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CHAPTER EIGHT

Dickie didn’t even raise his head. “Yeah, sure. You’re not usually mean with your jokes, but I guess I probably deserve it. Are you sure I can’t have another drink?”

“He’s not kidding, Dickie,” I said, getting to my feet and coming over to stand near Jack. “I did the autopsies this afternoon.”

Dickie’s head lifted slowly and the color drained from his face. “Wait, you’re serious? Chloe is dead? I don’t understand. I just saw her last night.”

“You had sex with her yesterday before the wedding?” Jack asked.

Slashes of red appeared on Dickie’s pale cheeks and he got to his feet angrily. He leaned over the desk so he was in Jack’s face. “How the hell would you know that? Did someone see us?”

“I did the autopsy,” I said. “It was obvious she’d had sex with someone, and it wasn’t her husband. The science doesn’t lie. And after your story, we can put two and two together.”

“Autopsy,” Dickie said softly. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Sit down, Dickie,” Jack said, and Dickie dropped back into his chair.

“You’re not wrong,” I said, feeling my blood pressure rise at the thought of being so stupid. “Someone could have seen you. Especially if you had sex with the bride at the wedding venue where five hundred people were waiting for her to walk down the aisle.” My voice rose in pitch and volume by the time I was done talking. “What were you thinking, Dickie?”

“We’ve been hooking up for months,” Dickie said, coming to his feet again. He paced around the room and kept running his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t think she was serious about getting married. She just wanted his protection, but I told her that I could protect her. I thought she was going to leave him at the altar. We’d made plans.”

“She was in danger?” Jack asked. “Is that why she had a fake name and background?”

Dickie was a pretty okay poker player, but we knew him well enough to know when he was lying. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, you do,” Jack said. “You always twitch your lip like that when you lie. Who was she really? We’re trying to find out who killed her. And right now you’ve got a pretty strong motive, so you should probably help us out here.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Dickie said, outraged. “I wanted to marry her.”

“Except she married another man anyway. Which gives you another good reason to kill her.”

Dickie’s mouth dropped open in surprise as he thought things through, and then he fell back into the chair and covered his face with his hands.

“You want to know the ironic thing about this mess?” he asked. “I actually introduced her to Theo.”

“Do I even want to know how you know the son of the former Greek ambassador?”

“He’s a business associate of my dad’s,” Dickie said. “They’ve known each other a long time. Mom and Dad vacation in Greece from time to time, and have even stayed at the embassy there.”

“What’s Chloe’s real name?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, and then he held up both hands when Jack looked at him skeptically. “No, really, I don’t. I just know that Chloe’s not her real name. I met her last June while she was waiting tables at The Corner Café. That’s the little place in DC I like to go after we go to the theater. I was with some business associates and we stopped in late one night. It was almost midnight.”

He stopped and smiled at the memory, rubbing his damp hands on his slacks. “She was the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen in my life. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. There was just something so vivacious about her—the way she moved, the way she talked. She had a great personality and was obviously smart. She charmed everyone in our group. But there was something else about her too, like she was always looking over her shoulder. It made me want to protect her.”

That was probably one of the most honest things Dickie had said since he’d walked through our door. Dickie had a savior complex. I was pretty sure it was because he had daddy issues, but he was always a sucker for a sad story and he’d been taken advantage of plenty of times because of it.

“I knew the first time she introduced herself that Chloe wasn’t her real name,” he said. “She had to think about it too hard before she said it. And when I called out to her she didn’t turn around to answer. I never pressed her on it. I thought maybe she was running from an ex or something.”

“How’d she meet Theo?” Jack asked.

“Theo and I have known each other in passing for years,” he said. “But we connected at a fundraiser for a senator who was up for reelection. Theo told me he’d bought a house in Newcastle and had several business interests in the works here and abroad. He’s got dual citizenship. Theo has always just dabbled in business. His parents are loaded, and Theo received a pretty sizeable inheritance from his grandfather if I remember right.

“Theo mentioned he was opening up several restaurants in the area and needed a business manager,” he continued. “And I know that Theo has a lot more money than business sense and that he’d probably overpay whoever he employed. Chloe was always adamant about paying her own way. It made her very uncomfortable when I’d try to cover things for her. I knew she was struggling. She was living in a hotel and paying with cash from her tips every week. I offered to help a couple of times, but it made her mad to even bring it up.

“So I introduced Chloe and Theo that night.” He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Stupid of me. I knew he was probably pushing fifty, so I didn’t think anything of it. He even offered her a room in his house. I helped her move in. Not that she had many belongings.”

“She and Theo didn’t share a bedroom?” I asked curiously.

“No,” he said. “There was a downstairs suite he gave her that even had a little office attached so she could work from home if she wanted to. He gave her a car since she’d have to drive to the different restaurants. It wasn’t hard to see there were wounds behind the resilient exterior. I thought Theo saw them as a father would for his daughter. He must have gotten a lot of laughs at my expense. Some friend, huh?”

“Dickie…” Jack said, but there was really nothing either of us could say. It was obvious Dickie had really cared for her, and nothing we could say would make any of this okay.

“I guess when it came down to it Chloe decided what Theo could offer her was more appealing than what I could.” Dickie shrugged like it was just par for the course, but he couldn’t hide the pain and anger on his face.

“You don’t know that,” I said. “I don’t know Chloe or Theo or what her motives could have been. But I know you, and as cynical and skeptical as you are of people, you typically can size them up pretty quickly and be accurate about it. If your gut told you that Chloe really loved you and that she wanted to be with you, then maybe she really did. Maybe she just didn’t have a choice in the matter and couldn’t find a way to tell you. All we know is she was running from something, and that something caught up to her and shot her seven times.”

Dickie winced.

“If you’d been the one to marry Chloe it could have been you on Jaye’s autopsy table today,” Jack told him.

He sucked in a breath. “Theo’s dead too?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “We haven’t ruled out a professional hit on them. Tell us more about Chloe. Anything you know about her past that might lead us to who did this to her.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I think I’m just in shock. I really need a drink.”

“If I give you one you have to sleep in the guest room,” Jack said.

Dickie thought it over quickly. “Fine. Bring the bottle.”

Jack went back to the bar and brought the decanter of whiskey back to the table. “Tell me about Chloe.”

“Chloe opened up a little about her background, but she was always very guarded. She never told me for certain, but I think she grew up in some kind of commune. I’m not sure where though. She knew how to do all kinds of weird stuff. Canning and sewing, and she knew a lot about plants and gardening. She even knew what plants were good for medicine.

“But she said as she got older things changed and became dangerous. She said in passing once that she’d witnessed someone die. I didn’t ask her about it. There was something about the look on her face when she said it that told me she hadn’t really meant to tell me that, so I pretended I hadn’t heard. But I knew she was scared, even though she pretended not to be. She was always looking over her shoulder.”

“Did Theo not suspect that the two of you were still involved?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Dickie said. “I saw Theo at that fundraiser when I introduced him to Chloe and the next time I saw him was at his wedding. He wasn’t demanding or anything of their relationship. She worked for him and took her job seriously. There were times we’d meet up during her lunch break, and there were times she stayed over at my place. Apparently Theo was out of town a lot, and she said she didn’t like being there by herself. Said it felt like a prison. I guess Theo had a whole team of personal security, and whenever he’d leave town he’d make sure that Chloe was protected.”

“So chances are Theo knew the two of you were still hooking up?” Jack asked. “I can’t imagine Theo’s security guards would keep that a secret from him.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Dickie sighed. “Maybe I’m thinking too much into it. Maybe there was nothing between them except his ability to protect her.”

I was keeping my opinions to myself until we’d gathered all the facts.

“Theo offered her the protection she needed, and I understood that,” Dickie said. “When she told me he’d asked her to marry him and that his name and his father’s position would help protect her I was a little shocked, but it was a gut reaction to when someone had run her off the road.”

“Wait,” Jack said. “When was this?”

“Sometime after the New Year,” he said. “They got engaged right after that.”

“What happened?” Jack asked. “No police reports popped when we ran the background check on her.”

“She didn’t want to involve the police,” Dickie said. “She was checking on one of the restaurants up in Arlington, and on her way home a black sedan tried to run her into oncoming traffic. She managed to swerve out of the way and she hit the guardrail. Messed up her car pretty bad. That was when she told me she thought her past was catching up to her.”

Dickie poured another drink. “She told me Theo had offered to marry her and move her to Greece. He’s got dual citizenship.” Dickie stopped and frowned, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. “I think I told you that already.”

“That’s okay,” Jack said. “Keep going.”

“That’s when I told her that I would marry her and we could move wherever she wanted,” he said. “I mean, I’ve got loads of money. Not as much as Theo, but it’s nothing to sneeze at. She seemed excited about the idea, but she told me we had to go along with her engagement to Theo. She said it was safer that way. So I went along with it. I even went to the wedding. I had my bags packed in the car for us to make our getaway. I came to the wedding early.” He rubbed the back of his neck and laughed. “I was nervous. I’ve never really done anything like that before, and I kept thinking that my father would probably disown me.”

“If your father didn’t disown you after your divorce from Candy I don’t think he ever will,” Jack said, trying to lighten the tension.

“Well, you never know with my father,” Dickie said softly.

At that moment he reminded me of the teenager who hadn’t been hardened by the world yet. The boy who was smart and a little nerdy, but who always had a heart to do what was right for others. And a boy who could never live up to his father’s expectations.

“Did she contact you once you arrived at the Briarly?” Jack asked.

“I texted her when I got there,” he said. “And then she told me where I could meet her.”

“What time was that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe around two o’clock? All of her bridesmaids were all friends or family of Theo’s, so she told them all she needed some time alone to rest. There’s this whole bridal suite wing in the main clubhouse of the Briarly, so Chloe had her own private space and balcony. I snuck up the back stairs and she let me in her room. There was just this…desperation in her.” Slashes of bright red colored his cheeks and he cleared his throat. “And then one thing led to another. She said she loved me.” Dickie shrugged again, looking more defeated than I’d ever seen him. “I tried to get her to leave with me then, but she said it was too soon. That we needed to wait until it was almost time for the wedding. I told her to text me where to meet her and she kissed me goodbye. That’s the last time I saw her.”

“You didn’t stay and try to talk with her?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I was waiting in the bar of the clubhouse and realized it was time for the wedding to start. I could hear the music and I kept expecting for it to stop and people to start running around looking for Chloe. I kept checking my phone, but there were no messages from her. They got married in the gardens. I could see through the window. She looked beautiful. So I did the only thing I could do. I left.”

“How’d she get the fake ID and papers?” Jack asked.

Dickie shrugged and his eyelids were starting to get heavy and his speech slurred. “I guess Theo pulled some strings and got them for her. When she was working at the restaurant she always paid cash for everything. She had an ID, but I don’t know where she got it from. You can buy the fake ones in the city for a few hundred bucks. Some of them look pretty real. But after she met Theo she had everything from a birth certificate to a passport. I can’t believe she’s dead. I was so angry with her. I could’ve?—”

“Dickie—” Jack interrupted.

“Am I really a suspect?” he asked.

“You’re a person of interest we need to eliminate,” Jack said. “So here’s what you’re going to do. You going to willingly let Jaye take a DNA sample tonight. Then you’re going to go upstairs and sleep this off. And then tomorrow you’re going to come into the station with your attorney and give a voluntary statement. You’re going to tell them everything you told us tonight. Do you understand?”

“But I bought a plane ticket to the Bahamas,” he said. “I’m supposed to leave tomorrow night.”

“Don’t,” Jack said, and the tone of his voice didn’t leave room for argument.