The Lady Who Cried Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (15 page)

Russ Burton’s muscles flashed before his eyes. Not your average lawyer.

David’s heartbeat kicked up until he could hear it in his ears. Urgency propelled him out of his chair behind his desk and out the door. “Where’s Burton?” He yelled down to Tonya while galloping down the steps.

“Who?” she asked.

“Russ Burton. Fields’ lawyer,” David called back to her while on a dead run to the stairs leading down to the cells.

“He left forty-five minutes ago,” Tonya answered, but the police chief was already out of earshot.

The stairs came out to the Spencer officer on duty to guard the prisoners in the cells. Otto the cat burglar had already been arraigned and transferred to Virginia to face charges on the burglary at the bank in Williamsburg. The only prisoner left to guard was Nick Fields.

“I want to see Fields.” David moved over to the door between the guard and the cells.

“Sure, Chief.” The officer unlocked the door and slid it aside for David to go on through. “What’s wrong?”

Without answering, David entered the cellblock area. The small police station had only four cells. Nick Fields had been placed in the furthest cell on the right. “Fields, get up!” David called to him when he came within sight of the cell and saw the young man under his blanket on his cot. “I want to talk to you!”

Nick Fields did not move.

David’s heartbeat was so loud that it seemed to pound against his eardrums. “Let me in there.”

“Maybe it’s a trick,” the officer said. “He’s pretending to be sick or—

“Open it up!”

The officer unlocked the door, slid it open, and pulled out his gun just in case. David rushed in and over to the bed. He threw back the blanket. Nick Fields was on his stomach. With one movement, David grabbed his shoulder and yanked him over onto his back to reveal his dead eyes staring up at him.

So much for being safe as a baby in a holding cell.

Chapter Fifteen

Driving up the beltway to the exit for Sheila McGrath’s home address, Cameron almost swerved into the next lane and collided with a van in her blind spot when David announced Nick Fields’ death from the speaker on Mac’s phone.

“How was he killed in his cell in your police station?” Mac asked.

“The only one who was in there with him was his so-called lawyer,” David said.

“So-called?” Cameron repeated. “Then he’s not a lawyer?”

“What’s the cause of death?” Mac asked.

“Doc isn’t here yet,” David said. “But from what I can see, I think his neck was snapped. The killer must have placed him in the bed to give him time to get away before we noticed and realized this guy was really a hired gun sent to kill Nick for blackmailing the senator. Tonya went onto the Internet to look up Attorney Russell Burton with this law firm in Washington. The real Russell Burton is at least twenty years older than the guy who showed up here.”

Mac and Cameron heard a movement in the background.

“Doc’s here,” David said. “I’ve got to go. Let’s hope the state police forensics team finds something else inside that house to tell us what’s going on. Tell me what you find out from Nick’s sugar momma.”

Before they could say good-bye, David disconnected the call.

“From what we know, she wasn’t involved,” Cameron said.

“If she has enough money to support Nick in the lifestyle to which he wished to become accustomed,” Mac said, “who’s to say she doesn’t have enough juice to have him exterminated.”

“True,” Cameron said. “We’re making a lot of assumptions in this case. I mean, do you have any evidence to prove what Khloe’s big announcement was going to be?”

“She knew that Senator Palazzi was her birth father,” Mac said. “We have a text she sent Bevis saying that she was his sister. How could she tell him that without proof?”

“DNA,” Cameron said.

“But where did she get the first suspicion that she was—after her mother’s death?” Mac asked. “On the tape, Khloe’s mother said she had more than one copy. If anything happened to her, one would be made public. We know one copy went to her lawyer. She must have had the second copy somewhere in that house, and Khloe must have found it. Since she had been disowned, she decided to cash in her insurance policy with Daddy.”

“Nick said he knew what she was going to announce,” Cameron said. “Maybe Khloe gave the tape to him for safekeeping—”

Mac shook his head. “That house had been searched. I think Nick found out that she had been murdered and, before her body was discovered, went there to find the tape to use for his own gain.”

“He certainly was an opportunist.”

“We know that,” Mac said. “Only an extreme opportunist would pretend to be gay for money and fame.”

Seeing that Cameron was pulling into the parking lot next to a nursing home, Mac sat up in his seat. Cameron was equally curious.

“Did you put the right address in the GPS?” Mac asked her.

She was already double-checking the address. “This is it. Maybe Sheila works here.”

They climbed out of the cruiser and made their way in through the main entrance. Mac tapped on the glass at the reception desk and presented his badge showing that he was a detective with the Spencer Police department. “Excuse me, we’re looking for Sheila McGrath.”

The receptionist stared at the badge and then at Mac. From him, her eyes fell on Cameron, who was also showing her police shield. “You’re the police?”

“Yes,” Mac replied. “Does Sheila McGrath work here?”

This question prompted the receptionist’s eyes to grow even bigger. “I better get Mrs. Phillips, the administrator.” She scurried out from behind the desk and trotted down the hallway.

“That was weird,” Cameron said.

“Everything about this case is weird.” A grin crossed his face. “I love it, don’t you?”

“That’s why I do what I do.”

“Excuse me,” a big-boned older woman who resembled a prison warden strode down the hall toward them. The receptionist was directly behind her. “I’m Mrs. Phillips, the nursing home administrator. I understand you’re asking about Sheila McGrath.” She folded her arms across her abundant bosom. “What is this about?”

Mac and Cameron showed their badges, which Mrs. Phillips took her time examining. When she saw that Cameron was with the Pennsylvania state police, her eyes narrowed. “What interest does the Pennsylvania police have in Mrs. McGrath?”

“We believe that she may have some information regarding the murders of three young women,” Cameron said. “One in Pennsylvania, another recent murder in Spencer, Maryland, plus there was a murder twenty months ago in Los Angeles, California.”

Mrs. Phillips’ eyebrows furrow. “You say a recent murder in…”

“Spencer, Maryland,” Mac said. “It is very important that we speak to Mrs. McGrath. This doesn’t mean that she’s involved, but she may have—”

“I guarantee she’s not involved,” Mrs. Phillips said in a sharp tone.

“With all due respect,” Cameron said, “how well do you know Mrs. McGrath? Do you really know what she does when she leaves here?”

The corners of Mrs. Phillips’s mouth curled. For the first time during their conversation, she looked amused. “I think I’d better take you to Mrs. McGrath and let you ask her that yourself.”

Without another word, she spun around on her heels and walked down the hallway at a pace so brisk that Mac and Cameron had to practically jog to keep up with her. They made two turns to go down corridors before the administrator pushed through a door to a resident’s room and threw out her arm like a master of ceremony introducing the headline act. “Here is Sheila McGrath.”

Mac and Cameron followed her into the room and stopped abruptly at the sight of a bed with the figure of a woman lying on it. An oxygen tube was up her nose, as well as a feeding tube and every other type of machine possible. The room was filled with the noises of beeps and hisses.

“Mrs. Sheila McGrath has been here for close to four years,” Mrs. Phillips announced, “ever since she sustained massive brain injuries in the car accident that killed her husband. It would have been a blessing if she had died alongside him. She’s been on life support ever since. So if you’re thinking she killed three young women, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Mac and Cameron exchanged glances.

“Does Mrs. McGrath have any living relatives?” Mac asked. “Anyone who could be using her identity?”

“A woman with a bad attitude maybe,” Cameron said, “and humongous breasts.”

“Mrs. McGrath has no living relatives,” Mrs. Phillips said.

“This is a private nursing home,” Mac said. “It’s expensive. Who’s paying her bills?”

“Her estate.” She turned to Cameron. “Her account is handled by her estate attorney, Teresa Winston. She’s the senior partner at Winston and Associates in Rockville.”

“A woman,” Cameron hissed at Mac.

“Do you have her phone number?” When the administrator’s expression betrayed disgust, Mac added, “It’s apparent that someone has stolen Mrs. McGrath’s identity and is possibly stealing from her estate. I think Ms. Winston would want to know about that as soon as possible.”

With the same brisk pace, Mrs. Phillips took them back to her office and dug through the giant stack of files on her desk until she found the one she was looking for. Rather than give the number to Mac or Cameron, she dialed the number on her phone and asked for Teresa Winston. After a long pause during which she stared out the window and refused to make polite conversation, she greeted the lawyer. “We have a couple of detectives here asking about Sheila McGrath. They seem to think some killer has stolen her identity. Now I told them that you’re the most reputable lawyer in the area, but they claim to have some evidence to say otherwise.” She thrust the phone out to Mac. “Ms. Winston wants to talk to you.”

With a deep sigh, Mac took the phone.

“This is Teresa Winston,” the gruff voice that sounded more like a man than a woman said from the other end of the phone line. “Who is this?”

“Mac Faraday,” he replied.

There was silence from the other end of the line. “Faraday? As in…are you the same Mac Faraday—”

“That would be me.”

The impatience in Ms. Winston’s tone disappeared. “What evidence would you have to suggest that Sheila McGrath’s identity has been stolen?”

“Well,” Mac drawled, “considering her current condition, I guess she would have no need for a luxury home in Potomac, Maryland, or to purchase a red jaguar and a black Ferrari, both registered to her. Both of those purchases have been made in the last eighteen months. We also have evidence of her taking numerous trips during the last three years.”

“Don’t forget the lip implants,” Cameron said in a harsh whisper.

“This wasn’t done by my firm,” the lawyer said. “You know how rampant identity theft is. It had to have been stolen by the Chinese who somehow got access to her name and social security number, or maybe one of the employees at the nursing home—”

“Now wait here, Ms. Winston,” Mrs. Phillips said.

Mac held up his hand to shush the administrator. “So you haven’t seen any large sums of money suddenly disappear from her account, or weird bills come—?”

“Like for liposuction?” Cameron asked. “Why would a woman in a coma need liposuction?”

“I’m sure the attorney handling her estate would have brought any regularities in her account to my attention,” the lawyer said.

“Do you mean you’re not personally handling Mrs. McGrath’s finances?” Mac asked.

“I am a senior partner,” she answered. “We’re talking about a monthly routine of paying bills, handling investments—I’m more concerned with bigger cases than this. So I handed it off to one of my junior partners—a very capable young attorney. Bevis Palazzi. His father is Harry Palazzi, the senator. Why wouldn’t I trust him?”

Cameron saw Mac staring straight ahead with a glazed look in his eyes when they climbed back into her cruiser. “I know that look,” she said. “Josh gets the same look when he gets to a certain point in his cases.”

Mac was still staring.

“It goes without saying,” she went on, “that Teresa Winston is going to go into Bevis’ office and demand to see Sheila McGrath’s account. Now, she could do something about it and nail Bevis, or she could cover it up. What do you think she’ll do?”

“In either case, Bevis will know we’re on to him and cover it up before we can say ‘embezzler,’” Mac said. “Who stole Sheila McGrath’s identity to play house with Nick Fields?”

“I still think it’s Teresa Winston,” Cameron said. “We only have her word that she knew nothing about it. As the senior partner, she had access to everything, plus the power to make Bevis keep quiet about it. He probably even demanded a percentage for his silence.”

“Tell me again what that neighbor said about Nick’s wife,” Mac said.

“Nastier than a junkyard dog,” Cameron said. “Somehow Sandy offended her from the get go. She was jealous—like she was afraid of the lady stealing Nick from her.”

“She hated her.”

“According to Sandy, it was like for no reason.” She asked him, “What are you thinking?”

Mac strapped on his seat belt. “Take me back there. I want to talk to her myself.” He took his cell phone out of its case.

“She doesn’t know her name.” Cameron started the car engine.

“That’s okay. She can still tell us who she is.” Mac pressed the button to call Archie.

Chapter Sixteen

“You’re right,” Dr. Washington told David, “his neck was snapped.” Kneeling next to Nick Fields’ body stretched across the bed in the holding cell, she pointed to the bruising around the back of his neck. “Whoever did it knew exactly what he was doing. We have bruising on the jaw where the killer grabbed it in his hand and jerked his head all the way around until he snapped it like a twig. Happened so fast, Fields probably didn’t know what hit him.”

“They teach that in the military.” Bogie peered at the wound from over her shoulder.

The officer who had been guarding the cells looked like he was going to be sick. “Chief, I am so sorry,” he said for the dozenth time.

“It’s not your fault, Brewster.” David patted the officer on the shoulder.

“Hon, can you hand me my camera from my bag over there?”

David jerked around to watch Bogie reaching into the medical examiner’s bag to take out her camera. He caught the smile Bogie gave her when her hand touched his when she took it.
Interesting. Way to go, big guy.

“I didn’t hear a sound,” Brewster recalled. “Not a peep. You’d think—“

“Cause he was a pro.” Unable to look at Nick’s dead body—in his jail cell—anymore, David turned around. “I need air.”

He was up the stairs and in the squad room before Bogie caught up with him. He had to grab him by the arm to get his attention. “You okay?”

“No.” Fighting to keep from punching the wall, David paced in place. “This happened in our house, during our watch. Palazzi is behind this—you know that. Fields had gotten his hands on Khloe’s copy of that recording and was blackmailing him—”

“How did Palazzi know we picked Fields up?” Bogie asked. “Bevis was here when you brought in Fields, but he was in the interrogation room. He never saw him, and no one said a peep to him.”

“Somehow the senator found out.” David shook his head. “Fields’ phone call. When we picked up Fields he called his lawyer—”

“Who ended up being a killer,” Bogie said.

“Fields’ phone is with his personal effects,” David said. “Let’s check the call log to see exactly who he called.”

The state forensics team was clearing out when Mac and Cameron arrived back at Nick Fields’ house.

“Find anything else?” Mac stepped over to the van to ask the chief investigator.

“We did identify those frozen body parts as women’s uteruses,” he responded.

Mac rubbed his hands together to warm them up. The sun had set and the temperature was down below freezing. “DNA should match them up with our three victims, which will connect them to someone in this house.”

“We did find something else that might help you,” the officer said. “When we were lifting the Ferrari onto the tow truck to take down to the lab to search, we found a GPS tracker clipped inside the wheel well. Based on the amount of mud, we think it’s been there a while.”

“Someone was tracking Nick Fields,” Mac said. “That was his car, or rather, the car he drove. Is there some way to trace the GPS?”

“We can trace the serial number to the store where it was bought and possibly match it up with a receipt if it was purchased with a credit card.”

Doubting that anyone connected to covering up for the senator would be careless enough to use a credit card for the tracing device, Mac jogged up the walk to the house next door where Cameron was already explaining their return visit to Sandy and her husband.

“I tell you,” Sandy said while shaking Mac’s hand, “I’ve seen more police today than I have in my whole life.” Impressed by her sudden importance, she left her kitchen to be cleaned up later and invited Cameron and Mac into their living room.

“I always did get a weird feeling about that couple.” Her husband sat next to her on the loveseat. “That wife would launch into Sandy, but never when I was around to defend her. Classic sign of a bully, if you ask me.”

“We’re concerned about her extreme jealousy,” Cameron said.

“Like that maybe she would come after me.” Sandy clutched her husband’s hand.

“Right now,” Mac said, “we want to find her. Now you gave a description of her to Detective Gates here. I had an artist come up with a composite picture of her.” He brought up the picture on his smart phone and handed it to Sandy. “Is this the woman that you saw living next door?”

Sandy only had to look at it for a second before she nodded her head. After showing it to her husband, he confirmed her identification. “Yes, that’s her.” She handed the phone back to Mac. “Do you know her name?”

Mac showed the picture to Cameron. “We do now.”

Cameron waited until they were outside walking to her cruiser before she asked. “Who is that in that picture you showed her?”

“Bevis Palazzi wearing a wig.” Mac climbed into the cruiser. “I asked Archie to do a trick with Photoshop.”

Cameron fought to regain her voice before climbing into the driver’s seat. “Are you serious? You mean he’s—how did you know?”

“The first clue was his plucked eyebrows,” Mac said. “David tried explaining that it’s not unusual for men in important positions to have their eyebrows cleaned up—”

“Josh doesn’t pluck his eyebrows.”

“Bevis goes beyond cleaning up,” Mac said. “He plucks his eyebrows so that they look like a woman’s. Then, while Ben and David were questioning him, he kept going back to Archie provoking him. He couldn’t let that go.”

“Because he hates women,” Cameron said.

“Probably learned from his father,” Mac said. “Toss that in with a liberal dosage of jealousy—” He sat up straight in his seat. “I bet you I know when Khloe signed her death warrant.”

“When?”

“One of my employees at the Spencer Inn used to be friends with Khloe,” Mac said. “She stayed friends with Khloe’s mother. When Khloe came back to Spencer, she started going to the inn and running up charges on her dead mother’s account. Lily called her on it, and Khloe was told that she needed to pay cash or put it on a credit card—not in her mother’s name. Well, Khloe was with Nick at the time, and he whipped out a card with the name of Sheila—probably McGrath—on it. Not trusting them, the inn ran a check on the card and found that it was good—at which point the two went to town on it.”

“And since Bevis was in charge of Sheila McGrath’s estate,” Cameron said, “those bills came to him—so he could see that Nick was fooling around with someone else—that someone else being a woman.”

“I’m willing to bet that was when the GPS was attached to Nick’s car, so that Bevis could keep tabs on him.” Mac sat back in his seat. “That gives Bevis two motives to kill Khloe. To protect his father’s reputation, on whose shirttails he plans to ride into political office, and jealousy, because Khloe was sleeping with his man. As much as he hates women, I think killing Khloe came easy for him.”

Cameron stopped with her hands on the keys in the ignition and frowned.

Seeing that she wasn’t turning on the cruiser for them to leave, Mac asked, “What’s wrong?”

“We’ve connected Bevis to Nick, which connects him to Khloe and Tiffany Blanchard,” she said. “But we can’t prove any connection between Bevis and Amber Houston, my case.”

“When you were questioning Nick, he said that he was seeing both Amber and Khloe at the same time,” Mac said. “Bevis was a theater groupie, hanging out with Khloe and her theater friends. He had to have met Nick through her during that time period.”

“Had to have met,” she repeated. “A defense attorney can turn that into reasonable doubt in a jiffy, Mac. Bevis could have met Nick for the first time when he was visiting Khloe in Hollywood. We need to know when Bevis first meet Nick and became obsessed with him.”

He was already listening to the ring on the other end of the line on his cell phone.

“Who are you calling?” she asked.

“I’m going to get a stronger connection for us,” Mac told her before turning his attention to the voice that answered the phone. “Hello, Lily. It’s Mac Faraday.”

“Mr. Faraday, how are you?” There was a note of fear Lily Carter’s voice.

Mac recalled that the last time Khloe’s ex-best-friend had seen him, he had Senator Palazzi by the front of his shirt. “Lily, I don’t have a lot of time to talk about this. You do know that Senator Harry Palazzi had raped Khloe’s mother. He was her father.”

Silence came from the other end of the line before Lily replied in a low voice, “Yes. My mother had told me. She and Florence were best friends. Khloe never knew, at least while her mother was alive. Florence really freaked when Khloe and Bevis started hanging out together, not that Khloe slept with him or anything like that. But I guess that thought crossed her mind.”

“I suspected you knew the truth about why Florence reacted the way she did when Khloe lied about being abducted,” Mac said. “Now, Lily, this is important. Khloe’s twenty-first birthday. According to something she had said on her show—”

“I never watched her stupid show.” Judging by the annoyance in her tone, Lily was insulted by the suggestion that she would have followed Khloe’s career on television.

“That’s okay,” Mac said. “On her show, Khloe said that she had met Nick Fields, that friend that she brought to the inn, when he was singing in a rock band at a club that she and her friends went to on her twenty-first birthday. Were you there that night?”

Again, there was a moment of silence from the other end of the line before Lily said, “Yes, I was there.” Excitement came to her voice. “I didn’t remember him because he didn’t strike me as being that great, but Khloe was really into him and swore that she was going to sleep with him. I remember us making a bet. A hundred dollars on whether or not she could seduce him. I lost.”

Mac grinned at Cameron while asking Lily, “Was Bevis Palazzi with you that night?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact he was,” she answered with a laugh. “Khloe invited him because she knew he’d pick up the tab, which he did. He paid for everything.”

“Did he take any special notice of Nick Fields?”

“Well,” Lily said with a drawl, “since you mention it, Bevis kept talking about how talented the band was. He even predicted that the lead singer, with the right financial backing, could be as big as David Bowie.” Her voice sped up as the memory came racing back. “I remember now. Bevis was going on and on about how much money you can make by promoting rock singers and by the end of the evening, he said he was going to back this lead singer. After that show, Bevis went back stage with Khloe to meet him. Was that the same guy that Khloe had brought to the inn? Did he kill her?”

Cameron’s and Mac’s eyes met.

Having confirmed a connection between Bevis and Nick Fields before Amber Houston’s murder, a smile crept to Cameron’s lips as she turned on the cruiser to go find their killer.

“Hey, Chief…” Tonya led Archie and Chelsea into the squad room. She stepped into the doorway to Bogie’s office where David and the deputy chief were examining Nick’s phone. “You’ve got visitors bearing big boxes of food for everyone. Should I send them away?”

The mention of food reminded David that he hadn’t eaten lunch and that it was closing in on ten o’clock at night. Without answering, he stepped into the squad room where Chelsea and Archie were emptying their packages.

Gnarly jumped up onto the sofa to make himself at home while Molly sat next to her mistress. In spite of the smell of food, Molly showed no interest in getting anything. However, Gnarly held his head high and sniffed at everything. Both women had big boxes with take-out containers filled with dinners from the Spencer Inn.

“When Chef Iman heard that all of you were working late, he insisted on sending dinners from the Spencer Inn,” Chelsea said, “on the house.”

Archie was glimpsing inside the containers to see what each held. “We have steaks, pork chops, and chicken. Iman went through his mental inventory of what each of you usually order and tried to match the meals up.” Seeing a chicken dinner, she turned to hand it to Tonya. “Chicken à la Spencer.”

Chelsea handed David a box. “Rack of lamb with a loaded baked potato.” She reached up to kiss him when he took it. “Don’t forget your salad.” She pointed to another box containing tossed salads. “And we have fresh rolls, too. They put them in hot out of the oven.”

“I love this job.” Tonya cut into her chicken dinner at her desk.

“Doc, I believe we have a salmon dinner with your name on it,” Archie said.

“How did Iman know I was here?” the medical examiner asked.

“We told him that there was a dead body in the building,” Archie replied.

Doc Washington pulled a chair over to Bogie’s desk in his office to eat next to him. When he saw her move in, Bogie sat up straight and peered out the door to make sure no one noticed her in his office, which Archie and Tonya had.

The delicious food took their minds off the brutal murder in the cells directly beneath their feet. Even Brewster, the officer who was responsible for Nick Fields, was enjoying his pork chops with a brown sauce and rice pilaf.

“Well,” Chelsea asked after they were all settled down, “do you know who your killer is?”

“Fields’ lawyer,” David said. “But he was working for someone. We need to find him and connect him to whoever hired him. He used the name of a real lawyer to get in here.” He looked across the squad room to where Archie was breaking a roll into bite-sized pieces and feeding it to Gnarly. “Archie, can you access your face recognition software to get a name for this guy? I’m almost certain he’s got a military background. He should be in the database.”

“I can get to it from Bogie’s desktop.” After giving Gnarly the rest of the roll, she stood up from where she was sitting next to him on the sofa. “But I do need his picture.”

Hearing that she was going to need his computer, Bogie picked up his plate and moved from his desk. “We scoured through our security pictures. He was pretty camera savvy, but we managed to get one of him getting out of his car in the parking lot. We also got the license plate number.” Bogie and Doc moved out of his office to allow Archie to go to work at his desk.

“The car ended up being a rental,” Tonya said. “And the name used was Russell Burton, the phony name he used when he showed up here.”