Best Laid Plans (Lucy Kincaid, #9)

“San Antonio PD called the FBI into the investigation, and we’re working closely with them to find out exactly what happened.” Barry glanced at Lucy and gave her a brief nod. At first she wasn’t certain what he wanted, but decided he was asking for a gentle touch with Jolene.

Lucy assessed the woman and determined that Jolene was stronger than she’d first appeared. Her posture was straight, and she was working hard to keep her emotions in check. She was a professional businesswoman, and her husband was there for support, so Lucy decided to be as blunt as possible, but also to walk Jolene through the facts as they knew them.

“I want to give you the big picture first,” Lucy said, “because there are several things we don’t know about the events prior to your father’s death.”

Jolene nodded. “I can take it. I just want the truth.”

“Here are the facts. Harper Worthington bought a round-trip plane ticket from Dallas to San Antonio on Friday night. The tickets were purchased last minute—only hours before the plane left. It appeared he only planned on staying in San Antonio for a few hours before returning to Dallas. He told the taxi driver that he had a meeting at the White Knight Motel and requested that the man return for him one hour after being dropped off. The flight times confirm the timeline.

“When the driver returned and suspected something was wrong, the manager opened the room and found your father deceased. The police were called, and when his identity was learned, the police chief contacted the FBI.”

“Adeline said he had been with a prostitute. She’s lying,” Jolene said.

“The taxi driver saw a young woman dressed immodestly leaving the motel room. Because the girl propositioned the driver, he determined that she was a prostitute—we have a surveillance tape with her picture and concur with the assessment. We’re looking for her now.”

“No,” Jolene said. “You think that I can’t see the truth, but I know my dad, and he would never hire a prostitute. You don’t know him like I do. Ask anyone—anyone who knows him, and they’ll say the same thing. There has to be another reason my daddy was there.”

“Did you know he planned on flying to San Antonio Friday night?” Barry asked.

“N-no,” Jolene said, her voice cracking. “We had dinner with clients earlier. Daddy was a little preoccupied, said he was tired. He called me around ten thirty, said he was sorry about cutting dinner short, but we’d have breakfast together and he wanted to talk to me about something important. I thought—” But she cut herself off, and didn’t finish the sentence.

“Thought what?” Lucy asked.

“We were very close, Agent Kincaid, but Daddy is a southern gentleman. He didn’t like troubling me with personal problems. If it was business, he’d tell me. I started working for him when I was in high school, and I came on full-time after college. I’m not a numbers person like my dad, but I understand people and public relations, and work with our clients one-on-one. So it had to be something personal. And—” She hesitated again.

“Jolene, you need to be open with us,” Lucy said. “We’re trying to find out not only how your father died, but why he was in San Antonio in the first place. No one at HWI knew about the spontaneous flight, there is no record of the meeting at the White Knight, and his wife didn’t know.”

“After what happened last night, if I say it’s personal and had to do with Adeline, you’d tell me it was sour grapes. And it’s not,” Jolene said.

“Everything is relevant,” Barry said, “until we rule it out.”

“First, I want to make it clear that I did not attack Adeline last night. She made it seem that way, but I did not.”

“Jolene, you need to be completely honest with these agents,” Scott spoke up for the first time. “Tell them exactly what happened.”

Jolene drank from her water bottle with unsteady hands. “I should never have gone over there.”

“You’re right,” Scott said. He turned to Lucy and Barry. “I had to go to the hospital to check on a patient who was in post-op. There had been complications, otherwise I would never have left Jolene alone last night.”