Cancelled Vows

by Lauren Carr

  Abby Gibbons was then hugging herself. “I’ll call the handwriting expert to ask him what happened with his analysis of the postcard.”

  “And Hopkins?”

  “I’ll talk to Wayne.”

  “When you do, give him this warning: anything happens to David O’Callaghan, and there’s no place here on God’s green Earth that he’ll be able to hide from Mac Faraday.”

  In the elevator descending to the ground floor of the News Corps Building, Mac was so deep in thought—his mind was reeling with possibilities, many of them bad, of how the whole situation with David was going to play out—that he barely noticed when the doors opened.

  Gnarly stood up from where he was lying across Mac’s feet and barked.

  “Hey, Faraday, wake up,” he heard Ryan Ritter call out to him before laughing good naturedly.

  Mac broke out of his stare and saw that Ritter was holding the elevator doors open for him. Gathering up the dog leash leash, he led Gnarly out onto the ground floor.

  “Are you looking for Ali and your brother?” Ryan said. “I saw them this morning. Congratulations on hiring Ali Hudson, by the way. You got yourself one rare find there. She’s as smart as a whip and easy on the eyes, too.”

  The reference to his hiring Dallas startled Mac and made him stop, turn around, and face Ryan. His mind working quickly, he concluded that there had to have been a good reason for someone to tell the noted journalist that he’d hired Yvonne’s assistant. “Thank you.” He forced a grin across his face. “I know a sharp employee when I see one.”

  Ryan allowed the elevator to move on without him. “What exactly are you going to have Ali do in Deep Creek Lake?”

  Recalling Preston Blakeley’s warning about Ryan Ritter’s womanizing and his pursuit of Yvonne’s assistant, Mac realized the source of the journalist’s misinformation. “Whatever it is assistants do—assist me.”

  “In what?” Ryan Ritter fell into step with Mac as he crossed the lobby. “I thought you were retired.”

  Appearing displeased about the hanger-on they had picked up, Gnarly paused to look over his shoulder back at Ryan and uttered a low growl from deep in his throat.

  Thinking fast, Mac replied, “I hired her to assist my wife, Archie. She’s an editor. One of the best in the business. Worked closely with my mother for ten years. Now that we’re married, we want to travel more, but Archie is in such demand that she needs an assistant.” He then added in a whisper, “But don’t tell anyone. It’s a surprise.”

  The more Mac talked, the more sense it made. He found himself wondering if Dallas would like to work for Archie, who was putting in full-time hours as a freelance editor. Remembering Dallas Walker’s background, he chuckled to himself.

  “Well, I don’t know how much you’ve offered her, but I don’t intend to give up trying to get her to come back to New York to work for me.” Ryan Ritter reached down to pet Gnarly, but the German shepherd jerked his head out of Ryan’s reach and stepped back to brace himself against Mac’s legs.

  “Usually dogs like me,” Ryan said.

  “Gnarly’s picky.”

  Instead of going on his way, Ryan Ritter continued to walk with Mac, who was making his way through the throng of visitors moving to and fro on the main floor of the high-rise building. “Can I help you? Audra Walker was a friend.”

  Mac stopped. “I thought you hardly knew her.” He turned to peer at the journalist.

  “We only met that one day she came here for her interview with Yvonne Harding, and we really hit it off.” A smile came to Ryan’s lips. “I had hoped we would grow closer. Who knows where we’d be now if things had turned out differently.”

  Recalling that Letty, Audra’s assistant, had said that Ryan had been quite attentive to Audra, Mac regarded him for a long moment. Finally, the journalist said, “I feel like you have a question for me, Faraday.”

  “I’m just curious,” Mac said. “I keep hearing about what a prestigious news journalist you are. One of ZNC’s top stars. How long has your show been on?”

  “This new season makes thirteen years.” With a sense of pride, Ryan smoothed his tie.

  “You’ve had dinner at the White House,” Mac noted. “Interviewed every president, some prime ministers, and movie stars. Audra Walker won Pulitzers and every other award in journalism, but you never had her on your show. Why not?”

  “That’s something you’d need to ask her publicist about,” Ryan said. “It wasn’t because I didn’t want her. I did. As a matter of fact, on the night she was interviewed by Yvonne, I was here before taping because I wanted to ask her personally to be on my show. We set it up for the next week.” He chuckled. “Why would I have been avoiding someone I’d never met?”

  “I didn’t suggest you were avoiding her.”

  “Fact is, I wanted her. Audra Walker on my show would have been a guaranteed draw for big audiences.” Ryan flashed Mac a wide grin. “You and I think alike, Faraday. We’re both suspicious.”

  “That we are,” Mac said. “Do you remember where you went after Yvonne’s interview with Walker?”

  “Are you suggesting I need an alibi?”

  Mac laughed along with him, and then he said, “Can you tell me where you were?”

  “As a matter of fact, I can,” Ryan said slowly. “Under regular circumstances, I wouldn’t be able to remember where I was without having Betty check my calendar.” He grinned. “However, as luck would have it, I know exactly where I was that night.”

  “Where was that?” Mac asked.

  “With Yvonne Harding.” Ryan’s grin turned into a full-fledged leer when he saw shock cross Mac’s face. “Sorry. Kind of awkward, isn’t it? I mean, with you being best friends with the guy who turned out to be Yvonne’s husband. If she had told me she was married—”

  “You’re telling me that you were with Yvonne Harding all night,” Mac said.

  “All night,” Ryan said.

  “I didn’t get the impression—”

  “Yvonne and I are grown adults. You might say we were friends with benefits. The intimate nature of our relationship has been off and on since she came to ZNC. I remember that particular night because when Audra Walker disappeared, the police wanted to know Yvonne’s alibi because of the text Audra received that seemed to have come from her. So—”

  Mac nodded his head. “And you were her alibi, which is why you know where you were.”

  “Jason Van Derk was my guest on the show that night,” Ryan said. “Knowing what a fan I am of fine cigars and liquors, he had given me a bottle of very fine fifty-year-old scotch. It was much too good to drink alone, so I took it over to Yvonne’s place after the show. We broke it open and … one thing led to another. We were together all night.”

  “I get your point,” Mac said. “How about when Yvonne was shot?”

  “That’s easy,” Ryan said. “I was in makeup getting ready for my show.”

  “That should be easy enough to check.”

  “Check away,” Ryan said. “This is the first time I’ve ever been a suspect in a murder.” He grinned. “Pretty cool. Any other suspects in Audra Walker’s murder—besides me, I mean?”

  “Do you know why Yvonne Harding, not Crime Watch’s star, Pam Wiehl, interviewed her?” Mac asked.

  “Because Pam was jealous of Audra,” Ryan replied. “They both had the same publisher. Audra sold more books, got bigger deals, and won awards. She got the royal treatment when she came to ZNC.” That wide grin crossed his face again. “Plus, I think Jim Wiehl had a bit of a crush on her.”

  “I was told that Jim is devoted to his wife,” Mac said.

  “I’m sure he is,” Ryan said. “But Audra Walker was a looker, and Jim was fawning all over her.” With a shake of his head, he added, “Pam did not like that one bit.”

  “Do you think Pam was jealous enough of Audra Walker
to want to dispose of the competition?” Mac asked.

  Ryan chuckled. “Well after Audra’s disappearance, Pam Wiehl did get a couple of journalism awards that would have gone to Audra otherwise. One was the woman of the year award from the Women in Journalism Association.”

  “Interesting,” Mac murmured.

  “I should say so,” Ryan said. “And now that Yvonne Harding is out of the way, Pam is a shoo-in for that award this year.” He chuckled. “That’s the way to stay on top. Kill the competition.” Seeing someone across the main floor’s reception area, Ryan raised up his hand like he was hailing a cab and called out a name. Capturing the other man’s attention, Ryan quickly shook Mac’s hand before trotting off to join his colleague. The two men left the building together.

  Inside the security office, Mac and Gnarly stepped up to the counter. Without hesitation, Gnarly jumped up to place his front paws in the counter, causing the guard behind the counter to jump back.

  “He doesn’t like to be kept in the dark,” Mac explained before easing Gnarly’s front paws down to the floor. “I’d like to talk to someone about Carl Rubenstein.”

  The guard at the counter turned his attention to his boss, a huge man in the uniform of the chief of security. “Hank?”

  “We’ve already said everything we need to say to the police investigating Yvonne Harding’s murder, Mr. Faraday,” Hank said in a low voice while hitching up his pants and puffing out his chest.

  “I know,” Mac said. “My question has to do with your security procedures.”

  “If you have questions about our procedures, you’ll have to have your lawyer call our lawyer,” Hank said. “We do everything by the book. We knew Carl Rubenstein had been making threats against Harding and ZNC, but we received a security form clearing him to go upstairs for an interview with Harding.”

  “Didn’t that strike you as strange?” Mac asked.

  “Not really,” Hank said. “The news bureaus in this building are always setting up interviews with their biggest enemies. Sometimes they even fake fights and feuds in order to get viewers taking sides, and then they have these interviews and all-out brawls on air. That gets lots of viewers to tune in.”

  “So you thought nothing of it when a security form came in clearing Rubenstein to go on up for an interview with Yvonne Harding, even though he’d threatened her hours earlier.”

  “Nothing at all.” Hank shook his head. “He must have hacked into the system.”

  “Is that easy to do?”

  “We aren’t exactly the NSA here.”

  “Tell me how your security system works.”

  “It’s all internal,” Hank said. “The intranet. All someone had to do was log into the building’s intranet using any desktop here in the building; go to security; fill out the visitors form with the name of the visitor, his arrival time, his destination, and the name of his contact; and hit the send button.”

  “Kind of like when David and I came here yesterday,” Mac recalled.

  “Exactly,” Hank said. “Only instead of going to the security kiosk in the lobby, everything is already done before you come through the door. You walk up to the reception desk, and your badge is all ready for you to pick up. Then you walk through the metal detector and, assuming you aren’t packing, you’re on your way.”

  “If the visitors security form was completed online using the building’s intranet, your system would say who sent the form based on whose user account the form was sent from.”

  “Which means that whoever filled out the form needed a user ID and password in order to get into the building’s secure network in the first place,” the other security clerk said. “The name on the request form is Ali Hudson.”

  “But she couldn’t have used her desktop, because Harding’s office and outer office were sealed off yesterday while the police removed Audra Walker’s body,” Mac pointed out.

  “You’re right,” Hank said. “Plus, the police determined that Ali Hudson was out of the building at the time the request was sent in because her security badge shows that she swiped it going out seventeen minutes before the request was submitted online to our office.”

  “So we know the visitor’s request came from someone else using another desktop,” Mac said.

  “Could be any one of hundreds of computers.” Hank slowly shook his head. “Most of the employees in this building log in when they arrive in the morning and log out when they leave.”

  “Personally, I don’t think Rubenstein was set up,” the clerk said. “I think he got someone to hack into our system and to get him a pass into the building so he could kill Harding. He used that plastic gun because he knew that our metal detector wouldn’t pick it up. I still haven’t figured out how he got the bullets in, though.”

  “Maybe he used wooden ones,” Hank said. “That’s what the terrorists are using overseas. If he used wooden bullets, our security system wouldn’t have detected them.”

  “The killer used real bullets,” Mac said. “They found a metal shell casing at the crime scene and in the stairwell where Rubenstein was killed.”

  “If he killed Yvonne Harding, then who shot him?” Hank asked.

  “His accomplice,” the clerk said. “The inside man I told you about who set up the visitor’s pass for him and gave him the bullets for the gun.”

  “Do you have any way of knowing the IP address of where that form was sent from?” Mac asked. “Suppose someone here in the building who didn’t have a log-in to the intranet were to walk up to any of these desktops. Since everyone just logs in at the beginning of the day and stays logged in until they leave, couldn’t that someone just fill out the visitors form at any desktop while someone was at lunch, submit it, and then simply walk away?”

  Hank’s mouth hung open while he processed Mac’s question. The younger security clerk got it right away.

  “We could just check the IP address to figure out what desktop the request came from.” The younger man was already on his computer bringing up the form.

  “Then we identify who had access to that desktop,” Mac said.

  The young security clerk was excited. “Don’t worry, Mr. Faraday. We’re going to nail this creep!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Seriously? I’m running from the police, and I’m going to hide out in the Plaza?

  David sucked in one deep breath after another while sitting on the bench across the street from what was considered one of the grandest, if not the grandest, hotels in New York City.

  It was Dallas’ idea.

  The police would naturally be searching every hellhole in the city looking for them and would expect them to be hiding as far off the grid as possible. They would never think to look for them in the lap of high society.

  David had to admit that Dallas had a point.

  Armed with her phony identification and platinum cards, Dallas strolled in with her shopping bags to book a room while David waited across the street. The plan called for her to check in alone. Using yet another alternate cell phone, not the same one she had used to call Mac, she would text David the room number—and nothing more. He would wait seven minutes before crossing the street to enter the hotel and would go directly up to her room.

  Once they were both secure in the hotel room, they would stay there until Mac and Ed had managed to clear them.

  Across the street, Dallas used a thick Jersey-shore accent to register for a deluxe room and to effortlessly spin a tale about how her trip was an illicit getaway with her lover, “a guy Daddy would kill if he knew I was hookin’ up with ’im.” She slipped the clerk a large tip—an incentive to keep their tryst secret in case Daddy “sent some of his goons.”

  After getting two key cards, she trotted over to the elevator that would take her up to the ninth floor.

  She found it difficult not to notice the elegant, tall woman with long,
dark hair clad in a brilliant red-sequined backless dress in front of the elevators. Black jewels dripped from her ears and around her throat. She wore a red hat with netting that fell down across her eyes.

  Dallas’ first impression was that she must have been a famous model or a movie star.

  While waiting for the elevator that would take her up to the room, Dallas noticed the woman in red glance in her direction once—and then twice. The third time, her glance rested on Dallas longer—she was studying her.

  Curiosity gave way to nervousness. Dallas hadn’t had access to the news. Are pictures of David and me all over the city?

  The elevator doors opened.

  Dallas tried to appear casual as she ran onto the car. With a few graceful steps, the woman in red was standing next to her. Wishing she were already there, Dallas punched the button for the ninth floor. She yearned to be behind closed doors with David holding her in his arms, telling her they would both be okay.

  It’ll all be over soon.

  “Sixteen, please,” the woman in red said.

  Dallas’ hand trembled when she thumbed the button.

  The doors closed. The elevator ascended.

  “Dallas?”

  Dallas jumped and turned to the woman who was eying her from behind the veil.

  Her dark eyes were kind. “I thought it was you,” she said. “I saw on the news that your mother’s body was found. Are you here to find her killer?”

  Dallas’ mind raced. Somewhere in her mind, the woman’s voice and eyes seemed familiar, but she couldn’t remember where she knew her from. She had something to do with her mother. But the woman didn’t look familiar to her.

  That voice. Where have I heard it before?

  The woman abruptly held out a business card to her. “Dallas, if you need anything—ever—call me. I owe your mother a big debt. Now that she’s gone, I’ll pay it back through you. That’s what she’d want.”