Open Season for Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery Book 10) (15 page)

Chapter Fourteen

“You do realize that it’s okay to wake up after six o’clock in the morning, right?” Mac asked Gnarly around the two maximum strength aspirin between his lips. He washed them down with a swig of orange juice.

Focused on the empty dog food bowl on the kitchen counter, the German shepherd was oblivious to the bags under Mac’s eyes. After leaving the Spencer Inn, they had gone to the emergency room where Mac had his shoulder and wrist x-rayed. As Doc Washington had diagnosed, he had a dislocated shoulder. Thankfully, his wrist was only badly sprained. They put his hand and wrist in a brace and his arm in a sling that was secured to his chest.

With only two hours of sleep, Mac planned to return to bed right after filling the bowl with dog food and plopping it onto the floor next to Gnarly’s water dish.

“I knew you’d be up.” Carrying her laptop tucked under her arm, Archie trotted into the kitchen. She was still clad in one of his pajamas tops, which she wore for bed clothes. On her petite frame, they hung down to her upper thigh, not unlike a short nightie. As always, her feet were bare. Archie only wore shoes, usually sandals that let her feet breathe, when she needed to get into public establishments.

“To tell you the truth, I was planning to go back to bed. I wanted to sleep in, but the morning dog had other plans.”

Gnarly stomped his front paws and let out a yelp. When Archie arrived to snatch a kiss, his master had become distracted in his duty. The dog dish was still resting on the counter.

“Sorry,” Mac apologized before placing his dish on the floor.

Gnarly dove in.

“He’s allowed to be a morning dog.” Archie patted the German shepherd on the back. “He gets to nap all day long. On the other hand—” She sat down at the kitchen table. “I would have thought you wouldn’t have slept at all after last night.” She opened the lid to her laptop.

“I tend to sort things out in my sleep.” Seeing that she intended to stay, Mac hit the button on the coffeemaker to start the coffee brewing. “What did you find out while mingling with the witnesses last night?”

“Not much,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I ended up with more questions than answers. I’m still trying to figure out who sent out the bogus invitations and why.”

“You don’t think Rock Sinclair did it to bring together all his suspects for his show?” Mac asked.

Archie shook her head. “Neither he nor Jasmine had access to the invitation list. The phony invitations only went out to the suspects in Ashton’s murder who had been banned from the Diablo Ball.” She tapped his hand with her fingertips. “Not only that, but the counterfeits that Catherine and Chelsea had confiscated are identical to the real invitations.”

“That means whoever sent out the phony invitations had to have access not only to your guest list but the custom invitations,” Mac said.

“Mac, the only ones who had access to both were me, Catherine, Chelsea, and the event coordinator at the Spencer Inn.”

“I’ll check with her to see if she has any ideas of who else may have accessed it,” Mac said. “Did you discover anything from the recordings on the memory card?”

“It only has shots of Lindsey acting like the bimbo that she was,” Archie said.

“Now don’t go speaking ill of the dead,” Mac said. “Kassandra Van Dyke was devastated by her death.”

“I have to admit, she did surprise me.” Archie slid the laptop over to rest in front of Mac’s seat. “Exhibit A.” She had brought up the video player on her laptop. “From the video we stole—”

“Confiscated,” he corrected her.

She explained, “According to the time stamp, this was recorded at twelve minutes after seven—before you spotted Raul and chased him down into the kitchen, which was around seven-thirty.”

Reminding himself of the sequence of events, Mac asked, “Riva Sinclair attacked Jasmine and Rock outside the ballroom around twenty after seven.”

“This was a little more than five minutes before that.” She pressed the play button.

The scene opened with a shot of Lindsey’s back while she was making her way across the crowded hotel lobby. She turned to the camera. “Well, this is some banquet,” she said in a tone laced with heavy sarcasm. “I mean, like, I show up with Raul and everyone disappears.”

With a glance over her shoulder, Lindsey seemed to spot her friends. “There they are.” Her grin was brimming with evil. “Time for some fun.”

Judging by the swing of her hips, Lindsey was in full trouble making mode when she swaggered across the lobby in the direction of the massive stone fireplace that served as a central focal point for the Spencer Inn lobby. A life-size portrait of Robin Spencer, in her later years, sitting in a chair with a German shepherd resting at her feet hung above the mantle.

In a natural reaction to get out of the way of the woman and her camera operator, the sea of guests parted to allow her a clear path to the lounging area in front of the fireplace. Along the way, Lindsey reached out her hand to take a champagne flute with the Spencer Inn logo etched on it from a server.

“Hey,” he objected off-camera. “That was for—”

“Whatever!” Without the courtesy of looking in the server’s direction, Lindsey waved her hand at him in a sign of dismissal.

Their heads close together, Carlisle was showing pictures on her phone to Kassandra. ”I call her Sunshine because, when I see her smile, it’s like a ray of sunshine on my whole day.”

The warmth on Kassandra’s face was genuine. “She does have a lovely smile.”

“You should have seen it before her operation.”

“What operation?” Kassandra passed the phone to Corey.

“She had a cleft lip,” Carlisle said. “I had to take her to Johannesburg to have it fixed.”

Lindsey took the phone from Corey to study the picture of a little African girl with a wide toothy grin. “Hey, Corey, where’s Rachel?”

“Don’t know,” Corey replied in a cold tone. “Haven’t seen her.”

“That’s one of Carlisle’s kids,” Kassandra interjected to tell Lindsey. “She has thirteen children.”

With a quick glance at the picture, Lindsey noted with a naughty tone, “You’ve obviously been busy since the last we saw you.”

“They’re adopted,” Corey looked at Carlisle with admiration. “They’re orphans in a village where Carlisle was helping build a well for clean water. The village was hit with Ebola and these children lost their parents.”

Her eyes narrowing, Lindsey peered across at Carlisle with distaste.

“What about schooling?” Corey was asking off-camera.

Watching the film, Mac noted the fire brewing beneath the surface while Corey and Kassandra ignored Lindsey to discuss Carlisle’s mission work. “She really can’t stand not being the center of attention.”

Archie said, “Keep watching Kassandra.”

While Carlisle went on to explain about the regular ordeal of transporting the children on an old bus to a village over an hour away, Kassandra’s face softened as she was visibly filled with compassion. The sexy playmate being groomed for reality stardom was transformed on camera into that of a woman filled with empathy for the hardships of the children she had never met.

Carlisle concluded her tale by announcing that she was looking for volunteers to help build a school in the African village. “There are two other villages nearby who have children they could send to our school,” she said. “I have the money, of course, but I need people to travel there to help me build it. Educators, doctors—”

“I’ll go,” Kassandra blurted out with childlike enthusiasm.

Carlisle and Corey stared at Kassandra in disbelief.

Almost choking on the champagne, Lindsey laughed loudly. “You have got to be kidding.”

Kassandra’s face turned bright pink. Her eyes moist, she gazed down at the picture of Sunshine on the phone. Carlisle reached over. It appeared as if she were reaching for her phone. Instead, she grasped Kassandra’s hand. Kassandra raised her eyes to meet Carlisle’s.

“They laughed at me, too, Kassie, when I first went to Africa,” Carlisle said in a soft voice. “I thought the only help I had to offer was to write out checks. But the Lord knew that I was willing, and in no time, He showed me that I had many other talents to offer. And the joy that I have experienced using those gifts …” Squeezing Kassandra’s hand, Carlisle’s voice dropped to a whisper, “There’s no recreational drug on earth that can match that high.”

“I’m not smart enough—”

“All you need is an open heart and a willingness to serve. God will place you where you’re needed.”

Lindsey blurted out so loud that heads turned from across the lounge area. “Bull—”

“God gives everyone spiritual gifts,” Carlisle said. “If Kassie looks for hers, she’ll find them—”

“We’re talking about
Kassandra
,” Lindsey said in a disinterested tone.

“I like the name Kassie,” Kassandra said.

“Whatever.”

Mac could see that Lindsey’s attention was drawn to something or someone off camera. Her eyes narrowed to focus.

Off camera, the recording picked up Gnarly barking and Mac’s voice yelling, “Zernbog! Stop! Police!”

Abruptly, the recording shut off.

“Then we have the shootout in the kitchen off the ballroom,” Archie said while fast forwarding.

“Sorry about that,” Mac said while getting up to fill their coffee mugs.

“That’s okay, darling.” Archie shot him a crooked grin. “I love you anyway.” She reached up to kiss him on the lips.

The door to the deck abruptly opened. “Don’t you two ever stop?” Dressed in his police chief’s uniform and looking as fresh as if he had a full night’s sleep instead of only a couple of hours, David stepped into the kitchen and slammed the door behind him. “I thought I smelled coffee.” He took a mug out of the cupboard and filled it.

“I’m surprised you didn’t stay at Chelsea’s.” Archie held out her mug in a silent order for David to refill it.

“Are you in a hurry to get rid of me?” David poured the coffee into her mug. “I got in so late that I didn’t want to disturb her.”

“Any leads on Rachel?” Mac asked.

“None,” David said. “I checked first thing when I got up. Nada.” He paused to take a cautious sip of the hot coffee. “But Doc did get the results for the tox screen on Lindsey York. Turns out she didn’t die of a drug overdose. She was poisoned with belladonna.”

“Belladonna?” Mac repeated the name.

“Comes from a plant that has dark blue, almost black, berries,” Archie said. “Ten berries is enough to kill you. Actually, it’s an old poison. Was used in Ancient Rome. Very sophisticated … and deadly.” In response to questioning looks from Mac and David, she added, “I researched it for one of Robin’s books.”

“Lindsey had ingested it at some point during the evening,” David said. “Doc told me that it was less than two hours before she died. Maybe as short as an hour. Turns out the heroin that Gopher shot her up with was the final nail in her coffin.”

“What was Gopher’s story?” Mac asked.

“Lindsey supplied the drugs,” David said. “We found a bunch in her suite at the hotel to confirm that. Gopher claims Raul brought them and shot Lindsey up before she left the suite to go down to the gala. Raul was already dead when they went into the restroom. Between the booze that she had been drinking all evening and the heroin that she had before coming downstairs—”

“And the poison that she had in her system,” Mac interjected.

David agreed with a nod of his head. “She asked Gopher to shoot her up. He agreed if he could have some. So he shot her up and was shooting himself up when Brian came in and chased them out. He confirms Brian’s statement that he never touched Lindsey.” He added, “We found no evidence of drugs in Gopher’s room, so Ben told us to let him go for now until we can get evidence that he poisoned her. My people are keeping an eye on him.”

“Well,” Mac scratched his ear, “nobody had a chance to eat before the chaos started. Lindsey was drinking like a fish. So I suggest we start looking for the poison in the drinks.”

“According to what we just saw on the recording we confiscated from last night, Lindsey was looking for Rachel who is now missing,” Archie said. “Maybe while going around stirring up trouble for the show, Lindsey saw something that she shouldn’t have seen … or knows too much about Rachel’s disappearance.”

David’s brows furrowed. “Why was Lindsey looking for Rachel? I wonder if it has anything to do with Lindsey’s role in seducing A.J. so that the Breckenridge’s could blackmail him.”

“Now that Ashton’s body has turned up, Dr. Breckenridge has more at stake than just her reputation,” Mac said.

“You might want to take a closer look at how Dr. Piedmont and A.J.’s father died,” Archie said.

“This case is about strange bedfellows,” Mac said.

She asked, “What about strange bedfellows?”

“According to you and Catherine, Lindsay York and Kassandra Van Dyke did not travel in the same circles as the Breckenridges, Greens, and Piedmonts,” Mac said. “However, according to A.J. Wagner, after Lindsey drugged and seduced him, the Breckenridges got what they needed in order to blackmail him into silence. That circumstance alone makes me suspect that they hired Lindsey to do it. But, everyone here on Deep Creek Lake knows Lindsey and her reputation. If I was a blackmailer, she’d be the
last
one I would enlist into a conspiracy. She has—had zero belief system. She’d be willing to turn the tables in a heartbeat.”

“Now that you mention it …” David mused, “if it was a matter of drugging A.J. to seduce him, why didn’t Rachel do it? He knew Rachel. She belonged to his social group. She was at the Diablo Ball. At the medical school, they had plenty of access to the drugs to do the job.”

“Why did Dr. Breckenridge and Rachel take the risk of enlisting Lindsey’s help?” Archie asked.

“Maybe Lindsey’s dead now because she
did
turn the tables,” Mac said.

“Speaking of blackmail …” The corner of Archie’s lips curled. “How is Lindsey paying the bills without her daddy supporting her?” She took a cautious sip of the hot coffee. “Daddy cut her loose after her fourth stint in rehab a couple of years ago. So, how was she able to afford that twelve thousand dollar dress that she was wearing?”