Chapter Thirty Four
"Starr was a bully but he wasn't a killer. Guys like that get used to intimidating people because of their size but there's no follow through with them.
I was convinced it was him or it was Pezzo until Morgan swallowed mommy's pills."
Sebastian stopped speaking long enough to swallow a bite of sausage. Grace ate a small bite of her scrambled eggs with brown toast, no butter.
She sat beside Sebastian in a booth at the diner. Sebastian ate his eggs sunny side up and across from Sebastian, Robert Kelly had a plate full of corned beef hash.
Kelly said, "We all thought it was Pezzo. Even when he appeared to have killed himself I still thought it was him. It made more sense that he had gotten so caught up in things that he took the easy way out. I thought for sure he was getting pressure from his people who had given him money and then when you told me he was fooling around with Jessie Vail it seemed like a sure thing."
Grace looked up from her breakfast.
"Keon said that Morgan regularly raided her parent's medicine cabinets for drugs. She often mixed whatever she found as a recreational narcotic. She had cleared them all out. Her mother had some sleeping tablets and some pain killers but he said she had already used those. After her father passed away she emptied all of the drugs that had belonged to him. He even had a small quantity of oxycodone that had been prescribed when he hurt his back a year ago. It was past the due date but she swallowed it anyway. Morgan was sure she had used up everything in the house. Keon said he didn't worry about her stealing drugs from home because she had already taken everything.
Then she found a secret stash that her mother had hidden in a shoe box. It was the roofies that Jessie had asked Teddy Arsenault to get for her. Morgan had no idea what she was taking but she didn't care much anyway. She never met a pill she wasn't willing to pop.
She dropped a large quantity of roofies that evening and when the boyfriend brought her to the hospital to get her tummy pumped it all came together. Starr told Arsenault that he needed to get roofies for Jessie. Just like us, Arsenault that he was going to use them on Jessie but it was an order. Starr bought them for Jessie, who had plans to render her husband unconscious."
Grace passed her last sausage to Sebastian's plate. He speared it and then he spoke up.
"I dismissed Pezzo early on. When I first met him he didn't seem like the type to get his hands dirty and the more I met Starr the more I didn't like him and felt he had the most to gain with Vail's death.
Of course when Pezzo killed himself that didn't make any sense at all and of course his uncle took me for a little ride and told me upfront that Pezzo wasn't a killer. I believed the old crook. I knew Pezzo didn't do it and I wondered if he had killed himself or if someone had helped him out. I still thought Starr was involved but I thought by then that Jessie Vail was looking more and more like Lady Macbeth.
When her daughter showed up at the hospital and all she wanted to do was meet up with me it didn't seem like a concerned mother. It seemed more like someone trying to cover her tracks and she was starting to look more conniving.
I thought I would get to the gym and she would be washing her hands of the killings ...out, out damn spot."
"How did you know about Pezzo's murder?" Kelly asked.
"I really didn't know for sure but like I said I just didn't believe he killed himself. It seemed to me someone had helped him do the deed. At first I thought it was his partners from Denver but then when I heard that Morgan had access to roofies, I figured that Jessie and probably her friend Starr were involved in Pezzo's death and obviously Paul's as well."
A chubby waiter wearing a filthy apron approached the table with a pot of coffee. Sebastian and Kelly took a refill. Grace was a one cup of caffeinated a day type.
She spoke up again, "The autopsy came back positive on both Pezzo. We were too late to know for sure with Paul but it appears likely that someone fed them both roofies before they killed them. Jessie Vail denied everything until her lawyer heard about the autopsy. Now she is working on a plea bargain. The prosecutor's department is convinced she will plead guilty on both murders and take a deal. She is trying to avoid the death penalty and the evidence is strong enough for a conviction."
Sebastian finished reporting to Kelly.
"I thought I was going to get Starr, at least as an accessory but I learned that he didn't have it in him. He was a bully, a big man who was used to pushing people around and getting his way. He never had to follow through. People were intimidated by his size. When I saw him in action I knew for certain that he wasn't involved in any murder.
Although I know Jessie was ready to set him up to take the fall on the murders if she needed to."
"Well it's interesting. The prosecutors all agree that this is a female killing," Grace explained, "Our D.A. is all about statistics. Apparently men use blunt instruments but women prefer medication. If Starr was going to kill Paul he would have slugged him from behind with a baseball bat. There would have been no need for medication to knock him unconscious. The fact that the victim was drugged first makes it much more likely that a woman did the murder.
It looks like Jessie drove out to visit her husband with a coffee and a sandwich at midnight the night of his murder. She ate with him at his office and then pretended to go home and he stayed to finish working. The drugs were probably in the coffee.
She probably drove around the parking lot twice and then walked back in to find her husband succumbing to the drug. As he slipped away to sleep, she whacked him a few times in the head with a baseball bat and then drove home and called the police to report that he was unusually late that night. Cops found him murdered."
Sebastian said, "The same thing happened with Pezzo. Obviously he wouldn't take drugs and then hang himself. So someone had to be with him that night and they drugged him.
Jessie used the guy. She was his lover when she needed him but then when things were getting too complicated she had to cut the deal with the company from California. Pezzo was heart broken. He knew he had been used and he wasn't going to give up that easy. He assumed that Starr was the killer and that Jessie had arranged her husband's death so that she could sell to Pezzo. He took her for dinner and forced her hand. He needed to buy the business to get his uncle's money back and he probably let her know that his Uncle Peter was coming to town and would want her to return that money. He must have threatened her a little with his uncle.
So Jessie did the same thing to her lover that she did to her husband. A couple of roofies in his fancy cappuccino and then she strangled him and tied him the rafters so it looked like suicide.
Jessie was a very athletic woman. She would have easily overpowered them both once she got that stuff into them.
But killing Pezzo was a bad decision. I knew Pezzo hadn't killed himself and after I met Uncle Peter I knew his partners didn't do it. That's when I was sure Jessie was involved and when I learned she had purchased the roofies and Starr had no idea what was going on I knew she had done it alone."
Grace said, "I understand the prosecutors have offered a decent plea deal and her lawyers are strongly encouraging her to take it. The case isn't exactly open and shut but there is a good possibility of prosecution for both murders and so it is in her best interests to take the deal and spend her life in jail. The alternative might cost her life."
The meal was done and the coffee cups were empty. The bill sat on a little tray on the corner of the table but no one moved. They were silent for a while.
"What are you going to do now?" Kelly asked Sebastian. He pulled out his wallet and paid the tab and then he pulled out an envelope with the FBI seal in the top left corner. He passed it to Sebastian who slipped it into his pocket without counting the money inside.
"I don't know," he said.
Grace said, "Don't look at me. You have a few loose ends to tie up in Las Vegas."
"You know you really could pass the exam if you are interested in working with us." Kelly said. "I have some friends in recruiting down in Los Angeles. I could make a call."
"I know that I need to go to Vegas," Sebastian said, "and I have a career already. I am a very effective doorman at the Nite Lite Gentleman's Club in Reno and I do a little fighting on the side you know.
My trainer, Chip has been calling me for weeks. He wants me to take a fight that will be staged in a casino in Vegas. It will give me a chance to see my mother."
He looked over at Grace.
"I think it's time I dropped by to say hello to my family.
I'm also thinking about school. I was a good student when I was a little kid and I have taken a few continuing education courses through some local colleges and universities."
Grace laughed.
"You're going to college?"
"If I pass my high school equivalency first," Sebastian said.