by Carr, Lauren
“Hello.” Hearing laughter in her tone, she sucked in her breath. “Yes, this is Archie Monday.” She paused. “Yes, he’s here.” She held out the phone to him. “It’s Jeff Ingle. He wants to speak to Mickey Forsythe.”
“I’m not real,” Mac took the phone from her. “This is Mickey—I mean Mackey—I mean—How are you, Jeff?” He listened for a moment before saying, “No, I’m glad you called. I’ll be right there. His drinks are on the house. Try to get him to eat something.”
* * * *
The outdoor café seemed to be serving twice as many customers as it had the previous week when Mac made his first appearance at the Inn. In the short time since moving to Deep Creek Lake, Mac noticed that more boats and jet skis populated the lake with the migration of seasonal residents returning to their summer homes in the resort area.
Staring out at the landscape off in the distance, David sat alone at a table in the corner.
Mac retrieved a bottle of beer from the bar and took the seat across from him. Immediately, he noticed that David’s badge was missing from his uniform’s breast pocket. “What happened?”
“Lee Dorcas’s and Katrina Singleton’s deaths have now both been classified as murder.”
“That’s good.”
David tore his eyes from the landscape. “I’m Phillips’s prime suspect.”
“Why? Why would you have wanted to kill them?”
David closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. He swallowed. “She was scared. She asked me to stay with her while her husband was in the city. So after Mom went to bed at night, I would go over, and one thing led to another and…” He left the rest up to Mac’s imagination.
“You were having an affair with her!” Mac sounded as if he were speaking to one of his children rather than a stranger who happened to be his brother. “What were you thinking?”
“That no one knew.”
“If nobody knew then how did you become a suspect?”
“Phillips has to be guessing. I kept it a secret, but not because of that.” David corrected himself. “Yes, because of that. I thought if no one knew I was staying there, then Pay Back would make his move and I could catch him.”
“How long did this affair go on?”
“Mid-summer into fall. About five months.” David told him in a firm tone, “I had no intention of sleeping with her. I was going to stay in one of the guest rooms. But, after a while, we got to talking about back when we were in school and it just happened.”
Mac blurted out, “Affairs don’t just happen between grown-ups.”
“My career is officially shot! Isn’t there anything you can do to help me besides lecture me on everything that I’ve been telling myself since Katrina died?” David’s face was pale with fear. “Do you think I’ve not been afraid that this would happen?”
“Why didn’t you tell me to drop it? If I had known—”
“Would you?” David laughed. “Get real. We only just met and I already know that once you pick up the scent of murder nothing will shake you off the trail. You’re as bad as Robin.”
Mac sucked in a deep breath. “I certainly didn’t want you to become a murder suspect.”
“Put yourself in my shoes. If someone you loved got murdered, wouldn’t you do everything you could to get their killer? I couldn’t sit back and let Phillips do nothing.”
“So you pushed for a murder investigation at the risk of being a suspect.”
David reiterated, “I didn’t think anyone knew about us.”
“Someone knew. Otherwise, how did Phillips find out? He isn’t smart enough to have figured it out on his own.”
David went to the bar for another beer.
Mac considered calling Archie to tell her that he wouldn’t be home for dinner until he remembered that she wasn’t his wife. She had returned to the guest cottage to work on an editing assignment. She would be eating dinner alone whether he came home or not. He didn’t need to check in with her.
David returned with two beers. He set one bottle down in front of Mac. “Travis and Sophia knew.”
“Did you tell them?”
“Didn’t have to.” David paused to take a gulp from his bottle. He continued after swallowing. “Travis was there when she asked for my help. Last Fourth of July weekend, I stopped in to have a drink after work. The place was packed. I ran into Travis and Sophia in the lounge, and we had a drink together in the sofa area. The bartender brought me a drink. Katrina had sent it over.” He sighed. “I hadn’t seen her in a dozen years, at least.”
Mac asked, “Was that what Travis was talking about when he said she told you guys about how Dorcas had murdered her husband?”
“Exactly.” David explained, “I was overseas. Archie and Robin had written me about him getting killed. I sent Katrina a sympathy card and she replied. Before that, we hadn’t communicated since school.”
“But then you saw each other here last July and she bought you a drink.”
“I asked her how she was holding up since Niles’s murder.” After another sip from the bottle, he recalled, “Travis and Sophia knew nothing about it. They had been in Europe that summer. That was the first time I heard the whole story about how Dorcas accused her of stealing his inheritance and about him sneaking into her dressing room on her wedding day and telling her that he was going to kill Niles, and about how Niles died.”
“But Dorcas had an alibi,” Mac reminded him.
“She knew that. She thought that maybe since the killer hit her in the head, she got confused and assumed it was Lee Dorcas.” He drained his beer while signaling to a server for another one before continuing. “Whatever the case, she told me that someone was stalking her, and she was terrified. He had followed her back from Washington and was now threatening her here in Spencer. I had to help her.”
“Did she report this to Phillips?”
“She said Phillips was an incompetent.”
Mac smirked. “Perceptive lady.”
“I didn’t straight out offer to go sleep with her right then and there,” David insisted. “I started by offering to check the security in her home. After we had finished our drinks, I left with her. I checked out her house. It seemed secure. We had another couple of drinks and I went home.”
“Did Travis and Sophia hear the part of the conversation about you staying with her?”
David paused to think. “They left after their table was ready.” He sat up. “Actually, I hadn’t agreed to spend nights with Katrina at all at that point. When they left, I had only offered to let her call me personally when anything happened.”
“When did you start sleeping there?” Mac asked.
“It was a good week later. The day after I ran into Katrina, she called me. Pay Back pinned a note to her front door with a knife. He threatened to throw her off Abigail’s Rock the same way he had Niles. I went to her house and checked out the scene. The next day, she called me again. This time, he had broken into her house and written ‘Bitch’ on her dressing room mirror with her lipstick.”
“Was the security system on?”
“Yes, but it didn’t go off,” David said. “I checked with the company and their records show that someone had used her code to deactivate it. Katrina swore that she never gave her code to anyone. After that, she changed it. She kept changing the code, but that never seemed to do any good.”
“When did you start spending nights there?” Mac wanted to know.
“After that,” David said. “Katrina was pretty shaken so I spent the night, but we didn’t get intimate until a couple of days after that.”
“Did Pay Back show up while you were there?”
“Ten days later,” David told him. “Katrina had invited me to dinner. We had a bottle of wine and both of us passed out in the living room.”
“Wait a minute,” Mac interrupted him. “You passed out after only one bottle of wine?”
“The wine had to have been drugged. Afterwards, we both felt like death warmed over for se
veral days.” David said, “It had to have been Pay Back because while we were unconscious, he came in and wrote ‘Pay Back is hell’ and ‘This time you live! Next time you’ll die!’ on all her mirrors with her lipstick. He also slashed her bed. He could have killed us both, but he didn’t. This time the security company said there was no break in the system. No one entered the code to deactivate it, nor did they set it off. As far as the security company is concerned, no one came in at all.” He sighed. “It was the Ford case all over again.”
“What’s the Ford case?” Mac wanted to know.
“Milo Ford,” David said. “During his career, Dad had a couple of cases where he didn’t catch the killer. The Ford case was one that he couldn’t figure out how the killer did it. It’s exactly the same as Katrina’s case. Milo Ford had built Katrina’s house back in the mid-1980s. He was a pompous ass. He owned one of the biggest real estate agencies in Deep Creek. Dad found out that Milo was the local drug connection to the rich and famous. No one would testify to bring down the local power brokers’ candy man and Dad had no evidence to prove anything. When Dad managed to get warrants to search Milo’s house he would never find anything. Not one thing. Dad could never bust him.”
Mac reminded him, “You said this was a murder case.”
“One Sunday night, Milo’s wife and kids came home from a weekend away and found him shot to death in the family room. The security system was on and there was no sign of any forced entry. Nothing. Even Robin Spencer couldn’t figure it out.”
“A locked door murder,” Mac smiled. “I’ve never had a case like that.”
“That’s what Katrina’s murder is,” David said. “The security system was on when I found her body. I had the code and turned it off when I went in. The security company had no record of any break in the system since the evening of the murder when she had let Gnarly out.”
“How did your affair with Katrina end?”
David said, “It wasn’t any torrid love affair. Not the type Phillips will present to Fleming. I knew Katrina wanted money and status. After everything that had happened, she couldn’t wait to get out of Deep Creek, and I made no pretense of going with her. She planned to leave Deep Creek Lake for good the Monday after Valentine’s Day and put the house on the market.”
“Were you at her place that night?”
“No. Chad was supposed to be coming back. Besides, once she got Gnarly she didn’t need me to protect her.”
Mac sat back and propped a foot up on the empty chair next to him at the table. He watched the boats out on the water. Fishermen were making their way onto the lake after the jet skis and speed boats had turned in.
He asked David, “Where was Gnarly that night Pay Back knocked you and Katrina out?”
“Katrina didn’t get Gnarly until the month after that. Chad had a client who was a dog trainer and he had this retired police dog. Chad bought him and shipped him out here.”
“Retired police dog?” Mac was puzzled. “Gnarly can’t be more than two years old.”
Preoccupied with his problems, David nodded his head. “Yeah, Gnarly does have a lot of puppy in him.”
“Do you believe the Hardwicks about their security camera being broken the night Katrina was killed?”
“No, but we don’t have any evidence to prove otherwise.”
“Even if the killer was able to get around the security system,” Mac mused, “how did he get around Gnarly?”
“The only thing I can come up with is that Gnarly was outside. There’s no break in the system for her to let him in,” David replied. “That’s where I found him.”
“If she was killed after letting Gnarly out, then how did the killer get inside without Gnarly catching him?” Mac wondered.
“You got me.”
“Were any dog bites reported at the time of the murder?”
David cocked his head at him. “I’m not an amateur. I checked with the hospital and all the clinics and doctors’ offices in the area. There were none.”
* * * *
Two hours later, customers packed the Spencer Inn.
“David, I think we should go home.”
David’s reaction confirmed Mac’s suspicion that he was unable to drive. “Yeah, you’re right. Mickey Forsythe is always right, just like Dad was. He always does the right thing, always gets his man, and never makes a mistake.”
Mac wondered if the bitterness in David’s tone was rooted in Mac’s connection to Patrick O’Callaghan. “I know how it feels to have your whole life turned upside down.” Mac told him, “A year ago, I came home and found my wife of over twenty years in bed with the assistant district attorney. Did you know that?”
David shook his head.
“Did you know that even though she was the one cheating, because her lover had so many influential friends, I was the one taken to the cleaners? I lost everything. I had an appointment scheduled for the next day to meet with a bankruptcy lawyer when Ed hunted me down,” Mac recalled. “I thought Ed was one of my ex-wife’s friends. I wouldn’t return his phone calls. He’d come in one door at the police station and I’d go out the other. I had no idea I was running from a man wanting to give me a check for two hundred and seventy million dollars.”
David laughed loudly. The customers at the next table turned their heads to look at them.
“Goes to prove that none of us is perfect.”
“Not perfect?” David asked in a sarcastic tone. “You live on the Point, damn it! You own this town and you don’t even know it.”
“There’s a difference between being rich and powerful, and being perfect. If rich meant perfect, Katrina wouldn’t be dead.”
“You’re Mickey Forsythe.”
“Mickey was a figment of Robin Spencer’s imagination.”
“Hell! You even drive his car!”
“I read the description of his car in her first book and thought it was cool,” Mac said. “I decided to buy one. It was the first piece of luxury I ever indulged in.”
“You were the top homicide detective in Georgetown,” David reminded him.
“I may have been, but my boss treated me as badly as yours does. He’d take credit for my work. He’d blame me for his mistakes. The brass upstairs didn’t like me because they wanted cases closed fast, even if it meant putting innocent people in jail. I asked too many questions. That’s why I never made chief.”
David leaned across the table and whispered, “Mickey is always accused of asking too many questions. After inheriting his mother’s millions, he quit his job because his bosses hated him for not playing the game.”
“What game?”
“The kiss your boss’s ass game.” David sat back. “Mickey doesn’t care who the bad guy is or who his friends are. If you’re a bad guy, you’re going down.” He finished off the bottle in one gulp and slammed it down. “You’re Mickey Forsythe.”
Mac ended the conversation with a suggestion that sounded more like an order. “Let’s go home.”
David accepted his hand on his elbow to lift him to his feet in order to guide him around the deck to the parking lot.
“Hey, buddy, how ya doing?”
In the parking lot, Mac made out Travis’s muscular shape in silhouette under the bright lamp. He was stepping out of his red Mercedes convertible. His black sports jacket matched his slacks.
In a low, threatening tone, David asked, “Did you tell Phillips that I was spending nights at Katrina’s place?”
Travis looked from David to Mac.
“You were here when Katrina told us about how scared she was sleeping alone since her husband had left,” David reminded him. “I was trying to catch the guy.”
“Was he the only thing you were trying to catch?” the novelist asked with a smile. “Hey, I’m not the one who slipped between the sheets with a married murder victim.”
“So you did rat me out!”
Travis stepped back with a shake of his head. “Phillips asked and I answered. That’s all.”
>
Mac grabbed David by the waist and forced him over the hood of his Viper when he lunged for the author.
“You’ve got a problem, O’Callaghan,” Travis said. “You don’t know how to use your head. I would have handled the whole thing differently. Too bad. I had hoped we could still be friends.”
Mac said, “I don’t think you two ever were friends.”
Chuckling, Travis climbed the steps to the Inn.
“Get in the car,” Mac ordered.
“He ratted me out,” David muttered while climbing into the passenger seat of the Viper.
Mac started the engine. “Do you know what this means?”
David shook his head. “I’ve had too much to drink to know what anything means right now.”
“Travis and Sophia knew you were over at Katrina’s place while her husband was out of town.”
“And he told Phillips.”
“You had kept it a secret that you were over there because you wanted to catch Pay Back when he made his move. But Travis blew your cover—pardon the expression. Pay Back probably knew, too.”
* * * *
“What’s wrong with him?” Violet demanded to know when Mac called to report that David was spending the night at his house.
“He’s sick to his stomach.”
He turned away to escape Archie’s green eyes peering at him from where she sat in front of the flames in the outdoor fireplace. The fire reflected off the golden tone of her bare arms and silky white lounging pajamas.
With his head hanging over the edge of the deck, Gnarly was stretched out on his back on the top step leading down to the beach. He also seemed to be watching his master.
Mac would have called Violet from inside the house, but it wasn’t like Archie wouldn’t notice David there the next morning. He’d learned early on that she didn’t miss a thing.
“But he has to work tomorrow,” Violet objected.
“He’s not going to work tomorrow.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s sick.” After soothing her with assurances that David would be home in the morning, Mac hung up and poured a glass of chardonnay from the bottle Archie had placed in the center of the table.
