Josh answered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you, Walt, but I wasn’t sure until the last minute that he’d come.”
“And all this time I thought you were shiftless and uncaring.” He laughed. “My apologies, Josh.”
“I’m the one who needs to apologize-for being such a fool.” Karl Kinkaid looked at his wife. “My grandson has told me about your recent activities, my dear.”
“It’s lies, Karl, all lies.”
“Perhaps, but I prefer to believe him. It gives me a way to get reacquainted with my grandson.”
“Karl, listen to me.”
“That’s the trouble, Joy, I listened to you too much. I let you sour me on my only blood relative. I let you tell me what a wonderful candidate…” He looked at Justin Wright. “Governor, you will get no more money from me. Ronald Reagan was a man of principle. I was told you were, too.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “You, sir, most definitely are not.”
Justin Wright opened his mouth to speak, but Kinkaid silenced him with a dismissive wave. “Don’t embarrass yourself in front of these people any more than you have already.”
He looked around at the guests, raised his voice. “I understand all of you paid $10,000 to be here for dinner. Your money will be returned to you, and you are welcome to stay and eat the food.”
Byerly felt he couldn’t stop smiling. He looked at Doreen. There was joy and relief in her face.
“Let’s go home, dear,” she said, “And take this little one and his mother with us.”
“In a minute. First, we have some unfinished business here.”
26: Whodunnit
Byerly turned to Lupe. “Haven’t you a question or two?” She hesitated, suddenly cowed by the audience and situation. “The ball is yours, Lupe.”
She looked at him somberly, then nodded. “Yes, we do have unfinished business here.” She squared her shoulders.
“If I may ask, who are you?”
She turned to Karl Kinkaid, sitting in a wheelchair now. “I’m Detective Lupe Hernandez of the Santa Barbara Police Department. A man was murdered a few days ago. I believe your wife may have some knowledge of it.”
“Is that true, Joy?”
“Of course not, Karl. The man committed suicide. There was no murder.”
Lupe now looked at Mandy Sykes. “Why did you come to Santa Barbara?”
She held her son in her arms. “Do I have to answer?”
“I’m afraid so. A man has been murdered. I believe you have vital information.”
“Sergeant, you’re the investigating officer.” The voice of the Dragon was heard in the land. “Can’t you put a stop to this nonsense?”
Looking at Lupe, Buster Brogan hesitated. Clearly her warning about his pension had gotten to him.
“At the very least, Sergeant, can’t you hold this stupid interrogation somewhere else?”
Lupe answered. “Certainly, Mr. Dragon. We can go downtown, but you’ll have to come with us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ll see.” She turned back to Mandy. “Please answer my question, why did you come to Santa Barbara?”
“I was told-” She sighed. “-that Jamie’s father wanted to meet him.”
“Who told you that?”
“Harry Gould. We were friends from college.”
“And the father of your child, no doubt,” Fielding said.
Lupe ignored her. “Did Harry Gould pay your way from Boston?”
“He arranged for me to pick up a ticket at Logan Airport.”
“And made reservations for you and Jamie at the Upham Hotel?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t his money. Harry didn’t have much money. He said he had a client.”
“Do you know who that client was?”
“Yes.”
“Did you meet someone else besides Harry Gould when you came to Santa Barbara?”
“That man there. He was with Harry when they came to the hotel to talk to me.”
“Are you pointing at Victor Dragon?”
“Yes.”
“Was he Harry Gould’s client?”
“Yes, he did most of the talking.”
“And what did he say?”
“That Jamie’s father wanted some…involvement in his son’s life, that he wanted to provide financial support.”
Byerly jumped in. “You’re doing great, Lupe, but I have to ask Mandy a question. Was Jamie’s father prepared to acknowledge paternity?”
“That was not discussed. I did not ask for it. My impression was that everything was to be…secret.”
Now Doreen got her two cents in. “Was Jamie’s father involved or was Victor Dragon acting on his own?”
Mandy hesitated.
“That’s a most important question,” Lupe said. “If Jamie’s father was a participant in all this, it may well make him an accessory to murder.”
Byerly watched Mandy closely. She looked at Jamie, Doreen, her feet, everywhere except at Justin Wright-or tried to. Then the merest flicker in his direction came.
The silence in the room was profound, the tension heavy.
“It’s important, Mandy.”
She nodded, looked at Lupe. “No, I don’t believe Jamie’s father knew anything about it.
Byerly recognized his own disappointment, yet he admired Amanda Sykes. Justin Wright did not deserve a woman like her. “When you had this meeting with Gould and Dragon did they want you to do something?”
“They said Jamie’s father wanted to see his son. They would take us to him the following morning.”
“Did you go?”
“No, Mr. Byerly. I felt uneasy about it. I’ve known for a long time that someone wanted Jamie out of the way. He was a threat-”
“To Whom?”
“I never knew.”
“You worked in Congressman Wright’s office. He was promoting family values in his campaign for President. Surely you realized the effect the mere existence of Jamie would have on-”
“I didn’t want to be involved in that. I didn’t want Jamie involved. That’s why I hid.”
“So you didn’t trust Victor Dragon and decided not to meet him. What happened?”
“I’d taken Jamie to a nearby park. There was a play castle for children.”
“It’s called Kid’s World and it’s in Alameda Park,” Doreen said.
“Jamie met a nice boy, Tommy. I’d struck up a conversation with his mother. She was the only person I knew in town besides Harry and Mr. Dragon.”
“So you asked Karen to baby sit Jamie. Then what happened?”
“I didn’t want to go back to the hotel the way I’d come. I was afraid it might lead them to Jamie. I took a circuitous route and ended up at the library downtown. I was lost. Then a limousine pulled up and I was told to get in.”
“Did you?”
“I had no choice.” She pointed. “That man there pulled me in.”
“That would be good ol’ Dirk, the pancake man.” Byerly laughed at the man’s glower.
“Who was in the car?” Lupe asked.
“Mr. Dragon and a woman I now know was Mrs. Kinkaid.“
“It’s a lie, I was never there.”
Lupe waved that aside. “Then what happened, Mandy?”
“They really didn’t want me, you see, they wanted Jamie.” She clutched the boy tighter. “They wanted me to tell them where he was. I wouldn’t.”
“Were you threatened?”
“Not in so many words, but I was locked in the tower and told I couldn’t leave until I revealed where Jamie was.”
“God, how awful for you,” Doreen said. “I was only there a day or so, but you were held how long? A week or 10 days? It had to be torture, positively medieval.”
He had to smile. Doreen was not helping Wright’s PR a bit.”
“The worst thing, DeeDee, was that I had no newspaper, radio or TV. I had no idea what was going on in the world, no idea whether Jamie was safe or not. I worried constantly.”
“Oh, my dear,” a voice said behind him.
“You poor thing, how awful for you.”
Edie Wright had the most sense of any of them. “Justin, I warned you not to get involved with the Fielding woman. I told you-”
“I should have listened to you.” He raised his voice. “I want all you good people to know I had nothing to do with any of this. I knew nothing about it and definitely would not have condoned such conduct.”