by Lauren Carr
“I was talking to the victim’s wife,” David said.
The corner of Mac’s lip curled. “Did you catch the perp pulling out of the parking lot?”
“No.” The word was a sharp snap at him.
Randi told Mac, “He’s very sensitive about it.”
Mac unfolded his arms. “He should be. Nora Crump sent him on a wild goose chase.”
“You make that sound like she did it on purpose,” Randi said. “You saw her. Her husband was gunned down in front of her. She was in shock—still is—and confused.”
“Oakley told me you found the murder weapon.” David gestured at the bathroom door. “It’s in there?”
“The shooter didn’t get in the car and run. Gnarly followed his trail around behind the restaurant, and in through the kitchen entrance to here where he dropped the gun and his jacket.” Mac opened the door for them to peer inside. “Then, he mixed in with the crowd running out to see what happened.”
Slipping on his evidence gloves, David stepped inside and knelt to examine the jacket and gun on the floor next to the garbage can.
“The gun was wrapped up inside the jacket.” Mac followed him inside after ordering Gnarly to stay out in the corridor. “Gnarly pulled it out onto the floor.”
Careful not to disturb any possible fingerprints, David picked up the gun and sniffed it. “It was recently fired. We need to contain this scene and get forensics in here.”
The forensics team was already coming in with their cases of equipment. After ordering them to search the men’s room for possible evidence of the shooter, David and Randi went back outside to collect statements from possible witnesses who had stuck around instead of running.
“So we meet again,” one of the forensics officers, a petite redhead, said before following her partner into the men’s restroom.
“Again?” Mac asked.
“Skeltner Cove B and B,” she reminded him. “Mary Catherine Skeltner was dragged out of her bed and tossed down the stairs.” She clutched the handle of her crime scene kit with both hands. “Got any suspects yet?”
“One,” Mac said. “Unfortunately, he has an alibi. Have you had a chance to process the evidence yet?”
“Well, you guys have been keeping us pretty busy,” she said with a slight smile on her lips. “But, we do have one piece of good news for you.”
“I could use some good news.”
“Whoever killed her, we got her DNA,” she said in a coy tone.
“Her?”
“Her,” she replied. “So if your suspect is a man, then he isn’t your guy. At least he doesn’t belong to that lens you found or the hair we collected from under the victim’s fingernails.”
Her reply caught Mac’s interest. “Our killer is a woman with dark hair and she wears contact lenses.”
“It was a daily disposable lens with enough human tears on it to lift a DNA profile.” She peered inside the bathroom. “We also got fibers from a black material under her fingernails.” She caught Mac’s eye before looking back down at the jacket on the floor. “The same type of material that this jacket is made of.”
“A witness saw our chief suspect riding a silver bike,” Mac said. “There’s a silver bike at the rack outside.”
She grinned at him. “If the treads to that bike’s tires match the tread marks we collected at the scene, then you might be able to make a case for these two murders being connected. But then, I’m not the detective. My job is to only examine the evidence and give you the report.” She went into the bathroom.
“Very interesting.”
Mac turned to go secure the bike he had seen when he realized that Gnarly was nowhere around. I swear I spend half of my time at crime scenes looking for that animal. Calling out for Gnarly in a coarse whisper, Mac went into the dining room.
The murder had cleared out the restaurant that was usually packed on the weekends. Those who had finished giving their statements to the police had hurried home to their loved ones.
Only one employee, a brunette dressed in the form-fitting red and black dress of a Mexican senorita, was still in the dining room. She was sitting next to the fireplace crying softly while stroking Gnarly, who was resting his head in her lap. While wiping her nose with a napkin with one hand, she stroked the top of Gnarly’s head with the other.
Neither of them moved when Mac came up to their table. “I hope Gnarly isn’t bothering you.”
Startled, she clasped her hands to her bosom and whirled around. Appearing equally startled, Gnarly looked up over his shoulder at Mac as if to accuse him of interrupting a very good petting.
Apologizing for scaring her, Mac pulled out a chair from the table next to her and straddled the back to sit down. “I guess the murder scared away all of your customers.”
The windows looking out into the parking lot were lit up with blue and red lights from the emergency vehicles. Seeing that Mac wasn’t dragging him off, Gnarly returned his head to the pretty woman’s lap. She resumed petting him.
“If you weren’t with the police,” she sniffed, “would you be hanging around if you didn’t have to?”
“No,” Mac said. “I’d rush home to hug my family.” He cocked his head at her. “Why haven’t you left?”
“One of the police officers—his name tag said Fletcher—told me the chief would want to talk to me.” Her eyes filled with tears. Weeping, she dropped her head and clutched Gnarly closer to her. As best as he could, Gnarly inched in to give her a canine version of a hug with his head pressed against her breast.
Mac asked her in a quiet tone, “Did you see what happened?”
She brought her hand down from where it was wiping her eyes. She hugged Gnarly. Quickly, she nodded her head. “I can’t believe I saw a man…killed.”
“Can you tell me what you saw?”
She lifted her eyes from where she was staring down into Gnarly’s face. “Are you here to take my statement?”
“One of the other officers will do that,” Mac said. “But I am working with the Spencer police on this case. Did you actually see it happen?”
Nodding her head, she pointed at the window. “I was at the window looking for them…I was their server, and the man had left without his credit card. It was strange. Suddenly, his wife had to leave. I had only just served him coffee, and she got all anxious that they had to go. I couldn’t ring them up fast enough.”
Recalling the café that morning, Mac asked, “Did they have a fight?”
She shrugged her shoulders with one hand up in the air in a gesture of confusion.
“All of a sudden, they had to leave,” Mac recalled.
“She had to go,” the server corrected him.
“Did she get a call on her cell phone?” Mac asked. “Maybe something happened…”
“I didn’t see her using the phone,” the server replied. “She was mostly taking in the crowd and the view outside.”
“What about the husband?” Mac asked. “The man that got shot?”
“He was talking non-stop,” she said. “It was both sad and funny at the same time. He was talking away to her, and you could see that she wasn’t paying any attention to him.” She shuddered. “I remember thinking what a weird, disgusting…” Tears came to her eyes. “I feel so bad. He smelled…it wasn’t cologne, it was body odor, and he kept picking his nose. I kept thinking how gross—Now he’s dead.” Sobbing, she collapsed her face into Gnarly’s mane. “I feel so bad now for thinking that.”
Gently, Mac patted her shoulder. “They were having coffee …”
“He ordered coffee for dessert.” Wiping her nose, she sat up. “Double cream and sugar. I heard her tell him that one day all that fattening cream and sugar was going to kill him.” Her voice shook. “Five minutes later…”
“Did they wa
lk out together?”
“No,” she said. “They decided to leave together. I got their check and he gave me the card. I rang it up and took the booklet to them. As soon as I got there, she got up and told him to come. I was still clearing the table when they took off. Then I saw that he had left the card. I went to the reception area to catch them and I looked out the window and… saw it …”
Mac sat forward. “What did you see happen?”
“She was crossing the access lane to the parking lot,” she said. “The killer, he was wearing a black running suit with a hood on it, passed her coming toward the restaurant from the parking lot. They walked right past each other and he came up to where her husband was stepping off the curb to follow her. Suddenly, he pulled out a gun and shot him.” She covered her ears. “I can’t tell you how many times he shot him. It seemed to go—he went down with the first shot, but the man in the hoodie stood over him and kept on shooting. Then he ran around behind the restaurant and the wife came running up to her husband.”
“Where was she while her husband was being shot?”
The server paused to think before answering. “I wasn’t watching her. I can’t say for certain—I think she was behind the killer—on the other side of the road.”
“She wasn’t standing next to her husband when he was shot?” Mac asked.
Quickly, she shook her head. “I saw her running up while the killer was running around toward the lake.”
The three of them sat in silence. Mac and the server were digesting what had happened—she from memory, Mac visualizing what she had described.
Nora Crump was ignoring her husband while taking in the crowd…coffee with double cream and sugar …“one day all that fattening cream and sugar will kill you …” he could see her saying. The poison at the Dockside Café was in the cream.
“Show me where they were sitting.” Mac jumped up from his seat so fast that both the server and Gnarly were startled.
Choking on her tears, the server pointed at the very table from which Mac had pulled out the chair to sit down.
“Where was the wife sitting?” Mac asked her.
“In the chair that you’re sitting in.”
Mac turned around the chair and sat down at the table. The fireplace would have provided a warm ambiance for the couple. Looking around, Nora Crump also had a view of the mural of a Southwestern scene on the wall next to the fireplace; a view out the window at the outdoor café, which was closed for the season; one of a corner of the lake; one of the courtyard directly on the other side of the window; and one of the corner of the parking lot.
What made you suddenly leave? What did you see? Was it the killer? Were you running to or from something?
Mac was still gazing through the window when David came rushing in from outside. “There you are!” the police chief called to him. “Come on. We’ve got to go.”
Frightened by the anxious tone in David’s voice, Mac assumed something had happened to Archie. “What’s happened?”
David waited for Mac to get close before whispering, “The feds got a location on Ray Bonito. Randi got us permission to be there when they grab him.”
Chapter Sixteen
Something isn’t right with that woman.
Archie had come into the kitchen to prepare a nighttime snack when she spied Leah’s smart phone on the floor next to the doors opening out onto the deck. She had seemingly dropped it while slipping it into her pocket before taking Sari down to the dock to feed the ducks before putting her to bed. After picking up the phone from the floor, Archie studied the screen.
What’s up with her? Why did she react the way she did when I caught her texting? Was she sending a note to a married man she was having an affair with? Or was it someone from her family that she had left behind when she went into the program? Someone she’s not supposed to be contacting.
With a pang in her heart, Archie recalled all the loved ones that she had to leave behind, many of whom she didn’t have a chance to say good-bye to, when she went into the program more than a decade before. Now, Randi had said they were faking Leah’s and Sari’s deaths before relocating them.
If Leah is so concerned for their safety, then who is she texting? The whole idea behind the program is to go deep underground. It doesn’t work if you have any contact at all with your past. Not only does it jeopardize your safety, but also the safety of your loved ones. If whomever you are running from even suspects that someone you love has been in contact with you, they are liable to be tortured or killed to get information about your whereabouts.
With one eye on the dock, Archie slipped the smart phone into her pocket, stepped out onto the deck, and hurried down to her guest cottage.
Many a child had fed the ducks down on the dock in the morning or evening as the sun was going down. The feeding would always be accompanied by childish squeals of delight. Not so this evening, Archie noted while trotting down the path to her stone cottage. Sari won’t even talk to the ducks. How sad.
Watching for Leah and her daughter to come up from the dock, Archie placed her hand on the door knob. With the other, she clutched the phone concealed in her pocket.
“Everything okay?”
Her gasp ending in a shriek, Archie whirled around while pulling her blue Ruger out from behind her back to aim it into Hector’s face.
“It’s only me!” The security manager threw up his hands. “Easy, Archie.”
With a sigh of relief, Archie lowered the gun and replaced it in the waistband behind her back, under her shirt. “You should warn people before sneaking up on them.”
“You should warn people before pulling a gun on them,” Hector countered.
“If I gave killers a warning before shooting them, then they’d get the drop on me.”
“Point well taken,” Hector said. “What are you sneaking around about?”
“I’m not sneaking around,” Archie said.
“You’re lying.”
“I am not.” She threw open the door. “I need to get some folders from my office.”
Before she could hurry inside, Hector grabbed her by the arm. “I need to check it out first to make sure it’s secure.”
“Be my guest.” She stood back.
Hector pulled his gun out of his holster and stepped inside. The beating of her heart sounded like a clock timer in her ear while she watched Leah and Sari down at the dock. Silently, the mother and child sat on the dock. Sari would throw food to the ducks that were crowded beneath her feet while her mother, uninterested in the feeding, glanced around at the scenery.
“All clear,” Hector announced.
“Thanks,” Archie said while hurrying inside.
While the bodyguard waited, Archie ran through the small kitchen and down the hall to her office. Once inside, she dropped down to her knees in front of a plastic storage cart that contained five drawers and yanked open the third drawer down. That was where her organization ended. The drawer contained a wide variety of cell phones, from flip to slide to smart. Her breath quickened while she clawed through the phones until she found the style and model she wanted. She uttered a gasp of satisfaction when she found it.
The next drawer down contained the cord that would attach the two phones.
She plopped down onto the floor and went to work.
“Ducks all fed?” Hector called out in a cheery voice that made Archie jump.
Cool it, Archie. You’re as jumpy as a schoolgirl getting her first kiss. She continued to download and copy the settings from Leah’s phone to the clone phone she was creating. Just ten more seconds.
“Where’s Archie?” She heard Bogie call out to Hector.
“She’s getting something out of her office.”
She could hear their voices moving closer.
The screen on her p
hone read “Cloning Complete.” She detached the cord and tossed it onto the floor next to her desk. She slipped Leah’s phone into one pocket while dropping the clone into the opposite pocket.
“All done,” she sang out while coming out of her office and closing the door. “I was about to pour myself a cocktail. Do you two want some?”
“Love one,” Bogie said, “but we’re on duty. I’ll have a cup of hot tea if you don’t mind.”
Hector opted for a cup of coffee.
Archie led them up the path, across the deck, and into the kitchen where she opened the cupboard to take out the packages of loose leaf tea.
“I just got off the phone with Tonya at the station,” Bogie said. “The husband of that couple at the café this morning was murdered.”
“Seriously?” Archie stopped with the tea kettle in mid-air on its way to the stovetop. She turned to stare out the deck doors off the back deck to the dock, which was home to the speed boat and two jet skis. Since David had moved in, he had been riding her jet ski more than she did.
Leah and Sari came into the kitchen. Hugging her toy collie dog close to her chest, Sari had changed into an oversized nightshirt that Archie had offered to her to use for pajamas. It hung all the way down to the little girl’s ankles. The events of the day had not allowed them time to pack any clothes or belongings from home.
Recalling her staring at Gnarly when he was in the room, Archie turned to her when they came in. “Gnarly should be home soon, Sari.”
“Sari doesn’t like dogs.” Leah’s hardened tone grated on Archie’s nerves.
“Are you sure about that?” Archie looked down at the little girl staring with a longing look in her eyes out at the lake. “She doesn’t act frightened of Gnarly.”
“You can’t trust dogs.” Leah glanced around the room. “Have you seen my phone? I can’t find it.”
“No, I haven’t seen any phone laying around,” Bogie said.