Blast from the Past (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (2 page)

Chapter One

Spencer, Maryland – Deep Creek Lake – Present Day

“Gnarly, it’s time to go for your appointment.”

Lovely in her soft grey Chanel suit, rose-colored blouse, and stylish pumps, Archie Monday, assistant to the late Robin Spencer, hurried up the stairs to the second floor of Spencer Manor and down the hallway to the master suite.  The rose leather clutch bag under her arm was a perfect match for the fedora she wore over her pixie-styled blonde hair.

“Gnarly, are you in here?” She threw open the double doors to find the German shepherd sitting in the suite’s bathroom doorway. “There you are. It’s time to go.” She gestured for the dog to come to her.

Instead of obeying his favorite human, Gnarly whined and turned his attention back to the happenings inside the other room.

“Go where?” Mac Faraday called out to her from the bathroom.

She crossed the width of the suite to peer in at him. The sight that greeted her wasn’t what she had expected from the son of Robin Spencer, whose roots were as blue-blood as they come.

The clichéd appearance of a wealthy man calls for him to be tall, dark, and handsome—maybe ruggedly handsome—and at the very least, well-groomed. A man of wealth is best able to achieve this requirement by hiring others—like plumbers—to do the dirty work.

Two years after his inheritance allowed him to retire from his career as a homicide detective, Mac Faraday had chosen to ignore that rule.

His middle-class upbringing had a different rule: If you can do it yourself—no matter how dirty the job—it’s a waste of money to hire someone else to do it for you. 

Determination had drawn Mac’s handsome face into a scowl. His blue eyes were narrowed into slits focused on the toilet in which he was plunging away. Water splashed upwards to spill over the sides and drenched the lower half of his sweatpants down to his bare feet.

Even in this less than glamorous setting, Archie did find his arm and chest muscles, bulging from the workout, appealing. When Mac yanked the plunger up from out of the toilet, in the process splattering the water across his firm stomach and down the front of his pants, she reconsidered that assessment.
Maybe not that appealing after all.
She asked, “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

“Why?”

“It’s stopped up.” He shook the dripping plunger in Gnarly’s direction. “And I have a feeling I know who did it.”

Uttering a whine, Gnarly moved to hide behind Archie’s legs.

She jumped to the shepherd’s defense. “Why are you blaming Gnarly? He doesn’t use the toilet. You’re the only one who uses this toilet.”

“You’ve used it.” Mac reminded her of her frequent nights spent with him in the master suite. “Maybe I should blame you.”

She folded her arms across her bosom. “I wouldn’t go there if I were you.”

“That’s why I’m blaming Gnarly.” He again pointed the plunger at the dog. “Look at him. Do you see that guilty expression on his face? He’s done something, and I suspect it has to do with this toilet.”

“Even if he did drop something into it, how did he flush it?” She giggled. “Mac, he’s a
dog
.”

The phone on the bed stand rang before Mac could come up with a response. “Answer that, will you?” He returned to his plunging.

“I need to take Gnarly to the groomer,” she called in to him while trotting to the king-sized bed that they had been sharing.

Mac Faraday had inherited the mansion from Robin Spencer, who, as an unwed teenager, had given him up at birth. However, his late mother had stipulated that her research assistant and editor, Archie Monday, was permitted to live in the stone guest cottage tucked away in the rose garden for as long as she wanted.

The beautiful green-eyed blonde had come with the house, and Mac Faraday was in no hurry for her to move out … nor was she in any hurry to leave.

Spencer’s police chief David O’Callaghan didn’t sound his usual jovial self when Archie answered the phone. After a quick hello, he asked for Mac.

“David, you sound terrible,” she observed.

“My weekend’s been shot,” he replied. “One of my cruisers was stolen last night.”

“Are you serious?”

Mac came into the bathroom doorway. “What’s wrong?”

She told him, “One of David’s police cruisers got stolen.”

David told her the reason for his call. “Tell Mac that I’m going to miss the game this afternoon. I need to fill out a ton of reports and find out how someone was able to break into our garage to steal a police cruiser.” He added, “Our guys are going to be the laughing stock of the state for this.”

In Archie’s other ear, Mac was asking, “Does he need any help finding the scum who stole it?”

“It was probably some bored teenagers pulling a prank,” she told them both.

“Committing a felony doesn’t make for a very good prank,” they told her in unison.

Seeing the time on the alarm clock on the bed stand, she announced, “Gnarly and I are late.” She handed the phone to Mac.

“Where are you taking Gnarly?” he asked her.

“To the groomer,” she said. “It’s the first Saturday of the month.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Mac?” David called to him from the phone.

“Gnarly has a standing appointment for the first Saturday of the month,” she said with her hands on her hips. “Ten-thirty with Misty. He gets the works.”

“What’s ‘the works’?”

“Mac, are you there?” David asked him.

Archie ticked off each item on her fingers. “Shampoo, deep conditioner, teeth cleaning, toenails clipped, aromatherapy—they’re having a special today on strawberries and champagne—and—and this is Gnarly’s favorite—a deep body massage.”

Gnarly pawed at her hand.

“For a dog?” Mac’s voice went up in pitch.

“Dogs need pampering, too.”

“How much is all this going to cost?” Mac asked.

“Only two-hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

“Only two hundred and twenty-five dollars?” Mac objected. “I don’t spend that much a year on my own hair, and I’m a human.”

“And you look like it.” She kissed him. “I have to go. Misty is very popular. She will only hold Gnarly’s appointment for ten minutes. Once I was late, and she gave his appointment to a chow. Gnarly was in a snit the whole next week until Misty was able to fit him in.”

Gnarly uttered a whine mixed with a bark before charging down the stairs. Archie tucked her handbag under her arm and hurried after him.

With a shake of his head, Mac sat down onto the bed and brought the phone to his ear. “Dave …” All he heard from the other end of the line was a dial tone.

Gnarly loved riding in Archie’s royal blue Escalade. Mac would always order him to the back seat, which the German shepherd would ignore. Not so with Archie. When riding with his favorite lady, he was invited to ride shotgun in the front passenger seat and stick his head up through the sun roof when the feeling struck him to do so.

After climbing into the SUV, Archie noticed that the bangs of her shortly cropped blonde hair were curling funnily. That would not look good at the book club luncheon at the Spencer Inn, for which she was already running late. While the automatic garage door went up, she licked her fingertips and finger combed it.

Gnarly pawed at her arm to urge her to get moving.

“Sorry, Gnarl, I can fix them later at the Inn.” She put the car into gear and backed out of the garage, which housed Mac’s black SUV and red Dodge Viper. The last stall was still home to Robin Spencer’s yellow classic 1934 Bentley Park Ward convertible, which the late author had rarely driven. Mac had yet to drive it. He was afraid of wrecking it.

In the heart of Maryland, the cedar and stone home, known as Spencer Manor, rested at the end of the most expensive piece of real estate in the resort area of Deep Creek Lake. The peninsula housed a half-dozen lake houses that grew in size and grandeur along the stretch of Spencer Court. The road ended at the stone pillars marking the multi-million dollar estate that had been the birthplace and home of the late Robin Spencer, one of the world’s most famous authors.

Along the stretch of Spencer Point, Archie waved to the Schweitzers, who lived in the last house before crossing over the bridge, and then turned right onto Spencer Lane, which took her around the lakeshore. She noticed the Spencer police cruiser fall in behind her after she made the turn.

With her eye on the speedometer, she eased her foot on the gas to stay under forty-five miles per hour. With the other eye, she glanced at the black and gold SUV through the rearview mirror. She squinted in an effort to see who was driving.

It wasn’t Deputy Chief Art Bogart. He had his own cruiser. David was still at the station. Any of the dozen officers on the police force would have waved to her when she drove past.

I have a bad feeling about this… who’s that in the passenger seat?

The alarm inside her head kicked up the tempo a notch. The Spencer police department did not operate in teams. The force was too small. Each officer had his own cruiser and patrolled alone. If backup was needed in the small resort town, another officer would be only a few minutes away.

Something’s not right—not right at all.

The blue lights flashed on in the cruiser behind her.

“We have company, Gnarly.” She eased her SUV over to the side of the road. Through the trees on the right, she could see that the lake was tranquil. Most of the residents of Spencer were still waking up and starting their day. Across the road, the woods and trails led up the mountain on which rested the Spencer Inn, another part of Mac Faraday’s inheritance.

In her side and rearview mirror, Archie watched the two men with silver police shields pinned to their uniforms, dark glasses, and hats, get out of the cruiser. She could see by the fit of their shirts that they were wearing amour vests.

Gnarly looked over his shoulder and growled.

“Easy, Gnarly.”

While the driver approached Archie’s side, his partner came up along the rear passenger side. They were both wearing utility belts with guns, batons, and radios.

With her right hand, Archie reached into her clutch bag that she always kept tucked in between her seat and the hand break.

The driver reached around behind his back.

“Down, Gnarly.”

Gnarly lay down in the seat.

When she saw the butt of the gun come out from behind his back, Archie, her eyes on the target in her side rearview mirror, fired three shots from her pink handgun, engraved with
The Pink Lady
across the muzzle, over her left shoulder. The first shot took out the rear driver’s side window before ripping through the gun man’s neck. The other two went through his head before he hit the ground.

In one movement, Archie threw her right arm around to fire out the rear window at the partner who only managed to get one shot before she hit him in the lower neck. Her second shot went through his head.

The world seemed to stop.

Breathing hard, she clutched the gun and stared in the rearview mirror for any sign that they were still alive and would try again.

The next thing she was aware of was Gnarly clawing at her. When she didn’t respond, he licked her face. She had no idea of how long she had been sitting there.

“Oh, my!” She heard someone yell.

Archie opened up the car door and stepped out.

A car filled with tourists had driven up to the scene. Seeing the woman in a Chanel suit holding a pink handgun and standing over two dead police officers next to a cruiser that still had its blue lights on, they immediately became hysterical. The tires burned leather on the road when the car sped away.

After checking out the two men, Gnarly, assured that they were dead, came back to sit in front of Archie. His big brown eyes were questioning.
What just happened here?

Archie knelt down and took the paw he offered her. “Well, Gnarly, it’s a long story.”

Chapter Two

“Lucky thing I know every officer in the Spencer police department,” Archie told David as he knelt to examine the two dead men lying in the road. “When I saw two of them riding together, especially since I didn’t recognize them, I knew that they were in your stolen cruiser and something was up.”

“Or rather going down.” The police chief wiped the sweat dripping from his blond hair down the back of his neck.

Most of Spencer’s small police force was on the scene. After getting the call from Archie, and after being visited by the car filled with hysterical tourists, David ordered Spencer Lane blocked off until he and his officers could investigate.

As inconvenient as it was, motorists were sent either back and around to the other side of the lake or up over Spencer Mountain.

After taking Archie’s pink handgun into evidence, Deputy Chief Art Bogart scanned the dead men’s fingerprints onto his computer pad to send into the AFIS. If their prints were in the national database, they would be able to identify them. That would get them a step closer to finding out what had happened.

Like every devoted companion, Gnarly refused to leave Archie’s side until he knew she was completely safe.

David got the warning from his men at the end of Spencer Lane seconds before Mac Faraday roared up in his Viper. “Archie!” he called out before leaping out of the convertible to run to her. He was so anxious to get to her that he hadn’t stopped to put on a shirt or shoes. He gathered her up into his arms and hugged her so tight that he threatened to break her petite frame in half. After letting go, he clutched her face in both of his hands and kissed her. “Are you okay?”

Breathless from his kiss, she could only nod her head.

“What happened?” Mac observed the two dead bodies lying in front of the stolen police cruiser.

“A couple of car thieves messed with the wrong lady,” David said. “I’ll never make fun of her pink handgun again.”

“Who are they?” Mac asked him.

Deputy Chief Art Bogart threw open the door of his cruiser before stepping out to make his announcement. “A couple of high-priced assassins—just got a match from their prints in the AFIS.” He pointed his computer tablet to the dead driver. “Benny Hillerman—suspected killer in thirteen hits.” He then pointed at the dead partner. “Frank McCrumb—suspected of seven murders. Those are only the deaths the feds believe they know about.”

“The mob.” Mac clutched Archie’s hand in both of his. “They must have thought you were me.” He could feel her hand tremble.

She gazed up at him. Her mouth opened, but then shut again. She glanced over at David.

“You need to tell him,” the police chief said with his hands on his hips.

Mac looked from him to Archie and then back again. “Tell me what?”

Archie pulled Mac to the path going down to the lake. “Let’s take a walk.”

“No,” David said firmly. “I don’t want you out of my sight.”

Bogie agreed. “David and I will go over here.” He pointed to his cruiser. “We need to call the sheriff and state police about this.”

Mac was further concerned when David didn’t step away before asking him, “Do you have your gun?”

“Always.” Mac pulled his Beretta out from where he had it tucked into the waistband behind his back.

“Good.”

Mac noticed both David and Bogie scanning the trees and landscape around them while stepping over to the deputy chief’s cruiser. “Archie, what do you need to tell me? What happened here?”

Clinging onto both of his hands, she gazed down at the ground.

Gnarly pressed his body against her leg while staring up at Mac.

She sighed before saying, “I never told you how I met your mother.”

“Yes, you did,” Mac said. “She was teaching a special graduate course in mystery at a university. You were one of her students and got a job as her teaching assistant. You two hit it off, and after you graduated, she hired you as her editor and research assistant.”

Archie smiled softly. “That’s not exactly the truth. Not all of it.”

“What isn’t true?”

“One, I never graduated.”

“So you dropped out.” Mac gestured at the two dead men.  “What does that have to do with this?”

“There was something else I left out,” she confessed. “Why I never got to graduate.”

“What?” Mac sucked in a deep breath and held it.

“Something that happened between when I was Robin’s TA and when I came to work for her—my last semester of school.”

“Archie, you’re scaring me.”

Gnarly whined and hung his head.

“Did you ever hear of Tommy Cruze?” she asked.

Mac nodded his head quickly. “Big syndicate boss. The feds worked for years trying to bust him for drugs, prostitution, white slavery, and murder.”

“A dozen years ago he was put in jail—”

“For murder,” Mac said. “He killed his wife’s lover. They think he killed his wife. Her body was never found.” 

“But the reason they put him away was because there was a witness,” Archie said. “Not only did she witness the murder, but when his men took the body to dump it, she followed them and then went to the police.”

Mac was nodding his head. “Oh, yeah, I know all about that. When I was working homicide in DC, we all followed that trial. This one citizen, this woman went up against Tommy Cruze, the biggest, baddest mobster on the East Coast, and put him away.”

Archie said, “It wasn’t easy for her. His people managed to kill one of the witnesses before the trial, and later two people who had testified against him—even though they were in the witness protection program. This witness had to give up everything—even quit school—to go into the federal witness protection program—but it was what she had to do to stop Tommy Cruze.”

Mac stared down at her. Her eyes were emerald pools of tears. “That was you.”

Wordlessly, she nodded her head.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it.”

In silence, he cocked his head at her. “But—” He scratched his ear. “My mother was world famous. How could you work as an assistant for someone who—”

“
She
was famous, not me,” Archie said. “I was never anywhere around the cameras or PR people. When she made public appearances, I was elsewhere.”

“But Robin knew so many people,” Mac said. “She would interview criminals or people who were connected to underworld types for book research.”

“
Her
,” she said, “not me.” She sighed. “Listen, even the US Marshal’s office wasn’t keen on the idea, but before they placed me with Robin, Cruze’s people had gotten to two witnesses who had testified against him. Robin had figured out how it could all work. Her friends in high places told my handler and her boss to let me decide. I figured …” She shrugged. “What did I have to lose? Robin was offering to let me hide in the world I dreamed of living in: books, literature, travel—all from behind the scenes. I did my research online or in libraries. As for when we were meeting her sources who were connected to the underworld—I had a totally different background and identity.”

She held her hands up to her face. “I lightened my hair and cut it short—that’s why I wear it like this. Robin paid for me to get cosmetic surgery on my face—” She smiled. “Did you really think all this beauty happened naturally?” She waited in silence to see if her attempt to lighten the mood had succeeded.

Mac backed up a step and looked her up and down. Finally, he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Tears came to her eyes. “I wanted to.”

“Robin knew and protected you.” He turned to the police cruisers. The police chief and deputy chief were watching them. “David and Bogie knew. Everyone knew but me.”

“When the US Marshal’s office places a witness in the area, they contact the local police to let them know. Pat O’Callaghan was chief of police then.  He told none of the officers working under him until he was dying. Then, he told David and Bogie.” She cried, “I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how. I’m sorry, Mac.”

He shook his head. Fearing she would collapse from her grief, he took her into his arms. Gnarly pressed up against them as if to participate in a group hug.  “Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for. You did nothing wrong.”

“But I should have told you,” she sobbed into his ear.

“I understand…” He kissed her cheek. Then, he pushed her away and kissed her mouth, which was salty with tears. “I think you’re the bravest woman I ever met, Archie Monday, or whatever your name is.”

“I love you, Mac.” She collapsed back into his arms.

The three of them, Mac, Archie, and Gnarly, stood together as a group while she sobbed against his bare chest. Mac sensed that the fear or reality of the attempt on her life had finally hit her.

David came over to join them.  “Is everything okay?”

Stroking Archie’s hair while she clung onto him, Mac nodded. “We’re as okay as we can be …”

“If you’re not mad at her, I guess you’re not mad at me either.”

Mac shook his head. “I don’t care about who knew what when. I’m more concerned with finding out how Cruze uncovered where she is.”

As if to answer his question, a black sedan pulled up and around Mac’s car.

“Oh, no!” Archie pushed Mac away and hurried toward the car.

A woman with dark hair shortly cropped to her head, and dressed in a black pantsuit, jumped out of the driver’s seat. “O’Callaghan!” She advanced on David.

The police chief lunged in her direction. “Finnegan!”

Archie jumped between them. “Randi, you be nice to David.”

“Oh, I’ll be nice to him,” she yelled. “All I want to do is help him—help him find my fist at the end of his nose!” She threw a fist in David’s direction while Archie pushed her back.

“You want a piece of me, Finnegan! Come on!” David was ready to take her on, only to find Bogie blocking him with the deputy chief’s massive hand against his chest.

The silver-haired deputy chief, possessing the solid build of a wrestler, stood up with his arms straight out to his sides to hold the battling man and woman apart. Neither David nor Randi could get beyond the enormous officer between them.

Bogie’s gray hair and weathered face fooled many rookies. The officer had been with the Spencer police department longer than some of the younger officers had been alive. More than once, Bogie had been forced to adjust a cocky young rookie’s attitude by using his years of experience and massive muscles to pin him to the mat.

“I take it from her attitude that she’s a fed,” Mac asked Bogie.

“Randi Finnegan. US Marshal,” Bogie replied. “Archie occasionally checks in with her in Cumberland. A few times, she’s come into the station to see David, usually to give him grief about security in Spencer.” His salt-and-pepper eyebrows went up toward his gray hair. “Those meetings are never pretty.”

Her dark eyes boring on David’s blue eyes, Randi approached him like a gun slinger ready to do battle. “You just leave your police cars sitting around so assassins can use them to commit murder?” With both hands, she wrestled against Bogie’s hand, which was blocking her access to the chief.

“Now you listen here, Finnegan,” David argued, “my department’s procedures are none of your business.”

“They are when my charges are put in danger. Why didn’t you call me when you let your cruiser get stolen?”

“I only discovered it was missing minutes before this went down.”

“And you didn’t warn her?”

“He did warn me,” Archie said. “David called me about the missing cruiser, but I didn’t think—”

“You didn’t think?” With a sarcastic laugh, Randi redirected her attention. “Archie, that’s how killers get close to you—It’s the oldest ploy in the book! They pretend to be police officers.” She gestured at the cruiser. “They steal police cars.”

“Archie did think,” Mac said. “In case you haven’t noticed, she’s still standing, and they’re not.”

Finnegan looked the bare-chested man in the damp sweatpants and bare-feet up and down. “No thanks to your police chief.”

“Now you take that back!” Mac charged at her to find Archie holding him back.

The group of law enforcement officers turned into an angry mob with the police chief and Mac trying to get at the US Marshal.  Squeezed in the middle, Archie and Bogie tried to keep the peace by holding them all back.

“David O’Callaghan is the best police chief in these parts,” Mac told her. “He’s taken very good care of Archie—better than you—considering that I haven’t laid eyes on you until today and, frankly, with that attitude, I don’t care to see anymore of you.”

Grasping his arm, Archie tried to lead him away. “Mac, calm down.”

“I don’t want to calm down.” Mac shook her hand off and pointed at the marshal. “I have a question for you, Finnegan. How did Cruze’s men find Archie? How did they know she was here?”

All eyes were on US Marshal Randi Finnegan. Her attitude drained from her body. Her face turned white.

Bogie repeated the question. “How did they know?”

“Tommy Cruze got out of jail eighteen days ago,” she said.  “A judge let him out when it turned out that one of the feds who investigated his case was found to be dirty.”

Archie shrieked.

Mac gasped, “Are you kidding me?”

David stuck his finger into Randi’s face. “How is it that you, me, and more importantly
she
,” he pointed at Archie, “weren’t informed about this? If I knew, I would have been prepared to protect her. Instead, she had to take care of it herself.”

“I had no idea,” Randi said. “I only found out when I contacted the home office after Archie called me about this.” She whipped out her cell phone. “Get in the car, Archie.”

“What?” Archie asked while Mac clasped her arm as if to hold her there.

“I said to get in the car. We’re relocating you. Now!”

“No.”

The federal marshal lowered her cell phone from her ear. “We don’t have time to talk about this. Cruze is out. He knows where you are. You’re in danger. We don’t even have time to pack—”

“I’m not going.” Archie turned around and clung to Mac.

“I’m not letting her go,” Mac said.

When Randi stepped toward Archie as if to forcibly take her, Gnarly stepped in between them and barked. Archie clasped his collar to hold him back.

David and Bogie took positions on either side of Archie.

“We’ll take care of her,” Bogie said. “We’ve been taking care of her for this long, and we’re not stopping now.”

David said, “As you can see, she does pretty good at taking care of herself.”

“She got lucky this time,” Randi said.

“I’m not letting you take her away from me,” Mac said.

“If you want to be with her, fine. You can go into the program, too.” Randi waved her arm in a gesture for them both to get into the car.

“I’m not going into the program,” Mac said. “I have friends and family. I’m not going to leave them all behind to hide from a killer.”

“That’s your decision.” Randi said, “Archie, I understand how you feel. You’re in love. But don’t be a fool. Cruze and his people are ruthless. They’ll stop at nothing, including killing the people you care about.”

“I did nothing wrong,” Archie said. “Why am I the one hiding? Cruze is the one who did something wrong. He killed innocent people, and now he’s tried to kill me.” She folded her arms across her chest. “If anyone should be running scared, it’s him.”