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

by Carr, Lauren

  “No.” Mac nodded in the direction of the server standing over their table. “What do you want to drink?”

  Chad ordered a scotch from the waiter, who refilled Mac’s water glass before leaving the two men alone.

  “This is Gnarly,” Mac told him.

  More interested in ensuring that he wasn’t about to be arrested, Chad shrugged his shoulders at the introduction.

  “Don’t you recognize him?”

  Chad glanced under the table. His eyes met Gnarly’s. Neither of them showed recognition. “Should I?”

  Mac said, “He’s the dog you gave to Katrina to protect her from Pay Back.”

  “So this is the mutt that let Katrina get killed.”

  “He almost died trying to catch her killer. Didn’t you check out the dog you bought?”

  “What do I know about dogs? A dog is a dog. My buddy said he knew about some dog the army wanted to get rid of. He told me the price was a steal for a fully trained, purebred German shepherd. So I bought him and had him shipped to Katrina, who gave me hell for saddling her with a mutt that kept digging up her back yard. I was trying to do her a favor.” He looked suspicious. “I thought you called me here to talk about Katrina’s secret, not some dumb dog.”

  Both men sat back in their seats while the server placed Chad’s drink on the table.

  “He’s not dumb,” Mac said after the server left.

  He was aware of Chad’s eyes on him. His police experience told him that Katrina’s husband was nervous about what he had figured out.

  Chad masked his nervousness with confidence. “You can’t prove that I knew Katrina killed Niles.”

  “She pretty much said so on this tape.”

  Mac pressed the button on the recorder he had set next to his glass.

  “He knows!” Katrina’s sobbing voice came from the recorder. “He’s like some demon that appears out of nowhere and knows everything. Pay Back is hell.”

  Without emotion, Chad sipped his drink while listening to his late wife’s anguish. “That doesn’t prove I did anything wrong.”

  “But you’re capable of it,” Mac said. “You were both cut from the same cloth.”

  “So tell me, Chad,” Katrina asked from the recorder, “how much does Rachel love you?”

  “This is where it gets interesting.” Mac turned up the volume.

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

  Chad pointed out, “Notice that I said she was crazy.”

  Katrina begged for an answer before advising him, “I wouldn’t go up to Abigail’s Rock with her if I were you, Chad.”

  Mac turned off the recorder.

  “All this proves is that Katrina was very unstable.”

  “You’re right. This recording doesn’t prove that you were in on her plan to kill Niles Holt.” Mac smirked. “I notice that you haven’t asked me where I got this tape. Could it be because you wanted me to get it? Why? What recordings did you make that you don’t want me to hear?”

  Chad sipped his drink. “Like you said you’re not a cop anymore. You can’t do anything to me.”

  Mac rested his elbows on the table. “Katrina went fishing for a rich husband, just like you were fishing for a rich wife. She hooked Niles Holt. Then, she killed him so that she could have his money without having to sleep with an old man. How’s that?”

  “I had nothing to do with any of it,” Chad said in a low voice.

  “Pay Back is hell. He was doing what Katrina paid the chief of police not to do—punish her. Maybe her own guilt pushed her over the edge, or she could have been getting pay back for something else and only assumed it was for killing her husband.”

  “Maybe,” Chad said. “If she killed him, I didn’t know anything about it.”

  “You knew. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have called you for help. Since you didn’t report it, that makes you an accessory.” Mac chuckled. “That’s why you recorded her calls. You wanted her to admit to Niles Holt’s murder so you could hold it over her head to get out of the pre-nup and get a better divorce settlement.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Did you suspect her of killing him before you married her?”

  Chad drained his drink. “What if I did? I didn’t have any proof.”

  “When did the thought first cross your mind?”

  Chad looked down into his glass. “Katrina had her name on all of his accounts within a week of the engagement.”

  “What did she say when you talked to her about killing Niles?”

  “We didn’t talk about it.”

  “Come on,” Mac said. “That’s what she meant when she asked you if Rachel would ever kill you. That’s what she meant about going up to Abigail’s Rock. You knew and she knew you knew.”

  “She was drunk on that tape.”

  “What did she tell you? Did anybody besides the chief of police know that she killed Niles?”

  Chad studied the faces of the diners gathered at the tables around them.

  “Well?” Mac forced him to turn back to him.

  “I put it together after Holt died. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. She kept saying Lee Dorcas did it, but he had an alibi as tight as they come. Then she said it was some mysterious stalker. She certainly wasn’t in mourning. All I had to do was wink at her and she jumped into bed with me.”

  “So you jumped into bed with a murderer,” Mac said.

  “She was filthy rich and wanted me,” he said. “Who wouldn’t?”

  Mac refused to respond. “Does anybody else know Katrina murdered her first husband?”

  “Probably the lover she had in Deep Creek.”

  Knowing that Chad was referring to David, Mac asked, “Who else?”

  After a moment of deep thought, Chad answered, “There was that writer.”

  “What writer?” Mac’s thoughts immediately turned to Travis Turner.

  “Some author wanting to write about Katrina and make herself famous,” Chad explained. “Right after I came back to Washington, she called all excited because this writer thought Niles’s murder would make a good mystery, only she would fictionalize it. I warned Katrina that she was playing with fire. I mean, if I could figure out that she did it—For her to go over her story in detail—”

  “Her own piece of fiction,” Mac noted.

  “Exactly,” Chad said. “Katrina wanted to be famous.”

  “Did she tell you this writer’s name?”

  “Probably, but it didn’t mean anything to me. Anyway, I think the writer put it together. They got into a fight. Katrina didn’t give me any of the details. I half-expected to hear from the police, but nothing happened, except Pay Back materialized not long after that.”

  * * * *

  “Okay, Mr. Faraday, we’ve landed in McHenry,” Jackson called back from his cockpit. “I hope you enjoyed the flight…considering.” The pilot unlatched his seat belt and stood up to check on his passengers.

  The German shepherd appeared to have recovered from his air sickness. He was curled up on one of the four lounging chairs in the passenger compartment.

  The pilot’s sole human passenger was still asleep under the blanket where he had been when the flight began. Wherever he ate lunch, Jackson swore he was never going there. When they met at the airport for the return flight, Mac announced that he had been throwing up since his meeting. He was asleep on the sofa in the back before the private jet taxied down the runway.

  Aware that Mac Faraday had been a homicide detective, poison crossed the young pilot’s mind when he saw no movement under the blanket.

  Gnarly lifted his head from his nap and yawned.

  “Mr. Faraday, are you okay?” Jackson pulled back the blanket to reveal a bald head.

  “It ain’t Faraday. It’s Groom.” Detective Sam Groom threw back the blanket and sat up.

  “What the—?” Jackson leapt back.

  “I decided to try an experiment,” he heard Mac’s
voice behind him. The pilot spun around to find his registered passenger in a lounge chair resting with its back to the cockpit. With no other passengers registered for the flight, Jackson had assumed it was empty.

  “Experiment? What kind of experiment?” Jackson demanded to know.

  Mac explained, “You said that during the whole flight to California, Travis Turner was asleep under a blanket. I wanted to see if someone else could have been under that blanket.”

  Jackson objected, “I saw you come on the plane.”

  “But you didn’t see me slip on and take his place,” Detective Groom said. “Just as easily as I slipped on, Mac could have slipped off. Private chartered flights don’t have all the security measures in place that commercial flights have.”

  “Did you actually speak to Travis Turner after the plane landed in L. A.?” Mac asked,

  “He was sick.” The pilot sputtered out a comment about how he couldn’t remember if he did speak to his passenger.

  Mac grinned at the detective. “That’s what I was looking for.”

  “You still don’t have motive for him doing it,” Detective Groom said.

  “That’s only one small detail.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Gnarly! I’m going to kill you!” Mac grabbed the barking dog by his collar and shook him. “Stop it!” While his guests, Sophia and Travis Turner, took cover behind the front door, he slapped Gnarly on the snout. “I’m sorry,” he told them. “He’s very territorial. I’ll lock him in the bedroom upstairs.”

  Mac gestured in the direction of Archie, David, and Yvonne, who had remained seated in the living room during the attempted attack. “The server will get your drinks. One of the Inn’s best chefs is cooking dinner for us.”

  Ready to make a run for it if Gnarly broke loose, Travis and Sophia joined the rest of the party. Before they could sit, a server dressed in the uniform of the Inn appeared to take their drink orders.

  Archie could see Sophia giving her and Yvonne the once over. Judging by the smirk that crossed her face, the celebrated model was conducting her own private beauty contest in her head. Proclaiming herself the victor, she sat on the loveseat without acknowledging the losers.

  David clasped Travis’s hand. “Hey, buddy, good to see you. No hard feelings?”

  “None now that you’ve taken me out from under the microscope.” Travis smoothed the lapel of his suit jacket.

  As they did for every public appearance, he and Sophia had coordinated their attire. The blue in his suit matched the hue of his wife’s dress, as well as the sapphires in the jewels around her neck, wrist, fingers, and dangling from her earlobes.

  “Now that all of our questions have been answered about Betsy’s death, we have no choice but to close the case,” David explained.

  When he took the drink the server offered on a silver tray, Travis’s eyes met his friend’s. Silently, he thanked him for not mentioning his indiscretion the weekend of Betsy’s murder.

  David said, “I’m sure you understand why I had to be thorough in my investigation. Naomi said it best in your first book—what was it she said? I can’t remember exactly. About how the truth has a way of ending friendships? I’m sure you know the line I’m talking about. Since you wrote it, then you must know how true it is.”

  Gnarly’s abrupt bark startled Sophia out of her seat.

  “Gnarly! Back! Shut up!” Mac called from the hallway upstairs.

  The dog answered with snarling barks.

  They heard a door slam.

  “That dog should be put down,” Travis said. “He’s dangerous. He scared Katrina. That’s why she kept him in the garage.”

  Sophia sat up straight. “How do you know Katrina kept that mutt in the garage?”

  “I don’t remember who told me. I found out at some point during my research.”

  “Speaking of your research,” Archie asked, “when are you going to start writing your book about Katrina?”

  “Don’t make me neuter you!” Mac appeared at the top of the stairs.

  The barking stopped.

  Their host paused to smooth his hair, messed in the wrestling match, and straighten his suit. After composing himself, he strode down the stairs to join the party. The server met him at the bottom with a glass of champagne.

  After a short conversation between Mac and his guests about the warm weather and the onslaught of summer residents returning to Spencer, the server returned to announce that dinner was ready.

  Mac invited his guests to gather in the dining room where the Inn’s staff had prepared the table with the Spencer family’s century-old china. “You should be honored to know that this is the very first time I’ve eaten in this room. I usually eat in the kitchen.”

  After holding out Archie’s chair at the head of the table, Mac sat at the other end. David and Yvonne sat next to each other on one side of the table while Travis and Sophia sat on the other.

  The server brought out chilled copper salad plates. While she set one in front of each guest, Mac told Sophia, “We’re having salmon for the main course. Jeff told me that you’re a quasi-vegetarian. You eat fish, but no other meat.”

  “Thank you for noting that.” She picked up her fork. “The media is always watching my waistline.”

  Mac turned his attention to the rest of his guests. “I’ve learned a lot of little things about household chores since my divorce. Today, I learned that fish leaks. No matter how you wrap it, the slime oozes out,” he told them with a grin before sipping his champagne. “The Inn delivered the salmon this morning and I thought they had wrapped it up nice and tight. But when I went to make a sandwich for lunch I found that it had leaked onto my baloney. Even Gnarly refused to eat that slimy mess. The slime oozed down to the bottom of my fridge.” He asked Sophia, “Does that happen to you?”

  Offended by the suggestion that she did such mundane chores as cleaning, Sophia said, “I never paid that much attention to the floor of our refrigerator.”

  “You have a walk-in fridge,” David said. “I saw it. It’s huge. I’ll bet you could hide a body in there.”

  “Why would I want to hide a body in the fridge?”

  David said, “To slow down decomposition to throw off the time of death.”

  Sophia turned to her husband. “What are they talking about?”

  Travis glared across the table at David.

  “We’re simply making polite dinner conversation.” Mac picked up the pepper mill. “Anyone want pepper on their salad?”

  * * * *

  After dinner, Mac invited his guests into the study for cigars.

  Gasping at the décor in the room devoted to Robin’s writing, Sophia clasped her throat upon spying the various weapons, research materials, and memorabilia of murder.

  “This room helped to inspire Robin.” Archie handed Sophia a sherry glass. “Doesn’t Travis have a room—?”

  “He wouldn’t dare.” Sophia gulped down a taste of the liquor.

  After draping his suit jacket over the back of the chair behind the desk, Mac removed a box from the bottom drawer. “My mother was a closet cigar smoker.”

  “Robin loved to smoke one every now and then,” Archie explained. “She had an average of five a year.”

  David hung his suit jacket on the coat rack before taking a cigar from the open box. “I remember sharing a couple of cigars with Robin. Dad loved nothing more than a good cigar after closing a case.”

  “Then we should have one, by all means, now that we’ve solved Katrina’s murder.” Travis took the cigar Mac offered to him.

  Archie ignited a crystal cigar lighter and held the flame to the end of Mac’s cigar. After it caught flame, she turned to Travis, who had also taken off his suit coat. While she held out the flame to Travis’s cigar, she noted his bare muscular arms exposed by the short-sleeved shirt he had worn under the suit coat. His bronzed flesh was smooth and flawless.

  “Hey, Travis, do you know what this is?” Mac had removed a book from a
shelf behind Robin’s desk.

  Travis smiled broadly when he saw the cover. He took the hardback and opened it. “It’s the first book that I autographed. ‘To Robin, My Mentor and Inspiration, With all my gratitude, Travis Turner.’ I dated it five years ago this summer.” He showed the inscription to Sophia. “I owe everything to her.”

  “Can you do me a favor?” asked Mac. “I’ve never known a bestselling author. Can you read A Death in Manhattan to me—to us? It would be such a kick.” He turned to the rest of his guests. “How about it?”

  After David, Yvonne, Archie, and even Sophia voiced encouragement, Travis accepted the invitation and took the book that his wife held out to him. Perched in a chair in front of the fireplace, he cleared his throat.

  “A Death in Manhattan, by Travis Turner.”

  He turned to the first chapter.

  “The alarm clock blasted its way through Naomi’s dreams to jerk her out of a pleasant slumber to rejoin the world…” By the third paragraph, Travis was enthralled in his role of the author playing center stage to his private audience.

  “Preoccupied with the cats circling her feet in search of their breakfast, the old lady was unaware of the killer behind the curtain waiting for the opportunity to steal what was left of her miserable life…” Aware of another voice added to his own, Travis stopped.

  Behind his desk, in unison with the famous author, Mac had been reading from a stack of typewritten pages. “What’s wrong, Travis? Why did you stop reading?”

  Travis closed the hardback. “What do you have there?”

  “Do you mean this? Oh, it’s just something the dog dragged in.” Mac restacked the papers. “Funny thing about this manuscript. Word for word it’s the same as A Death in Manhattan, except for the title page. This story is entitled Murder in the City and the author listed below it is Betsy Weaver.”

  Sophia sneered. “Betsy was a no-talent writer wannabe.”

  Mac held up the brown envelope. “We found this manuscript in this envelope, which had been postmarked and sealed ten years ago. Travis met Betsy seven years ago.”