs. She thought that if her starry-eyed girl said that you’d made love to her that everyone would believe her. Even if it wasn’t true, your family might be willing to pay her big bucks to go away.”

  “But that didn’t happen,” Doris said. “So Ethel put her grandchild up for sale. Did Sandy know about you buying her baby?”

  “We were going to tell her that her baby died,” Frederic said. “After Julie’s baby was born, I put her baby on life support.”

  “The maternity nurse said that you personally hooked her up to life support,” Chris said, “which is not how it is usually done. You wanted the nurse to think that you had detected life. Once, she was hooked up to the life support system, it started breathing for her, which bought you time to deliver Sandy’s baby.”

  “I’d made arrangements for Sandy’s baby to be delivered at my home,” Mason said. “All the servants had the day off and we set up the guest room for the delivery.”

  “But something went wrong,” Chris said.

  Frederic swallowed. “Minutes after I gave Sandy an injection to induce labor, she went into full cardiac arrest. We threw her in the back of Mason’s car and drove her to the hospital. Luckily, no one was around in the parking lot when we put her on a gurney and I wheeled her in saying that someone had dumped her off.”

  “What about the phony identification that you gave to the hospital?”

  “Steve arranged that,” Mason said. “I pretended to find it
later.”

  “You leave me out of this,” Steve said.

  “The whole story about a man in the parking lot and me talking to him after she had passed,” Frederic said, “it was all a lie. You’ll notice in the records that no one saw Tamara Wilcox’s husband, except me.”

  “Sandy’s baby was born alive, and you switched them,” Chris said. “The maternity nurse had said that Julie’s baby looked like a totally different baby when she went back on duty that night. That’s because she was.”

  “It was the early nineties,” Frederic said. “Being her doctor, no one questioned me when I took Sandy’s baby for a walk and returned with Julie’s. No one thought a thing when I called a code blue because the baby that they thought was Sandy’s had gone into respiratory arrest.”

  “And that’s why Ethel Lipton had free rein here at the Stardust all these years,” Chris said. “I’ll bet the Stardust sponsored Carson’s culinary education—”

  “That was part of the deal we made with Ethel,” Mason said.

  “And you hired him as head chef,” Chris said.

  “Even though he was a rapist,” Helen said.

  “He never gave us any trouble,” Mason said.

  “Really? What about Mona Tabler?” Chris asked.

  “Mona had trouble with everyone. But she was a damn good restaurant manager.”

  “How did she get along with Carson Lipton?”

  Mason fell silent.

  “What is this about?” Steve Sinclair asked.

  “Mona Tabler was murdered,” Chris said. “Raped, stabbed to death, and her house burnt down. Did she have trouble with Carson, Mr. Davenport?”

  “She thought he was unstable—like his mother. Two days before she was killed, she came into my office and gave me an ultimatum. Her or him. I was going to tell him that Friday.”

  “And you didn’t suspect that he’d killed her because of that?” Doris asked.

  “People were telling me that some guy named Opie had said he’d done it.”

  “Unfortunately, Mona’s not the only victim connected to the Stardust to have been killed that way,” Chris said.

  “Carson Lipton and his wife did not show up at the restaurant today,” Helen said. “No one knows where they are.”

  “Yesterday, I asked Carson for a sample of his DNA and he refused,” Chris said. “You knew before you hired him that he raped his own sister.”

  “Usually, violent sexual predators get worse, not better,” Elliott said.

  “So, let me get this straight,” Chris said, “your wife who you loved very much, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Your doctor informs you that the baby she was carrying had died. So you buy a baby—”

  “It was a private adoption,” Steve said.

  “Privately adopt,” Chris said, “a baby whose father was a second generation rapist, who goes on to become a suspected serial killer—”

  “I did not know Carson was a serial killer,” Mason said.

  “This baby’s grandmother had the moral compass of Satan,” Doris said. “Don’t tell me that you didn’t know that.”

  Steve Sinclair stood. “I think we’re done here. We’ll meet in Victor’s office on Monday.”

  “We’re not done by a long shot!” Chris said.

  Taken aback by Chris’s outburst, Steve Sinclair opened his mouth to respond but found no words.

  “Sit down, Father,” Victor said. “I want to hear what Chris has to say.”

  “You can’t talk—”

  “I am the county prosecutor!” Victor yelled. “All these years you’ve known the truth about what had happened to Sandy Lipton.” He beat his chest. “I loved her. I vowed to get justice for her by making sure this man rotted in jail!” He pointed at Chris. “That’s why I ran for prosecutor! Now, tonight, after all these years, I find out that you’ve known all along that he had nothing to do with any of it!”

  “I never told you that Matheson did it,” Steve said with a cocky smirk.

  “Sit down!” Victor shoved his father into the chair. “Zip it,” he ordered with a hiss.

  A stunned silence filled the room. Victor stood to his full height and turned to Chris. “Please continue.”

  “Mr. Davenport, don’t tell me that Peyton’s genealogy hasn’t been running through your mind. When was the first time you wondered about it? When your wife’s body was found on the patio and Peyton was the only one in the room when she went over the railing? When the medical examiner noted the bruises on your wife’s back—indicating that she’d been pushed?”

  “Peyton never connected with her mother,” Mason said in a soft voice. “Never.”

  “Or was it a couple of years later when my father came to you about your darling daughter’s high school sex ring seducing and blackmailing teachers?”

  “Her best friend Josie was murdered,” Mason said.

  “Jocelyn Davis,” Doris said.

  “Peyton called her Josie,” Mason said. “Peyton wasn’t so much saddened by her murder as she was angry about Josie’s murder exposing and shutting down her enterprise.”

  Chris went around the desk to force him to look up at him. “You’d risked everything to adopt this baby—only to have this child destroy everyone who got close to her.”

  “Josie was the closest Peyton had ever come to loving someone,” Mason said. “That’s why she adopted her name.”

  “Adopted her name?” Helen asked.

  “Peyton liked to get dressed up—put on a red wig—and go down to the lounge to seduce men,” Mason said. “Successful, married men. She’d take them to a specially reserved room here in the hotel in which she had a hidden camera set up. Then she would blackmail them. She used the name Josie. One of my friends had fallen victim to her. He never knew it was Peyton. She was that good.” He uttered a deep sigh. “So good, that I came to realize that Josie was like a separate personality.”

  “This evening,” Chris said, “when we were going to Peyton’s office, you told me that Josie was gone. That’s because you killed her when you shot Peyton.”

  “Peyton was insane,” Frederic said.

  “Most definitely.”

  “In college,” Elliott asked, “she’d organized an illegal online gambling ring—betting on college sports.”

  “Rachel set it up on the dark web,” Mason said. “Peyton ran the show.”

  “They operated under the radar until one of the university’s star players caught the fed’s attention after throwing a big game,” Elliott said.

  “He was going to testify against Peyton,” Mason said. “Somehow, Peyton got wind of it and suddenly he was dead of a drug overdose.”

  “Things got too hot in Morgantown,” Elliott said, “so Peyton pulled up stakes and moved on to the Stardust.”

  “And the ransomware?” Helen asked. “Peyton managed that, too.”

  “She found out that Rachel had developed the ransomware virus,” Mason said. “But Rachel lacked the initiative to take full advantage of it—something Peyton had coming out of her ears. She hired Rachel to run the cybersecurity division of the casino purely to target potential victims who would pay up without going to the police.”

  “Only they made the mistake of targeting Boris Krawford,” Chris said, “who was just as ruthless as Peyton. He sent one of his people to investigate and he found the virus in the Stardust’s system.”

  “Peyton killed him herself.”

  “Pretending to be Josie,” Chris said. “Peyton lured him to the stables—using her security pass—”

  “When we get the security records, it will confirm that,” Helen said.

  “Rachel had known Peyton for years,” Mason said, “but she never knew Peyton was capable of murder. Peyton ordered Seth, Rachel’s boyfriend, to get rid of the body.”

  “He went to the st
ables and dumped the body on my farm,” Chris said. “Rachel got so nervous that Peyton saw her as a liability. So, Peyton took care of both her and Seth. Then, to make real sure her tracks were covered, she lured me to their house to blow me up and end the investigation.”

  “She intended to pin everything on Josie,” Mason said. “The last one to be seen with this Bukowski guy was Josie. The bartender had no idea Josie was really Peyton.”

  “But you knew it,” Chris said. “You saw something was really, seriously, wrong. So you decided to take care of her yourself before she killed anyone else.”

  Mason raised his moist eyes to meet Chris’s.

  “When I arrived here at the casino tonight, two of the three elevators were held up on the sixth floor. One by the band, the other by the catering staff. The third elevator came down to the lobby, and I rode it straight up to the fifth floor,” Chris said. “When I got off, I saw you turn the corner—you told me you were heading to Peyton’s office.”

  “That’s right,” Steve said. “Mason had just gotten off the elevator—seconds ahead of you.”

  “He couldn’t have,” Chris said. “because I came up on the only elevator that was available. Since it was near six o’clock on Valentine’s Day weekend, the office staff was gone. Mason was leaving after having killed Peyton.”

  “What the hell!” Steve said.

  “Rachel was a good kid,” Mason said. “I truly hoped that she would be a good influence on Peyton. Instead, Peyton got Rachel mixed up in this whole ransomware thing. If the authorities found out about what she was doing, it would have ruined everything that I had sacrificed so much to build. So many people depend on the Stardust for their livelihood.”

  “You knew about the gun in her purse,” Chris said.

  “Since everyone thought Julie had committed suicide, then I figured it’d be easy to convince everyone that Peyton had been hiding her depression and killed herself.”

  “She was in the bathroom getting dressed for our date,” Chris said.

  “I went into her office. Her purse was right there on the desk. I took the gun out and then went into the bathroom. I had the gun behind my back. She didn’t notice it until I pressed it to her temple and pulled the trigger. Then, I closed the bathroom door behind me and left.”