“Our lawyer will be here,” Jack fired back.
“This is strictly an interview to get everyone’s statement regarding the day of the murder, but maybe you know something I don’t. So am I to take your insistence on legal representation as an admission of your family’s guilt?” Riordan asked.
Silence.
Riordan guessed Jack was thinking that over.
“No, of course not,” Jack finally said.
“Then we will see you soon.”
“We? Who’s ‘we’?”
“My team and I,” Riordan said, and hung up.
It wasn’t that Riordan was afraid of the Wayne family, but he was afraid of what they might do, and the more witnesses he had to their behavior, the better this interrogation would go.
What he regretted was that he’d hesitated to do the right thing, and if it hadn’t been for Bowie Youngblood’s angry call, he probably still wouldn’t be doing this, which was his fault. If he’d done this to begin with, he wouldn’t be starting on the wrong foot.
But after Bowie’s second call and the news that Stanton had paid off the loans belonging to his brother and sister, meaning that the land the developers needed for the resort was no longer available, Clayton’s call about the picketers had suddenly made a lot more sense.
At that point Riordan had called the bank to confirm the information with the president of the bank in Eden, who’d told him that, yes, they’d sold the loans to East Coast Lenders, Inc. He said when they began foreclosures on some of the notes, he was surprised, but had no say in the matter. He’d also confirmed that Stanton Youngblood had paid off his siblings’ loans on several pieces of property, which he only knew because Stanton had mentioned it to him when he cashed in some IRAs to cover the loans. Those properties were in the same area as the planned resort.Riordan knew if that had delayed or even stopped the developers from building, then he had the motive that he’d been missing.
At that point he’d called in and had one of his officers research the ownership of East Coast Lenders, Inc., as well as the names of the investors on the property at the lake. When he got the call back with information, he wasn’t surprised to learn Wayne Industries was an investor in the resort development and also owned East Coast Lenders.
The ride to Eden was mostly silent, with both men lost in thought. The magnitude of what they were about to do wasn’t lost on either one of them, because they both knew the Wayne family had the power and pull to make their lives miserable as hell if they so chose.
By the time they reached the city limits, Riordan’s gut was in a knot. CSI Griffin had been reading over his notes from the crime scene, so that it was all firmly in his mind. If anyone said anything incriminating, Griffin would know.
*
When Jack realized Riordan had just hung up on him, he was livid. Furious, he left the library, yelling loudly for everyone to get the hell out there and listen to him. One by one, the family emerged from their rooms to rush to the head of the stairs.
Blake was only half-dressed as he ran out, and when he saw his uncle at the bottom of the staircase, he called down, “What’s going on?”
“Where’s Charles?” Jack shouted.
Charles came out of his bedroom wearing nothing but a big bath towel wrapped around his waist.
“I’m here! I was just getting out of the shower. Is something on fire?”
“Nobody leaves the house this morning,” Jack announced.
Justin frowned. “But I was supposed to—”
Nita shrugged and cut him off. “I wasn’t going anywhere anyway.”
“What the hell is going on?” Blake asked again.
“Constable Riordan is on his way here with ‘his team.’ He’s coming to take our statements about the day of Youngblood’s murder.”
Blake’s eyes narrowed angrily. “I thought you said you spoke to the governor about this?”
“It appears the governor has decided to distance himself from our unsavory situation. So one of you has put all the future of this family in jeopardy! The constable will be here around nine. Make sure you are all available, and don’t confront him in any way or do anything to make yourself look guilty. I’m going in to breakfast. Feel free to join me.”
He turned and strode into the dining room, leaving the rest of them staring at each other.
Blake threw up his arms and went back to his room. The others quickly followed suit, leaving Charles at the top of the stairs alone. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he, too, went back to get dressed. This had certainly put a damper on the good mood he’d been in from last night.
*