by Lauren Carr
“I think I remember that case. I was like fifteen when that happened.” David smiled his gratitude to the buxom server when she refilled his cup along with the others at the table.
Mac had noticed that David greeted her by her first name when they had come in. The grease on the burger and the soggy fries made him wonder if it was the service that David enjoyed as much as the food.
“If I recall correctly, Propst was arrested?” David asked after the server left.
Mac nodded his head somberly. “And tried twice. Both times it ended with a hung jury.”
“Did he do it?”
“Everyone knew he did it.” Mac shrugged. “It wasn’t my case. I was in homicide at the time but not close to the investigation. I remember it was one of those cases where everyone knew he did it, but there was no real evidence.”
“Except his skin under her fingernails,” David said.
“Natasha Holmstead was his attorney. This case made her career. I didn’t actually meet her until the Keating case,” Mac said. “Holmstead argued that since they were married the skin had gotten under her fingernails during marital relations.”
David shot Archie a naughty look. “I never actually had that happen.”
“I saw that.” Archie said with her eyes still on her smart phone. “I could say a few things about you, Dave.”
Mac steered them back to the topic of Douglas Propst. “No other evidence could be found to use against him.”
“What about the abuse?” David wanted to know.
Mac said, “Not once had the police been called to their home for domestic disturbance. Once she’d gone to the ER for a broken wrist. She said it was because she’d fallen off a step ladder. Some friends had seen her with a black eye. She said that it was an accident. The Propsts had argued in public, but he was never seen hitting her.”
Mac grimaced. “Propst was a bully and abusive in the field. All that was kept from the jury. Holmstead pointed out how many couples have fights in public but the wife doesn’t end up dead.” He shrugged. “Both times, the jury got hung. The prosecutor finally said that until we got more evidence, they weren’t wasting their time.”
“Who was the prosecutor?” David popped a fry into his mouth. “Maguire?”
“That was before Maguire’s time at the attorney’s office,” Mac said. “Garrison Sutherland was the prosecutor on the Propst case.”
“The judge that Holmstead is sleeping with now?” David chewed a big bite of his burger and frowned at the same time.
“Douglas Propst is Bonnie Propst’s late husband.” Archie held up the phone for them to see the screen.
“Late as in dead?” Mac asked.
She went on to read the screen. “Douglas Propst was a retired cop. He opened Propst Security in Morgantown, WV, with the money from his late wife’s life insurance. Two years later, he was killed when he walked in on a burglary in his office. Since then, his widow, Bonnie Propst, has made the company one of the most successful security firms in the tri-state area, according to the company bio.”
Mac scratched his head. “Douglas Propst is dead.”
“If the perp is dead, then it would make no sense for Maguire to re-open the case.” David finished the last bite of his burger.
Archie slipped her phone into her purse. “Unless he had found new evidence while working on this Themis case that Propst didn’t kill his wife.”
Mac took out his wallet to pay for the bill. “I guess we’ll find out when we talk to his widow.”
* * * *
First, they had to go to the Morgantown police station where Cameron Jones, the college drop-out claiming to be Stephen Maguire’s illegitimate daughter, was spending the night in a holding cell awaiting a bond hearing on possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute.
In the station’s reception area, David, Mac, and Archie met Master Sergeant Rick Bromberg, the trooper who had arrested Cameron. The tall, muscular, bald-headed officer shook David’s hand so hard that he shook the police chief’s whole arm. “David O’Callaghan, nice to see you. Congratulations on the appointment to chief. I always thought if anyone should take over your dad’s slot, it should be you.”
While shaking his hand, Sergeant Bromberg glanced down the corridor to the holding cells. “We’re taking Jones into an interview room now. Like I told you on the phone, we busted her for possession with intent to distribute, and she immediately started talking about wanting to make a deal.”
“We put out an APB on her as a suspect and witness in the Maguire murder this afternoon,” David told him.
“It must have been about the same time that we busted her.” The sergeant looked worried. “We’re hoping she’ll roll over on her boyfriend, who is a person of interest in the drug community here in Morgantown. Instead, she wants to roll on the murder in your neck of the woods.” He confessed, “I really don’t want to give her up with what we have against her. This is the best break we’ve had in nailing the boyfriend.”
David cocked his head at Mac and Archie. “Why don’t you let me hear what she has to say first?”
Mac and Archie watched from the observation room while David went into the interrogation room where Cameron Jones sat at the table.
Mac’s memory of their brief meeting days before was unclear. At the time, he had been focused on calming Christine down. After learning that she was trying to con Stephen Maguire out of money, Mac’s perception of her created the image of a hard young woman willing to say and do whatever it took to keep up her party lifestyle.
That image was a far cry from the little girl shivering in her thin sleeveless top over a short skirt with only sandals to cover her bare feet in the cold interrogation room this late in the night.
She looked like a frightened animal.
“What do you think?” Mac asked Archie while com-paring Cameron to the woman running onto the guest elevator in the security video.
“She could be the right height and build,” Archie answered. “But would she know enough about how security works at the Inn?”
“If she’s involved with drug dealers, she knows enough about security, period.”
“Cameron, I’m David O’Callaghan, the police chief in Spencer, Maryland. Tell me what you know about Stephen Maguire.” Taking on a casual attitude to put her at ease, David straddled the back of the chair across from her. He had laid his pen on top of the notepad in the middle of the table.
“I want a deal,” she said forcibly.
After all of his years of experience dealing with suspects from all walks of life and criminal experience, Mac saw that her harsh demand for a deal was a cover for her fear.
David said, “You don’t seem very broken up about his murder. That’s surprising since you claimed Stephen Maguire was your father.”
“That was all a misunderstanding,” she said. “I didn’t kill him, but I can tell you who did. All I want is a deal.”
“I already know you weren’t on the scene,” David said. “My sources tell me that you have an airtight alibi. That makes me wonder how you would know who did it.”
“Because I saw her try to kill him before.”
“Are you talking about the woman who attacked you in the lobby?”
She sat back in her seat. “I’m not telling you anything else until I have a deal.”
David started to rise out of the chair. “I can see I’m wasting both our time. I’m sorry, I must have misunderstood. I thought you had some useful information on this case.”
“Wait!” She jumped out of her seat and grabbed his arm. “I saw her try to kill him the day before. I can identify her. All I need is for you to give me a deal.”
“I don’t help drug dealers.”
“I’m not a dealer. My boyfriend’s the dealer. I don’t even use drugs. When I don’t help him, he beats me up. I had no choice. I had told him about my friend Rebecca from school and her daddy, and it was all his idea that I contact this Maguire guy and get him to pay me off to go
away.” Clinging to David’s arm, she pleaded, “Please. You have to help me. Please don’t let them send me to jail.”
“He’s going to sit back down,” Archie whispered.
David lowered himself back down into the chair.
“Told you.” She grinned. “David’s always had a soft spot for the ladies, especially if she’s a lady in distress.”
David told her, “First off, Morgantown is out of my jurisdiction. The only thing I can do is put in a good word with the prosecutor here. If you cooperate with me and the police here about your boyfriend’s drug activities, then they’ll be more inclined to help you than not.”
Without a reply, she stared at the two-way mirror while seeming to consider his advice. After they sat a long time in silence, David told her, “What do you know about what Stephen Maguire was doing in Spencer?”
“Nothing,” she answered. “He said he had some business in the area. On Friday, we met at some restaurant on the lake. It was closed for renovations. There was a big pool table on the lower level. It was really cool. He was really cool. He had gotten some burgers from the take-out place on the corner. We played pool. We even had some beer. Then, I made my move. I told him about flunking out of school, but now I was getting my act together and wanted to make a new start, but since things are so tough, that I needed some money; or I could follow him back to D.C. and meet all his friends.” She stopped.
David urged her to continue, “To which Maguire replied...”
“He said he’d have to think about it and wanted to get together for drinks at the Spencer Inn the next day to discuss it.”
“Then what?” David urged her to continue.
She asked, “Are you talking about at the place with the pool table on the lake or the Spencer Inn?”
“The place where you saw some woman try to kill him the day before he ended up dead.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “At the lake. After he put me off about giving me any money, I had to go take a leak. I was in the bathroom and I heard this big fight. It was, like, wild. I went back downstairs and there was this crazy woman there and she was screaming like a witch at Maguire. I couldn’t believe he was laughing at her.”
“What was she screaming about?”
“She called him a liar and he laughed even more. That pushed her off the deep end and this bitch grabbed a screwdriver and went at him with it.”
David sat up straight. “A screwdriver?”
“I don’t think she’s talking about the drink,” Archie said.
Cameron continued, “Maguire took it off her and slapped her down. She took off running out of there.”
David frowned. “Did Maguire tell you who she was?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t give me a name. He just said that she was some crazy bitch who couldn’t take a joke. But I saw her. I could identify her if I saw her in a line up.”
“What did she look like?” David leaned toward her.
In the observation room, Mac and Archie pressed up against the glass.
“She had long black hair…”
* * * *
“Mac, I hate to tell you this, but Christine had been in Spencer at least two days before Stephen Maguire got killed.” David glanced over his shoulder to the back of the cruiser where Mac was sitting in the back seat behind Archie.
Except for the occasional squawks over the radio, the inside of the cruiser had been so quiet since they’d left the police station to find their way to Bonnie Propst’s condo complex that all they could hear was Gnarly breathing in the seat next to Mac. Little had he envisioned his romantic evening with Archie would end with him in the back seat with a hundred-pound German shepherd with bad breath.
“I checked with the security cams at the main inter-sections in McHenry, coming in and out of Spencer,” David said. “We have her car on Route 219 Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Roxanne Burton stated that Christine had told her that she was coming out to the lake house to clear her head.”
David continued gently, “I’m beginning to think that maybe she did kill Maguire. We don’t have any actual evidence to prove she didn’t do it. The clone phone with her fingerprints on it was in her suitcase. This other person that was on the scene could be a witness to the murder. After-wards, they got into a fight. Christine fell, hit her head, and died. The witness panicked, cleaned up the scene, and ran.”
“Even before her illness, Christine wasn’t clever enough to have thought up anything like Maguire’s murder,” Mac said. “It was planned. The wig and smock and getting up to the suite by way of the service elevator. Christine has been out of her mind ever since she took up with Maguire. That’s what made her such a good target for a snake like him. No way could she have planned it well enough to have pulled any part of it off.”
Their silence made him turn to the only one he could turn to. “What do you think, Gnarly?” He stroked the dog’s back. Gnarly answered with a tongue that went into Mac’s ear.
Bonnie Propst lived in a high-rise condominium on a hill overlooking West Virginia University’s campus. Her condo was on the eighth floor of a twelve-story building. Late in the evening, they were lucky that many of the residents were coming and going. Most of them looked like academic types from the university. With the coming and going, it was easy for David in his police chief uniform to get a resident on the way out to hold the door of the main entrance open to allow them, with Archie leading Gnarly on his leash, into the lobby of the secure building.
“The same way Nita got up to the penthouse floor,” Mac noted.
David checked his notes. “Bonnie Propst lives in unit 812.”
On their way up to the eighth floor, Archie petted Gnarly, who sat obediently for her in the back of the elevator. His ears were up at attention. “I think Gnarly likes police work.”
“He’s not on the payroll,” David cracked.
“He was trained by the United States Army,” Archie reminded them.
“He also got a dishonorable discharge for what, we don’t know,” Mac said.
They found Apartment 812 to be a corner unit. After answering the door on the first knock, Bonnie Propst looked displeased when she saw David flash his badge and identify himself as the police chief investigating the murder of Stephen Maguire in Spencer, Maryland.
Blocking their entrance into her condo with her door, she stated, “If you have any questions about Stephen Maguire’s murder, you’ll need to talk to my lawyer.” She reached be-hind her to snatch a business card from a table and thrust it into David’s hand.
While David tried to negotiate for some information, Gnarly looked up and down the hallway like a censor on duty.
Having met Douglas Propst, Mac remembered him as a vain, antagonistic man who hated not having control, especially over his women.
Bonnie Propst was overweight, something her late husband would have abhorred. In spite of her weight, she had a pretty face. Her clothes and make-up were tastefully applied and she was stylishly dressed in a business suit.
“Stephen Maguire is dead,” David said. “He was killed after having dinner with you. If there’s anything that you can think of—”
“It wasn’t a date,” she said. “That was the first time I had even met him.”
Mac interjected, “If it wasn’t a date, what was it?”
“Business,” she said quickly. “I own a security company. He was opening a business in Spencer and wanted to know about our services. It’s important to have a good security service, especially for a restaurant on the lake.”
“Do you always meet potential clients at five-star restaurants on Saturday night?” Mac asked.
“He set it up,” she answered. “I don’t get invited to the Spencer Inn very often. Who was I to argue?”
Mac and David exchanged glances. Mac chose to toss out the next question. “Did Stephen Maguire mention your late husband during the interview?”
“No,” she answered too quickly.
“Stephen Maguire wa
s the prosecutor in D.C. where your late husband was tried twice for killing his first wife.” Mac said. “Maybe he had some questions about what your husband may have told you about his wife’s murder or the trials.”
“He’s dead. Long gone,” she responded in a firm tone. “Look, I’m sorry Mr. Maguire is dead, but my dead and for-gotten husband doesn’t have anything to do with it.” She tried to slam the door shut but found the police chief’s foot in the way.
David explained, “Since you work in security and with the police, you have to understand that since you were the last person to see Stephen Maguire alive, we need to know what took place when you met him. What did you talk about? Did anything happen? Did anyone come to the table to talk to him?”
She hissed at him. “Surveillance cameras. Motion detectors. Police and fire alarms. That’s all we talked about. As for what we did, we met at the Spencer Inn for dinner at seven o’clock. I ate shrimp scampi over linguini. He ate the filet mignon. He paid for dinner. I came home. That’s all that happened.” After kicking David in the shin to get him to remove his foot, she slammed the door shut.
David turned to Mac who was petting Gnarly. “What do you think?”
“I think the woman doth protest too much.”
Gnarly exploded into a round of snarling barks. Archie held onto his collar while he lunged at the elevators.
The woman in the car jumped back from the hundred pounds of fur and teeth straining against the collar holding him back from getting at her. Keeping her eye on the dog, she moved slowly to get off the elevator.
Mac noticed that, at first glance, she appeared much younger than her true age. The red curly hair that fell to her shoulders and her athletic figure made him think she was more youthful than the hardness in her face revealed.
This woman has had a hard life.
“Sorry,” Archie gasped at her. “I guess he doesn’t like your perfume.”
“What’s gotten into him?” Mac joined her in grasping his collar.
David muttered, “I knew we should have left him in the car.”
The red-haired woman backed up against the wall to get as far away as she could from Gnarly, who continued to strain to get at least one tooth into her while Mac and Archie dragged him onto the elevator. Her glare said that she was unforgiving of the dog’s anger.