Beauty to Die For and Other Mystery Shorts

by Lauren Carr

“I know.”

  “That’s okay,” the senator said. “I don’t let it brew beneath the surface to let go off like a volcano—like someone I used to know.”

  “Who was that someone?”

  “Rachel Burke. I have no doubt that’s what got her killed. Susan probably killed her in self-defense after I spilled the beans about her and Ronald. I guess you probably already figured out that Susan’s son, Tyler, is Ronald’s.” She smirked. “Of course, if you go to the media about that, I will deny it.”

  “Let’s say,” Cameron said, “I believe you that you didn’t kill Rachel Burke, then why go to such lengths to end any investigation into her murder?”

  “Because Susan Burke is a weak link,” Linda said. “For years after Charley was killed, Susan kept saying that we should tell what happened to bring her family closure.” Her face screwed up when she scoffed, “Like it was going to bring Charley back to them or something—whatever.”

  “Do you mean you had Ellicott kill Angela Jarvis because you knew she was getting close to uncovering you killing Charley Halston?”

  While her lawyer objected, the senator sat up straight in her chair. “I did not order any murders! I only ordered that Ellicott use whatever means necessary to make people see the wisdom of doing things my way! Besides—I didn’t know Angela Jarvis was anywhere near finding out about Charley Halston. After Rachel was killed, I know she went to see Susan. I guess since it was Rachel who killed Charley, and she was now dead, Susan saw no use in revealing what her twin had done anyway.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Susan then assured me that she didn’t want to ruin Rachel’s memory by revealing that she had killed Charley.”

  “Of course, you’d say that,” Cameron said. “Why should I believe you?”

  “It was my car,” Linda said while pointing at herself. “I was driving. Rachel and Charley were fighting in the back seat—”

  “Over Ronald?”

  “No,” Linda laughed. “I knew about Ronald and Charley. Big whoop. He was marrying me.”

  “What were Rachel and Charley fighting over?”

  “Charley had too much to drink and ripped Rachel’s dress,” Linda said. “After getting us thrown out of the club, that was the final straw. I told you, Rachel has a temper and when her temper blows …”

  “Are you arresting Linda?” Susan Burke asked when Joshua and Cameron returned to her home.

  Ignoring her question, Joshua asked casually, “Lovely weather we’ve been having this summer, isn’t it?”

  She narrowed her eyes as she peered from him to Cameron.

  “We really aren’t that far from the mountain where you dumped your best friend Charley’s body,” Joshua said. “I’m sorry. My mistake. Charley was not your best friend. She was Susan’s best friend.”

  “She must have been an annoyance to you,” Cameron said, “with her bipolar disorder.”

  “What are you talking about?” She flipped her red curls over her shoulder.

  Joshua shook his head. “You had us fooled. You had everyone fooled. Being identical twins—”

  “But then,” Cameron said, “you two weren’t totally identical in every way.”

  “I have twins,” Joshua said. “No two people are completely identical. Environment and personalities shift. One is serious, like Susan was. Has compassion, like Susan did. The other was the beauty queen with a little less depth—and a temper that can turn murderous at the snap of the fingers.” He snapped his fingers in her face. “Like it did that night that Charley Halston tore your expensive cocktail dress after getting you and your friends kicked out of a club for starting a fight with Linda over Ronald.”

  “If Linda told you that,” she said in a low voice, “she’s lying.”

  “Maybe,” Joshua said. “But we do have confirmation from the Syracuse police where the missing person’s report was filed after Charley disappeared that it was Linda’s car, not yours that you girls were driving that weekend.”

  “Which means that most likely Linda was telling the truth about it being her who was driving,” Cameron said. “You were in the back seat with Charley. She was out of control. She tore your expensive dress. You flipped out and killed her. Now you had a problem. This was October, 1996, the same year that you were Miss Pennsylvania. It would have looked really bad if you went down for killing one of your friends while having a hissy fit.”

  “It already looked bad getting thrown out of club,” Rachel said in a frightfully low voice. Her eyes narrowed to slits. Her mouth drew tight.

  “No matter who’s telling the truth about killing Charley,” Joshua said, “Both you and Senator Pryor are going down for her murder. One of you killed her, while the other was an accessory in covering it up.”

  “We do know that the senator isn’t lying about it being Susan that she had discovered having an affair with her husband,” Cameron said. “That means it was Susan who you killed, Rachel. When Linda called her on the affair in front of you, you realized that your sister was sleeping with your lover. Ronald wasn’t just cheating on his wife; he was cheating on his mistress.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “Tyler’s birthday is in March 2002,” Joshua said. “We checked. That means you were two months pregnant when you discovered Ronald was cheating on you with your sister. They had both played you for a fool.”

  “So the next day,” Cameron said, “you dressed up in men’s clothes—probably some clothes that Ronald had left at your place—and you lured Susan to the salon after she had a rendezvous with your lover.”

  “The autopsy indicated that she had sex shortly before you killed her,” Joshua said.

  “You’re right there,” Rachel said with a small smile. “I followed him from the club to her house. They spent the whole afternoon in bed—laughing about what a fool they made of me and Linda.” She let out a laugh. “I had the last laugh on her.”

  “You planned the whole thing,” Joshua said.

  “The fact that you dressed up in men’s clothes before killing her points to premeditation,” Cameron said. “Then, you went over to Billy Robb’s boarding room to frame him for the murder.”

  “Billy was the perfect patsy,” Joshua said. “He had already threatened to kill you.”

  Cameron finished, “You held a gun to his head and made him put on the clothes with Susan’s blood on them, and then you killed him all to cover up your murder.”

  “Then you went back to the salon and called the police,” Joshua said. “You identified her body as Rachel, who Billy had a motive to murder. That’s why you switched identities. No one thought to check to see if you were telling the truth.”

  “With less make up and a quieter demeanor,” Cameron said, “everyone believed you were Susan—until Linda Pryor told us about Susan hurting her arm the day before the murder. She had a hairline fracture which the ME noted in the autopsy.”

  Joshua said, “We checked with a few guests who were at your Labor Day party. They all remember it was Susan who hurt her arm, not Rachel. Since the broken arm was never made public, no one noticed it until Linda told us.

  Rachel Burke stared at them. Fire came to her eyes. “She was my sister. The plain one. I know we were identical, but I was the beautiful one. I was always the one with the boyfriends. I was the popular one. She knew that. And for her to steal Ronald from me—How could she betray me like that?” Her pouty lips curled in a snarl. “She made a fool of me! It made me so mad! I wanted to kill her!”

  “So you did.” Joshua took out his cell phone to call Billy’s mother while Cameron read Rachel Burke her rights and handcuffed her.

  Gina Robb died in peace one hour later.

  The End

  KILLING BID

  A Mac Faraday Mystery Short

  “Tell me again why you insisted on bringing him?” Mac Faraday asked Archie Monday while handing a blue leather clutch bag back to an unhappy looking woman.

  He didn’t think it was possibl
e for the woman to look any more displeased; but, when her manicured fingertips came in contract with dog drool, she managed an even deeper frown, disgust mixed with wrath.

  “I told you what he did to my iPad,” he told the petite and pretty blonde who had dragged him and his wayward dog away from their secure home on Deep Creek Lake, for a day of shopping, which the multi-millionaire hated.

  From the end of his leash, Gnarly, the German shepherd, cocked his head while gazing up at his master as if to ask the same thing about him. If it hadn’t been for Mac’s yelling, no one would have spotted the dog snatching the bag from the woman irresponsible enough to have left it unattended while looking over the jewelry on display at the estate auction.

  “The trainer had said it would be good for him,” Archie replied with one of those sighs that said she was tired of repeatedly explaining her reasoning for bringing the anti-social hundred-pound shepherd with a talent for getting into trouble.

  Neither the man nor his beast wanted to be there.

  It was a woman thing.

  Archie Monday and her friend Catherine Fleming had somehow coerced “the men”, Mac Faraday and Catherine’s husband Ben Fleming, Garrett County, Maryland’s prosecuting attorney, into attending the estate auction of Celeste Taylor, the legendary actress of Broadway and the Golden Age of movies turned socialite turned recluse.

  The auction was by invitation only. Since Mac Faraday was the son, even if it was illegitimate, of mystery novelist Robin Spencer, one of Celeste Taylor’s friends, then he had garnered an invitation. He would have tossed out if it weren’t for Archie Monday, his late mother’s editor and research assistant, intercepting it.

  “Celeste Taylor knew all of the greats and near greats in both Hollywood and New York,” Archie confided in a whisper while jerking on Gnarly’s leash when he threatened to stick his nose into a fat man’s pocket. “There was even talk of her being the mistress of Le Chat.”

  “Who’s Le Chat?” Mac asked.

  Archie and Catherine stopped to gaze at a life-sized oil painting of the strikingly beautiful actress in her youth. She was clad in an ornate ruby red gown with thick shoulder pads. A ruby tiara covered the top of her head. The gown hugged every delicious curve of her voluptuous body. Her red hair fell in one wave that covered up one eye and draped across her shoulder.

  The two women sighed with adoration.

  Ben chose to answer Mac’s question. “Le Chat was a legendary, and most likely fictional, cat burglar of the rich and famous.”

  “Not according to what I heard,” Catherine countered her husband. “I worked my way through college working at Tiffany’s in DC. The manager told me that Le Chat was for real back in the late fifties through mid-seventies. The best in jewelry and art. They said he even stole a Renoir from the National Museum of Art in Washington after a gala. He only stole from the very rich and the crème of high society. It got so that having your jewelry stolen by Le Chat was like a status symbol.”

  “In other words,” Ben said, “he only robbed those on the A-list. If he passed you by, then socially you were on the out.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard,” Mac said.

  Ben chuckled. “Spoken like a true man of common sense.”

  “Why did they think Celeste Taylor was connected to Le Chat?” Mac asked Catherine.

  “Totally circumstantial,” she replied. “An insurance investigator had noticed that the burglaries occurred after huge social events. Celeste was at each one of these events. At the time she was said to be dating a mysterious French businessman. They tried to identify him, but couldn’t catch him and she refused to give him up.”

  “How romantic,” Archie said.

  Strolling behind the two women being dragged by the shepherd through the mansion with all of the late celebrity’s wares on display, Mac cast a look in Ben’s direction. The lawyer rolled his eyes.

  “Oh, you should read Celeste Taylor’s autobiography,” Catherine grasped Archie’s arm. “She had such a fascinating life. She started out as a dancer. Within less than a couple of years, she was starring on Broadway. From there to Hollywood to become a movie star. Falls in love and marries a millionaire and has a baby, only to lose her husband to a car accident before the bloom has even left the rose. Makes a big comeback—high society, romance with a mysterious stranger sought by Interpol, only to have him disappear leaving her with nothing but a single red rose on his pillow before disappearing into the night.”

  “Didn’t I see that in a movie once?” Mac asked.

  “Wasn’t that the ending of a Celeste Taylor movie that we saw on the golden oldies?” Archie agreed.

  “I’m sure you’re both mistaken,” Catherine said. “We really need to check out the jewelry.”

  “Of course, we do,” Ben said, “we can’t not check out the jewelry.”

  An hour from Deep Creek Lake, the mountaintop estate overlooked a valley in the Virginian countryside. In the early spring, the weather had broken. It was warm enough for the auction personnel to open the doors and windows of the century-old colonial mansion to allow a breeze to sweep through the rooms filled with its late owner’s possessions.

  The temporary parking lot that had been set up on the front yard was made up of luxury cars and SUV’s the size of military tanks.

  Catherine, who Mac had never seen out of fashion, donned a lilac hat that resembled a style he had seen Princess Kate wearing. With her classical blond beauty, sense of style, and her husband’s financial and social connections as Garrett County’s prosecutor, she had everything necessary to be an American princess.

  Archie, too, donned a bonnet on her head, which Mac was not pleased to see covering up her pixie blond hair.

  Like animals wanting to impress the rest of the herd with their power or virility, the other guests at the estate sale were dressed in fine spring wear. While gawking and examining Celeste Taylor’s collection of extravagant jewelry, they would make noises ranging from impressed to disappointed when informed that much of it was imitation.

  “If Celeste had been married to a millionaire and was a celebrated actress, how did she die broke?” Mac asked Ben Fleming, who was peering at a statue that resembled the Thinker, after having been set fire to. Mac couldn’t tell if he was admiring it or curious about how it came to look like that.

  “She didn’t work for the last thirty years of her life,” Ben answered. “I don’t know the particulars of her finances, but millions of dollars only goes so far when it’s all going out, but nothing is coming in. You know that. Even having inherited two-hundred and seventy million dollars, if you weren’t so smart investing it, if it just sat there for you to live off of, it wouldn’t last very long.”

  “Wouldn’t she have an advisor to suggest investments?” Mac asked, “like I have?”

  “Maybe her advisor isn’t as smart as yours,” Ben replied. “It’s not uncommon for rich people, very wealthy and smart people, to have huge chunks, if not all, of their millions stolen by dishonest so-called investment counselors.”

  “You’re not going to believe what I just heard.” Catherine came rushing up to clasp her husband’s elbow. “All of Celeste Taylor’s jewelry is fake.”

  “Including the Blue Starburst Diamond.” Archie came up on Mac’s other side.

  “What’s the Blue Starburst Diamond?” Mac asked.

  “Don’t you follow any of the society pages?” Catherine asked him.

  “Nope.”

  “The Blue Starburst Diamond was given to Celeste Taylor as an engagement ring from her late and only husband,” Archie said. “It was a seven carat blue diamond with a white starburst in the center. Extremely rare. There’s only one like it in the whole world.”

  “You certainly weren’t expecting to buy it, were you?” Ben sounded worried when he asked Catherine.

  “I only wanted to see it,” Catherine said. “But they just announced that it was discovered that what Celeste’s daughter thought was the diamond was
really a fake. Turns out, Celeste has been selling off her jewels and artwork for years and replacing it with fakes.”

  “That’s why they’re having this auction,” Archie said. “The estate is broke.”

  Further conversation was cut off when Gnarly dragged Archie off toward the open doorway leading to the dining room.

  “You’re invitation, sir?” a tall intimidating man in a black suit stopped Mac. Holding out his hand, he demanded to see his invitation.

  “Why didn’t you ask them?” Mac demanded to know while taking his invitation out of his inner breast pocket.

  The man refused to take his eyes off Mac. “Because I’m asking you.” He snatched the invitation from Mac’s hand and read the front cover. “Your name, sir.”

  “Mac Faraday. Yours?”

  “Faraday?” A note of congeniality crept into his tone. “As in Robin Spencer’s son Faraday?”

  “The very same.” Mac took back the invitation. “And you are …”

  “Frederick. The butler here. It is my job to keep out the riff-raff who may only be seeking to gawk at Ms. Taylor’s treasures. I worked for her for thirty years.”

  “You must have been close,” Mac said with sympathy.

  “Very.”

  “Mac! He-lp me pl-le-ee-ze!” Archie cried from within the interior of the house.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Mac muttered while dashing around the towering man and running in the direction of Archie’s call. He found her attached to the end of the leash with a hundred pounds of fur at the other end dragging her from room to room. Mac weaved through the crowd to get to her side.

  “I see what he’s tailing.” She dared to let go of the leash with one hand to point a finger up ahead.

  Mac had to search the throng of people ahead of them before he could see the object that had captured Gnarly’s attention. On what appeared to be a mound of yellow daisies, the blue bird bounced and beebopped on top of woman’s head.

  Gnarly was on the hunt.

  “Gnarly,” Mac jerked on the leash, “leave the bird alone.”

  Still on the trail of the blue bird, the black and tan dog dragged them across the parlor to a row of mannequins set in front of a red cherry china hutch.