by Lauren Carr
David and Bogie peered at the space between the stone pillars. Storm climbed up onto the console between them and nudged David’s arm until he gave in to her demand for a petting. On her other side, Bogie did the same. They could hear the Kleinfelds bickering before going inside their house.
“If one of her cats was missing, she’d be calling in ASPCA to have Gnarly crucified by now,” Bogie said.
“What happened to the cat that Gnarly killed?” David asked.
“Cats do have nine lives,” Bogie said. “Maybe Gnarly just knocked the wind out of it and after Mac left, he went on his way.”
“Am I paranoid?” David asked Bogie in a low voice. “Could that woman be so fixated on a dog that she’d try to frame him for a crime.”
“She’s clearly not working with a full deck.”
“We need to run a background check on her.” David started the cruiser’s engine. “Get Tonya on it. She knows every animal person on the lake. Have her get the low down on this fruitcake. Dog, cat, or amphibian lover—no one sets up our mayor and gets away with it.”
Chapter Two
“Okay, Storm, what do you say to a game of fetch?” David pushed the chair back from his desk and waved a red tennis ball. The corner office that had belonged to his father had a glorious view of the boathouse, docks, and lake.
Storm sat up from where she had been sleeping on the sofa. Her ears perked up. Without moving, she followed the ball with her eyes as David made his way around the desk and tossed it from one hand to the other.
“Ready?”
Whining, she begged him to proceed.
“Fetch!”
The ball bounced off her forehead, onto the end table, and then dropped to the floor. Without moving from her spot, Storm watched the ball roll under his desk. Then, she looked back to him as if to ask if he was going to get it.
With a groan, David reached under the desk for the ball.
Without knocking, Mac threw open the door. Upon seeing David on his hands and knees, he asked, “You and Storm playing fetch again?”
“How can you tell?”
David threw the ball out from under the desk in Gnarly’s general direction. The German shepherd jumped into the air and easily caught it in his mouth.
Mac closed the door. “Did you get rid of the body?” he asked in a low voice as if there was someone else in the room to overhear their conversation.
“We couldn’t find it?”
“What do you mean you couldn’t find it?” Mac spun a chair around from the conference table and straddled the back. “He was lying right there on the sidewalk in front of the porch. There’s no way you could have missed him.”
“Maybe Gnarly just knocked him out. What color was he? I saw your fruity neighbor with three cats this morning.”
“I know those cats,” Mac said. “They’re always on our property taunting Gnarly.”
“But there’s no leash laws to prevent cats from running loose,” David said with a shake of his head.
“I’ve never seen this cat before,” Mac said. “He was big and white, and he had two black dots on either side of his head.”
“Dots?”
With both index fingers, Mac pointed behind his ears. “They looked weird to me. That’s why I noticed them.”
“He must not have been dead.”
Mac paused to mull over that suggestion. “He certainly looked dead to me.”
“Cats do have nine lives.”
David took the ball from Gnarly, who was wagging his tail in anticipation of another throw. Storm regarded Gnarly’s enthusiasm with curiosity—not unlike a foreigner trying to figure out the point of this game called “fetch.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be surveilling your guests at the Inn this weekend?” After throwing the ball, David picked up his laptop from the desk. He pressed the intercom button on his desk. “Hey, Bogie, Mac’s here. Bring the case file so we can go over what we’ve uncovered on the Pratt case?”
Mac returned the chair to its place at the head of the table. “Hector and his team are keeping an eye on our suspects as they check in. Everyone should be assembled by the bachelor party tonight.”
“Well, between Hector and his team, Bogie, me and a few of my guys looking for overtime, plus you, we should be able to keep all of our suspects covered.”
“Don’t forget Doc.” Bogie stepped through the door. He dimmed the lights to make it easier for them to see the smart board. A wicked grin crossed his face. “Doc and I will be working undercover this weekend.”
“Did David approve that?” Mac asked.
“Doc’s paying for it,” Bogie said. “It was her idea. She’s a rich doctor and I’m her toy.”
“He’s become unbearable lately,” David said.
“You didn’t think that until after Dallas left.” Bogie whispered to Mac, “I think David’s last girlfriend took his sense of humor.”
“She did not,” David said in a steady voice while focusing on the case notes on the screen. “You make it sound like she left me.”
“Well, she’s not with you.”
“She’s investigating a story for her next book,” David said. “While she’s gone, I’m focusing on other things besides women.”
“They had a big fight,” Bogie told Mac.
“I kind of sensed that already.”
“It must have been pretty bad because the chief gave up women.”
“For what?” Mac asked.
“For the sake of sanity, if you must know,” David said.
Mac glanced from one of them to the other.
“Don’t look so surprised,” David said. “You’ve suggested that to me how many times. ‘You can’t have a fulfilling relationship with someone else if you don’t have one with yourself.’ Isn’t that what you say?”
Unlike Bogie, Mac didn’t find their conversation quite so humorous. He noticed a big dose of angst in his half-brother’s striking blue eyes. “When my first wife and I got divorced, our police department shrink advised me to wait at least a year before becoming involved with anyone else to give my heart time to heal properly. He was right.”
Bogie arched an eyebrow in David’s direction. “Chief, have you ever gone a year without a date?”
“Yes.” David focused on his laptop’s keyboard.
“After your first date back when you were twelve,” Bogie said.
“Well, we’re getting close. Dallas left four months ago.”
“When was the last time you heard from her?” Mac asked.
“Over a month ago,” David said with a groan. “She told me it wouldn’t be fair to me to have to wait for her to come back because she didn’t know when that would be. So, I was free to move on with my life. Translation. She’s got someone else.”
Mac noticed Storm lying under the table. She rested her head on David’s foot.
Seeming to read Mac’s mind, David said, “I’ve got permanent, full custody of Storm. She’s all I need.” He let out a low growl. “Stick a fork in me. I’m done.” He turned his attention to his laptop and the smart board. “Now that we’ve discussed my non-existent sex life, we can move on to business.”
He swung his laptop around and hit a button to light up the smart board on the wall. Two wedding pictures appeared on the screen. One was of the bride—Brie Pratt. The other was of the tuxedoed groom—Trevor Polk.
“Detectives Brie Pratt and Trevor Polk,” David said. “Murdered on their wedding night sixteen years ago.”
“Shot to death at the Willard-Intercontinental less than two hours after they’d taken their vows,” Mac said.
David was scanning through a series of crime scene pictures on the smart board. Many were of the champagne bottle and glass next to it, the two flutes on the floor, and stains on the floor marked with evidence markers. “Tell us abou
t the significance of the champagne.”
“A bottle of champagne was given as a complimentary gift with the honeymoon suite,” Mac said. “The hotel locked up their alcohol in a special wine locker. The system had been set up to prevent employees from stealing booze. It works the same way it does at the Spencer Inn. Only a kitchen manager or wine steward, using his or her key card, can enter the locker. They scan the bottle’s bar code to check it out before leaving the locker. If they’re removing a case, like for the bar in the lounge, then they’ll scan the case code. Ideally, the hotel inventory knows precisely which employee has checked out the bottle and where it is going.”
“That system must have proved helpful in tracking down where that bottle at the crime scene came from,” Bogie said.
Mac shook his head. “On the night of the murder, a wine steward’s key card had been used to check out a bottle of De Margerie Grand Cru Brut.”
“That’s the same brand of champagne found in the victim’s ice bucket,” David said.
“However, that wine steward had a solid alibi for when the champagne left the wine locker and the murders. He was serving some high-profile guests at a private party in another suite. He had twenty witnesses to verify that he was not even on that floor of the hotel when his key card had been used.”
“Did he have his keycard on him?” David asked.
Mac confirmed that he did, to which Bogie replied, “The killer must have stolen it and maybe slipped it back into his pocket.”
“The wine steward swore he had it on him the whole time,” Mac said. “He had used it for the wine for the private event twelve minutes before the victims’ complimentary bottle was checked out.”
“The killer was sophisticated enough to either copy the wine steward’s key card or hack into the system. They used the champagne as a ruse to enter the bridal suite,” David said.
“It gets better.” Stepping up to the board, Mac pointed at the plastic ice bucket. “This bottle of champagne is dated 1988.” He turned to them. “The bottle that had been checked out of the wine locker and designated for the honeymoon suite was 1986. The Willard-Intercontinental did not carry 1988 in their inventory.”
“Then the bottle found at the crime scene was not the same bottle stolen from the wine locker,” Bogie said.
“Do you think?” David turned back to Mac. “Why are we even talking about this? It’s a false lead. Most likely, a hotel employee hacked into the system to steal a bottle of champagne and this has nothing to do with the murders.”
“The hotel’s system makes you indicate where the bottle is going,” Mac said. “There’s a code if it is going to the lounge or the restaurant or an event. If it’s going to a room, then you put in the room number. Whoever took that champagne put in the honeymoon suite. I can’t believe that some random sticky finger employee happened to steal a bottle of De Margerie Grand Cru Brut and said it was going to the honeymoon suite on the same night that our victims were murdered and a bottle of De Margerie Grand Cru Brut is left at the scene.”
“But it’s not the same bottle stolen from the wine locker,” Bogie said. “I don’t believe in coincidences either, but since it’s not the same bottle ...” He shrugged his shoulders.
“I can’t not believe there’s a connection here someplace,” Mac said. “The hotel did have De Margerie Grand Cru Brut 1988 listed on their wine list. It was a typo. They meant 1986. I think our killer bought the bottle at a local wine shop, paid cash so we couldn’t trace it, and then used the bottle to gain access to the room.” He pointed at the ice bucket. “This is the standard ice bucket that comes with every room. If the wine steward had delivered the champagne, it would have been in a real cast iron ice bucket.”
“Wouldn’t two detectives have noticed that when the guy came into the room with the plastic bucket?” Bogie asked.
“Yes,” Mac said. “That’s one of the reasons I believe our victims not only knew their killer but was friendly with him or her. They not only let their killer into the room but drank with him or her.”
“How can you tell?” Bogie asked.
“There are three glasses.” David counted off the one glass next to the ice bucket and the two flutes on the floor. “That’s an odd number. There had to be four glasses—”
“Two pairs. The wedding coordinator had left two crystal champagne flutes in the suite.” Mac directed David to bring up the picture of the champagne flute on the floor, next to the corner of the bed. “This flute is one of those two glasses. It had Trevor’s fingerprints on it and evidence of having had champagne in it. The other two flutes left at the scene look identical, but they’re cheap glass, not crystal. The mate to the flute that Trevor had been drinking from is missing.”
David flipped to the picture of the flute Brie clutched in her hand. “Why would the bride drink a toast from a glass that didn’t match the groom’s?”
“Because she was drinking from it,” Mac said. “Look at what’s on the end table.”
David scrolled through the crime scene pictures. He stopped at a photo of a small bottle of ginger ale resting on an end table. “One open bottle of ginger ale.”
“Brie stopped drinking six months before the murder,” Mac said. “She wasn’t an alcoholic, but she was a mean drunk. She got it from her father. She personally told me a few months before the murder that she had given up alcohol.”
“What prompted that?” David asked.
“She’d gotten into a big fight with Trevor while she was drunk. Things got ugly and she realized that if their marriage was going to work, she needed to be totally sober.” Mac pointed at the picture of the soda bottle. “She swore she was only going to drink ginger ale at her wedding.”
“Maybe she changed her mind,” Bogie said.
Thinking over the information, David rubbed his chin. “Then explain the bottle of ginger ale.”
“Go to the picture of the splatter on the wall.” Once the picture was displayed on the board, Mac said, “That’s soda. Not champagne. The pattern indicates that it had been in a glass that had been knocked out of someone’s hand. Champagne had been spilt on the floor, but both glasses found at the scene had contained champagne, not soda.”
“Including the flute in Brie’s hand?”
“But Brie had no alcohol in her system,” Mac said. “Her stomach did contain soda. That brings us to this question. Where’s Brie’s glass?”
“The killer must have taken it,” David said. “The flutes look identical. The murderer probably didn’t even realize there was a difference. He meant to take his own glass to make sure he didn’t leave any prints or DNA behind, but got them mixed up.”
Mac scrolled back to the picture of the glass clutched in Brie’s hand. “The spatters on the wall indicated a struggle. The killer must have shot Trevor, the biggest threat, first. Brie reacted. There was a struggle. A short one because she was unarmed and in a wedding gown. The murderer shot her twice in the abdomen. After she was down, he or she shot her in the back. During their struggle, both her glass and the killer’s got knocked to the floor. The perpetrator had to get out of there quickly and in his hurry, he picked up the wrong glass. Brie must have noticed and, with her dying breath, grabbed it to tell me.”
“But there were no useful fingerprints or DNA on the glass left behind,” David read from the file.
“He or she would certainly have known enough to be careful.” Mac sat back in his chair with a sigh. “I’ve been keeping this information about the glass and the champagne bottle close to my vest for sixteen years. The forensics report has remained in the case file, but I’ve told no one. The victims’ colleagues were all at the wedding and hotel that night. Each one had the ways, means, and opportunity to have done it.”
“And they’re all going to be at the Spencer Inn this weekend for yet another wedding,” David said. “I hope history doesn’t repeat itself.”
Slowly, Mac shook his head in silence.
“An experienced police detective would know to get rid of the weapon and figure out how to hack into a hotel security system,” David said.
“The killer chose to take them out on their wedding night,” Mac said. “That’s cold. They picked the happiest, most joyous occasion of anyone’s life. To me, that’s personal. Not only did they want to rip their lives away from them, they wanted to do it in the most painful way possible.”
“Who would hate them enough to want to do that?” David asked.
Staring at the pictures of the joy filled bride and groom, Mac uttered a deep sigh.
“You have to have had some gut feeling over the years.” David stared at him until Mac lifted his gaze. Once their eyes met, he said, “After over sixteen years, you have to have formed some opinions.”
“Let’s start with the simplest item on the list,” Bogie said. “Which of them was the intended target?”
“Truthfully, I keep going back and forth. They weren’t really together long enough to both be the target—except for one motive.”
“That being?”
“Kassandra Johansson.”
“The bride’s sister,” Bogie said. “Matron of honor. Found the bodies.” He referred to the background check. “Is chief of staff of the forensics lab in Fairfax, Virginia. Widowed.”
“Her husband was killed on 9/11 at the Pentagon,” Mac said, “leaving her alone to raise a three-year-old little girl and Gina, Brie’s daughter. This was all eight months before the wedding and her sister’s murder.”
