It's Murder, My Son (A Mac Faraday Mystery)

by Carr, Lauren

  “I don’t know why he doesn’t like me,” Debra called out to Archie. “Most dogs love me.”

  “Drop it, Gnarly!” Archie hit him with her open palms. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

  “Let go of it, you dumb mutt.” Determined to win the tug of war, Debra whacked the dog’s snout with her fist.

  Gnarly twisted his head and shook the bag until it tore to spill its contents.

  When she saw what had scattered in the driveway, Archie screamed.

  The bag had contained an array of personal mementoes, jewels, watches, silver, knick-knacks, and other priceless memorabilia—all taken from inside Spencer Manor. Debra had grabbed everything she could lay her hands on during the job interview and tour of the house.

  “You’re a thief. That’s why Gnarly doesn’t like you.”

  Debra dropped the bag and ran for her car. Leaving tread in the driveway, the thief drove off between the stone pillars and on up the Point.

  “That’s another applicant I need to cross off our list.”

  * * * *

  After lunch, Mac and David stopped at the Old Ebbitt Grill on Fifteenth Street in downtown Washington. Piquing their curiosity when she asked that they not tell her husband, Rachel Singleton had scheduled the meeting that morning.

  She was nursing a gin and tonic at a booth in a dark corner. Looking like a model belonging on the cover of a society magazine in a jade suit with matching jewels, Rachel stood out even in a restaurant that catered to the city’s most beautiful people.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” she said. “You got Chad so mad last night that he threatened to call his lawyer if you try to question him again. I thought maybe if you knew the truth about Katrina that you’d understand why he walked away from her the way he did.”

  When the server appeared, she told them to order anything they wanted. She was buying. Mac ordered a beer on tap while David ordered a mineral water.

  Wordlessly, they eyed the server until he left before Mac asked, “What truth do you want to share with us?”

  “Katrina was nuts.” When the two men responded with silence, she rattled on, “Yes, Chad married her for her money. She chased him for years but he loved me. Then, after her first husband died and she inherited all that money, he thought what the heck. Who wouldn’t?”

  “And you didn’t mind your boyfriend sleeping with another woman for her money?” David asked doubtfully.

  “Katrina cheated, too,” Rachel said. “She had a lover in Deep Creek after she married Chad.”

  David’s cheeks took on a shade of pink.

  “Did Chad tell you that?” Mac asked her.

  Silently, they waited while the server delivered their drinks. They didn’t resume their conversation until he was out of earshot.

  Rachel told them, “Less than two months after they got married, Chad smelled another man’s cologne on his bathrobe when he went to the lake. Katrina said it was her perfume. She lied.”

  “Did Chad ever talk to you about Pay Back and how he hurt Katrina?” David’s tone betrayed his disbelief of Chad’s compassion for his wife’s terror.

  “It wasn’t what you think,” she argued. “At first Chad did believe that someone was after Katrina. But then, when no one could catch the guy, and when she started really losing it, we started to wonder.”

  David suggested, “Maybe she was losing it because no one could help her.”

  “Maybe if she told the truth once in a while someone would have wanted to help her.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mac interjected, “what did she lie about?”

  “First, she said this crazy client killed Niles,” Rachel recalled. “After the police said that it couldn’t have been him, she said the killer looked like him. Then, she said that she was being attacked in Deep Creek while Chad was working here during the week. The police interrogated Chad. They told him that she said that she was being harassed while she was living here, before she went back to Deep Creek, and that the stalker had to have followed her from Washington to Deep Creek.” Shaking her head, Rachel’s face contorted with contempt. “Nothing happened to her here.”

  Surprised by the announcement, David looked at Mac, who asked, “Are you talking about the time period between Niles Holt’s murder and when Katrina returned to Spencer after marrying Chad?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “Katrina told the police that someone had been after her all along since this Dorcas guy threatened her the first time. But I was here in the city that whole winter after Niles died. Chad was with her all the time. Nothing happened. Check with the police. She never reported anything because nothing happened.”

  David seemed to ask both of them, “Why would Katrina lie about something like that?”

  “That’s something you need to ask a shrink.” Rachel reached into her purse and slapped a micro cassette recorder in the center of the table. “She would get drunk and make really weird phone calls to Chad saying all this wild stuff. After this one he decided that she didn’t have enough money to make him stick around. That’s why he went ahead and gave me the ring. He figured that if he could hold on until June, then it would be one year and he would get a hundred thousand dollars and get out.”

  Mac picked up the recorder and hit the Play button.

  They recognized the smooth male voice from the night before. “Katrina, what do you want me to do? I’m four hours away. Why don’t you call the police when this guy shows up?”

  “I have.” Her high-pitched voice was choked with tears. “It’s always the same. They come out here, check the security system, and say it’s working fine. They can’t find how he gets in here. He knows.”

  “Knows what?” Chad asked with an impatient tone.

  “He knows!” she sobbed. “He’s like some demon that appears out of nowhere and knows everything. Pay Back is hell!”

  “Eventually, he’s going to slip up and the police will catch him.”

  “No, he won’t.”

  “Of course he will.”

  “You just don’t understand. The police can’t catch him because he’s Pay Back.”

  “What does he know, Katrina?” Chad begged, “Tell me what he knows.”

  “What I did!” She sucked in a shuddering breath and let it out. “He’s Pay Back! He’s hell personified!”

  “Katrina, how much have you had to drink?”

  “Not enough.”

  He ordered, “Go to bed.”

  “You know, Chad, you aren’t completely innocent either. We’re both cut from the same cloth. I’ve done nothing that you’re not capable of doing yourself.”

  “I hate talking to you when you’re like this, Katrina.”

  “I know about Rachel.”

  “And I know about your lover. I may not know his name, but I know he’s been wearing my bathrobe.”

  “That means we’re both cheats,” she said. “So tell me, Chad, how much does Rachel love you?”

  “Good night, Katrina.”

  “Does she love you enough not to kill you after you get all my money?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Do you even know, Chad? Or do you know and you’re afraid of the answer?”

  “I’m hanging up.”

  “I wouldn’t go up to Abigail’s Rock with her if I were you, Chad.”

  Click.

  Rachel turned off the machine.

  Mac looked over at David. His cheeks were no longer pink. Now his face was white.

  “See?” Rachel asked them. “Katrina was crazy. That’s why Chad wanted out. After this phone call, he wanted to get as far from her as possible. That’s why he never went back to the lake.”

  “Can I have this tape?” Mac asked.

  “You certainly can. It’s a copy. Chad’s lawyer has the original to use if something ever happened.”

  “Something did happen,” Mac reminded her. “Someone killed her.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mac checked the time on his watch while tu
rning the Viper onto Spencer Point. Instinctively, he wanted to keep his eyes averted when he passed the Hardwick home, but curiosity overcame his bitterness toward the neighbors.

  A van with a cockroach huge enough to take up the whole side panel rested in their driveway. The name splashed on the door indicated that it belonged to a pest exterminator.

  Carrying what resembled an oxygen tank, a man in white overalls jogged out the front door and across the driveway. His long ash-colored hair, fashioned in dreadlocks that looked more like a bird’s nest, hung down to the middle of his back. He made a failed attempt to cover up the nest with a white ball cap pulled down over the top of his head. Dark reflective sun glasses concealed his eyes.

  The exterminator jumped into the front seat of the van and slammed the door shut.

  Mac didn’t know if he found the man with the tank so interesting because of the contrast between the stark white overalls and the bushy hair, or maybe because the Hardwicks had bug problems.

  When he saw Archie sitting on the front steps, he recalled his reason for hurrying home. Hoping that she was waiting for him, he gunned the engine to take him up to the front door.

  Gnarly’s non-stop barking punctuated his elation. Archie claimed it had started before Mac pulled into the driveway. She assumed that the dog’s sensitive ears had picked up the sound of the Viper’s engine and Gnarly was excited about his master’s return home. She appeared to be wrong. Becoming increasingly agitated, Gnarly threatened to charge through the stone entranceway at whatever was upsetting him.

  “Gnarly, will you shut up?” Mac ordered when he couldn’t hear Archie tell him about the events of her weekend.

  As if to answer him, Gnarly jumped up to plant his paws on Mac’s chest. He then whirled around and once again perched between the pillars to resume barking.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Archie asked Gnarly. “The thief is gone and she won’t be back.”

  Whining, Gnarly hung his head and turned in a circle before plopping down in the driveway.

  With a shake of her head, Archie followed Mac inside the house.

  * * * *

  “Where’s the bologna?”

  Mac swore that he had left an unopened pound of bologna in the refrigerator before he went to Washington. Now it was gone.

  Archie hadn’t eaten it. She didn’t like processed meat. He learned this fact when she screwed up her nose and uttered an “ugh” noise after he had offered her a hot dog.

  He became distracted in his search for the missing lunchmeat when, through the kitchen window, he spotted Archie in the hot tub out at the tip of the Point. Soft blue lights under the water along the walkway and around the gazebo cast the spa in a dreamy air. She had warned him that sometimes she would soak naked in the hot tub. Mesmerized with visions from the depths of his imagination, he stared at the tub until he recalled his manners, stepped back from the window, and returned to preparing dinner.

  With the lunchmeat missing, Mac settled for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a glass of milk.

  “Light dinner?” he heard Archie ask while he was returning the ingredients for his meal to the fridge. She had slipped into her red robe to cover up.

  Fearing that she would see him trying to determine if she wore anything under the robe, he kept his back to her. “Someone stole my bologna.”

  “Don’t look at me.” Screwing up her nose at the mention of the lunchmeat, she sat at the kitchen table. “Maybe Gnarly did it.”

  “Oh, yeah, I can see him opening the fridge, stealing my food, and then closing the door behind him.”

  She smiled up at him when he crossed the room with his plate and glass. “Gnarly nabbed that thief pretending to be a job applicant.”

  He sat across from her. “I never said he wasn’t smart. He is. Like a fox.” He took a bite of his sandwich.

  “Did you know he had an identity chip? The vet found it when David took him in after the murder,” she told him. “Chad Singleton never changed his registration. This weekend, I went online to register him and guess who Gnarly was registered to. The United States Army.”

  “The army? What was he trained for? Stealing food from the enemy?”

  She shrugged. “They wouldn’t tell me. But they did tell me that he was dishonorably discharged.”

  “How does a dog get dishonorably discharged from the United States Army?”

  “You got me. They refused to talk about it. This rude woman said that it was classified and then started interrogating me.”

  Mac looked at the sandwich in his hand. The bologna, along with the butter and bacon, was missing. On the surface, Archie’s theory that Gnarly was stealing food from his fridge was laughable. Mac swore that more than once the dog distracted him so that he could steal food from his plate. But could Gnarly really take food out of the fridge and close the door behind him? If so, that would explain why food he swore he hadn’t eaten disappeared.

  “Where is Gnarly?” Archie asked.

  “Sulking someplace. He wouldn’t stop barking until I whacked him on the snout. The last I saw him, he ran downstairs to crawl behind the sofa.” Mac raised his voice. “Gnarly!”

  She joined in the call. “Gnarly! Come here, boy!” She called for the dog out the deck door.

  Within moments they heard the familiar jangle of Gnarly’s tags and the click of his paws on the stone steps leading up from the home theater on the ground floor.

  With a thick cloth handbag clutched between his jaws, the German shepherd emerged at the top of the stairs. Purple flowers decorated the torn and discolored bag that hung from threadbare shoulder straps.

  Archie said, “That isn’t the same bag he took off the thief.”

  “Let me take a look at that.” When Mac reached for it, Gnarly jerked his head away and turned to escape with his prize. Anticipating the move, Mac blocked his path and grasped one corner of the bag. It contained something thick and heavy. After a tug-of-war, he extracted the bag from the dog’s jaws.

  “Where did he get this?” Mac turned to Archie. “Could it be Robin’s?”

  “I thought I threw away all of her old handbags.”

  He asked Gnarly, “Where did you get this?” Sitting at his feet, Gnarly answered by looking over his shoulder through the French doors to the outside.

  The bag contained a large brown sealed envelope. Two labels on the front indicated that it had been mailed special delivery with a signature required. Both the return address and the addressee were the same: Betsy Weaver in Los Angeles, California.

  “Betsy Weaver?” Mac looked across the table at Archie. “Why do I know that name?”

  “Travis’s assistant,” she reminded him. “You’ve never actually met her. She was at the bar that night we took David and Violet out to dinner.”

  “Why would she mail a package to herself special delivery with a signature required?”

  Gnarly charged before she could answer. With a single bound, he captured the bag out of Mac’s hand and ran back down the stairs to the play room and home theater.

  “Follow him,” Mac ordered.

  Leaving the package on the kitchen table, they ran down the stairs in time to see Gnarly burrow behind the leather sofa.

  “Why do I think my Blackberry is back there?” Mac asked. “Grab an end.”

  They moved the sofa out from the wall.

  Surprised by the intrusion, the German shepherd sat up from his nest of treasures: towels, beach blankets, women’s handbags, wallets, keys, shoes, cell phones, and empty food wrappers. The most recent addition was a pack of bologna.

  Archie broke into a round of giggles. “Someone has been a very busy doggie.”

  “Someone has been a very naughty doggie.” Mac picked up a chewed-up wallet that still contained cash and credit cards. He read the name to find that it belonged to a neighbor from the other end of the Point. “David said the petty thefts started shortly after Pay Back arrived on the scene. Shortly after Pay Back showed up, Katrina got Gnarly
for protection. The thief wasn’t Pay Back. The dog protecting her from Pay Back was the thief.”

  Spying a pair of chewed-up pink pumps with stiletto heels, Archie shrieked. “My shoes! Bad dog!”

  Gnarly darted between them and escaped up the stairs with the cloth handbag still in his possession. They let him go to dig through his treasures. The loot included Mac’s Blackberry and Archie’s phone.

  “Now do you believe me that Gnarly is smart enough to open and close the refrigerator door?” she asked.

  With both hands, Mac held up fistfuls of empty food wrappers. “I think this evidence makes him a strong suspect.” He picked six wallets and eleven purses from the nest of stolen goods. The handbags contained cosmetics, cell phones, keys, and wallets. Gnarly appeared to be more interested in chewing on the outside than the goods inside. Archie knew the victims of the thefts. They all lived on the Point and across the cove.

  “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to replace lost credit cards?” Mac picked up a wallet that she had discarded.

  “Oh, lighten up. It isn’t like Gnarly went out and bought a home theatre with them.”

  Covered in dirt and food and grease stains, one wallet appeared more worn than the others. The discolored and mildewed leather had been chewed to bits. Along with thirty-seven dollars in cash, the pockets contained credit cards and identification.

  Mac dug his fingers inside the card section to extract the driver’s license that had been pierced by Gnarly’s teeth. He observed the expiration date first. Issued by the Commonwealth of Virginia, it was scheduled to expire in four years. After studying the photograph and name of the wallet’s owner, he did a double-take. The long, bushy, ash-colored hair was twisted into dreadlocks.

  “Look at this.” He handed the license to Archie.

  Her eyes squinted while she studied the image. When the image registered with her, they grew wide. “No way!”

  “He kind of looks like the bug man I saw coming out of the Hardwicks’ place this afternoon.” Mac studied the license again. It had been issued to Lee J. Dorcas.

  Archie wondered, “Do you think that maybe Gnarly had dug this up in the mine after finding his body?”