Candidate for Murder

by Lauren Carr

  Dallas and Archie exchanged glances.

  “Who was bribing Nancy’s political party to support her for her elections?” Dallas asked.

  “That was more like blackmail,” Nathan said. “Think about it. Since Hugh runs the laundromat, he knows all about everyone’s dirty laundry.”

  “But it sounds like you’re saying that Nancy wasn’t really involved at all,” Archie said.

  “She wasn’t,” Nathan said. “But not everyone knows that.”

  “So,” Archie said, “George Ward and everyone who was laundering their money through Braxton Charities probably assumed that Nancy, the face of Braxton Charities, knew things about them that they didn’t want to be made public. So they backed her for whatever she wanted.”

  “Making her think that their support was based on a sincere belief in her abilities,” Dallas said, “which fed her delusions of grandeur.”

  “When really, they were just plain scared to death of her.” Nathan looked up and saw a lovely blonde making her way across the dining room to him. “Well, I’m glad everything is now coming out into the open. Now I can close up Braxton Charities and start a new chapter of my life.”

  Thanking him, Archie stood up.

  “Wait!” Dallas said. “If Hugh was out of town during Sandy Burr’s murder, then he really wasn’t the fat man watching from the bar. Do you know who the fat man the bartender saw was?”

  “I have no idea,” Nathan said while holding out a chair for his date. “I’ve always assumed it was just a coincidence, and the guy had a beef with Sandy about something else that had nothing to do with Braxton Charities.”

  Life is good indeed.

  Flashing what he hoped was a charming grin at the server, Hugh Vance accepted the glass of champagne from her and took a sip of it as he took in the view from the Virgin America Loft at Los Angeles International Airport. Sitting back in his padded seat, Hugh sighed and took a moment to admire the long legs of a woman sitting in a padded chair at the next table. He wondered if she was one of those women who would be impressed by a man with money—and whether she’d be impressed enough to tumble into bed with him.

  While Hugh couldn’t see her eyes behind her dark glasses or see the color of her hair under her wide-brimmed white hat, he could see enough of her legs to know that he wanted her.

  After catching the steely eye of the mountain of a man sitting across from her, Hugh decided that it would be safer to simply let her be a fantasy.

  You may be bigger and stronger than I am, but I have enough money to buy and sell you like that! In his mind, Hugh snapped his fingers. And with all of the dirt I have on some of the most powerful people in our nation, I could have you killed just by asking. Sticking out his chin in a show of bravado, Hugh took a sip of his champagne and directed his attention back out the window. He picked up his briefcase. In it was his computer tablet, which held all of his banking information and the information for the paper work he’d need to start a new life.

  Movements around him drew Hugh’s attention from the window to where passengers were leaving the lounge. At first, he thought they were leaving for a flight, but then he noticed four men in suits making their way from one table to the next, quietly speaking to the other guests in the lounge. During their hushed conversations, the men would show the guests what appeared to be badges, and then the guests would gather up their belongings, casting quick glances in Hugh’s direction, and rush out of the lounge.

  No, no, no, no, no! Maybe this has nothing to do with me. A thick layer of sweat formed on his brow. He clutched his leather briefcase to his chest. I was so careful while creating Van Kruger. Spent a lot of money making a new identity and years storing up nest eggs all over the world. I even have my own estate on a private island.

  The lounge was empty except for the men in suits, each of whom had weapons on his hip, stationed at the exit. Even the bartender had left.

  Hugh’s heart pounded against the smooth leather. He considered making a run for it, but he doubted that the men guarding the exit would let him get very far.

  Three men were being escorted by two uniformed Maryland State Police officers and two California State Police officers into the lounge. After flashing their badges to the plainclothes officers, they crossed the lounge to where Hugh was trembling in his seat.

  Sheriff Turow stepped up to the side of his chair. Police Chief O’Callaghan took a position behind it. The other police officers boxed Hugh in. There was no escape.

  Mac Faraday slipped into the seat across from him. “Hello, Hugh. Do you know why we’re here?”

  “How’d you get here so fast?”

  “You forgot that a lot of very wealthy people live in Spencer,” Mac said. “One of them is Randolph York, the owner of SuperMart. He always has a private jet on standby. As soon as we found out where you were, we just had to go to McHenry and get on board the jet. We were on our way here within an hour.”

  David reached out to extract the briefcase from Hugh’s grip. Like a child refusing to give up a favorite toy, Hugh clung to his new life for all it was worth until David pried it from his fingers.

  “Why did you kill her?” Mac asked while David handcuffed him. “She was your sister. She considered you her only friend. She believed in you—even when others confronted her with evidence of what you were doing.”

  “Because she couldn’t stop,” Hugh said.

  “Stop?”

  “Nancy had this insane need—not desire but need—to be in charge. When we were kids, it was to be president. Then a governor or a senator. What she really wanted was to be queen, but since we live in a democracy—”

  “But why kill her?”

  Hugh Vance looked down at Mac. “Because with every race she ran, there was always a danger that her opponents would look too closely at Braxton Charities. I saw from day one that Bill Clark would dig far and wide to uncover something on her. Then when Chief O’Callaghan here brought up Sandy Burr—” He shook his head with remorse.

  “It was only a matter of time before someone found out that you had turned Braxton Charities into a money laundromat,” David said.

  “When those death threats came in and Nancy lost her mind, I couldn’t have asked for a better time to get rid of her and to finally be free to live my new life.” Hugh Vance pursed his lips together. “It was her fault, you know. I had worked too long and too hard to let her ruin everything I had built just because she wanted to be the mayor to a bunch of hicks who can’t stop clinging to their clotheslines!”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Next Morning

  Her head resting on Murphy’s bare chest, Jessica listened to the thrum of his heartbeat. Lightly, he brushed his fingers through her hair. His chest rose as he took in a deep breath.

  “Don’t tell me that you’re going back to sleep,” she said with a smile. “Not after all the trouble I went to waking you up.”

  “Not a chance.” Chuckling, he pulled the comforter up from where they had kicked it while making love and covered their naked bodies. After wrapping his arms around her, he buried his face in her tousled hair and enjoyed the scent of her. “Gnarly snores.”

  “I know.” Reminded of the German shepherd, she raised her head to look around their bedroom. “Where is Gnarly?”

  “I kicked him out at about three thirty this morning.”

  As if to announce that he could not be kept out, he quickly opened the bedroom door. Standing in the doorway, Gnarly regarded them. Seeing the opening, Spencer scurried into the room, scampered across the floor, took a running jump from the middle of the room, and landed on the bed.

  “Did he just open that door?” Murphy asked her.

  Jessica nodded her head. “He just presses down on the door lever and pushes it open. He can open doors with round doorknobs too. I thought it was cute until now.”

  “Does he p
ick locks, too?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.” She lay back down. “I’m sorry you didn’t sleep well.”

  “It’s wasn’t Gnarly’s fault.” He gazed into her violet eyes. “I kept thinking about those four agents working under Camille Jurvetson—the ones she got killed.”

  With a heavy sigh signaling his resignation of the fact that his breakfast was not going to be immediately served to him, Gnarly plopped down in the middle of the floor.

  Murphy took Jessica’s hand and fingered the wedding band on her ring finger. “Every time I go out on a mission for the Phantoms, I leave my wedding band in the nightstand because I can’t risk one of our enemies getting ahold of it and tracing it back to you. Our missions are that dangerous. Every time I kiss you good-bye and walk out that door, I know that there is a very good chance that I won’t be coming home to you.” He met her eyes. “I knew that when I signed up for it.”

  She swallowed. “So did I when I married you.”

  “And so did those agents,” Murphy said. “They didn’t become intelligence agents for glory. They signed up for the same reason I did: because our country needs people who are willing to put their lives on the line every day to protect their families, their neighbors, and their freedom—to protect everything we stand for. We know that we’re on the front line, and we’re there willingly and because someone has to be.” He gritted his teeth. “Those four agents didn’t sign up to be sold out because of their own leader’s personal ambitions.”

  Jessica stroked his face. “She will be held accountable for it, Murphy. CO said Jurvetson will never be able to put another agent in danger ever again.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Did CO say what she’s going to do?”

  Murphy shook his head. “Nigel said she’s out of country, but she is working on the case.”

  “Basically,” Jessica said, “the case is closed. We identified the traitor. We know who blew Bruce Hardy’s cover when he was working with Gnarly’s handler’s team. I guess we can take Gnarly back home in a couple of days so that he can resume his campaign for mayor.”

  “Your dad wanted us to clear his name,” Murphy said.

  “The army put out a press release saying that the journalist who broke the story was wrong,” Jessica said. “Between that, the release of Gnarly’s birth certificate proving that he’s an American citizen, and him saving that mother cat and her twenty-four kittens, there’s no way he can lose the election.”

  “But we promised Sheriff Turow that we’d find out who killed his wife,” Murphy said. “We have to finish that case.”

  Impatient for his breakfast, Gnarly leaped up onto the bed. The addition of a hundred pounds at the foot of the bed forced Spencer to move farther up toward the head of the bed, which pried Murphy and Jessica apart.

  “I admit that we don’t know who actually killed Belle Perkins,” Jessica said. “But I kind of thought that she was killed by someone who came into the camp to find Bruce Hardy and happened upon her.”

  “An Islamic terrorist wouldn’t have stopped with Perkins,” Murphy said. “He would have continued through the camp. Plus he would have brought a group of soldiers with him to take out the whole camp. That’s how they work. No,” he shook his head. “this was personal.”

  “Strangling someone is up close and personal,” Jessica said. “You’re looking someone in the eye while you’re killing him.” She stroked Spencer.

  Lying sphinxlike and with his ears up straight, Gnarly eyed both of them.

  “Does that mean that we have to start back at the drawing board?” Jessica asked.

  “No, we have made headway.” Murphy moved down toward the foot of the bed to stroke the German shepherd. “Belle Perkins and Gnarly were sent to Iraq to that unit to investigate something.”

  “But CO hasn’t told you what yet,” Jessica said.

  “Not exactly, but look at what we do know.” He looked into Gnarly’s eyes. “Both Dr. Samuels and Bruce Hardy said they heard Perkins arguing with the lieutenant.”

  “Dr. Samuels said she told the lieutenant that she was going to put a stop to something.”

  “He also said that Lieutenant Watson had a reputation for being a real go-getter. Respected by his people but always taking on high-risk missions.” He lowered his voice. “He also said Watson was always on the front lines with his men.”

  Jessica sat up. “What are you thinking?”

  Murphy sprang out of bed and grabbed his sweat pants. “I think I want you to do some psychological profiling for me,” he said while stepping into his pants and pulling them up.

  Hoping for breakfast, Gnarly and Spencer followed Murphy out of the bedroom.

  “But if Hugh Vance wasn’t the fat man, who was?” Dallas said in the kitchen, piercing the sleep and dreams of David, who was all the way upstairs in the bedroom.

  Who’s she talking to? Curious, he opened one eye and squinted against the late-morning sun streaming in through the window.

  Seeing a sign of wakefulness, Storm slithered up from where she had been sleeping down by the foot of the bed to lick his face.

  “I don’t know.” Archie sounded annoyed. “Maybe he had nothing to do with the murder?”

  “Caleb Montgomery said in his statement back at the time of Burr’s murder that the guy was watching Nancy Braxton and Sandy Burr very closely. So closely that he ordered a fresh drink and pretty much left it there so that he could follow Sandy Burr out of the lounge.”

  “Montgomery is a blackmailer,” Archie said. “He probably made up the fat man in order to turn attention away from Hugh Vance.”

  “Who Nathan Braxton says was out of the country and had no idea about Sandy Burr’s investigation,” Dallas said.

  “That we know of,” David said while making his way down the stairs in his bathrobe. He paused to hug and kiss Dallas on his way to the coffeemaker. He lifted the mug in a toast to Archie, who was sitting at the kitchen table and looking at copies of case files and Sandy Burr’s research. There was no room for him to set his mug down. “Where’s Mac?”

  “Home in bed,” Archie said. “Remember, he has pneumonia. I can’t believe you guys let him fly to California.”

  “He insisted on going,” David said. “I would have had to shoot him to stop him.”

  “Well, after bringing Vance back last night,” Archie said, “he crashed, and he’s still out like a light.”

  Dallas was petting Storm, who had followed David down the stairs. “Could Caleb have killed Sandy Burr?”

  “He was there in the lounge when Burr was interviewing Nancy Braxton,” Archie said. “He would have heard what Burr had against Braxton Charities, and he could’ve realized that that information would make good blackmail.”

  “So he killed Sandy Burr to steal his research,” Dallas said with a wave of her hands.

  Both Dallas’ and Archie’s smiles fell when they saw David shaking his head over his coffee mug.

  “Where are we wrong?” Archie asked. “Montgomery had to have been in the room to steal Burr’s research.”

  “Not at the time of the murder,” David said. “Caleb Montgomery was cleared as a suspect back then because he was working in the lounge. He didn’t get off until one o’clock, and Sandy Burr was murdered at around ten o’clock.” Before Dallas could voice her opposition, he added, “Montgomery was the only employee working in the lounge, so there was no one to cover for him. Plus Burr’s room was all the way over on the other side of the hotel, which was off of the employee parking lot. Montgomery must have seen something in Burr’s room and gone in to check it out after the murder and found the research.”

  “After overhearing Braxton and Burr arguing, he realized Burr’s research was valuable,” Archie said. “So he grabbed it.”

  “But didn’t bother calling the police about Burr’s murder.” Dallas turne
d to David. “You don’t think he would’ve been capable of killing Burr?”

  “He didn’t have the chance,” David said. “This murder was not a crime of opportunity. It had been planned. The killer took the time to control his victim, to kill him in a manner that would look like a suicide, and to stage the scene. Montgomery couldn’t have been gone from his post for that long.”

  “Maybe Nathan Braxton only thought that Hugh Vance didn’t know about the investigation,” Dallas said. “Hugh did know, and he hired someone to kill Burr while he was out of the country.”

  “Then why not kill Montgomery when he started blackmailing him?” Archie asked.

  “Hugh is not a cold-blooded killer,” David said. “He is remorseful about his sister. It took years of stress and worry about her continued campaigning to push him over the edge. If he’d had it in him to hire someone to get rid of Burr, he would have eliminated Montgomery as soon as he started blackmailing him.”

  Uttering a growl, Dallas grabbed her head with both hands.

  “Remember what Nathan Braxton said?” Archie asked.

  “What did Braxton say?” David asked.

  “He said he always believed that someone else with a motive that had nothing to do with Braxton Charities killed Sandy Burr.” Archie shuffled through the papers on the table until she pulled out a case file. “Has anybody ever taken a look at that?”

  “I doubt it,” David said.

  Archie opened the folder she had pulled from the batch. “Fiona Davis.”

  Dallas sat up at attention. “I actually forgot all about her.”

  “Who’s Fiona Davis?” David asked.

  “The woman who Sandy Burr had dinner with the night he died,” Archie said.

  Excited, Dallas bounced in her seat. “They didn’t know each other. She was just a guest at the hotel, and the two of them met in the lounge and had drinks and ended up having dinner together.”

  “Six weeks later she committed suicide,” Archie said.