“Can I help you gentlemen?” A tall man wearing a damp Doggie Divas apron asked. He was in the process of soaping up a tiny dog. “The barbershop is three doors down.” The man pointed to his left.
“We’re not here to be groomed.” Fitz offered a fleeting smile. “I’m Captain Kevin Fitzgibbon from the Salem Cold Case Unit and we’re here to speak with Vince Holbrook.”
“That’s me,” the tall man said. “Mandy, can you finish up with Killer for me?”
“Sure thing, Vinny.” Mandy winked at him and approached the small dog, who began barking like a ferocious squeaky toy.
“Follow me,” Holbrook waved Fitzgibbon forward. He opened a door leading to a conference room. “Can I get you anything? Water? Soda? Coffee?”
Fitz shook his head and took a seat. “No, thank you, Dr. Holbrook. Like I said, we’re from the Salem Police. I’m Captain Fitzgibbon and this is Detective O’Mara and Detective Byrne. Cope Forbes is our consultant.”
“My mother is a huge fan of all the psychics at West Side Magick. I could have used your services several years ago, Cope. Maybe you could have clued me in that the business I worked so long and so hard to establish was about to collapse.” Holbrook sighed and took a seat across from the detectives. He folded his hands in front of him, looking resigned to his fate.
“Even with my gift, I’m not able to see what went so wrong for your business. I can feel your resentment and frustration, but I’m not getting any clues as to what went so wrong. Can you tell us what happened?” Cope asked.
“Oliver Adams did this to me because he thought I was after his wife. He told everyone who’d listen that I was the scum of the earth because I was trying to break up their marriage.” Holbrook shrugged. “I’d been so busy with school and getting my veterinarian practice off the ground that I hadn’t taken a lot of time to date. About six months before Adams came to town, I’d figured it was time to get myself out there. I got on a couple of the dating sites and met several women, but no one that I could see myself settling down with.”
“Where do Oliver and Francesca come into the picture?” Ronan asked, looking as if he didn’t want to hear another word about Holbrook’s dating life.
“They came into my clinic to meet me. Oliver said he was looking to start a vet practice here in Salem, which I thought was a great idea. I had more patients than I could handle. He seemed like a great guy, at first, but as time went on I started to hear rumors about the way he treated his wife. People were saying he was controlling and jealous, among other things, which I took with a grain of salt. Gossip is almost never true, although most of my customers believed the worst in me.” Holbrook paused, before focusing his attention on Jude. “It wasn’t until Frankie showed up on my doorstep that I realizedallthe rumors about her husband were true.”
“Frankie came to your house?” Jude asked. He looked at Cope for confirmation that the former veterinarian was telling the truth. Cope nodded, confirming Holbrook’s claim.
“It was New Year’s Day and I was off, but Oliver was on call. We’d agreed to be on call for alternating holidays, so that we could each enjoy some downtime. Like kids, pets don’t know it’s a long weekend. They get sick when they get sick. Anyway, according to Frankie, Oliver had been called in for an emergency with a Great Dane. Bronx had been hit by a car and needed emergency surgery. Being the wife of a vet, Frankie knew Oliver would be out of the house for hours. I couldn’t have been more surprised to see her standing on my front porch.”
“Why did she come to see you?” Fitzgibbon asked.
Holbrook shook his head. “I’m not sure I should tell you. Frankie deserves her privacy.”
“Frankie’s dead, Holbrook,” Jude said with a sneer. “She doesn’t care about privacy. We care about catching her killer. Right now, we’re just having a little chat, but if you refuse to cooperate, we can continue this conversation downtown.”
Holbrook worried his bottom lip with his teeth. “Frankie was afraid Oliver was cheating on her.”
Jude frowned at the news. “Why would Frankie come to you with this accusation instead of chatting with her best friends or her mother?” Frankie and Holbrook barely knew each other. “It makes no sense that she’d confide in you, unless-”
“She wanted to sleep with me to get back at her husband,” Holbrook finished with a shrug. “Yeah, that was exactly why she’d showed up at my house.”
“Did you, uhh?” Ronan began, looking as though he wasn’t quite sure how to finish.
“Did I do it? No,” Holbrook said with a roll of his eyes.
“If you didn’t sleep with Frankie, why did Oliver come after your practice?” Ronan asked.
“Because he was tracking Frankie’s phone and knew she’d been at my house for several hours that day. We didn’t have sex, but we did talk and had lunch together as friends. Once Oliver found out where his wife had been, he started to come after me and my business.”
“How did he do that?” Fitz asked. “We went through the reviews of your clinic and for the most part, they all raved about you and the services you provided.”
“That’s right, but Oliver had a lot of rich and powerful friends thanks to his time at Tufts. He told anyone who would listen thatI was screwing his wife. The person who did the most damage was a member of the Salem City Council.”
Jude had a feeling he knew exactly who Holbrook was talking about. “Ambrose Watson?”
“Yeah, that dirty bastard. Not only did he do his best to bring me down, he did the same thing to Frankie, making it look like she’d been the one embezzling money from the city’s treasury. I’d bet my last nickel that Watson was the one who stole the money and set it up to look like Frankie was the embezzler. I probably shouldn’t say this to three detectives, but if I were out for revenge, I would have killed Oliver, not Frankie. He ruined everything, while she was one in a million.”
Jude didn’t need Cope’s gift to know Holbrook was telling the truth. “During your chat with Frankie, did she bring up anyone who had an axe to grind with her?”
“The only people she had issues with were her husband and Watson and my money is on the husband. If he’s capable of bankrupting my business, then he’s definitely capable of killing his wife.”
Fitzgibbon stood up with a nod. He grabbed a business card from his wallet and set it down in front of Holbrook. “Call me if you think of anyone else who would have wanted to hurt Frankie.”
