by Lauren Carr
“Your home?” he shouted. “This is your house? Why … I am so sorry.” He giggled. “Now I know what this must look like.”
“What does it look like?” Cameron asked.
“Like that maybe I had broken in and was trying to steal something,” He giggled again. “But that isn’t what happened.”
“What did happen?” David asked.
“It’s all a big misunderstanding. You see, I thought this place was a restaurant and bar.”
“Do we look stupid to you?” Archie asked him.
“It’s true,” he said. “I came here to have a nice martini on the lake, and instead I got attacked by your vicious dog.”
“Gnarly is not vicious,” Archie said.
“What do you call this?” He held out his legs with shredded cloth hanging from them. “Not only is he vicious, but that dog is a sadist,” the burglar insisted to the police chief. “Look at him.” Unable to point with his hands cuffed behind his back, he nodded with his head from where he had been plopped down in a chair.
Gnarly was making grunting noises while wiggling on his back to scratch just the right spot between his shoulder blades. Seeming to sense every eye in the room on him, he stopped to look up at them from his upside down position. He didn’t seem to have any shame about his hind legs being spread out to display his masculine parts to all of them.
“I see.” David studied the identification he found in the wallet they had taken from the suspect during their search after rescuing him. Archie and Mac made no pretense of reading the driver’s license from over the police chief’s shoulder. The name on identification read Otto Grant. He was from Baltimore, Maryland.
“You’re a long way from Baltimore, Otto,” Mac said. “That’s quite a drive to get a martini.”
“I’m on vacation.”
“Let’s start this from the beginning, Otto,” David said. “You’re on vacation. You decide to go have a martini lakeside and you see this house, with no sign out front, and assume that it’s a bar.”
“You also find all the doors locked,” Archie pointed out, “so you break in.”
“Finding no servers, you decided to help yourself,” Mac finished.
David handed the wallet to Bogie to check for background information on their perpetrator. The deputy chief went to work entering the information from the driver’s license into his computer tablet.
“Can’t you see I’ve been terrorized?” Otto claimed before stomping a foot. “Look at my pants. These are brand new. This is the first time I’ve worn them, and look at what that dog did to them.” As if they had failed to notice before, he stuck his legs out straight to show them his tattered pants. “What that dog and woman did to me was worse than any simple B & E.”
“I didn’t do anything to you,” Archie said. “I was sound asleep and having a totally luscious dirty dream about Mac in a loin cloth.”
“Archie, TMI,” Mac said while making a cutting gesture with his hand across his throat. “That’s too much information.”
Feeling hot, he pushed the mental image of what she could have been dreaming from his mind, which was difficult since he had noticed the red silk from her negligée under the hem of her robe. In that particular nightgown, she always made his heartbeat race.
“Don’t forget to get every detail of her dirty dream down in her statement,” Cameron leaned over to whisper into David’s ear.
Smiling, David asked, “Do you think I should have a sketch artist make up a composite of Mac in a loin cloth?”
“Email it to me,” she replied.
“That’s enough.” Mac was torn between joining them in their laughter and leaving the room.
“Hey!” Otto stomped both of his feet. “Remember the man handcuffed to the chair!” He turned his attention back to Archie. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear all this.” He gestured with his head at the wrecked room.
Giving into her curiosity, Cameron asked, “What happened?”
“That demon dog from hell is what happened.” When Archie laughed out loud, Otto glared at her. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was in on it. She probably has a closed-circuit television and was watching me run for my life all night while being stalked like an animal by her trained killer.”
David plopped the black bag that Archie had found in the study down on the floor at Otto’s feet. “And what’s this? Your suitcase that you carried in when you checked into the house of horror.”
Otto looked away. “I never saw that bag before in my life.”
“Then I guess I won’t find any of your fingerprints on it or anything inside.” David leaned over him. “We have you for breaking and entering and vandalism.”
“Vandalism?” Otto squawked. “I didn’t break anything when I broke in.”
The police chief gestured around him at the broken furniture.
“I didn’t do that,” Otto claimed.
David asked, “Then who did?”
“I told you already. That demon dog!”
As if he had been wounded by the insult, Gnarly climbed his front legs up into Archie’s lap, hid his face under her robe, and let out a whine.
Otto uttered a crazed laugh. “You may have convinced them that you’re a nice, cute, pretty puppy dog needing comfort from your pretty little mistress there, but I know what you’re really capable of.”
Bogie came back from where he had been looking up Otto’s background on his computer tablet. “Well, Mac, it looks like Gnarly snagged a pretty big fish. There’s three outstanding warrants on Otto Grant in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.”
“What about the one in Pennsylvania?” When he realized his goof, Otto said, “You can’t use anything I say. I’m traumatized. That’s a mix-up. There’s another Otto Grant who has a police record and is wanted for breaking and entering, but that isn’t me.”
Mac wanted to know, “How did you get past my security system?”
Showing his tattered legs again, he replied, “I didn’t!”
Archie said, “He meant the electronic security system.”
“According to what I found here,” Bogie said, “Otto has been breaking into some of the most secure estates on the east coast. He’s a retrieval expert for hire. His known associates are private investigators and lawyers who don’t mind bending the rules. They hire him for work they want done under the radar.”
“I told you already,” Otto said. “That’s not me.”
“Clearly, it’s not you,” Cameron said, “I mean, if you were such a professional, you wouldn’t have gotten snagged by a simple dog. No, you’re not any Otto Grant, retrieval expert. You’re just a simple everyday common burglar who doesn’t know how to get past any house with a dog. Only an expert would know how to do that. Of course, it’s not you.”
“Hey! I’ve broken into hundreds of homes with dogs,” he retorted. “Big dogs. Little yip-yaps. Nice dogs that showed me where the family silver was hidden. Vicious dogs that would kill you on sight. I’ve gotten past them all.”
Archie squinted at him. “But you didn’t get past Gnarly.”
As if he was agreeing with her, Gnarly uttered a single bark.
One of Otto’s eyes twitched while he glared at the German shepherd. “Because he’s a sadistic psychopath.” Sitting back in his seat, he said by way of an insult, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was gay.”
“What?” Mac was insulted.
Equally offended, Molly exploded with a round of barks in the burglar’s direction and wouldn’t quit until Chelsea ordered her to stop.
“Unneutered German shepherd,” Otto said. “It works every time. I brought a towel soaked in urine from a bitch in heat and left it out by the dock. He smells her, scratches at the door. I had bypassed the alarm and he took off for the dock while I slipped in—no problem. I closed the door behind me so even if he got finished early, I’d be in the clear. I had five minutes to collect the merchandise and get out and off the property before the dog had his way with the towel and returned to find m
e and sound the alarm.”
Mac asked, “What was the merchandise?”
“A recording,” Otto said. “My client was paying me twenty thousand to lift it. Ten thousand up front. Ten thousand when I delivered the recording. My client didn’t know where it was, but that was okay. I had only started searching in the desk in the study when—wham!”
Everyone jumped.
“It was like some bear trap had been released on my ankle.” With the tone of a child who had lost a game, he asked, “Do you know how many houses I have broken into with dogs?”
“No,” David said, “tell us.”
“Hundreds,” Otto said. “Dogs are supposed to growl and bark to give you some sort of warning before they attack.” He glared at Gnarly. “But not this one. He sneaked up behind me without making a sound and clamped onto my ankle and wouldn’t let go.” He yelled at Gnarly, “Which is not fair—not fair at all! You weren’t even supposed to be in the house.”
“If Gnarly had given you a warning bark, he wouldn’t have been sneaking,” Cameron said.
“There are rules in nature.” Otto jerked his head in Gnarly’s direction. “He broke the rules. That’s not playing fair. Therefore it is only right that you release me now.”
“So you can have a do-over?” Mac asked. “I don’t think so.”
Recapturing his dignity, Otto sat up. “I’m a professional. Even when he was ripping the skin from my body, I didn’t make a sound. I knew that if I bided my time and kept a cool head I could outsmart him. After all, he’s a dog, damn it. Then, things really got weird.”
Cameron’s interest was captured. “They got weirder?”
“He winked at me.”
“Winked?” Bogie’s salt and pepper eyebrows went halfway up his forehead.
Otto nodded his head. “He let go of my ankle and sat down and got all quiet like he was going to let me go. So I went for the safe to finish my job and he bit me in the arm. I managed to get loose and ran for the door. He actually leapt over the sofa and landed on my back and took me down. Then he let me go again. It was like he was playing some game—like he was some giant cat in a dog suit playing with a human mouse. Every exit I went for, he’d cut me off and take me down—I never knew where he was hiding. He was stalking me like some wild animal.” His voice went up in pitch as he claimed, “It was a nightmare.” He turned to the police chief. “I’m suing. That dog violated my civil rights.”
“We’ll discuss your lawsuit after you tell us what recording you were after and who hired you to steal it,” David said.
“And why did you think it was in this house?” Mac asked.
Otto said in a firm tone, “I want a deal.”
“Sure, we’ll talk about a deal,” Mac said. “We’ll all step into the kitchen to talk about what kind of deal we can offer you. You don’t mind if we leave Gnarly here to guard you, do you?”
Otto almost jumped out of his chair when Gnarly rose to his feet. “It’s a PI in Washington. I don’t know who hired him, but I know he’s got some big name clients.”
“Do you mean like senators?” Mac asked him.
“Politicians.” Otto nodded his head. “Politicians are my bread and butter.”
“How were you supposed to know which tape was the right one?” Mac asked. “Someone had to have told you what was on it.”
“I don’t know who was on it,” Otto said. “Only that it was a man and woman, and she was accusing him of raping her and telling him that he got her pregnant.”
With a toss of his head, Mac gestured for David and Cameron to follow him into the kitchen. “We know what recording he was after,” he said once they were in the kitchen.
“I don’t,” Cameron said. “What have you not told me?”
David explained, “Khloe’s mother, who passed away a few weeks ago, left a recording of a conversation she had with Senator Harry Palazzi, in which he admitted to raping her and getting her pregnant.”
“Senator Harry Palazzi?” Cameron said with a gasp. “Why am I not surprised? I always thought he was slimy.”
“At the time of the recording,” Mac pointed out, “he was a sheriff in Maryland.”
“Why is his butt not in jail?” Cameron asked David.
“Because the victim is now dead—a true accidental death,” David said. “Without any solid details about the rape and the victim not available to testify, the county prosecutor decided not to press charges. It doesn’t even say on the tape where the rape took place, so our prosecutor may not have jurisdiction.”
“According to the recording,” Mac said, “Khloe’s mother had more than one copy of the tape, and in the event of her sudden death, it would make its way to the proper authorities. Her lawyer had one copy.”
“Khloe was staying at her late mother’s house,” David said. “It did show signs of having been searched. For all we know, the killer found the tape.”
“We have evidence that Khloe was in contact with Palazzi’s lawyer shortly before her murder,” Mac said. “We have every reason to believe she was going to reveal that the senator was a rapist.”
“And her murderer found the tape,” Cameron said. “So where does that leave our psycho singer-slash-stripper-slash-gay best friend?”
“He could be a hired killer,” Mac said, “who decided to up his price when he found out what a gem he had.”
With her arms folded across her chest, Cameron peered at Mac. “Why did Palazzi think you had the tape?”
“Because I called him on it,” Mac said. “This proves he’s scared.”
“Maybe he has reason to be,” she replied. “You say the house where your victim was killed had been searched. The prosecutor and lawyer aren’t doing anything with their copy. Palazzi must know they have it. Yet he sent someone to break into your house for a copy of the tape.”
“She’s right. Why would Palazzi send someone to steal it from you if he had it stolen when he had Khloe killed?” David asked.
“Everest didn’t say on the tape exactly how many copies she had,” Mac said. “The killer Palazzi hired could have gotten the copy Khloe had and gave it to him. When I called him on it, Palazzi must have assumed I got my hands on yet another copy.”
“Or your senator didn’t kill Khloe,” Cameron said, “and my psycho singer-slash-stripper-slash-gay best friend killed her, stole her copy of the tape, and decided to add extortion to his resume.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“If Otto Grant says he’s working for me, he’s lying,” Private Investigator Kevin Cooper said with a laugh when Mac, David, and Cameron confronted him upon arriving at his office the morning after Otto’s failed break in.
They had decided to use the element of surprise. Since the court system was closed for the weekend, Otto had to spend the rest of the weekend in jail before Bogie could book him for criminal trespassing and breaking and entering.
Otto was fortunate in that he had an alibi for the day of Khloe Everest’s murder. Williamsburg police in Virginia had him on a surveillance video breaking into a bank’s safety deposit vault. The evidence against him for breaking and entering into a bank also eliminated him as a suspect for murder-for-hire.
First thing Monday morning, David, Cameron, and Mac left in the police chief’s cruiser to go to Washington, DC. On the off chance that she was going to be gone for a long time, Cameron had left Irving with Archie to care for, much to the relief of the hotel manager, Jeff Ingles. When two members of the hotel staff had gone up to move Cameron into another suite, they ran screaming from the room after catching sight of the twenty-five pound skunk cat.
Driving without stopping, they quickly made it to Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, and Kevin Cooper’s brownstone office, which, Mac noted, with its view of the Potomac River, was the high-rent district.
Before they left, Archie did a quick background check, which revealed that Kevin Cooper had been a police officer whose career was speckled with disciplinary charges, until he had abruptly quit twelve years ago to
start his own private investigative practice. Based in the historic district of Old Town Alexandria, his service had a staff of six investigators working under him.
“That’s pretty good for a private investigator starting out on his own,” Mac noted when Archie reported her findings.
She looked up from the screen of her laptop. Her emerald green eyes, their hue deepened by the red in her robe, sparkled. “He’s got a pretty good bank account and a couple of off-shore accounts with over a million dollars in both of them.”
“He’s dirty,” Mac concluded. “He’s Harry Palazzi’s cleanup man.” Struck with a thought, he asked, “When did you say he left the force?”
“Twelve years ago.”
“What month?” Mac asked.
She flipped through some screens before finding the answer. “In a couple of months, it will be thirteen years.”
“Dee Blakeley was murdered twelve years ago. In April, it will be thirteen years.” Mac peered closely at her report. “Kevin Cooper was a uniform. There was no sign of forced entry. Dee had let her killer in. She would have let in a uniform officer the night before her hearing.”
“He may be your killer,” Archie said. “He got a big payday for killing the woman who was going to ruin Palazzi’s career and life, and he started his own business doing dirty work for bad guys.”
“Which could explain the other women’s murders,” Mac said. “They were hits for some of Cooper’s other clients.”
Mac’s suspicions were further compounded when he called a detective friend who was still working in the department. Kevin Cooper had been on duty at the time of Blakeley’s murder; plus, he had been patrolling her area.
“What’s it like?” Mac asked Kevin Cooper after the investigator invited them into his office. In response to the private investigator’s questioning gaze, he explained, “Working with criminals like Otto.”
“I don’t work with criminals,” Kevin Cooper said. “I never hired him. He’s lying.” He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a weak jaw and thick, wavy ash-blond hair. The combination of a dark tan and deep wrinkles gave his face a worn look.
