Candidate for Murder

by Lauren Carr

  Pleased with herself, Archie stuck out her hand. “Keys, please. I’m driving.”

  The grand old hotel was elegant with its hardwood floors, off-white walls, and sitting areas in the lobby and the lounge that were furnished with wing-backed chairs.

  “You did make sure we got a ghost with this room, right?” Dallas said after they had arrived in their room, which was decorated in tan with blue accents. “I am so looking forward to seeing a ghost.”

  “No,” Archie said with a laugh while going into the bathroom to unpack her cosmetic bag.

  To Archie’s surprise, Dallas was serious. “But I requested a room with a ghost when I made the reservations,” she said with a whine in her tone.

  That was enough to prompt Archie to fly out of the bathroom. “You better not have!”

  Sitting on the edge of her bed, Dallas nodded her head. “I paid an extra hundred bucks ghost fee for it.”

  Sucking in a deep breath, Archie reminded herself that Dallas was David’s girlfriend. For family harmony she needed to get along with her. With a forced grin, she turned around and went back into the bathroom to continue unpacking.

  “Don’t worry, Archie,” Dallas called into her. “If we don’t get haunted tonight, I’m gonna demand a refund.”

  After checking in with Mac and David, they hurried down to the lounge, where they snagged a table with three wingbacked chairs in front of the fireplace. While waiting for their first round of martinis, they both eyed the doorway leading into the lobby, looking for any sign of their informant, who arrived at the same time as their drinks—a good ten minutes before the appointed time.

  Sally Gladstone had hurried to the hotel straight from the police station as soon as she’d gotten off duty. Immediately, Dallas ordered a martini for their guest and a second round for her and Archie, even though they had only tasted their first round.

  Hoping to ease Sally’s nervousness, Archie patted her hand. “We really want to thank you for meeting with us. We both know that you’re taking a big chance by talking to us.”

  “Yeah,” Dallas said. “If your boss catches you, you’ll probably be fired in half time less than no time.”

  Sally jumped when Dallas put the reality of her situation into words, and Archie shushed her. “Let me do the talking. Okay?”

  Sally took a generous sip of her drink when it arrived and cleared her throat before she began. “Fiona and I went all through school together. We were friends. She was a bridesmaid at my wedding.”

  “So you were close,” Archie said in a gentle tone. “You wrote in your note that you found her body.”

  Sally nodded her head. “She and I were supposed to go out to lunch that day, and she didn’t show up. I waited for close to an hour. I knew immediately that something was wrong. I had a key to her place because I had collected her mail and fed her cat when she’d taken a trip the month before. So I let myself in when she didn’t answer the door.” Reminded of the horror of her discovery, she took another sip of her drink. After setting the glass down, she covered her face with a trembling hand. “I found her in the bathroom. She was lying in front of the toilet. There was vomit everywhere.”

  “The autopsy said she had taken a whole bottle of migraine medicine,” Dallas said.

  “Fiona got horrible migraines,” Sally said with a nod. “She had a hard time because of them. She’d get them so often that it was hard for her to hold a job.” She sucked in a deep breath. “But she didn’t kill herself. That note was forged. It had to have been.”

  “According to the police investigation,” Dallas said, “Fiona was depressed about her mother’s death.”

  “Yes,” Sally said with a wave of her hand. “That was a murder, too. I didn’t think so at the time, but I think it was.”

  “She fell down a flight of stairs,” Archie said.

  “I think he did it to get back at her,” Sally said.

  “He who?” Dallas asked.

  “I don’t know.” Sally frowned.

  Dallas and Archie exchanged glances.

  “Fiona was twenty-seven years old. She was at the point—all of her friends were married,” Sally said. “She couldn’t hold a job. She was afraid of being alone. So…She started seeing someone. He was married. At first, he treated her really good.”

  “Except for being married,” Archie said.

  Sally agreed. “Fiona got all wrapped up in it. He paid for her apartment. Bought her clothes and gifts. Bought her a car. She had money for the first time in her life. She was happy.”

  “Until?” Archie asked.

  “He became very possessive. I mean, like, insanely possessive. He’d call her at all times of the day and night wanting to know where she was, who she was seeing, and what she was doing. It was okay that he was going home and sleeping with his wife, but Fiona couldn’t go out to lunch with a friend without his knowing who, what, when, and where.”

  “Sounds like a stalker to me,” Dallas said. “Only she was sleeping with this stalker.”

  “It got insane,” Sally said. “Fiona knew that she’d have to start over with nothing if she cut it off, but I think she also realized that it was not a healthy relationship at all. I mean, the guy was obsessed with her. He was nuts. She was really torn about the whole situation. That was why she went away for that long weekend. She didn’t tell anyone where she was going, because she was afraid he’d follow her. You said she witnessed a murder?”

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

  Sally covered her mouth with her hand. “She never told me.”

  “What did Fiona decide during her trip?” Dallas asked. “Did she end it with the married man?”

  Sally nodded her head. “And a week later, her mother fell down the stairs and broke her neck. Fiona was devastated.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Archie said. “She ended up going back to him.”

  “Yeah,” Sally said. “But that only lasted a couple of weeks, because the last time I talked to her, she said she was going to apply for some clerical jobs in Washington, DC. I asked her how her boyfriend felt about that, and she said that she didn’t care how he felt. It was time to move on and to stand on her own two feet.” She looked from Archie to Dallas and back again. “Now does that sound like a woman who was about to kill herself?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Dallas said.

  “You have no idea who this guy was?” Archie asked.

  Sally shook her head.

  “The night of the murder in Deep Creek Lake,” Dallas said, “a fat man was seen in the lounge watching the man who Fiona had had dinner with—”

  Dallas stopped when Sally’s eyes grew wide with recognition. Seeing it too, Archie leaned over in her seat.

  “Fat—fat man?”

  “Like, three to four hundred pounds,” Dallas said.

  “Son of a bitch,” Sally said.

  “Do you know who that could’ve been?” Archie asked.

  Sally was still cursing. “Of course. It all makes sense now. Why Jarrett didn’t want you two looking into this case—why he insisted that it was a suicide.”

  “You mean the chief of police?” Dallas said. “He’s not three to four hundred pounds.”

  “But he used to be!” Sally said. “Back then, Jarrett was obese. His father was a big-shot engineer and had designed some big—” She waved her hands. “Forget it. Point is that they had a lot of money. Jarrett got married, and they had a couple of kids, but he’d always wanted to be a police officer. He’d gotten a degree in law enforcement and stuff, but he couldn’t get into the academy because of his weight. One day, he buckled down and started really working out and dieting. He lost two hundred pounds and got into the academy—that was over fifteen years ago. They even did a big spread about it in the local papers because he came back home to join our local
police department. He made chief about five years ago. That was when I started working there as a desk sergeant.”

  She wagged her finger at both of them. “Jarrett always had a thing for Fiona. He asked her out when he was engaged to his wife. Why didn’t I see it?”

  “Because you were too close,” Archie said.

  “Okay, so the chief of the police is our killer,” Dallas said. “How do we prove it—especially after all this time?”

  “You said he bought her a car and rented an apartment for her.” After Sally confirmed that he had, Archie said, “Apartments usually have leases that need to be signed. Cars need insurance and titles. If Jarrett Hill was her sugar daddy, he had to have left some sort of a trail somewhere.”

  “We’ll start by following the money,” Dallas said.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Next Morning

  “Mr. Clark, I want to thank you for coming in to help us clear this up,” David said with as much congeniality in his tone as he could muster. He and Mac had just walked into the police station’s interview room to meet with the town councilman and his lawyer.

  “I just want to get this over with.” Despite years of practice, Bill Clark couldn’t completely erase the disgrace from his face. His own wife of less than a year had admitted to hating him so much that she wanted him dead—in front of Police Chief O’Callaghan, no less.

  David and Mac sat across the conference table from them, positioning themselves so that David was directly across from Bill Clark.

  “Sheriff Turow asked us to go over the facts as we have them in the case against your wife.” David opened the folder containing the police report that stated that Cassandra Clark had conspired with an undercover police officer to have her husband killed. “The whole purpose of this meeting is to answer the questions that I’m sure you may have.” He laid his hand bearing the gold ring on his little finger flat on the police report. “If there’s anything you want to offer that you think may be helpful, we’ll be very glad to hear it.”

  Mac saw that Bill’s eyes were drawn to the ring on David’s finger like metal to a magnet.

  David’s gaze met that of the town councilman. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me, Bill?”

  “No.”

  “In light of the situation,” the lawyer said, “my client feels that it would not be beneficial for us to cooperate in prosecuting his wife.”

  “What dirt does Ms. Clark have on your client?” Mac asked.

  “My client stands for devotion to family.”

  “He’s been divorced twice,” Mac said, “after his wives caught him cheating on them.”

  “Oh, yeah,” David said. “We know all about how devoted your client is to family.” Holding a pen in his hand, David gently rapped the ring on the tabletop.

  His gaze never leaving the gold ring with his family crest on it, Bill smoldered.

  “Was your client aware of his wife’s affair with Mr. Braxton?” Mac asked.

  “No,” the lawyer said without needing to check with the councilman. “Unfortunately, political candidates can become so wrapped up in campaigning and meeting voters and listening to their concerns and trying desperately to help them that their spouses, especially young, insecure women like Cassandra, can become vulnerable to players like Mr. Braxton. He took advantage of her.”

  “She tried to blackmail him into hiring a paid assassin to kill your client,” Mac said. “We recorded the whole thing.”

  “We’re going to have that recording tossed out of court,” the lawyer said.

  “You’re representing her?” Mac asked.

  “Mr. Clark hired me to defend her. We’re going to have the charges dropped on the grounds of entrapment.”

  “She wants your client dead,” Mac said. “If the police hadn’t stepped in and arrested her, he’d be dead now.”

  “The problems between the Clarks would be best worked out between the two of them, without the help of the police. As soon as the election is over, they’re going to go away for a long holiday together.”

  “I’d suggest she stay away from water,” David said in a low voice that only Bill Clark could hear.

  “Excuse me,” the lawyer said. “Did you say something?”

  “Just that Bill is very good at working out family problems,” David said. “I used to be friends with his late sister. When it comes to putting an end to family differences”—he rubbed his fingers across the blue jewel on the ring—“he’s an expert.”

  Bill lifted his gaze to glare into David’s blue eyes. The tension in the room was palpable.

  “Do you need anything else from us?” the lawyer asked Mac.

  “No, I think we’re done here for now.”

  “Thank you for finding time to meet with us.” Archie’s tone oozed with gratitude that Police Chief Jarrett Hill had agreed to meet with Dallas Walker and her to go over their findings in the Fiona Davis case.

  Concealing her nervousness, Sally Gladstone busied herself at her desk outside of the police chief’s office.

  Jarrett Hill closed his door and went around behind his desk. “Well, like I told you two yesterday, I believe you’re wasting your time. After you left, I went to the trouble of bringing up Fiona Davis’ case file and going over the evidence and the autopsy report. There’s no evidence of any foul play.”

  “Even the fact that it’s impossible to accidentally drown in a toilet?” Dallas set a typewritten report on the center of his desk. “Forensics experts have proven that in more than one case.”

  “I don’t care what your science says.” Chief Hill refused to look at the report. “Fiona left a suicide note. She was extremely close to her mother, who had died the month before. She wanted to be with her. She took a bottle of migraine medicine—”

  “Funny thing about that,” Archie said. “When you look at the autopsy report, it shows enough gelatin capsules for two pills, but the actual level of medication in her system was much, much higher. Like, maybe someone got the medication and ground it up into a powder and then mixed it into a drink—like the wine he had brought over as a peace offering.”

  “Only instead of dying of an overdose like her killer had planned,” Dallas said, “she threw it up.”

  “That wasn’t good,” Archie said. “The stuff that was supposed to kill her had gone down the toilet. So he shoved her head down into the bowl and held it there until he killed her.”

  Police Chief Jarrett Hill looked from one of them to the other and back again. They could see his mind working to come up with an argument. “Most likely, when she was throwing up on the pills she’d taken to kill herself, she passed out from the overdose, fell into the toilet, and died.”

  “If Fiona had passed out,” Dallas said, “her body would have acted as a counterweight, and she would have slipped out of the toilet before she had time to drown and landed on the floor. No”—she shook her head—“someone would have had to hold her head under the water in order for her to drown.”

  “Does this mysterious someone have a name?” the police chief asked.

  “Jarrett Hill,” Archie said.

  Police Chief Jarrett Hill laughed. “I barely even remember Fiona Davis. When you came in here yesterday—”

  “Cut the crap,” Dallas said. “It’s a small town. The landlord of the apartment you rented for Fiona remembers you setting up the whole thing. You found the apartment. You paid the rent in cash every month. He even remembers you going to visit her on a regular basis.”

  “We also found the friend who sold you the little sports car that you gave to her,” Archie said.

  “And all of that was while you were married to your wife,” Dallas said. “You remember your wife, don’t you? The one who tragically died in a fire less than a year after Fiona died. Did she try to leave you, too?”

  They all stared at one anothe
r in silence.

  Jarrett Hill broke the standoff. “You yourself said that Fiona’s death was connected to a murder she witnessed in—where is it that you said you were from?”

  “Deep Creek Lake,” Dallas said.

  “The murder of Sandy Burr at the Lakeside Inn,” Archie said. “Yes, it was six weeks before Fiona’s murder. Have you ever been there?”

  “No,” he said. “And I never met this Sandy whatever. Since I never met him, I had no reason to kill him. No motive. No opportunity. Based on your theory that the two murders are connected, I guess I didn’t kill Fiona.” He flashed them a grin. “Well, it was nice meeting you.”

  “Are you sure you’ve never been to the Lakeside Inn in Deep Creek Lake?” Archie asked.

  “Positive.”

  “Because Caleb Montgomery, the bartender who was tending bar the night Sandy Burr was killed, remembers you.” Archie took a copy of a newspaper article out of her purse, unfolded it, and laid it flat on his desk. The article included two pictures, one of Jarrett Hill in his present slender shape and a “before” picture of him from when he was obese.

  “Mr. Montgomery told the police that the night Sandy Burr was killed, there was a customer at the bar—he called him the ‘fat man’—who was clearly watching Mr. Burr,” Dallas said. “He was so intent that he left a fresh drink behind to follow Mr. Burr when he left. We texted this picture to him, and he identified you at your former weight as that man.”

  “He’s wrong,” the police chief said. “That was so long ago that his memory has to be foggy. I’ve never been to Deep Creek Lake. I wouldn’t have had any reason to kill Sandy Burr, so I wouldn’t have had any reason to follow him.”

  “You didn’t start out following him,” Archie said. “You started out following Fiona. You were obsessed with Fiona. Her friends confirm that. You tried to hide it, especially after you got married. But then Fiona started having health and money issues, which made her vulnerable. You saw your chance to have her, so you took advantage of it. But you couldn’t just have her as a mistress—you had to have her completely. When your love became suffocating, Fiona wanted out. She went to Deep Creek Lake to think about your relationship—but you couldn’t let her go. You followed her and saw her having dinner with another man.”