Blast from the Past (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (15 page)

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.

“You said they were bickering about him being a wimp.”

A slow smile formed on the lawyer’s lips. “I remember now… what they got into a fight about…Louie, Cruze’s bodyguard, took their cream.”

“Cream?” Mac repeated.

Alan nodded his head. “We ordered coffee all the way around. The woman poured our coffee for us. We had sugar, but no cream on the table. But there was a bowl of those little tubs of cream over at that couple’s table, so Louie went and got it. When the husband didn’t say anything, the wife had a fit.”  

“Then she left.” Now the slow grin came to Mac’s lips. “Cruze and his bodyguard used the cream… and then died.”

The cream Gordon Crump had left on the table!

Chapter Twenty

FBI Agents Sid Delaney and Tony Bennett were waiting at the police station when David O’Callaghan and Mac arrived with Alan Richardson in custody.

In the early morning hour, most of the officers were assembled to get their assignments from Desk Sergeant Tonya before going on patrol. This was the second shift for most of them since Tommy Cruze and his crew had arrived in town. Gordon Crump’s murder the night before did nothing to slow things down.

“What is this?” the senior special agent’s tone was overflowing with annoyance.

“Alan Richardson has confessed to hiring the two assassins at the Dockside Café,” David announced.

“That’s our case,” Tony Bennett said. “You aren’t even supposed to be investigating it.”

“I was following up a lead in another murder case when Richardson confessed,” Mac said.

Agent Delaney regarded Alan Richardson with a mixture of both disbelief that he confessed to anything willingly, and annoyance that it was to the local police chief and not him. “Is that true?”

“I want a deal,” Richardson said.

“Be serious,” Delaney said.

“I am serious,” Richardson said. “I have a ton of information that will close up a lot of your open cases. You’ll get it all. You can even put me in jail. All I want is immunity and protection for my wife, Ariel.”

Delaney looked from Alan Richardson to his partner to David and Mac, then back to the lawyer. “Where is your wife?”

“She’s driving back to our place in Philadelphia,” Richardson said. “I called her before we left the hotel. She’ll meet your people in Philadelphia and call me when she is at a safe house and under protection. Once I know you have her and she is safe, then I’ll start talking. I’ll give you everything you need to bust the biggest mobsters on the East Coast.”

“Put him in the car and we’ll take him back to Washington,” Agent Delaney told Tony Bennett.

“This should be interesting,” Agent Bennett said before taking the lawyer by the arm and leading him out.

Special Agent Delaney glared at Mac and David in silence.

After the door shut, David said, “You don’t have to thank us.”

“Thank you?”

“You’re welcome,” Mac replied with sarcasm.

“We have a serious problem,” the special agent announced while looking from one of them to the other.

“Well, it just got better,” David said. “I have a feeling Alan Richardson is going to make your career in ways you could only imagine. He’s been representing mob figures for his whole career.”

“Now all we have left is the poisoning inside the café,” Mac said.

“Whoever did that put a lot of thought and premeditation into it,” Delaney said. “Our forensics people said every tub in that bowl that had been on Cruze’s table was tampered with. The paper cover over the tub had been peeled off to mix the poison into the cream, and then the tub was resealed. No one would have noticed without looking for it.”

“Well, at least you finally have Alan Richardson’s confession to hiring those two assassins to take out Cruze,” David said. “We still have Gordon Crump’s murder, as well as Mary Catherine Skeltner.”

“I also have Ray Bonito’s murder to solve,” Agent Delaney said. “Oh, and identifying the double-crossing inside man who set up the ambush last night.”

David and Mac exchanged puzzled glances.

“Ray Bonito?” David asked. “Was he the—”

“Body in the grave.” Delaney nodded his head. “DNA confirmed it.”

“Any idea when he was killed?” David asked.

“We’re still working on trying to pinpoint the last time he was seen alive by anyone,” Delaney said. “What gets my hackles up is that we collected the dead men’s cell phones and found an exchange of communication with who we thought was Bonito, and more than one text saying that our guy was a fed and to eliminate him ASAP. Someone blew his cover, and I want to know who.”

David gestured to the parking lot outside where Delaney’s partner had taken Alan Richardson. “Could have been—”

Mac was already shaking his head. “Richardson had no idea that the hit man was an agent.”

“If it wasn’t Richardson, then that means the rat who burned our guy has to be someone on the inside.” Delaney said. “I’m investigating my men, but I can already tell you that I doubt our rat is among them.” He shook his index finger in David’s face. “You better hope like hell that I do find our rat on our side, because once I’m through looking there, I’m going to start looking in your camp.”

“My men aren’t dirty!” Lunging, David riled like a papa bear.

Fearing that the police chief was going to physically attack Delaney, Mac yanked him back by the arm. “We’ll investigate our own camp, thank you very much.”

“You do that.” Delaney stepped up to tell David to his face.

The two men’s penetrating glare cast an electrical vibe throughout the room that captured the officers’ attention.

“Who’s going to investigate you?” Delaney asked in a low tone. “After all, your men weren’t in our van to see my man…you were.”

Mac pushed in between them to break the glare. “You can investigate O’Callaghan as much as you want. He’s clean. I’d stake my life on it.”

“Well, my man staked his live on it, and he’s got a bullet in his shoulder and the cover that he’s spent three years setting up is burned. He’s lucky. In that ambush, it could have been a lot worse. No one blows my operation without getting called on it.”

“Bring it on,” David challenged him.

“I will.”

With that parting shot, Delaney, under the glare of the whole Spencer police force, departed.

“Here I thought he’d be happy that we brought in Alan Richardson,” Mac said in a breathless voice.

“This is not good,” Tonya said. “Having the feds mad at us is not good at all.”

“No, it’s not,” David said.

“Maybe the agent blew his own cover and didn’t realize it,” Tonya said.

Mac shook his head. “Cruze trusted him enough to ask him to take out Archie. As of yesterday morning, his cover was secure. It was after the murders at the café…”
The men received the information that the agent was a cop via text!

Mac remembered the conversation he had with Archie the night before.
“If she’s supposed to be dead, who is she texting? She’s up to something.”

“I need to go home,” Mac said with a desperate tone. He grabbed his gun from its holster. “Tonya, call the manor, and tell Randi not to leave with Leah. They are to stay until we get there.” He grabbed David by arm. “We need to get out to the house now.”

“What is it?” David asked.

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

Mac was rushing for the door when it flew open so hard and fast that he thought the federal agents had returned. Instead, Ariel Richardson walked in. Her beautiful face was contorted in anger. Her eyes were red rimmed and wide. The gun she had aimed at Mac’s face appeared equally menacing.

He backed up from the door.

“I came for my husband.”

Chapter Twenty-One

The hardest part of being a research assistant or editor—the two things that Archie had made her life since being abruptly torn from her old one— is lack of movement.

Archie had learned to focus all of her attention on the task that she was given. Whether it was how autopsies were performed at the turn of the nineteenth century, or digging into the background of a murder suspect who appeared completely innocent to everyone else on the planet, she would virtually dive into her computer and the Internet—only to come up for air sometimes as much as ten hours later, exhausted and hungry, and with cramped muscles from lack of movement.

As the years went by and her muscles had grown older, she found that she had to force herself to break from the concentration and do some walking.

After hours of digging through various social media sites to unravel the mystery of Russell and Mary Catherine Skeltner, Archie left the study and went in search of a snack upstairs in the kitchen.

She was startled by a witch’s cackle bursting forth from the home theatre across the hall.

Archie slowly pushed down on the door handle and stepped inside. Loud music hit her in the ears and face as the crescendo of the thrilling soundtrack from
The Wizard of Oz
burst forth from the room. Specifically, it was the scene of the flying monkeys filling the sky around the Wicked Witch’s castle.

“Oh, Gnarly, I’m scared,” a little girl’s voice came from out of the darkness.

The dark scene from the old movie filled the movie screen in the theatre. Lounging sofas made up four rows of seats for the viewing audience.

The terrifying music was mixed with a little girl’s squeal.  “I’m so glad you’re watching this with me, Gnarly.”

A dog-like groan responded to her.

When her eyes adjusted to the dark in the room, Archie discovered Bogie, sacked out on one of the lounges, sound asleep. Sari and Gnarly were sprawled out on the floor in front of the screen. Sari laid on top of Gnarly with her arms wrapped around him. In front of them was a giant bowl tipped over and spilling popcorn across the floor. Both of them were feeding from the bowl and the popcorn on the floor.

“I know they’re not real, but those monkeys always scare me.” Pointing to the screen, Sari told Gnarly as if he had never seen it before. “But Toto escapes from the castle and goes to get help.”

Gnarly was more interested in the handful of popcorn she had in her hand. She opened it to let him lick up the pieces from her palm, after which she licked the remnants that his tongue had missed.

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.” She hugged him closer. “I know you’ll never hurt me.” She kissed him on the top of the head. “I love you, Gnarly.”

Gnarly returned her kiss with a lick on the face and mouth.

So she does talk! Just not to us.
“Sari,” Archie called as she came forward out of the darkness.

The little girl whirled around and stared up at her.

“I see you and Gnarly are watching
The Wizard of Oz
.” Archie knelt down next to her.

Saying nothing, Sari clung to Gnarly.

“That was my favorite movie when I was growing up. Do you know who I loved the most in the whole movie?”

Sari stared at her without saying a word.

“Toto,” Archie said.

The two of them eyed each other.

“I know you can talk, Sari,” Archie said. “It’s okay that you only want to talk to Gnarly. He’s a good listener. But if you ever want to talk to someone who will answer back, you can talk to me. I’m a good listener, too.”

The message in the little girl’s eyes ordered Archie to leave them alone.

“Maybe you’d like some ice cream to go with the popcorn?”

Sari turned to the dog and asked, “Do you want some ice cream, Gnarly?”

“His favorite flavor is vanilla,” Archie said. “Would you like some hot fudge sauce on yours?”

Sari nodded her head.

“Two ice creams coming up.” Watching the little girl return to hugging Gnarly, Archie backed out of the theater.

The cell phone in her pocket vibrated to signal a text. She took it out of her pocket to see that it was the clone for Leah’s phone. She was sending a text to multiple recipients—all of whom were only named by initials.
Scatr & la lo untl I contact u

Hurrying back into the study, Archie reached into her pocket for her cell phone and dialed the number for Mac’s cell. After three rings, it went to voice mail.

“Rats!” she stomped her feet.

Scatter and lay low until I contact you!

Recalling the text message, Archie’s eyes raised when she heard a scream and a gun shot from the bedroom two floors above.

“Your husband isn’t here,” David told Ariel Richardson, who had ordered everyone (Tonya, David, Mac, and two officers who had not yet left to go on patrol) to gather together in the center of the reception area. They were all holding their hands up for her to see.

“You’re lying!” Ariel’s well-cultured tone from the day before now held a hysterical edge to it. “He told me that he was coming here with you.”

“But when we got here, the feds were waiting,” David explained in an even tone. “The attempted hit is their case. That makes your husband their witness. They’re taking him to Washington right now. They left about a half-hour ago.”

Mac tore his eyes from the barrel of the gun to look into Ariel’s eyes. He had seen that look before, usually in the faces of women who felt that they had lost it all. They had nothing more to lose.
This is not good. This is not good at all.

“Your husband is making a deal with the feds,” Mac said. “He loves you very much and wants, above everything else, to keep you safe.”

“Alan won’t last a single day if he so much as speaks to the feds,” Ariel said. “They can’t protect him. No one can protect him. That’s why I’m taking him with me and we’ll run away together—we can go underground and start a new life.”

“Ariel,” David said while stepping toward her, “we know how dangerous the people your husband worked with are—”

“You know?” she shrieked. “You don’t know anything. I lived with them. They have connections everywhere—into everything. There is no place that they can’t reach you.”

While David had Ariel’s attention, Mac, keeping turned to the side, slowly reached down to touch the button on his cell phone. Unable to see the keypad, he could only hope that he tapped the side that would do a redial of the last number he had dialed, and that the phone would be on speaker phone.

“Do you know how long it took me to find a rat in the US Marshal’s office to get me Kendra Douglas’s location in the Witness Protection Program?”

“You?” Mac asked. “It was you?”

“The caller ID on Ginger Altman’s phone was Alan Richardson,” David said. “But since you’re his wife—the phone is in his name.”

“You set up the hit,” Mac said. “Those two hit men at the café—”

“I told Alan about it after I had set it up so that he could make sure he found an excuse to leave before they got there,” she said.

“Then
you
hired the hit men,” Mac said.

“They thought they were doing a job for Bonito,” she said. “Texting is great that way. With no voice and a phony ID on the phone—”

“You can easily hide your identity,” Mac finished. “When I confronted him with the evidence, he took the blame to protect you.”

“Alan was always such a gentleman.” Tears rolled down Ariel’s cheeks. “He saved my life.”

“Ginger Altman,” Mac said, “the leak at the US Marshal’s office who gave you the whereabouts for Kendra Douglas—It was you, not Alan, who arranged to have her killed when she became a threat. Your husband didn’t seem to know about it when I mentioned it.”

“She called the office and demanded money to run away,” Ariel said. “I met people like her all the time when I was married to Tommy. Once you start paying them for their silence, they never go away.”

“Alan is confessing to everything,” Mac said, “everything that you did—to protect you.”

“That is why I’m going to save him now.” She aimed the gun at Tonya. “You have five minutes to turn over my husband, and then I’m going to start shooting your officers one by one.”

Years of training had Bogie instantly awake and on his feet the second he heard the gun shot from up above. He almost tripped over Sari and Gnarly while running for the door. Before throwing it open, he turned to Sari, who was clinging to Gnarly. The German shepherd was ready to charge as soon as Bogie opened the door.

“Gnarly, stay with Sari,” Bogie said. “Whatever happens, make sure she’s safe.”

Whirling around, Gnarly gently took Sari’s wrist into his mouth and led her to the other side of the room to disappear into the darkness of the theater.

Cracking open the door, Bogie peered out. He could see Archie at the top of the steps.

“Randi is bleeding,” he heard Archie say. “You need to let me call a doctor. She needs help.”

“If you want to help her,” he heard Leah yell, “you’ll go get Sari and give me the keys to your car. If I see any cops following me, then she’s dead! Tell her!”

Bogie heard a muffled response that sounded pained.

He tapped the button on his radio. “Tonya,” he said in a loud whisper. “This is Bogie. We’ve got a hostage situation here at Spencer Manor.” He heard no response.

“Bogie!” Hector Langford’s voice called out into his ear. “Are you able to respond? We heard a shot. Is everything cool inside?”

It took several seconds for Bogie to realize that the Spencer Inn security manager was calling to him on his ear bud.

“No,” Bogie answered. “We have a hostage situation. Leah has shot Finnegan and taken her hostage. She is demanding her daughter and safe passage out. I repeat, Leah is armed and has taken Finnegan hostage. I’m not getting any response on my radio from the station.”

“That’s because something is going down there,” Hector said. “I got what sounds like a butt dial from Faraday. Some woman sounds like she’s taken them all hostage and is threatening to shoot everyone.”

“Damn!”

“I’ve already called the feds for us and the state police for your department,” Hector said. “Is the little girl safe?”

“Gnarly is guarding her in the home theater.” Bogie squinted to peer into the dark corner of the theater where Gnarly had led her. “Gnarly? Sari? Where are you?”

They were both gone.

“Archie is upstairs trying to talk Leah down,” he reported.

“Don’t you worry, mate,” Hector told him. “We’ve got your back.” In his ear, Bogie heard Hector rallying the guards outside to move in.

“It’s dark, Gnarly,” Sari whimpered. “I can’t see anything.”

In the dark corner of the home theater, she could feel, but not see, the dark tunnel that Gnarly had urged her to crawl into on her hands and knees. It seemed like a game of follow the leader.

She had not seen Gnarly jump up to push the button that popped open the hatch door built into the wall beneath the movie screen. Grasping the hem of her skirt in his mouth, he had pulled her into the tunnel behind him. Clinging to the dog’s tail as her lifeline, Sari crawled behind him until they reached the end of the tunnel, at which she felt a flight of stairs. Using his nose, Gnarly nudged her up the stairs.

“What’s up there?” she asked with a whine.

As if to show the way, Gnarly trotted up the stairs to what seemed to be a dead end.

She followed. The sound of birds singing and the lake water seeped down to her ears. With a push on the roof above her, the trap door opened to reveal a multi-colored floral scene around them.

“Cool!” she squealed.

Gnarly leapt out of the secret passageway.

Outside in Robin Spencer’s rose garden, Hector Langford was squinting through his binoculars into the living room while praying, as he always did when he found himself in a tough situation.

When he had signed on as security manager at the five-star Spencer Inn, he had assumed the toughest situation he would run into would be a sticky fingered housekeeper. He had needed a break after retiring from a career in covert operations.

No one warned him that anything is possible when you go to work at an inn owned by a world famous mystery writer. When Robin Spencer died, her son, who turned out to be the personification of her literary detective, Mickey Forsythe, stepped things up a notch.

How did I ever get into this? Oh, Lord, let that little girl be okay.
The answer to his prayer came in the form of a bark.

“Is that Gnarly?” one of the officers nearby asked a security guard hiding a few paces away.

The glasses still in front of his eyes, Hector turned in the direction of the bark in time to spot a magnified dog snout racing straight for his face. Before he could prepare himself, Hector Langford was flat on his back in the rose garden with a hundred pounds of fur on his chest and a squealing child wrapped around his leg.

US Marshal Randi Finnegan was bleeding. One whole side of her shirt and pants was covered in blood where Leah had shot her. Leah held a gun to her head, with a second gun tucked into the waistband of her slacks.

Archie’s blue Ruger was on the floor between them where Leah had ordered her to toss it.

Archie refrained from covering her mouth in horror while watching Leah shove the wounded woman, her friend and confidante of a decade, down the stairs into the living room. “It doesn’t have to be like this, Leah. It’s clear that you killed Ray Bonito in self-defense and to protect Sari. You covered up his murder because you were afraid that once his people found out who you were and what you had done—”

“That’s not what I’m afraid of them finding out,” Leah said. “It’s what happened afterwards.”

“You took over running his operation,” Archie said.

“I can’t believe it.” Randi struggled against Leah’s hold with her arm around her throat. “You mean you were running a major crime syndicate while in the program?”

Leah laughed. “Who would have ever guessed that someone who was being protected from the mob would be running the mob?”

“I’m going to be so fired for this,” Randi said.

“Or dead,” Leah replied.

Spying movement in the shadows beyond the deck, Archie eased over toward the fireplace on the other side of the living room. “Leah, it doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Yes, it does,” Leah said. “You don’t get it, do you? I have been running a major identity theft operation, illegal arms deals, swapping drugs for weapons and then selling them to the cartels—all of it and I loved it,” she hissed. “All that power. All those men doing what I said, when I said. Someone gives me grief, and with one text, they’re dead. Someone gets in the way, just the tap of a few fingertips on the keypad, and the way is clear. It’s exhilarating…and addictive.” She waved her gun at Archie. “Really—seriously—I never planned for it to be that way. I didn’t go to see Ray to kill him. But it happened. And I thought that I would pretend to be him, using the phone, sending texts, for only a few days until I figured out what I was going to do. But then, I couldn’t give all that up. Don’t you understand?”

“No,” Archie said.

“Admit it,” Leah taunted her. “Wouldn’t you like to be Mac Faraday—have all his power—have people cow-towing to you—even if only for one day?”

“Ariel,” David said while trying to ease away from the group of officers, “you have to believe us. Alan is not here. We don’t have him, Ariel, and we have no authority to bring him to you.”

As he was talking, David eased up toward her. “You have every reason to be scared. That’s why they have the witness protection program, so that people who are brave, like Alan, can help to put people like Tommy Cruze away without getting hurt.”

Slowly drawing his gun, Mac eased around behind the hostages and slipped out of the range of Ariel’s peripheral vision.

They could all see that the terrified woman was indeed an amateur. It was with little difficulty that David had managed to draw her attention away from the rest of the officers. Taking them hostage was not planned. It was a desperate act of survival.

When David took a step toward her, Ariel held her ground. He reached out his hand to her. “Ariel, you don’t want to do this. You’re not a killer like Cruze. Everyone will see that everything you did, and everything that Alan took the credit for, was for self-defense.” He reached for her. “Hand me the gun.”

Mac saw Tonya’s Taser resting on top in her open hand bag.

Indecisive, Ariel was breathing hard.

David inched in closer. “We’ll talk to the prosecutor. The feds will protect you.”

As he reached for the gun, she pulled back. “No!” Her resolved returned and she thrust the gun up and at David. “They’ll kill us both. We—”

Mac dove for her from behind. With one arm, he thrust her hand up into the air. The bullet flew wild to hit the ceiling. With his other arm, Mac planted the Taser against her neck and hit the trigger to send a jolt of electric shock through her body.

With a single scream, Ariel Richardson collapsed into Mac’s arms. 

“Why did you kill Ray Bonito?” Archie asked Leah. “When he recognized you, why didn’t you tell Randi and get relocated?”

Leah laughed. “Do you have any idea how many people Mario worked for and with? No matter where they put me, no matter how they had me live, one of Mario’s people was going to locate me. I thought Ray—he knew my father. He said he had a lot of respect for my family, which was why he wasn’t going to rat me out to Mario’s people, as long as I did as he said. Do you know what he wanted me to do?”

Randi replied in a weak voice. “I can imagine.” Her clothes were soaked with blood. Losing consciousness, she staggered to stay on her feet.

Lying on the floor in the dining room, with his gun aimed at Leah from over the lower wall, Bogie was in position. He got her into his sights.

Without warning, Leah whirled around to aim her gun at him.

“Oh,” Archie called out as she collided with the end table. Both it and the lamp fell over onto the floor.

The sudden movement in the other direction caught Leah off guard. Pulling the trigger at the same time, she turned toward Archie, who had dropped to the floor behind the end table. Her shot went wild and took out a picture of a Spanish bull fighter that Archie always hated.

When Leah ping-ponged to find her target, she lost her hold on Randi, who slumped to the floor. 

Seeing Leah firing in Archie’s direction, Bogie grabbed the precious second to fire his gun, but he didn’t have enough time to readjust his aim. The shot ended up taking out the grandfather clock. It wasn’t the first time the grandfather clock had been shot out. Before he could take another shot, Leah had spotted him and had him in her sights.

Archie was back up on her knees and firing. The little pearl-handled revolver that she had concealed in her ankle holster was more for appearances, but in the hands of an experienced shooter like she had become, it was good enough.

The bullet tore into Leah’s side, traveled upward and shot out through her upper chest. During its flight through her body, it tore through her heart. She was dead before she hit the ground.

“Randi!” Archie was by the marshal’s side.

“Target is dead,” Bogie reported into his ear bud to Hector at the same time that the guards came bursting in from all directions—taking out doors, windows, sheers, and curtains in the process.