It's Murder, My Son (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (25 page)

“Because Katrina wanted him,” Ron answered. “Katrina liked to have things. They started at the firm at the same time. Chad is a good-looking man. Katrina liked good-looking men. She pursued him, but got nowhere because he already had a gorgeous, but poor, girlfriend.”

Mac started to ask, “If Rachel and Chad were an item—”

“Chad wanted money,” the lawyer interjected. “Rachel had everything except that. They have both been digging for gold since they hit Washington. You should have seen some of the rich widows and divorcees Chad courted. Rachel knows first-hand which congressmen and senators are unfaithful to their wives. Chad finally struck gold with Katrina after she became Niles Holt’s widow. He seduced her into thinking that he was always in love with her. I guess she wanted it enough to believe him—until after the nuptials.”

Mac sat forward in his seat. “Is it possible that Katrina and Chad started seeing each other before Niles Holt died?”

“Only casually,” Ron answered without hesitation. “I’m sure Katrina got off on screwing around with Chad behind Rachel’s back. But he had no intention of making a commitment to Katrina until after she became a rich widow.”

“Do you recall Chad being there when Lee Dorcas had that altercation with Katrina over the money missing from his grandmother’s estate?”

“I couldn’t swear to it.”

David asked, “Did you witness it?”

Ron nodded his head quickly. “The whole thing. I thought Dorcas was going to kill her then and there.”

“Did Ingram and Henderson investigate his claim of embezzlement?” Mac asked.

“We had no choice. He sued us.” The lawyer signaled the server for more coffee. “We settled out of court.”

After the waiter refilled their cups and moved on to another table, David told him, “Katrina told me that the judge threw the case out due to lack of evidence.”

“That’s not the first lie Katrina told,” Ron laughed. “We threw Lee Dorcas a bone to go away and he did.”

Mac asked, “How much money did Katrina steal from his grandmother?”

“I didn’t say that she did.”

“Ingram and Henderson has the biggest, baddest lawyers in DC working for them. If Katrina didn’t do anything wrong, then you would have fought the suit to protect the firm’s reputation.”

After glancing around to ensure no one could hear, Ron confessed, “We did find evidence of wrongdoing. Like you said, we have the highest-paid attorneys with the most impeccable reputations working for us. We could have dragged his suit out in the courts until Lee Dorcas was old and gray. But he wanted money for his music career and he wanted it now. So we settled.”

“For how much?” David wanted to know.

“We gave him back what Katrina had stolen, plus a hundred thousand dollars for restitution. He got half a million dollars. That’s a pretty big bone, if you ask me.”

“But you didn’t file any charges against Katrina for embezzling his grandma’s nest egg,” Mac noted.

His eyes wide with fear at the suggestion, Ron shook his head. “That wouldn’t have done our firm’s reputation any good. Katrina resigned and the case was quietly settled.”

David wondered, “Was Lee Dorcas satisfied with the settlement?”

“He got everything he lost and then some,” Ron reminded them. “What more could he want?”

“Maybe he wanted a pound of flesh,” Mac suggested.

Ron stared down into his coffee mug. His eyes took on a faraway look.

“What are you thinking about?”

“After Dorcas filed his suit, I was assigned ass-kissing duty.” Ron chuckled. “I actually managed to get Dorcas to bring his accounts back to Ingram and Henderson as long as I handled his money.”

“You must kiss ass with the best of them,” Mac said.

“A couple weeks after Niles Holt died—less than a month for sure,” Ron recalled, “Dorcas came into my office with a cash deposit. One hundred thousand dollars.”

David interrupted him to ask, “Why’d he bring it to you and not a bank?”

“Good question,” Ron said. “The most obvious answer is that it came from a less than up-and-up source. You take a hundred thousand dollars in cash up to a bank teller and eyebrows will raise, tongues will wag, and questions will be asked. By bringing it to me, the money was quietly deposited into his account without a lot of questions.”

Mac asked, “Where did the money come from?”

“He never told me,” Ron answered, “but he had the biggest grin I ever saw.”

 “It couldn’t have been a payoff for killing Holt,” David said to Mac. “Dorcas had an alibi.”

Mac pointed out, “Unless he had chartered a private plane to get him to Deep Creek and then to his singing gig. Jackson’s not the only pilot in the world. But I doubt if he would have done Katrina any favors by killing her husband so that she could inherit forty mil.”

Ron held up his hands. “I’m only telling you what happened. The guy was a no-talent musician living off his inheritance. Money always went out of Dorcas’s account. It never went in except that one and only time. That’s why it stood out in my mind.”

They drank their respective drinks in silence while considering the possibilities.

Ron broke the silence. “Katrina never ran for Miss Congeniality. Other people probably wanted to kill her for reasons besides money.”

“Who else would want her dead?” David asked.

“More than one associate at the firm,” Ron said. “Katrina stole other people’s ideas, as well as her clients’ money. She’d charm new associates to do her work for her and then take the credit. She screwed over more than one lawyer to move up.” He added, “Niles Holt was my client. She wined and dined him—stabbed me in the back a few times—until Niles switched his account to her.”

“How long ago was that?” Mac asked.

“Four years ago.” Ron laughed. “Don’t go looking at me. In spite of Katrina’s crap, I’m now a partner, thanks in part to cleaning up her messes after she left.”

When Mac inquired if Katrina had any clients connected to the Marlstone syndicate, Ron bristled. “We don’t knowingly represent drug dealers or anyone involved in organized crime. We didn’t know what Peter Marlstone was until Katrina had us in deep.”

David asked, “Did Katrina steal from them?”

Ron’s face flushed. “After the Dorcas case, our bookkeeping department went over her accounts with a fine-tooth comb. Peter Marlstone had already withdrawn his money and disappeared by the time the feds came looking for a paper trail. Two years ago, when bookkeeping went through Katrina’s accounts from then, they found half a million dollars missing from his account. It’s weird. He never filed a complaint about it.”

“Probably because he didn’t have time to stick around to litigate.” Mac went on, “What about Chad? Where did he fit in the firm?”

“Chad kissed butts and stabbed backs, but he wasn’t that good a lawyer. He knew how to look more important than he really was.” He added with a small grin, “Rachel may be gorgeous, but she is nowhere near as smart as Katrina was. She believes everything Chad says and does. I can’t believe she stood still to let him marry Katrina, even if it was only supposed to be temporary.”

David asked, “How did Rachel expect him to end his marriage if he was only going to get one hundred thou per year?”

Ron cleared his throat. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think Rachel is smart enough to think that far.”

“Do you think she would have married Chad if he was planning murder?” Mac asked.

Ron shrugged. “You got me.”

“Do you think she’s capable of arranging to have Katrina killed to free Chad to marry her?”

The lawyer paused. “I don’t know. Rachel isn’t very bright, but now that you mention it, it could be an act.”

David saw Mac sit up straight.

Ron seemed to see it, too. “What did I say?”

“An act,” Mac muttered. “It could be just an act.”

*   *   *   *

“Oh, this is such a lovely home,” Debra Gerald gushed to Archie while gazing across the grounds from Spencer Manor’s front porch. “I would love so much to work here.”

According to her resume, this applicant fit the bill. Debra was clean, well-spoken, polite, and had experience both as a cook and housekeeper in some of the finest homes in Charlotte, North Carolina. She also claimed to like dogs.

Unfortunately, Gnarly didn’t like her. Soon after Debra arrived, he began barking and pawing at the oversized handbag she clutched under her arm. He became such a nuisance that Archie had to lock him in her cottage before giving the applicant a tour of the house.

Other than Gnarly, the interview went well. All Archie had to do before offering Debra the job was to check her references and schedule an interview with Mac.

“I’ll call you tomorrow with a time that Mr. Faraday can see you,” Archie said while she escorted Debra to the car.

Suddenly, Gnarly tore around the corner of the house. Somehow, he had escaped the cottage.

“Gnarly! No! Stop!” Archie shrieked when the large dog charged toward the prospective housekeeper.

In mid-air, Gnarly grasped the corner of Debra’s bag in his jaws.

“Stop it!” Debra pulled on the bag by the straps.

Growling, Gnarly held onto the bag for all it was worth.

“I don’t know why he doesn’t like me,” Debra called out to Archie. “Most dogs love me.”

“Drop it, Gnarly!” Archie hit him with her open palms. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

“Let go of it, you dumb mutt.” Determined to win the tug of war, Debra whacked the dog’s snout with her fist.

Gnarly twisted his head and shook the bag until it tore to spill its contents.

When she saw what had scattered in the driveway, Archie screamed.

The bag had contained an array of personal mementoes, jewels, watches, silver, knick-knacks, and other priceless memorabilia—all taken from inside Spencer Manor. Debra had grabbed everything she could lay her hands on during the job interview and tour of the house.

“You’re a thief. That’s why Gnarly doesn’t like you.”

Debra dropped the bag and ran for her car. Leaving tread in the driveway, the thief drove off between the stone pillars and on up the Point.

“That’s another applicant I need to cross off our list.”

*   *   *   *

After lunch, Mac and David stopped at the Old Ebbitt Grill on Fifteenth Street in downtown Washington. Piquing their curiosity when she asked that they not tell her husband, Rachel Singleton had scheduled the meeting that morning.

She was nursing a gin and tonic at a booth in a dark corner. Looking like a model belonging on the cover of a society magazine in a jade suit with matching jewels, Rachel stood out even in a restaurant that catered to the city’s most beautiful people.

“Thank you for seeing me,” she said. “You got Chad so mad last night that he threatened to call his lawyer if you try to question him again. I thought maybe if you knew the truth about Katrina that you’d understand why he walked away from her the way he did.”

When the server appeared, she told them to order anything they wanted. She was buying. Mac ordered a beer on tap while David ordered a mineral water.

Wordlessly, they eyed the server until he left before Mac asked, “What truth do you want to share with us?”