by Carr, Lauren
She took a sip of her wine before asking, “David’s in a lot of trouble, isn’t he?”
“Oh, yeah!” Mac sat back in his chair and propped his bare feet up on the table top between them. “Did you know that he was sleeping with Katrina?”
“No, but I’m not surprised,” she said. “David is very popular with the ladies. He’s easy on the eyes and really sweet. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for you.”
“Especially if you’re a woman,” Mac quipped. “So I’ve found out.”
“Why did Travis blow the whistle? He was David’s friend.” Archie gazed at him through the darkness. His skin, which had turned bronze since his move to the lake, glowed in the light created by the flames.
“I don’t think Travis Turner is into friendship.”
“They all knew each other their whole lives,” she said. “Katrina, David, Travis. You’d think he’d want to help find Pay Back.”
“Travis is an opportunist. Probably has been all along. Look at how fast he got over here when Gnarly found Dorcas’s head.”
“Probably as fast as he would have been over here when Katrina was killed if he’d been around.”
Mac asked, “Where was he?”
“Hollywood,” Archie said. “Sophia was there making some reality show about modeling. They only came back a couple of weeks before you got here. As soon as Travis found out about Katrina’s murder, he was all over the case for his next book.”
“What did he gain by ratting on David?” wondered Mac.
Archie asked him, “Haven’t you ever met someone who stirs things up just for the thrill?”
“Maybe Phillips didn’t make the decision to blacklist David on his own,” Mac said. “When Travis ratted on David, he became Phillips’s good buddy and confidante for the big murder case. Think of the hook on that novel if Travis can write himself in as the great amateur detective who breaks the big case wide open.”
“Sounds like you have Travis figured out.” She reached out and touched the bare foot he had propped up on the table. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Smiling, he replied, “Oh, I can think of a lot of things you can do to help me.”
* * * *
With David sleeping off the beer in one of the guest suites down the hall, Mac turned in at one o’clock in the morning.
As was his routine, Gnarly burrowed under the bed after Mac petted him good night. Within moments, he could hear the dog snoring. He hadn’t known dogs snored until he had met Gnarly. Sometimes the dog sounded like a chainsaw.
Instead of reading one of Robin’s books, Mac leafed through her journal until he found her entries around the time of Niles Holt’s murder. Archie’s claim that Robin didn’t get involved in his murder because they both had tight deadlines sounded lame. The mother he was getting to know would have dug into the case and not let go until she uncovered the truth.
He found her first reference to the Holts two-thirds of the way through the book.
Betsy, Travis’s assistant, came over for a cocktail today. She’s such a nice girl. Reminds me of a writer I used to know who committed suicide. I hope Betsy ends up better. Strange bird, though. Seems obsessed with Travis’s books. She’s spending the summer alone at the Turner place working on his next book. He’s in Europe for some film festival. He won’t be back until after Labor Day. Last month, he was in New York for two weeks for the Edgar awards. These young writers nowadays. They spend more time networking to promote their writing careers than writing their books. Maybe that’s why there are so few good ones anymore.
Now, I’ll get off my high horse.
After Betsy left I went out for a walk and had quite a surprise when I met my new neighbors. The husband, Niles Holt, is a retired investment broker. He’s about my age. Very distinguished looking. His bride of a month is named Katrina, used to be Dunlap. She used to be David’s high school sweetheart. Get it? He’s my age and she’s David’s. She thought I didn’t recognize her. She was wrong. I remember her very clearly from when David brought her around. Niles Holt looked at her with the same puppy dog eyes that David had for her. Her diamond necklace made his devotion clear. Five carats worth of diamonds. Not the type of jewelry I would wear around my neck while working in the garden. Maybe she’ll get more practical as she gets older. Maybe not. She hasn’t changed a bit.
A few pages later, Mac found the entry for the day of Niles’s murder:
Murder has come to the Point. This morning, someone shoved Niles Holt off Abigail’s Rock. Of course, Katrina is taking this all very hard. She told us that an old client of hers attacked her. After knocking her down with a big stick, he killed Niles. She said he had been threatening her for months and, after murdering her husband, told her “Payback is hell.” How tragic. I feel so bad for her. I sent David a letter.
The next day, Robin reported that the police located Lee Dorcas, who had an alibi.
…Now, the police are trying to find out who killed Niles. After watching Katrina on the news with Yvonne Harding, I decided to go up to the Rock and look around. I went down to the bottom of the cliff where they had found Niles’s body. It was hard for an old girl like me, but I found a necklace hanging from a tree branch below the Rock. You should have seen this old lady climbing up that pine tree, at least ten feet from the ground, to get that necklace. But I did it. It has to have at least five carats of diamonds on that gold chain. I called Chief Roy Phillips to tell him, but he called me a nosy old biddy before I could even tell him what I found. I put the necklace in my safe.
* * * *
Of all the rooms in the manor house, Mac felt most comfortable in Robin’s study. Here, he felt the essence of the woman who had given birth to him.
Robin Spencer’s famous mysteries had been penned in the most cluttered room in Spencer Manor. Built-in bookshelves containing thousands of books collected over five generations took up space on every wall. Robin had left her son first editions of all her books. First editions of famous authors personally inscribed to her, and books for research in forensics, poisons, criminology, and the law also lined the shelves. With every inch of bookshelf space taken, the writer had taken to stacking books on her heavy oak desk and tables, and in the corner.
Portraits of Spencer ancestors filled space not taken up with books. Mac didn’t know their names. Some appeared to be from the eighteenth century. Others wore fashions from the turn of the nineteenth century and on throughout. The most recent portrait was a life-sized painting of Robin Spencer, dressed in a white strapless formal gown from the 1960s. When he had first seen the picture, Mac had been taken aback by how much Robin resembled his grown daughter Jessica.
The portrait of the demure-looking author filled the wall between two gun cases behind the desk. One case contained rifles and shotguns, while the other had handguns. Some of the guns had been handed down through the Spencer family. Others, Robin had purchased for research.
Robin had acquired other weapons during her career of writing about murder. The coat rack sported a hangman’s noose and a Samurai sword hung on the wall.
In a chair in the far corner of the room, Uncle Eugene watched all the comings and goings. A first aid training dummy, Uncle Eugene had been stabbed in the back, tossed off rooftops, and strangled on numerous occasions, all in the name of research. When he wasn’t being victimized, he sat in an overstuffed chair in the corner, dressed in a tuxedo with a top hat perched on his head. With one leg crossed over the other and an empty sherry glass next to his elbow, Uncle Eugene looked like he was taking a break while waiting for the next attempt on his life.
On the day of Mac’s arrival at Spencer Manor, Archie had shown him the fireproof safe built into the wall behind the portrait of his mother. He didn’t need to write down the combination: right 6, left 27, right 63. It was his birth date, further proof that Robin had never forgotten him.
Mac almost gave up his search for the necklace she had found up at Abigail’s Rock. Maybe, he thought, Robin decided to
get rid of it to protect Katrina for David’s sake. Then his fingers landed on a small envelope tucked under heavy business folders and papers in the safe’s far corner. Its contents made a scratching noise when he slid it toward him.
Holding the business folders and papers up to allow room, he extracted the small envelope and emptied its contents into his palm. The string of diamonds burst with light in his hand when they caught the morning sun streaming through the window.
The gold chain contained no less than five carats of diamonds. The clasp claimed the only imperfection. The link that would have held the missing part was broken, as if the necklace had been ripped from its owner’s throat and tossed off Abigail’s Rock along with her husband.
Chapter Seven
Searching for the journalist who had interviewed Katrina after her first husband’s murder, Mac strolled around the small Morgantown, West Virginia, television studio, when a shapely blond with legs that didn’t quit rushed from a corner office to grab him by the arm. “Excuse me, but are you Mickey Forsythe? Are you really him? You look just like him. I saw you on Oprah.”
“No, I’m not Mickey Forsythe. I’m Mac Faraday.” He extracted his arm from her grasp while asking for Yvonne Harding, which prompted a loud gasp followed by a bombardment of questions.
“That’s me! What do you want to know? Stuff about your mother? I knew her since I was just a little girl. David O’Callaghan—his dad was Spencer’s police chief—he introduced us.”
“How about Katrina Holt Singleton? I’m looking for information about her.”
“Katrina? Well, we went to school together, but we didn’t keep in touch.”
Yvonne led Mac into a lounge furnished with a sofa that had seen better days, if not years, and a stained coffee table. She took two bottles of water from a portable fridge and offered one to him.
“David would be more help than me,” she said. “He dated Katrina for almost a year.”
“Girls aren’t as open with boyfriends as they are with their girlfriends.”
“Katrina didn’t know the meaning of the word friend.” She squinted at him. “Why are you interested in her?”
“I’m trying to find out who killed her.”
Suspicion crossed her face. “I heard that a crazy ex-client did it.”
“Evidence suggests otherwise.” Mac sucked in a deep breath. “Now they think David murdered her.”
Scoffing, she sat on the arm of the sofa and crossed one long leg over the other. “David would never kill anyone, especially Katrina.”
“Why did you say that she didn’t know the meaning of the word friend?”
“Katrina wasn’t anyone’s friend. It took me a long time to figure that out. Even after…” her voice trailed off.
“After what?”
“It’s ancient history.”
“I love history.” Mac urged her to continue.
“It was schoolgirl silliness.” Yvonne shook her head with a laugh. “Okay, here you go. Back in school, Katrina and I worked at my father’s sporting goods shop in McHenry. A couple of guys came in all the time, and I had a huge crush on one of them.”
“Who was that?” Mac offered a guess. “Travis Turner?”
“No, not him,” she answered. “I loved David O’Callaghan.”
“David?”
Blushing at the memory, she rolled her eyes. “I’d turn to mush every time I saw him. He hung out with Travis and they drove around the lake in Travis’s black Jag convertible. They came in pretty regularly, so we knew they liked us. Finally, one day, we arranged to get together after the shop closed. I prayed all day that David would couple up with me.”
Mac surmised, “But that didn’t happen.” When she paused to swallow a gulp of the water, he could see that the memory still hurt after what had to be over a decade.
“Since we were going in Travis’s car, Katrina and I assumed he would be driving. So David would be in the back. David opened the passenger side door and held back the seat for me to get in, but Katrina pushed me out of the way and I ended up sitting in front with Travis.” She sighed. “That seemed to write it in stone. I was with Travis from then on, until Katrina dumped David and our foursome broke up. Then we all went our separate ways.”
“Did Katrina know that you liked David?” Mac imagined how she felt when her best friend started dating the object of her infatuation.
Yvonne answered in a firm tone. “Of course she did. She used to tease me after he left the shop about my screw-ups in front of him. Katrina loved nothing more than something that belonged to someone else.”
“So,” he concluded, “you had a crush on David and Katrina basically stole him from you. Then, you ended up with the rich playboy in the hot car.” He chuckled. “Have you interviewed your former boyfriend since he hit the big time?”
“I interview Travis on our show every time he comes back to the area. We always joke about the irony of it all,” she said. “Back in high school, I wrote his term papers. Who would have thought? Now, he’s a Pulitzer Prize–winning author. Last summer, when he came on the show to promote his latest bestseller—I forget the name of it. He’s been churning out one a year. He brought some pictures from when we were in school to show the audience. We had a good laugh.” Her mirth took on an irritated note. “He also brought Sophia Hainsworth. Gorgeous, but touched.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I made the mistake of kissing Travis hello on the cheek and she about scratched my eyes out. She told me to keep my claws off him. He was hers. She can keep him.” She cocked her head at him. “I thought you wanted to talk about Katrina.”
Reminded of his reason for seeing her, Mac started. “According to my mother’s journal, she saw Katrina on your show after her first husband’s death.”
“I remember that interview,” she said. “It was your average plea-for-justice type report. Katrina told about how she and Niles went up to Abigail’s Rock—”
“I know the story,” he interrupted her. “Can I see that interview by any chance?”
After some time rummaging in a portable pod filled with shelving that served as the news station’s archives, Yvonne took Mac to her office where she loaded a DVD into a player for them to view. She perched on the corner of her desk with her legs crossed. He was so interested in the news report that he didn’t notice her bare knees inches from his shoulder.
For the first time, Mac saw Katrina in life. He could see what attracted David to her. She wore her black flowing hair loose. Her flawless sun-kissed skin with an olive tint added an exotic touch to her beauty. For her television appearance, the new widow displayed her slender figure in a black sleeveless dress with a plunging neckline.
Katrina reminded Mac of someone, but he couldn’t put his finger on whom.
“What are you looking for?” Yvonne whispered.
“Something Robin saw and thought was important enough to make her climb up the face of Abigail’s Rock.”
“What was that?”
“She didn’t say.”
He turned up the volume.
“It was our last week at Deep Creek,” Katrina told Yvonne and the audience in a soft voice. “I remember as a child, climbing up to Abigail’s Rock with my friends. Once—it was such a happy memory—a former boyfriend and I climbed up there to watch the sunrise. It was the most beautiful and romantic thing that ever happened to me.”
On the screen, Mac saw Yvonne flinch at the reminder of Katrina’s relationship with David. He wondered if the dig had been intentional.
“It was my idea that we go up to the rock to see the sunrise before going back to the city. But when we got up there—” Katrina choked. “It happened so fast.”
The reporter patted her hand. “That’s okay.”
“No, I want to go on…He blindsided me. We came out into the clearing at the rock. It happened so fast. Suddenly, I was on the ground with blood on my face. Niles was screaming and—” Uttering a sobbing noise, she dabbed her eyes with
a tissue. “He was gone!”
After a moment, Yvonne announced, “The man originally suspected of attacking you and killing Niles has been eliminated as a suspect.”
“He’s been threatening me. But I have to admit I never saw my husband’s killer. I didn’t really see anything.”
Mac squinted.
Seeing his questioning look, Yvonne asked, “What is it?”
“She didn’t see anything,” he replied.
On the television, Yvonne asked, “Did he say anything to you? Do you know why he killed your husband?”
“No, he didn’t say anything.”
Mac turned off the television.
“Did you see what Robin saw?”
“Yep.” He handed her the remote. “Thank you very much.”
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“Nope.”
Chapter Eight
After seeing Yvonne Harding, Mac rushed back to the manor, grabbed the next Robin Spencer book on his reading list, and lay out on the deck next to the shore to enjoy the sunny day. Gnarly’s moan when he stretched out in a sunray next to the chaise reflected his master’s joy.
Mac recalled numerous beautiful days that he had spent in stuffy rooms with self-serving supervisors or murder suspects. With a sigh, he leaned his head back, embraced the touch of the sun on his face, and opened Robin Spencer’s seventh book. He noted the copyright date on the first page: the same year he had started school.
He had read less than one page when Archie jogged up the path from the gazebo. She wore a long powder blue skirt and blousy top. Her earrings and bracelets around her bare ankles matched the shade of blue in her clothes. “Hey, Mac, have you seen my phone?”
“No,” he replied. “Have you seen my Blackberry?”
“I guess the petty thief snagged them both.”
“The cell service claims no one has used my Blackberry since it disappeared.” He marked the last word he read with his finger. “Why would someone steal a Blackberry if they didn’t intend to use it?”
