It's Murder, My Son (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (27 page)

With a thick cloth handbag clutched between his jaws, the German shepherd emerged at the top of the stairs. Purple flowers decorated the torn and discolored bag that hung from threadbare shoulder straps.

Archie said, “That isn’t the same bag he took off the thief.”

“Let me take a look at that.” When Mac reached for it, Gnarly jerked his head away and turned to escape with his prize. Anticipating the move, Mac blocked his path and grasped one corner of the bag. It contained something thick and heavy. After a tug-of-war, he extracted the bag from the dog’s jaws.

 “Where did he get this?” Mac turned to Archie. “Could it be Robin’s?”

“I thought I threw away all of her old handbags.”

He asked Gnarly, “Where did you get this?” Sitting at his feet, Gnarly answered by looking over his shoulder through the French doors to the outside.

The bag contained a large brown sealed envelope. Two labels on the front indicated that it had been mailed special delivery with a signature required. Both the return address and the addressee were the same: Betsy Weaver in Los Angeles, California.

“Betsy Weaver?” Mac looked across the table at Archie. “Why do I know that name?”

“Travis’s assistant,” she reminded him. “You’ve never actually met her. She was at the bar that night we took David and Violet out to dinner.”

“Why would she mail a package to herself special delivery with a signature required?”

Gnarly charged before she could answer. With a single bound, he captured the bag out of Mac’s hand and ran back down the stairs to the play room and home theater.

“Follow him,” Mac ordered.

Leaving the package on the kitchen table, they ran down the stairs in time to see Gnarly burrow behind the leather sofa.

“Why do I think my Blackberry is back there?” Mac asked. “Grab an end.”

They moved the sofa out from the wall.

Surprised by the intrusion, the German shepherd sat up from his nest of treasures: towels, beach blankets, women’s handbags, wallets, keys, shoes, cell phones, and empty food wrappers. The most recent addition was a pack of bologna.

Archie broke into a round of giggles. “Someone has been a very busy doggie.”

“Someone has been a very naughty doggie.” Mac picked up a chewed-up wallet that still contained cash and credit cards. He read the name to find that it belonged to a neighbor from the other end of the Point. “David said the petty thefts started shortly after Pay Back arrived on the scene. Shortly after Pay Back showed up, Katrina got Gnarly for protection. The thief wasn’t Pay Back. The dog protecting her from Pay Back was the thief.”

Spying a pair of chewed-up pink pumps with stiletto heels, Archie shrieked. “My shoes! Bad dog!”

Gnarly darted between them and escaped up the stairs with the cloth handbag still in his possession. They let him go to dig through his treasures. The loot included Mac’s Blackberry and Archie’s phone.

“Now do you believe me that Gnarly is smart enough to open and close the refrigerator door?” she asked.

With both hands, Mac held up fistfuls of empty food wrappers. “I think this evidence makes him a strong suspect.” He picked six wallets and eleven purses from the nest of stolen goods. The handbags contained cosmetics, cell phones, keys, and wallets. Gnarly appeared to be more interested in chewing on the outside than the goods inside. Archie knew the victims of the thefts. They all lived on the Point and across the cove.

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to replace lost credit cards?” Mac picked up a wallet that she had discarded. 

“Oh, lighten up. It isn’t like Gnarly went out and bought a home theatre with them.”

Covered in dirt and food and grease stains, one wallet appeared more worn than the others. The discolored and mildewed leather had been chewed to bits. Along with thirty-seven dollars in cash, the pockets contained credit cards and identification.

Mac dug his fingers inside the card section to extract the driver’s license that had been pierced by Gnarly’s teeth. He observed the expiration date first. Issued by the Commonwealth of Virginia, it was scheduled to expire in four years. After studying the photograph and name of the wallet’s owner, he did a double-take. The long, bushy, ash-colored hair was twisted into dreadlocks.

“Look at this.” He handed the license to Archie.

Her eyes squinted while she studied the image. When the image registered with her, they grew wide. “No way!”

“He kind of looks like the bug man I saw coming out of the Hardwicks’ place this afternoon.” Mac studied the license again. It had been issued to Lee J. Dorcas.

Archie wondered, “Do you think that maybe Gnarly had dug this up in the mine after finding his body?”

“Dorcas disappeared in February. Cash, credit cards, ID. Nothing appears to be missing. Look at all these teeth marks. Gnarly must have had this for months.” Mac scratched his head while he thought. “The killer dumped Dorcas’s body in the mine, a popular spot for hikers. He had to know that the body would be found eventually.”

“Long after he took off on a chartered flight to Houston,” she said.

“Why would his killer pretend to be Dorcas on the flight to Houston? Why not someone else? Someone completely off the radar?”

“To throw the police off his trail,” Archie answered. “If Phillips thought he had left the area, then the police wouldn’t be looking for him here.”

Mac stood up. “I’m calling Fleming.”

*   *   *   *

“What are we talking about here? Immunity from prosecution for theft in exchange for Gnarly’s cooperation in identifying Dorcas’s killer?” Ben Fleming found it impossible to keep the amusement out of his voice when Mac phoned him about the chewed-up loot stashed behind the sofa. “Considering what you just told me, I think Gnarly is a canine of interest in this case.”

Once again, Mac was gazing down at the gazebo where Archie waited for him. She had been wearing her red swimsuit under the robe.

“Hey, Ben, what do you know about Pete Mason?”

“He’s a pompous ass.”

“Did you know that Katrina used to be his investment lawyer?”

“No,” Ben said, “but now that you mention it, Mason never did welcome Katrina into Spencer society. I wondered about that.”

“Her firm says a half a million dollars disappeared from Mason’s accounts, but he never filed a claim or charges against her.”

“Maybe Mason decided to take care of it himself,” Ben suggested.

After promising to talk more the next day, Mac hung up and went upstairs to change into his swim trunks. There, he found Gnarly on his bed ripping Betsy Weaver’s bag into tattered pieces.

“What are you doing?”

Leaving the shredded handbag behind, Gnarly jumped off the bed and crawled under it.

“Unbelievable.” He picked up the bits of slimy cloth and cotton filler from the comforter. “A dog burglar living under my own roof.”  He tossed the handbag into the trash on his way into the walk-in closet.

In the privacy of Spencer Point, secure behind a line of trees, Mac and Archie relaxed in the hot tub against the jets pulsating their bodies.

After he had slipped into the water next to her, she asked, “Did you find out anything in Washington?”

He shrugged while pouring a glass of wine from the bottle she had opened for them to share. “We met Chad Singleton and his new bride.”

“What’s she like?”

“Very beautiful.”

Archie cocked her head at him. Her eyes narrowed. “How beautiful?”

“She’s blindly in love with her husband,” Mac said. “She claims no one bothered Katrina while she lived in Washington after Niles died.” He felt her foot brush against the inside of his leg. He wondered if it was an accident. Considering that the tub was large enough to hold ten people, he doubted it. He kept his leg still.

“Maybe Katrina was but didn’t tell Rachel. It isn’t like Katrina would have confided in her.”

“Maybe,” Mac said. “Where did Pay Back come from?”

“Everyone wondered that.”

“Someone said something about putting on an act. That got me thinking. Pay Back was all just an act,” he said. “He had to learn enough about Lee Dorcas to know what he looked like and how he behaved. Then Pay Back put on an act, impersonating a man who had a score to settle with Katrina. That would answer the question about where Pay Back went when he wasn’t terrorizing Katrina. Where did he go? Home to change out of his Pay Back costume to re-emerge as fill-in-the-blank.”

Mac was on a roll. “And then when he made his escape on the chartered plane after killing Katrina, he did so wearing his costume. He could have gone anywhere from Houston. He could even have taken the next commercial flight right back here. Round trip in one day and no one would ever have known he left.” He concluded with the question, “Why did he choose the name Pay Back?”

Thoughtfully, Archie wondered, “If he had his own score to settle with Katrina, why not settle it in his own name?”

“To get to her,” Mac suggested. “Finding out that it wasn’t Dorcas, but knowing that someone was after her and not knowing who. That’s mental torture.”

“If you’re right, then Katrina’s killer was a vigilante and Pay Back was a symbol of his motive?”

“Pay Back is hell,” he muttered. “Who did I hear say that?”

She asked, “Is Chad a viable suspect? He killed Niles to free Katrina for him to marry, and then decided to get rid of her to have it all to himself. I told you about the Eagle Group.”

Mac recalled, “That’s Niles Holt’s investment group.” He pressed his leg against her foot. She responded by rubbing the underside of his calf.

“Before he died, Niles Holt quietly bought seventy acres on the west side of Deep Creek Lake,” she said. “Last summer, Katrina courted the county commissioners to change the zoning from residential to commercial in order to build a retail development complete with condos and jet ski rentals right on the lake.”

“Chad says that was why she hung around Deep Creek.” He draped his arm across her shoulders.

Archie moved in closer to him. “Maybe Pay Back really had to do with Katrina raping the land.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and looked into his eyes.

The lights from inside the hot tub cast them in a golden glow.

“Mac?”

“What?” He sucked in a nervous breath.

Her eyes locked on his. “When are you going to kiss me?”

“Uh?”

“Yes?”

“I guess…” Mac licked his lips. “Now.”

He brought his lips to hers. He could feel her warm breath on his face.

She brushed her fingers against his cheek. 

The silence of the night exploded. The ground shook while the sky filled with red, orange, and yellow hues.

Chapter Fourteen

After the explosion, Archie wasted no time in running to her cottage to call Ira and Francine Taylor, who owned a police scanner.

While Archie changed out of her swimsuit, Mac ran upstairs to the master bedroom balcony in hopes of seeing the source of the excitement on the Point. When he threw open the bedroom door, Gnarly went flying off the bed and under it.