Old Loves Die Hard (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (13 page)

David asked, “Did you tell Stephen Maguire all this?”

“The day he got killed,” she said. “He told me that he was going to let Cameron Jones hang herself.”

“Shortly after which he ended up dead,” Mac said.

“She didn’t do it,” Nancy said.

David wanted to know, “How can you be so sure?”

“I’m not an amateur,” she said. “No one goes killing my clients before I get paid. I checked into it myself. After the scene with Christine Faraday at the Spencer Inn, Maguire did confront Jones. He’d recorded the whole conversation on his phone. Got her trying to shake him down. Threatening to reveal his illegitimate daughter, which I’m sure wouldn’t have gone down well with his high society family. The whole extortion. He produced the recording and told her that, on account of him being such a nice guy, he was going to let her off easy. If she turned around and walked away and never came back, then he wasn’t going to have her arrested for fraud and attempted extortion. I guess Cameron Jones did have a brain in her head because that’s what she did.”

David said, “We found no recordings among Maguire’s personal effects.”

“He recorded it with his phone. She cried to my source about the whole thing.”

Mac was impressed. “Who’s your source?”

“The bartender at iPooli. It’s a cyber café joint right off WVU campus. Students go in to drink themselves silly while being sucked into virtual worlds and games. Cameron practically lives there twittering on her laptop and snorting coke in the parking lot. That’s where she was from shortly after seven until iPooli closed. She went home with her boyfriend who deals coke out in the club parking lot. If you don’t believe that, check with the Morgantown police. Lover Boy has been a person of interest in the drug scene for quite some time. They’ve been watching him, which means they can alibi Cameron.”

“Sounds to me like she might blame Maguire for ruining this dream she had of him bankrolling her way into the party life,” David said.

Gnarly stood up and barked at the hill.

Petting the dog, Nancy peered up the hill. “What do you see, boy?”

Mac asked her, “Since this place is a hangout for such low-lifes, do you think Cameron may be twisted enough to hire one of her boyfriend’s associates to wreak her revenge on Maguire by killing him?”

“Even if one of these geniuses had the smarts to figure out how to pull off a murder at the Spencer Inn, she had no money to pay for a hit.” She reached around behind her back. “Excuse me. I think you boys had better duck.”

“She was a college girl with a body. What more—” David was saying when Nancy drew a handgun from a holster she’d been wearing under her work shirt and plowed into him with her full body to knock him down to the ground into her freshly planted mums.

A potted mum waiting on the porch railing to be planted exploded.

Gnarly’s bark sounded like a wild animal’s roar in the jungle.

The next shot from the hillside shattered the lemonade pitcher.

Drawing his gun, Mac dove to take cover behind a tree.

“They’re using an automatic rifle up there at the top of the hill,” she called out to Mac. “I saw the sun reflect off the scope. That’s what your dog was barking at.”

While Mac covered them with a round of shots from his gun, David and Nancy rolled together through the flower bed until David was able to reach around her to get his gun out of its holster on his utility belt. They ended up behind the wheel-barrow, which David overturned for them to use for cover.

Gnarly charged down the sidewalk and out into the road.

Mac didn’t need any more information. Gnarly led the way across the road in the direction of the hillside.

Sounding his alarm, Gnarly charged up the steep hill to a roadside park and playground. In the middle of a school day, it was vacant.

By the time Mac caught up to him, Gnarly was sniffing around a bench between two trees that looked out across the valley. The back of the bench provided a brace to rest the rifle in order to take two shots seventy-five yards down the hill to the house with the police cruiser in front of it.

Mac knelt down to examine the ground where Gnarly was sniffing. The two rifle casings in the grass were still hot to the touch.

“Good dog.”

Gnarly didn’t stick around for more praise. The scent was still hot. He took off again toward the parking lot on the other side of the playground.

The black Ford SUV barely missed the dog when it careened around the corner and hit the ditch before swinging out onto the road to make its getaway onto the interstate.

Chapter Eight

“Who does the caddy belong to?” David rolled the police cruiser between the stone pillars and up the circle driveway to Spencer Manor’s front door.

A black Cadillac SUV blocked the entrance to the stone path from the driveway to the wrap-around porch.

There was only one person Mac knew that the Cadillac could belong to. She bought the latest model Cadillacs with the same frequency that Archie upgraded her technological gadgets.

“Christine’s sister.” Mac’s tone alone conveyed everything the police chief needed to know about his ex-in-laws.

David couldn’t hear the rest of his reply over Gnarly’s barking, which erupted when the cruiser passed the oak tree at the corner of the manor’s wrap-around porch. His snarling snout smeared dog drool on the back window in his fervor to get out. When Mac released him from the back of the cruiser, Gnarly charged as if he had forgotten that he couldn’t climb trees.

“What’s gotten into him?” David looked up into the branches to see the source of Gnarly’s fury.

“Otis,” Mac answered while bracing for the scene he suspected was awaiting him inside the manor. “Archie says there’s some giant squirrel that’s been tormenting him.”

David pointed his finger up toward the top of the tree. “That’s the fattest squirrel I’ve ever seen.” When an acorn flew out of the tree to bounce off the top of the cruiser, he yelled, “Hey, did you see that? That piggy squirrel threw an acorn at my cruiser.”

“Gnarly, I’m going to kill you.” Between getting shot at, the shepherd’s barking, and his ex-in-laws waiting inside, Mac was ready for an early cocktail.

“Well, it’s about time,” Sabrina immediately called out from the living room when Mac, David, and Gnarly stepped into the foyer.

He hadn’t seen either of his ex-sisters-in-law since they had accompanied Christine to the courthouse in a show of support when their divorce became final.

After that hearing, Edward Willingham, senior partner of Willingham and Associates, had chased Mac three city blocks before convincing him that he had indeed inherited two hundred seventy million dollars from the birth mother he never knew.

In a black ensemble suitable for mourning, Sabrina Carrington filled the leather wing-backed chair in the corner of the living room. Dripping in ruby jewels, she resembled a queen on her throne holding court, with her surviving sister playing the role of princess in waiting on the sofa across the room.

In a black pantsuit void of any jewels to brighten it up, Roxanne Burton contrasted her sister. She wasn’t only dressed the part, she was indeed in mourning. Her eyes were red and swollen. Her face was drawn and pale.

With only eleven months between them, Roxanne and Christine had been more than sisters. They were the best of friends. So close in age and similar in beauty and body type, they had served together as professional cheerleaders for Washington’s football team. Signed by the same agency, they had worked together as models to pay for their college education.

Archie came in from the kitchen bearing a serving tray with tea for them after their long drive from Washington.

“I was beginning to think that you’d deserted your children in their time of need to go off on one of your crazy adventures with one of your friends.” Sabrina directed Archie to leave her English tea on the end table. When unable to decide between the sugar cookie or the tea biscuit, she took both after Archie informed her that they had plenty.

After admiring the exquisite herringbone china cup, Sabrina took a sip of the tea, which prompted a sour expression and a squawk that resembled the honk of a goose. “This is nothing more than hot water. Don’t you know to let tea steep?”

Archie turned around from where she was about to return to the kitchen. “We can let it steep a few more minutes.”

“Do.” Sabrina ordered the tea taken away with a wave of both her hands. “This is totally unacceptable.”

The roll of Archie’s eyes told the two men that the sisters were everything Mac had warned her about. She returned to the kitchen with the rejected tea pot. Having seen enough of the visitors, Gnarly, his tail between his legs, followed at her heels. When Mac heard a door slam in the kitchen, he guessed that she wouldn’t be returning until after their visitors were gone.

The matter of the tea taken care of, Sabrina looked up to notice that both Mac and David were covered in soil after their run-in at Nancy Brenner’s home. “What happened to you?”

“Someone took a couple of shots at us,” Mac said.

“People are always shooting at you,” Sabrina scoffed between bites of her cookie. “Your day isn’t complete until you get shot at, at least twice.”

 “Oh, Mac!” Roxanne leaped off the sofa and threw her arms around his neck.

The embrace was so unexpected that a lock of her auburn hair went up his nose. Roxanne had never made it a secret that she believed he wasn’t good enough for her little sister. The last time Mac recalled them embracing was on his wed-ding day after Christine had ordered them to do so.

Roxanne continued to hold onto him while sobbing onto his sweater. “Chris didn’t deserve to die like that. I was supposed to take care of her.” She dissolved into incoherent blubbering.

Over the sobs, Mac introduced David to them as Spencer’s police chief. When he added that David was investigating the murders, Roxanne erupted with a fresh round of sobs.

“I’m sorry you had to wait,” Mac apologized. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“That’s okay. Your girl has been taking very good care of us. Though she’s a little slow with that tea.” When Sabrina waved her hand her jewels caught the rays of the sun streaming through the window. “I’m glad you’re here, Chief. You were going to be my next stop. What progress have you made in finding the killer?”

Bracing to be interrogated, David stepped further into the room. With Sabrina refusing to budge out of the chair, Mac and he resembled army generals reporting on the war’s progress to the queen. “We’re making progress.”

“Do you have any suspects yet?”

“A few,” David answered.

“Who?”

“I can’t say.”

“Why not?” Sabrina demanded to know.

“Because I don’t believe in showing my hand until it’s time to show my cards,” the police chief replied.

Sabrina’s voice was low and threatening when she told him, “Christine was my sister. When you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us. I want to know what happened. Was it an accident or did someone kill her?”

“She was drunk,” Roxanne said. “She had called me that night from the penthouse and she was out of her mind. I told her to get something to eat and to go to bed and sleep it off, but she was crazy out of her mind. She kept saying that she was going to kill Stephen.” She sobbed. “I never thought she would’ve done it.”

“Someone else was in that room,” David told them.

“Who?” Sabrina asked.

“We don’t know yet.”

“Are you sure?” Roxanne’s eyes filled with fresh tears.

David said, “We’re finding evidence that others wanted Stephen Maguire dead. There’s a possibility that Christine was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Someone did try to poison him a couple of weeks ago,” Sabrina said.

David turned to Roxanne. “The Washington police told us that you were on the scene of that incident.”

Mac hadn’t thought it was possible for Roxanne’s face to become paler, but it did.

“Only because I dragged Christine there,” she answered the police chief. “I thought it would do her good to go out and meet other people.”

Sabrina said, “They couldn’t prove that Christine had any connection to whatever it was Stephen ate that was poisoned.”

Roxanne explained, “I finally convinced the investigators that if they didn’t have any proof she did it, then to leave her alone. They didn’t, so they did.”

“That was after I made a few phone calls.” Sabrina caught David’s eye. “It pays to have friends.”

“Who else at that party could have slipped that arsenic to Maguire?” David asked Roxanne.

“Everyone was there,” she said. “His wife Natasha was there. She hated the air he breathed.”

“But Maguire didn’t get a restraining order issued against Natasha Holmstead,” the chief pointed out. “He got the order issued against Christine after he’d been poisoned.”

Sabrina bristled. “That was a political move on his part. He did that to make Roxanne look bad so that he’d get appointed Deputy U.S. Attorney instead of her.”

“Was there anyone on his enemy list named Nita?” Mac asked, thinking about the servant who had slipped into the Inn. “Mexican. Didn’t speak a word of English.”

Sabrina let out a laugh. “Nita? That sounds like that girl I had working for us for a few years.”

“Who?” David asked.

“A few years ago I had a cleaning woman working for me,” Sabrina said with a wave of her hand. “It was purely charity on my part. She had family in South America that she was trying to bring to the United States.” She pointed across the room at her sister. “She worked for you first. That’s how she came to work for me.”

Roxanne said, “Everyone felt sorry for her. She worked in housekeeping at the courthouse. She spoke very little English and was desperate for money to have her family brought here. So a bunch of us would have her clean our houses, and we’d pay her under the table.”

“I had her clean my house for quite a few years,” Sabrina said, “which she was totally inadequate at doing anyway. Then I had to drive her home and she would be talking at me and didn’t speak any English. Thank God I remembered it from when we were kids. I tell you, her working for us brought it all back to me. We used to speak fluent Spanish when Big Daddy was the ambassador in Brazil. Then, after coming back to the United States and not using it—but when Nita worked for us, it all came back like riding a bike.”