by Lauren Carr
“Gnarly doesn’t like her either,” she said while letting him pull her over to his side, “and he is an excellent judge of character.”
“Look at who you’re talking about,” Mac said. “Where did that rubber duck come from?”
In an effort to sound innocent, Archie’s voice went up a whole octave. “You must have gotten it for him.”
Mac shook his head. “Gnarly is up to his old tricks again. He stole it. I could have sworn I saw a rubber duck in the Phillips’ kids’ wading pool when they invited us over last week.”
“Mac,” she argued, “I’m sure that’s not the only rubber duck in all of Deep Creek Lake.”
“Should I call the Phillips to ask them if their four-year-old son is missing a rubber duck?”
“No!”
“So Gnarly did steal it and tried to hide it from me by flushing it down my toilet.”
“Mac,” she said, “he’s a dog. How was he supposed to know that it would clog your toilet? Give him a break.”
“Like you’re giving Leah a break?”
Catching the meaning behind his playful grin, Archie sighed and folded her arms across her chest. “Now I feel guilty.”
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her on the cheek. “For covering up for Gnarly or for suspecting Leah of being a bad person?”
Another thought crept into her mind. “She’s been texting someone—someone she’s not supposed to be texting. When you’re in the program, you’re to cut off all contact with your past.”
Seeing that she was not going to give up on talking about something other than them, he sighed and lied back on the pillows on his side of the bed. “Maybe she’s texting friends that she has made since entering the program. She’s been in the program two years. She’s got to have made some friends in that time.”
“She dropped her cell phone on the deck and accused me of stealing it when I gave it back.”
“Did you steal it?” Mac asked her.
“No!” she replied. “But you should have seen her. She flat out accused me of stealing it.”
He cocked his head at her. His eyes narrowed, and he peered at her face. She shifted to avoid his gaze. “Did you clone her phone?”
“Yes.”
“Hah!”
Archie picked up the phone from the night stand. “She must have suspected that I did that, because ever since I made the clone, her phone has been off.”
“What do you think she’s doing that you had to clone her phone?”
“I have no idea, but she’s up to something,” she said. “She’s definitely up to something.”
“You’re in the program and you text people,” Mac said. “Why are you suspicious about her texting?”
“The feds released a statement saying that she and Sari were dead,” she reminded him. “If she was serious about wanting to keep her daughter safe, then she would behave like she was dead. That means not reaching out to anyone from her old life. If she’s supposed to be dead, who is she texting?”
Archie looked down at where Mac was resting his head on her shoulders. He smiled softly up at her. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m reaching. I don’t like her and would like her to be guilty of something.”
“That’s what David is saying about Russell Skeltner,” Mac said. “I think he had his wife killed because I simply don’t like the guy.”
“Is David right?”
“No.” He rolled over onto his side and gazed up into her emerald green eyes. “I don’t care if he does have an alibi and if the contact lens belonged to a woman. Skeltner’s as guilty as sin.”
“And Leah is up to something.” She rolled over to face him. “I intend to find out what before she leaves.”
“I have no doubt that you will,” he said. “And while you’re finding that out, maybe you can help me by digging into Russell Skeltner’s past to find a motive for him killing his wife.”
“Yes, sir, detective, sir.” She saluted him.
As their laughter subsided, she brushed her hand across his cheek. He kissed her fingertips. Gazing at her slender hand, his soft expression turned to one of deep thought.
“What are you thinking so hard about?” she asked him.
“Ray Bonito.” Mac looked over at her. “Cruze’s lawyer says he’s completely paranoid—like Howard Hughs paranoid. Even Cruze couldn’t get in to see him.”
“He probably has reason to be paranoid,” Archie said.
“Do you remember Ray Bonito from the trial?”
“Never saw him,” she replied. “The marshals kept me as far from Cruze’s people as possible.”
“He wasn’t there the night of the murder?”
“No.” She shook her head. “The police got all of Cruze’s men who I saw at the murder.”
“What do you remember about Cruze’s wife?”
“Oh, I remember her all right,” Archie said. “She was an associate professor in business administration at the university. She used to come into the library.”
“A professor?” Mac sat up. “I pictured her as the clichéd blonde gun mole.”
“No, she was a gorgeous redhead,” she recalled, “and very smart. She taught business law.”
“Law? Really?”
Archie’s eyebrows almost met in the center of her forehead. “What are you thinking?”
Mac was out of bed. Without putting on his bathrobe, he threw open the door and ran down the hall to knock on David’s door.
“Mac, what did I say?” Archie called to him from the bed.
“Everything!” Mac called over his shoulder back at her while pounding on David’s bedroom door. “Get your laptop. We have some research to do.” He turned back to the door. “David, wake up. I put it together.”
The door down the hall flew open. “What’s all the racket about that can’t wait until morning?”
Turning around, Mac found himself face-to-face with Randi Finnegan. He also caught a glimpse of her naked breasts before she realized that her bathrobe was hanging open. He was still finding his voice when she flew back into the bedroom and David came out into the hall.
Wearing only his lounging pants, David was clutching his gun in his hand. “What’s happening?”
Mac worked his mouth for a moment, while peering beyond David to where Randi was impatiently waiting on the bed. “I figured it out.”
“What out?”
“Who hired those hit men at the cafe?”
David glanced over his shoulder back at Randi. He turned back to Mac. “Do we have to go now?”
“I need Archie to hunt down the evidence,” Mac replied, “so I think you two have some time to get into something less comfortable.”
On the top floor of the south wing of the Spencer Inn, Alan Richardson stepped off the penthouse elevator with his two bodyguards. After an early morning workout at the resort’s athletic club, it was time to call room service for breakfast.
The high-priced lawyer and his bodyguards paid little attention to the two linen carts in the corridor. The housekeeping staff was cleaning the other suites on the floor—two staff employees in the corner suite across the hall, and another pair at the other end of the corridor.
Richardson opened the door and stepped into the suite with one of the bodyguards behind him. The guard instinctively pulled his weapon when they spotted Mac waiting in the chair in the corner of the living room.
“Not even a hello before shooting me,” Mac replied at the sight of the gun.
The guard kept his weapon aimed at him.
“What are you doing in my suite?” Richardson stepped into the room.
“Actually,” Mac replied, “this is my suite.” He gestured at their surroundings. “I guess you didn’t do your homework. I own the Spencer Inn
. Therefore,” he waved in the air the key card he had used to let himself in. “I can go anywhere I want—whenever I want.” After putting the key card down on the table, he picked up the mimosa he had been drinking when they came in. “Have a mimosa …on me.” He gestured to the pitcher and glass on the bar.
Richardson ordered the gunman to put away his gun. “I’d rather you leave, even if you do own this hotel. There is an expectation of privacy when you check into a hotel—and right now, you’re invading it.” He crossed to the door and opened it. “So I would invite you to leave.”
“I know where Tommy Cruze’s wife is.”
Alan Richardson froze. The guard looked from the lawyer to Mac and back again.
Mac flashed a smirk at Alan Richardson. “Now your line is to tell the guard to wait outside while we talk about this in private.”
The lawyer ordered the guard. “Outside. Don’t let anyone in until I come tell you.” Once the guard was out in the hall, Richardson closed the door and rushed to stand over Mac. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Where’s your wife, Richardson?”
“Out,” the lawyer replied. “What does she have to do with any of this?”
“I remembered something during the night,” Mac said. “At the café yesterday morning, when your wife came in, one, she could not take her eyes off Cruze. Yet, you said she had never met Tommy Cruze.”
“He was an ugly brute, and he was dead,” Richardson said. “That’s why she couldn’t take her eyes off him.”
“Two,”’ Mac said, “you referred to the hit men as those men posing as FBI agents.” He cast a smile in Richardson’s direction. “You were inside before they arrived, and during the shootout. How did you know they were wearing FBI insignias on their clothes?”
“One of your people mentioned it,” Richardson said.
“Maybe,” Mac said, “but I like my idea better. You knew because you and your wife set up the hit.”
“Why would Ariel get involved in any conspiracy to hit Tommy Cruze?” Alan Richardson laughed loudly. “She had never even met him.”
“Nose job, cheek and breast implants, but that wasn’t enough to fool a face recognition program into not seeing that the woman who you now claim to be your wife is really Harper Cruze.” Mac sat up. “That’s why you two had to take him out. You weren’t lying all those years ago when you said Cruze’s wife had left him before he got home to kill her. She had escaped.” Grinning, he pointed a finger at the lawyer. “You helped her. We called the FBI to ask about the blood that was left in the car.” Mac shook his head. “No body tissue. If she had been shot, there would have been body tissue mixed with the blood. She faked her death to frame her husband for killing her, and then you defended him just enough to make it convincing, but not enough to keep him from going to jail.”
“How many of those drinks have you had?”
“Like I said, I own this Inn.” Mac took a cell phone from his pocket and tossed it onto the coffee table. “I found the burn phone from which the phony FBI agents received the text giving them the time and place to hit Cruze. You texted your wife with the location, and she texted the hired killers from this burn phone.”
“No jury will ever hear any of that,” Richardson said. “Your search was illegal, and that cell phone will be tossed out of evidence.”
Mac continued, “During the night, we collected DNA from the dishes that Ariel ate from last night and sent it to the lab. They compared it to Harper Cruze’s DNA. It was a match. Harper Cruze had dinner in this suite last night before running—maybe to get away from me. I saw how she was staring at Cruze’s body yesterday morning. It wasn’t just horror—it was relief—that comes from a long war being over.”
“Ariel had nothing to do with any of it.” The lawyer poured a mixture of the mimosa from the pitcher into a glass. “Would you believe I introduced them?” He lowered himself onto the loveseat across from Mac. “I warned her from the very beginning—when she started dating Cruze—that nothing good would ever come from it. But she found him exciting—she loved men who were forceful and aggressive—until she found out how forceful and aggressive he was.” He sipped from the glass. “By then, it was too late. She was in deep and couldn’t get out—not alive.”
“So you helped her fake her death and then defended Cruze of murdering the man she was having an affair with.” Mac sat forward in his seat. “Tell me, just between us—did you purposely lose that trial?”
“I didn’t have to with Kendra Douglas testifying,” the lawyer said. “You should have seen the prosecution’s witness. That woman was determined and unshakable. Cruze knew he was buried the second she took that stand.” He sat back in the seat and laughed. “Do you want to know the totally ironic part of the whole thing?”
“What?”
“Harper wasn’t having an affair with Reynolds,” he whispered. “They were only friends.”
Mac wasn’t surprised. “She was having an affair with you.”
“Cruze focused on Reynolds because he was handsome and had a reputation with the ladies. He never suspected it was his dull, workaholic lawyer.”
This shocked Mac. “You had to know Cruze would kill Reynolds.”
“Collateral damage.” The lawyer went on, “I was the one who suggested the Dockside Café. I set up the hit with the assassins, trusted associates of Bonito.”
“What if that couple hadn’t left?” Mac asked. “What if your paid assassins hadn’t been stopped by the FBI and went in? Would you have let them kill—”
“Their instructions were to only kill Cruze and his bodyguard. I had to kill him. It was kill or be killed.” The smug look was gone. “Cruze was so intent on revenge when he got out of prison. He never bought that Harper was dead. Over the years, he had become convinced that everything, Kendra Douglas witnessing the murder, Harper’s disappearance—everything was an elaborate con job to frame him and put him away. When he got out, he was obsessed with getting revenge on everyone for everything.” Richardson paused to sip his drink. “I thought that if I was able to uncover where Kendra Douglas was so he could concentrate on her, that would satisfy him.”
“So you dug around until you found someone in the US Marshal’s office willing to give up Kendra Douglas’s location,” Mac said.
“Everyone has their price,” the lawyer said with a smirk.
“And if they become a lose end,” Mac said, “all you have to do is make a phone call, and they’re dead.”
Mac was surprised to see Alan Richardson’s face go blank.
“Ginger Altman,” Mac said, “with the US Marshal’s office. When they started closing in on her, her last phone call was to your office. A short time later, she was dead—killed by another one of Bonito’s people.”
“Yes, I had her killed, too.” Alan Richardson gazed down into his glass. “I did it all to protect Ariel. I love her. I’m sure you’d do the same thing for your woman.”
“Yes, I can see why you believed you had to do it,” Mac said. “It was only a matter of time before Cruze saw Ariel and recognized her. If not by looks, then by a glance, or the way she tilted her head.”
“All you have on me is conspiracy to commit murder,” the lawyer said. “Once a jury finds out who the target was and why, they’ll refuse to convict me.”
“What about your wife?” Mac replied. “She had to know.”
Alan set the glass, now drained, down on the coffee table between them. “I have represented members of organized crime for twenty years. I know where all the bodies are buried. You’d be surprised what the feds would be willing to give up in exchange for what I have to offer.” He sat back in his seat. “One woman for a dozen of the FBI’s most wanted.”
“I’m not in the position to promise anything,” Mac said. “All I want is to know what happened at the café.”
“You forgot about the couple that left before Cruze dropped dead.”
Startled, Alan nodded. “Maybe because they left before things started happening.”
Resting his elbows on his knees, Mac sat forward. “Their names are Gordon and Nora Crump.”
“Names don’t ring a bell.”
Even though Mac was suspicious, he could see that Alan Richardson’s confusion was sincere. “Had you ever seen them before?”
“Never laid eyes on them before in my whole life.” The lawyer shook his head.
“You said they got into a fight—”
“They did.”
“What about?” Mac asked.
“No idea,” Alan said. “I wasn’t interested in them. What does it matter what they were fighting about?”
“The husband is now dead,” Mac told him. “His wife claims he had some business dealings with Tommy Cruze.”
The shock on the lawyer’s face was genuine. “If he did, I knew nothing about it.”
“A witness to the murder says the killer said, ‘This is for Tommy Cruze,’ right before he emptied his weapon on him.”
Alan Richardson shook his head so hard his jowls shook. “We had nothing to do with that. They were long gone of their own volition before our men arrived.”
“Maybe there was another connection,” Mac asked.
“We wouldn’t even know where to find them.”
“Come on,” Mac laughed. “You’re a crime boss. You have connections. Spencer and Deep Creek Lake is a small community. How hard could it be—”
“Why would we want to kill some strange looking couple bickering over him being a wimp?”
Mac jerked his head. “What did you say?”
Alan gazed at him with question in his eyes.