Blast from the Past (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Well, that went about how I expected,” David said when they returned to the Spencer police station and went upstairs to his office with cans of soft drinks.

“Admit it,” Mac said, “I was right about Skeltner. He had his wife killed—”

“Too bad you’re his alibi.” With a chuckle, David plopped down onto the sofa.

“I wish people would stop telling me that.” Raking his fingers through his hair, he started pacing the length of the office.

“It’s the truth.” Smiling at Mac’s predicament, David took off his shoes and propped his feet up on the coffee table.

“Do you know what really infuriates me about being his alibi?”

“Skeltner used you and you’re taking it personally.”

“Not me alone. Anyone who happened to be at the café, Leah and Sari, anyone who happened to be there was his alibi.” The snap of Mac’s fingers startled David to grab his attention. Mac pointed a finger at him. “The same time his wife was being murdered, Skeltner was planting the cream meant to kill Gordon Crump. Don’t you see it? They killed each other’s spouses. Nora Crump was the guy on the bike.”

“Witnesses said it was a man—a teenager.”

“In black sweats with the hood up speeding by on a bike. These witnesses are elderly. Without  a clear look, they could have assumed it was a teenaged boy. Nora is very slender and isn’t very well endowed. In the right clothes and speeding by, she could be mistaken for a teenaged boy.”

David sighed. “Now it’s Nora Crump who killed Mary Catherine Skeltner? Wasn’t she at the café, too? Sari said she came in and was waiting for her mom to seat her when Skeltner planted the poison.”

“She could have made it in time. The terrain on Lakeshore Drive is flat. Nora is athletic enough to have done it.” Mac plopped down on the coffee table directly in front of David which forced him to take his feet off the table. “The B and B is three miles from the café. The ME can’t be precise down to the minute. She could be a few minutes off.”

Mac recalled the moment she first saw Nora Crump running across the parking lot. Her husband was lagging far behind her. As she came down the hill, she stumbled off the curb and almost landed on her face. She couldn’t see the curb clearly because she had lost a lens. She wore an athletic suit, and he had thought that she was breathless from running. “She was breathless because she was in a hurry. In order for their plan to work, timing had to be precise. She had to speed three miles on the bike to get to the B and B to kill Mary Catherine Skeltner while Russell Skeltner was establishing an alibi. If she committed the murder too close to when he left, then the argument could be made that he killed his wife before leaving. But, she also had to make sure she got back to the hotel and got her husband to make it to the café in time to get the same table where Skeltner had planted the poison so that no innocent victims would die.”

“Which is exactly what happened,” David said.

“It was all over the news that it was Tommy Cruze who was murdered,” Mac said more to himself. “So they used it to their advantage. That night, Skeltner finished the job while Nora pointed the finger at a mob hit. That whole story about Gordon Crump borrowing money from Cruze is a lie.”

When David looked doubtful, Mac asked, “Why else did Nora Crump send you in the opposite direction when you asked her where the shooter went? They had no idea we were going to be on the scene.”

“She claims she was in shock and confused,” David reminded him. “A jury will find it hard not to believe her.”

“You and I both know that’s not true.” Mac shook his finger at him. “The lady runner.”

“What?”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” Mac said with a grin. “Sari hit on the connection between Skeltner and Nora Crump. She called Nora ‘the lady runner’. I’m willing to bet money that it’s what brought them together. They’re both runners. Skeltner’s neighbor says he’s always traveling to run in marathons. Do you realize how many people participate in those things?”

“I do and I have,” David said. “It’s all a great theory, but we have no proof.” He ticked off on his fingers. “Sari says Russell Skeltner is a regular customer. Leah had said he’d been coming in every day for well over six months—same time, right when she opens—to order an espresso.”

“He used his regular routine,” Mac replied. “Killers do that all the time. They watch a victim, learn their routine and then take advantage of it. Only in this case, it’s the killer who has the routine and made use of it to establish his alibi. If he had strayed from it in any way, then that would make us suspicious.”

“But you are suspicious,” David noted, “with no proof whatsoever that Skeltner and Nora Crump even know each other.”

“The neighbor saw the bike,” Mac said. “The tread from the bike at the Santa Fee Grill matched the tread marks they found at the Skeltner house.”

Mac’s cell phone signaled on his hip with Clint Eastwood’s dare. “Go ahead. Make my day.”

David grinned. “Figures.”

Checking the caller ID, Mac told David that it was forensics while answering the phone.

David got up off the sofa and went over to gaze out the window at the lake. It was a windy day. Waves were rocking the boats and jet skis.

Watching him while he listened to the report from the forensics office, Mac saw a look of sadness cross David’s face and wondered how he was going to take the news of his and Archie’s engagement.

Forcing an upbeat note into his tone, Mac said, “That was forensics.” He slipped his cell phone back into its case clipped onto his belt.

“So you said.” David turned from the window. “What have they got?”

“DNA from the seat on the bike, which matches the DNA from the contact lens and hair,” Mac said. “The DNA on the bike seat is sweat and even some vaginal discharge. Enough for them to collect and run a profile. Whoever rode that bike was a woman.” He added, “All from the same woman.”

“But was there a match from the data base?”

“No, but if we could get Nora Crump’s DNA they could run a comparison.”

“Problem is,” David said, “we don’t have enough to get a warrant for her DNA. Did you hear Ben out there on the course? Have you been listening to me? Without enough evidence to prove any connection between Nora Crump and Mary Catherine Skeltner, we’ve got squat. Since she was at the café close to the time of the murder, it is going to be hard to prove that she was anywhere near that B and B.”

Mac shook his phone at him. “Unless Archie can break into her medical files to see if the prescription from the lens matches Nora’s prescription.”

“Motive? Since we can’t even prove they’ve met—” 

“Medical bills had run the Skeltner’s finances into the ground,” Mac said. “Now that she’s dead, Mary Catherine Skeltner’s life insurance will be able to pay off those bills, plus they have mortgage insurance that paid off the house when she got sick. Skeltner’s wife’s death got him out of debt and free and clear to keep the B and B—a prime piece of real estate.”

“So he has a motive,” David said. “Everything you have is circumstantial.”

A whoop from downstairs drew their attention. A second later, David’s intercom buzzed and Bogie announced, “We found something.”

His arms folded across his broad chest, Bogie stood tall behind his chair in his office. Sitting at his desk, Archie was before both his computer monitor and her laptop.

“You can run, but you can’t hide,” Archie said when David and Mac came in.

“Did you find their connection?” David asked.

“Athletes,” Bogie said.

“Told you,” Mac said to David.

“Specifically, triathlon athletes,” Archie clarified.

“Traditional background checks turned up nothing,” Bogie said. “Residential addresses. Places where they may have worked together. Clubs, social media sites. Nothing.”

“Nora Crump is a physical education teacher in a public middle school,” she said. “Russell Skeltner is an online counselor for an investment company. Skeltner originally came from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Nora has always lived in the Hershey, Pennsylvania, area.” She sat forward and leaned her elbows on the desk. “Now their spouses were another story.”

“There was a connection between them?” Mac asked.

“Not exactly the way you might think,” she said. “Mary Catherine Skeltner came down with cancer a few years ago. She almost died and has since been strung out on drugs.”

“According to her doctor, she got hooked on them,” Bogie said. “She would have been fine if she had weaned herself off of them once she became cancer free, but she didn’t.”

“She became a burden to her husband, who ended up taking over everything,” Archie said. “Now we come to Gordon Crump and his wife, Nora. Crump’s father was a millionaire with a chain of bath and fixture stores in and around the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, area. He was very successful. Some would say he was a big fish in a small pond. Nora actually married an heir. But, when his father died, Gordon ran the family business into the ground. He had a history of bad investments. He lacked the charisma of his father—”

“Not to mention the hygiene,” Mac recalled his bad breath and body odor during their brief meeting.

“So we have two people whose spouses become burdens on them,” David said. “But both of them are from different locations and worlds.”

“
Strangers on a Train
,” Archie said with a smile. “Right out of Alfred Hitchcock.”

“Triathlon,” Mac said. “They were both triathlon athletes. They went to the same event—”

“Those events draw amateur athletes from all over the world,” David said. “They all share one thing in common, which creates a feeling of camaraderie.”

“Have you ever done a triathlon?” Mac asked.

David nodded. “I did two or three a year back when I was on active duty with the marines. There are amateur athletes who actually follow the circuit going from one event to another. After the event, the local restaurants would be crowded with participants—eating, drinking—hooking up if you’re lucky.” He let out a breath. “Yeah, I can see where they would hook up at one of these things.”

“Then Nora and Russell meet at a triathlon and discover that they share something more than firm, taut, muscles,” Mac said, “Spouses who were dragging them down. They fall in love and decide to kill each other’s spouse so that they can be together.”

“Which happened last September first.” Archie brought up the Internet site for the athletic event on Bogie’s computer. “Twelfth annual City of Lenoir triathlon in North Carolina. When I found on both of their Facebook pages that they listed hobbies as triathlons, I started hunting for a common event that they were both registered for and attended.”

“Are they friends on Facebook?” David asked.

“No,” Bogie said with a growl. “These two are good.”

Archie continued, “We have both Russell Skeltner and Nora Crump booked at the same hotel, in separate rooms, where the triathlon was registered.”

“Russell Skeltner booked a private flight out of Morgantown’s airport to fly him down,” Bogie said. “We found no plane reservations for Nora.”

“It would have been an eight hour drive,” Archie said. “She could have decided to drive instead.”

“Russell had booked the plane for a return trip,” Bogie said, “but at the last minute he cancelled. When I asked the pilot about it, he said Skeltner told him he got a ride back with a friend.”

“That’s where they met,” Mac said.

“Have you found any evidence of them connecting afterwards?” David asked. “Phone calls? Emails?”

Archie shook her head. “They have to be communicating with throw-away phones.”

“Triathlon athletes,” Mac said. “It would have been a cinch for Nora to ride that bike three miles to the Skeltner’s B and B, kill Mary Catherine Skeltner—an ill, weak woman—and then race back to be there when Russell Skeltner planted the cream at their table. Then, that night, Russell Skeltner rode the same bike to the restaurant and then slipped away and ran back to the B and B along the dark jogging trail. No car to trace.”

“Nora Crump has had two of my men on her ever since Gordon was killed,” David said. “She and Skeltner have not gone near each other. The only way we can prove they planned this is to get a confession from one of them—”

“Or to get Nora’s DNA to connect her to the bike, lens, and hair,” Mac said. “Charge her for Mary Catherine’s murder and she’ll be sure to flip on Skeltner for a deal. We’ll have them both.”

“Still,” David said, “I hate to be the wet blanket, but we need something to connect her to Mary Catherine Skeltner to warrant a subpoena for her DNA.”

Slowly, a grin crossed Mac’s face. “Give me your cell phone.” He held out his hand to David.

“My phone?”

“Your phone.”

“Why don’t you use yours?” David took his phone off his belt.

“Because your phone has Special Agent Delaney’s number programmed into it.” Mac hit the button on the phone and pressed it to his ear.

“What are you thinking?” Archie asked him.

Mac held up a finger to silence her. “Agent Delaney… Mac Faraday here… I was wondering… could we borrow a couple of your undercover agents to help close up your poisoning case?”

Chapter Twenty-Five

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Crump,” David explained to Gordon Crump’s widow, “but once you leave Deep Creep Lake, we can’t guarantee your safety.”

“I can’t stay here indefinitely.” She looked around the police station at the various officers working in the squad room. The two officers who had been with her since the shooting at the Southwestern grill were busying themselves at their desks while she signed the paperwork that David had called her into the station to complete. “I want to take my husband’s body home, bury him, and put this awful week behind me.”

“I understand, Mrs. Crump,” David said.

“Please don’t call me that,” she said with a note of disgust.

“Nora.”

She frowned. “I’ve always hated that name.”

“Maybe you should have kept your maiden name when you married your husband,” David suggested.

“My father-in-law and Gordon wouldn’t hear of it,” she said with a sharp tone. “When will he get shipped back home?”

“The ME’s office will be contacting you about those details.” David shook his head. “Are you sure you don’t want me to contact the Pennsylvania State Police to arrange for protection until we close the case on your husband’s murder? For all we know, you’re a target, too. After all, you were at the café.”

Her mouth hanging open slightly, she gazed at him. “If I was a target, wouldn’t that gunman have shot me at the Grill?”

“He must not have seen you,” David said, “since you weren’t next to your husband when the gunman shot him. The parking lot was dark—”

“No,” she said. “I was close enough to my husband that if the gunman wanted to kill me too, he would have. The business arrangement that my husband had with Tommy Cruze was between the two of them.” She sighed. “I only wish I could have known more about it to help the FBI in their investigation.”

“But you were confused.” It was David’s turn to shake his head. “Remember, you told me that he was driving away in a dark SUV, but he wasn’t. Witnesses in the parking lot saw the gunman run in the opposite direction and through the back door into the restaurant to dump the gun and sweatshirt in the men’s room. He very well may not have seen you. He could be looking for you now.”

She backed up a step. “Bull! I was there. They know that I’m an innocent victim in this whole thing and know nothing. The mob isn’t going to come after me.”

“Mrs. Crump…” David reached out to her.

“Don’t call me that!”

“Nora, it’s my duty to protect you.” He grasped her elbow.

“Get away from me.” She jerked out of his grasp.

“If the mob is looking for retaliation for Tommy Cruze’s murder, they may not stop with your husband. They are very big on sending messages. They may want to kill you too for whatever deal it was that went sour.” He picked up the phone. “I have friends. Marshal Finnegan is with the federal witness protection program. We can get you into the program. They’ll relocate you, give you a new identity. Find you a job. Of course, you’ll never be able to see any of your friends and family from your past ever again, but at least you’ll be safe—”  

“Go to hell!” She hurried out of the police station.

One of the officers assigned to protect her looked over at David. “Shouldn’t we go with her?”

With a grin on his face, David shook his head while waiting for the answer on the other end of his cell phone. “She’s on her way.”

Nora Crump took the long way around the lake to drive past the Skeltner Cove Bed & Breakfast. She slowed when she saw a red convertible in the driveway and a buxom blonde brushing her hand across Russell Skeltner’s cheek where the two were standing close to each other on the porch.

Nora was so stunned that she crossed the center line and almost hit a pick-up truck going the other way.  “Damn it!” she cursed while wrestling for control of the steering wheel. Once she was back in her lane, she pressed her foot to the gas pedal. She couldn’t get out of Deep Creek Lake fast enough.

Back at her hotel, she galloped up the stairs to her room and through the door to find herself face to face with the barrels of two guns.

“Mrs. Crump,” the largest of the three men who had made themselves at home in her room said. “Nice to finally meet you.” He didn’t move from where his enormous body filled the chair in the corner of the room. The bulk, she could see, was not fat, but muscle. He reminded her of a grizzly bear.

“Who are you?” she gasped out while clutching her purse to her chest against which her heart was beating.

“Oscar Feldman,” he said. “I’m running things here in this area now, since you and your husband eliminated Tommy Cruze from our corporate ladder.”

“I didn’t kill Tommy Cruze.”

“That’s not what my people tell me.”

“Your people are wrong,” she said in a desperate tone.

“Are you telling me that I have dummies working for me?” Oscar dared her to give the wrong answer.

The two gunmen moved in closer.

Clutching her chest, she stepped backwards to find her back against the wall. “This is all a big misunderstanding. That poisoned cream was already on the table when Gordon and I went into the café and were seated there. One of Mr. Cruze’s people took the cream from our table. That was how Mr. Cruze was poisoned. It wasn’t our fault. It was the bodyguard who took our cream.” She brightened up.

The big man furrowed his brow and slowly shook his head. “But our informant in the police department told us that you told them that it was your husband who planted the poison to take out our boss.”

“With all due respect,” she said “it was the bodyguard’s fault that Mr. Cruze was killed. If he hadn’t taken that cream, then my husband would have put it in his coffee and he’d be dead…which he is anyway.”

“Oh,” the large man said. “I don’t understand. Why would your husband plant the poison cream and then drink it?”

“My husband didn’t plant it.”

“But you told the police that he did.”

“I was lying!”

“Oh, you were lying?” He chuckled at his men, who chuckled as well. “I get it now. You were trying to kill your husband, but Tommy Cruze got whacked by mistake.”

“Exactly,” she laughed nervously. “It was all a big mistake.”

“And I guess our killing your husband, who was actually your intended victim, was a mistake.”

“You killed my husband?” Nora gasped.

“Hey,” he said, “We did you a favor since you were planning to kill him in the first place.” His smile fell. “Too bad we don’t believe in mistakes in our business.”

“Huh?” she asked with a heavy breath.

“You killed one of our own,” he said. “Now, granted, it worked out great for me. I mean, I got a promotion because of it. But, for me to not act on your murder of Tommy Cruze would be like saying that it’s okay to go around killing our people. I have to make you pay for it. You were lucky that my man missed you the other night.” He rubbed his finger across his thick lips while looking her up and down. “Lucky for me, too. Now that I see you, I can see that killing you would have been a big waste of such feminine beauty. Better that you should work off your debt.”

“You didn’t kill my husband,” she cried out.

“Oh, yes, we did,” Oscar said. “Bert here pulled the trigger himself. Didn’t you, Bert?”

One of the gunmen nodded his head. “Two nights ago at the Santa Fe Grill and Cantina. I waited forty minutes for you and your husband to come out of the restaurant before taking him out.”

“Enough talk.” Oscar stood up. “You’re a little bit older than we like our girls, but I have some business associates who like their women firm and athletic—”

When one of the gunmen moved in, Nora whacked him in the face with her purse and ran screaming from the room. While digging through her handbag for her cell phone, she fell down the stairs. The contents spilled out. Spying Oscar Feldman and his two men at the top of the stairs, she grabbed only her keys and cell phone and ran through the lobby and out into the parking lot.

In the dining room, Mac and Archie watched her punching buttons on her cell phone and pressing it to her ear before looking at the screen. She repeated the ritual over again before reaching the car.

“No signal?” Mac asked Archie.

Across from him, Archie looked down at the signal blocker she held in her hand. “None within a half mile radius.”

“Damn it!” the clerk gazing with disgust at his cell phone called out from behind the reception desk.

“See?” she said. “Told you these things work.”

“My girl and her toys.” Mac smiled at her.

Out in the parking lot, Nora hurled her phone inside the car and sped off.

“She’s on the move.” Mac got up and took Archie’s hand. “This is going to be fun.”

Without any concern about blocking anyone in, Nora tore her broken-down sedan into the driveway at the Skeltner Cove Bed & Breakfast. After slamming the car door shut, she ran across the driveway, up the steps to the porch, and threw open the door to find Russell Skeltner on the sofa with the buxom blonde.

The beauty gasped. “You told me that you weren’t open for business.”

“I’m not.” Russell jumped up to his feet. “Excuse me, but the sign outside says we’re closed.”

“Well, if she’s not a guest, then who is she?” Nora pointed at the blonde who was buttoning her shirt.

Russell gazed at her with wide eyes. “Excuse me, lady, but have you been drinking?”

“Should I call the police?” the woman on the sofa called out.

“No!” Russell yelled back over his shoulder before turning back to Nora. “You need to leave. Now!”

“Do you have any idea what I’ve gone through in the last hour?” Nora cried out in desperation.

“Considering that you’re a stranger,” Russell said, “no.”

“She looks like she needs help to me,” the blonde said.

“She’s deranged,” he said.

Out the front window, Nora saw a long black sedan slow down. It came to a halt. The rear window lowered to reveal Oscar Feldman.

Nora screamed. “Russell, how can you abandon me after all I did for you? I killed your wife for you!”

“She did what?” the blonde yelled.

“She’s crazy!” he said.

Nora pointed out the window. “Those men are trying to kidnap me and force me into prostitution!”

“What men?” he asked.

She looked out the window to see David climbing out of his police cruiser. The sedan was nowhere in sight.

“You have completely lost your mind!” Russell said. “What men are you talking about?”

“The mobsters that killed Gordon.”

“Mobsters didn’t kill Gordon,” Russell said. “I did.”

“Really?” David replied as he stepped into the room from the foyer. “I guess you two didn’t hear me knock over your argument. I came out because your neighbor across the road called to complain about the yelling. I happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“You can’t use what I said in court,” Russell said. “There’s an expectation of privacy in my own home.”

“Unless,” Mac said as he stepped in, “someone who happens to be in the room chooses to testify to what she heard.”

Russell’s eyes narrowed on Nora. “You know now that you got played.” When her gaze fell to the floor, he grinned. “Sorry, your trick didn’t work. No one here is going to testify to anything that was said.”

The woman on the sofa cleared her throat. “That’s the problem with being a blonde. They forget about us so quickly.”

Russell whirled around to see that the beauty he had picked up after a round of golf with the town councilman now held up a shield identifying herself as an agent with the FBI.

“I need protection,” Nora said. “The mob is trying to kill me.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Crump.” David whipped out his hand cuffs. “But you can’t get protection unless you’ve got something to offer.”

“Don’t call me Mrs. Crump.” She pointed her finger at Russell Skeltner, who struggled against the police chief handcuffing him. “I’ll testify against him. It was all his idea. He seduced me into killing his wife while he was out for his morning run, and in exchange he said he would leave the poison at our table at the café to kill Gordon. Then, six months from now, we would meet at a triathlon in Boston and no one would know.” Her voice rose while Mac handcuffed her. “He killed my husband!”

“She killed my wife,” Russell said. “She couldn’t wait to get rid of her so that she could move here and live on the lake. She’s a classic gold digger.” He offered to David, “I’ll testify against her. Give me immunity and I’ll tell you everything.”

“He’s the killer!”

On their way out the door, David turned back to Mac. “I think you broke up the lovebirds.”

“I know I broke up the lovebirds.”