Old Loves Die Hard (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (28 page)

“And then she put you in charge,” Mac said.

Roxanne replied, “Like I said, I tried to teach her to protect herself.”

“And when she refused, I imagine, as circumstances would have it, you couldn’t help yourself.”

Sabrina warned him, “Mac, you’re treading on thin ice here.”

Stepping in between Mac and Sabrina’s glare, David fished a report from his valise. “When forensics examined Maguire’s cell phone, they found that it contained a chip that would transmit everything—calls, texts, images—everything that happened on that cell phone was sent to a clone, which we found in Christine’s suitcase at the penthouse. When Maguire got or made a call, whoever had possession of that clone was able to listen in.” He showed the picture of the device to Sabrina. “That chip also had GPS capability.”

“That was how whoever was tracking Maguire knew he was here in Deep Creek Lake,” Mac said.

David went on, “Maguire’s laptop had a similar type of spyware 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 any flash drive he had plugged into it. Someone was keeping very close tabs on him.” He said, “Christine’s financial records showed that these devices, plus a laptop which we assume was used to receive this data, were all purchased on a credit line in her name.”

“You have to give Christine credit,” Sabrina said. “I never thought she was that imaginative. Did you, Roxanne?”

“No.” When her voice squeaked, she swallowed.

“Christine wasn’t that imaginative, nor was she that computer savvy,” Mac said. “But you are, Roxanne.” His eyes bore into hers as he stepped toward her. “Christine wasn’t the only one that Stephen Maguire screwed over. He had been screwing you all summer in your competition for Deputy U.S. Attorney. Only he crossed the line by framing you for bribing a witness. Not only were you in danger of not getting the promotion, but you could be disbarred.”

“I deserve that promotion,” Roxanne said.

“Stop it, Mac.” Sabrina reached around him to take her sister’s hand and pull her close. As if to physically shelter her, she wrapped her arms around her. “Stephen Maguire wasn’t half the attorney Roxanne is. The only—and I mean only—reason he was even in the running for deputy was because that ass Hunter thought he could help him to become attorney general. It isn’t fair.”

“Politics is never fair,” Mac agreed.

Sabrina turned to David. “Those things that you found in Stephen’s stuff proves nothing. They were all bought on Christine’s accounts and in her name.”

“But they were delivered to the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” Mac countered. “They were ordered while Maguire was out on sick leave after being poisoned, after he had a restraining order issued against Christine.”

David said, “She would never have had them sent there because there was no way she could take delivery of them.”

“Unless she asked Roxanne to pick them up for her,” Sabrina argued.

“But she still would have needed access to his laptop and cell phone,” David countered. “Roxanne had ordered them and had them delivered to the attorney’s office where she had the means to set up the electronic surveillance on Maguire’s cell phone and his laptop, which, since he wasn’t planning to be poisoned, had been left in his office while he was at the hospital. Christine didn’t have that access, especially with the restraining order.”

Mac set up the sequence of events. “After Natasha Holmstead had tried unsuccessfully to kill Maguire, you took advantage of him being out of his office to break in to search for ammunition to use against him. As luck would have it, that was when Cameron Jones, posing as his long-lost daughter, called his office. Unaware of his lies about his lineage, she dropped a lovely bombshell when she mentioned that he had met her mother while attending Ohio State University, not the Ivy League Oxford that he had boasted about in his resume. That was when you determined to find out what else you could uncover. If he was to discover your spy devices, you didn’t want them traced back to you, so you purchased them in Christine’s name.”

David said, “Since Christine already had a record of being unbalanced, they would be chalked up as another incident by a jealous ex-lover.”

“That was the crux of everything in your frame,” Mac said. “Christine was emotionally unbalanced. She was an alcoholic. She made bad choices in her actions and choosing who to trust. When you set out on this path, you laid the groundwork for Christine’s psychological defense by filing a petition to have her declared emotionally incompetent. When Maguire came out to Deep Creek Lake, then your plan went into action.”

“What plan?” In an effort to convince him, Sabrina turned to David. “Christine took off out of the blue and came out here on her own. Roxanne was home sick with the flu. Sure, she wasn’t in the office, but she was working at home. I brought her dinner on Saturday night. I’ll testify to that in court.”

“Roxanne brought Christine out here in her car,” Mac said. “She wasn’t home sick. I assume that she put valium in Christine’s drinks to knock her out so that she could tail Maguire in her Nita disguise.”

Sabrina said, “Christine was the one popping valium. No one had to slip it to her.”

“Roxanne knows and regularly uses Spanish in working with defendants and their families in court.” Mac turned back to Roxanne. “While you were here, you set up your alibi by working remotely. While monitoring Maguire’s laptop, you used the laptop that you had purchased in Christine’s name to connect to your laptop at home to make it look like you were working from your house in Washington.”

David told her, “Our forensics unit examined your lap-top. Of course, we have a warrant. They found where it had been remotely connected to a computer here in Deep Creek Lake during the days that you were supposedly home sick.”

Sabrina challenged him, “But you don’t have Christine’s laptop.”

“We’ll find it,” David said with certainty.

Mac told them, “I believe that on Friday, Roxanne, you believed you’d collected enough evidence against Maguire and went to Sully’s where you knew he was meeting Cameron Jones based on a call that you had intercepted from his phone. After you thought she’d left, you confronted him with what you had and tried to force him to come clean with the truth about his real background and framing you for bribery. When he laughed in your face, you became enraged and went after him with a screwdriver, but he disarmed you.” He concluded in a soft tone, “I think that was when you decided to kick it up a notch and kill him.”

“You have no proof of any of this!” Sabrina charged at Mac. Stepping between them to block her attack, David backed her away.

“We do,” Mac said.

David slipped another report from his valise to show the women. “Roxanne’s cell phone records. At six-thirty-seven on Saturday night, the night of the murders, Roxanne called the Spencer Inn. At that same time, room service took an order from a woman identifying herself as Christine for two filet mignon dinners and a bottle of red wine. The cell phone tower that had been used for that call was here in Deep Creek Lake, which means your phone, Roxanne, wasn’t in Washington at the time, but here.”

Mac explained, “The manager who took that order remembers that the woman was drunk and identified herself as Christine. At that time on Saturday night, they would never notice if the call came from within the Inn or an outside line. If Christine had ordered it, she would have used her cell phone or the phone in the suite. Neither had been used to place that order.”

David pointed at Roxanne. “You were probably already in the Inn, in your Nita disguise, when you placed that order. You waited at the service elevator to slip up to the penthouse floor since you didn’t have a key card. Then, while the server delivered the food to Christine, you hid out in the room across the hall under the pretense of delivering extra towels. Once he was gone, you knocked on Christine’s door and she let you in.”

“Then, your plan for murder was in motion,” Mac said. “You ate dinner with Christine. You drugged her and she passed out. Then you put all the dishes in the dishwasher and put on Christine’s clothes because you didn’t want any of Stephen Maguire’s blood and DNA to get onto your clothes. You even kept your Nita wig on in order to protect your hair.”

David jumped in to add, “You had a duplicate wig that you put in Christine’s suitcase to make us think it was her pretending to be Nita. You made sure it was one you’d never worn so as to not inadvertently give us your DNA.”

“After eight o’clock, when you had everything ready,” Mac said, “you started calling Maguire on Christine’s phone. What you didn’t plan was for him to refuse to come see you. So you started calling every few minutes until he finally came just to get rid of you. As soon as he walked in, you let loose on him with all your rage.” 

David said, “You stabbed him twenty-seven times.”

“Then you put the steak knife in the dishwasher with the rest of the dinner dishes and turned it on,” Mac resumed. “Now it was onto the next step in the plan. You took off Christine’s clothes, planted the clone phone on which you had planted her fingerprints, and went into the bathroom to shower off all of your evidence and any proof of you being in the room. You even bleached the bathroom. As you had it planned, Christine would come to, find Maguire dead, and everyone would think she did it during a blackout. You’d convince her to plead insanity and she’d go to a hospital and get help.” He sighed and said sadly, “But things didn’t work out that way. Since Maguire took so long to come to the penthouse, it allowed time for the valium to wear off. Christine came to and attacked you. I want to think that you were defending yourself when you either pushed her or she slipped on the wet floor, and hit her head on the corner of the sink. Now your sister was dead.”

Clutching her stomach, Roxanne broke down into deep sobs.

Blinking back tears coming to his eyes, Mac swallowed. When he tried to continue, he found that he had no voice. He cleared his throat.

David picked up the sequence of events. “That was when your whole plan went to hell in a handcart. You panicked. Not thinking about the shape of the wound, you put Christine in the tub to make it look like she’d hit her head on the towel rack while in the shower.”

Mac found his voice. “You did think to soak her hands and wipe her down with bleach to destroy the DNA evidence from your skin under her fingernails.”

“I want you both to leave.” Sabrina grabbed her purse resting on top of the luggage. “Now! I’m calling our lawyer, and you can forget about showing your face at Christine’s funeral, Mac.” Snatching her cell phone from her purse, she waved it in his direction. “You’re not family anymore!”

David told Roxanne, “We have a picture of a VW Beetle registered in your name at the service station in McHenry the night that Christine and Maguire were killed.”

Sabrina said, “Your picture means nothing. We told you the other day that Big Daddy’s Bug was stolen.”

“You said Roxanne sold it.”

Smirking, Sabrina said, “No, we never said that. Did we, Roxanne?” She glared at her sister.

Checking a text message on his cell phone, David said, “We have a warrant to search a garage in Washington. My officers are there now. They’re about to open the door. I believe we’ll find Big Daddy’s Bug inside. When we do, it’ll prove that, after killing Stephen Maguire and your sister, you drove the VW Beetle that you kept here at the lake back to Washington in order to be there when the call came that your sister had been found dead. I also believe that we’ll find the black wig you wore when you killed Stephen Maguire and, if we’re lucky, the laptop that you used to keep him under surveillance.”

 “Keep your mouth shut, Roxanne,” Sabrina hissed. “They aren’t going to find a thing. Believe me.”

Mac laid his hand on Roxanne’s shoulder. “The prosecutor will go much easier on you if you cooperate. Once they open the garage and find the Bug and the evidence, they won’t need your confession.”

“He’s a manipulative bastard,” Sabrina told her while pressing her phone to her ear. “I’m calling our lawyer. Don’t let Mac get to you. You know how he works.”

“They’re about to open the garage,” David announced. “This is your last chance, Roxanne.”

Roxanne’s voice was weaker than Mac had ever heard it. “I thought it was the perfect plan.”

“Shut up!” Sabrina raged. “They’re not going to find anything!” Into her phone, she asked a receptionist for their lawyer.

“I didn’t send her to your place, I swear,” she told Mac. “I was in the shower, and when I came out she was gone. I about went nuts. Then, when she called that she was at the Inn in your suite, it all came together. It was like God had planned it that way.” She grinned nervously. “Stephen would never be able to hurt anyone else ever again. Once his lies came out, I’d be exonerated and get the promotion that I deserved. By pleading guilty to an insanity defense, Christine would get the help she needed at a hospital. She could be out in a few years and maybe even back to her old self.” She sobbed into her hands. “I never expected her to come to so soon. When she saw the blood and Stephen’s body, she went crazy. I thought she was going to rip my skin off. I shoved her off me and she fell.” She let out a shuddering breath. “One minute she was alive and the next—her life was over.”

Clutching the cell phone, David asked, “What did you do with the wig and the laptop?”

Sabrina ordered her, “Say nothing else. I have our lawyer on the phone now.”

David told Roxanne, “You have the right to say nothing else to us.”

“I know my rights,” she replied. “I want this to be over.” She looked up at Mac. “To tell you the truth, I had no idea how I was going to make it through Christine’s funeral, knowing that I was the one who put her in that casket.” She told David, “The wig and laptop are in the trunk of the car in my garage. They’re in a backpack along with my underwear. I was wearing it when Christine hit her head. She was bleeding all over the place and her blood got on my underwear. That’ll put me in the suite when she died.”

While David ordered his officers to open the garage, Sabrina screamed at her sister. “You fool! I told you not to tell them anything. They aren’t going to find anything.”