by Lauren Carr
“You seriously think I was investigating a kidnapping and murder that I myself had committed?” Kevin laughed.
“No kidnapping,” Chris said with a shake of his head. “Just murder. It was genius how you created the illusion that George was alive hours after you’d killed him. Gavin went to Hill House to get Mercedes’s car and Patricia lured the banquet manager outside to witness George leaving.” He pointed at Kevin. “You were the third man—the man in the cap and trench coat who Patricia identified as George. Your ex-wife told me that you used to own a trench coat back when you first dated. You also used to own a Washington Nationals ball cap.”
“A lot of people have owned trench coats and ball caps,” Kevin said. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that as the lead investigator, I was able to divert suspicion away from a crime that I myself had committed?”
“You directed everything right down to how and where the drop took place,” Chris said. “As the kidnapper, you gave orders of what kind of bag to put the money in, and where to make the drop. As the lead investigator, you counted out the ransom and swapped the bags without anyone suspecting a thing.”
With a broad smirk, Kevin clapped his hands.
“After all that work, I’d feel entitled to the entire ransom, too,” Chris said. “That’s why you tried to kill Patricia, but she escaped.”
“I would have hunted her down, but she was so terrified, that I knew she’d never come back,” Kevin said. “She knew she’d be facing a murder charge if she did.”
“But you got reckless when you murdered Gavin,” Chris said.
“How?”
“You set fire to Gavin’s house with a cigar after killing him with a heroin overdose,” Chris said. “Kyle told us that he’d cleaned up his act years earlier. Gavin didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. That points to someone who didn’t know him in the present. Like someone who hadn’t seen Gavin in years.”
Slowly nodding his head, Kevin turned his back to Chris and looked out the window across the barnyard. “You still don’t have any real evidence.” He slipped his hand into his jacket pocket.
“But I do have a whole lot of circumstantial evidence. You lied about when you got involved in the case, had access to the ransom, and had suddenly come into a whole lot of money.”
“That you do. Enough that some people may actually suspect me.” Kevin spun around and threw up his arm. He held a syringe in his hand. “Which is why I’m going to feel bad about doing this.”
Sterling locked Kevin’s elbow in his jaws. Kevin delivered a knee to Sterling’s ribs. When the dog refused to let go, Kevin grabbed the syringe into his other hand.
Seeing that Kevin was going to inject Sterling with whatever he had in the syringe, Chris grabbed Kevin’s hand with both hands and delivered a series of kicks to his knees—made difficult with the large dog wedged in between them.
The attack happened so suddenly that Chris didn’t have time to grab his weapon tucked in his boot. It went without saying that whatever Kevin had in the syringe was lethal. Chris couldn’t risk releasing one of his hands to reach for his gun.
Even though he was in his seventies, Kevin Crane had a lifetime of experience under his belt. What he lacked in strength, he made up for in know-how.
In the stall nearest to the fight, Traveler reared up and kicked the walls while screeching to join them.
Sterling dug his teeth into Kevin’s flesh. Screaming in anguish, the old man repeatedly jabbed the needle in Chris’s direction. Chris adjusted his weight to shove Kevin against the wall.
Even amid their battle, Chris heard the click of the door-opener.
Summoning up as much strength as he could, Chris slammed his body against Kevin’s, plunged the needle into his neck, and pressed the plunger down.
Kevin’s eyes grew wide. His mouth dropped open.
Swoosh!
“Sterling, stand down!” Chris gathered up the dog and pressed him against the far wall as the stall doors swung open.
His face blue, Kevin Crane clutched his chest. Disoriented from the poison gripping his heart, he staggered into the common way as the herd of horses sprang from their stalls and raced for the opening to the pasture.
Leading the charge, Traveler reared up on his hind legs. A noise of fury erupted from deep in the horse’s chest as he brought his front hooves down on man who dared to threaten his family. Kevin Crane collapsed to the ground to be trampled by the rest of the herd.
Silence dropped over the barn after the last horse exited the barn. The herd scattered throughout the field.
Chris went to check on the old man. His face and hands were blue. His battered body was bloody. There was no sign of a heartbeat, pulse, or breathing.
Kevin Crane was dead.
Snorting and pawing at the ground, Traveler paced back and forth in front of the open barn doors. Chris rose to his feet and stepped outside. Traveler threw his head back and spun around.
“Easy,” Chris said in a calm tone while moving slowly to the horse.
Traveler shook his head.
Chris held up his hand and inched toward the gray Thoroughbred.
In silence, they remained motionless with Chris’s hand held out to him.
Finally, Traveler moved forward. Cautiously, he sniffed Chris’s hand.
“Everyone is okay now. I’m all right. Sterling is fine.” Chris stroked Traveler’s face while trying to transmit calm to the animal. “It’s all right.”
With a toss of his head, Traveler stepped into Chris and pressed his head against his chest. Chris wrapped his arms around his head and held him.
Epilogue
The solution of Mercedes Livingston’s greatest mystery became such huge literary news that it overshadowed reports about one of the nation’s foremost rare documents expert actually being the country’s best forger—and a murderer.
As predicted, William Blakeley, Junior, aka Speare, had literary agents calling him day and night with offers to represent him. After reading Robin Spencer’s letters to his mother, he reached out to Archie Monday, who took him under her wing, not unlike the way Robin Spencer had done for his mother. After several emails and phone calls, Speare convinced the editor to become his agent.
They met a month later at a party held at the library in memory of Shannon Blakeley. Hundreds of library patrons, Mercedes Livingston fans, and media showed up.
Among the guests was Kyle Billingsley. Upon learning about the uncle they never knew about, the Blakeley children reached out to him. Overnight, the disowned son found himself part of a loving family. It took some getting used to, but he was growing to like having a family to visit for Sunday dinners instead of spending the day nursing a hangover.
Anxious to put a face to the voice and emails she had been receiving, Archie Monday was the first guest to walk through the door. Her husband and Gnarly were in tow.
After getting over the shock of the hunk of beefcake behind the touching literary prose she had been reading, Archie greeted Speares with a warm hug—and then another just to take in the strength of his muscular arms. Then, he introduced her to his wife, three children, and the rest of Shannon Blakeley’s family.
Bruce, Ray, and Elliott had organized a poker game, which attracted a sizeable crowd of spectators. Two of the players were German shepherds.
“We know Archie will take care of Speare,” Doris told Helen, Jacqui, and Francine as they watched the poker game. “We can trust her.”
“Robin taught her all of the sharks’ best tricks,” Mac told them as Speare let out a whoop and hugged Archie a third time. “I guess she told him.”
“Told him what?” Helen asked.
“Archie got Sue Richardson to sign the copyright for The Last Thing She Said to Mercedes’s children.” Mac corrected himself. “I mean Shannon.”
“How did she ever manage that
?” Helen asked.
“Somehow, Archie had acquired a recording of Sue Richardson admitting she knew Mercedes was alive when she’d petitioned the courts to have her declared dead. That’s proof of Richardson perpetrating a fraud. Archie convinced her that it would be more prudent to turn the rights over to Mercedes’s children rather than risk a lawsuit for everything she had made in royalties over the last few decades.”
“Where did Archie find that recording?” Chris flashed a grin at Francine and Jacqui.
Noticing Francine for the first time, Mac Faraday cocked his head at her. She favored him with a broad grin.
“Not only did Speare sign a fantastic deal for his book series,” Doris said, “but Archie also got him a deal with a huge advance on his parents’ love story.” Despite her best effort to resist, happy tears filled her eyes.
“He’s certainly got enough material,” Helen said. “It’s all there in Robin’s and Shannon’s letters. Shannon wrote long beautiful letters about how they’d met, fell in love, their plans to run away, and their marriage.”
“Did the medical examiner ever determine a final cause of death for Shannon?” Jacqui asked Helen. “Was it suicide or natural causes?”
“The examiner said Shannon’s heart simply stopped. But it was healthy and there was no medical reason for that to happen,” Helen said. “The tox screen didn’t turn up any drugs or poisons.”
“She died of a broken heart,” Doris said with conviction in her tone. “She and Billy had a very special love for each other. They had to be together. It’s all in her letters that she’d sent to Robin Spencer. I think she wrote them expecting them to be published one day so that the world would know that love like that is real.” She wiped a tear from her eye and turned to Mac. “In her letters to Shannon, Robin told her story about her relationship with your father. Talk about star-crossed lovers.”
Mac was too focused on Francine to comment. “Now I remember where I know you. You’re my stalker.”
“I told you he’d remember me,” Francine told Jacqui.
Seeing that Sterling had collected a sizeable pile of poker chips, Chris joined them to monitor the dog and keep the game honest.
“Thornton told me that a seventy-year-old woman got the drop on you,” Mac Faraday whispered to him with a chuckle.
“And I heard that your dog caused a state attorney general to resign in disgrace,” Chris murmured.
“It was the fool’s own fault,” Mac said with a chuckle. “He put party politics ahead of intelligence. Once Buttwrinkle’s shenanigans hit the news—”
“Along with news footage of him being carted off in a straitjacket screaming about Spencer’s forest animals conspiring against him.” Chris tried not to laugh.
“Our attorney general had a very hard time explaining why he spent over two hundred thousand dollars and assigned four prosecutors to investigate a dog based on the accusations of a corrupt town councilman who turned out to be a lunatic. It’s kind of hard to spin that—not that they didn’t give it the old college try.”
“Of course not.”
“They’re politicians.” Mac shrugged his shoulders. “What’s important is that you got your man. You solved a forty-year-old cold case and restored a great author’s legacy to her children. Congratulations.”
Even as they bumped fists, Chris frowned. A month after Kevin Crane’s death, he still didn’t feel like celebrating. “I hate dirty cops—dirty feds. They give the rest of us a bad name.”
“Crane had fooled a lot of people,” Mac said. “What was in the syringe?”
“A lethal cocktail of barbiturate, paralytic, and potassium solution. Stopped his heart. If he had succeeded, it would have been assumed I had a fatal heart attack like my dad. It’s said that the love of money is the root of all evil. But which comes first? Evil, in which greed is the root, or the love of money, which sprouts evil?”
“Crane thought Livingston was already dead when he walked into that suite,” Mac said. “He had already concocted this plan for extorting half-a-mil from Billingsley to cover up his death. By the time he walked into the suite, he could taste the money. When he saw that Livingston was still alive, he couldn’t walk away. Emotionally, he was committed.”
“So he murdered him, which was evil.”
The two men peered questioningly at each other.
“I did not deal you that ace of spades!” Bruce pointed a finger of accusation at Gnarly.
From his seat across from him, Sterling barked at Bruce in defense of his canine friend.
“I wouldn’t object too loudly if I were you, Sterling,” Elliott said. “You’ve been itching a lot more than usual. What are you hiding under that big tail of yours?”
“Why are you so suspicious, Elliott?” Ray asked.
“In my line of work, you end up dead if you’re not suspicious.”
“He did it again!” Bruce rose from his seat. “Gnarly just swapped two deuces for two aces.”
“Wait a minute,” Ray said. “Those cards were face down. How do you know they were deuces?”
“Yeah!” Elliott rose from his seat. “How do you know what you dealt Gnarly?”
The two shepherds jumped from their seats, ran across the poker table, and dashed for the exit—pausing only long enough to snatch a pie each from a dessert table. The table, cards, and drinks went flying.
With a shake of his head, Mac apologized for his dog’s behavior. “Gnarly’s therapist says he can’t help himself. He bores too easily. When that happens, he gets into trouble.”
“I totally understand where you’re coming from.” Nodding in sympathy, Chris patted Mac on the shoulder. “Have you considered getting Gnarly a little brother? Maybe a Jack Russell puppy? He’s free.”
The End
About the Author
Lauren Carr
Lauren Carr is the international best-selling author of the Thorny Rose, Lovers in Crime, Mac Faraday, and Chris Matheson Cold Case Mysteries—over twenty titles across four fast-paced mystery series filled with twists and turns!
Book reviewers and readers alike rave about how Lauren Carr seamlessly crosses genres to include mystery, suspense, crime fiction, police procedurals, romance, and humor.
Lauren is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on author panels at conventions. She lives with her husband and two German Shepherds, including the real Sterling, on a mountain in Harpers Ferry, WV.
Visit Lauren Carr’s website at www.mysterylady.net to learn more about Lauren and her upcoming mysteries.
Check Out Lauren Carr’s Mysteries!
Order! Order!
All of Lauren Carr’s books are stand alone. However for those readers wanting to start at the beginning, here is the list of Lauren Carr’s mysteries. The number next to the book title is the actual order in which the book was released.
Joshua Thornton Mysteries
Fans of the Lovers in Crime Mysteries may wish to read these two books which feature Joshua Thornton years before meeting Detective Cameron Gates. Also in these mysteries, readers will meet Joshua Thornton’s five children before they have flown the nest.
1) A Small Case of Murder
2) A Reunion to Die For
Mac Faraday Mysteries
3) It’s Murder, My Son
4) Old Loves Die Hard
5) Shades of Murder (introduces the Lovers in Crime: Joshua Thornton & Cameron Gates)
7) Blast from the Past
8) The Murders at Astaire Castle
9) The Lady Who Cried Murder (The Lovers in Crime make a guest appearance in this Mac Faraday Mystery)
10) Twelve to Murder
12) A Wedding and a Killing
13) Three Days to Forever
14) Open Season for Murder
16) Cancelled Vows
17) Ca
ndidate for Murder
23) Crimes Past
27) It Came Upon a Midnight Murder
Lovers in Crime Mysteries
6) Dead on Ice
11) Real Murder
18) Killer in the Band
25) The Root of Murder
Thorny Rose Mysteries
15) Kill and Run
19) A Fine Year for Murder
22) Murder by Perfection
20) Twofer Murder
The Chris Matheson Mysteries
21) ICE
24) Winter Frost 26) The Last Thing She Said
Anthology - Spring Thaw (Mystery Short Story Collection
Attention Book-Clubbers!
Want to add some excitement to your next book club meeting? Are you curious about this mystery author’s theme regarding cold cases? Do you wonder where she picks up her inspiration for such interesting characters? What does she have planned next for the Geezer Squad? Well, now is your chance to ask this international best-selling mystery writer, in person, you and your book club.
That’s right. Lauren Carr is available to personally meet with your book club to discuss The Last Thing She Said or any of her best-selling mystery novels.
Don’t worry if your club is meeting on the other side of the continent. Lauren can pop in to answer your questions via webcam. But, if your club is close enough, Lauren would love to personally meet with your group. Who knows! She may even bring her muse Sterling along!
