Candidate for Murder

by Lauren Carr

  Standing above her with her arms folded across her chest, Archie grinned. “Get my point?”

  “What’s going on in here?” Mac asked from where he was leaning in the open doorway. Dressed in his bathrobe, he looked as sick as he felt, and there were dark circles under his eyes. “Archie, are you trying to drown David’s girlfriend?”

  Accepting Archie’s hand to help pull her up, Dallas said, “Archie and I are researchin’ the case of a supposed suicide victim who drowned in a toilet.”

  Mac shook his head. “You can’t accidentally drown in a toilet, and you can’t commit suicide by drowning in a toilet without help. The way the toilet is constructed, the body acts as a counterweight. As soon as the victim passes out and his or her body goes limp. Their own bodyweight naturally drags the victim’s head up and out of the water.”

  “But I could have sworn that I heard of people drownin’ in—”

  “Cause of death is not drowning,” Mac said. “Yes, people have died in the bathroom from drug overdoses or alcohol poisoning. They passed out after throwing up and their bodies are found on the floor in front of the toilet—not with their heads in the bowl.

  “I was right. She was murdered.”

  From the bathroom doorway, Mac watched Dallas rush into the dining room with the enthusiasm of a child. In silence, he turned back to Archie, who was lowering the seat back onto the toilet. A slow grin came to his lips.

  Seeing the grin, Archie said, “I still don’t like her.”

  Spencer Police Department

  David practically got rear-ended when he screeched his cruiser to a halt after turning onto Lake Shore Drive and finding “Don’t Give a Paws! Vote for Gnarly!” signs at every corner and in every yard along the lakeshore.

  Guess Bernie and Hap are out to earn their pay—whatever it may be.

  At the police department, he found four signs, one on each side of the driveway at each end of the police department’s property. Bernie and Hap were in the process of erecting a huge wooden sign with Gnarly’s face on it directly below the lighted sign identifying the police department.

  Upon seeing the police chief’s cruiser, Bernie and Hap stopped pounding the sign into the ground and turned to wave enthusiastically at him. “Hey, Chief!” Bernie shouted.

  Slowing down, David read the bold block letters across the top of the sign. The sign read, “Endorsed by the Spencer Police Department.” After parking, David strolled over to where Bernie and Hap were bursting with pride.

  “What’d you think, Chief?” Bernie asked. “You’ll never believe how this campaign has taken off. Our phone is ringing off the hook at Gnarly’s campaign headquarters with people asking for signs, and they’re throwing money at us like crazy.”

  Hap was nodding his head up and down so fast that he looked like he a bobblehead.

  “Gnarly’s even got a commercial,” Bernie said. “It went viral on the Internet. As of this morning, it had gotten five hundred thousand hits. Hap’s granddaughter made that commercial and a couple more for Gnarly, too. Smart as a whip, she is. She won the elementary-school spelling bee last year. Went all the way to the state capital.”

  Hap stepped up his head nodding.

  “What does Gnarly’s schedule look like?” Bernie asked.

  Tearing his attention away from where Hap was nodding his head as though he were about ready to take off, David said, “Schedule?”

  “People want him to go speak to their groups,” Bernie said. “They want to know where he falls on the issues.”

  “He’s a dog,” David said.

  “Yeah, we’ve been pretty transparent about that.” Bernie pointed to the sign between Hap and him. “As Gnarly’s campaign manager, I strongly encourage him to get out there to meet the voters. He needs to be shaking paws and licking babies, or people are going to think that he’s hiding something.”

  Slowly nodding his head, David stepped back from them. “I’ll get back to you two on that.” He was halfway across the parking lot of the police station before he realized that Bernie had mentioned a campaign headquarters and phones ringing off the hook.

  No, it can’t be. People can’t be serious.

  Shaking his head, he pushed his way through the front door to enter the police station. “Who authorized our department’s endorsement of Gnarly for mayor?” David asked while picking up his mail from the reception desk.

  Tonya jerked a thumb in the direction of Bogie, who was watching a press conference with the rest of the officers in the department.

  Without turning around, Bogie said, “We took a vote at roll call this morning. It’s unanimous. Gnarly’s our guy for mayor.”

  “He’s got more loyalty and trustworthiness in his dew claw than both of those knuckleheads have in their whole bodies combined,” Tonya said. “I just heard from Jeannie at the fire department. They’re endorsing Gnarly, too. Who knows? I may even register to vote this year.”

  On the television screen, Nancy Braxton was raging. “Shame on you, Chief O’Callaghan!” She wagged her finger at the cameras. “Shame on you for making a mockery of this election! The position of mayor, whether in a major metropolitan or a small resort town, is a serious job. It is not a joke, and you, the chief of police, should know that better than anyone else. Nominating a dog for mayor is not only inappropriate but also insulting!”

  “Especially since Gnarly’s beating her pantsuit off,” Tonya said with a laugh.

  David turned to her. “Gnarly is beating her?” He threw his head back and laughed. “That’s better than I thought.”

  “He’s beating Bill Clark, too,” Bogie said. “As of this morning, Gnarly is polling at forty-two percent, while Clark and Braxton are tied at seventeen. Gnarly is twenty-five points ahead of both of them. That’s why they’re so mad.”

  Abruptly, the door flew open, and Marilyn Newton breezed in. An attractive woman in her forties, Marilyn did not look at all like what she was—which was a middle-aged churchwoman. She looked more like a middle-aged heiress—which was also what she was.

  “Is Chief—” she said to Tonya, and then she saw David. “Chief O’Callaghan, I am so glad to see you.”

  Before David could stop her, she rushed over as fast as she could in her high heels to hug him. “I just had to come over to give you the news. We all heard about Gnarly running for mayor—well, how could we not hear about it? Nancy Braxton about had a stroke at the chamber of commerce breakfast this morning when she found out that Gnarly is leading her in the polls.”

  “I thought you said last year that you were going to run for mayor,” Tonya said.

  “Oh, I’m sure I did,” Marilyn said. “As a matter of fact, Twerpie’s party leaders—“

  “Twerpie?” Officer Fletcher interjected to ask.

  “Bill Clark,” Marilyn said. “He’s a twerp so I call him Twerpie. Anyway, his party asked me to run against him in the primaries because I’m a woman, and Nancy Braxton wouldn’t be able to play the gender card against me. But I turned them down.”

  “You didn’t want to lower yourself into all that mudslinging?” David asked.

  “That’s one reason.” Marilyn waved her hand to show off her elegantly painted fingernails. “The Tuesday morning meeting with the town council conflicts with my standing appointment with my manicurist.”

  “And you couldn’t change your manicure appointment?” Tonya asked.

  “The only other time she has available conflicts with my yoga class,” Marilyn said. “Now, I could change to the Tuesday-and-Thursday yoga class, but then that would interfere with Poo’s therapy sessions, and there’s no way that I could touch that.” She frowned. “Poo doesn’t like change.”

  “Your dog is in therapy?” Bogie asked.

  “To treat his sleepwalking. A few months ago, Poo wandered away from home during the night. Richard Bailey found him asleep in th
e front seat of his Mini Cooper.”

  “That must have been a shock,” Bogie said. “Finding a one-hundred-eighty-pound Newfoundland dog squeezed into the front seat of a compact car like that.”

  “Not as big of a shock as it was to find that while Poo had been climbing into it, he’d disengaged the emergency brake. The car then rolled down the hill and landed in Reese Hardy’s swimming pool, which woke Poo up. It was terrible. You know, they say that you’re never supposed to wake up a sleepwalker.”

  “How do you know Poo was sleepwalking?” David asked. “Why not assume that Poo wandered off and climbed inside the car while he was wide-awake?”

  Marilyn’s eyes grew big. “Chief O’Callaghan, Poo would have never considered doing such a thing while he was wide-awake and in his right mind. He’s a good dog.” With a wave of her hand, she said, “Speaking of good dogs!” She proceeded to dig into her purse. “After Nancy Braxton had her cow at the chamber of commerce, I went running over to the church as fast as my Mercedes could go—” Aware of the police officers surrounding her, she corrected herself, “I mean, as fast as my Mercedes could go while staying within the speed limit.”

  “Of course,” David said with a grin.

  “And we had an emergency meeting of the ministry councils of all of the churches in Spencer and voted unanimously to endorse Gnarly Faraday for mayor.” With a flourish, she held out an envelope to David. “Nancy said that you were the one who nominated Gnarly to run as an independent, so I assume that you’re the one I should give this endorsement to.”

  Stunned, David stared at her.

  Bogie clapped his hands together. “That means Gnarly won the evangelical vote!”

  “How could he not?” Marilyn said. “With a choice between a pathological liar and an arrogant blowhard—”

  “O’Callaghan!” Bill Clark said while coming through the front door.

  “Speak of the devil!” Spinning on her high heels, Marilyn threw out her arms. “Twerpie! If it isn’t Spencer’s very own bombastic boob.”

  “Marilyn Newton,” Bill said, pronouncing her name with disdain in every syllable. “I should have known that you’d be somewhere behind all of this.”

  “And once again, you’re wrong,” Marilyn said. “As much as I would love to take the credit for blocking your attempt to put one last nail into Spencer’s coffin, I can’t. As a good Christian woman, I can’t lie—unlike you and your friends on the town council.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” Bill asked with a hint of worry in his tone.

  “Maybe I’m telling your opponent about your deep, dark, dirty secret,” Marilyn said with a mocking, evil grin. “So that he’ll be properly armed with a missile to fire in your direction if you should choose to try any of your infamous dirty tricks during the election.”

  David saw a wave of worry cross Bill’s face before he regained his composure.

  “Worried, Twerpie?” Marilyn giggled. “You should be.”

  “Gnarly just got the evangelical vote,” Tonya told the candidate.

  “Well, he won’t have it for long.” Bill stepped up to David. His mouth curled up in a snarl. “You think you’re so clever.”

  “Based on the polls, the voters are more clever than I thought,” David said. “Given the choice between you and a dog, they’re voting for the dog.”

  “We’ll just see about that after tomorrow night.”

  “What’s tomorrow night?” Bogie asked.

  “The debate.” The candidate chuckled. “Since you so rudely interrupted our last mayoral debate—well, we’re going to finish what we started. Since Gnarly is now a candidate, it’ll be his chance to let the voters know where he stands on all of the issues. Tomorrow night. Eight o’clock. Spencer Inn. See you then.”

  Taking in the fallen faces of all of the officers and the angry glares from Marilyn and Tonya, Bill Clark left the police station with a bounce in his step.

  “Well,” Officer Fletcher said. “It was fun while it lasted.”

  “What do you mean, ‘fun while it lasted’?” Marilyn threw up her hands. “That’s what he expects! Did Moses back down when the pharaoh doubled the Hebrew slaves’ work after he told him to let his people go? Did America roll over and play dead after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor? No! These are crazy times, and politicians and the media have turned things upside down so that voters care most about how much free stuff a politician promises them even when they know that he’s a bold-faced liar—”

  “All I wanted to do was make a point about the couple of knuckleheads the parties have stuck us with,” David said.

  “And you are making a point,” Marilyn said while jabbing a manicured nail into his chest. “If you weren’t, do you think Twerpie and Nancy would be so upset?”

  “Gnarly can’t participate in the debate,” David said.

  “Why not?”

  “Duh! He’s a dog,” David said.

  “Dogs have been acting in movies since Rin Tin Tin first appeared in them,” Marilyn said. “They rescue people from drowning and dig them out of collapsed buildings. They serve in law enforcement and in the military. God will find a way for Gnarly to participate in that debate and win!” With a wave of her hand, she spun around and headed for the door.

  “Wait a minute,” David said. “Clark looked very worried when you mentioned his dirty little secret. What is it?”

  Placing a hand on her hip, Marilyn giggled at the faces of the police officers around the squad room waiting for her response. “You mean you don’t know?”

  “If we knew, it wouldn’t be a secret,” Tonya said.

  “That’s very true,” she said. “I never thought about that. I knew it was a secret, but I thought everyone knew about it—in which case it wouldn’t be a secret.”

  “But we don’t know about it,” Bogie said. “So it is a secret to us.”

  “But if I tell you, it won’t be a secret.”

  “It will still be a secret if we don’t tell anyone,” David said.

  “If you don’t tell anyone, what good will knowing about it do you?”

  “Just tell us!” David said.

  “Okay,” Marilyn said with a shrug of her shoulders. “Bill Clark killed his own mother.”

  “How did Fiona’s mother die?” Archie asked Dallas. The two women were sitting at the dining room table with folders, and their laptops were humming away.

  Curious about what they were doing, Mac came out of the kitchen with a glass of orange juice and watched them work.

  “Took a header down a flight of stairs,” Dallas said, pointing at a section of the case file on Fiona Davis’ suicide. “Bashed her head in. She was fifty-three years old.”

  “That was probably murder, too,” Archie said.

  “Maybe Fiona knew too much ’bout Sandy Burr’s murder, and the killer was tryin’ to silence her by killin’ her momma. Then that upset Fiona to the point that the killer thought that she was gonna spill the beans, so he had to silence her.”

  “Murderers aren’t that complicated,” Mac said. “If your suspect killed one man, then he was already capable of murder. If he wanted to keep this Fiona quiet, he’d kill her. He wouldn’t take a detour to the inevitable by killing her mother.”

  “Maybe Fiona was blackmailin’ the killer, and that was why she was murdered,” Dallas said.

  “And her mother’s death really was an accident?” Archie asked.

  “We’re sure that Fiona was murdered.” Dallas leafed through the pages of the case file. “Accordin’ to the witness statements here, she was really close to her mother. Her suicide note said that she couldn’t go on livin’ and that she wanted to be with her momma. But if it’s impossible to drown yourself in a toilet, it had to have been murder. Guess I’m gonna be talkin’ to the Gettysburg police.”

  Mac sat down on the steps of the s
unken dining room and sipped his orange juice. “What murder did this Fiona witness?”

  “Sandy Burr,” Dallas said. “An investigative journalist lookin’ into Nancy Braxton.”

  “Dallas seems to think that Braxton either killed him or had him killed because he was nosing into some irregularities about Braxton Charities,” Archie said.

  One of Mac’s eyebrows rose up in an arch. Curious about what Mac was imbibing, both Gnarly and Storm scampered across the living room and sat on the top step to sniff at the juice glass from over his shoulder.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of some questions about Braxton Charities,” Mac said while pushing both of their snouts out of his glass. “Back when I was working homicide in DC, I heard rumors about some unsavory movers and shakers, both politicians and special-interest groups, who were very tight with Braxton Charities. But there was never anything concrete.”

  “Maybe Sandy Burr got too close, and that was why Nancy Braxton turned him into buzzard bait,” Dallas said.

  “How was he killed?” Mac asked.

  “Slashed wrists at the Lakeside Inn,” Dallas said. “Your dad and Bogie started the investigation. Braxton was the last one seen with him.”

  “And the woman who drowned in the toilet?”

  “She had dinner with the victim hours before he was killed,” Archie said.

  “But that was before he had a sit-down with Nancy Braxton,” Dallas said. “Fiona saw the two of them together in the lounge on her way out for a walk. She must’ve seen somethin’ that made Braxton want to have her killed.”

  When a cell phone buzzed, Archie and Dallas both grabbed their phones. “It’s mine,” Archie said with a laugh. “It’s David.” She shot a cocky grin across the table to Dallas while bringing the phone to her ear. “Hey, you’ll never guess who I’m sitting across from.”

  “My dear Dallas,” David said. “I tried to call Mac, but his phone went straight to voice mail.”

  After explaining that they must have forgotten to charge his phone, Archie handed the phone to Mac, who had to push Storm’s snout away from where she was licking his ear in order to hear David. “What’s up?”