The Lady Who Cried Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (14 page)

After slapping the case file down onto the table, Cameron slipped off her jacket to reveal her tight shirt, which hugged her slender body, and slid into the chair across from him.

Nick looked across the table at her. Maybe it was because they were in the bright light of the interrogation room that he noticed more color on her face. The green specks in her eyes jumped out at him. The waves of her auburn hair brought out her cheekbones. The corners of his lips tugged upward at the sight of her.

“Nick,” Cameron said, “you’ve got quite a reputation with the ladies.” The corner of her lip curled.

“It’s a talent.” Nick grinned.

“Amber Houston…” She leaned forward. He could see down the front of her shirt. “That strip club was packed that night she went with her friends. What was it about her that made you pick her out of the crowd?” she asked in a breathless tone.

He gazed into her eyes. “She wanted me. She was crazy about me, and she let me know it. After the show when the club closed, all of the women would go home with their fantasies. Not Amber. She wanted me, and she stayed after to let me know that I could have her—anything I wanted, she’d let me have.” He wet his lips. “All I had to do was ask, and it was mine to have.”

“A lot of money disappeared out of her bank account before she went missing,” Cameron said. “Did it go to you? Is that what you asked for?”

He pulled back. “It isn’t what you think.”

Cameron got up out of her chair to position herself closer to him. Moving into his space, she leaned against the table. Her slender curves were so close that he could feel her heat. “Tell me what I think, Nick.”

“That I’m for sale,” Nick said. “That I can be bought like a piece of meat. That’s not what it’s like.”

She leaned in closer. “Tell me what it’s like, Nick.”

“If someone wants me…” he sighed. “If they want me on call—twenty-four-seven…it’s like how doctors and police and other professionals are on call for when they are needed, and they expect to be paid for it. Also, for someone like me—a first-class companion—then there are expenses that go into my upkeep.”

“And that is where Amber’s money went to?” Cameron asked.

“But since then, my prices have gone up,” Nick said.

“You’re moving up,” she said. “Your parents must be proud of you.”

“They think I’m a rock star,” Nick said. “They have no idea.”

“How much did Tiffany have to pay for your expenses?”

Moving in closer to her. “Not every woman has to pay for my attention.” Nick chuckled.

“What does a woman have to do to get such a premium man like you for free?”

His eyes wide, he wet his lips.

“Did Khloe have to pay for your…attention?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “Khloe and I were friends. We went way back.”

“How far back?” she asked. “Back to her staged disappearance?” She flashed him a grin that betrayed her appreciation for the publicity stunt that won Khloe a reality show deal.

His grin was wicked. “Khloe and I hooked up around the same time Amber and I were together. After Amber disappeared, I told Khloe that I knew her, and Khloe about wet her pants at all the publicity that she was getting on account of her being missing. She told me that she wished it was her—only not that she’d be dead—but alive. She said she knew how to use the fame that she would get when she came back alive and became a star. So…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “We did it.”

Cameron fought the hint of disgust that wanted to rush to her eyes. Nick was perfectly playing the role of a potential lover sharing his secrets.

“We did nothing wrong,” he said. “She didn’t call her mother to say she was kidnapped. We just set things up and let the police and media run with it. Khloe never expected her mother to go ape the way she did.”

“What did you and Khloe do while she was missing?” Cameron held up her fingers to signal quotation marks in the air.

“That part of what Khloe said was true,” Nick smiled. “We were shacked up in a motel having a grand old time.” He touched her knee. “I gave her the time of her life.”

“Did you give her the time of her life the day she died?” she asked.

The smile fell from his face.

“We know you were with her,” she said.

“No you don’t.”

“What if I told you that your DNA sample is a match for the semen we found on her body?” For the first time, she saw fear come to his face. She bent over to whisper into his ear. “I want to help you, Nick. I can’t if you don’t tell me the truth.”

“I was with her,” he said. “But it’s not like you think. We weren’t lovers.”

“Then what were you?”

“Friends with benefits.”

Cameron nodded her head. They were friends who had sex without any ties or commitments.

“We got together. Partied. Had tremendous sex—it was always tremendous between us,” he said. “And then I left. She was alive when I left.”

“And then she just so happened to get murdered,” Cameron said, “just like what happened to Amber and Tiffany.” She screwed up her face in doubt. “I’m going to have a real hard time selling that to those two.” With a roll of her eyes and a slight cock of her head, she indicated the other two investigators who were not in on the interview. Continuing with her role of good cop, she confided, “Mac Faraday, he’s ready to lock you up and throw away the key. The police chief ... well ... he’s young and trying to build up his reputation of being a tough guy.” She shook her head. “If you want me to help you, Nick, you need to give me something.”

Nick sat up. “After I left Khloe’s place, I went to a party at the Wisp. That was where I met Katelyn.”

“Who’s Katelyn?”

“The hot babe that you guys scared off,” Nick said. “We spent the rest of her vacation together, and I went back to Washington with her on Tuesday. I was with her from late Sunday afternoon through Tuesday. Khloe was alive and posting some stuff on the computer when I left.”

“If you didn’t kill Khloe,” Cameron said, “Who would have wanted to kill her? If you want us to stop looking at you, then it would be helpful if you pointed us in another direction.”

Nick stared up at her.

She gazed at him with wide eyes.

Silence stretched between them.

“He knows who did this,” Mac whispered to David in the observation room.

“He certainly does.” When his phone vibrated on his hip, David answered it without taking his eyes off Nick and Cameron. “Hello…” When he heard who it was, he turned away from the two-way mirror to concentrate on his conversation.

Willing Nick to tell them who killed the three women, and maybe even Dee Blakeley, Mac stepped up closer to the mirror.

“Khloe was going to make a public announcement in an interview on Thursday,” Cameron said when Nick did not respond. “Do you know what that was about?”

“Yeah,” Nick said in a low voice. “She told me all about it.” His eyes grew wide. “It was big. It was going to put her name and face out there again. Guaranteed.”

“What was it?” Cameron asked.

Mac could see his breath on the glass of the two-way mirror.

“I can’t,” he could hear Nick telling Cameron. His head was shaking. “It’d ruin everything.”

“Thank you. That is very helpful.” David pressed the button to disconnect the call. “That was the lab. Nick’s DNA is a match for the semen on all three women. He had sex or raped each of them right before their murders.”

“Which begs the question,” Mac replied, “did he kill them, or is he connected to the killer?”

“We certainly have enough to hold him,” David said.

The intercom buzzed, followed by Tonya’s voice informing them that Nick’s lawyer, an attorney from Washington, had arrived to take his client home.

“I’ll call Ben.” David whipped out his cell phone.

“Good,” Mac said. “I’m dying to take a closer look at his eyebrows.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Okay, so my client had sex with these three women,” Russ Burton, a young attorney from a small firm in Washington, told the prosecutor and police chief sitting on the other side of the table in the interrogation room. “Did he ever deny that?”

Ben shook his head while David said, “Yet he never volunteered it, either. All those days that Amber Houston was missing, he never came forward. Same thing when Khloe Everest was missing.”

“She was never missing,” Nick said.

“That’s right,” David said with a glare. “You two engineered her disappearance for a publicity stunt.”

“That was three years ago,” Nick said. “Get over it.”

“The fact is,” Russ said, “my client may have had a sexual relationship with the victims, but he didn’t kill them. He had no motive and you’ve got nothing to prove he committed these murders. So we’re leaving.”

Ben launched into the astronomical odds of Nick Fields being sexually involved with three women in different parts of the country and all three being murdered in the same way without him being involved, let alone not being the killer himself.

While the prosecutor was speaking, his words went into David’s ears and turned into muted sounds while the police chief eyed the defense attorney across the table. Sitting next to the young man whose livelihood was living off of women, it was clear that the defense lawyer was at least half a foot taller. His shoulders and chest spread out beyond the ends of the back of the chair. The muscles in his forearms bulged out against the fabric of his suit coat.

David remembered being struck by the strength in his grip when they shook hands when he had first arrived. Pretty strong grip for a legal weenie.

Glancing quickly at Ben Fleming for comparison, David noted the athletically slender prosecutor, who could be found playing tennis or golf or even working out at the club at least three times a week. Ben enjoyed his sports.

The defense attorney wasn’t into sports as much as he was into working out and building up his muscles—like a soldier or police officer whose work depended on him always being in top physical condition.

Noting Russ’s closely cropped hair, David surmised that it was a military haircut. Maybe he had been enlisted before going to law school and never shook it. He was jarred out of his thoughts when Russ Burton stood up.

“We’re going, Nick,” he told his client.

“I’m afraid Nick isn’t going anywhere.” Ben sat back with a smirk. “We’re charging him.”

“And I’ll get the charges dismissed like that.” Russ snapped his fingers.

“I don’t think so, considering that we have a confession.”

“I confessed to nothing,” Nick turned to his lawyer. “I didn’t say nothing.”

“Actually, we have you on tape admitting to it twice,” David said.

Seeing their confused expressions, Ben said, “We’re charging your client with obstruction of justice in Khloe Everest’s phony disappearance. The statute of limitation is five years, so we’re well within our limits, and your client admitted during our interrogation to helping Khloe stage it. One of those confessions was right here with you present. If found guilty, he could spend five years in prison.”

“I’m sure we’ll have no trouble finding that little dive hotel he and Khloe hid out at while we were wasting our manpower and resources looking for her.” David took his handcuffs out of their case. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

“Not to mention his participation when she lied again about it on national television,” Ben said. “That’s the problem with lying. There’s no telling when that lie is going to come back to bite you in the butt.”

“They can’t do this,” Nick yelled.

“Oh, yes we can,” Ben said. “And we will.”

“Who do you think did it?” Chelsea asked Archie after hearing about the day’s events during the short drive from Ben Fleming’s office to Spencer Manor.

“It changes on the hour,” Archie said with a sigh while pulling her SUV in through the stone pillars of Spencer Manor.

“I hope this case doesn’t mean David can’t help me move,” she said.

In the backseat, Molly stood up and pressed her snout against the window. She was anxious to see her best friend, Gnarly.

“David will do everything he can to be available to help you.” After turning off the car’s engine, Archie grinned at the blush that came to Chelsea’s cheeks while thinking about David. The mention of David’s name made her ivory cheeks turn bright pink. “Even if he can’t, I’m here.”

“I guess this is something that you have to get used to when involved with a police chief or detective.”

“Are we involved now?” Archie asked. “Something changed. I thought you were only friends because you don’t need a man.”

Chelsea leveled her gaze across the front seat to Archie. “You knew Cameron was a homicide detective and that they were working together. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I thought it would help you to come to terms with how you really feel about David.”

Chelsea let out a deep breath. “Well, it worked, damn it.”

“Loving someone is not a weakness.” Archie unclicked her seatbelt and threw open the door. “Come on. Mac is driving back to Potomac, Maryland, to search Fields’ house. David is working with Ben. How about a girls’ night? We’ll have chocolate mousse for dessert.”

“Works for me.” Chelsea opened the rear door to let Molly out. The shepherd took her spot at her mistress’ side.

Archie came around the SUV and wrapped her arm around Chelsea’s shoulders. “I am so glad you and David are working things out. It’s like having a sister. I never had a sister.”

“Neither have I.”

The two women and the dog made their way up the steps and went through the front door.

As soon as they stepped inside, Archie sensed that something was off. Instead of running to greet her with his paws on her shoulders and a wet kiss on her face, Gnarly was sitting up on the living room sofa. Irving, Cameron’s huge Maine Coon cat, was sitting next to him. Both seemed to be sitting at attention. Their faces were emotionless.

Sensing that something was terribly wrong, Molly hid behind Chelsea instead of running to greet Gnarly.

“Something’s not right here,” Archie said in a low voice. “Gnarly, what did you do?”

Gnarly’s head dropped. His ears fell back against the top of his head. Uttering a low whine, he dropped down onto the sofa.

Irving looked over at him and uttered a growl. As the cat’s growl grew in volume, it seemed to take on the sound of a word: traitor.

Gnarly slinked off the sofa and crawled back behind a chair in the corner of the living room.

Chelsea searched the floor for a mess in addition to the one made by the burglar the night before. After all, they had both been inside all day. She could find nothing.

Suspicious, Archie hurried back into the kitchen. As soon as she entered, her scream filled the house. Its volume and tone was filled with fury like none that Chelsea had heard come from the mild-mannered editor.

When Chelsea rounded the corner to come into the kitchen, she was unable to express her disbelief in words. The refrigerator door rested open, and the food was spilled across the floor. Every cupboard door was open. Even the shelves up near the ceiling were empty of their food, which comingled with the food from the fridge on the floor. Out of Gnarly’s reach, Irving had managed to somehow climb up to open the doors and make his way inside.

“I just cleaned all of this up this morning after that burglar trashed the place!” Archie wailed. “Augh! Gnarly! I’m going to kill you!”

“How did they do this?” Chelsea asked. “Maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe another burglar broke in.”

“No, it was them,” Archie said. “They conspired and pulled off this heist together.” She picked up the treat jar in which she kept Gnarly’s treats. “Exhibit A. This was stashed in the cupboard. It was full yesterday. It is empty now.”

As if on cue, they heard Gnarly throw up on the other side of the kitchen door.

“Ugh!” Archie whirled around. “Gnarly, I’m going to kill you—and that goes for your feline partner in crime, too.”

“Listen, my client did not kill those women,” Russ Burton told Ben and David after Nick was locked up in the holding cell in the basement of the police station.

“He’s not under arrest for killing those women,” Ben said.

“I heard you,” Russ said. “He’s under arrest for a publicity stunt he pulled three years ago. We both know what this is about. You’re putting pressure on him to make him tell you what he knows.”

“If he tells us what he knows, it may help us to be more sympathetic towards him in the obstruction of justice case,” Ben said.

“If he didn’t kill those women,” David said, “then he knows who did. We want a name and the motive for doing it.”

Russ stood up straight. He was a good couple of inches taller than David. His chest bulged against the front of his suit. “’Okay. I’ll go talk to him in his cell and see what he says.” He turned and went to the door leading down to the cells.

Bogie came out of his office. “Fields’ alibi is a little less than airtight.”

“How’s that?” Ben asked.

“This Katelyn says she did hook up with Nick at the Wisp maybe around four o’clock. She’s not sure. Definitely before five. However, according to Dora, Khloe could have been dead before then. She was killed less than an hour after having sex with Nick.”

“Dora?” Ben asked.

“Doc,” Bogie corrected himself.

“The last posting that Khloe made on her social media sites was at four o’clock,” David said. “Her laptop was right there in the room. Nick could have killed her and done the hatchet job and then posted that on Khloe’s Facebook page from her laptop right before leaving the house. The Everest home is only twenty minutes from the Wisp. So he would have been at the Wisp to hook up with Katelyn between four and five.”

“Yeah,” Bogie said, “but the dismemberment took time. With all those stab wounds, the killer would have been covered in blood. Doing it in less than an hour and being at a happy hour the next mountain over is cutting it close.”

“I wish Doc could give us a closer timeframe for the murder,” David said. “All we know is that Khloe was killed very shortly after she had sex with Nick.” He shook his head. “I think he knows who did it, but I don’t think he killed those women.”

“Let’s hope Burton can convince Nick to cooperate with us,” Ben said.

“Maybe Mac and Cameron can find something in his house to persuade him that it would be in his best interest to do so,” David said.

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Mac and Cameron were driving across the state of Maryland. This time, Cameron was driving her police cruiser with Mac in the passenger seat.

With a broad smile across his face, Mac disconnected his phone call from David. “They’ve got the search warrant.”

“Yes,” Cameron said. “We’re getting very close. I can feel it.”

“Nick’s alibi checked out for Khloe’s murder,” he added, “but it’s not necessarily airtight.”

“Do you think he did it?”

“He definitely knows something,” Mac mused. “I think he knows who did it, but he’s protecting them. We need to go talk to Sheila McGrath, the widow who’s keeping him.”

“But first, we search Nick’s house.” She swung the cruiser around the end of the cul-de-sac and pulled into the driveway of the yellow house.

The neighbor and her children were outside building a snow fort. Seeing Cameron and Mac climbing out of the cruiser, Sandy waved across the yard at them. “My, you police are certainly busy here today.”

“Now we’re here to search the house,” Cameron strolled across the snow-covered yard in the direction of the fort. She stopped when she saw a look of befuddlement fill Sandy’s face.

“Again?”

On his way to the front door, Mac stopped when he heard her say that.

“We didn’t search it before,” Cameron said. “We only took Mr. Fields in for questioning. Now we have a warrant—”

“But the FBI was just here,” Sandy said. “They were searching the house, too. They had FBI written across the back of their coats. They didn’t tell me what they were looking for, but I think they found whatever it was because they all left about an hour ago.”

“Cameron,” Mac said, “get descriptions of these guys while I go look.”

Inside, the house showed every sign of being searched. Drawers were pulled out and the contents dumped. Furniture was overturned and the cushions ripped open. Mac yanked out his phone to call David.

“Did you find anything?” David asked.

“Someone else was here first.” Mac went into the kitchen. “They were posing as the FBI, and this place is thoroughly searched.” A plastic bag with used duct tape rested on the counter. Remnants of cabinet varnish were attached to the sticky side of the tape. Mac bent over to peer at the underside of the top cabinet. “I think they found it. It must have been the tape.”

“Nick had a copy of the tape and blackmailed the senator after Khloe was killed,” David said.

“Now that they have the tape, he has no leverage to stay alive,” Mac said. “They have to kill him to keep him from telling what he knows about the senator being a sexual predator.”

Looking around for another place to search, Mac yanked open the freezer door and peered inside. It was filled with boxes of frozen dinners. A freezer bag was tucked in one of the shelves built into the door. It was filled with three items that resembled frozen fleshy tulips.

“Mac, are you still there?” David called to him.

“Give me a minute.” Mac pulled out the bag and held it up. He peered through the frost and ice to distinguish what it was he was looking at. “David, do you know what a uterus looks like?”

In his corner office at the police station, David hung up the phone.

There were possibly three uteruses in Nick Fields’ freezer. Does that make him our killer? His alibi isn’t airtight. Maybe he’s not the killer, but he’s certainly involved. Maybe it’s his hostile wife. In either case, Nick Fields is in trouble up to his pierced ears.

Mac knows what he’s talking about. He’s gone up against Senator Palazzi before. Yes, Palazzi would send his cleanup team to get rid of Nick, which was why he was safe as a baby in his holding cell.