Open Season for Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery Book 10) (21 page)

“Hey, Bogie!” Carlisle yelled over her shoulder to the deputy chief who she thought was downstairs, only to be startled to find the tall, muscular silver-haired deputy chief standing almost directly behind her in the guest room of her home. Seeing him peering down at her from his height, she jumped so high that she almost fell into the closet that she was cleaning out.

“Anything I can do for you, Ms. Green?”

“Call me Carlisle, for one.” She turned back around and tried unsuccessfully to reach up onto the top shelf. “And then, you can put that Incredible Hulk build to good use and take everything down off the shelf to help me sort through it.”

Bogie looked at the stack of moving boxes that littered the guest room, as well as in every other room in the round house. “I take it you aren’t staying here in Deep Creek Lake.”

“No, I don’t belong here anymore.” She moved out of his way to allow him to reach up to the top shelf in the closet. “My place is in Africa. That’s where I can do the most good and where I get what I need.”

Bogie pulled an armload of sweaters and sweatshirts down off the shelf. When he handed them to her, he paused with his hand on the pile. His bushy mustache twitched and his eyes softened. “You know, when I heard that you were back in town, I have to admit that I was not too happy. I remember all the trouble you used to cause every summer when you blew in here.”

“Kind of like a tornado, only worse, huh?”

“Exactly.” The corners of his mustache curled up. “From what I can see, you’re living proof that a leopard can change its spots.”

“It is true, you know,” she said. “Leopards can and do change their spots based on their environment in order to blend in with their surroundings—as camouflage. I guess that’s why I belong in the bush, away from the sex, drugs, materialism, and cut throat lifestyle here. Too much temptation to get involved in it. Life is simpler in the jungle.”

“All you have to worry about there is getting eaten by a lion.” Bogie reached up into the top shelf and ran his hand along the wall in search for anything else that may have slipped out of sight.

“Lions only kill what they need to in order to survive,” she said. “Humans stab each other in the back for much more senseless reasons, which begs the question—who really is more civilized?”

Clutching a cubed shaped device in his hand, Bogie stepped back out of the closet.

“What’s that?” Carlisle asked.

Bogie read the wording imprinted on the side of the black device which he recognized as a data storage device. The police station had many on which to locally back up case files. “It’s an external hard drive.”

“Where did it come from?”

Bogie jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the closet. “Up there.”

“I never saw that before.”

“Must’ve belonged to your grandpa,” he said.

“Grandpa had a laptop that he brought out here to the lake that he used to work on.” She took the external hard drive and turned it over in her hand. “I don’t remember him using one of these …”

“Maybe he left some really juicy stock tips on it,” Bogie said with a grin.

“He died almost ten years ago,” she replied.

“If you want, I’ll hook it up to your laptop to see what’s on it for you.”

With possibilities of what secret information the hard drive might contain racing through their minds, they giggled at each other. Their fantasies of found treasure were cut short by the ringing of the doorbell.

Instinctively, Bogie clutched the weapon he wore in on his utility belt before going downstairs to the front door. Through the windows, he saw Parker Lander waiting on the deck. Recognizing the neighbor, a regular summer resident of Spencer, Bogie opened the door.

“Deputy Chief Bogart.” Standing up straight, his eyes wide, Parker swallowed. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

“My cruiser is in the driveway,” Bogie said.

“I came over through the old path along the water,” Parker explained. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine,” Bogie said. “Anything I can do for you?”

The older man hesitated before a smile came to his lips. “I was worried about Carlisle. You know I had come over that night because I heard Carlisle and Ashton arguing. Now, with Ashton’s body being found, I’ve been going over what must have happened and I know I said that the last I saw Ashton, she was diving into the water off the dock. But then, afterwards, later on that night, I woke up hearing what I thought was a screech owl. Now, I wonder if maybe that wasn’t an owl, but Ashton screaming while being killed after Carlisle had passed out.”

Bogie’s mustache twitched while he digested Parker’s information. “That could be. Do you remember how much later this was?”

“I’m afraid not,” Parker said. “If that was the killer I heard, he’s probably still around. I don’t know if my imagination was playing tricks on me, but just now, I could have sworn I saw someone lurking in the woods watching the house.”

“Really?” Stepping out, Bogie peered into the trees and bushes lining the lake and surrounding the houses along the shore. Rainwater from the downpour an hour earlier dripped from the leaves. Steam rose up from the planking on the dock and walkway.

“We might want to check it out,” Parker said. “We can’t be too safe.”

Chapter Twenty

“I want my lawyer,” Rachel Breckenridge announced as soon as Mac and David entered the interrogation room. “You have no right to hold me here.”

“You’ll get to call your lawyer after we talk.” Mac sat down across from her while David leaned up against the wall.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Rachel said.

“You’re at least a material witness to a murder,” Mac said, “who was caught trying to leave the country under an assumed identity, which ups you from material witness to suspect.”

“What murder?” Rachel said innocently.

With a chuckle, Mac kept his eyes on Rachel while asking David behind him, “Like mother, like daughter. Did your mother teach you how to lie like that?” He sat back. “What would you say if I told you that we have copies of the texts between you and your mother discussing Lindsey York’s murder and you telling your mother that was why you had to get out of the country?”

“But I didn’t mean I had to leave because I killed her,” she said. “I meant that I had to get away from that whole outfit—that whole gambit that they were all running was ruining my life.”

Mac pounced. “What gambit?”

“It was like that saying,” she said, “’Oh, what a mighty web you weave when first you practice to deceive.’”

“Tell us about it and set yourself free of the web,” David said.

She looked from Mac to David and then back again. “I want immunity and protection.”

“Immunity from what and protection from whom?” Mac asked.

She narrowed her eyes while peering across the table at Mac. “You give me immunity from everything that I got roped into, and get me into the witness protection program and I’ll hand you my mother and Lindsey York’s partners on a silver platter.”

Without a word, David left the room.

Mac fought the smile working its way to his lips. “We can’t offer you anything until we know what you have for us.”

In silence, Rachel stared at Mac from across the table. Her expression became more pleading with the passage of time. Knowing that he had the upper hand, Mac gave her nothing by way of encouragement. His face was void of emotion. He could see her trying to read his thoughts.

She swallowed. “Mom made a deal with the devil.”

“Is that devil Lindsey York?”

Rachel nodded her head. “We knew Lindsey was trouble, but my mother was already in trouble and thought Lindsey could get her out.”

“What type of trouble?”

“My mother was Ross Piedmont’s protégé,” Rachel said. “He was researching 3D printing for prosthetics and organ transplants. He’d been working on it for years. As luck would have it, he had just completed his research and his book to publish the results when he died. My mother found his body. Ashton was in Europe doing a summer internship, so …”

“No one would be the wiser,” Mac said. “Your mother took advantage of the opportunity to put her name on everything.”

“Since she was his assistant and protégé, she knew where everything was in the house,” she said. “Of course, Ashton knew what her grandfather had been researching, but she was just a student. Mom thought that if she offered her a free ride through medical school that she would keep her mouth shut. Even if she didn’t, who would take a little girl’s word against Mom—a distinguished researcher and doctor by the time Ashton realized what she’d done.” She laughed. “My mother thought she had it all planned out.”

“Thought?” Mac asked.

“There were a couple of loose ends that she wasn’t counting on,” Rachel said. “One being A.J.’s father. Dr. Piedmont had been keeping him apprised of all the research. When he found out that Mom had sold it to a publisher as her own, he threatened to blow the whistle.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Suddenly, he was dead of a heart attack. Then, A.J. and Ashton got together. The year after Mom’s book came out and she became the toast of the medical community, Ashton told her that she had proof positive that it was her grandfather’s research. She had found the stack of printed hard copies of her grandfather’s book that she had mailed special delivery to him. Turns out that, with every draft he completed, she was printing them, packing them up, and then mailing them to him. He put them straight in his safe. They were all unopened and date stamped. Proof that he had been working on it years before Mom claimed she had written it.”

“Sounds like Ashton had your mother over a barrel,” Mac said.

“It would have worked, too,” Rachel said. “But Ashton was such a little fool that she got herself killed.”

“How was that?”

“She gave Mom a choice,” Rachel said with a shake of her head. “Very bad idea. Mom could confess to everything herself or be exposed for the fraud she was.”

“Then Ashton disappeared and your mother’s problems were over,” Mac said. “What happened to the copies of the book?”

“She found them right where she figured they would be,” Rachel said. “Mom had the security code for the Piedmont place from back when she worked for Dr. Piedmont. So, after she made Ashton disappear, she went in and found a whole drawer of them. She shredded them and burned them all in our fireplace.”

“Was this before or after your mother brought Lindsey into your web?”

“Same time,” Rachel said. “Mom needed some dirt on A.J. to keep him in line. Lindsey is—was very good at that. Since she couldn’t
find
anything, she decided to seduce him.”

“Why Lindsey and not you?” Mac asked. “I mean, you were a med student like him. You were friends—”

Rachel laughed. Upon seeing the confusion on Mac’s face, she said, “You haven’t figured it out yet, have you?”

“No, enlighten me.”

She leaned across the table. In a stage whisper she said, “I’m a lesbian. But don’t tell anyone. Mother would be horrified if the world found out.” With a wicked grin, she sat back in her seat. “A.J., Corey, Ashton, they all knew. So if I went to A.J. and tried to seduce him, he would have laughed me out of Maryland.”

Sitting back in his seat, Mac studied her to determine if she was telling him the truth or not. He decided to dig a little further. “A witness told me that you and Ashton used to be friends, but that ended when A.J. came into the picture …”

“That was about the time I realized I was in love with Ashton,” Rachel said with a note of sadness in her tone.

Could she be Greaser?
Mac stared at her.
Ashton may have kept the fact that Greaser was a woman from Carlisle.

It was almost as if she wanted to fill the silence in the room when Rachel plunged on. “I knew Ashton was heterosexual, but I thought … hoped that maybe if she knew how I felt. All it did was put a wedge between us.”

“The jealousy over A.J. wasn’t because you wanted him,” Mac said, “but because you wanted Ashton.”

A hint of tenderness filled her face and she shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t realize until after she was gone what a good friend she was. She had told A.J. and he told Corey, but they kept it to themselves—even when Mom blackmailed A.J., he never once threatened to out me. He said his war was with my mother, not me.”

“Since you couldn’t seduce A.J., your mother brought in Lindsey York to,” Mac said. “She drugged him and then took advantage of him.” He ordered her to continue.

“Mom was going to use that tape to keep A.J. in line and get him to convince Ashton not to expose her,” she said. “But it didn’t work. Ashton didn’t care what she had on whom. She called Mom that night and told her time was up. She was sending those manuscripts to her lawyers and they were suing Mom for all she was worth. Mom went to go have it out with her. When she came back, she had scratches on her arms and across her face … and her problem was gone.”

Mac glanced over his shoulder at the two-way mirror. He sensed David was watching from the other side.

“I take it that was not the end of it,” he said.

“Lindsey York had recorded every conversation she had with my mother and me, asking her to seduce A.J., and why,” Rachel said. “She knew that my mother had stolen the research, which was why she became head of the medical school. Suddenly, out of the blue, Lindsey was calling the shots. As head of the medical school, Mom had access to drug supplies. All she had to do was some juggling with the numbers in the inventory. Since she was head, no one would question her. If they did … well, my mother can be pretty intimidating in case you haven’t figured that out yet. Within a couple of years, Lindsey had us supplying illegal prescription drugs to dealers connected to major South American cartels operating in California.”

“We?” Mac asked. “If this was your mother’s mess—”

“She was giving me orders because she couldn’t get caught with her hand in the cookie jar,” she said. “Do you think I wanted to be forced into a shotgun wedding with A.J.? Do you think it’s fun living in a closet pretending to be someone that you’re not?”

“Why the shotgun wedding?”

“Two reasons,” Rachel said while holding up her fingers. “One, A.J. Wagner is Dr. Howard Wagner’s son. Everyone at the university remembers Dr. Howard. If A.J. and I got married, it would be like the merging of two dynasties, at least, that is the way Mom likes to see it. Two, she wanted A.J. to be my cover—” She whispered harshly, “so no one would know that I’m a lesbian.”

“You didn’t want to marry him anymore than he wanted to marry you.”

“Nope,” she replied. “Now that I’m a hair’s breathe from getting my medical license, I wanted out from under my mother’s thumb. We’re talking about my future. I told both of them that I was getting out. Mom said that she was going to take care of it, but then Lindsey showed up at the ball with that thug. Her message was loud and clear. Don’t mess with them. As soon as I saw Raul, I was out of there.”

“Do you think your mother took care of the situation by killing Lindsey?”

Rachel sat back in her seat. “She’s now in the running to be university president. Mom had too much to lose. What do you think?”

“Do you have proof to back up any of this?” Mac asked her.

“Lindsey isn’t the only one who knows how to make incriminating recordings.”