by Carr, Lauren
David explained, “Shortly after Pay Back showed up we started getting reports of stuff disappearing here on the Point. Wallets, purses, cell phones, keys, towels. You name it. So small that some victims don’t even bother reporting everything that’s been stolen.”
“What about food?” Mac inquired. “Like bacon from out of a kitchen?”
“That’s our guy’s M.O.” David nodded his head. “Since Pay Back was clearly unstable and the thefts have been occurring in the same vicinity, it’s likely that they’re connected. Just two weeks ago, the Holdens reported two wallets and a handbag stolen from their patio during an Easter party. That’s almost two months after Katrina’s murder.”
Travis chuckled. “Did it ever occur to you and the Holdens that one of their caterer’s staff had sticky fingers?”
“That was the first thing I checked into,” David said.
Chief Phillips asked him, “Are you sure you checked into it thoroughly? Two wallets and a handbag sound more like something some hired help would steal than a psychopathic murderer.”
“The staff is clean.”
“I appreciate your tenacity, Officer O’Callaghan,” the police chief interjected, “but you should leave the investigating up to the professionals.”
“I’m a professional,” Mac said.
From where he knelt next to the skull, Travis peered up at him.
“Almost twenty years in homicide. I stopped counting how many murders I investigated after my hundredth case,” Mac told them. “I suggest before you go jumping to any conclusions about this head being connected to Katrina Singleton’s murder that you get a positive ID on it.”
Chief Phillips looked down at Travis.
Mac asked, “Do you have any evidence to prove that Dorcas—Is that your suspect?”
“Lee Dorcas,” David answered. “He was once a client of Katrina Singleton.”
“Do you have any evidence to put him on the scene the night she was killed?”
The police chief responded by sticking the side of his pinkie finger into his mouth and biting down on it.
Mac continued, “Other than the bullet hole where the shot was fired above his ear on one side of the head and out the other, what positive evidence do you have to prove that he, or she since we—you—have yet to determine the sex of this head—inflicted the fatal wound himself?”
While his question was met with silence from the police chief, Mac saw David cover up his mouth with his hand. He guessed that he was covering up a smirk, which he also saw on the faces of the other two officers.
“You need more evidence before closing this case along with the murder of Katrina Singleton. I suggest you start with finding the rest of the body,” Mac said. “Of course, that’s only my humble and professional opinion.”
“That’s what I intend to do.” Chief Phillips called out, “Okay, men. Let’s split up and search the Point. We need to find the rest of this body.”
Travis Turner said, “I’d love to help, but I have some writing to do.”
The writer, chief of police, and one of the officers went off in different directions. David stayed on the deck while the remaining officer wrapped the head in the garbage bag and placed it in a box for transport to the state lab.
“Where on the Point can we find coal dust?” Mac whispered to David.
“Nowhere,” he replied in a soft voice.
* * * *
“What do you think?” Mac blocked a tree branch threatening to stab him in the eye.
While he led Mac up a mountain trail, David explained how coal dust, like that coating the head’s tangled hair, could be found in the Spencer Mine. Since it had been abandoned the century before, the mine had become popular with hikers seeking a strenuous trek.
“Think about what?” David called back over his shoulder in response to Mac’s question.
“About that head belonging to Lee Dorcas?”
“What does it matter what I think?” the officer answered. “You heard Chief Phillips. He considers the case closed. Lee Dorcas killed Katrina Singleton. If that head proves to be his, then it’s a simple case of murder-suicide.”
Mac said, “I don’t think in all my years in homicide that I’ve ever seen an investigator close a murder case that fast. How long has this guy been chief of police?”
“A little over four years.” David directed him onto a wider path at a fork in the road. The other path went straight up the mountain at a steep incline. “Spencer is usually a quiet little town. All Phillips expected that he had to do was socialize with our rich and famous. The fact that he’s old friends of the mayor didn’t hurt any. When Katrina’s first husband was killed he had to do actual police work.” He gestured back at the path they had passed. “He died back there up at Abigail’s Rock.”
Mac asked, “Is that at the top of the mountain?”
“Nearly. It’s a rough trail. Forty-five minute climb over rocks from off this path. The rock was named after your great-great-grandmother. She and her husband were on their way west when they stopped here. She climbed up to the top of the rock, which has a magnificent view of the area, and decided she didn’t want to go any further. They were Spencer’s first residents.”
“And then Niles Holt took a header off the rock,” Mac noted. Seeing no sign of strain in the younger man, Mac sucked in his breath to control his own heavy breathing. After accepting the water bottle David offered, he leaned against a tree to rest.
“Katrina and Niles Holt wanted to see the sunrise from Abigail’s Rock before going back to Washington for the winter,” David told him. “They were admiring the view when Katrina saw something move out of the corner of her eye. She claimed Lee Dorcas knocked her down. Niles came to her defense, but he was an old man. She was still coming to her senses when Dorcas threw her husband off the rock.”
Mac asked, “Why didn’t he kill her if she was his target?”
“He told her that he wanted her to suffer.”
“What did she do to make him terrorize her like that?”
“Dorcas swore Katrina stole his inheritance,” David replied before adding quickly, “but she was never charged with embezzlement.”
“That doesn’t mean she didn’t take it,” Mac said. “If Lee Dorcas has an alibi—”
“He and his band were singing at a festival at Rehobeth Beach in Delaware. Witnesses place him there at ten o’clock in the morning. The band went on stage at noon and played for over an hour.”
Mac handed the water bottle back to him. “Band?”
“Lee Dorcas was a hip-hop artist wannabee. He took care of his maternal grandmother and expected her to leave him everything. She had a brownstone in Old Towne Alexandria, Virginia—”
“That’s prime real estate.”
“—plus, hundreds of thousands of dollars that she got from her husband when he died thirty years earlier. But then when she kicked the bucket, he found out that yes, she had left him everything, but it wasn’t much. All he got was the house and about twenty thousand dollars—a far cry from the hundreds of thousands that he was planning to use to finance his music career.”
“And he blamed Katrina,” Mac concluded.
David said, “He charged into her office and threatened her in front of witnesses. He filed a lawsuit, but it turned out he didn’t have a case. Katrina said he showed up at her wedding and told her to enjoy her marriage while she could because he was going to kill her new husband. She didn’t take him seriously until he killed Niles Holt three months later.”
Mac reminded him, “Dorcas had an airtight alibi for Holt’s murder. How could he have killed her husband at sunrise and made it all the way across the state to Delaware by ten?”
“No way.” David turned to continue up the trail.
The rest break over, Mac followed. “What’s Travis Turner’s role in all this?”
“He’s one of Deep Creek Lake’s most famous citizens,” David said. “His next bestseller is based on Katrina’s murder.”
/> “Why was Chief Phillips conferring with him instead of you?”
“Very observant.” David turned around so abruptly that Mac collided with him. “In the beginning, Phillips and I got along fine. I trained him. Then, I spent a year in Afghanistan. By the time I got back, Phillips had decided I was incapable of doing anything right.”
Mac said, “This is a murder case in an area not known for murder. Phillips probably feels like this is his only chance to prove himself, and here the son of Chief Patrick O’Callaghan, Spencer’s answer to Marshal Matt Dillon, is horning in on it.”
“I’m not horning in,” David objected. “I’m doing my job.”
“Maybe so,” Mac said. “But if I were an incompetent like Phillips, I know I’d feel threatened by you simply being on the scene.”
David pointed up the path. “It’s up that way.” The steep trail had previously been used by mining carts to haul coal to trucks at the bottom of the mountain.
“I used to play up here when I was a kid,” David explained as if he sensed Mac’s question about his familiarity with the secluded area. “I almost killed myself playing in the mine when I fell through a shaft. It was only by the grace of God that I was able to climb out.”
They broke through the trail to find the mine boarded up with a red sign nailed across the front: Keep Out, No Trespassing.
David unclipped his flashlight from his utility belt. “I hope he’s not too far in there.”
Mac glanced around at the coal spread out around the front entrance. “The body doesn’t have to be in the mine for it to have gotten coal dust on it.
David noted one of the boards broken off to provide a hole through which to climb.
“This was broken off not too long ago.” Mac saw the fresh wood exposed on the break. A set of paw prints led into the cave. “I guess this is where Gnarly went in.”
Perching his flashlight on his shoulder next to his head, David crawled through the boarded-up entrance. He stopped to light the ground with a sweeping motion. He found the body sprawled out twenty feet into the mine. While they made their way up to the form, David tapped the button on his radio. “Dispatch, this is Officer O’Callaghan reporting that we have found the rest of the body to the head found at Spencer Manor. It’s in the Spencer Mine.”
The hands’ flesh had been eaten away. Scavengers had torn its clothes to get to the food provided by the body.
The flashlight illuminated the object next to the body. Mac knelt to examine it. “Colt revolver. Forty-five caliber. That could have put the hole in his head.”
Both David and Mac noticed the green army fatigue jacket encasing its torso. While the officer aimed the torch on the body’s chest, Mac smoothed the material to read the label sewn across his breast. The block lettering read Pay Back.
* * * *
“Can you find any identification?” Chief Roy Phillips asked David during his examination of the body.
David replied that there was none. “And his fingertips have been chewed away. We won’t be able to get any prints off this body.”
“What kind of person carries no wallet?” the police chief asked.
Mac replied, “Maybe the person who put the bullet through his head took it.”
Roy Phillips shot Mac a sharp look before turning his attention to David. “What were you doing up here? I ordered you to search the Point.”
David answered in an equally forceful tone. “The head had coal dust on it. This mine is the closest location that he could have picked it up.”
The chief exchanged sharp glances with his officer. “Good night, Officer O’Callaghan.”
David gestured at his colleagues collecting evidence from on and around the body. “But this crime scene—”
“We don’t need you,” the police chief said. “Start your first shift at the school crossing in the morning.”
* * * *
When Mac invited David to join him and Archie for dinner at the Spencer Inn, he declined because it was his mother’s nurse’s night off. After Mac suggested he bring his mother, David accepted.
In celebration of Mac’s first evening out since his move to high society at Spencer Point, Archie changed from her usual barefoot style into a gold sundress that matched the tone of her sun-kissed skin. The color brought out the emerald tone in her eyes. She accented her ensemble with delicate gold jewelry. For the first time since Mac had met her, she wore shoes: sandals with gold straps that wrapped around her ankles. The bronze polish on her toenails matched the color on her fingertips.
After Mac directed the Viper to the mountain’s top, Archie led the way to the Spencer Inn’s stone steps. The front of the Inn offered a view of the lake below and the mountains off in the distance. Instead of entering through the front door, Archie turned the corner of the wrap-around porch furnished with cane rocking chairs. Mac followed her to find an outdoor café on a multi-leveled deck that looked out across tennis courts, a golf course, and a ski lift with trails down the mountain. The Inn also offered guests meals and refreshments at tables or in gazeboes while lost among the flora of an elaborate maze.
“My family built this?” Mac breathed.
“I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it,” Archie said. “There have been articles and pictorials featuring the Spencer Inn in every gourmet and travel magazine.”
They stepped through the glass doors on the upper level of the deck and crossed the lobby separating the hotel from the restaurant. Like the Manor, the Inn had been constructed of stone and cedar. Huge windows provided a view of the rural countryside from every angle. Halfway across the lobby, Archie skipped up three granite steps and through another pair of cut glass doors.
A man with dark hair and a thin mustache at the reception desk turned to greet the incoming customer. When he laid his eyes on her, his formal expression evaporated. “Miss Archie, how are you? It’s been so long.” He rushed around his desk to hug her and exchange pleasantries in a language that Mac recognized as Italian.
Reminding himself that he owned this establishment, Mac gazed at the elegance before him. The servers wore uniforms consisting of white button-down shirts with black slacks and shoes. Black aprons hung down to their mid-calves.
I couldn’t have afforded to eat here two months ago.
The touch of her hand on his elbow startled him. “Mac, Antonio is going to take us to our table.”
Antonio led them through the dining room until they came to a table in the corner that provided a view of both the lake and ski slopes. “Your mother was such a lady, a true lady. We all miss her. This was her table. Now, it’s yours, Mister Forsythe.”
“Faraday,” Mac corrected him.
Looking in his direction, the servers whispered among themselves, “The new owner is here.”
Antonio rushed off to find the wine steward to fill Archie’s order for a specific bottle of champagne, which she had ordered in fluent Italian.
A willowy man in a gray suit that matched his slicked-back hair rushed in from a hallway that led back to the kitchen. Lured by his employees’ excitement, he located Mac and crossed the dining room while straightening his tie and smoothing his suit.
“Mr. Forsythe?” Jeff Ingle, the inn’s manager, extended a slender hand to Mac.
“Faraday.” Jeff’s hand felt cold and clammy in Mac’s palm. He saw that it was covered with red scars on the back that disappeared up his sleeve.
“Excuse me,” the manager said. “You look so much like the way your mother described in her books.” He rattled on. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you—” He turned his attention to Mac’s companion. “—and to see you again, Archie. We haven’t seen you since Robin passed away. I hope you know that you’re always welcome here—on the house, of course.”
“Thank you, Jeff.”
Antonio and a server wearing a cork screw on a band around his neck returned to the table. The wine steward carried an ice bucket containing a dark bottle with a white label and two champagne flutes
.
“Le Montrachet, Grand Cru,” the steward showed the bottle to Mac. “From our—your—private reserve.” He extended the bottle toward Archie, who took her time to examine the label before nodding her consent.
While the steward opened the bottle, Jeff explained that it had come from Robin Spencer’s private collection. It was reserved only for her and her guests. “We always make sure that we have a case of Le Montrachet on hand,” Jeff finished while the steward poured a taste for Mac’s approval. “It was one of Robin’s favorites.”
Mac handed the glass to Archie. “You’re the expert.”
She sniffed and tasted it. “Wonderful, as always.” The champagne approved, the steward poured it into their glasses and left with Antonio.
“Mr. Faraday, any time you’re ready to take a tour of the Inn simply give me a call.” Straightening his tie, Jeff hurried away to supervise a busboy who didn’t appear to be clearing a table quickly enough.
“Nervous, don’t you think?” Mac observed the servers. Their manner was formal to the point of bowing their heads before leaving the tables. Only after he had become a multi-millionaire and taken his children to the most expensive restaurant in Washington did he know the meaning of five-star service. From what he saw, the Spencer Inn was in, if not above, that same league.
“Considering that he’s had free rein running this place and you’re the man with the power to end it all, he should be.” Archie explained, “Robin only cared about her writing, but she wasn’t stupid. She didn’t know about managing a hotel, so she hired Jeff and paid him very well. But she was around enough to keep him in line. If she’d ever caught him in a lie, or cheat, even once, then she’d have buried him. Considering all the people she’s killed on paper, Jeff knew that if anyone knew how to bury someone so that no one would find his body, it was Robin Spencer.” She studied the champagne in her glass with a smile. “Ed ordered a complete audit after Robin died. The Inn came in as being ten cents off in your favor.”
“That’s pretty good,” Mac said.
“Damn good considering the amount of money that flows in and out of here.” She held up her glass. “How do you like it?”