It's Murder, My Son (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (33 page)

“Did you terrorize Katrina?”

“No!”

Mac could see that Jeff wanted to order him out of the office, but he couldn’t forget that he was the boss. “You said she paid. How did she pay?”

“I meant because she’s dead and I’m not. That doesn’t mean I had anything to do with it. I saw her here all the time. That night she ran me down was less than a week after her husband had died, and I tell you,” he swore, “she wasn’t in mourning.”

Mac paused to consider Jeff’s observation. He had also seen Katrina’s lack of remorse in the recording of Yvonne Harding’s program.

Concern leaked into the manager’s voice. Rubbing the scars on his hand and wrist, his voice crept up an octave. “You’re not seriously thinking that I killed her, are you?”

Mac recalled, “Didn’t you say that you heard a couple arguing when you came out of the Inn that night before you were hit?”

Quickly, Jeff nodded his head. “Yes, I did. I told the police about it.”

“Was Katrina the woman you heard?”

“She had to be. The argument stopped right before she came running out of the garden.”

“Was Chief Phillips the man she was arguing with?”

Jeff shrugged before nodding his head. “She was having dinner with him.”

Mac asked, “Were they guests at the hotel?”

The inn manager replied with certainty that they weren’t.

“You said this was an hour after the restaurant and lounge had closed.”

“I had to count the receipts and lock up,” Jeff explained.

“If the restaurant and lounge were closed and they weren’t guests of the hotel,” Mac asked, “then what were they doing for the hour before Katrina came running out and hit you with her car?”

Jeff scoffed, “They were in the garden. It was dark. Use your imagination. We’re chasing couples out of there all the time.”

“But you said they were fighting,” Mac said. “You were hit one week after Niles Holt was murdered. Katrina may not have been a guest here at the Inn, but maybe the man she was fighting with was. I want to see the guest log for that night.”

Chapter Seventeen

The temperature dropped at the same rate that the wind picked up to form waves on the lake. The mist finally drove Mac inside from the back deck, which had become one of his favorite spots. He was starting his first fire in the stone fireplace under the portrait of Mickey Forsythe when Gnarly leapt up onto the loveseat to enjoy the warmth of the flames.

“What are you doing up there?” Mac demanded to know. “You don’t belong on the furniture.”

Gnarly lay down and gazed into the fire.

“Now you listen here. I don’t care if you are a canine genius. You’re a dog and you don’t belong on the furniture. Now get down.”

Gnarly sucked in a deep breath, which expanded his broad chest.

“I’m the boss here. If you don’t get off that loveseat, I’m going to get you off.” Mac grabbed him by the collar.

Gnarly growled.

Releasing his grip, Mac held up his hands as if the German shepherd had pulled a knife on him. “Okay. We’ll drop this for now.” He picked up the next book in Robin’s series and took a seat on the sofa. “Not only are you a dog, but you have dog breath.”

“Oh, great! You built a fire.”

He had been so engrossed in his argument with Gnarly that Mac hadn’t noticed Archie, armed with a food tray, come in through the French doors and up the stairs from the dining room to join them.

She wore blue jeans and a sweater. In spite of the cold, her feet remained bare. Mac wondered if she bothered with boots when it snowed.

He smelled chili. So did Gnarly, who jumped off the loveseat to pursue the bowl across the room.

When Mac took the tray from Archie, he revealed a sheet of paper clutched in her hand underneath. She had run a background check on Betsy Weaver. Licking the soup spoon like a lollipop, Mac scanned the printout.

Archie perched at the other end of the sofa to sum up her findings. “No surprises except that she’s dead. She wasn’t into anything. No debts. No substance abuse. No scandals. Nothing. So I made a couple of phone calls. That’s where things got interesting.”

“Who’d you call?”

“Robin’s literary agent, Brad Zimmerman. Robin had introduced Travis to him. I thought maybe if Betsy was a writer that maybe she had talked to him about representing her. Turns out, she called him at home on Saturday night.”

“The same night she was last seen alive,” Mac said.

She agreed. “Now Brad told me that he didn’t really know Betsy. They have never really talked, but she insisted that he see her. So they made an appointment to meet in his office first thing Monday morning.”

Mac noted, “That would be today.”

“He didn’t even know she was dead until I called him. He thought she blew him off.”

“Did she tell him about the book she was writing about Chief Phillips?”

Archie slid across the sofa until she ended up next to him. “Brad Zimmerman is an ass—Robin’s assessment, not mine…though I do agree. He’s a wonderful agent but a terrible human being. He wouldn’t talk to Betsy Weaver about any book she was working on until she had finished it and it had Travis’s seal of approval. That’s the way he is. He only agreed to meet with her because she was Travis Turner’s assistant and she sounded upset—so upset that he called Travis to ask him what was going on. Travis told him that she was drunk.”

Mac set the papers aside. “If Phillips threatened her because of her book—”

“Phillips and Mason were the last people I saw her with, or rather following her,” she told him. “Maybe they killed her and dumped her body by the pool to warn Travis not to finish her book. Since he told you about it, he must know about them. Maybe they’re afraid of ending up in his next bestseller.”

“That’s a lot of maybes.” Mac picked up the bowl of chili and ate a couple of spoonfuls. “Travis told me that he had met Betsy back when he was an actor in Hollywood. He hired her away from his talent agent after his first book sold.”

“That had to be over five years ago.”

“It still might be worthwhile hunting this agent down,” Mac said. “He could give us insight into Betsy’s and Travis’s lives back in Hollywood.”

“Would that be relevant?” Archie asked. “That was a long time ago.”

He agreed. “Five years is a long time to know someone, but Travis doesn’t seem upset about Betsy’s body being in his back yard, other than the possibility that her death may overshadow his next bestseller.”

“That tells me that Travis is a jerk, which isn’t exactly news,” Archie said.

Aware of her eyes on him, Mac stopped eating.

Her green eyes searched his face. The corners of her lips curled.

Setting the bowl aside, Mac slipped his arm across her shoulders. “Now where were we?”

“Talking murder.” She moved in closer to him.

“I don’t want to talk about murder.” He pulled her closer. “I want to talk about last night.”

She didn’t fight his embrace when he asked her to recall what they were doing before the explosion interrupted them. “I loved working for Robin, but I have to admit, you living here brings a whole new dimension to life in Spencer Manor.” She wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Every home a bachelor acquires should come with a woman.” Mac leaned toward her. “All that came with my last house was a dishwasher that died four months after we moved in.”

The phone rang. He snatched it from the base and checked the name displayed on the caller ID.

“Hold that thought,” he told her before connecting to the caller on the other end of the line. After hearing the caller’s news, he smiled broadly. “I’ll meet you there.” He hung up.

“Looks like we got some good news for a change,” Archie said.

“We certainly did,” Mac said on his way to the front door. “We’re going to catch a killer.”

*   *   *   *

Pete Mason lived in a million-dollar home tucked in the trees at the end of Mickey Forsythe Court. Two state police cruisers, two Spencer police cruisers, and one unmarked car with Detective Sam Groom and David O’Callaghan inside were waiting at the entrance to the court when Mac pulled up in his sports car with Archie.

“How did you like that little trick with spilling the wine into his lap?” Sam asked Mac. “No judge would give us a warrant until we got proof positive that Mason is Marlstone. He may have changed his weight and face, but he couldn’t change his fingerprints.” The detective pulled an envelope from his pocket. “The warrant for Peter Marlstone’s arrest.” He patted his breast pocket. “I also got one here for Herman.”

“First, we have to find him,” David said. “He must have found out that we fingered him. He disappeared during the middle of the night.”

“Herman may have gotten away, but at least we got Marlstone.” Mac got back into the car to follow them down the court to the stone home at the end. Lights inside and out lit it up like a showplace.

They stood off to the side to ring the doorbell and waited. When they didn’t get a response, Sam rang it a second time.

A small woman with a weathered face trotted across the foyer and pulled open the door. She started when she saw a group of men and a woman on the stoop.

Sam flashed his badge. “Is Mr. Mason home?”

Her eyes widened more. “Yes, but he can’t be bothered right now. He’s got company.”

Before she could finish with her objections, the officers charged into the house with their guns drawn. The elderly woman shrieked. “What do you want? You have no right. What do they want with Mr. Mason?”

Before Archie could explain, a trooper called from up the stairs. “We’re too late.”

Mac cursed. “He got away again.”

“No, he didn’t run,” the trooper said. “Someone else got him first.”

Upstairs, Peter Marlstone was lying spread-eagle in his king-sized bed. Black and silver fur covered his chest down to his pelvis, which he had squeezed into a pair of red silk bikini briefs that matched the sheets on the bed. The ice bucket on the nightstand contained an empty bottle of champagne and two crystal flutes. Marlstone’s head rested on a blood-soaked pillow. Blood had overflowed from his open mouth into his goatee.

He had a bullet hole between his eyes.

The maid screamed and ran from the room.

“Looks like I wasn’t the only one who found Marlstone,” Mac said.

“Where’s the woman?” Sam asked.

One of the state troopers stepped into the doorway. “Marlstone’s Mercedes is gone.”

Mac picked up a black jewel-cut stone resting in the dead mayor’s open palm. “You won’t be finding the woman.” He handed the jewel to Sam. “A black diamond. The trademark of the mob’s top assassin. She leaves a black diamond on the scene to signal her hits. The Sanchez family spared no expense in finding Peter.”

“The Black Diamond,” Sam admired the dark stone. “Damn!”

*   *   *   *

One week before Memorial Day, residents returning for the summer season filled every table at the Spencer Inn’s restaurant. Patrons on the waiting list crowded into the lounge. Neighbors catching up on the latest scandals around the lake caused a dull roar that replaced the Inn’s usually elegant ambiance. Four murders in two days right in their back yards and their missing police chief made the top of the list on the gossip circuit.