Blast from the Past (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (14 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Archie and Bogie were sitting on the front porch steps in the dark when David’s cruiser pulled around the circular driveway and parked.

“We were starting to get worried about you when you didn’t come home with Randi.” Archie kissed Mac and wrapped her arms around his neck when he stepped out.

“I hear I’ve been missing all the excitement while babysitting.” Bogie opened the door to let Gnarly out. “Even the dog is getting more action than me.”

“We’ll be getting you back out there soon enough.” David noticed Randi saunter out onto the porch. She had her bathrobe wrapped around her. “The feds wiped out what appeared to be Bonito’s closest men up on the mountain. They’re moving in on him. He’s going to be wiped out soon enough.”

Wagging his tail at Sari who was pressed up against the window inside the living room, Gnarly was standing up with his front paws on the sill.

Mac opened the door in time for Leah to come flying down the stairs to intercept Sari and sweep her up into her arms before Gnarly was able to give the girl a big, wet kiss on the face. “Sari, what are you doing up?”

Startled by Leah’s lunge between him and Sari, Gnarly snarled and snapped at the woman.

“Did you see that?” Leah turned around to Mac while clutching the girl in both of her arms. “He was going to bite Sari.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Mac said. “You jumped in between them and scared him.”

“Is that blood he has on his face?” She hurried over to Randi who stepped in with Archie, Bogie, and David. “I don’t want to stay here any longer.”

“Why?” Randi asked. “You’re safest here until we can get your new identity set up.”

“That dog is dangerous.” Leah pointed at Gnarly, who was wiping his face on the afghan draped over his loveseat. “He tried to bite Sari. I don’t feel safe here. I want to leave now.”

“Most likely Gnarly tried to kiss her,” Bogie chuckled. “He loves children.”

Randi responded to Leah’s shocked expression. “I know how terrified you are of dogs, but Gnarly isn’t like other dogs. I’ve seen it myself. Sari is completely safe with him.”

Gnarly’s grunting drew their attention to the loveseat where the dog was sprawled on his back, his hind legs spread apart to expose him in his full glory, while twisting and scratching an itch between his shoulder blades. Abruptly, he rolled over onto his stomach and let out a series of barks as if to announce that he felt much better.

“Either that dog gets locked up someplace, or we leave.” Leah whirled around and raced up the stairs. At the top of the stairs, Sari tossed her collie dog over the bannister without her mother noticing. Like a secret admirer seeing a rose tossed to him from the balcony, Gnarly leapt from the loveseat to catch the toy in his teeth and ran down the stairs to his hiding spot behind the sofa in the study.

“I really don’t like that woman,” Archie said. “Sari so wants to be friends with Gnarly, and Gnarly likes her, too.”

Randi Finnegan said, “It’s my job to keep her not just safe, but also comfortable, considering all that she’s given up to help us. If she’s afraid here with Gnarly, then I should move her.”

It was exactly as Leah had called it. She had the US Marshal at her beck and call for snitching on her ex-husband. Her blood boiling, Archie clenched her teeth while exchanging a quick glance with Bogie, who sighed heavily while running his fingers over his mustache.

“I’ll make arrangements for the three of you to stay in a suite at the Spencer Inn,” Mac said to Randi. “Between security and David’s department, you’ll all be safe there.”

“We’ll go first thing in the morning.” Randi’s eyes fell on David’s.

They met for a short moment before David turned away. “I’ll go call my people.”

Randi Finnegan believed in traveling light. You never know with witnesses in the program when you’re suddenly going to have to be on the move. In fact, there had been more than one time when she was forced to move with only the clothes on her back. With the chief of the police down the hall, the deputy chief sleeping on the sofa in the living room, and eight armed guards, four police officers and four trained private security guards patrolling outside, she felt reasonably safe.

That was not to mention the German shepherd who also seemed to be on watch roaming from one bedroom to the next, except for Sari’s room. Leah had closed and locked the door after Randi assured her that they would be moving the very next morning.

Randi was packing her clothes for the move to the Spencer Inn when there was a knock at her door. Assuming that Gnarly wasn’t smart enough to knock, she tucked her handgun into the pocket of her robe and opened the door a crack to find David O’Callaghan on the other side. He was clad in his bathrobe and lounging pants. Through the opening of his robe, she saw that his chest was bare. He was cradling two brandy snifters in one hand.

“Peace offering,” he said.

Without a word, she opened the door and gestured for him to come inside. Silently, he held out one of the snifters to her. She took it and closed the bedroom door.

When their eyes met, he raised his glass in a toast. “I’m sorry for making light of what happened tonight. I work with men so much that I can forget how to be a gentleman.”

“I’m not asking for special treatment—only a little sensitivity would be nice.”

He clicked his snifter against hers. “To sensitivity.”

“To sensitivity.” Eying him over her glass as she sipped the smooth cognac, she noted how blue his eyes were.

After partaking of the cognac, David wet his lips before saying, “I have a confession to make.”

“You want to finish what we started last night,” she replied.

He laughed. “That wasn’t what was I going to confess.”

Her cheeks felt warm.

“Though—” he pointed at her, “don’t let me forget that we do want to talk about that.” He sat down on the edge of her bed. “About tonight, when you froze—”

“I didn’t freeze.”

“Yes, you did.

“If you had given me a chance—”

“You had icicles hanging from your nose you froze so bad,” David countered.

Now her face felt hot. He was right, and she hated him for seeing and knowing that he was right. As good as he looked to her sitting on the edge of her bed in his bathrobe, with his chiseled chest so close she could reach out and touch it—touch him—and feel the heat of his flesh on her hand; she wanted him gone, and the truth about him having saved her life along with it.

“I’ve been there,” he said in a quiet voice.

“Been where?” she whispered back.

“I froze,” he said. “I had been in Iraq and Afghanistan. I had command of fifty-five men under me. Yet, with all that—a couple of years ago, in Washington, DC, of all places, I came face to face with a twelve-year-old boy pointing a Beretta into my face and laughing as he was about to pull the trigger.” David paused to take a sip of his cognac. Closing his eyes, he sighed. “All I could think about was that he was some mother’s son. I couldn’t move… Mac saved me… He shot that boy in the back…killed him. It was him or me.  Just like tonight. It was him or you.”

She sat down on the bed next to him. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. We’ll never talk about it again.” David gazed into her eyes.

She felt as if he were examining her inner being.

“I’m not going to tell anyone about what happened,” he said, “and I promise not to tease you about it anymore.”

“I’d like that.”

“I thought you would.” He caressed her cheek. “Do you want to talk about that other thing you wanted to talk about?”  He moved in closer to bring his lips towards hers.

“Not really,” she replied. “I think we’ve talked about it enough.”

“Same here.” He covered her mouth with his.

The deputy chief was sprawled out on the sofa. He was covered with a multi-colored afghan that Robin Spencer had received as a gift from a fan in Arizona. His mouth hanging open, Bogie snored loudly.

Gnarly led Sari across the floor, careful not to make a sound as they made their way to the hallway and the stairs down to the ground floor where the home theater contained an assortment of treasures that he had stashed behind the last row of seats. There was also a big box of popcorn and a microwave in which to pop it.

His secret friend opened the door. Her mouth dropped open when she saw the size of the movie screen.

Gnarly placed his front paws on the counter and stretched his neck to knock over the box of popcorn. Grabbing it up into his mouth, he carried it over to Sari and nudged her until he tore her attention from the movie screen.

Effortlessly, she interpreted his message. Taking a bag from the box, she went over to the microwave. While she popped the popcorn, Gnarly went over to the control center and picked up the remote in his mouth.

It took three minutes to pop the popcorn. Within five minutes, the secret friends were stretched out on the floor. Gnarly had the stuffed dog between his front paws, and Sari clutched the rubber duck in one hand. Between them, they shared a bowl of popcorn while watching an old Benji movie.

Chapter Nineteen

“I don’t like Leah.”

“You don’t like anyone who doesn’t like Gnarly.” Mac came out of the bathroom to find Archie in his bed—wearing the top to the pajamas of which he was wearing the bottoms. Thinking about how much better she looked in it than him, he turned off the light and crossed the room to climb into bed next to her.

“Gnarly doesn’t like her either,” she said while letting him pull her over to his side, “and he is an excellent judge of character.”

“Look at who you’re talking about,” Mac said. “Where did that rubber duck come from?”

In an effort to sound innocent, Archie’s voice went up a whole octave. “You must have gotten it for him.”

Mac shook his head. “Gnarly is up to his old tricks again. He stole it. I could have sworn I saw a rubber duck in the Phillips’ kids’ wading pool when they invited us over last week.”

“Mac,” she argued, “I’m sure that’s not the only rubber duck in all of Deep Creek Lake.”

“Should I call the Phillips to ask them if their four-year-old son is missing a rubber duck?”

“No!”

“So Gnarly did steal it and tried to hide it from me by flushing it down my toilet.”

“Mac,” she said, “he’s a dog. How was he supposed to know that it would clog your toilet? Give him a break.”

“Like you’re giving Leah a break?”

Catching the meaning behind his playful grin, Archie sighed and folded her arms across her chest. “Now I feel guilty.”

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her on the cheek. “For covering up for Gnarly or for suspecting Leah of being a bad person?”

Another thought crept into her mind. “She’s been texting someone—someone she’s not supposed to be texting. When you’re in the program, you’re to cut off all contact with your past.” 

Seeing that she was not going to give up on talking about something other than them, he sighed and lied back on the pillows on his side of the bed. “Maybe she’s texting friends that she has made since entering the program. She’s been in the program two years. She’s got to have made some friends in that time.”

“She dropped her cell phone on the deck and accused me of stealing it when I gave it back.”

“Did you steal it?” Mac asked her.

“No!” she replied. “But you should have seen her. She flat out accused me of stealing it.”

He cocked his head at her. His eyes narrowed, and he peered at her face. She shifted to avoid his gaze. “Did you clone her phone?”

“Yes.”

“Hah!”

Archie picked up the phone from the night stand. “She must have suspected that I did that, because ever since I made the clone, her phone has been off.”

“What do you think she’s doing that you had to clone her phone?”

“I have no idea, but she’s up to something,” she said. “She’s definitely up to something.”

“You’re in the program and you text people,” Mac said. “Why are you suspicious about
her
texting?”

“The feds released a statement saying that she and Sari were dead,” she reminded him. “If she was serious about wanting to keep her daughter safe, then she would behave like she was dead. That means not reaching out to anyone from her old life. If she’s supposed to be dead, who is she texting?”

Archie looked down at where Mac was resting his head on her shoulders. He smiled softly up at her. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m reaching. I don’t like her and would like her to be guilty of something.”

“That’s what David is saying about Russell Skeltner,” Mac said. “I think he had his wife killed because I simply don’t like the guy.”

“Is David right?”

“No.” He rolled over onto his side and gazed up into her emerald green eyes. “I don’t care if he does have an alibi and if the contact lens belonged to a woman. Skeltner’s as guilty as sin.”

“And Leah is up to something.”  She rolled over to face him. “I intend to find out what before she leaves.”

“I have no doubt that you will,” he said. “And while you’re finding that out, maybe you can help me by digging into Russell Skeltner’s past to find a motive for him killing his wife.”

“Yes, sir, detective, sir.” She saluted him.

As their laughter subsided, she brushed her hand across his cheek. He kissed her fingertips. Gazing at her slender hand, his soft expression turned to one of deep thought.

“What are you thinking so hard about?” she asked him.

“Ray Bonito.” Mac looked over at her. “Cruze’s lawyer says he’s completely paranoid—like Howard Hughs paranoid. Even Cruze couldn’t get in to see him.”

“He probably has reason to be paranoid,” Archie said.

“Do you remember Ray Bonito from the trial?”

“Never saw him,” she replied. “The marshals kept me as far from Cruze’s people as possible.”

“He wasn’t there the night of the murder?”

“No.” She shook her head. “The police got all of Cruze’s men who I saw at the murder.”

“What do you remember about Cruze’s wife?”

“Oh, I remember her all right,” Archie said. “She was an associate professor in business administration at the university. She used to come into the library.”

“A professor?” Mac sat up. “I pictured her as the clichéd blonde gun mole.”

“No, she was a gorgeous redhead,” she recalled, “and very smart. She taught business law.”

“Law? Really?”

Archie’s eyebrows almost met in the center of her forehead. “What are you thinking?”

Mac was out of bed. Without putting on his bathrobe, he threw open the door and ran down the hall to knock on David’s door.

“Mac, what did I say?” Archie called to him from the bed.

“Everything!” Mac called over his shoulder back at her while pounding on David’s bedroom door. “Get your laptop. We have some research to do.” He turned back to the door. “David, wake up. I put it together.”

The door down the hall flew open. “What’s all the racket about that can’t wait until morning?”

Turning around, Mac found himself face-to-face with Randi Finnegan. He also caught a glimpse of her naked breasts before she realized that her bathrobe was hanging open. He was still finding his voice when she flew back into the bedroom and David came out into the hall.

Wearing only his lounging pants, David was clutching his gun in his hand. “What’s happening?”

Mac worked his mouth for a moment, while peering beyond David to where Randi was impatiently waiting on the bed. “I figured it out.”

“What out?”

“Who hired those hit men at the cafe?”

David glanced over his shoulder back at Randi. He turned back to Mac. “Do we have to go now?”

“I need Archie to hunt down the evidence,” Mac replied, “so I think you two have some time to get into something less comfortable.”

On the top floor of the south wing of the Spencer Inn, Alan Richardson stepped off the penthouse elevator with his two bodyguards. After an early morning workout at the resort’s athletic club, it was time to call room service for breakfast.

The high-priced lawyer and his bodyguards paid little attention to the two linen carts in the corridor. The housekeeping staff was cleaning the other suites on the floor—two staff employees in the corner suite across the hall, and another pair at the other end of the corridor.

Richardson opened the door and stepped into the suite with one of the bodyguards behind him. The guard instinctively pulled his weapon when they spotted Mac waiting in the chair in the corner of the living room.

“Not even a hello before shooting me,” Mac replied at the sight of the gun.

The guard kept his weapon aimed at him.

“What are you doing in my suite?” Richardson stepped into the room.

“Actually,” Mac replied, “this is my suite.” He gestured at their surroundings. “I guess you didn’t do your homework. I own the Spencer Inn. Therefore,” he waved in the air the key card he had used to let himself in. “I can go anywhere I want—whenever I want.” After putting the key card down on the table, he picked up the mimosa he had been drinking when they came in. “Have a mimosa …on me.” He gestured to the pitcher and glass on the bar.

Richardson ordered the gunman to put away his gun. “I’d rather you leave, even if you do own this hotel. There is an expectation of privacy when you check into a hotel—and right now, you’re invading it.” He crossed to the door and opened it. “So I would invite you to leave.”

“I know where Tommy Cruze’s wife is.”

Alan Richardson froze. The guard looked from the lawyer to Mac and back again.

Mac flashed a smirk at Alan Richardson. “Now your line is to tell the guard to wait outside while we talk about this in private.”

The lawyer ordered the guard. “Outside. Don’t let anyone in until I come tell you.” Once the guard was out in the hall, Richardson closed the door and rushed to stand over Mac. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Where’s your wife, Richardson?”

“Out,” the lawyer replied. “What does she have to do with any of this?”

“I remembered something during the night,” Mac said. “At the café yesterday morning, when your wife came in, one, she could not take her eyes off Cruze. Yet, you said she had never met Tommy Cruze.”

“He was an ugly brute, and he was dead,” Richardson said. “That’s why she couldn’t take her eyes off him.”

“Two,”’ Mac said, “you referred to the hit men as those men posing as FBI agents.” He cast a smile in Richardson’s direction. “You were inside before they arrived, and during the shootout. How did you know they were wearing FBI insignias on their clothes?”

“One of your people mentioned it,” Richardson said.

“Maybe,” Mac said, “but I like my idea better. You knew because you and your wife set up the hit.”

“Why would Ariel get involved in any conspiracy to hit Tommy Cruze?” Alan Richardson laughed loudly. “She had never even met him.”

“Nose job, cheek and breast implants, but that wasn’t enough to fool a face recognition program into not seeing that the woman who you now claim to be your wife is really Harper Cruze.” Mac sat up. “That’s why you two had to take him out. You weren’t lying all those years ago when you said Cruze’s wife had left him before he got home to kill her. She had escaped.” Grinning, he pointed a finger at the lawyer. “You helped her. We called the FBI to ask about the blood that was left in the car.” Mac shook his head. “No body tissue. If she had been shot, there would have been body tissue mixed with the blood. She faked her death to frame her husband for killing her, and then you defended him just enough to make it convincing, but not enough to keep him from going to jail.”

“How many of those drinks have you had?”

“Like I said, I own this Inn.” Mac took a cell phone from his pocket and tossed it onto the coffee table. “I found the burn phone from which the phony FBI agents received the text giving them the time and place to hit Cruze. You texted your wife with the location, and she texted the hired killers from this burn phone.”

“No jury will ever hear any of that,” Richardson said. “Your search was illegal, and that cell phone will be tossed out of evidence.”

Mac continued, “During the night, we collected DNA from the dishes that Ariel ate from last night and sent it to the lab. They compared it to Harper Cruze’s DNA. It was a match. Harper Cruze had dinner in this suite last night before running—maybe to get away from me.  I saw how she was staring at Cruze’s body yesterday morning. It wasn’t just horror—it was relief—that comes from a long war being over.”

“Ariel had nothing to do with any of it.” The lawyer poured a mixture of the mimosa from the pitcher into a glass. “Would you believe I introduced them?” He lowered himself onto the loveseat across from Mac. “I warned her from the very beginning—when she started dating Cruze—that nothing good would ever come from it. But she found him exciting—she loved men who were forceful and aggressive—until she found out how forceful and aggressive he was.” He sipped from the glass. “By then, it was too late. She was in deep and couldn’t get out—not alive.”

“So you helped her fake her death and then defended Cruze of murdering the man she was having an affair with.” Mac sat forward in his seat. “Tell me, just between us—did you purposely lose that trial?”

“I didn’t have to with Kendra Douglas testifying,” the lawyer said. “You should have seen the prosecution’s witness. That woman was determined and unshakable. Cruze knew he was buried the second she took that stand.” He sat back in the seat and laughed. “Do you want to know the totally ironic part of the whole thing?”

“What?”

“Harper wasn’t having an affair with Reynolds,” he whispered. “They were only friends.”

Mac wasn’t surprised. “She was having an affair with you.”

“Cruze focused on Reynolds because he was handsome and had a reputation with the ladies. He never suspected it was his dull, workaholic lawyer.”

This shocked Mac. “You had to know Cruze would kill Reynolds.”

“Collateral damage.” The lawyer went on, “I was the one who suggested the Dockside Café. I set up the hit with the assassins, trusted associates of Bonito.”

“What if that couple hadn’t left?” Mac asked. “What if your paid assassins hadn’t been stopped by the FBI and went in? Would you have let them kill—”

“Their instructions were to only kill Cruze and his bodyguard. I had to kill him. It was kill or be killed.” The smug look was gone. “Cruze was so intent on revenge when he got out of prison. He never bought that Harper was dead. Over the years, he had become convinced that everything, Kendra Douglas witnessing the murder, Harper’s disappearance—everything was an elaborate con job to frame him and put him away. When he got out, he was obsessed with getting revenge on everyone for everything.” Richardson paused to sip his drink. “I thought that if I was able to uncover where Kendra Douglas was so he could concentrate on her, that would satisfy him.”

“So you dug around until you found someone in the US Marshal’s office willing to give up Kendra Douglas’s location,” Mac said.

“Everyone has their price,” the lawyer said with a smirk.

“And if they become a lose end,” Mac said, “all you have to do is make a phone call, and they’re dead.”

Mac was surprised to see Alan Richardson’s face go blank.

“Ginger Altman,” Mac said, “with the US Marshal’s office. When they started closing in on her, her last phone call was to your office. A short time later, she was dead—killed by another one of Bonito’s people.”

“Yes, I had her killed, too.” Alan Richardson gazed down into his glass. “I did it all to protect Ariel. I love her. I’m sure you’d do the same thing for your woman.”  

“Yes, I can see why you believed you had to do it,” Mac said. “It was only a matter of time before Cruze saw Ariel and recognized her. If not by looks, then by a glance, or the way she tilted her head.”

“All you have on me is conspiracy to commit murder,” the lawyer said. “Once a jury finds out who the target was and why, they’ll refuse to convict me.”

“What about your wife?” Mac replied. “She had to know.”

Alan set the glass, now drained, down on the coffee table between them. “I have represented members of organized crime for twenty years. I know where all the bodies are buried. You’d be surprised what the feds would be willing to give up in exchange for what I have to offer.” He sat back in his seat. “One woman for a dozen of the FBI’s most wanted.”

“I’m not in the position to promise anything,” Mac said. “All I want is to know what happened at the café.”

“I told you what happened at the café,” Alan said. “We went in. We ordered coffee and breakfast. Suddenly, people started dropping dead.”

“You forgot about the couple that left before Cruze dropped dead.”