Blast from the Past (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (10 page)

Robin had acquired other weapons during her mystery writing career. The coat rack sported a hangman’s noose and a Samurai sword hung on the wall.

In a chair in the far corner of the room, Uncle Eugene watched all of the comings and goings. A first aid training dummy, Uncle Eugene had been stabbed in the back, tossed off rooftops, and strangled on numerous occasions—all in the name of research. When he wasn’t being victimized, he sat in an overstuffed chair in the corner dressed in a tuxedo with a top hat perched on his head. With one leg crossed over the other and an empty sherry glass next to his elbow, Uncle Eugene looked like he was taking a break while waiting for the next attempt on his life.

Leah and her daughter would be sleeping in the guest room across the hall from Randi. The master suite would be on one side of her, and David at the other end of the hall.

“She’ll be gone in forty-eight hours tops,” Randi said. “I certainly appreciate you letting her hide out here until we leave.”

“Don’t mention it.” Mac handed her a snifter with cognac. “I noticed when I brought up the poison that Leah insisted she didn’t do it, but you didn’t jump in to defend her.”

“Neither did you,” Randi said.

“I only met her this morning,” Mac said. “You’ve been working with her for how long? You know her. You know her past. Don’t tell me that you don’t suspect that she slipped rat poison into Cruze’s cream out of self-defense when she saw him come into her place?”

“And you wouldn’t have killed Cruze if given half a chance,” Randi said.

Mac looked to David for his back up, which he didn’t offer. Instead, he was staring at Randi with a suspicious glint in his eyes.

“I don’t know about Leah,” she said in a harsh whisper. “I’ve never been able to put my finger on it. I’ve concluded that it’s because she does come from a completely different world than me or any of us. Her father was an assassin with one of the most notorious crime families in Europe. Her mother, an Italian, sent her over here to the United States to get her away from the family business. What her mother didn’t know was that the cousin she had sent Leah to live with had started an American branch of their now international crime organization. When Leah got married, she thought her husband was a successful businessman. She had no idea what business he was in until after she had Sari.”

“Who are her friends?” Mac asked.

“She doesn’t trust anyone enough to have friends.” Randi’s furrowed brow and squint reflected confusion. “None that she speaks of anyway. She’s a totally different animal than Archie has been in the program. I’ve concluded that it has to do with why people come into the program. You’d be surprised how many criminals and criminal types end up in the program. That’s how they come into the evidence they give us. Then, we have witnesses who are innocent, law-abiding citizens who literally are in the wrong place at the wrong time—”

“Like Archie,” Mac said.

“And chose to do the right thing,” Randi finished with a nod of her head. “Leah was raised in a crime family. She was surrounded by drug and illegal arms dealers, crooks, and killers. She’s got a totally different wiring than we do.”

“If she doesn’t have any friends, then why does she carry a cell phone?” Mac asked.

“Maybe for protection,” David replied. “I know a lot of women who don’t carry cell phones to talk to their friends all the time, but only to use if they need help.”

While Randi agreed with David, Mac had a nagging feeling that Leah wasn’t all she appeared to be.
Randi is right. Leah comes from a completely different world—a world where killing comes easy.
“Would Leah put the lives of innocent people at risk to poison one man?”

“The feds have taken the lead on the murders at the café,” David said. “So we really don’t need to focus on solving them.”

“Except that I don’t like the idea of keeping a possible killer under my roof,” Mac said. “Are the feds even looking for that couple that ran out of the café before Cruze collapsed? They were in the dining room after Leah went back into the kitchen to prepare their orders. They could have planted the poison in the cream. Tommy Cruze had collected a lot of enemies. He’s hurt a lot of people. Any of them could have paid off one of Cruze’s people to give them a heads up of where he was going, and then arranged to get to the café first to set up his murder.” Excited by the prospect that came to his mind, he added, “The fight could have been staged. We need to find that couple.”

“Have you been listening to me, Mac?” David replied. “The poisoning is not our case. It’s the feds’ case. They don’t like it when locals poke their noses into their cases—believe me. They can be more territorial than Gnarly.”

Randi said, “Well, I am a federal agent and I’m going to investigate this lead. If those hit men that Gnarly took out this morning were there for Leah and Sari, we need to find out who knows where she is and who sent them. If the poison was meant for Leah, we need to know that, too.” She clasped the weapon in her holster with one hand while heading for the door. She paused in the doorway before turning to Mac and David. “Are you two coming?”

David looked over at Mac. “I can see you chomping at the bit to take this on.”

“I got a good look at both of them,” Mac said. “I think they’re tourists. They came to the café from the hotel across the road.”

“Sounds like a good place to start,” Randi said. “What are we waiting for?”

Chapter Fourteen

Gnarly ended up going along for the ride after Leah ordered them to take him because she feared for Sari’s safety.

Usually, the German shepherd would jump at the chance to go with Mac or David, especially in the police chief’s cruiser. Such wasn’t the case this time. Gnarly refused to come when Mac called for him. Eventually, Mac had to lead him by his collar to the car. While urging the dog into the back seat, Mac saw Sari peering out the front window at them. When Gnarly turned back to look at the house, she waved. Mac could see that it was Gnarly she was waving to.

With Randi filling the front passenger seat, Mac had to climb in back with Gnarly. “If I remember Cruze’s murder trial,” Mac said, “he was tried for the murder of Dr. Reynolds, not his wife.”

Randi nodded. “The investigators were never able to prove that Cruze killed his wife, but her car was found in a secluded rural area with two shell casings inside and a giant blood splatter on the seat. DNA proved the blood to be a match with Harper Cruze. No evidence could be found to put Cruze or his people at the scene. Richardson claimed she had left Cruze. Without a body, no one could prove who was right.”

Mac muttered, “So she could have survived.”

“If she is alive,” David said, “after a decade in jail for killing her lover, Cruze would have to have her at the top of his list of most wanted dead.”

Randi looked into the rearview mirror back at Mac. “How old would you have guessed the woman of this couple to be?”

“Late thirties, early forties,” Mac replied. “How old was Cruze’s wife when he went to jail?”

“Late twenties.”

David said, “Then that would make her about the right age.”

“Why come after him?” Mac asked. “Why come near him?”

“Same reason as Archie,” Randi said. “Kill or be killed.”

Mac agreed. “I guess Cruze would know if she was really alive and out there.”

David pulled the cruiser into the hotel lot and parked the cruiser next to the lobby entrance. “Only thing is, according to Alan Richardson, it was only this morning that Cruze decided to go to the café.” He unsnapped his seat belt. “So how would this woman, who may or may not have been his wife, know he was going to be there?”

“Same way the FBI knew he’d be there,” Randi said. “Someone on the inside.”

Mac leaned forward toward her seat. “If Cruze’s wife is alive and in the program, now would be a good time to tell us.”

Randi turned around in her seat. “I don’t have a membership roster of everyone who’s in the witness protection program.”

Mac peered closely at her face. When he had first met her the day before, he had thought she was hard looking. She would be called a handsome woman—not unattractive, but not pretty, either. Up close, with her face illuminated by the parking lot light, he could see that her features were pretty. She had high cheekbones and dark eyes. With the right makeup, she could be striking.

Having spent a career working with numerous female police officers, Mac was aware that attractive women who played up their feminine features were taken less seriously than women who played them down. It was a subconscious fact of life, not sexism. Men instinctively want to protect pretty women. Spending too much time out in the field worrying about the “pretty woman” can distract you from someone who might be trying to kill you.

“You didn’t answer his question, Finnegan,” David said.

Randi broke the stare to lock eyes with David. “Even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you. You both know that. Why do you even ask?”

David looked over the back of his seat to Mac as if to ask his opinion.

Tired of waiting for someone to open the door to let him out, Gnarly stomped his front feet and groaned.

“Okay,” Mac said to the agent, “but if I find out that you’re holding out on us…”

“What?” she challenged him with a razor-sharp glare back at him. “What are you going to do?”

David threw open his door, climbed out, and opened the back door of the cruiser to release Gnarly and Mac.  “Let’s start with the desk clerk.”

“Oh yeah,” the desk clerk nodded his head quickly when Mac described the couple who had escaped the massacre at the Dockside Café.

Seemingly bored with the interview portion of the investigation, Gnarly yawned and plopped down with his head resting on Mac’s feet.

“The odd couple,” the clerk said.

Having seen the couple up close, Mac understood the clerk’s reference.

Randi and David exchanged glances. “Odd couple?” Randi asked.

The clerk, a young man with thick, dark eyebrows and a goatee, laughed. “I’ve been working here for five years. By the end of my first, I figured out the people who check into this place. I can spot a couple married to each other like that.” He snapped his fingers. He leaned over the desk to whisper, “I can also tell who’s meeting with someone who isn’t his wife.”

“Tell us about the odd couple.” With a circular motion of his finger, Mac urged him to get back on topic.

“Well, you know how a lot of couples look like they belong together? You can tell by looking at them that they match in some way. They mesh.” He shook his head. “Not those two. This morning, I came in for the first shift, and she went running out the door looking like an Olympic athlete. He came stumbling down around seven o’clock looking like something the cat dragged in—and smelled like it, too.” He shot them a wicked grin. “My guess, he must have money to have snagged a looker like that.” Seeming to have a second thought, he shook his head. “But she doesn’t strike me as the trophy wife type. Not that we get that many here. Couples like that check in up at the Spencer Inn.” He looked at Mac, dressed in a sports jacket over a pair of dress jeans. “You look more like the Spencer Inn type.”

Not revealing that he owned the Spencer Inn, Mac chuckled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Do you have the odd couple’s names?” David asked.

“Gordon and Nora Crump from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”

“What room are they in?” Mac asked.

“Two-oh-four,” the desk clerk answered without checking. “But they aren’t there. They went out to dinner a couple of hours ago.”

Confident that the desk clerk would know the answer, Mac asked, “I don’t suppose you know where they went to eat.”

“She asked me.” The young man grinned. “She had heard someone talking about a Southwestern restaurant on the lake. The Santa Fe Grill and Cantina. I gave them directions to it. They were all dressed up. He even looked like he took a shower…maybe.”

“The odd couple?” Randi repeated after they had climbed back into the cruiser.

“Odd.” David maneuvered the cruiser on the twisting road along the lake. 

“Why is it so hard to believe that a beautiful woman can fall for an unattractive man?” Randi asked with an accusatory note in her tone.

“The clerk wasn’t saying that Gordon is unattractive,” David said, “but that they didn’t look like they have anything in common.”

“How can you tell that by looking at a couple?” she asked.

“He’s right,” Mac called out from the back seat. “I saw them. They don’t look like they belong on the same planet, let alone in the same bed.”

David turned the cruiser up an entrance ramp that climbed up a slight hill into a crowded parking lot.

The Santa Fe Grill was a very popular Southwestern restaurant. Adding to its popularity, it sported a boat dock where guests would pull in for outdoor dining. Loud Southwestern music blared from the outdoor speakers to practically drown out the guests that filled the outdoor café. Inside the restaurant, there was an outdoorsy feel with high ceilings under which the guests’ chatter could bounce and echo to mix with the music.

After climbing out of the cruiser and opening the back door for Mac and Gnarly, Randi said, “It’s going to be almost impossible to find them in this crowd.”

The blast of six gunshots fired in rapid succession followed by a woman’s scream drowned out Mac’s reply.

David pointed beyond the rows of parked cars toward the restaurant’s main entrance. “Over there!” he shouted over the screams while pulling his gun from its holster.

Gnarly was already on the run. He charged at the sound of the first shot. Like a salmon fighting to swim upstream, he dodged around the fast moving legs to get to where Gordon Crump was sprawled out in what would be a flower bed during the summer months with his wife Nora kneeling over him.

“Did you see who shot him?” Randi grasped the hysterical woman’s shoulder.

Jumping at the agent’s touch, Nora looked up at them and covered her mouth with her hands.

“Did you see where the shooter went?” David searched the crowd for someone with a weapon.

Not answering, Nora gazed at the police chief standing over her.

Behind them, car horns were blaring. Patrons not wanting to be part of the scene, or possible victims, were frantically seeking escape routes. Some cars were making impromptu exits over curbs and down the hillside to the main road.

“Is he still here?” Randi asked the dead man’s wife.

She pointed out at the exit ramp. “There! That’s him in the black car.”

Craning his neck to get a look at the driver of the black car that had turned out onto the lake shore road, David raced back to his cruiser while calling in a description of the vehicle speeding away.

Seeing that Gnarly was hot on someone’s trail, Mac had opted to follow the barking dog. As he was dodging the courtyard bench, Mac noticed a rack with a silver bike chained to it.
Silver bike!
Mac paused long enough to note it.
Could it be the same killer? What could be the connection?

He turned the corner of the building to the back of the restaurant to witness a flock of kitchen help who had been lounging outside scattering at the appearance of the canine hot on a trail.  Determining that his prey was not amongst them, Gnarly was clawing and barking at the staff entrance.

“Hey, man!” someone called to Mac, “What’s wrong with your dog?”

With no time for conversation, Mac threw open the door to let Gnarly scurry in. Cooks and servers were yelling and jumping up onto counters to avoid the dog galloping straight through the kitchen followed by a man with a gun. Mac weaved through frightened cooks and servers while fighting to keep the shepherd in sight.

Gnarly followed the scent into the dining room, turned a corner and stopped at the men’s restroom door.

“Is this where he’s hiding?” His gun poised to shoot, Mac opened the door for Gnarly to charge in. Mac thrust his arm through the doorway with his finger on the gun’s trigger. Inside, he searched each stall for the shooter before determining that Gnarly had led him astray. “No one’s here, Gnarly.” Mac holstered his gun. “I’m afraid your nose misled us this time.”

His nose to the floor, Gnarly turned in circles until he came to the sink. 

“Come on.” Mac clapped his hands to get the dog’s attention. “David needs our help.”

Instead of going to him, Gnarly bolted under the sink to the trash container and rammed into it. It fell over with a loud metal clang.

“Gnarly!” Mac yelled. “What are you looking for? Did someone dump an old donut in there?”

While his master chastised him for the mess he was creating, Gnarly stuck his head inside the trash can. Dragging a black running jacket, its hood clutched in his teeth, he backed out. As he extracted it, the jacket became unfolded and a handgun fell onto the floor. After dropping the jacket to the floor, Gnarly let out a round of boisterous barks at Mac. When he was finished telling him off, the German shepherd sat down, peered at the jacket and gun, and then back up at Mac.

“Not bad, Gnarly,” Mac admitted. “But that still doesn’t get you off the hook for clogging up my toilet.”

The reminder of the toilet caused Gnarly to hang his head in shame.