The Lady Who Cried Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery)

by Lauren Carr

  Mac watched David looking down at his feet with the grocery bag hanging from one of his hands. A slow smile came to Mac’s lips when he said, “You know what I think? I think you never had to work this hard for a woman.”

  His eyes narrowed, David cocked his head at him.

  Mac chuckled. “You haven’t, have you? Every woman you’ve ever wanted just fell into your lap after you flashed a smile and winked at her. But Chelsea’s different. She knows you inside and out. She knows how you play. She knows your tells. She’s not like other women because you can’t get around her. That’s what’s driving you up the wall.”

  David whirled around on his heels. “I’m going to go have a beer.” He climbed the steps to the walkway to take him back to his cottage.

  “This is really fun to watch,” Mac called to him.

  “Don’t make me shoot you, Mac.”

  The dining room table was set for two when Mac came back into the house. It had been set for four when he took out the garbage. His assumption about the steaks had been right.

  Archie was lying out across the sofa with her laptop resting on her knees.

  “Is Chelsea eating at the guest house?” Mac asked her as she sat up to make room for him to sit down next to her.

  “She and David are celebrating her first paycheck from her new job,” Archie said. “She’s cooking dinner for him over at the cottage. I guess they’re having a date night.” After setting the laptop aside, she slipped his arm around her shoulders and cuddled up next to him. “Which means we’re getting a date night.” She gazed up at him with a wide grin.

  “Date nights are always good.” He kissed her. One kiss turned into two and then three, until they heard a throat clear.

  Looking awkward about walking in on them, Chelsea stood at the bottom of the stairs. “I was going to sneak out, but…”

  “That’s okay,” Archie assured her.

  “What are you cooking for your chauffeur?” Mac asked her. “I saw steaks in the grocery bag.”

  “Steak Diane,”’ she said. “It’s one of David’s favorite foods. I’m also serving roasted potatoes and grilled asparagus.”

  Mac asked Archie, “What are you cooking for me?”

  “Salmon and rice pilaf.”

  “I’d rather have steak.” He asked Chelsea, “Can I crash your dinner?”

  “Behave,” Archie ordered. “It will be hard enough to keep Gnarly from crashing it.”

  “Gnarly won’t be any trouble,” Chelsea said. “You talk like he’s a devil dog.”

  “You don’t know Gnarly,” Mac said. “If he gives you any grief, tell David to bring him back home.”

  “He never gives me trouble.” She started for the doors leading to the back deck.

  Calling out, Mac stopped her. “Hey, Chel?”

  She turned to them. “Yes?”

  “How are things going with David?”

  “Fine,” she replied. “Why?”

  “Well,” Mac drawled. “You’re cooking dinner for him. He’s helping you move. He drives you to and from work and takes you to lunch.”

  She placed her hands on her hips. “Are you asking about a return on your investment?”

  “Actually,” Mac said, “my question is, are you leading him on?”

  “I would never do that,” Chelsea said. “What kind of woman do you think I am?”

  “The type of woman who would be straight with a guy.” Mac turned back around. “I just wanted to be sure.”

  Chelsea slammed the door on the way out. When she stepped out onto the deck, Molly and Gnarly sounded like a herd of stampeding horses escorting her back to the guest cottage.

  “What was that about?” Archie asked him.

  “Exactly what it sounded like,” Mac said. “I don’t want her hurting David by leading him on. He’s got it bad for her.”

  “And she’s got it bad for him,” Archie said. “She’s been playing touch-don’t-touch for weeks. She wants him, but then she’s afraid that he’ll hurt her again, or she’ll give up her independence, which she has worked hard for. It isn’t that she doesn’t want him. It’s that she wants him so bad that she’s scaring herself.”

  “I know exactly what she’s going through,” Mac said. “I’m afraid that if she doesn’t make up her mind soon, she’ll lose her chance with him.”

  “David’s not going anywhere,” Archie said. “It’ll do him some good working to win her back. Make him appreciate her more.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been thinking about this.”

  “And you haven’t?” She sighed. “She wouldn’t be cooking Steak Diane for him if she didn’t care. Women don’t cook for men they don’t want.”

  “You cooked for me from day one,” Mac recalled.

  “I wanted you from day one,” she said with a smile.

  “And you’re still cooking for me.”

  “The day I stop cooking for you is the day you should start worrying.” She tapped the keys on her laptop to take it out of sleep mode. “Here’s another show of my love for you. I took a break from my editing to research Khloe’s communications, including her cell phone records.”

  “Bogie’s still waiting for those records.”

  “Well, I didn’t wait for any to get sent over,” she said, “I just hacked in.”

  “That’s illegal.”

  “So arrest me.” She closed the lid to her laptop. “I guess you don’t want—“

  Mac opened up the lid. “Tell me what you found out.”

  “You’re curious.” She giggled. “Lucky for us, Khloe and her friends operate with text messages, which are easy to follow because you actually know what they’re saying.”

  “If you can decipher the shorthand language.”

  “I know how to decipher the shorthand.”

  “That’s why I love you.” He squeezed her shoulders.

  She gazed up at him. Anxious to find out what she had learned, he gestured to the laptop. With a start, she resumed. “Another break for our side is that Khloe’s friends all have cell phone and cell phone accounts, so that made it easy for me to identify who she was talking to. For the last month, she was texting almost a hundred times a day.” She added as a sidebar, “No wonder she didn’t have a job. She couldn’t take time off from texting.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Anyway, ten days before her body was found, she makes a phone call, which was a red flag for me. Not only was it a call, but a call to a landline phone. Guess who she called.”

  “Who?” Mac asked.

  “The phone number was Senator Harry Palazzi’s office in DC.”

  Mac grinned.

  “You know something?” she asked.

  “Senator Palazzi is her birth father,” Mac said. “Ben and Ed met with David and me today to reveal that Florence had left a recording of her confronting Senator Palazzi about raping her—”

  “Rape?” Archie sat up straight.

  “Palazzi admitted to it on the tape, and Florence held it over his head all these years. Ed didn’t even know, and he was her lawyer. She had left the tape sealed for him to find upon her death. She said that there would be more than one tape. Ed didn’t tell Khloe, but she was living in that house.”

  “So she found the tape,” Archie said. “That’s why she called Senator Palazzi’s office. That makes sense with this pattern of calls.”

  “What pattern do you see?” Mac asked her.

  “Her first call to the office was only a couple of minutes long,” Archie said. “Six days before she was killed. The next day, she receives a call on her cell phone from the senator’s office. That call lasts close to twenty minutes. Less than an hour later, Khloe receives another call from a landline phone, which lasts twelve minutes. That number belongs to a law office in Washington, DC.”

  “What law firm?”

  “Samuel Brooks and Associates,” she said.

  “Palazzi’s attorney,” he said.

  “For the next four days,” she
reported, “there’s a series of phone calls between Khloe and this law office—three or four a day. Then, communication ceases. Minutes after the last call, Khloe texts Bevis Palazzi. This text reads, ‘Hey, bro, guess what I just found out.’ Later, Bevis replies with ‘Whats up?’ She replies, ‘Did you know you had a sister?” He responds, ‘Wouldn’t surprise me. Who is it?’ She responded, ‘ME.’”

  Mac chuckled. “Bevis did know that Khloe was his half-sister at the time of the murder.”

  “Obviously, she and the senator could not reach an agreement,” Archie said.

  “How did Bevis take the news?”

  “Don’t quite know,” she replied. “He called her from his cell. It was a very long conversation. After that call, Khloe started scouting for media outlets to take her story to. I found emails in her sent folder. She said she had big news that was going to shake Washington to the core.” She added in an ominous tone, “Her last posting was on her Facebook page on Sunday afternoon: ‘be sure to catch my interview on E-Entertainment Thursday when I’ll make an announcement that promises to rock this country. You won’t be disappointed.’ That must have been when she was killed.”

  “Harry Palazzi is a senior senator,” Mac said. “He’s got a lot of juice. If that tape was made public—”

  “He’s a rapist.”

  “I know that,” Mac said. “I’ve known it for years, but his friends and the media, who agree with his politics, have protected him all this time.”

  “Are you thinking he had Khloe killed? She was his daughter.”

  “I’ve met Senator Harry Palazzi,” Mac said. “Nothing means anything to him except his own personal gain.”

  “This means both Senator Palazzi and his son could be suspects in murdering Khloe to keep her quiet about the rape and being his illegitimate daughter.”

  “The house was searched,” Mac said. “I wonder if whoever killed her got the copy she had found of the recording. We still have the copy Ed has.”

  “I hope it’s in a safe place,” Archie said.

  “So do I,” Mac said. “Palazzi’s people will stop at nothing to get what he wants.” He glanced around the house. A wicked grin crossed his face before he squeezed her shoulders to bring her in closer. “Guess what I just realized.”

  “What?” She set her laptop aside.

  “We’re all alone.”

  “Date night!” She grabbed him by the front of the shirt and dropped back to pull him on top of her.

  Giggling like teenagers with the house alone, they groped at each other and kissed long and hard in anticipation of a lust-filled evening—until the deck door in the dining room flew open.

  Lying across the sofa, they were unable to see who came in.

  “Gnarly ate my shrimp cocktail!” they heard David yell.

  The door slammed shut.

  Before Mac could recover, Gnarly jumped over the back of the sofa to land on top of them. The three of them fell to the floor in a mangled pile of arms, legs, fur, and paws.

  “So much for our evening alone,” Mac grumbled.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The height of ski season was the busiest time at the Spencer Inn—especially on the weekends. The inn was packed with guests. Some would be into the skiing. Some would take advantage of the spa’s amenities—have a massage or go in the hot tub—and others would simply camp out in front of one of a dozen roaring fires while enjoying the view of the skiers and snowboarders outside. Everyone, it would seem, was enjoying the food and drink in the restaurant and lounge.

  Sometimes the inn would be so packed that Mac avoided it. It was simply too hard to elbow his way through the mob to get where he wanted to go.

  But he had a murder to solve, and this was an opportunity to question a suspect who would otherwise not be available.

  Senator Harry Palazzi was guest of honor at a fundraising event being held in the Spencer ballroom. Ben Fleming’s wife, Catherine, was a power broker in the senator’s party. Being a multi-millionaire, Mac’s pockets were deep enough to earn him an invitation.

  Archie had taken a break from editing to be Mac’s date. She even consented to putting on shoes. After a quick tour of the room in which she was introduced to most of Garrett County’s political movers and shakers, Archie welcomed the opportunity to sit down with the prosecutor’s wife to enjoy a glass of champagne.

  A stunning blonde, Catherine Fleming was an honest-to-goodness debutante, which many people believed were extinct. Having grown up in prestigious private schools, with summers spent overseas, she came from old money on both sides of her family and married an impressive lineage in Ben Fleming, whose ancestors had been friends with the Spencers, the town’s founders. Catherine had more social and political power in her little pinky than any of the women in Deep Creek Lake. While you could see it in her dress and regal bearing, you would never know it in her girlish laughter when she got together with her favorite gal pal, Archie Monday.

  Ironically, Catherine Davenport Fleming had married into the opposing political party. As much power as her family held, Ben Fleming’s family was equally powerful on “the other side of the aisle.” Catherine had confided to Archie that all her husband had to do was give the word, and his party would clamor to appoint him to run for Maryland governor—and, as the proud and supportive wife, she would throw her full support behind him.

  Luckily for Garrett County, their prosecutor preferred Deep Creek Lake to Annapolis.

  “Why did you decide not to go to the Governor’s Ball?” Archie asked Catherine after they had completed their first round of champagne.

  “Same reason you decided to close up your laptop for the evening and put on shoes,” Catherine said. “What fun is a fiasco when you aren’t there to witness it first hand?”

  “Mac has come a long way since he first moved to Deep Creek Lake,” Archie said.

  “I’m not talking about Mac,” she said. “I’m talking about Palazzi. It isn’t every day he has to face someone who knows exactly what he is and has the guts to tell him to his face.”

  “Is he really that arrogant?” Archie asked.

  “He’s the worst.” Catherine craned her neck to see around a group who had gotten between them and the bar where Mac and Ben were waiting to ambush the senator. “He was tough on crime and had an impressive record as sheriff. That got him elected to the senate. When his wife disappeared, that got him the sympathy vote that seems to have held him in office ever since. Anytime anyone questions his ethics, he trots out his dead wife and sobs about how much he has sacrificed for his fellow Americans.”

  A wave of sympathy swept over Archie. “What exactly happened to his wife?”

  “It was during his first term as senator.” Catherine shrugged. “I don’t know how old Bevis was—maybe he was a teenager. Barbara and her best friend were kidnapped from the Palazzi home. The place was wrecked. Police narrowed it down to a guy who the senator had put away for robbing a convenience store back when he was sheriff. The guy had been released only the month before.” Her disgust gave way to pity. “They never did find their bodies. The friend was married and had a daughter. Last I heard, her husband drank himself to death.”

  “Garnished Palazzi a lot of sympathy, huh?” Archie said.

  “’I was quite young when all that happened,” Catherine said. “And one would assume that all that tragedy contributed to Palazzi’s and his son’s character, but I was raised to believe that there is no excuse for being rude. Of course, some would say that’s old fashioned.”

  “Of course.”

  Catherine’s mouth turned downward into a frown. “I used to be really excited about my folks’ role in politics. I even had aspirations of running for political office—back when I was young and idealistic.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “It’s nothing like it used to be,” Catherine said with a shrug of her shoulders. “Priorities have changed. No longer is it, ‘what’s best for the county?’ Now it’s ‘what’s best for
the party?’” She gestured at the well-to-do guests filling the room. “Everyone here knows that Harry Palazzi is an arrogant, lying SOB, whose number one question about any political issue is ‘what’s in it for me?’ Those who offer him the most political favors, win his vote. Yet, would any of them think of making moves to run someone else for the senate seat in the next term? No.” She shook her head. “Not as long as he can get enough votes to keep the other party from winning his seat. He can sell our country to China for all we care—just don’t let the other guy win.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Archie said. “Don’t tell me that if Mac had proof that he was a rapist and a mur—”

  “You mean admit that we had made a mistake by backing him in the first place?” Catherine laughed. “That would mean taking responsibility.” A flash of anger crossed her face. She tapped one of her manicured fingernails on the tabletop. “Somewhere along the line, we’ve turned into a couple of street gangs in designer suits. All anyone—in both parties—cares about is winning that next rumble against the folks on the other side of aisle. If the conclusion turns out great for the country, so much the better. If not—well, it’s not our fault. It’s the fault of the other gang. Unfortunately, our country is falling apart while we’re behaving like upper-class street thugs.”

  “Divide and conquer,” Archie said.

  “Exactly,” Catherine said. “Who divided us, I don’t know or care. The fact is that it’s happened, and every time someone stands up to say enough is enough, the media hunts down his Achilles’ heel and rips him apart while the people watch and do nothing.” She sighed. “It’s sad.” The corners of her lips curled when she caught sight of Archie looking at her out of the corner of her eye. With a smile, she took a sip of her champagne. “That’s the end of my speech.”