by Carr, Lauren
Their tan poodle was curled up in her bed in the corner of the room. David noted that he had never seen the dog wag her tail. He thought that if he lived in this home, he wouldn’t be wagging his tail either.
He found it. A bottled jar of potpourri rested on an end table. Dust covered the surface of the table, except for a clean ring, evidence of where the bottle had rested until someone picked it up to use as a weapon for a self-inflicted wound.
Next to the bottle, David saw a yellow notepad with line upon line of letters, numbers, and symbols written in a feminine hand. Trying to appear casual in his discovery while picking up the jar, David tried to read the writing but couldn’t. The letters didn’t form words. Curious if they were a foreign language, he picked up the pad to decipher them only to find that they failed to have the necessary spaces to form word breaks.
Priscilla snatched the notepad from his hand. “That’s none of your business.” She rushed down the hallway to where he knew they had their office.
Holding the jar in his hand, David turned back to her husband. “I don’t see any dirt, grime, or scrape marks in the wound on your cheek, Mr. Hardwick. If you received that by having your face pushed down onto pavement, your face would be dirty.”
“I washed my face.”
David shot back, “You said a moment ago that you didn’t wash it because you didn’t want to disturb any evidence. As a lawyer you know all about preserving evidence. I believe you had an altercation with Mac Faraday in your driveway, Mr. Hardwick. Based on your relationship with your other neighbors, it was only a matter of time. Since Mac is worth over a quarter of a billion dollars, I’m sure you couldn’t wait to find something to lodge a complaint about against him. You started something and he ended it. But you didn’t get hurt enough in your greedy eyes, so you either hit yourself in the face with this jar, or had your wife do it for you.”
Gordon’s face reddened. “Just do your job and take my complaint.”
“No.”
With an expression of disbelief, Gordon Hardwick glanced at his wife who had come back into the room. She had left her notepad with the strange lettering in their office. He sputtered, “Wh-what?”
“I said no.” David crossed his arms across his chest. “We’ve had it with you, Mr. Hardwick. In the three years that you’ve lived here, I’ve answered more calls to this home to take complaints about your neighbors than I have answered in the entire Point for my whole career. I’m sick of it. The county prosecutor is sick of wasting his time and the taxpayers’ money on your petty complaints. The circuit judges are sick of seeing you and your lawyer in their courtroom. You’re nothing more than the personification of the sleazy lawyer hunting down his next big lawsuit and we’re all sick of it. None of us are going to have any part of it anymore.”
In order to make his point clear, he stepped across the room to speak into the little man’s blotchy face. “Hunting season in Spencer is closed, Mr. Hardwick.”
Gordon was still spewing his vulgar-filled response when David let himself out the front door. On the other side of Spencer Manor’s stone pillars, he could see Mac playing fetch with Gnarly in the grassy yard leading down to the boulder-lined tip of the Point.
Seeing the cruiser pull around the circle drive, Mac stopped the game while holding the ball that Gnarly was fetching. Not wanting to quit so soon, the dog pawed at his master until he tossed the ball down to the water.
“Are you here to arrest me for assault?” he called out.
“We’re not taking any further complaints from the Hardwicks.” David leaned against his cruiser. “What happened?”
“Gnarly dragged me onto their property and Hardwick jumped at the chance to escalate it from unintentional trespass to a vicious dog and assault case,” Mac said. “I advised him that taking me to court could cost him more physical damage than he could gather monetarily. I guess he didn’t take my advice.”
“No,” David said. “But no one here in Spencer is going to play ball with him. Ben Fleming won’t be seen in court with him unless it’s with Hardwick playing the role of defendant. Without being able to get a criminal charge filed, he’d have a hard time getting a civil case for assault going. So you have nothing to worry about.”
“Do I look worried?”
Gnarly was once again pawing at his master. He had brought back the ball, but Mac failed to toss it. David threw it as far as he could toward the water.
Mac asked, “Did the autopsy report come back for Pay Back yet?”
“Yes, but Phillips won’t let me see it. He says I don’t have any need to know the results. So I called the ME and got an unofficial verbal report. He was good friends with my dad.” David frowned. “Dental records were a match. It’s Lee Dorcas.”
“Cause of death?” Mac tossed the ball again for Gnarly.
“Gunshot wound to the head,” David said. “Forensics found the slug in the mine and it did come from the gun we found.”
“But was the fatal wound self-inflicted?”
“Since the body was so badly decomposed, we have no evidence to prove either way. They found gunshot residue on the jacket, which shows that whoever was wearing it fired a gun.” David added, “Yet, there’s no evidence of any dog bite on the body prior to death. But the jacket had Gnarly’s blood on it and showed evidence of being torn up in a dog attack. They also found blood on the jacket that didn’t come from Lee Dorcas or Gnarly.”
“Gnarly attacked someone else who happened to be wearing that jacket.” Mac put the scene together. “That someone else killed Katrina Singleton.”
David continued, “Gnarly attacked him when he left the scene. He was wearing the army fatigue jacket. Gnarly bit the killer and shredded the jacket.”
Mac concluded, “Then, he killed Lee Dorcas after putting the jacket on him to make it look like Pay Back killed Katrina and then killed himself.”
“If that’s what happened, then it’s not a simple murder-suicide.”
“It’s just plain murder.”
Chapter Five
“Someone besides Lee Dorcas had to have a reason to kill Katrina,” Mac told Archie during what had become their daily morning hike.
Afterwards, she would give him a cooking lesson while preparing breakfast, which they ate together on the lower deck down by the lakeshore. Archie may not work for Mac, but she didn’t skimp on sharing her good cooking with him. Besides being a wine connoisseur and fluent in Italian, French, and German, Archie was also a gourmet cook.
In the early morning’s solitude, Mac had taken Gnarly off his leash to let him run while Archie led him on a leisurely trail up the mountain toward Abigail’s Rock, where his great-great-grandmother founded Spencer and Niles Holt met his end. She explained that Abigail Spencer had taken the longer, less strenuous, route to the rock that had taken on her name.
“It isn’t a simple case of murder,” Mac said while navigating the path to keep from tripping over exposed tree roots. “First, the killer had to have known about Lee Dorcas’s threats against Katrina. Dorcas must have been abducted in order to frame him for her murder and stage his suicide. Katrina’s killer went to a lot of trouble. Why did he, or she, go to so much trouble?”
“You’re asking the wrong girl,” Archie replied when he paused to await her response. “I didn’t really know Katrina. No one did except David. They’d known each other since school. He took her death hard.”
Holding something that resembled a rope in his mouth, Gnarly charged down the trail toward them.
“What have you got?” Archie called out to him.
Mac recognized the twisting creature fighting to escape its captivity in the dog’s jaws. “It’s a snake!”
Together, they screamed and ran back down the mountain. Anxious to show off his treasure, Gnarly gave chase. They broke through the woods, across Spencer Court, and toward the lake. When he saw that they were going to be trapped by the dog and reptile, Mac turned to Gnarly with his hand held out in a signal to stop. “Drop
it!”
Gnarly stopped. Fiercely, he shook his head before dropping the snake’s limp body to the ground.
After examining the dead reptile, Archie uttered a shriek and covered her mouth. “It’s a timber rattlesnake!” She pointed at the rattle at the end of its tale. “Gnarly saved us from a rattler.” Cooing with affection, she hugged the dog while examining him for evidence of a snake bite. “Did he bite you?”
“I’m not taking you to the vet,” Mac told Gnarly.
“He saved our lives,” she argued.
As if to confirm her assessment, Gnarly let off a round of barks while pawing at the ground.
“What a good boy you are!” Archie patted him on top of the head.
“What was all that screaming about?” They heard called from the other side of the trees at the lake’s edge.
“Gnarly found a snake.” Archie made her way down the path to join Ira Taylor.
The old man had set up a minicamp with folding chairs, two coolers, and an assortment of fishing poles and tackle boxes. “Better than another head.”
Hearing his laughter, Mac felt foolish. “How are the fish biting today?” he asked while breaking through the trees to join them.
“Pretty good.” Ira flipped open a cooler to show that it contained several fish. “Where were you two heading?”
Archie told him, “I was taking Mac up to Abigail’s Rock.”
“Ah, that’s a beautiful spot,” Ira said. “Most magnificent view on this mountain. Too bad that nutcase ruined it all.”
“Lee Dorcas had an alibi for Niles Holt’s murder,” Mac told him.
“That wasn’t the nut I was talking about,” the elderly man replied with a shake of his head.
“What nut were you referring to?” Archie asked.
Ira said, “No one followed them up that mountain. I know. I was sitting right in this very spot fishing when they went past to go up on the trail. I didn’t move. The only way to get to either trail up to Abigail’s is there across the road. If anyone had been following them, he would have had to go past me. No one did. I was still here when she came running down screaming about someone killing her husband.”
“Maybe he didn’t use the trail. If they looked back they would have seen him,” Mac pointed out. “Maybe he went through the woods to get to the other trail.”
“I doubt it. I always said there was something fishy about Katrina’s story about how Holt died. I wasn’t the only one, either. Robin agreed with me.”
Mac asked Ira, “Did you tell the police about what you saw, or rather, didn’t see?”
Ira snorted. “Yeah. A patrolman came and took my statement. Then Chief Phillips came out to see me. He said he would question Katrina about it. That was the last I saw or heard anything about it.” He chuckled. “His murder case went cold faster than hers.”
* * * *
“Hungry?”
Curious about what Mac had been doing since they talked to Ira, Archie took a lunch break from editing the latest thriller of a hot new writer to prepare two ham and cheese sandwiches. Carrying the sandwiches and glasses of milk on a serving tray, she crossed the deck to where she found Mac stretched out on a chaise with Robin’s thick, leather-bound journal open in his lap.
Stretched out next to his master’s chaise, Gnarly started out of a deep sleep as if in answer to her question. He sat up at attention with his eyes aimed at the food on the tray.
“Did you call David about Ira?” Archie set their lunch on the table.
“He doesn’t recall seeing any statement from Ira. He’s going to check the case file again.” Mac held up the journal for her to see. “I’m looking up Robin’s take on Holt’s murder. Ira said Robin agreed with him about there being something weird in her statement. Katrina said Dorcas did it. Dorcas had an airtight alibi. Ira was fishing right there at the start of the trail.”
Archie handed him a sandwich and sat on the chaise next to his. “Katrina claimed to have been blindsided. She could have assumed it was Dorcas because he had threatened her.”
“Why didn’t Robin pursue the case?” Mac bit the corner off his sandwich and sat up.
“We both had tight deadlines.”
“Are you sure that’s it? I can’t believe my mother, whose blood courses through my veins, wasn’t intrigued enough to find out what went on up at Abigail’s Rock.”
Archie confessed, “It wasn’t like Robin to turn her back on murder, but she did. I don’t know why. What did she say in her journal?”
Mac turned a page. “I haven’t found her explanation yet.”
Gnarly let out a long whine. He stared at the plates as if he could will the food to come to him.
Mac continued eating his sandwich. “Gnarly stole my hot dog right off the plate last night. I took it out of the microwave and turned around to get the catsup. He jumped up, grabbed the dog, and ran outside with it.”
“Serves you right for turning your back on him.”
Mac accepted Archie’s offer of the glass of milk, took a gulp, and set it on the side table next to his chaise. “Have you seen my flip-flops?”
“Not since you took them off and left them here on the deck to dry after jet skiing.”
Mac gestured at the empty spot beside the French doors. “I paid twelve bucks for them. Now, they’re gone.” He looked at Gnarly, who was staring at the ham sandwich in his hand. “There’s a lot of thievery here on the Point,” he said. “My Blackberry is missing, too. It cost me over seven hundred dollars and I only had it a month. I left it on the table out here on the deck last night and remembered it after I went to bed. I came down to get it and it was gone. From twelve-dollar flip-flops to Blackberries. I’m beginning to think one of our neighbors is a kleptomaniac.”
Archie nodded her head. “Robin thought the same thing. I’ve lost my car keys, every beach blanket I hang out to dry, and a pair of pink pumps with stiletto heels. Anything left on decks or docks gets stolen. It started right after Pay Back showed up. But if Pay Back is dead, then it can’t be him.”
“Who said Pay Back was dead? Lee Dorcas is dead, but the evidence says he wasn’t Pay Back.”
Gnarly inched closer to Mac as he neared the last bite of the sandwich.
Archie said, “I had an interesting conversation with Francine Taylor yesterday.”
“Ira’s wife?”
“They’re year-round residents like us. They’re both nice,” she added, “unlike the other ones down the road. Francine said the Hardwicks went off about Gnarly on a regular basis.”
“I’ve already gotten closer and more personal with the Hardwicks than I care to get again.”
Recalling his account about when he first met Gordon Hardwick, Archie smiled. “Don’t you agree that they have a tendency to overreact?”
“Yes.”
“Francine says they used to get into some real screamfests with Katrina, which leads me to think that they were probably dancing on the Point when she died.”
Amused, Mac asked, “Are you suggesting the Hardwicks killed Katrina over a dog?”
“A few years ago a man poisoned his neighbor because he simply didn’t like her and her family.”
“We’re talking about an ambulance chaser,” he argued. “The Hardwicks are looking for grounds to file lawsuits so that they can live off of the court settlements. Katrina’s death got them nothing.” He turned the sandwich around to begin eating it from the opposite corner.
Gnarly stood up in preparation to pounce on it.
“Want to answer all of your questions about Katrina’s murder once and for all?” Archie asked with a naughty grin.
“How?”
“Visit the crime scene? See it live and in person?”
Mac answered, “I’d love to, except that the house is locked up tight.”
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Gnarly nabbed the last of the sandwich from his hand.
“Gnarly! I’m going to kill you!” Mac yelled, but the do
g was already making his getaway off the deck.
* * * *
Spencer’s police station didn’t look like a small-town police department. The three-story log building blended in with the woods that surrounded it. With its stone fireplace in the reception area, four speed boats for patrol docked in the back, and fleet of ATVs and dirt bikes parked in and around the garage, it resembled a sports club. The cruisers were four-wheel drive SUVs able to maneuver over the dirt trails that went deep into the woods and up the mountain.
Spencer only had a dozen officers, but the town’s founding family and well-heeled residents were willing to invest in the police department responsible for protecting their families and valuables.
Ever since Mac’s phone call, David’s mind was preoccupied with what Ira Taylor had not seen the morning Niles Holt went off Abigail’s Rock. If it had been any other witness he would have questioned the validity of his statement. He would have assumed Niles Holt’s killer had managed to slip past Ira without being seen to follow the Holts up the mountain. Not so with Ira Taylor. A retired naval officer devoted to detail, he would have seen the killer.
As soon as he had finished his morning patrol, David hurried to the file room in the basement of the police department. He studied the labels on the file cabinet’s drawers until he found one indicating the letters Hn-Hz. After sliding out the drawer, he ran his fingers over the tabs until he found the folder labeled Holt, Niles.
He scanned Katrina’s statement while carrying the folder to the table where he could study its contents in detail.
Tucked under the case and evidence reports, David found Ira Taylor’s statement written up on a single sheet of paper. Ira had signed and dated it. The narrative read almost word for word as the same statement that Mac had relayed to him that morning.
Ira Taylor was fishing off the shore on Spencer Point at Deep Creek Lake when he saw Katrina and Niles Holt. Since it was not yet sunrise, Katrina carried a flashlight. The couple wore hiking shoes and sweaters. Ira and the Holts greeted each other. The victims went onto the mountain trail and disappeared into the woods. Ninety minutes later, after the sun rose, Ira heard Katrina screaming for help. He met her when she ran out of the woods onto the road. Her sweater was torn. Her hair was messed and she was bleeding from a wound on her cheek. She told him that a man who had been stalking her had followed them up to Abigail’s Rock, hit her in the head with a thick stick, and shoved Niles Holt off the rock and down the mountain. She thought he was going to kill her, too. She told Ira that her attacker said he killed Niles Holt because “Payback is hell.” He then disappeared down the mountain.