by Carr, Lauren
“Did they ever prosecute the woman driving the Ferrari?” Ed repeated the question that had started the conversation.
“No, they didn’t.” Jeff rubbed the scars on his hand and wrist. “But you know what they say. Pay back is hell.”
* * * *
“I’m both surprised and saddened to learn that Patrick O’Callaghan’s son is a person of interest in these murders,” the voice identified as one of the leading members of Spencer’s town council announced over the radio while Mac raced along the curving road around the lake. “I never knew David very well. He always seemed polite—”
“He’s talking like I’m dead. Come on, Bill!” David objected from the passenger seat.
“—but then, you have to admit, there’s a lot of pressure living in the shadow of a dead man,” the councilman David knew as Bill Clark continued. “Ol’ Pat put a lot of pressure on his son to be aggressive. You have to be when you’re a cop. I used to worry that maybe Pat was teaching Dave to be too aggressive.”
“Bull!”
Mac punched the button to turn off the radio. “That’s enough of that.”
“Bill Clark and his cronies on the town council have tried and convicted me.” His passenger didn’t appear to be enjoying the wind blowing through his blond hair while racing through the Maryland countryside east of McHenry. Instead, David stared through the windshield without seeing the scenery.
“They’re the ones who’re going to look like fools.”
Mac pulled the Viper into McHenry’s airport. The small airport consisted of a building that resembled a warehouse and an assortment of private jets and planes used to shuttle the resort area’s privileged residents in and out of Deep Creek Lake at a moment’s notice.
David asked, “What are we doing here? I thought we were driving to DC.”
“We are driving.” Mac climbed out of the car. “But there’s more than one way out of Deep Creek. Lee Dorcas could have made it back and forth between Washington and here if he flew.”
David threw open the car door. “Wouldn’t that have been expensive? He was a struggling musician.”
“Who inherited a fortune.” Mac stepped through the hangar doors into the airport office.
In contrast to the sparse appearance of the airport, the office and lounge contained a sofa, love seat, fully stocked bar, and television. Busy, high-powered clients could conduct business at a desk next to the window looking out across the runway while waiting for their private flights.
A pilot rushed in from the hangar to greet the potential passengers. “Hello, gentlemen, welcome to McHenry airport. Where would you like to fly today?” With his slender build and smooth face, he looked barely old enough to drive a car. The gold pilot wings pinned to his breast pocket above a nameplate that read “Jackson” confirmed that he was a pilot. He told them that the private airline he owned and operated had been in his family for three generations.
Introducing himself, Mac shook the pilot’s hand.
Jackson’s face broke into a wide grin. “Robin Spencer’s son?”
“Yes. I was wondering—”
“I flew your mother!” Jackson interjected with youthful enthusiasm. “She interviewed me for some of her books. She mentioned me in Flight to Death.” He extracted a hardback from a bookcase in the corner that contained an assortment of reading material for waiting passengers. With pride, he opened the book to the acknowledgements page and held it out for Mac to read. “See? Jackson Langevoort. That’s me. She said I was an excellent pilot and thanked me for my wealth of information that helped her to write this book. I told her how to fake an alibi on a chartered flight. The killer booked a private flight for before the murder in his name and then had someone else show up and say it was him. I couldn’t believe it when she gave me one of the first copies hot off the presses and showed me my name in the acknowledgements. A big star like her.” He took the book back from Mac. “Of course, this isn’t my autographed copy. I keep that one at home and never lend it out.” He took a breath before asking again, “Where would you like me to fly you?”
After explaining that he and David were investigating a murder in Spencer, Mac asked if Lee Dorcas had ever booked a flight with him to or from Washington, DC.
Jackson shook his head. “Never heard of the guy.”
Mac’s description of Lee Dorcas caused a different reaction. “Oh, yeah, I remember flying a guy that looked like that right after the blizzard. I flew him to Houston. Real odd guy. To look at him you never would have guessed he had money.”
“How did he pay?” David hoped he had paid with a credit card, which could easily be traced back to the passenger.
“Cash. Up front. I remember him because he was so weird. The army jacket and wild hair. He smelled, too. Like a hospital.”
“He smelled like a hospital? Could it have been disinfectant or antiseptic?” Mac asked the pilot while looking at David. “Like maybe ointment to prevent infection from a dog bite?”
“Katrina’s killer.”
Jackson gasped. “Do you mean he’s wanted for murder? You don’t think he stole that money, do you?”
Mac asked, “What name did he use to book the flight?”
Jackson flipped through his reservation book while saying, “Oh, I remember that all right. Between what he looked like and the name, I wondered if I was going to make it back alive. P. B. Cooper.” He pointed at the line in his reservation book. “Get it? D. B. Cooper was the famous hijacker. This guy went by P. B. Cooper.”
While David studied the information in the log, which didn’t tell much, Mac wanted to know if the passenger had mentioned his reason for going to Houston or where he would be going from there. Jackson replied that the passenger wasn’t talkative at all. With thanks, Mac took Jackson’s business card and the two men resumed their drive to Washington.
After the Viper raced out of the airport onto the road leading to the freeway east, a Spencer police cruiser and a white sedan fell in behind them.
Mac yelled above the roar of the engine. “Here’s what I think happened. Our perp kills Katrina and Lee Dorcas to make it look like a murder-suicide. Then, he takes a private flight out dressed up like Pay Back to mix things up.” He glanced in David’s direction. “What did you find out about Ira’s statement when you looked at the Holt case file?”
“What makes you think I bothered looking at the case file?”
“You’re a good cop, David. How long did you wait after I called you before reading Ira’s statement? What happened? Why wasn’t anything done about it?”
David said, “Chief Phillips gutted my dad’s old office to build a new one, all paid for by the widow Holt.”
Mac fought to keep the Viper on the road while looking over at him to make sure he wasn’t joking. “Who took Ira’s statement? Phillips?”
David shook his head. “No, Bogie took it. He’s a good guy. My dad trained him. Bogie took the evidence to Phillips, who personally questioned Katrina. Then, he ordered Bogie to drop the case. Bogie fought him and ended up being demoted for it. Katrina made a contribution to the police department and went back to Washington.” He added, “Phillips forced Bogie into early retirement after he found out that I was still on Katrina’s case.”
Mac asked, “What was Katrina hiding worth bribing a police chief for?”
“I’m still trying to find that out. Two pages from the forensics report are missing from the file. Bogie ordered a copy of the full report, but Phillips forced him out before he could get it. I called my contact in the lab again and she said that she sent it the same morning that Phillips ousted Bogie. He must have intercepted it. So I asked for another copy. But my bud said that when she went looking for it, the folder was missing. Not only that, but so is the evidence box.”
“Phillips is covering his butt,” Mac said. “Robin tried to look into the case, but he stonewalled her. She went up to search the crime scene and found a necklace that she had seen Katrina wearing a couple of months before.”
“Was it a diamond necklace?”
“Yes.”
David said, “Katrina told me that Niles had given her a five and a half carat diamond necklace. She had it less than a month before it disappeared. She believed Lee Dorcas stole it.”
“Don’t look now, but we’re being followed.”
David checked the rear view mirror. “That’s Chief Phillips in the cruiser. The white sedan is a state trooper. He’s a buddy of mine. At least he used to be. I guess not anymore.”
“I don’t like being followed.” Mac pressed his foot on the accelerator.
“Cops love giving tickets to rich guys in sports cars.”
“They have to catch me first.”
Mac raced around a curve on Garrett Highway to take him over the top of a steep hill before pulling over and coming to a halt. When the two cruisers crested the hill and saw the stopped Viper, they pulled up behind it. The police chief got out of his cruiser. Mac waited until Phillips got to the bumper of his car then he hit the gas. Once he was on the road, he stomped on the brakes and did a one-eighty before racing by them. He threw the wheel to the left to take the Viper onto a side road that went down into a gully.
Chief Phillips ran back to his car while the trooper backed up to give chase. Both cars turned on their lights and sirens.
David clutched the sides of his seat. “Oh, yeah, this is going to get me into less trouble.”
They raced along a twisting wooded country road. Without warning, Mac screeched to a halt, forcing the cars to either stop or hit him. While the cars skidded off the road into ditches, he threw the Viper into reverse and bypassed them before swinging the roadster around to head in the opposite direction. Upon their return to Garrett Highway, two county sheriff cruisers fell in behind the string of police cars.
“Now we’ve got the whole police department coming down on us,” David said.
“For what?” Mac asked with a laugh.
“Resisting arrest for one.”
“What am I resisting arrest for?”
“Speeding.”
“Was I speeding?”
“You are now.”
“In that case I’ll go back.” Mac hit the brakes and swung the steering wheel. The Viper did a donut to speed back toward the cruisers. “Ever play chicken?”
“No.”
Unprepared for the sudden assault, two cruisers went off the road to avoid a collision. Mac turned onto a side road, then turned off again to hide the car along an abandoned hiking trail until the remaining patrol cars drove past in their pursuit.
Once they were safe, Mac backed the car out and quietly headed east toward his old stomping grounds in Washington DC.
* * * *
The sound of a car racing through the manor’s stone entrance told Archie that the next couple days alone weren’t going to be quiet ones.
Gnarly jumped off the sofa he had been sleeping on in her studio and jumped up at the window. Barking, he ran for the door as if to run through it.
Archie heard her name called out from the front door. Leaving Gnarly locked inside, she stepped out in time to see Chief Roy Phillips press his finger on the manor’s doorbell.
“May I help you?” She silently prayed that he hadn’t come to report that something had happened to Mac and David.
“Excuse me, Ms. Monday.” He took off his hat and smiled broadly at her while stepping down the walkway toward her cottage. “I hate to interrupt you, but may I speak to Mr. Faraday?” He brought his thumb up to his mouth before seeming to think better of it and shoving his hand into his pocket.
“I’m sorry, but he’s not here. Would you like for me to have him call you?” She made no move to invite the man instrumental in David’s suspension inside her home.
“Where is he?” the police chief asked.
“I can’t say exactly.”
His thumbs inserted inside his utility belt, he stepped forward. “Why won’t you tell me where Mr. Faraday is?” He gazed down at her.
Archie refused to back away. “Because you have no need to know where he is. He’s not under investigation for anything.”
“He just led me and the state police on a high-speed chase around Deep Creek Lake.”
“Then I’ll be sure to have his lawyer call you.”
“That may not be necessary if you can tell me where he was going in such a hurry.”
Tired of the circular conversation, she gestured toward his cruiser in the driveway behind him. “If you don’t care to leave a message then I suggest you leave.”
The police chief didn’t move to follow her suggestion. “Ms. Monday, your boyfriend may be rich, but he’s not too rich to go to jail. Maybe if he’ll talk to me, we might be able to come to an understanding that can help David out of this situation.”
“You couldn’t care less about helping David.” Archie turned away. “Now leave.”
“Don’t give me a hard time, Ms. Monday.” He grabbed her by the arm. “If you don’t convince Mr. Faraday to trust me, then people could get hurt.” His fingers dug into her flesh.
Archie pulled back but he tightened his grip. “Let go of me!” She could hear Gnarly barking from inside the cottage. The door shuddered when the dog threw himself against it. “I’m calling—” She started to threaten to call the police, but remembered that he was the police.
Uttering a scream from the depths of her gut, Archie jerked up her leg to crash her knee into Police Chief Roy Phillips’s groin. Yelling in agony, he released her arm to clasp his privates with both hands. At the same time, Archie threw open the cottage door and released the hound of Spencer Manor.
Before Chief Phillips could collect his wits, Gnarly hit him full force in the chest with a hundred pounds of fur and teeth. Both the dog and the police chief went over the porch railing and landed in Robin Spencer’s rose garden.
As quickly as Gnarly’s attack began, it ended, with Roy Phillips flat on his back among the thorns. Gnarly straddled him with his teeth at the police chief’s throat. With wide eyes, Phillips gazed up at the German shepherd daring him to give him reason to rip out his throat.
“Help!”
Dog drool dripped from Gnarly’s mouth onto the police chief’s nose and chin. His hot breath felt moist on Chief Phillips’s face.
“Call him off!” Remembering his gun, Phillips moved his hand toward his holster.
Snarling, Gnarly lunged.
Instinctively, the chief held both hands up where Gnarly could see them.
“How fast are you on the draw, Roy?” Archie yelled from the front porch over Gnarly’s growling.
If her question lacked sense, the .44 Magnum she had aimed at Police Chief Roy Phillips brought her point home.
“Come, Gnarly.” She called the dog to her side.
Releasing his prey, Gnarly stepped backwards to stand at her side.
Her weapon aimed between his eyes, Archie stood over the unwelcomed guest. “Here’s the way I see it, Roy. I have you in my sights and my finger is on the trigger. So does Gnarly. We can take you out in less than two seconds. Your gun is in its holster. I estimate that it will take you three seconds to draw it—if you can do so before Gnarly rips out your throat—take aim, and fire on whichever one of us you decide to shoot first. The way I see it, the one you don’t get first will have two seconds to spare to take you out before you fire on them. Now, if you feel lucky, give it a shot. If you don’t feel lucky, I suggest you leave and don’t come back without a warrant.” She grinned. “So, I ask you again, Roy, how fast are you on the draw?”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re making a big mistake, Ms. Monday.” The police chief rose to his feet and backed toward the cruiser. “Tell Mac Faraday that this time he’s messing with the wrong people.”
Chapter Ten
“If it isn’t Archie Monday. What a pleasure to see you here.”
At the mention of her name, Archie turned around from where she was admiring the early evening’s view from the Spencer Inn. Sh
e had stopped in for dinner only to be reminded that it was Friday, the night of the mayor’s weekly cocktail party. Dressed in casual summer wear, she felt out of place among cocktail dresses and summer suits. With her plate of appetizers, Archie had moved away from the crowd to the edge of the deck when she heard her name called.
The county prosecutor stepped away from Mayor Pete Mason to take Archie’s hand. “Did your new roomie bring you as his guest?”
Roy Phillips grasped the lawyer’s arm from behind. “I need to talk to you.” Seeing Archie, his eyes narrowed. “You! What do you think you’re doing here?”
Archie smirked. “I’m here as a guest of the owner. What are you doing here?”
Roy hissed in Ben’s direction, “Did Ms. Monday tell you that she threatened to shoot me this afternoon after ordering her dog to attack me?” He held out his arms in his short-sleeved shirt to display deep scratches that ran up his arms and on his throat. “He almost ripped my throat out. I barely escaped with my life.”
“Calm down, Roy. I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding.” A red cast came to Pete Mason’s tanned face.
Archie said to the police chief, “You started it.”
“I’m an officer of the law and you, Ms. Monday, pushed your luck too far this time.” Seeming to suddenly remember the party guests in earshot, the police chief cleared his throat. “Needless to say, Ben, I’m going to be needing a warrant.” He chewed the skin on the side of his index finger.
“A warrant?” the mayor gasped. “Now, Roy, we should talk about this.”
Archie turned away. “I’ll leave you gentlemen to discuss this issue alone. If you decide to arrest me, you’ll find me at the bar.”
Ben watched Archie climb onto a bar stool and order a drink before turning to the chief of police. “Phillips, why did you go to Spencer Manor?”