Old Loves Die Hard (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (12 page)

He set a black suitcase on the conference table. A slip of paper for the chain of evidence was connected to the strap. “This is the suitcase we found in Maguire’s room.” After checking the time on his watch, he signed the log slip.

“Why didn’t you say anything to me about it?” Mac asked about the poisoning while opening the suitcase.

 “I couldn’t say anything until I officially cleared you as a suspect.” David slipped the lid off the evidence box. “Here’s what happened. A couple of weeks after he left Christine, Maguire went to a retirement party at some swanky club in Washington. Everyone who was anyone was there, including Christine. Around four in the morning, Maguire called 9-1-1. A couple of days later, the doctors figured out that he had been poisoned with arsenic. Luckily, it wasn’t a fatal dose, but he was in the hospital for a week.”

“Do the police in Washington suspect Christine of poisoning him?” Mac asked while examining Stephen Maguire’s clothes. The suitcase contained a few changes of clothes. Nicely tailored ones. He didn’t scrimp on his wardrobe.

“She was at the party and Maguire went to the trouble of getting a restraining order against her,” David said. “Of course, she became a person of interest when the police heard about the scene she caused at the party when she saw him talking to another woman. It sounded very similar to the scene she caused in the Inn’s lobby. Yet, they couldn’t connect her to the arsenic.”

Mac said, “His wife, Natasha Holmstead, who inherited all of his estate, was also at that party.”

“Do you buy that bull she’s selling about looking for an old watch?” David took a mini-laptop from the box and laid it on the table.

“Of course not,” Mac replied.

“There’s no gold pocket watch among Maguire’s stuff. A gold watch, but not a pocket watch. He’d packed light.”

“She’s lying, like all lawyers—except Willingham and Fleming.”

“No, they’d never lie,” David said with a note of sarcasm.

“Holmstead is good at what she does,” Mac admitted. “I know that there are innocent people who’ve been accused of murder. Our country’s justice system is based on everyone getting a fair trial. Where would we be if the accused didn’t have the right to the best lawyer that they can afford or get? But…” He gritted his teeth as faces of murder victims he had encountered during his career flashed through his mind. “Seeing and knowing what juries haven’t been allowed to see and know because of the likes of Natasha Holmstead convincing some judges to suppress evidence, allowing killers to walk out—” He sighed while shaking his head. “But, she’s just doing her job and making a hell of a lot of money doing it.”

While gesturing at the other contents in the box, David held up a set of keys on a gold chain with a small pocket knife attached to it. “We found all this on the table in his suite. It looked like he was working on something when he left to go upstairs to the penthouse.”

Mac took the keychain and studied it.

“The forensics lab searched all of his electronics inside and out.” David showed him a picture of a cell phone. “They found something very interesting on Maguire’s cell phone and laptop. His phone had a tracking program loaded on it. It was set up to send his text messages, call logs, emails sent and received, as well as its GPS location to a clone phone.”

Setting another picture of a cell phone next to the first, David announced, “This cell phone, which we found in Christine’s suitcase.”

“Maybe it was planted,” Mac said.

“It has her fingerprints on it,” David replied. “If Christine had Maguire under surveillance, she had to know that he was staying at the Inn. Are you sure it was your idea that she stay there?”

“Positive.”

David continued, “His laptop had a similar type of spy-ware that allowed someone with a laptop to monitor what he was doing, including check his email and examine what he had on his hard drive or flash.”

“Did you find the laptop used to monitor him among her belongings?” Mac set the key chain in the box.

“No, we didn’t.”

Mac said, “Christine wasn’t one bit technically inclined.”

David hesitated before responding, “Two weeks ago, she purchased the clone phone and a new laptop, which we suspect was used to keep track of Maguire. I’m sorry, Mac, but between finding these surveillance programs, her arriving in town the same day he checked into the Inn, and finding the clone in her suitcase, it looks like Christine was stalking him.”

“But someone else was in that room.” Mac studied the pictures of the two phones. “Did you find any external hard drive or flash drives in the room?”

“Nope. Only the laptop.”

Mac opened the laptop and hit the button to turn it on. “Both Archie and I have one of these. It’s built for portability. You can’t store a lot on the hard drive. You need a flash drive for file storage.”

“Found none.”

“Maybe the killer stole the flash drive containing information about what Maguire was doing here.” He shut the laptop off and closed the lid.

“Maybe, but he didn’t get this.” David held up a business card for him to read the name.

While Mac didn’t recognize the name, he did recognize the title. Private Investigator. The name was listed as Nancy Brenner. “Maguire had hired a private investigator.”

“And I know her,” David said. “I’ve got an appointment to see her later. Want to take a road trip?”

*   *   *   *

After getting David’s invitation to ride along for the interview with the private investigator, Mac swung past Spencer Manor to change out of the sports jacket and slacks he had worn for his breakfast meeting and into comfortable blue jeans and a sweater. After discovering that Gnarly had shredded one of the pillows on his bed, he realized that he hadn’t taken the dog for a walk since the murders. Gnarly’s trainer insisted that boredom was the root to his misbehavior. This being the case, the German shepherd was invited to go along for the ride.

“Have you met Sandy Bennett yet?” David asked Mac during their drive out to Nancy Brenner’s home across the West Virginia state line in Morgantown.

 As if he expected Gnarly to know the answer, Mac turned to look at the German shepherd filling the backseat. With the dark patches above his eyes knitted together into a questioning expression, he looked like he was replying that he didn’t know either. The dog resumed peering out at the trees and cows in the hillside pastures along the mountain roads.

“The name sounds familiar,” Mac replied.

“She’s in a few of Robin’s books,” David said. “Robin based her on Nancy Brenner. She had the honor of being one of the first women sworn in as a West Virginia state trooper. Back around when I was born, Dad had met her when one of his cases spilled over the state line. He said she was the best and she was. He introduced her to your mother, who created the character of Sandy Bennett, based on Nancy.”

The reference to Robin’s books jogged Mac’s memory. Sandy Bennett was a police officer that Mickey Forsythe would sometimes work with during his investigations. Her sexy beauty disguised a quick wit and deadly aim with her gun.

David recounted Nancy Brenner’s story. “She retired around the same time Dad passed away. She’s got five grandchildren. The same year Nancy retired, her husband got a doctor to sign off on some disease I’ve never heard of, and will never be able to pronounce, to be put on permanent disability. He sits in front of the television drinking beer all day long.”

“What a life,” Mac said with sarcasm.

“I think Nancy got her PI license and went back to work because she didn’t want to join him.”

Once he had crossed the state line, David took an exit onto a side road that wound through the countryside until he found Nancy Brenner’s doublewide mobile home on a hill-top south of Morgantown.

“There she is.” David climbed out of the cruiser and opened the back door.

Gnarly took off for the nearest tree to mark the property as his.

Nancy Brenner didn’t look like any PI Mac had ever en-countered before. Private eyes he had met during his career were hard-drinking men who wore a lifetime of battling the system on their faces. Others were opportunists who had retired and moved into the high-tech field of security work to sit behind desks and swap war stories with other mid-level management types.

Nancy Brenner didn’t fit either of those profiles.

At first, Mac had expected Nancy Brenner to be inside the home. He thought the woman on her knees in an over-sized men’s work shirt digging in the dirt to plant mums was the retired cop’s mother or aunt. She certainly wasn’t the same woman which Robin Spencer had created into a female crime fighter.

With an order to Gnarly not to dig up the flowers as fast as she was planting them, David stepped across the lawn. “Hey, Aunt Nancy.”

Nancy shaded her eyes with her hand and spade and squinted up at them. “My God!”

After hugging her, David introduced her to Mac. “He’s Robin’s son.” While she shook his hand, she studied his face with an eye that he recognized as being that of a well-trained investigator.

Mac could see why Robin Spencer had been intrigued by the female police officer. Even on the wrong side of middle age, she was very attractive. The lines that had crept up onto her face only enhanced her cheekbones. The silver in her blond hair shone in the autumn sun.

“So you’re Robin’s son?”

Mac replied, “That’s what the DNA tests say.”

“What does your DNA say about your daddy?” She glanced from Mac to David and then back again. The corner of her lips curled into a knowing grin. “Don’t need any DNA samples to know the answer to that. The eyes alone say it all.”

When she finally released her grip on his hand, he turned to David. The eyebrow over David’s left eye rose into an arch. If Nancy Brenner had been born a decade later, she probably could have worked her way up from patrol to investigations.

“Well, what do you two boys want to talk to me about?” She went over to the porch where she had a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of sugar cookies waiting. “I take it you’re here about Stephen Maguire?” She took off her gloves and poured the lemonade into a glass.

Sticking his thumbs into his utility belt, David leaned against the porch rail. “How did you guess?”

“I’m retired, not brain dead.” She looked him over. “I must say that gold badge looks as good on you as it did on your daddy.” She reached out to brush her fingers across it. “You’re every bit as handsome as he was.”

“Thank you for the compliment.”

“How are you adjusting to the rich life?” she asked Mac. “What’s it like going from underpaid cop to big man on the Point?”

This wasn’t the first time that anyone had asked Mac about adjusting from the middle class suburban lifestyle of pinching pennies to having more than he could ever need. Before, he would grin, chuckle, and say, “It’s great.”

That was before someone murdered Christine and Stephen Maguire. While David was in on every clue, Mac had been shut out. With all his financial worries gone and living in the stone manor on Spencer Point, he felt like the pampered pooch with the rhinestone collar cooped up inside the mansion watching the junk yard dogs chasing the cat down the street and so wanting to be one of them.

“Retirement takes some adjusting to,” he said.

“Ever thought of getting a PI license?” Her tone was serious.

“I may do that,” Mac replied.

“Mickey Forsythe, look out.” She laughed before asking them, “What do you want to know about Stephen Maguire?”

“Did he hire you?” David asked.

She scoffed. “You know the drill, Dave. My files are confidential. If it gets out that I’m blabbing, especially to the cops, about one of my clients, then no one will trust me and I’ll be out of business.” She gazed at him with the prettiest expression she could muster while being on the wrong side of fifty. “A girl has to make a living.”

“Maguire is dead,” David reminded her.

“I know that all too well,” she said. “Someone offed him before he paid his bill. Do you really think the Maguire family is going to care about the whining of an old lady?”

Mac grinned. “Suppose I paid his bill?”

That was enough to make Nancy take her eyes off David’s handsome face. “Are you serious?”

“How much?” Mac took his billfold out of his back pocket. “If I pay his bill, that makes me your client. You give us the full report.”

She craned her neck to count the bills he was taking from his wallet. After he extracted them from the billfold, she snatched them from his hand, folded them up, and stuffed them into her bra. “Deal.” She tapped him on the chest while flashing him a smile. “I’ll even give you a receipt.”

“Maguire was seen with a young woman on the day he was killed,” David said. “Do you know who she was?”

“You said young,” Nancy noted. “Did she have copper-colored hair? Very skinny?”

David looked to Mac, who had seen her, to confirm the description, which he did with a single nod of his head.

“She says she’s Maguire’s long-lost daughter,” Nancy answered. “Maguire hired me a couple weeks ago. About twenty years ago, he had a fling with a young woman named Connie Hughes while they were students at Ohio State University. They broke it off and she never told him that he was a daddy-to-be. She was a real independent sort and raised the girl on her own. Then, two weeks ago this girl calls up Maguire, calling him ‘Daddy.’ She says her mommy had passed away eight years ago and she had just found out about him. Real soon after that, she had her hand out asking for money. Since she was going to college here in Morgantown, he called me to check her out. I got the impression that he never parted with cash unless he had to.”

David asked, “What did you find out?”

“The girl’s story checked out up to a point. Yeah, the mom died eight years ago, at which point Connie Hughes’s daughter, Rebecca, moved to Traverse City, Michigan, to live with her grandparents. She’s currently a student at Michigan Tech.”

Gnarly sat up. His nose pointed up the hill across from them. He growled deep in his throat.

“Easy, Gnarly.” Mac observed, “That’s a long way from Morgantown.”

Nancy agreed. “According to the profile pictures on Rebecca Hughes’s Facebook friend page, the girl that contacted Maguire is really Cameron Jones. They were friends in middle school. Cameron spent all of her time in college majoring in sex, drugs, and hip hop and flunked out real fast. Her parents still don’t know. As soon as they do, they’ll cut her off without a cent. I assume that’s why she decided to look up Maguire and pretend to be his long-lost daughter.”