Old Loves Die Hard (A Mac Faraday Mystery)

by Lauren Carr

“So that’s what happened,” he said to her dead body.

  He spied chunks of skin under her fingernails and deep red scratches on her arms and neck.

  Sobbing, he asked her, “Christine, what are we going to tell the children?”

  Chapter Three

  “Mac, are you okay?” Jeff Ingles asked a third time while shaking a tumbler filled with bourbon on the rocks in an effort to get his attention. With two dead bodies in the owner’s private suite at the Spencer Inn, Jeff felt like downing it himself. After receiving Mac’s call about the tragedy on the penthouse floor, Jeff directed him to his office on the ground floor to await the police.

  Sitting motionless on the manager’s sofa, Mac replayed the whole scene over and over in his mind.

  “Mac!” The sharpness of Jeff’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts. The call sounded foreign coming from the soft-spoken manager’s lips.

  After following Jeff’s eyes to the glass he held out to him, Mac understood the offer. “I shouldn’t.”

  “If you don’t, I will,” Jeff said.

  Mac didn’t feel up to a discussion about drinking habits. He took a sip of the bourbon and found that Jeff wasn’t steering him wrong. It did help to calm his nerves.

  “I called Ed,” Jeff reported. “He’s on his way.”

  “When I was a cop, the suspects who lawyered up the fastest were always moved to the top of my list.”

  Jeff pulled around a chair from the conference table to sit across from him. “Mac, do you know how long the Spencer Inn has had its five-star rating?” Before Mac could respond that he didn’t know, Jeff answered, “Seventy-five years. That’s longer than either you or I have been alive. Now we have two dead bodies, one being a direct descendant—”

  Later, Mac wouldn’t recall rising up off the sofa. All he could remember was the roar of his own voice in his head. “I just found my children’s mother dead. Do you know who has to call them to give them that news? Me. That’s who. I have to tell them that their mother is dead and you want to talk to me about how to spin this tragedy to keep from losing some lousy stars to the Wisp?”

  The terror in Jeff’s face matched the silence in the room.

  They were both grateful when the office door opened. As they had expected, it was Police Chief David O’Callaghan and his deputy chief, Arthur Bogart, who carried a canvas bag under his arm.

  Deputy Chief Art Bogart, called Bogie, was a mountain of a man. His thick mustache and hair were touched with gray. The lines on his strong face told of a man who had lived a life as hard as his body. The late Patrick O’Callaghan’s closest friend and colleague, Bogie was like a second father to David.

  “Is everyone okay in here?” David’s tone reeked of his authority. It sounded more like an order for any disagreements to be settled now.

  “No.” Mac fell back onto the sofa.

  Jeff told him, “I’m sorry, Mac. I was out of line.”

  “Yes, you were,” Mac said. “But I do know that Robin Spencer hired you to run this place because you’re the best at what you do.” In spite of his best efforts, he heard his breath shudder. “Do what you have to do to protect the Spencer Inn’s reputation.”

  Jeff reached out to touch Mac’s hand. “I won’t do any-thing without clearing it through you first.” He grabbed his smart phone and notepad from his desk. Before following David’s silent order for him to leave them alone, he stopped to clasp Mac on the shoulder. “In case I haven’t already told you, I’m sorry for you and your family’s loss.”

  Mac grasped his hand and replied in choked words, “Thank you.”

  The manager hurried from the office.

  Mac waited for the door to shut before asking if David had been up to the penthouse to survey the scene.

  “Yes.” The police chief turned around the chair that Jeff had vacated and straddled its back. “It’s a mess.” He gestured at Mac and his clothes. “I see that you’ve touched the crime scene.”

  “I did more than touch it,” Mac muttered. “I jumped in with both feet and contaminated it like some rookie.”

  “It happens,” the police chief said. “We’ll sort it out.”

  Try as he might, Mac couldn’t adjust his thinking from that of the family of a murder victim to that of cop.

  “Mac, are you okay?”

  He was aware of David’s touch on his hand. Instead of becoming detached from the scene, he had instead gone back to relive it in his mind. “I was checking to see if either of them was alive, but they weren’t. Rigor had already set in.”

  Look at him.

  Aware that he’d been avoiding David’s eyes, a sign of guilt that he would have quickly spotted when he was a cop, Mac forced himself to look into his eyes. The pity he saw in their blue depths was unbearable. He hated pity.

  “I didn’t do this.” Unable to stand the sight of his sympathy, Mac looked over at Bogie who was at the table in front of the window unpacking the canvas bag, which contained an evidence kit. Bogie had put on a pair of gloves.

  David said, “Bogie will have to take your statement.” When Mac started to object, he reminded him, “I was at the manor when Christine showed up yesterday. Having seen the two of you together, if I take your statement, someone could later construe it as a conflict of interest that made us eliminate you as a suspect.” He took Mac’s hand which was covered in Stephen Maguire’s blood. “About your clothes—”

  “Archie is bringing a change of clothes for me.”

  David asked in a gentle tone, “Did you call your kids yet?”

  “No.”

  “I suggest you do that as soon as Bogie is through. The media has already gotten wind of this and they’re coming out here in swarms.”

  “I’m ready, Chief.” Bogie stepped over to them with an open evidence bag in his hand. “Let’s start with the shirt.”

  Mac stood up and unbuttoned his shirt. Glancing down at it, he realized that it was a new shirt that his daughter Jessica had sent to him from a shopping trip to New York.

  A third-year student at William and Mary, she enjoyed shopping trips with her friends and sending stylish fashion to her father, who despised shopping as much as she loved it. His distaste for shopping showed in his casual blue jeans, faded t-shirts, and worn dockers.

  As he unbuttoned it, Mac recalled that he had put it on that morning because Archie had commented about how it brought out the blue in his eyes the first time he wore it. He had put it on for her.

  While watching David fold his shirt, Mac recalled the touch of Archie’s hands on his bare back less than two hours earlier and his anticipation of being with her—all while the woman who’d borne his children was lying dead.

  Mac’s stomach churned. His ears filled with a roaring sound.

  “Mac, are you okay?”

  Jerked from his thoughts, Mac was aware of David’s hand on his shoulder, while Bogie had his other shoulder in a firm grasp.

  “You’re going to be sick,” David yelled through the roar that filled his head.

  Through a hazy fog he saw David pointing to Jeff’s private bathroom.

  Mac sprinted to the small room where he fell to his knees and emptied his coffee, toast, and bourbon into the toilet. A cold sweat bathed his shoulders and back. He could feel it dripping down his bare chest while he knelt in front of the toilet.

  By the time his stomach stopped churning, he became aware of David stepping around behind him to take the hand towel off the rack and run it under the faucet in the sink.

  “I feel like such a rookie,” Mac spoke into the toilet bowl. “Twenty years in homicide. Hundreds of cases. Never once did I ever contaminate a crime scene or toss my cookies.” He flinched when he felt the cold towel on his bare shoulders. David pressed it against the back of his neck.

  “Were any of those murder victims your wife?”

  “Ex-wife.” Mac glanced up at him. “She was murdered, Dave. Someone killed her.”

  “She has skin under her fingernails.” David ran
his fingers from Mac’s shoulder and down his side. “And I see you have scratches on your back.”

  * * * *

  David wanted to get upstairs to talk to the M.E. before she left with the bodies. He needed a preliminary report to know where to start in his investigation. With the murders happening at the Spencer Inn in Mac Faraday’s penthouse suite, everyone was going to be demanding answers.

  He was coming out of Jeff Ingle’s office after Bogie had started interviewing Mac when he practically collided with Archie, who was trying to go inside with his change of clothes.

  “Is he okay?” she wanted to know when David took the clothes and sent them inside without letting her see Mac.

  “As well as you’d expect him to be,” was all David said while ushering her down the corridor and away from the office. “What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Only that Christine and Stephen Maguire, the guy she divorced him for, were dead and that he had been in the crime scene and needed fresh clothes. How did it happen?”

  “You know that I can’t talk about it, Archie.” As they neared the lobby, he was aware of more people, many resembling the media, milling around. “Where were you last night?”

  “Do I need an alibi?” she asked him.

  “You and Mac have become pretty tight in the last few months.” He was pleased when he saw her cheeks turn pink. “We both saw Christine yesterday asking Mac to take her back. If he had—”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Now that she’s gone—”

  “I have an alibi,” Archie said.

  “Mac?”

  “What’s the time of death?”

  “I’m going upstairs to find that out.” David glanced at his watch.

  Archie said, “I went to visit a friend of Robin’s. She’s a literature professor at Frostburg. She has issues and last night she called upset. I went to cheer her up. We had a couple of drinks in a lounge near the university campus. I’m sure people saw me there. I got home around midnight. I can give you her phone number.”

  “What about Mac? Did you see him when you got in around midnight?” He held his breath while waiting for her response.

  “No, I went straight to my place. I didn’t see him until this morning around seven-thirty.” She added, “But he was with Gnarly last night.”

  “I wonder if he’ll give me a statement.” Frustrated by her failure to volunteer for being the source of the scratches on Mac’s back, he asked, “Did Gnarly put scratches on his back?” When her face turned a deeper shade of pink, he sighed with relief. “It was you.”

  “I did that this morning before he came to see Christine. I was excited.” His chuckle only added to her embarrassment. “Don’t tell me that you’ve never had a woman scratch your back.”

  “Not an hour before I became a murder suspect.”

  “Mac didn’t do this,” she insisted.

  “I know.” The corner of David’s lips curled. “While your scratches were impressive, they weren’t anywhere nearly deep enough. Whoever Christine scratched before she died, she drew blood.”

  * * * *

  The police presence on the top floor had caused the guests in the other suites to clear out. Any ruffled feathers were soothed with Jeff offering guests a free day of pampering at the Spenser Inn resort’s award-winning spa. Each guest’s displeasure dissipated. Some were so anxious to take advantage of the offer that they rushed off to the spa in bathrobes and towels as soon as the police released them after giving their statements.

  Two police officers stood guard at the suite’s door to keep unwanted visitors out. They parted to allow their chief to cross the threshold.

  When David had first arrived at the hotel, the horror of what had happened hit him like a slap in the face upon entering the sitting area. Furniture was overturned. The victim that Mac had identified as Stephen Maguire rested on his side in the middle of a blood-stained carpet. Blood splatters and drops covered the walls, furniture, and floor like brown polka-dots.

  The bathroom was another story. The counters and surfaces shone like they had never been used.

  Mac had left Christine’s body in the tub where he had found it. Her blood-soaked clothes were scattered around the bedroom where she appeared to have discarded them after killing her lover.

  When David returned, he found the lead crime scene investigator packing up her equipment in the dining area. Cindy’s tiny build made her look too young to drive, let alone lead a forensics investigation.

  “Is it too early for you to have anything for me?” the police chief asked.

  “That’s the cleanest bathroom I’ve ever seen in my life,” Cindy reported. “It was scrubbed down with bleach. No fingerprints, except for those that we are assuming right now belong to Mr. Faraday. Don’t count on getting any other prints or DNA. Everything was soaked and washed down with bleach. Then the shower was left on to wash everything else down the drain.”

  David scratched the side of his head. “He didn’t say anything about the shower being on when—”

  “It’d been shut off,” she interrupted to explain. “Each of these suites is outfitted with timers on the showers, sinks, and appliances that automatically shut off the water for the whole unit if it runs too long. It’s a safeguard device to prevent water damage from overflow or leaks if the plumbing breaks or a guest passes out drunk after turning on the shower. When I got here, the shower handle was turned to the on position, but the water control valve for the unit was still shut off.”

  “I should have noticed that,” David admitted.

  Pleased with herself, she shot him a grin. “That’s why I’m forensics and you’re the chief.”

  “How about Mrs. Faraday? Did she slip and hit her head in the shower after killing Mr. Maguire?”

  Cindy shook her head. “We need to open her up first. She has a serious bruise and laceration on the back of her head and neck. I heard that she was intoxicated. You may not be far off.”

  “Her husband—ex-husband—says she was an alcoholic,” David said. “The manager stated that she was seriously intoxicated when Mr. Faraday checked her in. Plus, she’d gotten into an altercation with the victim around five-thirty yesterday afternoon. Based on what you’ve collected, what do you think happened here?”

  “Time of death on him is approximately ten-thirty last night.” Cindy pointed at the dishwasher with her hand encased in an evidence glove. “We have dinner plates and glasses for a dinner for two.” She gestured at the table under her evidence kit. “They have dinner. She’s drunk and volatile. They get into a fight.” She led David into the sitting room. “This is where things go really bad. She attacks him with a knife, probably from their dinner—I found steak knives in the dishwasher—and kills him. She needs to get rid of the evidence, she returns to the kitchen.”

  Cindy pointed at the drops of blood leading into the kitchenette. “She puts the murder weapon in the dishwasher along with the dinner dishes. I guess she thought that as long as she was cleaning the murder weapon that she might as well.”

  Leading the way into the bedroom, she continued her breakdown of the murder. “Now she comes to the bedroom and realizes that she has Stephen Maguire’s blood and tissue all over her and her clothes. She strips off her clothes and goes into the bathroom to wash away the evidence. After cleaning the bathroom, she climbs into the bathtub to take a shower, slips and hits her head and dies.”

  David glanced around the bathroom. “There’s a problem with your theory.”

  “The skin under her fingernails,” Cindy said. “The stabbing victim has no scratches. She could have had another altercation with someone else. Maybe the ex?”

  “Not him.” David picked up the trash can and peered inside. Not only was it empty, but it was clean. “Have you checked the trash can in the kitchen?” He checked the cabinet under the sink. That, too, was bare.

  “Yes,” Cindy answered. “It was empty. All of the trash was taken out.”

  “By
whom? You said this room was scrubbed down with bleach. Who did that?”

  “Christine Faraday.”

  “If she had left to take out the trash she would have needed her key card to get back into the room; in which case, security would have record of it,” David explained. “According to them, Christine Faraday never left this suite.”

  Perplexed, the investigator shrugged her shoulders while shaking her head.

  “According to you, Christine Faraday died while cleaning the bathroom with bleach immediately after the murder.” He held out the empty trash can to her. “How did she get rid of the bottle of bleach she had used to scrub down the bathroom without leaving the room?”

  “That’s for you to figure out,” Cindy replied. “That’s why they made you police chief.”

  Chapter Four

  Isn’t it ironic?

  Mac and Christine had always expected that he would die first. After all, he was the one out there dodging bullets while tracking down killers. She was home with the kids or working in a law office as a paralegal.

  Now, he was trying to put her affairs in order.

  While Mac remained in Spencer to keep tabs on the murder investigation as best he could, his daughter Jessica drove up from Williamsburg to stay at her mother’s home to make the funeral arrangements.

  Immediately came the calls from Jessica about Mac’s former in-law’s strong-arm attempts to take over the funeral.

  Christine’s older sibling, Sabrina, enjoyed the role of family matriarch. Since her marriage to the president of an ac-counting firm, who had provided well for her expensive tastes, Sabrina, with her orange hair and jewels dripping from her queenly figure, viewed the role of dictating what was best for her family very seriously.

  Claiming to know exactly how Christine would want her funeral to be handled, Sabrina had swept in and ordered Jessica to sit back and deal with the grief of losing her mother while letting her handle all the details.

  “When I told her no thank you,” Jessica reported in her latest call to her father, “she got all huffy and stormed out of the house. When I went outside a little bit ago, our garbage cans had been run over. I don’t want to be pointing fingers, but I think she did it.”