by Lauren Carr
When Natasha made a move, threatening to jump across the room to physically force Mac to give her what she wanted, she became aware of Gnarly between them.
The dog’s unblinking eyes were on her.
Easing back into her seat, Natasha said, “Since there’s no shortage of rich criminals looking to get away with murder, I’m very wealthy in my own right. Compared to my own financial portfolio, his estate isn’t worth the energy it would’ve taken to kill him.”
“Money isn’t the only reason to kill someone,” Mac said. “Why are you so anxious to get your hands on his stuff now? What did Maguire have that you wanted badly enough to exert your energy killing him?”
“I resent that.” She shot a glare at Mac and another one at the dog that refused to stop staring at her.
“Natasha, please,” came a plea from her companion, who patted her hand. “It isn’t like you don’t know how this works. Ask Mac to tell you what Stephen had with him, and then if it’s there, ask him nicely if he can help you get it back. If it isn’t pertinent to the case, then maybe the police chief will let you take it without the pissing contest.”
For her own curiosity, Archie asked, “What is it?”
Natasha gritted her teeth and looked over to Garrison who waved his hand in a gesture for her to go on. Finally, she told them, “A watch. A gold pocket watch. It had belonged to my father. When I married Stephen, Dad gave it to him.”
“Why didn’t you take it when you separated?” Mac wanted to know.
The attorney’s face flushed. “I didn’t know he took it with him until after he had moved out. I asked him to give it back, but Stephen argued that it was a gift, which, yes, it was, but my father never would have given it to him if he’d known what a prick he was. Since we never officially got divorced—”
“Why didn’t you divorce him?” Archie asked.
“It’s complicated.”
Natasha rolled her eyes in a way that reminded Mac of when his daughter had been an adolescent in middle school. After years of being on the receiving end of the teenaged eye roll, such gestures now instantly got under his skin.
The defense attorney said, “It’s of purely sentimental value to me. Since Stephen’s dead now—Christine probably didn’t even know he ever had it.”
“A watch? A pocket watch?” Mac scoffed. “You’re here making all this stink over a watch, which since you’re his heir you’re going to get eventually anyway?”
“It belonged to my father.” Natasha moved to the edge of her seat.
Like an army general seeing the enemy make an advanced move, Gnarly inched forward. All he needed was the word.
“I don’t believe you,” Mac said. “Someone broke into Christine’s home and went through her stuff. Why shouldn’t I think it was you?”
Garrison grasped her arm as if to hold her back. “Offer him something to work with, Natasha.”
She asked Mac, “If I tell you what I know about who else would have wanted Stephen dead, will you help me get what is rightfully mine?”
“Tell me what you know, then I might be persuaded to help you.”
When Mac turned to follow her eyes to that of her companion in search of his opinion, he noticed the judge staring at him. After years of knowing and working with Judge Garrison Sutherland, he recognized the expression on his face. It was one of study. The man had seen something that captured his interest.
Seeing that the judge’s thoughts were elsewhere, Natasha said, “I really shouldn’t do anything to help catch whoever did society a public service by killing that slime bucket.”
“Think of it this way,” Mac said. “For once, you’ll be helping to catch a murderer instead of getting him off.”
Somehow, that persuaded her. “Stephen was extremely ambitious.”
“Now tell me something I don’t know.”
“Boris Hunter, the U.S. Attorney, has been burning up the phone lines to get on the short list to be appointed U.S. Attorney General to replace Reed ever since the grapevine started murmurings about him announcing his retirement before the holidays. I suppose you didn’t hear that his cancer resurfaced?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Meanwhile, this whole summer, Stephen and Roxanne Burton have been neck and neck to replace George Vance.” Natasha shot Mac an aside, “Did you know Hunter’s deputy, George Vance, got appointed judge?”
“Vance deserves it,” Mac said. “He’s a good guy.”
“Well, according to my sources,” Natasha said, “Hunter decided on Stephen Maguire. It wasn’t official and he hadn’t announced it yet. I guess now that Stephen is dead, he’ll be falling back to number two.”
“Christine’s sister, Roxanne,” Mac noted.
The judge jumped back into the conversation with the question, “If Boris Hunter gets appointed attorney general and Vance is judge of the criminal court, then who’ll take Hunter’s place?”
Mac’s and Archie’s faces were blank. Even Gnarly’s expression was questioning.
Natasha said, “Not Vance. He’s got what he’s always wanted. He’s not going to step down from judgeship to take Hunter’s old job.”
Archie looked over at Mac. “Stephen Maguire?”
Tapping his hand on imaginary steps on the coffee table, Garrison told them, “Stephen Maguire was looking to go from criminal prosecutor straight into the seat of U.S. Attorney.”
Mac pointed out, “That’s a really big jump for a prosecutor who didn’t have a very good conviction record.”
“But Stephen figured out a way to do it,” Natasha said. “He was investigating wrongdoing in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Once he got his evidence, he was going to go public with it. He’d smuggled out some case files. Hunter sent Hamilton Sanders, Maguire’s assistant, here to get them back. He’s probably at the police station right now.”
“Evidence of what wrongdoing?” Mac wanted to know.
“That I don’t know,” she said, “I only know that he was planning to make a big media splash by exposing or insinuating unethical, or maybe downright illegal, dealings in the prosecutor’s office to get his name and face out there. Then he planned to ride that media wave to get appointed U.S. Attorney for D.C.”
“But if he found something dirty and went public with it, wouldn’t that ruin Hunter’s chances of getting appointed attorney general?” Archie asked.
“Yeah!” Natasha said. “But Stephen didn’t care about that.”
“The way Maguire saw it, he could win either way, whether Hunter got the appointment or not,” explained Garrison.
Mac said, “If Maguire was onto something and the man who had put him on the fast track got wind of it—”
“Which he did,” Natasha smirked.
“You sold him out and warned Hunter,” Mac said.
“Stephen did nothing to earn my loyalty.” She pointed out, “It wasn’t a week later that someone slipped arsenic into his champagne at a retirement party for Judge Anderson at the Chase Club.”
Archie wanted to know, “How do we know you weren’t the one who slipped it to him? Were you at that party?”
“Yes, I was there, but I had no reason to want him dead.” She glanced at Gnarly as if to tell him that she wanted him dead.
“What were you doing Saturday night?” Mac asked her. “Were you here at Deep Creek Lake?”
“I won’t dignify that question with an answer,” she replied forcefully. “For one thing, you’re not even a cop anymore. You have no right to treat me like a murder suspect.”
“You came to me,” Mac reminded her. “I doubt if you drove all the way out here from Washington only to give me your condolences.”
“Half of the attorney’s office was at that party,” she scoffed, “people who I just told you Maguire had been investigating.”
“Where were you while your husband was being killed?” Archie demanded to know.
“She was with me,” Garrison answered in a bored tone. He asked Natasha, “Why do you have to ma
ke everything so hard?” He went on to tell them, “Yes, we’ve been in the area since the Thursday before the murder. Purely coincidence. Natasha and I are staying at the Carmel Cove Inn, a favorite little bed and breakfast we like to visit in the autumn. We checked in Thursday afternoon. We were already here in Deep Creek Lake when we got the call from the police.” He responded to Natasha’s glare by telling her, “A simple check of your cell record would have told the police that we were already here.”
“Can you give us names of witnesses to confirm you were at the Carmel Cove Inn?” Mac asked.
Garrison said, “The owner saw us when we came back from dinner and went up to our room at around ten o’clock Saturday night.”
“Okay, we answered your stupid and insulting questions and it’s apparent that you don’t intend to willingly turn over my husband’s things, so I guess we’ll be going on our way.” Natasha stood up.
When Gnarly mirrored her move, she uttered a growl from deep in her throat.
“Just one more thing,” Mac asked before she had time to follow Judge Sutherland into the foyer. “Do you have any idea what business Stephen may have had here in Spencer?”
Tearing her attention from the dog escorting her out, she turned back to him. “Business?”
“He paid for his suite with a federal government credit card,” Mac explained. “That tells me it was a business trip.”
“That doesn’t mean he was here on business,” Natasha laughed. “Stephen never paid for anything with his own money unless he had to. That’s one of the reasons I kicked him out. Most likely his visit was enjoyment.”
“He was seen out here with a woman,” Garrison said.
“And Christine tried to punch her lights out. She also announced to everyone within hearing distance that she was going to kill him dead hours before he got his,” Natasha reminded them. “I did hear about Stephen having a new woman. I never saw her. Personally, I didn’t care to see her. I couldn’t care less about what he was up to.”
“Unless he pawned your father’s watch,” Mac said.
* * * *
Until Mac was officially cleared of suspicion, David wouldn’t let him in on any details in his murder investigation. Unable to stand not knowing what the police had uncovered, Mac met his only source into the goings on: Hector Langford, the Spencer Inn’s chief of security.
A lean, gray-haired Australian, Hector had been with the Inn for over twenty-five years, which was longer than Jeff Ingle had worked there. Hector knew the resort inside and out. When they’d first met, he took great delight in informing Mac that Robin Spencer had often asked for his help in planning her murders for her books.
With it being mid-week, the Inn’s restaurant was quiet for their nine o’clock meeting. Mac wondered if the murders could be the reason for the solitude. Jeff had been predicting guest registrations would plummet as a result of the press about the owner’s ex-wife and her lover getting slaughtered in his private suite. So far though, there’d been no cancellations.
After placing their breakfast order, Mac asked Hector, “What can you tell me?”
“The maid did it.”
“Which maid?” Mac turned to scrutinize a woman in the cleaning staff uniform washing the windows.
Every Spencer Inn employee wore a uniform. Office and desk clerks were distinguished by their black suits with white shirts. The restaurant staff wore white long-sleeved shirts over black slacks with a black apron that hung down to their knees. A similar uniform with black smock or apron was reserved for the cleaning staff.
No matter what type of uniform the employee wore, it displayed the resort’s insignia, which consisted of the Spencer family crest, stenciled on the blazer’s breast pocket or on the top portion of the apron.
“The maid did it?” Mac asked Hector to elaborate on what sounded like something out of a B-movie. It sounded as bad as saying that the butler did it.
Both men sat back and fell silent while the server returned to the table with the bread basket and fresh coffee.
“The name she gave was Nita,” Hector told him in a low voice.
“The name she gave?” Mac repeated. “Don’t you know? If she’s an employee—”
“That’s the problem,” the security chief said. “No one knows her except for a few service people who never saw her until a few days before the murders and never since. The chief of housekeeping has no idea who this Nita is. It’s very embarrassing. I’m surprised Jeff said nothing to you.”
When their food arrived, they fell silent while the server placed their plates in front of them. Mac had ordered French toast and sausage while Hector had ordered a fruit and yogurt plate.
“Tell me about this Nita.” Mac poured the syrup over his French toast.
“According to everyone who spoke to her, she barely knew English, if any,” Hector reported. “We got her on the security video. Unfortunately, we don’t have a good enough picture to show anyone. The service staff gave us a description though.”
“Why would she kill them?” Mac took a bite from his French toast. He chewed while waiting for the security chief to answer his question.
Hector stared at his plate.
Mac asked, “Does anyone have any idea who she is?”
“All we know is that she had long thick black hair and wore black glasses. She was seen wearing a cleaning uniform mixing in with the help.”
“What about the key card that all the employees get?” Mac pointed at the identification card that Hector kept in his breast pocket.
For security, all employees had identification cards that contained encrypted codes which allowed them access into areas where they needed to work. Key cards wouldn’t grant access for areas where the employee had no reason to enter. For example, a bartender’s key card wouldn’t allow him into the accounting office. Since access cards were needed to get into several areas of the resort, most employees wore them attached to lanyard cords around their necks. Other employees would clip them onto their belts.
There were very few security key cards that granted access into all areas of the Spencer Inn resort. Mac possessed one. As the Inn’s manager, Jeff Ingle also had one, as did Hector Langford and his deputy chief.
The security chief told Mac, “The employees I inter-viewed said she wore a lanyard cord around her neck and they saw what looked like a security pass in her breast pocket. But when I pressed them, they realized they never saw her use it.”
“It was for show.”
“She could’ve used any card or had her picture taped to a white blank one.” Hector laughed. “It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. A guy hangs out in front of an apartment building that has a security lock. When someone else goes in, the guy follows him inside. Happens all the time.”
“But who…”
Hector took a sip of his coffee before saying, “The police found a black wig and black glasses and the smock from the Spencer Inn cleaning uniform in Christine’s suitcase. Nita was first seen here at the Inn on Thursday. That’s the same day Stephen Maguire checked in. No one has seen her since the murders.” His tone softened. “I’m sorry to say this, Mac, but I think she was stalking Maguire. I’m pretty certain the police agree.”
“What does David O’Callaghan say?”
“He’s not talking to anyone.” His displeasure about not being on the inside of David O’Callaghan’s investigation was evident.
Jeff Ingle appeared at Mac’s elbow. “How are you and your family holding up?”
“We’ll be okay.” Mac thought, What’s the alternative?
Jeff slid into the seat next to him. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m worried about something.”
“You’re always worried about something.” Mac finished off the last of his French toast. “That’s what I pay you for.”
Seeming to miss the humor behind Mac’s comment, the manager plunged on. “Stephen Maguire was killed three days ago. The media has covered it. I’ve seen it on the news. They say the
Maguire family has refused comment and to date, no one from the Maguire family has contacted me. You’d think Ed would have at least gotten a call from their lawyer.”
“Isn’t no call from them a good thing?” Mac asked. “Do you want them to call to accuse us of wrongdoing?”
Jeff mopped his brow with the napkin from the place setting he was sitting at. “No, I don’t want the Maguire family demanding to know what we did wrong. But no call at all from them? No family representative telling the media that they intend to get to the bottom of this? That doesn’t happen.”
“I haven’t released any statements about Christine’s death,” Mac pointed out.
“You aren’t Broderick Maguire.” Jeff leaned in to whisper, “It makes me wonder if they aren’t saying anything because they’re preparing to slap us with a humungous multi-million dollar wrongful death lawsuit.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong.” Hector pounded the table top with his fist. “Whoever killed those people are the ones who did something wrong.”
“But the hole in our security is what allowed it to happen,” Jeff said.
“Now you sound like you’re talking for their side,” the security chief objected.
Mac was grateful for the vibration on his hip signaling the call on his phone. It gave him an excuse to end the conversation. “Quiet, men.” He checked the text on his phone.
Jeff looked as if he feared that his wish to hear something from the Maguire family had been answered. “What is it?”
Mac smiled. “Spencer’s police chief is now ready to talk.”
Chapter Five
The Spencer police department resembled a mountain sports club. The offices were housed in a three-story log building on the lake with a boat launch and dock. The cruisers were all-wheel drive SUVs in order to make their way up and down the mountain, both on and off the road. The department also had four speed boats and a fleet of jet skis for patrolling the lake.
A fire was roaring in the stone fireplace in the reception area when Mac arrived for his meeting with David.
The desk clerk, Tonya, had lived on the lake her whole life. Many suspected the long hours she put in at the station were an excuse to not go home, to which two of her three grown children had returned with their offspring after a short time spent in the outside world.
