5 The Murders at Astaire Castle

by Lauren Carr

  “I’ll be Mr. Congeniality,” Mac said.

  “Do I look like an idiot to you?” Kyle Finch scoffed when Mac accused him of having an affair with Lacey.

  Sitting across the table in the interrogation room, Mac didn’t answer. Instead, he thumbed through the case file he had resting in front of him. He saw Kyle eying the folder with a minute hint of fear, which he masked with a heavy dose of arrogance.

  “My client has over a dozen witnesses to corroborate that he was at the Wisp the evening and night of the murders,” Finch’s lawyer said. “He’s come in here voluntarily in hopes of finding the real killer of two of his dearest friends.”

  “And upon their deaths, he inherited a billion dollar company,” Mac pointed out.

  When his lawyer tried to intervene, Kyle waved him aside. “I’m thirty-two years old and Stan Gould made me his senior VP. All of my friends from MIT, they’re still paying off their student loans. Half are still living in their parents’ basements. I didn’t get where I am today being stupid.”

  “More like being ruthless,” Mac said, “by killing off the competition.”

  “Lacey was Stan Gould’s wife,” Kyle said. “That made her untouchable.”

  “Even if you touched her first?” Mac asked.

  The arrogance slipped from Kyle’s face.

  The lawyer jumped in. “You have no proof—”

  “Yes, we do,” Mac interjected while holding Kyle Finch’s gaze. “There are dozens of pictures across the Internet of the two of them together months before your client introduced her to Stan Gould.” He slid picture after picture of Kyle and Lacey in intimate poses across the table for him and his lawyer to see.

  “That’s impossible,” Finch said in a low voice. “When were these pictures taken? I …”

  “If he was stupid enough to be sleeping with Stan Gould’s wife …”

  Mac cut the lawyer off by holding up his finger. “Lacey was a spy. Her identity was a complete fabrication made up by your client.”

  “That’s not true,” Finch said.

  “Seriously?” Mac chuckled. “A lingerie super-model that no one in the fashion industry has ever heard of? Like you think that cover wouldn’t be uncovered during a murder investigation.” He paused to observe the questioning expression on Kyle’s face. “You met Lacey almost a year ago in Cancun. You hooked up immediately. It was love at first sight for her. At least, that’s what she said on her pages on the social media sites.”

  “Lacey didn’t have any social media pages,” Kyle said. “She was too busy building her career to have one.”

  “You mean as your spy?” Mac leaned across the table at him. “You saw how irresistible Lacey was— how every man wanted her. So you decided to use her gift to your advantage. You whispered your sweet plan in her ear. She’d seduce Stan Gould into a relationship—never letting on that she was already in love with you. Once she had Gould under her thumb, she would use her influence to help you gain control of the company.”

  “You have no proof of any of this,” the lawyer said.

  “We have the emails,” Mac said. “They were all on her laptop and cell phone.”

  “Emails!” Kyle Finch’s face was red. “We never exchanged emails.”’ He whirled to his lawyer. “They’re setting me up.” He pointed at Mac. “You can’t get away with this. We’re going to fight it.”

  Mac slapped his hand down on the pictures. “Tell me this is not you and Lacey in these pictures dated last year.”

  “I didn’t know she was—” Kyle stopped to rub his face with his hands. “Pages on the Internet? Pictures? Email? She set me up,” he muttered while staring at the pictures. “I don’t know how she … she set me up.”

  “This interview is over.” The lawyer grabbed Kyle’s arm and pulled him to his feet.

  While the lawyer dragged him out, Kyle kept looking over his shoulder at the folder on the table. “The bitch set me up,” he murmured over and over again.

  Mac continued staring at the pictures scattered across the table where he had set them out to show—and shock—Kyle Finch. They had their desired effect—only not in the way Mac had expected.

  “I think you got him,” Archie’s voice broke through Mac’s thoughts. She laid her hands on his shoulders and squeezed.

  “Yeah,” he murmured.

  Archie moved around the table and sat down across from him. “Why the look?”

  Bogie came in from where he had been watching in the observation room. “That interview looked good. You certainly rattled him.”

  “Kyle Finch is not the type to be rattled easily.” Mac picked up one of the pictures. “She set him up.”

  “Why?” Archie asked. “I mean, how could she? Lacey’s one of the murder victims.”

  “If anything, her setting him up gave him additional motive for killing her,” Bogie agreed.

  “Think about it,” Mac said. “Finch is right. He’s not stupid.” He held up one of the pictures of Kyle Finch and Lacey together for them to see. “No way would he have allowed pictures of the two of them together to end up on the Internet where Gould and the whole world could see. We need to find out who took these pictures and who posted them.”

  “At places like Cancun,” Archie said, “All you have to do is slip some money into a local’s pocket and they’ll be snapping pictures until you tell them to stop.”

  ““And post them on the Internet?”

  “They’re Lacey’s sites,” Archie said. “She posted them.”

  “Do you know that for sure?” Mac asked.

  Archie sat up straight. Her eyes flashed with offense at his suggestion of her being wrong or sloppy about her research.

  “I’ve investigated more than one murder case where someone set up a page on a social media site under someone else’s name and identity,” Mac said. “It’s surprisingly easy … and pretty scary, too.” He stacked the pictures back into the case file. “Let’s start with finding this Taylor Jones that Raymond Hollister was looking for. Lacey was posing as a lingerie model. Maybe her real name was Taylor Jones. We need to question Karin Bond, Lacey’s assistant, to find out what she knows about her boss’s life.”

  “I don’t know how much help she’ll be,” Bogie said. “According to her statement, she’s only been working for Lacey for six weeks. She came on to work for her the week before Lacey married Gould.”

  “That’s enough time to have seen or met someone who would have reason to kill Lacey and frame Finch for it.”

  “Are you saying you don’t think they had an affair?” Archie reached for the case file. “But these pictures—”

  “I believe he had an affair with Lacey.” Mac opened the file. “I even believe he set her up to seduce Gould in order to help him take over the company. What I’m beginning to doubt is that Finch would be so sloppy as to exchange damaging emails that he knows are admissible into evidence with Lacey and allow pictures to be taken of the two of them that could be very easily found.”

  Bogie nodded his head. “So you’re thinking someone else collected all of this evidence of their affair and plan so that they could kill Lacey and Gould, and frame Finch to get away with murder.”

  “With the motive being to steal a hundred million dollars from Gould’s rainy day account,” Mac said. “Whoever did this has to have had access to know about Gould’s secret account and transfer the funds. Plus, they have to have some motive for getting David and Hollister out of the way.”

  Tonya buzzed them on the intercom. “Hey, Bogie … Mac, Karin Bond is here to see you two.”

  “Perfect timing,” Mac said in a low voice.

  Dressed in a heavy coat and a floppy black hat with her dark hair sticking out in disarray, Karin Bond was huddled on the sofa, clutching her big purse, when Mac led Bogie and Archie into the receptio
n area. Seeing Mac, she stood up. “Mr. Faraday, have you got any news yet about who killed Lacey?”

  “We’ve got some leads,” Mac replied. “I’m glad you’re here because we were going to call you. Some questions have come up.”

  With her index finger, she pushed her glasses up on her nose. “What type of questions?”

  “Does Lacey have any family?” Bogie asked.

  “No,” Karin answered quickly. “I didn’t know a lot about Lacey. She was really a very private person—she could come across as almost rude and inconsiderate sometimes. It was because she was afraid of people hurting her. She told me that she was an orphan. She grew up on the streets in Germany. She was a thief for a while.”

  “A thief?” Archie gasped. “She told you that.”

  “Yes,” Karin nodded. “She was only a young girl when gypsies recruited her and taught her to be a pickpocket—”

  “Like in Oliver Twist.” Archie’s tone was doubtful.

  “Then they found out she had other talents,” Karin said. “Lacey was discovered by an agent who she had targeted for a mark. He turned the tables and made her into a star.”

  “Who no one heard of,” Mac said. “Lacey was never a super-model. Her whole background is fake.”

  In silence, Karin stared at him while they studied her for her reaction. “Maybe. I wouldn’t know. To tell you the truth, I didn’t care what she was as long as I got paid. I’d been out of work for two years. Lacey hired me to do her clothes and make her appointments and all that crap, and she paid me good. Now she’s dead and I’m out of work again. That’s why I’m here. I can’t afford to stay at the hotel. Gould Enterprises won’t pay my bill. I have to go back to New York—today. If I give you my address and phone number, can I go home?”

  Mac and Archie looked to Bogie for his reaction. Sympathy came to the deputy chief’s eyes. “I’m very sorry that you’ve ended up in this position.”

  Fearing that Bogie was about to send the witness on her way, Mac interrupted, “If we could just have another couple of days …”

  “Are you willing to pay for my room at the Wisp?” Karin’s scowl caused her cheeks to push her glasses up on her face.

  “No,” Mac replied before cutting off her scoff. “But I’ll put you up at the Spencer Inn. I’ll arrange for a nice suite for you and all of the resort’s facilities free of charge—including meals and the spa. Think of it as a nice vacation to help relieve the stress from the traumatic experience you’ve gone through.”

  The more he talked, the wider her eyes became.

  “Your police department can do that?” she asked.

  “I can do that,” Mac said.

  Bogie smiled. “That will solve all of our problems. Thank you, Mac.”

  “But—” Karin stopped before continuing. “I need to get a job.”

  “We need to find out who killed your boss,” Mac said. “All we need is a few more days.”

  “And if you aren’t any closer after I spend a few days hanging out by your indoor pool …”

  “You can go home with memories of a great vacation,” Mac said.

  She gathered up her purse and closed up her coat. She regarded Mac with what appeared to be suspicion. “I can order anything I want off the menu?”

  “Anything you want. Everything will be on the house.”

  “Can I check in today?”

  “Your suite will be ready by the time you get up to the inn,” Mac assured her.

  If anything, she peered at him with even more suspicion. Her eyes narrowed to a glare.

  “We do have some more questions about Lacey,” Mac asked.

  “I do want to help,” she said.

  “While working for her, did she ever mention or did you ever run across someone by the name of Taylor Jones?”

  “No,” she replied without hesitation.

  “Are you sure of that?” Mac peered closely at her.

  “Now that you mention it,” she said slowly while tapping her lip with her forefinger, “There was a message that I took the day Lacey left to come here. It was a woman, and she was mad as hell when I told her that Lacey wasn’t there. She cussed up a storm and said to tell Lacey that Taylor had called and that she was going to kill the little bitch.”

  “What was she mad about?” Mac asked.

  “I have no idea,” she said. “But I remember she gave me the name of Taylor Jones.”

  “How did Lacey react when you gave her the message?” Mac asked.

  “Never gave it to her,” Karin said. “She was dead before I could deliver it. Guess Taylor Jones wasn’t kidding.”

  Bogie paused in where he was taking down the information. “Did you get a phone number?”

  “No, she didn’t leave one.” She sighed heavily. “I’d really like to go home. I don’t feel safe here. Wasn’t your police chief shot yesterday?”

  “Yes, he was,” Archie said. “But Bogie is the deputy chief and they have the best security up at the Spencer Inn.”

  “Isn’t that the Inn where a man was poisoned yesterday?” she asked.

  “That wasn’t the fault of the Inn,” Mac said. “If you can help us catch this killer …”

  “How is your police chief, by the way?” she asked.

  “He’s going to be fine,” Archie said. “We expect that he’ll be able to come home tomorrow.”

  “Then I guess this killer isn’t completely infallible,” Karin said before turning her attention back to Mac. “Do they have a salon where I can get a massage at the Spencer Inn?”

  “You can get anything you want,” Mac said.

  A smile crossed her face when Karin hurried out of the police station.

  “Is that going to be a habit?” Bogie asked Mac. “You putting up witnesses for a vacation at the Spencer Inn?”

  “I’m not as nice as you think,” Mac said. “Believe it or not, I have my own agenda. At the Inn, security can keep a close eye on her and report back to us. I believe in keeping suspects and witnesses close.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Are you sure you should even be up?” Chelsea held onto David’s arm to ensure he didn’t fall. “It was only yesterday that a bullet went through your gut.”

  “The nurse ordered me to get up and walk.” His legs feeling shaky, David entwined his fingers through hers and clung tightly to her arm while they strolled down the corridor. “The sooner I get up and about, the faster I’ll heal.”

  They formed quite a crowd in the hallway. Molly was on the other side of Chelsea and two uniformed police officers brought up the rear. Pushing an empty wheelchair, Zigler was ready for if his chief overdid it and needed a ride back to his room.

  “As long as I have to walk the halls, I might as well go over to the psychiatric wing to visit Riley,” David told Chelsea. "Maybe he’s remembered something useful.”

  “I tried to talk to him yesterday and he still didn’t recognize me,” she said.

  “That was yesterday.” He stopped at the nurses’ station outside the doors that blocked off the psychiatric wing.

  The nurse smiled at David while he signed the register. “Riley Adams? The expert from Boston is supposed to be here to see him tomorrow. He’s a little more lucid today. He’s not as violent either. But we still have him restrained. For your safety, don’t loosen the restraints.”

  “See?” David said to Chelsea. “A lot can happen in one day. They’ve been adjusting his meds. Eventually, they have to hit on something that’ll work.” He let out a chuckle. “Look at me if you don’t believe what can happen in one day. Less than forty-eight hours ago, I was beating your butt in a foot race.”

  The nurse gestured at the two uniformed officers. “Are they going in with you, Chief O’Callaghan?”

  Leaning on top of the desk,
David tried to pretend he wasn’t catching his breath. “No.” When both the nurse and Chelsea objected, he put out his arm to stop them. “I want to see him alone.”

  “What?” Chelsea turned to the officers for them to make David change his mind.

  “I want to see him by myself,” David said. “Man to man. Bud to bud. Maybe it’ll be less stressful.”

  “If he remembers you.”

  “I was his best friend.” David tightened the belt to his bathrobe. “Or maybe he’ll think I’m another patient. The last couple of times we tried to see him, I was in my uniform. That could have stressed him out and made him see me as a threat.” He shrugged. “Let me try this. I know what’s going to happen to him at the psychiatric hospital. He’ll be so pumped up on meds that we’ll never be able to find out what happened to Damian Wagner. We’ll be lucky if he’ll ever be able to remember us. He’ll be totally gone and right now, he’s the only possible witness we have left. If I can get through to him, he might be able to answer the question of why I got shot and Raymond Hollister was killed.”

  Tears came to her eyes. “When you put it that way, I almost wish he’d been left out in the wild living like an animal. He was probably happier there.” She let out a laugh. “Riley always fantasized about being a werewolf.”

  “Wolf man,” he corrected her with a brush of his finger across her cheek. “There’s a difference. I’m going in alone.”

  Chelsea eyed the two officers.

  “We’ve got your back, Chief,” Zigler said. “If you need anything, you holler.”

  “I can take care of myself.” David stepped toward the door.

  The nurse buzzed the lock to open the door for him to press on through.

  With effort, David refused to let them see him lean against the wall, even though the sutures in his side were screaming in pain. At the door leading into Riley Adams’ room, he paused to clutch his side and take in a deep breath. Forcing a smile through the pain, he went in.