The Lady Who Cried Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (8 page)

“Suppose what you said is true?” Samuel Brooks said for the benefit of the media present. “Mind you, this is just speculation. Suppose Khloe Everest did find the recording and wanted to make a deal for her silence? What makes you think we didn’t come to an agreement?”

“Because she started shopping around to make an announcement,” Mac said.

“Do you know for a fact that she was going to reveal the recording?” Brooks asked. “Did it ever occur to you that we came to an agreement and it was some other news that she was going to announce?”

“What other type of news?” Mac asked.

Seeing Jeff Ingles, the Spencer Inn’s manager, and Hector Langford, the inn’s chief of security, the senator said in a loud voice, “It’s about time. What type of place is this that you let anybody in?”

“What do you mean?” Jeff asked.

“This man is harassing me!” the senator yelled while pointing a finger at Mac. “He’s spreading vicious lies about me in a campaign to ruin my reputation.”

Many of the guests gasped and stepped back.

“He has been harassing me for years, accusing me of crimes I didn’t commit, which I was never even charged for, and now he has crashed this private event in order to unfairly accuse me in a conspiracy to damage my reputation. I demand that he be thrown out of the Spencer Inn and he be barred from ever coming back.”

Jeff Ingle’s already pale face grew paler.

Hector Langford, a bald-headed Australian, laughed out loud.

“This is not funny!” the senator shouted at the chief of security.

“I suggest you do as the senator says,” Samuel Brooks told them. “He’s worked hard serving the people of this state. All he asks is that he gets the respect he deserves without being accosted by the riffraff. You would think that your inn security would be aware of that.”

“What did you call Mr. Faraday?” Jeff mopped his face with his handkerchief.

“He called me riffraff,” Mac said while leaning against the bar. He signaled to the bartender for a second drink. The poor young man’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head.

Not seeing any movement on the part of hotel security, the senator raged, “Why aren’t you doing what I told you? Are you people deaf, or just dumb?”

“There’s a small problem with trying to throw this man out of the Spencer Inn.” Hector held up his finger and thumb to show a small amount.

“What problem is that?”

“It’s my inn.” Mac grinned at the sight of the senator’s face growing redder than before. “That means they can’t throw my riffraff butt out, but I can certainly throw your lying butt out—even if you are the guest of honor at this event. Sure, your people will be upset about all the money they have paid the inn, but I’ll be happy to cut a check to cover the money they have lost. It will be worth it to me to see you tossed out with the rest of the garbage.”

There was an audible gasp from the guests crowded in the ballroom. At a table in the corner, Catherine Davenport Fleming was enjoying the scene so much that her laughter bounced off the walls.

“H-how?” Samuel Brooks asked.

Jeff explained, “Robin Spencer, the famous novelist who owned the inn, left it to her son, who is Mac Faraday.”

“Mr. Faraday,” Hector asked, “is the senator bothering you? Would you like me to throw him out with the garbage?”

Mac leveled his gaze on the senator. “I may not be a senator, but I certainly have the power to have you tossed out of this inn in front of all these people.”

“Robin Spencer?” Senator Palazzi ran his finger across his plump lips. A wicked grin came to his face. “I should have known the first minute I met you that you were of some relation to that rude stuck-up bitch. Thought she was too good for me—me!”

Samuel Brooks grabbed his client by the shoulders. “Senator! Calm down! Don’t say anything more. Let’s just leave.”

The senator jabbed his thumb into his own chest. “What I wouldn’t have given for an opportunity to give her a taste of what being with a real man was like by giving her a proper attitude adjustment.” He made a gesture of a backhanded slap.

“The senator is naturally upset!” His lawyer tried to block the view of the cameras. “Stop recording—now!”

Mac grabbed the senator by the front of his shirt with both hands. He felt his fingers dig into the senator’s flabby chest. While journalists closed in to get a closer view, Ben and Hector jumped in to pry Mac off him while the senator laughed.

Jeff Ingles fainted.

“I’m going to get you for what you did to Dee and Florence and all the other women you’ve been allowed to abuse at will all of these years,” Mac said in a low voice. “You’re going to pay for it. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to make you pay.”

“She wanted it!” the senator laughed while his lawyer pulled him away. “She would have loved it!”

“We need to leave, Senator,” Samuel Brooks said. “Now! Don’t say another word.”

“Get Senator Harry Palazzi out of the inn and off of the resort grounds,” Hector order the lawyer. “Both of you! I recommend that you not come back, if you’re smart.” He went on to tell the organizer for the fundraiser, who looked like she was going to throw up. “This event is now over. Call my office on Monday and we’ll issue you a refund. We will not be hosting anymore events for your senator here at the Spencer Inn.”

The organizer was equally displeased. “We wouldn’t dream of giving the Spencer Inn any of our business.”

Ben held Mac back while they watched the senator laugh while his bodyguards and hotel security escorted him out.

Out in the hallway, Mac saw Lily Carter watching the senator being escorted out. Her eyes were wide. Mac couldn’t tell if it was disbelief at him coming unglued, or at the senator’s outburst. When the young woman’s eyes met Mac’s she broke into a run and disappeared into the crowd.

After giving Mac his second drink, the bartender tended to Jeff Ingles, who was finally coming to. After learning that none of what had happened was a dream, the manager needed to be helped to his feet and back to his office where he had his therapist on speed dial.

After the crowd dispersed, Ben shook Mac by the shoulders. “What’s wrong with you? You were supposed to be in control. You let him get to you.”

“He’s crazy,” Mac muttered. “He’s a sexual predator and homicidal maniac and his people and friends in power let him get away with abusing women. Khloe was twenty-four years old. He’s been doing this for at least twenty-four years, and I’m willing to bet he’s still preying on women. When they stand up to testify against him, he has his people kill them.”

“We’ll stop him, Mac,” Ben said. “Before, you didn’t have the power to stop him. Now you have the power and the people behind you to stop him, and we’ll do it. All of us together. I promise.”

Chapter Seven

“What happened?” Catherine asked after they had moved into Mac’s private booth in the corner of the Spencer Inn’s lounge.

“Mac lost control.” Ben shook out his napkin with a snap and dropped it into his lap. “You think Senator Palazzi circled the wagons before.” He shot a glare at Mac. “Now they’re really going to be circled, and circled tight.”

“What happened, Mac?” Archie grasped his hand and squeezed his fingers. “You don’t usually lose control like that. I thought you were going to break his neck.”

“I wanted to.” Mac resisted the urge to order a scotch and make it a double. “He brought up Robin. He called her a bitch and said he wanted to give her an attitude adjustment—with the back of his hand. She was my mother.” He shook his head. “It was strange. I had met her only once for one day and never knew until after she had died—but the rage I felt when he talked about her like that—I never expected to feel that way about her.”

“You’ve gotten to know her,” Archie said, “through her journal, through us who did know her, through living at the manor and here at the inn. Even though she’s been gone, she’s become a part of you, and when he talked about her like that, your protective instincts took over.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t jerking your chain?” Catherine asked.

“Of course he was jerking Mac’s chain, and it worked,” Ben said. “I’m sure he met Robin, but knowing her, she would have put him in his place real fast if he tried anything with her. She had good instincts, too. She would have sensed him for what he was.”

“You know who would know if Palazzi had tried something with her?” Archie sat up in her seat.

“No one who’s alive,” Mac said. “She would have told Pat O’Callaghan. He’s dead.”

“And if Pat was going to tell anyone, he would have told Bogie, his best friend,” Archie said.

Anxious to find out what Bogie might know about his mother and Senator Harry Palazzi, Mac and Archie abandoned dinner to rush over to the police station. When they got there, they found the deputy chief and David eating their dinner of a takeout pizza while pouring over the forensics reports from Khloe’s murder.

“Hey, have you eaten?” Bogie offered them some of the pizza.

Realizing how hungry she was, Archie dove in while David reminded Bogie, “They just came from the Spencer Inn where Mac was rubbing elbows with Senator Harry Palazzi at a fancy shindig.”

“Actually, the fancy shindig ended up being an all-star wrestling match when Mac tried to kill him.” Archie plopped down at an empty desk with a slice of pizza. In her sequined cocktail dress, she looked overdressed for her dinner.

“You never were suited for high society,” David told him. “What happened?”

“He brought up Robin,” Mac said.

“What about her?” Bogie’s bushy gray eyebrows knitted together.

“He wanted to give her an attitude adjustment with the back of his hand,” Mac said. “He called her a rude bitch.”

“Robin couldn’t stand the air Palazzi breathed,” David said.

“For good reason,” Bogie said.

“Did he attack her, too?” Archie asked.

Bogie nodded his head. “Oh, yeah.” Chuckling, he sat down behind his desk and started working the mouse on his computer. “He was a junior senator then. Robin had met him at a Washington, DC, fundraiser. He offered to give her material for her books by telling her about some of his cases from when he was sheriff.”

In the search engine for images, Bogie typed in the senator’s name. “They were supposed to go to a dinner party, and the senator had asked Robin to come to his apartment in DC. She had picked up bad vibes from him, but thought that he had been a sheriff, which meant he had respect for the law. However, when he came into the living room wearing only his bathrobe, she realized her vibes were right. He put the moves on her and she tried to leave, but he blocked her way to the door.”

“He did say she was rude,” Mac said.

Bogie laughed. “That’s putting it mildly.”

“I never heard about this.” David didn’t know whether to be amused or concerned about Robin’s encounter with Senator Harry Palazzi.

“Remember,” Bogie said, “all Palazzi was wearing was his bathrobe. When he got in Robin’s way, she planted the pointy toe of her stiletto pump right in the family jewels. She said not only did he land on the floor, but also that it was a full body slam. She ran for the door. Now, we can’t forget that this guy was a trained law enforcement officer. He managed to grab her by the ankle and pull her down to the floor.”

“Oh, my,” Archie said. “Tell me Robin got away.”

“Well,” Bogie gestured for them to come around to see his computer monitor. “After it was over, Robin didn’t have a scratch. You can’t say the same for Senator Harry Palazzi.”

The picture on the monitor was of a younger Senator Harry Palazzi with his arm in a cast, a broken nose, and a black eye. The headline for the news article read that the junior senator had been injured playing football with some of his security officers.

“Robin did that to him?” David asked.

“Yeah,” Bogie chuckled while admiring the picture. “Never mess with a murder mystery writer who takes her research seriously.”

Mac wasn’t so amused. “We need to put a stop to him. He’s raped more than just Dee Blakeley and Florence Everest, and he tried to attack my mother. I’m convinced that the same guy who killed Dee killed Khloe and those two other women. He’s had plenty of time to escalate, and it can’t be a coincidence that both Khloe and Dee had connections to Palazzi that made their deaths beneficial to him.”

“Problem is,” David said, “we can’t find any connection between Senator Palazzi and the woman in Hollywood, or the woman in Pittsburgh.”

“Listen,” Mac said, “We know this. The senator isn’t the type to get his hands dirty. So these murders weren’t committed by him, but for him. If he uses a paid contract guy, he could be taking on contracts for other people, but using the same M.O. Maybe the other two women weren’t for Palazzi, but for someone else.”

“Now we’re talking about a pro, Mac,” David said. “A pro wouldn’t leave his semen behind. He’d know that, if he ever got picked up, his DNA would directly connect him to these murders. So what is it? A professional hit for Palazzi, or a maniac?”

Frustrated by the logic in David’s point, Mac paced the squad room to sort out his thoughts. Bogie went into his office to answer the ringing phone on his desk.

“Is Senator Palazzi’s DNA in the system?” Archie asked Mac.

“Yes,” Mac said. “We were able to get it with Blakeley’s case.”

“Is it a match for the semen left with Khloe and these other two women?” she asked.

“No,” David said with a shake of his head. “No match at all.”

“Was there any evidence left behind at the Blakeley murder?” Archie asked.

“Nothing to trace back to Palazzi,” Mac said. “I didn’t expect there to be. The creep even had a solid alibi for the time of the murder. He spent the whole evening playing chess with his son, Bevis.”

Bogie came out of his office. “We got some luck. That gay friend of Khloe’s that she was spilling her guts to? His name is Nick Fields. He used to be a singer with a rock group. According to the producer for Khloe’s show, it was like a package deal when they signed on Khloe. She insisted that he be on the show, too, so they had him in a scene or two every couple of shows and he made some money.”

“Then she knew him before the show,” Mac said. “Like while she was living here and he helped her to pull that stunt.”

“He went to Hollywood with her,” Bogie said. “He came from Smithfield, Pennsylvania, not far from here.”

“Do you have a current address for him?” David asked him.

“Potomac, Maryland.” Bogie handed a slip of paper with the address on him. “I’ll run a background check.”

“Mac,” David said while studying the address, “looks like you and I are going to take a road trip.”

“Can we do it Monday morning?” Mac asked. “There’s an angle I want to check out.”

“Are you going to keep me in the loop on that angle?”

“If something comes of it.”

“Fair enough,” David said. “Monday would work better for me, too. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow afternoon.”

“With anyone we know?” Archie asked with a wicked grin.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” David said. “But not who you think.”