Blast from the Past (A Mac Faraday Mystery)

by Lauren Carr

  Leaving the cruiser in the bed and breakfast driveway, Mac strolled over to the cottage. A yellow tabby cat greeted him when he stepped onto the walkway. After escorting the visitor to the door, the feline rubbed against Mac’s leg until the door was opened by a tiny elderly woman dressed in a rose-colored house dress. The cat scurried inside.

  “Hello, ma’am.” Mac showed her the police shield he wore clipped to his belt next to his service weapon. “I’m Mac Faraday with the Spencer police department. I’m investigating the death of Mary Catherine Skeltner, the woman who lives across the road from you.”

  The old woman peered up at Mac with wide eyes. “Pat? Chief Pat?” A wide smile crossed her face, pushing her wrinkled cheeks up to make her eyes narrow slits of grayish-blue.

  Mac felt a solemn smile come to his lips. He had seen several pictures of his birth father. The resemblance was striking. “No, Mac. I’m Mac Faraday. I live on—”

  “They told me that you died several years ago. Your son David is supposed to be chief now.”

  Concluding that setting her straight would be a lost cause, Mac moved on to the reason for his visit. “I was wondering if you had noticed anything going on across the road this morning.”

  “Did you say Mary Catherine was dead?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid so.”

  Her face scrunched up in a scowl. “Her husband did it,” she said in a harsh tone.

  “Why would he kill her?”

  “Because he didn’t like living with a sick woman,” she said. “Everything was fine when they had money and he could buy all his toys—expensive running shoes and travel all over the place to run-run-run-run, that’s all he does is run—going to this marathon and that one and leaving his poor wife all alone and sick. I’m surprised he didn’t kill her before now.” She pointed a gnarled up finger at him. “I know you’ll catch him, Chief Pat. He won’t get away with it. You’ll catch him—like you always do.”

  “Did you see him go running this morning?”

  “Every morning.” She nodded her head. “He went out running while I was in the kitchen putting on the tea kettle.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Six-thirty,” she said. “I get up at six-thirty every day. I don’t need an alarm. I just wake up—have for years from when I used to teach school. Taught over in Oakland for forty years.”

  Mac frowned. “Did you see anyone else come by the house across the road after Mr. Skeltner left?”

  “A boy on a bike,” she answered. “The bike was silver. He was wearing black sweats with a hood up over his head.” She stepped outside and pointed across the road to where she saw him. “He rode up and then got off and walked his bike around back behind the house. That was about fifteen minutes later. I know because I let my tea seep for fifteen minutes—” She tapped Mac’s chest to make her point. “—after I put in the tea ball. I was pouring my tea when that boy rode up.”

  “About how old was this boy?”

  Her face scrunched up in deep thought, she stared at the finger she was pressing against his chest. “Teenager. Maybe middle teens. Sixteen?”

  Following the line from her finger poking him in the chest to the home across the road, Mac turned. “On a bike, huh?”

  After climbing into the cruiser, Mac slowly drove along the road that followed the lake shore to the bridge and across to the café. He had difficulty keeping his eyes on the road while searching the bushes and hiking trails. Russell Skeltner could have hidden the bike to ride back to kill his wife, and then speeding back to hide it, all in order to get to the café in time to establish an alibi.

  Only Russell Skeltner was much too tall and solidly built to be mistaken for a teenaged boy.

  Maybe it was a teenager looking to steal some of Mrs. Skeltner’s drugs. Nah! Russell Skeltner had to be behind it somehow.

  At a pull-off right before the bridge, Mac spied the two elderly gentlemen who had called to him while he was jogging that morning. They were now packing up their gear. Year round residents of Spencer, they would fish from the same spot every morning when he would run by. As they had that morning, they would also notice everyone who crossed the bridge.

  “Hey, there!” Mac waved to them after parking the cruiser in the dirt boat launch where one of the fishermen had parked his old truck. “How’re the fish biting?”

  Spying the cruiser, the two men exchanged quick glances before strolling up to where Mac was sitting in the car. “Hey, aren’t you Mac Faraday?” One of them peered at him. “Robin Spencer’s boy?”

  After Mac confirmed that he was, they both looked over the SUV, noting the gold lettering that identified it as a Spencer police cruiser. “Since when are you working for the police?” one asked. The other inquired if Mac had lost all of his millions of dollars in the stock market.

  “No, I’m working as a consultant for the Spencer police department.” Mac assured them by showing them his police shield. “Only on this one case. A woman died suddenly this morning at the Skeltner Cove B and B—”

  “Mrs. Skeltner?” The one fisherman jabbed his buddy with his elbow before telling him, “She was real sick with cancer.”

  “Is that the woman whose husband goes running by here every day while we’re fishing?”

  “Saw him just this morning,” the other man replied. “Not long after you went by with Gnarly. How is Gnarly?”

  “Gnarly is fine,” Mac assured him.

  “Why isn’t he helping you on this case?” the old man asked in an accusatory tone.

  Stunned by the question, Mac could only shake his head and shrug.

  “Did Mr. Skeltner run by before or after I caught me that foot-long catfish?” the other man scratched the side of his head.

  “It was either before or after,” his companion answered.

  Looking at Mac, the fisherman nodded his head. “Definitely before or after I caught that two-foot long catfish.”

  “Poor guy,” his friend shook his head. “Wife sick all those years, then goes into remission only to die. When did it happen? How’d she die?”

  “Shortly before seven o’clock,” Mac answered. “By any chance, did you see someone ride by on a bike about that time?”

  They both nodded. “Dressed in a black hoodie. He rode by heading in the opposite direction,” one replied. “Couldn’t miss him. He was speeding because when Skeltner was running up on the bridge, he almost hit Skeltner or something. I don’t know what. All of a sudden, Skeltner yelled and was swearing at the kid on the bike.”

  “I saw Skeltner make an obscene gesture at him,” his buddy confirmed with a nod of his head. “Didn’t see what he did, but it really ticked Skeltner off.”

  Mac blinked. “You mean you saw them both at the same time?”

  Nodding their heads quickly, one asked, “Why? Is that important?”

  “Yes.”

  “Russell Skeltner had his wife killed.” Mac followed David from one desk to the other through the police station while making his case.

  After returning from the cafe, the police chief was busy doing the mundane administrative chore of passing out messages, notices, and other types of office drudgery. Even though he could delegate the duties to Tonya, he preferred to do most of them himself.

  “Well, that’s going to be pretty hard for you to prove,” David laughed while shoving an invitation to a police-firefighter ballgame into his hand, “considering that you’re his alibi and the neighbor saw some kid in a black hoodie sneaking in while he was out running.”

  Folding up the notice without reading it, Mac shot back, “Then he had the kid in the black hoodie kill her for him while he was out setting up an alibi. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Just your luck that you happened to be on hand to become that alibi,” David said with a smirk.
/>   “They may be able to collect DNA from the contact lens,” Mac said. “The problem is getting a suspect to compare it to.”

  “Why are you so convinced Skeltner is in on it?” David asked. “The woman was strung out on drugs. It could have been a kid after her meds.”

  “Skeltner didn’t even try to appear remorseful about her being dead,” Mac said.

  David stopped and turned to him. “Did you say she had cancer?”

  Mac nodded his head. “For the last three years.”

  “After years of watching his wife suffer, maybe Skeltner felt relief over her being out of her misery,” David said in a gentle tone. “I’ll admit that I felt relief when Dad finally passed. It’s hard to watch a loved one suffer.”

  With a swallow, Mac pushed the image of the father he never met suffering a long, painful death and focused on the dead woman he had examined at the bottom of a flight of stairs. The image of Russell Skeltner’s cocky smile came to the forefront. “Maybe he decided to help her along by having someone come in to kill her while he was setting me up to alibi him. Whoever it was, he’s missing a contact lens, and we’ve got it.”

  “I’ll call forensics to make sure they don’t sit on that evidence.” The paperwork dispersed, David jogged up the steps to his office.

  Without waiting for an invitation, Mac followed him into his office. “What did you find out at the Dockside Café after I left?”

  “The feds are taking the lead in both the shoot out and the apparent poisoning.” David flipped through a stack of envelopes left in the center of his desk. “No surprise there. As thrilling as it is to be in charge of a multiple homicide, I really don’t relish being involved in a mob case.” He waved an envelope at Mac. “But from what little I know about organized crime, with Tommy Cruze dead, the contract on Archie is no more. Who’s going to pay for hitting her? My guess is that she’s safe now, but I’m not calling our people off security detail until we get a confirmation from the feds.”

  “Neither am I.” Mac sighed with relief. “But it looks good.” They were both safe. “Do you believe Richardson and his wife when they say Ray Bonito was behind the hit men in the parking lot?”

  “Tommy Cruze was a legitimate businessman. Why would anyone want to hit him?” David said in a mocking tone. “Delaney agrees that it’s most likely Ray Bonito. He ran the day-to-day operation while Cruze was in jail. When he got sprung, Cruze was expecting to take up where he had left off, and he wasn’t known for taking no for an answer.”

  “So Bonito decided to send a hit squad to take Cruze out of the picture permanently,” Mac said.

  “That’s the way they do it in the mob.” Unwilling to deal with the stack of paperwork, David dropped the envelopes onto his desk.

  Recalling Randi Finnegan’s sudden departure with the café owner and her daughter, Mac said, “Or that hit squad could have been after someone else.”

  “You mentioned something about that earlier.” David’s head jerked up from the pile of mail. “What were you talking about?”

  “You were inside when Finnegan scurried the café owner Leah and her daughter out of there.”

  “That’s right,” David said. “I thought they were removing the little girl from the scene.”

  Mac’s eye caught that of the police chief.

  “Are you kidding me?” David demanded to know. “Don’t tell me that the café owner—”

  “Her name is Leah,” Mac said. “At least that’s the name Finnegan told me.”

  David gripped his hips with his hands. “Is there anyone in Spencer who’s not in the witness protection program?” He grabbed the side of his head while shaking it. “Then those gunmen could have been going after her. Who are they hiding her from?”

  “A West Coast crime syndicate.”

  “Great,” David said with heavy sarcasm. He wiped his hands against each other and then waved them both in the air as a gesture of tossing the matter aside. “Glad it’s not our problem.”

  “The hit men outside could have been after either the café owner or Cruze,” Mac said. “It’s also up in the air as to who was the intended target of the poisoning. Who planted it? Richardson to take out Cruze? Whose side is Richardson really on? Cruze’s or Bonito’s?”

  “Not our problem,” David repeated, with a shrug. “Let’s deal with what is our problem. You say Skeltner hired the guy on the bike to kill his wife while he set you up to be his alibi. Find the guy on the bike, or at least the bike.”

  “That should be easy,” Mac said. “Here on Deep Creek Lake, there should only be a few hundred bikes.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Oh, no!” Archie cried into the phone. “You can’t do that! Can’t you give me just another hour? Forensics should be here any minute.”

  “I’m sorry, Archie,” Misty replied. “But my schedule is full and I have other clients waiting. This Pekingese has been trying to get in for three weeks.”

  “A Pekingese? Not a Pekingese.”

  Gnarly’s head snapped up and around from where he was involved in a staring contest with Sari. He was lying in his favorite spot on the loveseat. Clutching her toy collie, the little girl sat on the sofa across from him.

  “I feel for Gnarly,” Misty told Archie. “Really, I admire him for being so heroic, but I can’t hold appointments again and again indefinitely. Once things settle down over there, call in and reschedule.”

  Even though she understood, Archie was heartbroken for the German shepherd when she hung up the phone. “I’m sorry, Gnarly.” She reached over the back of the loveseat to pat him on the top of the head. “Next week, I’ll call and make another appointment for you.”

  Leah came up from the dining room with a plate of cookies and a glass of milk for Sari. “Would you like a snack, sweetie?”

  The little girl sat up to peer at the plate of sugar cookies. The dog raised his head to take in the goodies only one long jump from his snout.

  “Gnarly, no,” Archie said in a firm tone.

  Gnarly trained his eyes on the woman holding the plate of cookies.

  Leah eyed the hundred pounds of fur and teeth. “Does he always look so mean?”

  “He isn’t really. Gnarly will behave himself,” Archie said more to the dog than to her.

  Together, the two women went into the dining room to join Randi, who was on her cell phone.

  Archie could see one of Spencer’s police officers out on the deck talking to one of the security guards from the Spencer Inn. Upstairs, Bogie had made it his duty to fix Mac’s toilet. It was the first time she had ever seen a plumber packing a Colt semi-automatic in his tool belt.

  “I guess the café is going to be closed for a while,” Archie told her.

  When Leah opened her bag and took out a tube of lipstick, Archie saw a smartphone resting on top of her wallet. “Yeah, I guess so.” Leah stopped reapplying her lipstick to glance over at Randi. “We’re blowing this joint. Within forty-eight hours it will be a new city and new identities.”

  Archie looked up into the living room where Sari was eating her snack. “Must be so hard for your daughter—being in the program at such a young age.”

  “She’ll get used to it,” Leah said with only a small drop of compassion.

  “When did she stop talking?” Archie asked.

  “Her father used to always say that children are to be seen and not heard,” Leah said. “I guess one day she decided to make him happy and stop talking.” Slipping her lipstick into her bag, she shrugged. “He never complained about her being too noisy after that.”

  “Have you tried therapy?”

  Her hand still in her bag, Leah glared up at Archie. “Why? She’s happy. As long as she’s happy, then I’m happy. If everyone is happy, why mess with it?”

  In the living room, Sari clutche
d her stuffed dog tightly while eating one of the cookies her mother had brought to her. Her eyes met Gnarly’s. The two of them stared at each other as if they could penetrate through each other’s eyes to read each other’s thoughts.

  With a look over her shoulder, Sari saw that her mother was at the dining room table talking to the other two women. Silently, she slipped off the sofa, picked up a cookie, and, holding it out far in front of her, slowly moved across to the loveseat until the cookie was in front of Gnarly’s nose.

  Unsure, Gnarly lifted his head to look up across the living room. Archie was still engaged in a conversation with Sari’s mother. Archie was seemingly unhappy with how the conversation was going. His brown eyes came back to focus on the child offering the goodie.

  “Nice doggie,” she whispered so low that only he could hear.

  Gently, he took the cookie from her hand, stood up, and turned around on the loveseat so his back was to Archie and Sari’s mother.

  As soon as he had taken the goodie from her hand, Sari ran back to the sofa to climb back up on it.

  Randi hung up her cell phone and pointed it at Archie. “The marshal’s office wants to wait for a confirmation from someone on the inside that the contract is cancelled before releasing you from protection. Better to be safe than sorry. Once we get that confirmation from one of our undercover agents, you’ll be free to come out from under the radar.”

  The marshal then turned her attention to Leah. “We’re going to release a statement to the media that a young mother and her little girl were killed in the poisoning. That way, if you and Sari were the targets, they’ll think the hit was a success.”

  “Do they know who those men with the submachine guns were working for yet?” Leah asked. “Was it Mario?”

  “We’re still trying to identify them,” the federal agent replied.

  “How about what happened inside the café? Did you see what happened to those men?” Archie was asking Leah.