A Wedding and a Killing (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

“What’s wrong with this case?” David asked Gnarly, who was riding in the front passenger seat of his cruiser.

As if he expected to hear the dog answer, David glanced over at where Gnarly was staring straight ahead through the windshield. He seemed to be scanning the dark road ahead of them in search of his home, Spencer Manor.

David O’Callaghan lived in the same guest cottage at Spencer Manor that Archie Monday had lived in for years. Robin Spencer had stipulated in her will that Archie was permitted to live in the guest cottage for as long as she wanted, even though Mac Faraday inherited the estate. As their relationship grew, Archie had no desire to leave and Mac didn’t want her to move anywhere—except into the main house.

The timing worked out well. At the same time that Archie moved into Spencer Manor, David O’Callaghan’s mother was committed to a nursing home. Unable to live any longer in his run-down childhood home, he accepted Mac’s invitation to move into the stone cottage.

Lately though, he had been spending most of his nights at Chelsea’s lakeside condo.

The news of the charges against Ruth being dropped should have been reason for a night of celebration with Chelsea.

Yet, David’s mind was elsewhere.

The pressure was on. Mac Faraday had solved the murder of Jason Fairbanks. Ruth Buchanan was in the clear. Now the police chief was determined to solve his case sooner rather than later.

Part of the stress was due to a touch of sibling rivalry. He and Mac Faraday may not have grown up together, but there was a familial connection that clicked the instant they met that day when Mac had driven his new, red sports car up to Spencer Manor.

David O’Callaghan didn’t expect to have the instinct and expertise that Mac had developed over twenty years of working as a homicide detective in Washington, D.C.
Man, Mac was working murder cases before I had even learned to drive.

This sudden realization did little to ease David’s resolve to solve Eugene’s murder on his own.
This is my case and I want to solve it—without my big brother’s help.
Sarcastically, he thought,
How mature is that?

After a celebratory dinner with Chelsea, David begged off with the excuse that he was tired, which he was. Dragging Gnarly away from his “date” with Molly, David climbed into his cruiser to head back to Spencer Manor.

“I know what’s wrong,” David answered. “Helga Thorpe is not that bright. She’s not smart enough to give us the slip the way she has. Nothing’s on her laptop to indicate that she was planning to do this. Zero activity on her bank accounts and cell phone since she left Wednesday morning. Leaving her purse in Breezewood with all that cash and credit cards? That contradicts her motive.” He shook his finger in Gnarly’s direction. “If Helga’s motive was to take over as chief of the trustees, then why run off?”

David slammed the brake pedal to bring his cruiser to a screeching halt. Gnarly was propelled to the floor. Casting a dark glare at the driver, the dog climbed back up into his seat.

“That’s it! It makes no sense! Either she killed Eugene for another reason or she didn’t do it! I need to take another look at Eugene Newton’s murder.”

David put the cruiser into reverse and backed up into a driveway along the lake shore road to head back to Spencer Church.

Using the key that Reverend Deborah Hess had given him, David let himself in the front door of the darkened church. After switching on the lights, he made his way past Edna’s office and down the business wing.

Gnarly led the way.

“Someone could have killed Eugene so that the church could inherit his fortune,” David murmured while making his way to the business office. “But then, where was Helga during the time of the murder? Maybe she did kill him, planning to frame Chip Van Dorn, who had threatened him, then, after the murder-suicide, realized that we would be looking at her again.” He stopped outside the office.

Gnarly sat down in front of the locked door with the yellow crime scene tape stretched across it.

Using his key, David unlocked the door and swung it open. He turned on the lights and peered inside. Ducking under the tape, he stepped into the office and went over to the desk. Mentally, he re-enacted what had to have been Eugene Newton’s final hour.

“It can’t be that complicated,” David heard a voice come to him from the end of the hallway.

Grabbing his weapon in his holster, David whirled around to find Mac’s silhouette standing in the doorway.

“I thought you weren’t coming back until morning,” David said.

“I chartered a jet to bring me into McHenry. Archie isn’t happy that I dropped her off at the manor and came straight here.” Mac ducked under the tape to enter the office and went behind the desk, being careful to step over the taped outline and blood stains behind the desk.

Sitting at attention, Gnarly sat in the hallway like a guard on duty.

“Where did you park?” David asked.

“Over on the other side of the parking lot.” Mac indicated with a jerk of his thumb. “I beat you here by only a couple of minutes. You came in while I was turning the corner of the building.”

David said, “This building is big enough and has so many rooms and dark corners that someone could have slipped in the back door without Ruth seeing him, sneaked up here to shoot Eugene, and then left without anyone knowing.”

“She swears she didn’t hear the shots.”

David was shaking his head. “Possible if the office door was shut and she was vacuuming on the other end of the building.”

“She didn’t see Eugene’s car until she came to this wing after hearing Gnarly barking when she turned off the vacuum.” Chuckling, Mac folded his arms across his chest. “You aren’t buying that Helga Thorpe killed Eugene Newton.”

David countered. “Why aren’t you buying it?”

“Because her taking off doesn’t fit with her motive for killing him.”

“Eugene left everything to the church,” David said. “Before his murder, they were existing on borrowed time. Now, since his death, all of their money problems are taken care of. Edna Parker is on her way to being a full time church administrator of a million-dollar church.”

“You mean the church lady with the bedroom eyes that Brewster is chasing after?” Mac asked.

“Exactly.”

“But she has an alibi,” Mac argued.

“She has a key to the building,” David said. “She knew Eugene was going to be here alone counting on Tuesday morning. A looker like that, she could have given a gullible man a key to come in to kill Eugene while she established an alibi with her mother and sister.”

“A femme fatale masquerading as a church lady,” Mac said with a grin.

“Edna Parker isn’t certain that she wants the job of full time church administrator,” Reverend Deborah’s voice came out of the darkened corridor. She stepped into the doorway. “I saw the lights on and decided to investigate.”

“Why would she refuse?” David asked. “She’s a single mother with two kids.”

“And her dead-beat husband is years behind in child support,” Deborah said. “But when the board offered her the job, she said she had to think about it. Edna puts her girls first. She likes the flexible hours and being able to come and go as they need her. She’s afraid that she’ll loose that flexibility if she accepts a full time position with so much responsibility. So, as for that being a motive for her killing Eugene—you’re completely off the mark.”

David and Mac exchanged glances before the police chief asked, “How about you, Reverend? Did you know that Eugene was leaving millions of dollars to the church?”

“Yes,” she said, “and I guess I have no alibi since I was just coming in from running at the time he was killed.”

“How did things change for you since Eugene’s murder?” Mac asked.

“Overall, not good,” Deborah said. “Yes, the money takes away the stress of worrying from one month to the next about if we are going to be forced to closed, but if I wanted a life free of financial stress I would have become a mathematician like my father wanted and I would have married the lawyer my mother tried to fix me up with. Then I wouldn’t have been widowed to raise a child alone before I was thirty because my husband felt called to go build a church in the jungles of South America where he got tortured and executed by guerillas.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “To answer your question, financially, God has always blessed me with all I need.” Her eyes teared up. “I needed Eugene’s friendship and emotional support more than I needed his money.”

Feeling like a jerk, David hung his head.

Gnarly licked the pastor’s hand. She knelt down to pet the German shepherd who licked her face. “I thought you had decided on Helga Thorpe as a prime suspect.”

“We’re trying to piece everything together,” Mac said.

Feeling his phone vibrate on his hip, David ducked under the crime scene tape to slip out into the hallway and down the hall to take the call.

“I’m sorry I didn’t finish marrying you and Archie the other day,” she said while stroking Gnarly. “I completely forgot about that until this evening when Carmine and Ruth announced that they were getting married.”

“Are they?” Mac smiled. “That’s good news.”

“God does have a way of turning things around,” Deborah said. “Ruth could never accept his proposal before because she was afraid that applying for the marriage license would flag her in some way that the police would find her. But now that you’ve cleared her name—none of that would have happened if Eugene hadn’t been murdered.”

David hurried back into the doorway. “They found Helga.”

“Now maybe we’ll get some answers,” Mac said.

“Actually, I think we’re going to get more questions before we get more answers,” David said.

Police Chief David O’Callaghan was heading back to Pennsylvania. This time, Mac was riding in the passenger seat while Gnarly rode in the back. Bogie tagged along in his cruiser behind them.

The stark night of the Pennsylvania forest was illuminated by the lamps set up by the emergency vehicles surrounding the tan four-door sedan parked in the turn-off of what appeared to be a long-forgotten boat launch of a tiny lake. The sounds of heavy traffic and the semi-truck horn blasts from the turnpike road less than a mile away pierced the wilderness.

“She’s at the end of the road,” a Pennsylvania state trooper directed David when he climbed out of his cruiser after parking it off the dirt road in hip high brush. “The sergeant will fill you in. He’s up there with the crime scene folks.”

Leaving a window down for Gnarly, Mac, David, and Bogie made their way along the road overgrown with brush and untrimmed branches from trees that threatened to overtake the road completely.

Using his flashlight to lead the way along the path, David warned Mac, who was behind him. “Watch out for snakes.”

“Snakes?” Mac halted.

Bogie bumped into him from behind. “Woods like these are filled with them.” He gently pushed Mac to go ahead. “If one bites you, be sure to not to let him get away. We’ll need to take him to the ER with you so they’ll know what antivenom to give you.”

“Do I look stupid to you?” Mac asked Bogie.

“Only when you’re trying to train Gnarly.”

Up ahead, David laughed. “Come on, you two. We have a murder to solve.”

The dirt-covered, tan sedan came into view where it rested in the spotlights set up by Pennsylvania’s crime scene investigators.

The fate of Helga Thorpe seemed to cry out to them when they spied a thick hose taped to the rear tailpipe of the car with the other end threaded through the front driver’s side window where it was held in place with duct tape. The window had been rolled up as far as the hose permitted.

“One of our people found her when he pulled off the main road to take a leak,” the sergeant came around the car to explain to them when he noticed David’s and Bogie’s uniforms. “Of course, she was parked way down here off the road, but his cruiser’s headlights caught off her rearview mirror. He decided to drive up to investigate. The ignition is on. She had to have been dead long before her car ran out of gas.”

Using his flashlight, Mac peered in through the windows at the woman slumped over in the driver’s seat of the car. “I don’t see a suicide note, but I do see her cell phone in the center console. She may have left a note there … if she killed herself.”

“I’ll ask our forensics people if it’s okay to open up the car yet,” the sergeant said.

“Bogie,” David asked, “did you check out Helga’s calendar on her laptop?”

“She had nothing on it,” Bogie said. “Looked to me like she didn’t use it.”

“Chelsea uses the calendar on her cell phone,” David said, “because she has that with her all the time. She isn’t as attached to her laptop as Archie.”

“Why do you want to see her calendar?” Bogie asked.

“Because Helga disappeared before we had a chance to ask her about an alibi for the time of Eugene’s murder,” David said. “Her assistant said she came back from lunch that day flustered—”

“Which a person would be if they had just committed murder,” Mac said. “But there could be other reasons for her being flustered besides murder. She had an argument with a friend, she got a speeding ticket on the way back to the office, she was using her lunch hour to have a rousing roll in the hay with her lover only to have the hundred-pound dog break down the door and jump on the bed in the middle of it—”

“Yeah,” Bogie said, “that happens to me all the time. Have you ever thought of putting a lock on your bedroom door?”

The sergeant called to them from the other side of the car. “We’re opening it up now.”

“Helga wouldn’t have committed suicide,” Bogie whispered to David and Mac as they made their way around to where the troopers were prying open the passenger side door while being careful to not disturb any evidence. “She was too arrogant. She would have been confident that she could have beaten any murder wrap.”

“If she was going to kill herself, why plant her purse in Breezewood to lead the police away?” Mac asked.

“You’re both right.” David slipped on a pair of evidence gloves. “She was murdered. But who did it?” With a nod of gratitude, he took the cell phone from the trooper who had reached inside to retrieve it. He pressed the button to turn it on.

“We’ve had no credit card or cell phone activity for the last two and a half days?” David glanced over at Bogie while waiting for the phone to turn on.

The deputy chief answered with a nod of his head. “We’ve been watching. Nothing.”

Mac peered into the darkness surrounding them. “This place is really out of the way.” He pointed to the small lake where the car was parked. “What lake is that?” he asked the sergeant.

“It’s called Miller’s Pond. It used to be a pretty nice lake. My grandfather used to bring me fishing, but then it got all overgrown and mucky. Now, mostly kids come out here to smoke and drink and have sex in the back of cars. We’re running them out of here all the time.”

“It’s up.” David thumbed through the applications on the phone to take him to the calendar. “Yep, she uses this to keep her calendar.” He thumbed through the pages to go back three days to the day of the murder. When he read the screen he let out a breath. “According to this, she had a twelve-thirty appointment with a doctor in Oakland on Tuesday.”

“If she kept that appointment,” Mac said, “then she would have an alibi, which means she would have had no reason to run off or commit suicide.”

“But Eugene spoke to someone when he called her at the store right before he was killed,” Bogie said. “He talked to someone for more than a minute and a half.”

“Maybe he talked to her right before she left for the doctor’s office,” David said. “And that call has nothing to do with Eugene’s murder. Fact is, she may have an alibi.”

“Or maybe not,” Bogie said. “Does she have the phone number for the doctor in that thing? I’ll call their office first thing in the morning to confirm that she made it there.”

“Did Eugene call her office number or her cell?” Mac asked.

“Her office number,” Bogie said.

“And Helga’s assistant was out to lunch,” David said. “Eugene talked to someone and no one else knew he was at the church.” He handed the cell phone to the forensics officer to be bagged while asking the officer searching the inside of the car. “Is there a gun in there?”

The officer reached under the seats. “I don’t see any.”

“Helga Thorpe was our last suspect,” David said. “Every suspect we’ve had—the very few that we’ve had—have come up clean—from Chip Van Dorn to Marilyn to Ruth to Edna—”

“Edna!” Bogie let out a loud objection. “Edna would never—”

“I’m reaching, Bogie,” David said. “I admit it, I’m reaching. I’ve never had a murder victim like this—the guy is completely clean and yet someone shot him three times for what looks like no good reason.”

“Can I make a suggestion?” Mac asked.

“Please,” David replied.

“I have gotten to points like this before on cases more times than I like to admit,” Mac said. “When that happens, I go all the way back to the beginning and start all over.” He turned on his heels and went back to the cruiser.

“Start all over,” David repeated in a dejected tone.

As he disappeared into the darkness, Mac waved to David and Bogie to follow. “Back to the beginning, gentlemen.”