It's Murder, My Son (A Mac Faraday Mystery)

by Carr, Lauren

  Shrieking, Archie clutched the notebook she was reading to her chest.

  Mac laughed.

  “Don’t you know better than to sneak up on a girl?” She whirled around and slapped his legs with the writing tablet.

  He knelt next to her. “Did you find anything?”

  “I found something missing. Someone wiped out Betsy’s hard drive. Her desk is cleared out. No disks, no flash drives. No nothing.”

  “So whoever killed her didn’t want anyone to find what she was working on,” Mac said. “Who?”

  “The Black Diamond,” Archie said. “Think about it. The Black Diamond is a master of disguise. Who knows more about makeup and changing looks than a supermodel?”

  Mac chuckled. “Sophia?”

  “Unaware that his new bride moonlights as an international assassin, Travis brings Sophia home. Betsy is here blending into the wallpaper so that Sophia doesn’t notice her. But Betsy notices Sophia, who notices Roy Herman and Peter Marlstone. Maybe Sophia even contacts the Sanchez family to negotiate the hit. Betsy thinks she has found the story to make her writing career happen; but, she also becomes a dangerous liability to the Black Diamond, who must eliminate her.”

  “Sophia was in New York this weekend,” he said.

  “Do we know that for a fact?” She asked, “What did Travis say?”

  “That it was a suicide and he dumped the body by the pool because she died at an inconvenient location.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “No, someone forced those pills and booze down her throat, and then put her on ice before dumping her next to the pool.”

  Convinced of her assessment, Archie declared, “Sounds like a mob hit to me. That points to the Black Diamond.”

  Mac gathered the notebooks scattered around them. “We need to find out what Betsy had been working on that got her killed.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Almost dropping the books she held in her arms, Archie gasped when she saw Sophia behind Mac.

  She had tied her wet hair up in a scarlet scarf matching the bikini she wore under a black overwrap. To illustrate her impatience, she tapped the toe of one of her high-heeled sandals while waiting for them to explain their presence in her guest house.

  Mac turned around to answer. “We’re investigating a murder.”

  “Murder? Give me a break. Who’d care enough about that dweeb to want to go to the trouble of killing her?”

  “We think someone killed Betsy because she uncovered something while researching one of Travis’s books,” Mac explained. “We need to take the notebooks to read for possible evidence about what she may have found.”

  She waved her hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Take them. They’re nothing but trash. Get them out of here.”

  Mac glanced at Archie. Sophia was unconcerned about what could be in Betsy’s notebooks. While Archie gathered them in a laundry basket, he made conversation with their hostess. “I saw your painting. It’s really a masterpiece.”

  “Painting?”

  “The one Deloise did of you that’s hanging in the study,” he said. “Not every woman can say she was painted by Antonio Deloise.”

  Her reaction surprised him.

  “Augh! That! I wish Travis would burn that piece of crap.” She screwed up her face. “It doesn’t even look like me.”

  Mac stepped up to Sophia. “Did you tell Deloise that you didn’t like the painting? Maybe he could have fixed whatever you didn’t like.”

  Her lips curled. “Travis wanted to surprise me. He had given Antonio some pictures from my portfolio to paint from.” She tilted her head. “What are you looking at?”

  “Your eyes,” he said.

  “A movie critic called them bedroom eyes.” She licked her lips. “Do you like them?”

  “Mac!” Archie shoved the laundry basket into his back. “I’m ready to go.”

  * * * *

  The sun went down on what Archie had considered to be a productive day. She had spent most of the evening reading through Betsy Weaver’s notes. Now, she yearned for dinner and conversation with Mac.

  She found him asleep on the back deck. Clutching one of Robin’s books to his chest, he leaned back in a chair with his feet propped up on the corner of the table. Curled up in a tight ball, Gnarly was sleeping under his master’s raised legs. Archie considered snapping a picture of the scene. They reminded her of Mickey Forsythe and Diablo.

  She snapped her fingers next to Mac’s ear. “Hey! What’s happening?”

  Growling and barking at the same time, Gnarly sat up. His head collided with Mac’s legs, which knocked his master off balance so that he almost fell from his chair.

  With a smile, Archie said, “I came to see if you wanted dinner.”

  “I don’t know.” Mac rubbed his eyes. He woke up more to tell her that he was reading.

  “Looked like you were sleeping to me.” She sat across from him. “I was reading, too. Betsy wrote a lot. Like Travis, she was into murder mysteries. She was good, too.”

  Mac marked his place in Robin’s book and set it aside. “If she was so good, why did she work for Travis?”

  “There’re a lot of very good writers out there who can’t get published, either because of timing, or not knowing the right people. Betsy thought she wasn’t pretty enough.”

  “People don’t care what authors look like. Either they like what they write or they don’t.”

  “Betsy had some issues.” She sighed. “One of the outlines I read in her notes is a chapter by chapter copy of Travis’s second book. Now, I haven’t read every mystery out there, but based on that, it’s entirely possible that Betsy, while she wrote well, had trouble coming up with original plotlines. I also found notes for a mystery about a series of murders in a resort town. The killer ends up being the mayor, who ends up not being who he claimed to be.”

  “Sounds familiar,” Mac said.

  “Makes one think that maybe Betsy had been lurking in the wrong place at the wrong time. The ME believes her time of death was before Marlstone’s. Maybe he killed Betsy before the Black Diamond caught up with him. Wouldn’t that be ironic?”

  Studying the cover of the book he had been reading, Mac didn’t hear what she had said. “Why would a writer mail a package special delivery to herself?”

  “Proof of copyright.” Archie gasped. “That package that Gnarly brought home. Betsy had mailed it to herself. She’s a writer. A quick and inexpensive way for writers to prove the date of writing a manuscript is to mail it to yourself special delivery. You file the package away without breaking the seal. The postmark is a legal record of the date the manuscript was completed. Did you open it?”

  “I was going to return it to her,” Mac said. “It turns out she was dead one full day when Gnarly brought it home.”

  “Let’s go open it.” Archie jumped to her feet.

  A shot rang out from across the cove. The windows in the French door behind them shattered.

  Mac flew out of his chair, plunged Archie down onto the deck, and covered her with his body. Barking loud enough to wake up everyone on the Point, Gnarly raced down to the dock.

  “Gnarly!” Archie attempted to get up to save the dog.

  Mac pushed her back down. “Stay down!”

  Another shot echoed across the lake followed by the roar of a jet ski speeding away.

  The voices of neighbors calling out inquiries about the source and cause of the shot, and possible injuries, floated across the cove and down the Point. Moments later, they heard the jingle jangle of Gnarly’s tags and the patter of his paws on the deck. Sensing all was safe, Mac climbed off Archie. Immediately, she hugged Gnarly who returned her affection with licks to her face.

  “I’m the one who shoved you out of the way of the bullet,” Mac objected. “Why are you hugging him?”

  “You’re not a defenseless dog.”

  “Gnarly’s as defenseless as a rattlesnake.”

  * * * *

 
“Someone is very nervous.” David knelt to pick up a shard of broken glass from the kitchen floor.

  The report of shots fired brought out David and Yvonne Harding, with whom he was having dinner. David excused himself to use the bathroom to clean up after Mac discreetly pointed out lipstick on his cheek and collar.

  Bogie had been teaching a women’s self-defense class in McHenry. The muscle-bound deputy chief arrived in sweats with protective padding.

  “The Black Diamond,” Archie said. “That’s who’s nervous.”

  “Who’s the Black Diamond?” Yvonne wanted to know.

  “A high-priced assassin.”

  “This isn’t her MO. The Black Diamond always hits her mark.” Mac gestured at the broken window and glass scattered inside the kitchen. “This is the work of an amateur.”

  David quipped, “If he’s an amateur, why are we having such a hard time catching him?”

  “Maybe because we don’t know what this is all about yet. But I think Gnarly brought home something that can lead us to his motive.” Mac led them to the stairs in the corner of the kitchen. “It’s in my bedroom.”

  Gnarly seemed to be waiting for them in the middle of Mac’s bed. The package he had brought home two nights earlier rested under his front paws. He didn’t object when Mac took the envelope from him. Moving to the edge of the bed, the dog appeared to be as interested as the humans in learning its contents.

  Mac studied the postmark on the package. “Very interesting.”

  “What’s so interesting?” David wanted to know.

  Showing the package to them, Mac pointed out, “Betsy Weaver mailed this to herself a decade ago.”

  Examining the post markings on the front of the envelope, David said to Mac, “She hadn’t even met Travis yet. What could it possibly have to do with her or Katrina’s murders?”

  With a whine that sounded as if his feelings had been wounded, Gnarly plopped down onto the mattress.

  “I don’t know. But Travis is in this up to his eyeballs. I think that broken picture on Betsy’s night stand was of him.”

  David laughed. “Betsy wasn’t Travis’s type.”

  “Betsy had something that Travis needed,” Mac said. “I think he slept with her to get that something. She had it locked up in the file cabinet. After killing her, he couldn’t get it open. So he took the whole cabinet to keep us from finding it.”

  “That something being what? What could little old Betsy Weaver possibly have that rich and famous Travis Turner would want from her?” David asked. “She was a nobody that scribbled junk in notebooks. What would a big fat cow—”

  “David!” Yvonne chastised him.

  “Travis’s words, not mine,” David clarified before turning back to Mac. “What in the world could she have that was important enough to Travis for him to lower himself to have sex with her?”

  “I don’t know, but it had to be something. Maybe she had evidence of something from his past locked up in that file cabinet.”

  “In other words,” Archie translated, “blackmail.”

  “Very possibly,” Mac said. “My gut is telling me that Travis is our killer.”

  “Mac,” David said, “his alibi checks out. He was with a woman he had met at the Inn Saturday night. Believe me, she didn’t want to admit it. Her husband was out of town and she says that if it comes to going to court, she’ll deny it.”

  Archie suggested, “Maybe he killed Betsy before going to see her.”

  “The ME can’t be conclusive about the time of death,” David agreed. “Even so, we still need a motive.”

  Yvonne said, “Maybe Betsy found out about Travis killing Katrina.”

  “His stepmother worked for Milo Ford, who built the Singleton home,” Mac reminded David. “Maybe his stepmother knew about the secret entrance and told Travis, which would give him knowledge of the crime scene to be able to get in and out without tripping the security system.”

  “Travis couldn’t have killed Katrina.” David shook his head firmly. “He and Sophia flew out of McHenry before the blizzard. I checked with the pilot. There’s no way either of them could have flown back before the airport was closed due to the storm. And now we come right back to the matter of motive. Why would he have wanted to kill Katrina?”

  Mac said, “He admitted to having an affair with her. He wouldn’t be the first husband to kill his mistress.”

  “No way!” Yvonne laughed heartily at the suggestion. “Katrina couldn’t stand Travis. When I interviewed her after Niles died, we got to talking about him. The literary world had crowned him their Golden Boy, but she wasn’t the least bit impressed. She said he was a phony in high school, and he was a phony now.”

  Whining, Gnarly pawed at the package like it was a bag of dog food.

  Mac said, “We might as well check out Betsy’s literary masterpiece.”

  Archie grasped his hand before he tore open the envelope. “Once we break that seal, then it will be no good to Betsy or her estate if the manuscript becomes a copyright issue.”

  “Betsy Weaver is dead,” David reminded her.

  “What about her estate?”

  “You told me that she was incapable of coming up with original storylines.” Mac ripped open the package.

  As expected, it contained a typewritten manuscript held together with two rubber bands crisscrossing the package. The top page announced the title of the work as Murder in the City. The second line listed Betsy Weaver as the author.

  “Have you ever heard of this book?” Yvonne asked Archie.

  “The title sounds familiar,” she answered, “but I can’t place it.”

  * * * *

  “Sorry for the mess.” Mac slipped some hundred dollar bills into Jackson’s palm to pay for cleaning the carpet where Gnarly had expelled his breakfast during the private flight from McHenry to Reagan National Airport.

  “He doesn’t get car sick.” Mac watched the German shepherd stagger down the steps to the stationary ground where a stretch limousine waited for them. “I’ll give him air sickness pills before the flight back.”

  Jackson said, “Good idea.”

  Struck with a sudden thought, Mac said, “The police told me that you flew the Turners to Los Angeles the day before the Saint Valentine’s Day blizzard.”

  “I’ve flown them out there quite a few times,” the pilot answered with pride.

  Mac asked, “Was Travis Turner on that flight?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jackson said. “Saw him myself. He was sicker than a dog.” Glancing at Gnarly, he chuckled at his impromptu quip.

  “Sick? How? A cold?”

  “It’s not a good idea to fly with a cold, especially a head cold. The pressure can make you feel like your head is going to explode. He had the stomach flu. I suggested that he not go, but Sophia said he had appointments with movie producers.”

  “She told you that?”

  Jackson nodded his head. “He spent the whole flight curled up under a blanket in the back.” The pilot glanced back inside and covered his face to block the smell of Gnarly’s vomit. “At least he didn’t throw up.”

  After thanking Jackson for the flight to Washington, and promising not to let Gnarly eat anything before the return flight that afternoon, Mac descended the stairs to climb into the back of the limousine that would take him to his appointment.

  Reluctantly, Chad Singleton had agreed to see Mac Faraday. The meeting was to take place at an outdoor café along the Potomac River in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. Sick to his stomach, Gnarly rested at Mac’s feet with no interest in stealing food from the other diners.

  “You still look green.” Mac patted the dog on the head with one hand while drinking his Brandy Manhattan with another. Resting his head against Mac’s leg, Gnarly responded to his touch with a long groan.

  Archie was a good influence. Mac was enjoying the finer things in life that he had been unable to afford months before. For the first time, he requested the restaurant’s best brandy for his Manha
ttan—no matter what the price.

  While waiting for Chad Singleton, Mac admired his new pair of leather shoes, purchased at Neiman Marcus. They cost more than his jeans, which had been bought off the clearance rack while on the verge of bankruptcy. The shopping trip followed the dog throwing up into his old loafers.

  Mac never imagined riding in the back of a white stretch limousine. When he had heard the price for an afternoon rental, he felt guilty over spending so much money that he had not earned personally. The pleasure of leaving the pressure of maneuvering his way through airport traffic to a uniformed chauffer overrode his guilt.

  Mac enjoyed seeing the café’s lunch crowd attempting to peer through the limo’s smoked glass to see who the lucky passenger could be. Recalling how he used to do the same thing not too long ago, he chuckled.

  The heir apparent to the Holt millions was one of those who slowed his pace to study the symbol of wealth before sauntering over to Mac’s table. The insignia embroidered on the breast of Chad’s athletic suit announced that he had come from the upscale athletic club down the block. Mac recalled having checked into the cost of a membership years earlier. It far exceeded his cop’s budget.

  Chad Singleton started their conversation without greeting. “My lawyer advised me not to talk to you.” In other words, Mac should chock him showing up as a favor.

  “I’m not a cop anymore.” Mac gestured at his limo. “I’m a millionaire playboy. Sit down and order a drink.”

  Chad whirled around. “Why waste my time if you don’t have the authority to arrest me?”

  “Katrina murdered Niles,” Mac declared one decibel louder than his lunch guest would have preferred. “You knew about it.”

  Chad’s shoulders stiffened.

  “That makes you an accessory.”

  Chad turned to glare at him.

  “I think you’d like a drink,” Mac said.

  All cockiness vaporized. Before taking a seat, Chad peered at the other diners as if to determine if any of them were undercover officers. He noticed the German shepherd lying inert under Mac’s chair. “Is your dog all right?”