Blast from the Past (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (8 page)

He offered his theory. “She spilt her juice and tried to come downstairs to get another glass, but fell and killed herself.” He concluded with a wave of his arms. “Accidental death.”

Mac looked from him to Dora, whose face was as devoid of expression as that of a professional poker player, and back to the husband of the dead woman lying in a pool of blood between them.

With each second of silence, the muscles in Russell’s face tightened with impatience.

“I need to see your wife’s bedroom,” Mac finally said.

While Dora went to work photographing the body and the scene for her records, Mac followed Russell Skeltner to the kitchen in the rear of the house and up the back staircase to the bedrooms on the second floor level.

“Do you have any guests staying here this weekend?” Mac asked in a pleasant tone. Even though the question was conversational, it was meant to determine if there were any other suspects.

“We haven’t had guests since Mary Catherine got sick,” he replied. “She always wanted to have a B and B on the lake.”

At the top of the stairs, a county forensics officer was taking pictures of the stairs and each blood splatter on the way down. The Spencer police department was rich, but small, which meant they had to use the services and labs of the bigger departments around them for the more serious crimes.

Russell Skeltner led Mac down a hallway at the end of which was the master suite. The door was open to reveal a cluttered bedroom. Numbered place markers and rulers littered the room where the forensics officer, a young woman who Mac noted appeared about the same age as his son in college, had marked evidence to suggest what had led up to the woman’s death.

“We were only here a few years and doing pretty good until it got too difficult for her to manage.” Standing next to the doorway, Russell gestured for Mac to step inside.

The room contained a television blasting a reality program featuring a has-been teen pop star, a bed tray overturned on the floor, and a glass resting in the middle of an orange juice spill. There were clothes scattered about on the bed, a chair, and the floor. On the bed stand was row upon row of pill bottles.

The bathroom door was open to reveal a sink and counter that was cluttered with more pill bottles and women’s cosmetics.

Mac noticed that the indentation in the mattress was in the center of the bed. There was a blood smear on the pillow case and a drop of blood on the bed poster next to the night stand. Both had been marked by the crime scene officer. The blood smear was over two inches long.

“The blood smear is old,” Russell Skeltner told Mac when he noticed him studying it. “Mary Catherine would get nose bleeds—side effect from some of her meds.”

“Where do you sleep, Mr. Skeltner?”

The husband’s head snapped in Mac’s direction in response to the question. “I sleep in one of the rooms at the end of the hall. Mary Catherine slept all hours of the day with the television blaring twenty-four-seven.  It was impossible for me to sleep in the same room with that.” He added, “But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love her.”

With no response to the answer, Mac knelt down to examine the hardwood floor. Mary Catherine Skeltner had been sick and bedridden for so long that she did not have the time to devote to cleaning—especially her floor. The hardwood floor contained a layer of dirt and dust that had built up. Mac turned on his penlight to study the drag pattern on the floor leading from the bed to the hallway.

When he saw the beam catch on something to create a brilliant spark of light, Mac felt a jolt as his heart seemed to skip a beat.
What is that?
He lowered himself onto his hands and knees to get a closer look at the object resting against the side of the leg of the bed stand.

“I heard the ME tell you that the time of death was between six-forty-five and seven o’clock,” Mac could barely hear Russell saying. “I left the house at six-thirty to go running like I do every morning.”

Mac resisted the temptation to touch it. “Mr. Skeltner, how’s your eyesight?”

There was a moment of silence before he answered. “Twenty-twenty. Perfect. Why?”

“How about your wife?”

Another pause. “Terrible. She wore glasses. As you can see, she left them on the night stand. Probably another reason she fell down the stairs. She was so hyped up on drugs—”

Mac sat up to see that a pair of eyeglasses with thick lenses was indeed resting on the bed stand. “Then I guess she didn’t wear contact lenses.”

Another pause.

When he didn’t receive an answer, Mac, still on his knees, turned to look up at Russell Skeltner. The two men’s eyes met.

“No, Mary Catherine didn’t wear contact lens,” Russell answered.

Mac called down the hallway to the forensics officer. “We have a contact lens here on the floor that needs to be processed into evidence. It’s not the victim’s or husband’s.”

“My God,” Russell gasped. “Mary Catherine was…murdered! I can’t believe—” He fell back against the wall. “Every day, I go running along the shoreline and cross the bridge to go to the Dockside Café for coffee. Whoever did this must have realized my schedule and…I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Mr. Skeltner, you need to step out of this room into the hall in order for us to contain the scene.” Mac ushered him out into the hallway to allow the forensics officer in to photograph and collect the contact lens.

While the forensics officer was taking pictures of the lens from various angles, Mac continued studying the drag marks on the floor.  There was one clear path in the layer of dust—leading from the bed and through the doorway out into the hall.

“Did you see the piece of her nightgown?” the officer pointed at a piece of material that had caught and been torn from a piece of clothing. “She was definitely dragged on her back to the top of the stairs.”

Pink!
Mac smiled.
Mary Catherine Skeltner’s nightgown is pink!

“Takes me about twenty to twenty-five minutes to jog to the café every morning,” Russell Skeltner was telling Mac even while he was trying to concentrate on the drag marks in the hall. “Then, I jog back after drinking my espresso next to the lake. I always get there right when they open.” He stepped away from the wall to tell Mac, “That was where we met this morning.”

Mac looked up from where he was studying the torn material that had been ripped from the nightgown Russell Skeltner’s wife had been wearing.

“My wife’s time of death is the same time as when you and I met in front of the Dockside Café.” A wide grin was filling Russell Skeltner’s face. “Guess you can’t ask for a better alibi witness than a homicide detective, can you?”

Chapter Twelve

Mac could feel Russell Skeltner peering out the window from inside his home—laughing at him.
I hate killers, especially smart killers who think they’ve gotten away with it.
He resisted the urge to slam the door of David’s cruiser.
Don’t give him the satisfaction.

Replaying the different scenarios in his mind, Mac was clutching the cruiser’s door handle when he noticed a movement in the other direction out of the corner of his eye. It was so far in his peripheral vision that he almost missed it. When he turned to look over his shoulder, he saw the curtain move in the window of the log cabin across the road.

Leaving the cruiser in the bed and breakfast driveway, Mac strolled over to the cottage. A yellow tabby cat greeted him when he stepped onto the walkway. After escorting the visitor to the door, the feline rubbed against Mac’s leg until the door was opened by a tiny elderly woman dressed in a rose-colored house dress. The cat scurried inside.

“Hello, ma’am.” Mac showed her the police shield he wore clipped to his belt next to his service weapon. “I’m Mac Faraday with the Spencer police department. I’m investigating the death of Mary Catherine Skeltner, the woman who lives across the road from you.”

The old woman peered up at Mac with wide eyes. “Pat? Chief Pat?” A wide smile crossed her face, pushing her wrinkled cheeks up to make her eyes narrow slits of grayish-blue.

Mac felt a solemn smile come to his lips. He had seen several pictures of his birth father. The resemblance was striking. “No, Mac. I’m Mac Faraday. I live on—”

“They told me that you died several years ago. Your son David is supposed to be chief now.”

Concluding that setting her straight would be a lost cause, Mac moved on to the reason for his visit. “I was wondering if you had noticed anything going on across the road this morning.”

“Did you say Mary Catherine was dead?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid so.”

Her face scrunched up in a scowl. “Her husband did it,” she said in a harsh tone.

“Why would he kill her?”

“Because he didn’t like living with a sick woman,” she said. “Everything was fine when they had money and he could buy all his toys—expensive running shoes and travel all over the place to run-run-run-run, that’s all he does is run—going to this marathon and that one and leaving his poor wife all alone and sick. I’m surprised he didn’t kill her before now.” She pointed a gnarled up finger at him. “I know you’ll catch him, Chief Pat. He won’t get away with it. You’ll catch him—like you always do.”

“Did you see him go running this morning?”

“Every morning.” She nodded her head. “He went out running while I was in the kitchen putting on the tea kettle.”

“What time was that?”

“Six-thirty,” she said. “I get up at six-thirty every day. I don’t need an alarm. I just wake up—have for years from when I used to teach school. Taught over in Oakland for forty years.”

Mac frowned. “Did you see anyone else come by the house across the road after Mr. Skeltner left?”

“A boy on a bike,” she answered. “The bike was silver. He was wearing black sweats with a hood up over his head.” She stepped outside and pointed across the road to where she saw him. “He rode up and then got off and walked his bike around back behind the house. That was about fifteen minutes later. I know because I let my tea seep for fifteen minutes—” She tapped Mac’s chest to make her point. “—
after
I put in the tea ball. I was pouring my tea when that boy rode up.”

“About how old was this boy?”

Her face scrunched up in deep thought, she stared at the finger she was pressing against his chest. “Teenager. Maybe middle teens. Sixteen?”

Following the line from her finger poking him in the chest to the home across the road, Mac turned. “On a bike, huh?”

After climbing into the cruiser, Mac slowly drove along the road that followed the lake shore to the bridge and across to the café. He had difficulty keeping his eyes on the road while searching the bushes and hiking trails. Russell Skeltner could have hidden the bike to ride back to kill his wife, and then speeding back to hide it, all in order to get to the café in time to establish an alibi.

Only Russell Skeltner was much too tall and solidly built to be mistaken for a teenaged boy.

Maybe it was a teenager looking to steal some of Mrs. Skeltner’s drugs. Nah! Russell Skeltner had to be behind it somehow.

At a pull-off right before the bridge, Mac spied the two elderly gentlemen who had called to him while he was jogging that morning. They were now packing up their gear. Year round residents of Spencer, they would fish from the same spot every morning when he would run by. As they had that morning, they would also notice everyone who crossed the bridge.

“Hey, there!”  Mac waved to them after parking the cruiser in the dirt boat launch where one of the fishermen had parked his old truck. “How’re the fish biting?”

Spying the cruiser, the two men exchanged quick glances before strolling up to where Mac was sitting in the car. “Hey, aren’t you Mac Faraday?” One of them peered at him. “Robin Spencer’s boy?”

After Mac confirmed that he was, they both looked over the SUV, noting the gold lettering that identified it as a Spencer police cruiser. “Since when are you working for the police?” one asked. The other inquired if Mac had lost all of his millions of dollars in the stock market.

“No, I’m working as a consultant for the Spencer police department.” Mac assured them by showing them his police shield. “Only on this one case. A woman died suddenly this morning at the Skeltner Cove B and B—”

“Mrs. Skeltner?” The one fisherman jabbed his buddy with his elbow before telling him, “She was real sick with cancer.”

“Is that the woman whose husband goes running by here every day while we’re fishing?”

“Saw him just this morning,” the other man replied. “Not long after you went by with Gnarly. How is Gnarly?”

“Gnarly is fine,” Mac assured him.

“Why isn’t he helping you on this case?” the old man asked in an accusatory tone.

Stunned by the question, Mac could only shake his head and shrug.

“Did Mr. Skeltner run by before or after I caught me that foot-long catfish?” the other man scratched the side of his head.

“It was either before or after,” his companion answered.

Looking at Mac, the fisherman nodded his head. “Definitely before or after I caught that two-foot long catfish.”

“Poor guy,” his friend shook his head. “Wife sick all those years, then goes into remission only to die. When did it happen? How’d she die?”

“Shortly before seven o’clock,” Mac answered. “By any chance, did you see someone ride by on a bike about that time?”

They both nodded. “Dressed in a black hoodie. He rode by heading in the opposite direction,” one replied. “Couldn’t miss him. He was speeding because when Skeltner was running up on the bridge, he almost hit Skeltner or something. I don’t know what. All of a sudden, Skeltner yelled and was swearing at the kid on the bike.”

“I saw Skeltner make an obscene gesture at him,” his buddy confirmed with a nod of his head. “Didn’t see what he did, but it really ticked Skeltner off.”

Mac blinked. “You mean you saw them both at the same time?”

Nodding their heads quickly, one asked, “Why? Is that important?”

“Yes.”

“Russell Skeltner had his wife killed.” Mac followed David from one desk to the other through the police station while making his case.

After returning from the cafe, the police chief was busy doing the mundane administrative chore of passing out messages, notices, and other types of office drudgery. Even though he could delegate the duties to Tonya, he preferred to do most of them himself.

“Well, that’s going to be pretty hard for you to prove,” David laughed while shoving an invitation to a police-firefighter ballgame into his hand, “considering that you’re his alibi and the neighbor saw some kid in a black hoodie sneaking in while he was out running.”

Folding up the notice without reading it, Mac shot back, “Then he had the kid in the black hoodie kill her for him while he was out setting up an alibi. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Just your luck that you happened to be on hand to become that alibi,” David said with a smirk.

“They may be able to collect DNA from the contact lens,” Mac said. “The problem is getting a suspect to compare it to.”

“Why are you so convinced Skeltner is in on it?” David asked. “The woman was strung out on drugs. It could have been a kid after her meds.”

“Skeltner didn’t even try to appear remorseful about her being dead,” Mac said.

David stopped and turned to him. “Did you say she had cancer?”

Mac nodded his head. “For the last three years.”

“After years of watching his wife suffer, maybe Skeltner felt relief over her being out of her misery,” David said in a gentle tone. “I’ll admit that I felt relief when Dad finally passed. It’s hard to watch a loved one suffer.”

With a swallow, Mac pushed the image of the father he never met suffering a long, painful death and focused on the dead woman he had examined at the bottom of a flight of stairs. The image of Russell Skeltner’s cocky smile came to the forefront. “Maybe he decided to help her along by having someone come in to kill her while he was setting me up to alibi him. Whoever it was, he’s missing a contact lens, and we’ve got it.”

“I’ll call forensics to make sure they don’t sit on that evidence.” The paperwork dispersed, David jogged up the steps to his office.

Without waiting for an invitation, Mac followed him into his office. “What did you find out at the Dockside Café after I left?”

“The feds are taking the lead in both the shoot out and the apparent poisoning.” David flipped through a stack of envelopes left in the center of his desk. “No surprise there. As thrilling as it is to be in charge of a multiple homicide, I really don’t relish being involved in a mob case.” He waved an envelope at Mac. “But from what little I know about organized crime, with Tommy Cruze dead, the contract on Archie is no more. Who’s going to pay for hitting her? My guess is that she’s safe now, but I’m not calling our people off security detail until we get a confirmation from the feds.”

“Neither am I.” Mac sighed with relief. “But it looks good.” They were both safe. “Do you believe Richardson and his wife when they say Ray Bonito was behind the hit men in the parking lot?”

“Tommy Cruze was a legitimate businessman. Why would anyone want to hit him?” David said in a mocking tone. “Delaney agrees that it’s most likely Ray Bonito. He ran the day-to-day operation while Cruze was in jail. When he got sprung, Cruze was expecting to take up where he had left off, and he wasn’t known for taking no for an answer.”

“So Bonito decided to send a hit squad to take Cruze out of the picture permanently,” Mac said.

“That’s the way they do it in the mob.” Unwilling to deal with the stack of paperwork, David dropped the envelopes onto his desk.

Recalling Randi Finnegan’s sudden departure with the café owner and her daughter, Mac said, “Or that hit squad could have been after someone else.”

“You mentioned something about that earlier.” David’s head jerked up from the pile of mail. “What were you talking about?”

“You were inside when Finnegan scurried the café owner Leah and her daughter out of there.”

“That’s right,” David said. “I thought they were removing the little girl from the scene.”

Mac’s eye caught that of the police chief.

“Are you kidding me?” David demanded to know. “Don’t tell me that the café owner—”

“Her name is Leah,” Mac said. “At least that’s the name Finnegan told me.”

David gripped his hips with his hands. “Is there
anyone
in Spencer who’s
not
in the witness protection program?” He grabbed the side of his head while shaking it. “Then those gunmen could have been going after her. Who are they hiding her from?”

“A West Coast crime syndicate.”

“Great,” David said with heavy sarcasm. He wiped his hands against each other and then waved them both in the air as a gesture of tossing the matter aside. “Glad it’s not our problem.”

“The hit men outside could have been after either the café owner or Cruze,” Mac said. “It’s also up in the air as to who was the intended target of the poisoning. Who planted it? Richardson to take out Cruze? Whose side is Richardson really on? Cruze’s or Bonito’s?”

“Not our problem,” David repeated, with a shrug. “Let’s deal with what is our problem. You say Skeltner hired the guy on the bike to kill his wife while he set you up to be his alibi. Find the guy on the bike, or at least the bike.”

“That should be easy,” Mac said. “Here on Deep Creek Lake, there should only be a few hundred bikes.”