by Carr, Lauren
By the time Mac stood up, the dog had become aware of the trick. “Very clever.” He held up the jacket to show the dog. “He took off his coat to throw you off his scent.”
Enraged, Gnarly erupted with a round of barks. Charging the bar, he planted his front paws on the counter and growled at his mirrored image behind it.
Mac searched for places that Travis could be hiding. With no furnishings, there weren’t any.
Behind the bar, he could see his own image looking back at him. It was the same two-way mirror Pay Back had used to watch Katrina’s every move.
The two-way mirror!
“Get down!”
The mirror exploded.
Mac plunged Gnarly to the floor.
A rain of shattered glass fell on them.
“Stay!” Mac jumped up to his knees and braced the dog against the bar while firing his father’s pistol into the darkness of the secret room.
When it was over, all was quiet.
They could hear the sirens of the police and paramedics racing to Spencer Point.
Mac rose to his feet. Freed, Gnarly shook to send the glass dust in his fur flying before planting his front paws on the bar to observe the damage. He uttered a whine.
Falling forward onto the bar, Travis laid face down in the broken glass. A pool of blood formed under him.
Mac took the gun from his hand. “Travis?”
“Mac,” he gasped, “don’t worry about me. I’m world famous. I’m going to live forever.”
With that, bestselling author Travis Turner gasped his last breath.
Epilogue
Ironically, Travis Turner’s killing spree didn’t shock the media as much as the motive behind it: to conceal the identity of who had really written his books. The police found twelve completed manuscripts in the famous author’s study. Each had Betsy Weaver’s name written on the title page.
They also uncovered Katrina Holt Singleton’s wedding ring along with a dreadlock wig splattered with Travis’s and Gnarly’s blood.
A DVD that Travis had hidden in his safe proved his motive for killing Gordon and Prissy Hardwick. The disc contained a security recording filmed from their back deck the night of Katrina’s murder. It showed Gnarly ambushing Travis when he left Katrina’s home via the secret door. During the attack, Gnarly pulled the wig from Travis’s head to reveal his face before he beat the dog senseless with the bat he was carrying.
A search of Travis’s bedroom closet turned up the baseball bat. Police found traces of Gnarly’s blood and fur on it. Forensic evidence also revealed it to be the weapon used to crush Katrina Singleton’s throat.
The publishing industry reeled for weeks in response to the news about America’s hottest mystery writer being a fraud. While deciding what course of action to take, Travis’s publisher yanked Travis’s, or rather Betsy’s, fifth bestseller from publication, losing millions of dollars on hardbacks already printed with Travis Turner’s name on the cover. In the end, they set a new publication date to release what they predicted to be the most awaited book of the year: a re-release of A Death in Manhattan with Betsy Weaver’s name on the front cover.
Meanwhile, Sophia Hainsworth dropped the Turner name before her chartered jet touched down in New York. A self-proclaimed victim of Travis Turner’s con, she went on the talk show circuit telling and re-telling how the man she loved had misled her.
Truly believing he was a writer, she had been duped into helping him set up a phony alibi for Katrina’s murder. She claimed Travis had told her that he was testing out a plotline for one of his books. Also, he explained away the dog bites with a dramatic story about saving a lost child from a pack of wolves during the blizzard.
Within a week of the news breaking, Sophia accepted a multi-million dollar book deal to pen her memoirs about her marriage to the famous bestselling author who had conned the world.
Archie turned down Sophia’s request to ghost write the piece.
With all the sensational coverage of Travis Turner’s scandal, the residents of Spencer forgot about their phony police chief until a Mercedes registered to their mobster mayor turned up at the bottom of one of Deep Creek Lake’s coves. Roy Herman’s body was in the trunk. He had been shot in the back of the head and had a black diamond tucked in his pants pocket.
In celebration of the Fourth of July, Mac Faraday hosted his first official party as master of Spencer Manor. Cocktail hour would be followed by a cookout of steaks, chops, chicken, and grilled lobster. After sunset, Spencer was going to be treated to the biggest fireworks show it had ever seen.
To introduce himself to Deep Creek society, Mac had invited all of his neighbors and gifted each of them with a party goodie in the form of new leather wallets and purses to make up for what his dog had stolen.
Taking up camp near the outside bar, Violet kept the bartender hopping to keep her martini glass filled. David watched her from a few feet away while sitting with Yvonne, Mac, Archie, Ben and his wife Catherine, and Bogie. Jeff Ingles lingered nearby while ensuring his employees were on top of things. Three cooks from the Inn scurried inside and out in preparation for the grilling. Gnarly cruised the guests and staff for snacks and pettings. Between munchies, he helped himself to cookies that Violet had stashed in a pouch hanging off the arm of her wheelchair.
“If you didn’t keep returning Lee Dorcas’s wallet to Travis, then who did?” Bogie asked Mac while sipping his beer.
Mac laughed, “The only one I can think of is Gnarly. Remember when the police came here after he brought home Dorcas’s head?”
“Gnarly was going nuts,” David recalled.
“He also freaked out when the Hardwicks’ killer was planting the bomb at their house,” Archie said. “It was Travis.”
“But he didn’t go nuts when Roy Phillips came out to see Archie until he attacked her,” Mac said. “Nor did he react that way when I was interviewing housekeepers. The only one he tried to attack was Travis. Looking back, like Travis playing Pay Back to get back at Katrina for rejecting him, I think Gnarly embarked on his own campaign against Travis to make him pay for getting away with murdering his mistress.”
“Kind of sophisticated thinking for a dog, don’t you think?” Ben chuckled.
“So is petty thievery to alleviate boredom.” Mac shrugged with a smile. “Gnarly stole or found that wallet. He brought that sealed manuscript to us. I doubt if he knew the significance of it, but he did sense that it had to be important.” He patted the dog on the head. “Circumstantial evidence points to Gnarly.” Mac’s touch startling him; the German shepherd yanked his head out of the pouch of cookies.
Jeff stopped by their table with a bottle of wine. “Who was Katrina arguing with that night that she hit me with her car? Was it Phillips or whatever his name was?”
Mac answered, “It was Lee Dorcas. He had checked into the Inn one week after Niles Holt’s murder, the same night as the hit and run.”
“What was he doing here?” Archie asked. “Was he stalking Katrina after all?”
Mac reminded David, “Do you remember Dorcas’s lawyer telling us that shortly after Holts’s murder, Lee Dorcas deposited one hundred thousand dollars into his account? He never said where he got it.”
“It couldn’t have been a payoff for killing Holt,” David said. “Dorcas had an airtight alibi.”
“Even so, if I was accused of murder, especially by someone I already despised, I’d start nosing around. After the police talked to Lee Dorcas, he came out here to see what was going on.”
“He blackmailed Katrina,” David concluded.
“Look at it from Katrina’s side,” Mac suggested. “She married Niles Holt intending for him to have a simple accident, but he fights back. She ends up with a bruise on her face, a torn sweater, and a missing five carat necklace. She has to come up with another story. So she used Lee Dorcas, banking on him not having an alibi. Then, to make matters worse, the chief of police comes up with not only a witness, but physical evidence against he
r. She has to keep him in line. At the same time, she has the man she accused of killing her husband threatening to blow the case wide open.” He chuckled, “She was between a rock and a hard place. Dorcas had to have been following her and saw her having dinner with the chief of police. They met in the garden afterwards to discuss a settlement in exchange for his silence. She paid him to go away.”
Jeff said, “What I heard was not a negotiation, it was an argument.”
Mac explained, “First, Katrina stole from him, and then she tried to frame him for murder. Dorcas had to have been furious with her.”
“That’s why it cost her so much for his silence.” Seeing that everyone had finished their appetizers, Jeff whispered into his transmitter for the busboys to clear the tables and the chefs to prepare the grill for the main course.
Catherine asked, “Did any of these murders have anything to do with Emma Turner’s or Milo Ford’s murders?”
David said, “The gun we found in the bag in the secret room turned out to be the one used to kill Travis’s stepmother.”
“Emma Turner was an informant,” Bogie revealed. “She was into drugs and Milo was her supplier. When Ol’ Pat caught her with some cocaine, she struck a deal to snitch on Milo. A few weeks later, she got killed.”
“Dad was convinced Milo did it.”
Bogie told them, “A few months later, Milo got killed off.”
“Travis had to have found out about that secret entrance into the Singleton house somehow,” Mac said. “His stepmother must have told him.”
Catherine asked Mac, “When did you first suspect Travis in all this?”
“When it came out that he had ratted David out, I knew Travis wasn’t what he appeared to be.”
“I thought he was a jerk,” Yvonne said, “but never thought he was a killer.”
Mac agreed. “Just because someone is a phony doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s a murderer.”
Ben asked him, “When did it occur to you that he was a murderer?”
“One hint was when he killed Betsy,” David answered.
“If he hadn’t killed Betsy, he may have gotten away with everything,” Mac said. “The mistakes he made in covering up her death revealed how little he knew about the very thing he supposedly wrote about: putting her in the fridge on her back, and then dumping her face down next to the pool. Sloppy.”
“Still, Travis was very clever,” Ben countered. “The Hardwicks’ murders and the way he set up his alibi for Katrina’s murder wasn’t the work of a dummy.”
Mac said, “He stole both of those crimes from my mother’s books: setting up the flight to California with Betsy pretending to be him, sending the Hardwicks a gift card to the spa. He put a lot of work into those murders. He didn’t have the luxury of time to plan when he killed Betsy.”
“If he was in love with Katrina why did he kill her?” Catherine wanted to know.
David explained, “Travis was hot for Katrina, but he wasn’t in love with her. He had plenty of other women, but Katrina rejected him.” He sighed. “I really don’t think she meant to. I think, like I thought Yvonne would never be interested in a guy like me—” He kissed Yvonne’s hand. “I think Katrina, being from the same side of the tracks, assumed Travis wouldn’t be interested in her.”
“Travis could have any woman he wanted,” Mac said, “except Katrina. It must have bothered him someplace in his psyche. Maybe he saw Katrina as the one he could never have and became obsessed with having her.”
“That was twelve years ago,” Yvonne said. “What about last year?”
Archie explained, “When Katrina ran into David and Travis at the Inn, she naturally directed her attention at her first love, David, who happened to be available. Once again she rejected Travis, even after all his success. His ego couldn’t handle it.”
Catherine asked Mac, “But when did you come to actually suspect him?”
“Something my mother observed in her journal clicked with me. She noted that Betsy was always working so hard while Travis was playing. Then, Yvonne mentioned that she wrote his papers in school. Between that, and seeing how close he stuck to the case, I started thinking, ‘If he isn’t a writer, then why is he so interested in this case?’”
Yvonne asked, “If Katrina killed Niles Holt, and the evidence showed that she did, then why did she come back here? If she hadn’t, then Travis wouldn’t have seen her and thought that she rejected him for David again.” She gasped. “If she had stayed away, she would have gotten away with murder!”
Mac said, “Quite simply, Katrina thought she could get away with murder.”
Having wheeled over to listen in on the conversation, Violet interjected, “She was stupid with beauty.”
“Think about it.” Catherine noted, “Katrina married Niles Holt and killed him for his money. Then, Chad Singleton married her for her money and let Travis kill her. Now, he’s living high on the hog with Niles Holt’s money. Where’s the justice in that?”
“Oh, but there is justice.” Archie smiled at Mac.
He said, “Archie has been a very busy girl. She went digging through galaxies in cyberspace where she didn’t belong and found out that Niles Holt fathered a daughter twenty-eight years ago.”
“She’s a single mother of two living on food stamps in Florida,” Archie told them. “Ed Willingham is going to represent her in an inheritance suit and the Forsythe Foundation is picking up the tab. Robin wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Since Katrina inherited Niles Holt’s estate by illegal means, as in murder, then she had no right to his fortune,” Mac explained. “As a result, Chad Singleton has no claim to all those millions he had inherited from her.”
“Excuse me.” David went down to the dock.
A silence fell over the table.
Mac went to the bar, got two beers, and joined David on the dock.
“Sorry.” Mac handed one of the beers to him.
“She trusted me,” David said. “I saw a side of her that she was afraid to show anyone else. She was very insecure.”
“She was also a murderer,” Mac said.
“I know.” David shrugged. “What are you going to do now?”
“Be a rich playboy.”
“Whose hobby happens to be murder,” David laughed. “Robin made her fortune off Mickey Forsythe chasing killers.”
“I’m not Mickey Forsythe.”
“Sure, you’re not. Next thing you’ll be telling me is that Gnarly isn’t Diablo.”
Smiling, Mac turned away to look up at his guests on the deck, patio, and inside the house—all around him. He still had to remind himself that it was all his. He glanced down at his suit, which he had tailored for close to twenty thousand dollars. This time writing the check was painless.
As if he were reading Mac’s mind, David grinned at him.
“Okay,” Mac whispered, “but let this be our little secret.” He sucked in a deep breath. “David, there’s something we need to talk about.”
“Dad told me about you years ago.”
“Really? You’ve known all along?”
“But he didn’t know where you were,” David explained. “When Robin found you and told Dad, he told me.”
“All these years, you knew where I was?”
“I knew everything about you.”
“And you didn’t mind my moving out here?”
David laughed. “Mac, I showed up on your doorstep within hours of you racing into town in that Viper.”
“You were waiting for me,” Mac said.
“Weren’t you curious about me?” David asked. “I’m sure Robin mentioned me in her journal.”
“Now that you’ve gotten to know me, what do you think about having a brother?”
Looking out across the lake, David sipped his beer. “Mac, since meeting you, I’ve been fired from my job, accused of murder, and shot twice.” His shoulders shook with laughter. “I haven’t had so much fun since the police academy.”
C
arrying her glass of wine, Archie came out onto the dock. “What are you two talking about?” In contrast to her white lace cocktail dress, she was barefoot, as always.
“Who stole my cookies?” Violet loudly demanded to know. “Our waiter is a thief!”
David could see Yvonne looking for his help while Violet picked a fight with Jeff Ingles. “I believe I’m being summoned.” He jogged up to the deck.
“What are you two up to?” Archie asked Mac.
“Shenanigans.” Mac pulled her to him. “Now, where were we?”
“Where were we when?”
“You name it.” He wrapped his arms around her waist. “I’ve been trying to kiss you for the longest time, but it seems like every time I get you this close—”
“Somebody interrupts us.” She wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Why is that?”
“Can’t we talk about that later?” She pressed her lips firmly against his. She sighed when they parted. “Finally.”
Their romantic bliss ended when screams erupted from up on the deck.
“Gnarly! No!” Jeff was yelling.
Partiers scattered in an effort to escape. Servers carrying trays of glasses collided, spilling drinks and breaking glasses. One of the buffet tables overturned. Spilt guacamole and salsa caused a slippery escape route for the stampeding guests.
To Mac’s and Archie’s horror, they saw the source of the chaos.
Carrying a tray covered with thick steaks, the chef ran to and fro, trying to escape the host’s dog. Seeing his only escape, he raced toward the lake. From the deck above, Gnarly took a flying leap and hit the cook in the back to send him and the steaks flying.
Oblivious to the screams, Gnarly plopped down in the midst of the meat to feed on his kill.
“Gnarly! I’m going to kill you!”
The End
About the Author
Lauren Carr fell in love with mysteries when her mother read Perry Mason to her at bedtime. The first installment in the Joshua Thornton mysteries, A Small Case of Murder was a finalist for the Independent Publisher Book Award. A Reunion to Die For was released in hardback in June 2007. Both of these books are in re-release.