Candidate for Murder

by Lauren Carr

  “Don’t answer that,” Elliott said in a sharp tone.

  “Why not?” David turned his attention to Hugh. “You are aware that your lawyer is representing both you and Erin, right? Think about this. If Erin was the last one with your sister before she left the house scared for her life that night, if she was alone with her, how do you know that she isn’t responsible for her death?”

  “I told you not to talk to my client,” Elliott said.

  Ignoring the lawyer, David barged on. “Since Curtis is representing her, too, then how certain can you be that he has your best interest in mind when he tells you not to tell us anything? He’s protecting her, too.”

  “We’re through here!” Elliott was out of his seat and gesturing for Hugh to follow him.

  “What if she’s behind Nancy’s murder?” David asked Hugh when he hesitated. “That would mean that your lawyer is telling you to keep quiet in order to protect your sister’s killer.”

  Yanking open the door, Elliott said, “Come on, Vance! We’re out of here!”

  Hugh stared into David’s eyes.

  “Now!” Elliot yelled.

  Mac held his breath.

  Hugh’s voice was soft. “Tell Ward thanks, but I want another lawyer.”

  David and Sheriff Turow sighed in unison.

  The slam of the interrogation room’s door was heard throughout the department.

  Hugh covered his face with his hands.

  Plunging ahead, David asked, “Was your sister on any medication?”

  “None that I know of,” Hugh said. “Why?”

  “Standard question,” David said. “According to what we saw on the recording from the security company, she was very distraught when she left the house less than two hours before she was murdered.”

  “Maybe the intruder who broke in the night before and shot Erin broke in again,” Hugh said. “Have you thought about that?”

  “When I spoke to you on the morning we found Nancy’s body, you said that Nancy had fired Erin the night before because she blamed her for leaking that story about Gnarly to Salma Rameriz,” David said.

  “But it wasn’t Erin, because when we checked the e-mail that had been sent to Salma, it was from a different e-mail address,” Hugh said.

  “Was that before or after Nancy fired Erin?” Sheriff Turow asked.

  Hugh hesitated. “Before.”

  “Why would she have fired Erin if there was proof that she hadn’t sent that story to the journalist?” the sheriff asked.

  Hugh took in a deep breath. “Nancy could be demanding that way.”

  “Erin claimed that Nancy fired her on a regular basis,” David said. “How did she like that?”

  “Nancy was ultrademanding,” Hugh said. “Most people called her a bitch. But Erin put up with it.”

  “Why?” David asked.

  Hugh shrugged his shoulders.

  “According to the security videos,” David said, “Nancy left. Erin came out of the house to search for her and then ran inside to get you, and you drove off after her.”

  “She was long gone by then.” Hugh waved his hands. “I looked all over. Up and down the mountain. Drove past the lake. Even parked and went walking along the footpath and shone a flashlight into the water to see if I could see her—I thought maybe she’d drowned herself. But I couldn’t find her. It was so dark. That’s why I knew she was already dead when you came the next morning. But I had assumed she killed herself.”

  “Did Nancy ever show signs of being suicidal before?” Sheriff Turow asked.

  “A little.” Hugh shrugged his big shoulders.

  “Did Erin tell you that Nancy went running out of the house to go kill herself?” David asked.

  “She didn’t use those exact words.” Hugh shrugged his shoulders again. “She came banging on my bedroom door and said that Nancy had flipped out and gone flying out of her bedroom. Erin said she caught up with her in the hall, and Nancy tried to attack her. Then she ran down the stairs and out of the house. Erin kept telling me that Nancy had lost her mind.”

  “Had she ever lost her mind before?” David asked.

  Saying nothing, Hugh looked directly at David. Slowly, he pulled his gaze over to Sheriff Turow. Finally, he said, “No. Never.”

  In the observation room, Mac looked through the glass to where David was peering over Hugh’s shoulder in his direction. Mac could see by David’s expression that he didn’t believe him either.

  While the sheriff and David resumed the interview and asked questions about other potential suspects, like Salma Rameriz or Nathan Braxton’s mistress, there was a knock on the observation room’s door. The desk sergeant stepped inside. “Mr. Faraday, I didn’t want to interrupt the sheriff, but I thought you would like to know that Nathan Braxton is in the reception area and wants to speak to the sheriff or to Police Chief O’Callaghan.”

  “Did he say what about?” Mac asked while keeping his attention focused on Hugh Vance’s demeanor. He’d seemed to relax after his lawyer had left.

  “Mr. Braxton says he knows who killed his wife.”

  The knock on the door woke Dallas up from a deep sleep. It took her a full moment to remember falling asleep on the sofa with her arms wrapped around Storm after David had left for the police station. She had been sleeping so soundly that one of her cheeks was pressed up to her eye, which was resting against the dog’s cold, hard plastic cone of shame.

  After climbing over Storm to get off of the sofa, Dallas stumbled up the steps and out of the drop-down living room to make her way to the front door. To her surprise, she found Archie Monday on the porch. She was armed with a casserole.

  “What’s the occasion?” Dallas asked, opening the door.

  Archie held out the dish to her. “I made a chicken divan casserole for dinner and happened to have extra chicken. So”—she lifted a shoulder—“it wasn’t that hard to just double the recipe. David loves my chicken divan. I thought since Storm is recuperating, you could use a break from cooking dinner.”

  Dallas shook a finger at her. “Admit it. I’m growing on you.”

  “No, you’re not. It’s just that I hate leftovers more than I don’t like you.”

  “Well, if I turned down free vittles, my pap’s ghost will come haunt me for a week, so come on in!” Dallas stepped back and opened the door wide for her. “You know where the kitchen is, Ms. Archie. Kick off your shoes, and stay a while.” While Archie walked through the door, Dallas saw that she was carrying her laptop case from a strap off her shoulder.

  After instructing Dallas in how to warm up the dish when she and David were ready to eat, Archie went over to the sofa to pet Storm and examine her wounds.

  “David told me that Gnarly took out that nasty ol’ mountain lion,” Dallas said. “If he hadn’t, I would have hunted him down myself. Did Gnarly get hurt?”

  “Just some superficial scratches,” Archie said before explaining that Murphy and Jessica had taken him to Washington to investigate the murder of his former handler. “The army put out a statement saying that Gnarly didn’t do it.”

  “Nancy Braxton’s and Bill Clark’s supporters won’t believe that,” Dallas said. “They’ll believe what they wanna believe, and since Rameriz put it out there that Gnarly is a crazed killer dog, people are gonna cling to that.”

  Hugging Storm, Archie pressed her face against her shoulder. “Unless Murphy and Gnarly track down the real killer.”

  Dallas narrowed her eyes and studied Archie. “What role is Murphy playing in this investigation? I thought he was a pencil pusher at the Pentagon.”

  Caught, Archie stuttered before she said, “Murphy went to the naval academy and has a lot of connections in the military. His dad was a Judge Advocate General officer and knows, like, everybody.” She rolled her eyes. “So Murphy should have no problem getting to the bottom of
this case.”

  “Even if his pap was a big wig, does Murphy really have that much pull?” Dallas was doubtful. “I can’t imagine the army helping a navy lieutenant who has no official role in a murder investigation.”

  Instead of answering, Archie opened up her case and extracted her laptop from it. “Mac and I think we found what Sandy Burr uncovered in his investigation of Braxton Charities.” She carried the computer to the dining table in the great room. “Want to see?”

  “This is still my story, right?”

  “Of course,” Archie said while powering up the laptop. “I’m an editor, research assistant, and amateur hacker—but don’t tell anyone that.”

  Pulling up a chair so that she could sit next to her, Dallas studied the chart and the notes on the notepad that Archie had taken out of the case. The organizational chart contained names in boxes and a list of amounts of money—including tens of thousands of dollars and even millions—and lines with arrows connecting each box to an amount of money. “Did you find a money trail?”

  “Not necessarily anything that would stand up in court,” Archie said. “Unfortunately, most of what we found is circumstantial.”

  “Aren’t most cases circumstantial?”

  “Yes, but in this case, the parties involved set up an elaborate path involving a lot of money coming and going overseas and through shell companies and phony charities,” Archie said. “Plus the people involved are heavyweights, including the director of the Internal Revenue Service.”

  “He probably helped set up the phony charities, which are complete with a tax-exempt status,” Dallas said.

  “On the surface, Braxton Charities is a legit nonprofit,” Archie explained. “It does have a lot of legitimate charities under its umbrella, and it’s given grants to universities for medical studies, to children’s hospitals, to homeless shelters—”

  “But—”

  “But,” Archie said, “we believe that it’s also a laundromat that enables politicians and special-interest groups to process bribes, kickbacks, and money from extortions.”

  Archie referred to the organizational chart, at the center of which were the words “Braxton Charities.” “Let’s say you’re a senator from a state where coal is a big industry. The voters expect you to support coal. But a big lobby that wants to shut down coal in order to combat global warming comes to you and wants you to support the Washington crowd. It makes you an offer that you can’t refuse.”

  “If you’re as crooked as a barrel of fishhooks, you take the money,” Dallas said, “and let your constituents fend for themselves. What do you care? You’re now runnin’ with the big dogs.”

  “But if you just take the money, you could go to jail,” Archie said.

  “Like a bad guy breakin’ out of the big house, you’ve gotta throw the dogs off of your scent.”

  “And that’s where the laundromat comes in,” Archie said. “Send the money through enough cycles, and it won’t smell like dirty money anymore. In the case of our example, the global warming lobby would make a donation to Braxton Charities, which would then transfer the money into one of its phony nonprofits or even into a shell company. Then the shell company would disburse the funds to the senator for an insanely expensive speech or some consulting he had done for them.”

  “So the bribe goes from the special-interest group to the charity,” Dallas said, “which makes the bribe tax deductible, just like in Robin’s book. Then it trickles from the umbrella down to the phony charity or shell company—”

  “Which provides some phony service or goods to Braxton Charities,” Archie said.

  “And from the shell company or phony charity to the dirty senator,” Dallas said. “At which point the dirty money is completely clean and practically impossible to trace back to the big interest group.”

  “Exactly,” Archie said. “And for each transaction, Braxton Charities takes twenty percent. Nancy and Hugh, who runs Braxton Charities, were doing that for years. She made the political contacts who needed to have their money cleaned, and Hugh cleaned it for them. We identified some IRS agents, district attorneys, and federal investigators who get monthly payments called ‘consulting fees’ from various shell companies that are directly connected to Braxton Charities. I managed to trace five back to Hugh Vance, who has multiple bank accounts overseas and a ton of money in all of them.”

  “Imagine all the dirt Nancy and Hugh have collected on all these people,” Dallas said. “No wonder Nancy’s party was bendin’ over backward to get her elected to somethin’ to keep her happy.”

  Their eyes met.

  “And every one of them had a motive to kill her: keeping her quiet,” Archie said.

  “Sandy Burr was investigatin’ Braxton Charities,” Dallas said. “He met with Nancy Braxton at the Lakeside Inn and ended up dead by mornin’. Considerin’ how much money it looks like they were rakin’ in, they wouldn’t have wanted to take a chance on Sandy ruinin’ their fun.”

  “Also, with so much money and so many connections, it wouldn’t have been hard for them to find someone to do the deed for them.”

  “And then buy the hotel and make their one witness co-owner.”

  “Yes,” Archie said. “That appears to be what happened. V & M Enterprises is owned by Hugh Vance.”

  “Is the M Caleb Montgomery, the bartender who jumped out from behind the bar and became the hotel manager in exchange for amnesia?” Dallas asked.

  “He owns one-third of the Lakeside Inn,” Archie said.

  “What does Hugh Vance look like?” Dallas asked.

  Archie did an image search on the Internet. With effort, they found one image of Hugh Vance posing at an event with his sister and her football-star husband.

  A thin grin crossed Dallas’ face. “Big guy.”

  “I’d call him big boned,” Archie said.

  “Big enough to be called a fat man,” Dallas said, “which was how Caleb Montgomery described the man at the bar who was watching Sandy Burr interview Nancy Braxton shortly before he was killed. Can you print that picture?”

  “If Vance bought Montgomery off, he’s not going to identify him as Burr’s killer and put an end to his gravy train,” Archie said.

  “Maybe not right away,” Dallas said. “But if the Lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise, we can find a way to make him see things a tad differently.”

  “Mr. Braxton,” Mac said as he stepped into the sheriff’s department’s reception area and extended his hand. “I’m Mac Faraday. Pleasure to meet you. Sheriff Turow is finishing up an interview and will be right with you.”

  “Gnarly’s owner,” Nathan Braxton said with a grin.

  As if he had been struck with a lightning bolt of realization, Mac understood the meaning of a complaint Archie had once made about everyone in Spencer knowing her as “Mac Faraday’s wife.” For over a decade, she had built her own career as an editor, working her way up to editing exclusively for Robin Spencer. Since Robin’s death, international best-selling authors and their agents had sought her out to edit books destined to make the best-seller lists even before their releases. Yet in the time it had taken them to exchange wedding vows, Archie’s identity had quickly become attached to Mac’s.

  Mac saw that if Gnarly indeed won the election, the same thing would happen to him. He would become “Gnarly’s owner.”

  “Actually,” Mac said, “Gnarly is my dog.”

  “Is it true—what they said on the news about him rushing into a burning building to save that mother cat and her ten kittens?”

  “I heard it was seven,” Mac said.

  “Hey, Mac!” After seeing their candidate’s owner in the reception area, instead of stopping at the welcome counter, Bernie and Hap made a detour over to see him. “Archie said we’d find you here! Where’s Gnarly?”

  Spotting Nathan Braxton, a football legend, Ber
nie’s mouth dropped open. “You’re Nathan Braxton!”

  Mac saw Nathan’s face transform from that of a regular dude to that of a celebrity. A wide grin crossed his handsome face. “Yes, I am. And you are?”

  Bernie pumped the former football player’s hand. “Bernie Stein and Hap Goldman.” He quickly unbuttoned his button-down shirt to reveal a T-shirt with Gnarly’s face on it. “We’re Gnarly Faraday’s campaign managers. You couldn’t ask for a better mayor! Gnarly is brave and has integrity coming out of his ears. Why, just this morning, they reported on the news that Gnarly, with no concern whatsoever for his own personal safety, ran into a burning building to save a mother cat and her twelve kittens! Can you see either of our presidential candidates doing that?”

  Clearing his throat, Mac said, “Bernie, Hap, Mr. Braxton is Nancy’s hus—”

  “Nah, that’s okay.” To Mac’s surprise, Nathan shrugged off his comment. “They’re right. Nancy would’ve never run into a burning building unless it was to save a big bag of money.”

  “Well, PETA has endorsed Gnarly for mayor,” Bernie said. “And as of an hour ago, he is twenty-four points ahead of Bill Clark!” Becoming serious, he led Mac by his arm away from the football player and lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “Which is why we need to talk to you. Where’s Gnarly?”

  “I told you,” Mac looked from Bernie to Hap, who was on his other side. “You read the statement I released yesterday. He went away for a few days to meet with his campaign leaders to plan how best to proceed for the rest of his campaign for mayor.”

  “Yeah, that was all well and good to tell the voters,” Bernie said. “But then this morning, Hap and I realized”—he gestured to Hap and himself—“that we’re his campaign leaders. Is Gnarly pulling a double cross on us? Now that we’ve gotten him national attention, has he decided that we’re too small potatoes for him and hired some big-time campaign manager?”

  “No, Gnarly would never do that. You both know Gnarly. He is the most loyal per—” Realizing he was about to say “person,” Mac stopped. What am I saying? He’s a dog! “Gnarly would never betray anyone. He almost died rushing into a burning building to save that mother cat and her fifteen kittens. I mean, you saw it on the news.”