The Lady Who Cried Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (10 page)

“What about my lunch?” David asked.

Mac slipped a generous tip to the server. “I’ll take care of it.” He picked up the bottle of beer meant for David and poured it into the frosted glass.

“I’m sure you will.” David went over to knock on the door. “Chelsea, we need to talk.”

“Go away!” she said in a blubbery tone.

“No, it’s time,” he said in a firm tone. Seeing Mac sit down to his dinner of lamb chops à la Spencer, served with a special cabernet sauce created for Robin Spencer, he managed to kick his mood up a notch. “We should have talked weeks ago when you came back to Spencer. We’ve been dancing around our feelings for too long. Now if you don’t open this door, I’m going to kick it in.”

“Jeff won’t like it if you go breaking his doors.” Mac mixed the sour cream and chives in with the potato.

“His doors or your doors?” Cameron was diving into sixteen-ounce slab of prime rib seared on the grill.

“They’re my doors,” Mac explained, “but Jeff Ingle, the inn’s manager, is as protective of this resort as he would be of his own—which is a good thing.”

“Chelsea,” David snapped, “I’m coming in.” He stepped back to kick in the door. “I’m giving you until the count of three.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a dinner and a show,” Cameron said to Mac in a low voice. “All of this makes me wish Josh was here.”

“Three!” David drew up his leg to kick in the door only to hit air when Chelsea threw it open. The momentum of the kick sent him into the room. With nothing to break his fall, he landed on his face inside the bedroom.

“Oh, David, are you okay?” Slamming the door shut, Chelsea rushed to where he landed on his chest on the floor. “Did you hurt yourself?”

The air knocked out of his lungs by the fall, David took a moment to catch his breath and regain his dignity before rolling over. “I’m okay,” he gasped out. He stretched out flat on his back. Above him, he made out Molly’s white face. Up on the bed, she cocked her head all the way to the side while gazing down at him with curiosity.

Chelsea’s face then came into view. Her eyes were red and her face moist with tears. He reached up to wipe her tears from her cheek. “I never like to see you cry.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“I hurt you a long time ago,” David said, “but in all the time that we’ve been together, the times I didn’t hurt you outweigh the times I did, don’t they? Don’t those times count for anything?”

Unable to form the words, she nodded. Tears filled her eyes again.

“Why do I scare you so much?”

“Because…” she started again, “I’m afraid of…” her voice trailed off.

“What?”

“Of going back to who I was before,” she finally said. “That insecure little ninny whose whole identity was wrapped around her boyfriend who she had to check with before getting her hair cut.”

David sat up on his elbows. “I never told you to check with me before getting your hair cut.”

“You didn’t, but I did,” she said. “I let you become my whole world, and when it ended, my world was gone. I had to rebuild it from the foundation up.”

“And now you have your world,” he said, “and I want in, and I want you to be a part of my world.”

She looked down at her hands.

He placed his hand into hers. “Neither of us is the same as we were back in school. We’re both stronger now. There’s no reason why we can’t have our own separate lives together.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” she asked. “But every time I’m with you, I feel myself going back to that insecure teenager—like what just happened out there. That’s wasn’t me now, that was me fifteen years ago, living out the scene that I wish I could have had when you sneaked off to be with Katrina.”

He grinned. “Now that that’s out of your system, I doubt if it will ever happen again.”

“Certainly not with an armed homicide detective playing the role of Katrina.” She smiled through her tears.

Rolling over onto his side, David stroked her face. “Here’s where we are. We have feelings for each other. You’re here and going to stay. I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. What do you say to taking a leap of faith and giving this thing a try?”

“I…”

He moved in to touch her lips with his. He could feel them trembling with his touch. When she pulled away, he assumed that once more, she gave in to her fear. Her light blue eyes were filled with uncertainly that melted away before she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. As she covered his mouth with hers, David rolled over to take her into his arms.

Chapter Nine

Nighttime had fallen on Spencer Manor.

Archie had spent the day in frustration. The author whose book she was editing had made major changes before she was done and sent her a new draft. She was practically starting over.

Well, he’s going to pay for it. At least I’ll make a lot of money on the deal. But will it be worth the frustration?

With Mac and Chelsea out, she worked as long as she could on the manuscript before turning in to bed with a headache. Even Gnarly seemed more subdued. Archie surmised it was because he missed Molly, who had become his best friend. She wondered how he would do after Molly moved out with Chelsea.

To Gnarly’s gentle snore from under the bed, Archie had drifted into a pleasant dream of being on a cruise of the Pacific with Mac. It was only Mac and her alone on a yacht—except for Gnarly. The weather had abruptly turned rough. With the waves tossing the yacht about, her cries for help were drowned out by the roar of the storm and the crash of the waves over the bow.

The sun rose the next morning to find them washed ashore onto a desert island. With a note for help attached to his collar, Gnarly swam out into the ocean.

Then she was alone with Mac, who was clad only in a loincloth. With the sun setting on the other side of the ocean, with love in his eyes, Mac whispered those words Archie so loved to hear–

“Help!”

No, that doesn’t sound right.

“Help me, please!”

With the call for help invading her dream, Archie stirred awake.

No, not now! I don’t want to wake up. Take me back to the island. What was Mac about to say?

Hugging her pillow to her chest, she tried to return to her dream and Mac in his loincloth about to tell her that he loved her.

“Help! Someone help me please! Anybody!”

Archie threw back the covers. The moon poured in through the skylight to bathe the room in a dim light. The manor was quiet. Has to be part of my dream. Dropping back down onto her bed, she closed her eyes.

“Help me!” Now the call sounded weak and hoarse.

Nope, not part of any dream.
Archie sat up again. Seeing that the bedroom door was open, she realized something was missing: Gnarly’s snoring.

“Gnarly?” she called down to under the bed.

“Someone help me!”

“Gnarly!” Throwing on her bathrobe, Archie hurried out into the hallway and peered over the banister to the entryway below.

Upon discovering the curtains torn down from the front window, the Oriental rug askew, and furniture overturned, Archie surmised the night’s events in Spencer Manor had been as chaotic as her dream during the storm that wrecked her cruise.

“Somebody! Somebody come and help me! Please!” the call came again.

It was coming from the lower level of the manor.

“Gnarly, where are you?” Archie took the three steps down into the sunken dining room to find the chairs pulled out from the table, which was pushed up against the wall. The crystal vase centerpiece had been smashed on the floor.

Archie wondered if Gnarly’s not answering her call was a sign that something horrible had happened to him. She called for him again and quickened her pace through the kitchen to the stairs leading down to the ground floor, which contained the home theatre, study, and laundry room.

The kitchen was more of the same. The contents of the canisters covered the floor. The usually smooth surface felt like sawdust. The pantry door was open. The room looked like the scene of a food fight. The plants that decorated the top of the fridge had even been thrown to the floor, the potting soil mixing with the flour, sugar, coffee, and tea from the canisters.

Upon hearing Gnarly’s bark from the direction of the laundry room, Archie felt a sense of relief that lifted a heavy weight from the pit of her stomach. Running down the hall to the laundry, she caught sight of the study, where books were scattered across the floor.

“Can you hear me? Help!” The call sounded strained.

When Archie saw a black bag that she didn’t recognize on the floor in front of the desk, she concluded that whoever it was in her home calling for help had not been invited.

At the room at the end of the hall, Archie threw open the door to find the visitor cowering on top of the washer and dryer. His tattered black clothes, pale face, and trembling demeanor evidenced his participation in the events that had wrecked Spencer Manor during the night. It was his luck that he wasn’t much bigger than she was. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to fit on the giant-sized twin washer and dryer units that stood five feet tall, leaving only a space of four feet open between their tops and the ceiling.

Gnarly was pacing in front of his catch like a guard on duty.

The burglar pointed a finger at Gnarly. His hands were clad in black leather gloves. “Call off your dog,” he demanded.

Seeing the finger pointed in his direction, Gnarly jumped up with a snarl as if to try to snip the finger off. Shrieking in a high-pitched voice, the burglar drew back his hand and clutched it to his chest.

With a cocky grin, Archie asked in a calm tone, “Excuse me.”

As if he didn’t believe Archie’s lack of action to call off the dog, the burglar replied, “What?”

“What did you just tell me?”

The pleading tone was replaced with agitation. “Call off your dog.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Hey, lady!” The burglar sat up on top of the washer and dryer to display his arms bare from having the sleeves shredded up past the elbows. “Your dog bit me! Not just once, but–I’m going to sue!”

Letting out a round of barks in response to the threat, Gnarly jumped up and almost caught an ankle. When the burglar jumped back from the edge of the washer he momentarily lost his footing, which threatened to send him plummeting into Gnarly’s jaws.

“Good boy, Gnarly.” Archie patted the dog on his head. The touch of her hand caused the dog to wag his tail. “Hold him there.” She left the room to go in search of the phone to call Mac.

First, I need a pot of coffee.

“Aren’t you going to call off your dog?” the burglar called out to her. “I have rights! I’m calling my lawyer! I’ll sue. Vicious dog attack, physical and emotional torture, and mental distress.”

Maybe, I’ll eat some toast before I place that call.

“The name is Nick Fields,” Cameron was reporting on her cell phone. “He had made appearances on a reality show that was taped in Los Angeles called Four New Girls in Town.” The news she was getting from the detective on the other end of the line excited her enough to make her stand up from where she had been sitting on the sofa. She turned to Mac, who was in the middle of sipping his cognac for an after dinner drink, which contrasted with the hot fudge sundae Cameron had brought up by room service. “Was there a model on that show by the name of Melissa Kincaid?”

“I have no idea,” Mac responded.

“Never mind.” Cameron plopped back down on the sofa and searched the Internet. “I’ll look up her name in the search engine. If she was—” With a squawk of delight, she pointed at the screen. “Yes, she was one of the four girls.”

Mac was unsure if she was talking to him or the detective on the other end of the line.

He got his answer when she swung around on her seat. “Khloe Everest’s co-star, Melissa Kincaid, was a model, and she was questioned by police when Tiffany Blanchard was murdered. The last time Tiffany Blanchard was seen alive was at the cast party for Four New Girls in Town when it was cancelled. Melissa had invited her to that party.”

“Khloe’s best gay friend, Nick Fields, was also on the show, so he must have been at that cast party, too,” Mac said. “He very well could have met Tiffany Blanchard there.”

“Do you have Nick Fields on the list of witnesses at the party?” Cameron asked the detective at the other end of the phone line.

“Fields wasn’t on my list to be interviewed,” the investigator noted when she answered that Fields hadn’t been questioned. “I’ll go through our records to see if anyone can place him at that party.”

After Cameron disconnected the call, she picked up her hot fudge sundae and sat back with a sense of satisfaction. She held out her ice cream bowl in a toast. “Here’s to closing three murder cases and getting one more creep off the streets. Amber Houston was killed in my jurisdiction first. That means I get first dibs when we nab him.”

“I haven’t forgotten how it works.” Mac reached for the cell phone vibrating on his hip. “We get him after Los Angeles. Assuming they can get a case together, we get him third.” He checked the caller ID to see that it was Archie. “Hey, hon, what’s up?”

“Gnarly caught a burglar.”

Mac jerked upright to sit up straight. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m dandy,” she said, “but this lousy burglar interrupted a totally lovely dream I was having. Can you and David get here before I shoot him? He’s making all kinds of racket in the laundry room screaming for his lawyer and threatening to sue us. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get back to my dream. Have you ever thought of wearing a loin cloth?”

Mac hung up the phone and banged on the bedroom door. “Time to go, Lover Boy! We need to go to the manor. Gnarly found a burglar and Archie has lost her mind.”

Chapter Ten

Unable to resist a good time, Cameron insisted on accompanying them back to Spencer Manor. She rode with Mac in his SUV, which followed David’s cruiser, carrying Chelsea and Molly as passengers, down the mountain to Spencer Point.

Coming from across the lake, Bogie’s cruiser fell in behind them when they turned onto Spencer Lane to take them to the Point. When they climbed out of their vehicles, Mac sauntered back to where Bogie was getting ready to climb out of his cruiser. “Did you have a nice afternoon at the Cornish Manor?”

“You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” Bogie peered down at him from beneath his bushy eyebrows.

“Why don’t you want anyone to know?” Mac asked. “You’re not married, and Doc is a gorgeous, intelligent woman.”

“She’s also twenty-five years younger than me,” Bogie whispered.

Mac chuckled. “Another reason to shout it from the mountaintops. You should be proud, Bogie. I know I’d be.”

Bogie chuckled. “She’s hot and she’s crazy about me. At least I guess she is, since it was her who asked me out.”

“She asked you?” When Bogie nodded his head, Mac let out a breath. “Wow. Don’t let her get away.”

When Mac stepped away, Bogie clasped his shoulder. “You’re not telling anyone, are you?”

“Not if you don’t want me to,” Mac said. “I’ll keep it all to myself.”

“And when you tell Archie, you’ll tell her to not tell anyone?”

“Of course I will, Bogie.”

Inside, they found that David had rescued the burglar from the laundry room and handcuffed him to a dining room chair. As vocal as the thief was about being trapped by Gnarly, one never would have known that he was the one committing a felony.

“What? Another one? You have another German shepherd?” he yelled when he saw Molly in the dining room. Based on his hysteria, one would have thought she was as big as Gnarly and chewing on his leg. “You people are insane. You have no right to have two German shepherds. No right!”

“But you have a right to break into my home?” Mac asked.

“Breaking into your house?” He looked at each one of them. When he noticed David and Bogie’s police badges, his eyes grew wide. “Now, wait a minute. Are you here to arrest me? I thought you were here to save me from these crazy people who sicced their vicious dog on me.”

“That’s a crock of malarkey,” Archie said.

Mac laughed. “You broke into my home.”

“Your home?” he shouted. “This is your house? Why … I am so sorry.” He giggled. “Now I know what this must look like.”

“What does it look like?” Cameron asked.

“Like that maybe I had broken in and was trying to steal something,” He giggled again. “But that isn’t what happened.”

“What did happen?” David asked.

“It’s all a big misunderstanding. You see, I thought this place was a restaurant and bar.”

“Do we look stupid to you?” Archie asked him.

“It’s true,” he said. “I came here to have a nice martini on the lake, and instead I got attacked by your vicious dog.”

“Gnarly is not vicious,” Archie said.

“What do you call this?” He held out his legs with shredded cloth hanging from them. “Not only is he vicious, but that dog is a sadist,” the burglar insisted to the police chief. “Look at him.” Unable to point with his hands cuffed behind his back, he nodded with his head from where he had been plopped down in a chair.

Gnarly was making grunting noises while wiggling on his back to scratch just the right spot between his shoulder blades. Seeming to sense every eye in the room on him, he stopped to look up at them from his upside down position. He didn’t seem to have any shame about his hind legs being spread out to display his masculine parts to all of them.

“I see.” David studied the identification he found in the wallet they had taken from the suspect during their search after rescuing him. Archie and Mac made no pretense of reading the driver’s license from over the police chief’s shoulder. The name on identification read Otto Grant. He was from Baltimore, Maryland.

“You’re a long way from Baltimore, Otto,” Mac said. “That’s quite a drive to get a martini.”

“I’m on vacation.”

“Let’s start this from the beginning, Otto,” David said. “You’re on vacation. You decide to go have a martini lakeside and you see this house, with no sign out front, and assume that it’s a bar.”

“You also find all the doors locked,” Archie pointed out, “so you break in.”

“Finding no servers, you decided to help yourself,” Mac finished.

David handed the wallet to Bogie to check for background information on their perpetrator. The deputy chief went to work entering the information from the driver’s license into his computer tablet.

“Can’t you see I’ve been terrorized?” Otto claimed before stomping a foot. “Look at my pants. These are brand new. This is the first time I’ve worn them, and look at what that dog did to them.” As if they had failed to notice before, he stuck his legs out straight to show them his tattered pants. “What that dog and woman did to me was worse than any simple B & E.”

“I didn’t do anything to you,” Archie said. “I was sound asleep and having a totally luscious dirty dream about Mac in a loin cloth.”

“Archie, TMI,” Mac said while making a cutting gesture with his hand across his throat. “That’s too much information.”

Feeling hot, he pushed the mental image of what she could have been dreaming from his mind, which was difficult since he had noticed the red silk from her negligée under the hem of her robe. In that particular nightgown, she always made his heartbeat race.

“Don’t forget to get every detail of her dirty dream down in her statement,” Cameron leaned over to whisper into David’s ear.

Smiling, David asked, “Do you think I should have a sketch artist make up a composite of Mac in a loin cloth?”

“Email it to me,” she replied.

“That’s enough.” Mac was torn between joining them in their laughter and leaving the room.

“Hey!” Otto stomped both of his feet. “Remember the man handcuffed to the chair!” He turned his attention back to Archie. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear all this.” He gestured with his head at the wrecked room.

Giving into her curiosity, Cameron asked, “What happened?”

“That demon dog from hell is what happened.” When Archie laughed out loud, Otto glared at her. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was in on it. She probably has a closed-circuit television and was watching me run for my life all night while being stalked like an animal by her trained killer.”

David plopped the black bag that Archie had found in the study down on the floor at Otto’s feet. “And what’s this? Your suitcase that you carried in when you checked into the house of horror.”

Otto looked away. “I never saw that bag before in my life.”

“Then I guess I won’t find any of your fingerprints on it or anything inside.” David leaned over him. “We have you for breaking and entering and vandalism.”

“Vandalism?” Otto squawked. “I didn’t break anything when I broke in.”

The police chief gestured around him at the broken furniture.

“I didn’t do that,” Otto claimed.

David asked, “Then who did?”

“I told you already. That demon dog!”

As if he had been wounded by the insult, Gnarly climbed his front legs up into Archie’s lap, hid his face under her robe, and let out a whine.

Otto uttered a crazed laugh. “You may have convinced them that you’re a nice, cute, pretty puppy dog needing comfort from your pretty little mistress there, but I know what you’re really capable of.”

Bogie came back from where he had been looking up Otto’s background on his computer tablet. “Well, Mac, it looks like Gnarly snagged a pretty big fish. There’s three outstanding warrants on Otto Grant in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.”

“What about the one in Pennsylvania?” When he realized his goof, Otto said, “You can’t use anything I say. I’m traumatized. That’s a mix-up. There’s another Otto Grant who has a police record and is wanted for breaking and entering, but that isn’t me.”

Mac wanted to know, “How did you get past my security system?”

Showing his tattered legs again, he replied, “I didn’t!”

Archie said, “He meant the electronic security system.”

“According to what I found here,” Bogie said, “Otto has been breaking into some of the most secure estates on the east coast. He’s a retrieval expert for hire. His known associates are private investigators and lawyers who don’t mind bending the rules. They hire him for work they want done under the radar.”

“I told you already,” Otto said. “That’s not me.”

“Clearly, it’s not you,” Cameron said, “I mean, if you were such a professional, you wouldn’t have gotten snagged by a simple dog. No, you’re not any Otto Grant, retrieval expert. You’re just a simple everyday common burglar who doesn’t know how to get past any house with a dog. Only an expert would know how to do that. Of course, it’s not you.”

“Hey! I’ve broken into hundreds of homes with dogs,” he retorted. “Big dogs. Little yip-yaps. Nice dogs that showed me where the family silver was hidden. Vicious dogs that would kill you on sight. I’ve gotten past them all.”

Archie squinted at him. “But you didn’t get past Gnarly.”

As if he was agreeing with her, Gnarly uttered a single bark.

One of Otto’s eyes twitched while he glared at the German shepherd. “Because he’s a sadistic psychopath.” Sitting back in his seat, he said by way of an insult, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was gay.”

“What?” Mac was insulted.

Equally offended, Molly exploded with a round of barks in the burglar’s direction and wouldn’t quit until Chelsea ordered her to stop.

“Unneutered German shepherd,” Otto said. “It works every time. I brought a towel soaked in urine from a bitch in heat and left it out by the dock. He smells her, scratches at the door. I had bypassed the alarm and he took off for the dock while I slipped in—no problem. I closed the door behind me so even if he got finished early, I’d be in the clear. I had five minutes to collect the merchandise and get out and off the property before the dog had his way with the towel and returned to find me and sound the alarm.”

Mac asked, “What was the merchandise?”

“A recording,” Otto said. “My client was paying me twenty thousand to lift it. Ten thousand up front. Ten thousand when I delivered the recording. My client didn’t know where it was, but that was okay. I had only started searching in the desk in the study when—wham!”

Everyone jumped.

“It was like some bear trap had been released on my ankle.” With the tone of a child who had lost a game, he asked, “Do you know how many houses I have broken into with dogs?”

“No,” David said, “tell us.”

“Hundreds,” Otto said. “Dogs are supposed to growl and bark to give you some sort of warning before they attack.” He glared at Gnarly. “But not this one. He sneaked up behind me without making a sound and clamped onto my ankle and wouldn’t let go.” He yelled at Gnarly, “Which is not fair—not fair at all! You weren’t even supposed to be in the house.”

“If Gnarly had given you a warning bark, he wouldn’t have been sneaking,” Cameron said.

“There are rules in nature.” Otto jerked his head in Gnarly’s direction. “He broke the rules. That’s not playing fair. Therefore it is only right that you release me now.”

“So you can have a do-over?” Mac asked. “I don’t think so.”

Recapturing his dignity, Otto sat up. “I’m a professional. Even when he was ripping the skin from my body, I didn’t make a sound. I knew that if I bided my time and kept a cool head I could outsmart him. After all, he’s a dog, damn it. Then, things really got weird.”

Cameron’s interest was captured. “They got weirder?”

“He winked at me.”

“Winked?” Bogie’s salt and pepper eyebrows went halfway up his forehead.

Otto nodded his head. “He let go of my ankle and sat down and got all quiet like he was going to let me go. So I went for the safe to finish my job and he bit me in the arm. I managed to get loose and ran for the door. He actually leapt over the sofa and landed on my back and took me down. Then he let me go again. It was like he was playing some game—like he was some giant cat in a dog suit playing with a human mouse. Every exit I went for, he’d cut me off and take me down—I never knew where he was hiding. He was stalking me like some wild animal.” His voice went up in pitch as he claimed, “It was a nightmare.” He turned to the police chief. “I’m suing. That dog violated my civil rights.”

“We’ll discuss your lawsuit after you tell us what recording you were after and who hired you to steal it,” David said.

“And why did you think it was in this house?” Mac asked.

Otto said in a firm tone, “I want a deal.”

“Sure, we’ll talk about a deal,” Mac said. “We’ll all step into the kitchen to talk about what kind of deal we can offer you. You don’t mind if we leave Gnarly here to guard you, do you?”

Otto almost jumped out of his chair when Gnarly rose to his feet. “It’s a PI in Washington. I don’t know who hired him, but I know he’s got some big name clients.”

“Do you mean like senators?” Mac asked him.

“Politicians.” Otto nodded his head. “Politicians are my bread and butter.”

“How were you supposed to know which tape was the right one?” Mac asked. “Someone had to have told you what was on it.”

“I don’t know who was on it,” Otto said. “Only that it was a man and woman, and she was accusing him of raping her and telling him that he got her pregnant.”

With a toss of his head, Mac gestured for David and Cameron to follow him into the kitchen. “We know what recording he was after,” he said once they were in the kitchen.

“I don’t,” Cameron said. “What have you not told me?”

David explained, “Khloe’s mother, who passed away a few weeks ago, left a recording of a conversation she had with Senator Harry Palazzi, in which he admitted to raping her and getting her pregnant.”

“Senator Harry Palazzi?” Cameron said with a gasp. “Why am I not surprised? I always thought he was slimy.”

“At the time of the recording,” Mac pointed out, “he was a sheriff in Maryland.”

“Why is his butt not in jail?” Cameron asked David.