“Anyone else who works here who might have seen anything?”
“Billy was on duty yesterday too, but he’s not in today. He might have seen something. He was delivering orders and bussing tables.”
Jamison handed her a couple of cards. “Tell Billy to give us a call. And if you remember anything else, give us a ring.”
While she’d been speaking, Decker sat down at the table that Dabney had occupied. “This chair?” he asked.
The woman looked over. “No, the one to the left of you.”
Decker changed chairs and looked around as Jamison walked over to him and sat down in the chair he’d vacated.
“What are you thinking?”
Decker gazed out the window. From here he could see the FBI building. And the guard shack. There was someone inside, but he couldn’t tell if it was the same guard as before.
He said, “This place was empty, so he had his pick of tables. He walked past a bunch of empty ones to get to this one. It gives the clearest field of view toward the FBI building. So did he come here to observe something? Or to meet with someone? Or was there another reason?”
“How will we find out which one?”
“We keep asking questions.”
Decker’s phone buzzed. He listened for a few moments and then said, “We’ll be there as soon as we can.” He clicked off and said to Jamison, “That was Bogart. Dabney’s daughter Jules has something to tell us.”
“What?”
“Something her father told her a week ago.”
CHAPTER
12
WALTER DABNEY HAD done well for himself.
Decker was standing right in the middle of it all.
The house in McLean was easily worth four or five million bucks. The grounds were extensive and professionally landscaped and maintained. A crew was outside right then trimming bushes, cutting the broad, plush lawns, and generally sprucing up the outdoor space. Another crew was working on the Olympic-size heated pool. And there was a poolhouse that was about the size of a normal home. The cost of merely maintaining this place each year was probably far more than Decker was paid by the FBI.
He turned from the window to stare over at Jules Dabney. She was an interesting mixture of her parents. Tall and athletically built like her mother, she had her father’s jawline, long forehead, and pale green eyes. Her blonde hair hung straight down and skimmed the tops of her shoulders.
Her manner was brisk, businesslike even, and she hadn’t shed a tear since Decker and the others arrived. Her mother, she told them, was in her bedroom, heavily sedated.
Translation: She’s not talking to you.
Jules instantly struck Decker as a micromanager and able handler of adverse situations. He wondered if that was going to help or hinder their investigation.
They were in the library, three walls of books clearly proclaiming the purpose of the room. Bogart sat in a comfy leather recliner, Jamison in an upholstered settee, and Jules in what looked like an antique wing chair. Decker stood in the center of the room.
Bogart said, “I can appreciate how difficult this is for you, Ms. Dabney.”
Jules waved this off. “It’s not difficult, it’s impossible. But we have to get through it, and so we will.”
“Where did you come in from?” Decker asked her.
She looked at him as though bewildered why this held any relevance.
“Palm Beach, why?”
“What do you do there?”
She frowned. “Is that important? Or pertinent?”
“It’s hard to say since you haven’t told us yet.”
Her lips pursed, she said, “I have my own company. Health care consulting.”
Jamison said, “I would imagine Florida is a good place for that. What with the large retired population.”
“Most of them are on Medicare, of course, but there’s a great deal of wealth down there and people have supplemental insurance. Health care is complicated. It’s hard for people to navigate it. And we advise businesses too. In fact, that’s where most of our revenue comes from. We have twenty employees and are growing double digits every year.”
“That’s very impressive,” said Decker. “When I was your age, I could barely take care of myself.”
She said curtly, “My father instilled an excellent work ethic in all his children. Along with ambition.”
She suddenly looked away, and for a moment Decker thought she might burst into tears. She rubbed her mouth and turned back to them.
“My father is…was a huge influence on me.”
Decker said, “I’m sure. And you wanted to meet with us because your father told you something?”
“Things,” she said. “I wrote them down on the flight in.”
She handed the paper to Decker. He looked down at it.
Bogart said, “Can you read them out loud, Decker?”
Decker appeared not to have heard him.
Jules stared impatiently at the silent Decker for a few moments and then said sharply, as though she were giving a business presentation, “One, he told me to take care of my mother. Two, he said for me to get married and have a family. Because life was too short. Three, he told me that above all I was to remember that he loved me.”
Bogart said, “And was this unusual?”
“My father was attentive and caring, but, yes, these particular statements were unusual because he had never spoken to me about these things before. At least not like that.”
Jamison said, “So were you concerned?”
“I point-blank asked him if something was wrong. He said no. Just that he’d been thinking about life in general and wanted me to know these things. He joked that he must be getting old, but it still struck me as odd.”
“Did you talk to anyone else about it?” asked Bogart.
“No. I was going to phone my siblings to see if he’d a similar conversation with them, but then I got busy. By the time I got around to thinking about doing it I got the call about Dad.”
Decker held up the list. “You have a number four marked here but nothing beside it.”
Jules reached in her pocket and pulled out a key. “He sent me this the next day.”
Decker took the key and looked it over. “Appears to be a safe deposit box key,” he said, handing it across to Bogart.
“It is,” said Jules. “He has a box at a bank in downtown McLean. He’s had it for years.”
“Do you know what’s in it?”
“I assumed it was just things one puts in a safe deposit box. I’ve never seen inside it.”
“Why would he send you the key?”
“I don’t know. I was going to call him, but then, like I said, I got distracted with business. I assumed I would have plenty of time to talk to him about it. I just thought it might have something to do with his estate planning. It would make sense that he would involve me. He’d named me executrix a couple of years ago.” She added in an explanatory note, “I’m the oldest. That stuff sort of fell to me by virtue of birth order.”
“But your father obviously had confidence in you too,” said Jamison.
“I hoped he did.”