SENECA POINT A Brandon Webster Mystery

Chapter 3 Sarah Webster's interrogation.

Chapter Three

 

Brandon parked his car in front of the Webster home under a massive sugar maple behind two police cars, one unmarked, and turned off the engine. He finally was home after 32 years. The house looked very much the same, except better maintained. The original part of the house was built around 1850, and it was expanded twice, once in the 1870s and again around 1900 to accommodate the large families of the time. Now he thought its combination of Civil War, Victorian and Arts & Craft architecture was a little ugly, but it never seemed that way to him when he was a child.

He mentally walked around inside the house, and had a sudden flood of memories: his mother and father reading to him at bedtime; the family dog, a dachshund named Cindy, beginning each evening in his bed then moving to his brother’s and eventually to his mother’s; Christmas trees and his mother singing carols in Italian; aromas from the kitchen he suddenly could smell in his mind, especially his mother’s wonderful Sicilian spaghetti dinners every Sunday; Big Mike teaching him to hit a baseball in the side yard, and breaking that window in the neighbor’s house; and the elaborate model train layout he started, but never finished, in the basement, and how that led to his discovery of the secret part of the house.

There also were painful memories of his lonely teenage years and then his banishment. He put those out of his mind. He left his suitcase in the trunk and walked up the sidewalk to the house.

 Little Mike opened the door and smiled broadly. He stepped out onto the porch and hugged Brandon. “It’s wonderful to see you again,” he said. “Mom will be so relieved that you are here.”

Little Mike looked about the same as he did when he came to Brandon’s farm, except more self-assured, and, if anything, more like his father.  He was not quite as tall, but he had the same muscular build, a big head of dark brown hair, a prominent nose, dark expressive eyes, and that smile. That was the clincher. It was just like his father’s.

“How is she doing?” Brandon said.

“She’s holding up a lot better than the rest of us,” Little Mike said. “She’s with the police chief, Mike Lawton, and an investigator from the State Police, a Lieutenant David Marino. They just got here about ten minutes ago. They have the autopsy report and Marino says he has a lot of questions. It appears he is taking charge of the investigation. I think Mom is the principal suspect.”

            “They haven’t Mirandized her, have they?”

            “No, but they don’t have to,” Mike said. “She isn’t in custody, and she isn’t under arrest. They can question her here at home without Miranda rights,” Mike said.

           

            Sarah stood up when Brandon and Little Mike entered the living room on the right side of the hall and smiled. She walked over to Brandon, gave him a brief hug, and said,

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you.” There were tears in her eyes, probably from hearing some of the autopsy report.

“I’m so sorry about Mike, I don’t know what to say,” Brandon said. “But I’m here to help in any way I can.”

Little Mike was right. She looked composed, in control of herself. The tears quickly vanished, but there was some strain in her face. Even though she was in her late 50s, with her clear complexion, light blonde hair and bright blue eyes, she looked 10 or 15 years younger. Her delicate looks were the kind that age well. She introduced him to Chief Lambert and Lieutenant Marino.

The Chief, large and solidly-built, was in uniform and had a ruddy face. Brandon thought he emitted an air of authority, but also of tension, maybe discomfort. He was open, friendly and professional.

Lieutenant Marino had the look of a serious pro. He was a thin, athletic-looking man with slightly tan skin, had thick black hair and a slight bulge in his sport coat under his left armpit from his shoulder holster. He had the wry, maybe cynical, look of hard experience in his eyes that put Brandon on alert. 

Lambert was effusive, shaking Brandon’s hand and smiling. He spoke loudly.

“I heard a lot about you from Big Mike. He was very proud of you,” Lambert said.

“Not nearly as proud as I was of him,” Brandon lied.  “He was the best man I’ve ever known, a great man, and a great brother.” Lies again, but Brandon knew there was a part to play here.

“Yes, he truly was a great man. He did so much for the people in this town,” Lambert said. “Lieutenant Marino is from the organized crime unit of the State Police. The Governor sent him here to help with the investigation.”

Marino also shook his hand but, unlike Lambert, he was reserved.

“Is there an organized crime connection to Mike’s murder?” Brandon said.

“First, we have to be sure it was murder,” Marino said, not answering the question. He spoke softly but clearly. “We were just starting to get into the autopsy report.”

“Please proceed,” Brandon said, and after looking quickly around the room wondering if he would see anything familiar �" just two tables and a painting of his grandfather, the doctor - he sat next to Sarah. He noticed that Marino was sitting on the sofa, with papers spread out next to him, not exactly the power position in an interrogation, and Brandon suspected, quite purposeful. His suspicions were confirmed by the way Marino began to question Sarah.

Brandon had done many interrogations and knew all the methods. Marino seemed to be using one where the person being questioned initially is made to feel unthreatened. The questions seem routine, even boring. The questioner appears to be laid-back, not terribly serious, maybe distracted, and completely non-threatening. Marino’s disadvantage was that he was questioning Sarah in front of members of the family, and the police chief, who had worked for her husband. However, Brandon thought, maybe that would make her more comfortable, and thus more vulnerable.

Marino methodically and politely went through the autopsy report, which confirmed death was caused by a bullet from the.22 that Big Mike had purchased for Sarah. He then had her recount the events leading up to the murder, asking an occasional question and writing notes as she answered. He did not challenge any answer and smiled occasionally, or nodded his head. Sometimes he stopped and looked through his papers, acting like he momentarily had lost his place.

“Do you have any idea how the gun got from your bedroom to the Expedition?” Marino said.

“Assuming Mike didn’t take it, and I can’t imagine that he did, then someone else took it,” she said.

“Who had access to your bedroom?”

“Quite a few people,” she said. 

“Can you be more specific?”

“We had a birthday party for my brother, Terry Ballard, on Friday night. There were more than 20 people in the house, family and friends and employees of the bank, the Town and my real estate company. People spread around the house, and I guess it would have been possible for any one of them to go upstairs to the bedroom.”

“Did all of them know that you had a gun?”

“I really don’t know.” she said. “Quite a few did.”

“Can you give me a list of the people who were here?”

“Sure,” she said. She took a folder from the table next to her, opened it, and took out a sheet of paper that she handed to Marino. He did not react to her being so prepared. He added the paper to those on the sofa.

“Did you have any visitors over the weekend?”

She told him that Little Mike and his wife, Susan, and her brother, Terry Ballard and his wife, Cynthia, all were in the house at various times on Saturday and Sunday. “We all live close to one another, and we’re always going back and forth,” she said.

“I assume you keep your personal records here, but what about business records?”

“Mike had a safe and a locked file cabinet in his office at the Town Hall and a safe deposit box at the bank. I think he kept all his business records in his office, or in the safe deposit box,” she said. “I kept the household records here, the important ones in our safe.”

“What about financial records, bank statements, mortgage records, brokerage statements, etc.?”

“We each managed our own money and contributed to a joint account that I managed for household expenses, major purchases, and general spending money. We don’t have a mortgage. We both inherited money and years ago we decided to keep it separate, even though the beneficiaries in our wills are the same. As close as we were, we never knew how much money the other had.  Truthfully, Mike had very little interest in money, and he didn’t care what I had, and probably did not know how much he had. He told me once he only opened his statements once a year when he would have a review with his adviser.”

“Who is the adviser?”

“Someone at T. Rowe Price in Baltimore,” Sarah said.  “I have his name and a phone number in a file. I can get that from my office after we finish.”

“Good,” Marino said.

Marino then questioned Sarah about the fight she had with Big Mike and what she did on Sunday when he was at the hotel. She told him what she told Brandon in their telephone conversation. Marino was polite but persistent, asking a few questions as she went along, and taking a few notes. He did not show any reaction to her account of the events.

He asked Sarah about various controversies in which Big Mike was involved. One  involved Lakeside National Bank.

“I have heard that Mr. Webster and your brother, Mr. Ballard, were not getting along,” Marino said. “Tell me about that.”

“It’s not that they weren’t getting along,” Sarah said. “Things have not been going well with the bank for the past couple of years. The economy, the mortgage problems �" everything that has happened �" all affected the bank.”

“Which your brother runs, as its president,” Marino said.

“Yes. Someone from my family always has run the bank, back three generations, since it was started,” she said.

“But your husband was the Chairman of the Board,” Marino said.

“Yes, Mike and I have a controlling interest in the stock of the bank,” she said.

“Tell me about the bank’s ownership,” he said.

“Originally, there were four owners, when the bank was started,” she said. “Their ownership interests were not equal. My grandfather was the principal one of the four and he owned 40 per cent. Terry and I each inherited 20 per cent. A man named Frank Hamilton owned 20 per cent. When he died his shares went into a trust and Mike was the trustee. From money Mike inherited from Hamilton, he bought another 20 per cent from the family of one of the original owners. About 10 per cent of the shares now are held in another trust, set up by the other original owner. The employees own the other 10 per cent.”

“So you now are the controlling shareholder of the bank?” Marino said.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t know the terms of the Hamilton trust and what happens to that stock. Mike never told me. He said the terms of the trust required him to keep it confidential. My son, Michael, inherits the stock that my husband owned outright.”

“From looking at financial statements the bank has had to file, it appears it has been fairly profitable,” Marino said, “and it has paid fairly good dividends on that stock, which, I assume makes the stock quite valuable, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know how to place a value on the stock,” she said. “It isn’t publicly traded, so there is no independent valuation of it. Shareholders just can’t go out and sell their stock. There are all kinds of restrictions on that. Its worth to the shareholders has been in the dividends it has paid. Since it hasn’t paid dividends for the past two years, that worth right now probably is much less than it was a few years ago.”

“So was that what the dispute was between Mr. Ballard and Mr. Webster?’

“Mike and Terry got along great for years,” she said. “It really was the two of them that helped so many merchants in town, and pushed the growth of the downtown. The two of them were debating what should be done to improve the bank’s performance. Really, their argument was over what was best for the bank, and for the town.  While it occasionally got heated, it wasn’t personal. Terry and his wife, Cynthia, still came to dinner here regularly and we went over there.”

Brandon wondered about the terms of the trust that held the bank shares. He remembered Frank Hamilton, their wealthy neighbor, who had no family, and who informally adopted Mike and himself after their father died, but always was much closer to Mike. Hamilton willed his estate to the two of them, supposedly in equal shares.  Mike was the executor. Not long after Brandon graduated from the Naval Academy and was back in the Marine Corps, preparing to go overseas, he received a check from Mike for $400,000.  Mike told him it was his share of the estate. He said Hamilton’s interest in the bank was not in his estate because it had been put in a trust.

Brandon did not ask any questions at the time. It was more money than he ever expected to have at one time, and he happily put the money into a credit union. Some years later, after its value had appreciated substantially, he used much of it to buy his farm. 

Marino asked a couple of other questions involving the bank, and then shifted to another topic. Brandon realized the interrogation was going to the next level.

“Did Mr. Webster go out of town very often?” he said, sort of offhandedly.

“Well, he went to Buffalo regularly,” Sarah said.

“No, I mean out of town trips, conventions, political gatherings, fund-raisers, those kinds of things,” Marino said.

“Maybe three of four times a year,” she said. “This year he went to Albany, and he spoke at a convention in Atlantic City.”

“Did you ever notice anything different about him when he came back from those trips?”

Sarah seemed surprised by the question.

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said. “I don’t remember anything being any different. Mike pretty much was always the same.”

Brandon knew what the next questions should be: they should be about their sex life, and whether Mike showed any less interest in her after returning from a trip. But Marino didn’t ask those questions, possibly, Brandon thought, because family members were present.

“So when you thought he might be having an affair, did you think it was just a spur of the moment thing, a fling so to speak, or something more?” he said.

Sarah turned a little red.  “That thought did come to mind,” she finally said softly. 

“That it was something more?” Marino said. He was sitting on the edge of the sofa now, staring at Sarah, no longer pretending to be offhanded.

“Well, yes,” she said. “How could someone just appear at his office and kiss him, and have people think they were having an affair.”

“So he probably had seen her before?”

“I did think that was possible,” Sarah said.  “He denied it, he swore to me that was not the case. As I said, he told me she was the daughter of a childhood friend and that there was nothing more to it.”

“But you didn’t believe him?”

“No, I’m sorry to say that I didn’t,” she said. There were tears in her eyes.

“So how did that make you feel?” he said.

“Angry, hurt, deeply hurt,” she said. “He never lied to me before. We didn’t have any secrets.”

“What would you say if I told you she was using a false name?” Marino said.

“False?” she said.

“Yes,” Marino said. “We have been unable to locate a Lauren Sizemore anywhere in the U.S. who fits her description.  It appears she was using a false name, or you were given a false name.”

“It wasn’t just me,” Sarah said. “It’s the name she used on the sign-in sheet at the Town Hall.”

“Yes, I know,” Marino said, “but it wasn’t her real name. Why do you think she was using a false name?”

“I have no idea,” Sarah said. “I didn’t know it was false.”

“Could it be to cover up the fact that the two of them had seen each other previously?”

Sarah was almost beet red now. There was anger in her eyes.

“He did lie to me, didn’t he?” she said, this time loudly.

“And that makes you angry, like it did this past weekend, doesn’t it?” Marino said.

“Damn angry,” she said, “and sick to my stomach.”

“And you were so angry that you took that gun and shot him, didn’t you?” Marino said, as he moved closer to Sarah, staring at her.

That stopped Sarah cold. Brandon thought she seemed surprised by the question. He also thought that Marino popped it a little too soon.

Mike started to say something, but Brandon motioned for him to stay quiet. Right now, Brandon was identifying with the interrogator, and he wanted to hear what Sarah would say.

Sarah did not look away. She kept her eyes right on Marino’s, and leaned forward until they were only about two feet apart.

“I did not kill him,” she said. “I did not take that gun. I loved the son-of-a-b***h, and I never would have hurt him no matter what. I might have walked out on him if I found out for sure he had a girlfriend, but I never would have killed him. Someone else took my gun.”

They held each other’s eyes in silence.

Marino flinched first, turned to Chief Lambert and said, “I think we’re done.” But then, about a beat later, he said to Sarah, “Oh, there is one other thing.”  He took a sheet of paper out of his folder.

“I brought a list of the personal effects that were found on Mr. Webster and in the Expedition. You’ll get them all back but we need to keep everything right now. Please look at the list and tell me if you think anything is missing.”

Sarah grabbed the list with a look of disgust and anger on her face. She read it, and her expression changed. She was calmer.  She read it again.

“Where’s his notebook?” she said, “and his cell phone?”

“We didn’t find a cell phone or a notebook,” Marino said.

“He always had both with him, almost everywhere he went,” Sarah said. “He even had the cell phone �" it was an I-Phone - in his pocket when he was home. He was always writing notes to himself.  He always had the notebook with him on Sundays and he kept a record of every conversation he had, every promise he made.  Sometimes he would write a note on a blank page and give it to the person with whom he was talking.  He never went anywhere without a notebook.  He had dozens of them from the past in file boxes in his office.”

Marino looked at Lambert.

“She’s right,” Lambert said. “He always had that notebook and he hardly ever used a regular phone. I didn’t see either in the SUV. They should have been with him.”

“Maybe he left them in the hotel,” Marino said.

“You didn’t know my husband,” Sarah said.  “He was not absent-minded. Whoever killed him took that notebook and the cell phone. That notebook would tell you who he met on Sunday, and the cell phone would tell you who he called, or who called him.”

“We can get the cell phone information from his carrier,” Marino said. “Who was his carrier?”

“AT&T,” she said.

“I thought of another thing,” Marino said. “Did Mr. Webster keep records of his investigation of the Disciples?”

“I’m sure he did,” Sarah said. “They’re probably in his office files.”

“He didn’t keep them here?”

“Not as far as I know,” Sarah said. “He did bring papers home to read at night, and he often took notes, but he didn’t keep them here.”

“Would you object to a search of your house? We could get a search warrant, but I would prefer to do this less formally.”

Sarah hesitated for a moment and looked at Little Mike. He shrugged.

“No, I don’t object,” she said. “I want to help in any way I can. However, we have many family heirlooms and antiques so I would expect you to be careful not to damage them.”

“We’ll be careful,” Marino said. “We’re also going to need your fingerprints. In fact we need the fingerprints of all the family members whose prints we don’t already have. We do have yours on file, Mr. Webster, from when you became a Councilman. We don’t seem to have any others from the family. We found quite a few different fingerprints in the Expedition that we have not been able to identify, and it would surely help if we could separate out those of family members.”

“I’m OK with that,” Sarah said. “When do you want to do that?”

“Perhaps you could come in tomorrow?”

“That will be fine,” she said.

“Thank you for your time,” Marino said. “I know you have a lot to do right now, so we’ll get out of your way.  If there is anything we can do for you, please let us know.”

“I just want you to find Mike’s killer,” Sarah said.

“We’re going to keep a patrol car outside for the time being.”

“That’s not necessary now,” Sarah said. “Brandon is here.”

Marino looked at Brandon.

“According to state records you are licensed as a private investigator in New York. Is that true?”

“Yes,” Brandon said. “I have some clients in New York City, but I’m not a traditional private investigator. I consult on security and intelligence matters, and having the license gives me greater flexibility depending on the circumstances.”

“So, are you here as a P-I as well as family?”

“If I am needed in that capacity, certainly,” Brandon said.

“I hope you will keep me informed of anything you find out that might be relevant. You are not known as a team player.”

Brandon remembered that when he was a child, his teachers often told his mother that he “didn’t play well with others.” Some things, he thought, never change.

 “It all depends on the team,” Brandon said. “Here, I just want to see Mike’s killer caught and my family safe. You will have my cooperation, but it is a two-way street.”

The two looked at each other for a moment.

“Sure,” Marino said. He then turned to Lambert.

“Let’s go, Chief, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

 

            Sarah seemed limp from the interrogation and said very little for a few minutes.

Mike and Brandon sat silently with her.

“Honestly, I didn’t kill Mike,” she said. “Do you two believe me?”

“Mom, of course I do,” Mike said. “I never thought otherwise. I know better.”

“What about you, Brandon?”

“I haven’t doubted you at all,” Brandon said. It was a small lie. He usually doubted everyone until they proved themselves. She had just proven herself in the interrogation.

“What about Marino, did he believe me?”

“He’s getting there,” Brandon said. “He used a classic interrogation technique on you, getting you relaxed, then getting you upset and angry. Sometimes that gets the person being questioned to accidentally admit something, or, occasionally, to completely confess. You held up very well.  If I had done the interrogation, I would have left here looking for other suspects.”  He didn’t say that if he had done the interrogation, he would have asked those questions that Marino didn’t.

“And there also was another reason.”

“What was that?” she said.

“The notebook,” Brandon said. “He knew the notebook was missing. It was another test. You passed it. Marino is sharp. He easily could be underestimated by a lot of people.”

            “He seems to have some regard for you,” Little Mike said.

            “He is hoping he can keep some control over me.”

            “Can he?” Sarah said.

            “He will try,” Brandon said, “but I doubt we’ll have a problem. He’s a pro. I don’t see any reason not to cooperate with him.”  Then looking at Sarah, he added, “I think it’s good for you that he is here.”

Author's Note

This book was in the process of publication in mid May, 2011.