Shades of Murder (The Mac Faraday Mysteries)

by Lauren Carr

David stopped petting Gnarly. “I know.”

  “You’re staring,” David told Mac, who was gazing straight ahead from the driver’s seat of his SUV.

  “It’s a stake out. I’m supposed to stare.”

  “But the perp is meeting my officer down there.” David pointed at the lakeside café down the hill from where they had parked on John Young Parkway. “You’re so spaced out that our guy could walk right in front of us with the painting and you wouldn’t notice.”

  After learning that Felix’s client didn’t know what he looked like, one of Spencer’s slightly built officers posed as him at the café in McHenry. While Spencer’s police officers waited on one side of the restaurant, Joshua and Cameron had parked on the far side, in case the drop happened there.

  “You’re too far away,” David argued when Mac parked at the end of the lot reserved for patrons of the lakeside diners and water sports vendors. A dirt path led down to the water where the exchange was scheduled to take place.

  “If we park along the road the perp will see us,” Mac said.

  “If he rabbits, we’ll be useless in catching him.”

  “I’ve done this before,” Mac said. “Wait and learn.” But, instead of watching for their suspect, he was thinking about Archie and her nightly escapes from his bed. “How do you know if you snore?”

  “Someone tells you…the announcement is usually preceded by a sharp jab to the ribs.”

  “Christine would have told me if I snored,” Mac said more to himself than David. “She wouldn’t have been nice about it either.”

  One of David’s eyebrows arched, while a corner of his mouth curled. “Is something going on between you and Archie?”

  “Something has been going on between me and Archie since the day I came to Spencer.” He added, “No, we haven’t been sleeping together that long. As a matter of fact, we haven’t been sleeping together at all.”

  David turned around to face him. “Do you mean—”

  “I mean—Sure, we’ve been together,” Mac told him. “We both wanted it to be special. I took her to Paris for Valentine’s Day.”

  David said, “I know. I house and dog sat for you. While you were gone Gnarly bellied into the Schweitzer house and stole Katherine’s blue marquis diamond from where she had left it on her dresser. We turned Spencer upside down for five days before you told me to look under your bed.”

  “I still think you should have cuffed Gnarly, instead of having Bogie slip it into her purse while you were interviewing her,” said Mac. “I never would have figured you to be one to take part in a police cover up.”

  “How do you explain to the media that the great jewel thief that everyone has been looking for, that stole a half-a-million dollar diamond, was really a klepto German Shepherd?” David raised a shoulder. “Katherine had no problem believing that she’d misplaced it. No harm, no foul.”

  “Until Gnarly’s next caper.”

  “That’s not my problem. He’s your dog,” David reminded him. “Tell me about you and Archie.”

  “Things are great.” Mac rubbed away a smudge on the windshield.

  “Then why the staring?”

  Mac turned to him. “She won’t sleep with me.” He hated the wounded sound that had crept into his tone.

  The police chief laughed. “That’s something else that’s not my problem.”

  Frustrated, Mac said, “No, I mean we have a great relationship. We’re very compatible in that way.”

  David was still laughing.

  “I mean,” he said forcibly, “she won’t spend the night with me in my bed. As soon as I’m asleep, she goes back to the cottage. She says it’s because she can only sleep in her bed. But last night, at the Inn, she went to the other bedroom as soon as I was asleep.”

  Even though he had stopped laughing, David was still smiling when he said, “Maybe you snore.”

  “My ex-wife would have told me.” Mac turned his attention back to the café. “At some point, over the matter of twenty years, she would have certainly told me if I snored.”

  Keeping an eye on the drop site, David suggested, “Maybe you thrash around. I used to date a woman who was all over that bed during the night—kicking and hitting—and she was asleep the whole time. Sleeping with her was like wrestling an octopus.”

  “And you ended it,” Mac noted.

  David’s face softened. “You’re right. If you snored, or punched and kicked during the night, after being married for so long, you’d know it by now.”

  “Then why does Archie keep running off?”

  “This is new.” David was chuckling again. “A woman running off as soon as sex is over, and the man wanting her to stay and cuddle.”

  Mac punched the steering wheel and grumbled. “Forget I said anything. You’re right. I’m being silly. I don’t know why. I didn’t used to be that way. But, since I met Archie, I’ve turned into some adolescent—”

  David reached across the front of the car to grasp his wrist. Compassion seeped in to replace his amusement. “Let me explain something about us.”

  “Us?”

  “I mean the rich.”

  “You’re not rich,” Mac reminded him. “You’re an underpaid police chief in a rich town.”

  “But I’ve spent my whole life among the rich,” David said. “And Archie may have been Robin’s assistant, but she’s spent over the last ten years living among them. I know you like to think we’re no different, but in some ways we are.”

  Mac shook his head. “David, I’ve investigated more than one murder involving rich people.”

  “You’ve seen them in the midst of scandal and controversy,” David pointed out. “Growing up in Spencer, going to school with their kids, playing ball with them, dating their daughters; I’ve seen them day by day. It’s not what people see on reality TV, or on the news when one of them kills the other. I know what these people are really like.”

  Mac was getting impatient. “What does this have to do with Archie and me?”

  “It’s not unusual for couples who are intimate with each other, who have great relationship, and enjoy each other’s company, to sleep in separate bedrooms,” David said. “It doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. Among the rich, many couples, each partner has their own room or suite—even though they may have roof shattering sex with each other—and they don’t cheat on each other. They just have their own space. Why? Because they can.”

  “I grew up where couples were together,” Mac said. “They sleep together in the same bed.”

  “Here’s something else to consider,” David told him, “Archie is in her middle thirties. She’s never been married. She’s never had a long-term relationship—at least, as long as I’ve known her. She loves you, but she’s used to having her own space. Man! What more do you want?”

  The thought struck Mac like a bolt of lightning. “Did you ever date Archie?”

  The corner of David’s lip curled. “Timing never worked out.”

  “But you tried.”

  “She wasn’t ready for a serious relationship,” David explained. “Dad got sick and was sick a long time before he died. So, I was in no shape for a relationship. By the time things settled …” He laughed. “Dating Archie would be like dating my sister. That’s what makes her the perfect woman for my brother.” He turned to him. “Give her time. Things will sort themselves out. They always do.”

  “Never thought of that.” Mac was impressed with the police chief’s ability to see things as they really were.

  David was perceptive beyond his years. It came from growing up in Spencer among the rich, without being one of them. It must have been like being next to the forest, while not being in it. Therefore, he was able to see the trees in the forest.

  Mac said, “I hate sleeping alone.”

  “Which I believe is the root to why it’s bothering you.” David patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. You two will work it out.” With a smirk, he said, “Geek at eleven o’clock.”
>
  Directing his attention back at the café, Mac picked out the patron, who had caught the police chief’s attention. Two tables away from the officer in plain clothes, he was hard for them not to notice.

  In the middle of the day, during the height of the summer season, most of the patrons were donning casual summer wear. In contrast, the man sipping hot tea and eating a scone stood out in white slacks and a bright pink shirt buttoned up to the collar and sealed with a dark pink tie. A duffel bag rested in an empty chair across from him. His appearance was made even more outlandish by his bi-color hair with dark around the sides and back, and white spikes on top. He sported a black goatee.

  He took a sip of his tea before spitting it out into the cup. After letting out a gagging noise, he snapped his fingers high above his head to get the server’s attention. “Excuse me,” he called out in broken English with a thick European accent, “but … this tea has been … ruined.”

  “Ruined? How?” The server glanced around for help. Ruined tea was a new complaint.

  “Tea should never … be allowed to seep for more … than five minutes.” The patron stuck his pointy nose high up in the air in order to look down his snout at her. “Any longer than that and it’s not…” While waving his hand in the air, he paused to search for the word. “How do you say?…Edible.”

  Apologizing, the server took the cup and tea pot to return them to the kitchen.

  The tea man was on the move. After picking up the duffle bag, he moved to the undercover officer’s table in the center of the café.

  “Anything looking good today?” He gave the officer the code.

  The officer said his line, “The margaritas.”

  Eying the tube envelope next to the officer’s hand, the tea man inched his fingertips toward it. “Did you have any…How do you say? … Problems?”

  “The dog.”

  A worried note came to his voice. “Did you to hurt him?”

  “Felix the Cat is a professional.” The officer repeated the thief’s assertion in third person as he had done in the hospital.

  The tea man reached for the tube, which the officer slid out of his reach. “After I get my money.”

  The tea man dropped the bag to the ground, and pushed it with his foot over to the other seat. Looking around as if to ensure that they were not being watched, the officer picked up the bag and looked inside.

  “Fifty-thousand dollars. You can count it.” His mustache grew wide with his smile of anticipation. He snatched the tube.

  “I’ll trust you.” The officer stood up. “Nice doing business with you.”

  When the tea man removed the cap of the tube and peered inside, the police poured in from all directions. “Police! You’re under arrest.”

  The call startled the man with the goatee, but not so much that he was willing to give up easily.

  “He’s going to rabbit.” David grabbed the door handle. “Told you so.”

  Mac stopped him. “Wait for it.”

  Crying out, the tea man made a run for it. Knocking a server with a tray full of food out of his way, he ran for the side of the cafe and took the path up the hill toward the parking lot. He headed straight for Mac’s SUV. After cresting the hill, he ran for the lot, and then darted alongside the car—only to slam into the driver’s side door that Mac kicked open.

  The force of the door caused him to fall backwards and roll head over heels, with the tube toppling alongside him, back down the hill to the officers below.

  “Not bad,” David said. “You caught him without breaking a sweat.”

  Mac closed the door and sat back in his seat. “And you didn’t want to park up here.”

  On the other side of the café, Joshua and Cameron watched the police officers chase after the man with the spiked hair. While the mob ran in one direction, they watched a man with dark hair get up from where he had been watching on a bench along the lakeshore. He quickened his pace toward the Jaguar parked next to them.

  He was still watching to make sure no one had spotted him when he reached for the door handle.

  Joshua gripped his wrist. “So we meet again, Mr. Scales.”

  “Thornton.” He turned to find Cameron flanking him. “I was out enjoying the beautiful summer weather.”

  “How long do you think the courier you hired will keep quiet under questioning?” Cameron asked him.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Joshua said, “Things will go better for you if you come clean.”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Then why are you paying people off and trying to buy stolen paintings?” Joshua asked.

  Scales stuttered. “I-I have a client. Anonymous.”

  “Do you mean Nancy Kaplan?”

  “I’m not saying a word—”

  “I know, I know,” Cameron said. “Until you talk to your lawyer.”

  “Oh, Scales…”

  George Scales whirled around to find that the police cruiser had pulled up behind them. Bogie was at the steering wheel. David held the back door open and the tea man was nodding his head at the lawyer. “That’s him! That’s the guy that offered me five thousand dollars to pick up his package for him.” the European accent had disappeared.

  David gestured for Scales to get in. “Care to join us?”

  George Scales whipped out his cell phone. “I’m calling my lawyer.”

  Cameron told him, “Good help is so hard to find.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Under an arrogant exterior, George Scales’s nervousness showed in the tapping of his heels in the interrogation room.

  In the squad room, Cameron and Bogie were racing to get the results of a background check on the lawyer, who had a long list of high profile clients, most of whom were government defense contractors.

  Joshua asked Cameron, “Have you gotten any word from your people in Pittsburgh about Scales being at the scene when Bixby was killed?”

  “We have the call from his cell phone to her throw away phone. But there was a call she received about ten minutes before that from another throw away phone. That call lasted about three minutes.

  “That could be Kaplan,” Mac said from where he was sitting next to Officer Foster’s desk. “Hathaway told us that he called Kaplan and his lawyer to take care of it. If Scales was working on his own, and he didn’t kill Bixby, then that leaves Kaplan…or someone Kaplan sent.”

  “Like his wife,” Joshua said, “She seemed awfully chummy with Scales last night.”

  Cameron recalled, “She was the one that ordered him not to say anything—maybe she had her own reasons.”

  “We have another off-shore account,” Bogie announced.

  They crowded around the deputy chief’s chair to see the listing on his computer screen.

  “Scales has over ten million dollars in the Cayman Islands,” Bogie said. “I also took a look at Peyton Kaplan’s account. That has only two million dollars.”

  Cameron laughed. “Only two million?”

  “I wonder how much classified information is going for?” Bogie asked.

  Joshua leaned in to look at the computer screen. “Can you find out whose account that money came out of?”

  “Let me do some digging.” Bogie bent over the keyboard to peck at the keys.

  David recalled, “Peyton claims his money was inherited, and he was hiding it from his wife.”

  “Hell of a guy,” Cameron muttered. “I don’t like him.”

  Bogie yelled, “Found it. In both accounts, the money has been transferred from an online investment company. There have been transfers as recent as three days ago. The name on the account is Ann Scales, who resides at 1313 Penn Way in Pittsburgh.”

  “Wait a minute. I know that address.” Cameron was inputting the address into her smart phone while Bogie read it off. She smirked. “It’s a nursing home. How much do you want to bet Ann Scales is George’s mother?”

  “They’re laundering the money they’re making
selling defense secrets through Scales’s mother,” Joshua said. “I wonder how many defense secrets they’ve sold to terrorists throughout the years?”

  David said, “What do you say we go find out, Bogie?”

  “Can I play the bad cop?” Bogie punched his hand with his fist. “I don’t like traitors.”

  David patted him on the arm. “You can be whoever you want to be, big guy.”

  “So, Scales,” David said when he came into the interrogation room. “You like paintings.” He tossed the Ramsay case file onto table.

  With a hard expression on his face, Bogie struck an intimidating figure while standing in front of the door with his arms folded across his broad chest. David swung around the chair on the opposite side of the table from Scales and straddled the back. The police chief shot the suspect a boyish grin.

  They came across as the classic bad cop-good cop.

  George eyed the folder. “Of course, I like paintings.”

  “Enough to kill for them?” David fingered the folder that rested on the table between them.

  “I told you already,” Scales said. “I have a client who happens to be a big Ilysa Ramsay fan. I thought this was a legitimate purchase—” His eyes grew wide as they darted from Bogie’s scowl to David’s pleasant expression.

  “If you thought it was so legit why did you hire someone to pick it up for you while you watched from ten yards away?” Chuckling, David glanced up at Bogie. The corner of the big cop’s lip curled to allow a low growl to seep from his massive chest.

  As if ignoring Bogie would make him disappear, George Scales forced himself to focus on David. “My client really wanted this painting. Book me for conspiracy to commit burglary, and I’ll be on my way.”

  “Ah, I’d really like to do that.” David shook his head while thumbing the edge of the case file without actually opening it. “But we can’t let you go anywhere. This isn’t a simple case of burglary. You’re looking at murder, my man.”

  George’s eyes were focused on the folder. “No one was killed in that break-in.”

  “Except Mac Faraday’s new boat,” Bogie said in a deep loud voice. “He was taking me out on it tomorrow, and now I can’t go.”

  “I’ll buy him a new one.” His voice went up so high that it squeaked. “I’ll have it delivered ASAP. I’ll get him a bigger one. One more your size.”