Old Loves Die Hard (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (29 page)

Roxanne sighed. “Oh, Sabrina, shut up.”

Sabrina pointed her red-tipped finger into Mac’s face. “This is your fault. You have no sense of family. All this has been to you is another murder case to solve.”

“It’s good.” David snapped shut his phone. “They found it. Everything was there as you said, Roxanne. The backpack in the trunk with the wig and what looks like blood, laptop, and underwear with blood on it as well. Everything is being taken into evidence.”

“No!” Sabrina screamed. “That’s not possible!”

“Why?” Mac asked her.

“Because…” Her bosom heaved up and down while she squinted at him with eyes angrier than he had ever seen them.

“Because your husband was supposed to get rid of the Bug,” Mac told her. “He did.”

David announced, “My officers were at a storage garage that we’ve discovered your husband had rented the day before yesterday.”

“The day after Roxanne told you what had happened,” Mac said. “You took it upon yourself to fix everything by ordering your husband to get rid of the Bug, and all the physical evidence in it.”

“That makes you and your husband accessories after the fact,” David told her. “We may also want to charge you with obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence.”

Mac told her, “You didn’t know about it the day you came out here with Roxanne, because you were upset about the Bug being gone. Roxanne told you that she’d sold it. But then, the next day, you told Archie to shoot Celia Tennyson because she’d killed your sister and stabbed Stephen Maguire with a steak knife.”

David said, “We didn’t release anything about the murder weapon being a steak knife. There was only one of two ways for you to know that. One, you were there.”

“Two, the killer told you,” Mac said. “That’s what the two of you were fighting about in my kitchen. Roxanne wanted to tell me the truth. She wanted to confess, but you insisted that she keep her mouth shut.”

He said to Roxanne, “You almost told me in the study, but changed your mind.”

She nodded her head so hard that the tears on her face splashed onto his hand.

“After Roxanne told you about what had happened, Sabrina,” he continued, “You were furious, especially when she told you about how Stephen Maguire got where he was by lying about his family connections.”

“Yes, you were,” Roxanne replied.

Sabrina backed up a step.

“Was it Roxanne who told you that she believed Sanders had accepted a bribe when he was working for Office of Personnel Management to let Maguire get in with his falsified background or did you put it together yourself?” Mac asked.

David said, “Your phone records show that you called Hamilton Sanders the evening he was killed. You talked a good seven minutes.”

“Knowing you,” Mac said, “you were raking him over the coals for everything that had happened to your family as a result of his accepting that bribe years ago.”

“And that was all,” Sabrina said. “I gave him hell, felt better for it, and we hung up.”

David countered, “But we have a picture of your car in Sully’s parking lot an hour later.”

“Of course it was,” Sabrina replied. “I was going into town and realized I’d forgotten my shopping list. I turned around in that parking lot and came back here.”

Roxanne whimpered, “Oh, Sabrina.”

“Shut up, you ninny. I did nothing wrong.”

“You killed Hamilton Sanders,” Mac told Sabrina.

“I did not!” she hissed at him. “You can’t prove anything. You can’t even prove I was ever there.”

“We can,” Mac said.

With a hand gesture not unlike that of a magician, she challenged him. “Prove it.”

“Are you sure you’ve never been to Sully’s?”

“Not even when it was open,” she said. “They were always too pedestrian for my tastes with their pool tables and beer.”

“Are you sure about that?” David asked.

“Positive.”

Mac replied, “Then what are your fingerprints doing in the ladies’ bathroom?”

Her mouth fell open.

“You wiped your fingerprints off the door handles and the screwdriver and tossed it into the lake,” Mac explained. “But you must have forgotten that you’d used the ladies’ room, probably while you were waiting for Hamilton to show up. That tells me that you weren’t planning to kill him, but when he didn’t give you a good enough explanation, or maybe show the proper remorse for what his actions years ago had done, you lost that famous temper of yours and killed him. After getting stabbed three times, he stumbled outside and off the dock. You tossed in the screwdriver, and wiped your fingerprints off the door and anything else you’d touched, except you forgot that before he got there, you’d used the restroom.”

Roxanne sobbed. “Sabrina, what did you do?”

The two sisters hugged. When they pulled away, Sabrina clasped Roxanne’s face in her hands. “Don’t worry, sister. Once our lawyer puts Stephen Maguire on trial, no jury will ever convict us.”

While David waited nearby with his handcuffs ready, Sabrina stood up tall to be led out to the cruiser with dignity.

Mac stepped over to them. “Sabrina, I’m very sorry.”

She rejected the apology with a slap across his face.

Epilogue

One Week Later

Has there ever been a good funeral? Has anyone ever left a funeral proclaiming, “Hey, that was some funeral, wasn’t it? Let’s do it again next week.”

Mac pondered this thought while lying on the sofa with his arm over his eyes trying to block out the last few days.

He could feel Gnarly staring at him from his love seat as if to ask, “Now that I’ve met
all
of Christine’s family, what else are you going to subject me to?”

Under the circumstances, Mac wouldn’t have gone to his ex-wife’s funeral. He would have chosen to go to the cemetery alone to say his good-bye. It was for his son and daughter that he attended the viewing and funeral.

The Burtons had never been ones to keep their feelings under wraps. With no regard for appearances or respect in front of his children, they were openly hostile toward him. Attending the funeral to give support to Mac and his children, Archie was treated like a home wrecker, as if she’d broken up Christine’s marriage to him.

When Jessica came to her father’s defense at the reception following the funeral, Sabrina’s daughter slapped her. Jessica retaliated by dumping a filled punch bowl over her cousin’s head.

Anxious to get on with their lives, Jessica returned to Williamsburg to catch up on her courses at William and Mary; Tristan returned to the Smithsonian to discover a new dinosaur; and Mac, Archie, and Gnarly raced back to Spencer Manor.

Claiming that she had a headache, Archie rushed off to her cottage before Mac could close the garage door. He didn’t know if her headache was real or symbolic. Knowing his was real, he took two aspirin and reclined in front of the fire-place with a bottle of cognac. He was still trying to erase the memory of the past two weeks when David arrived to check on the manor as was his custom when they were gone.

When Gnarly refused to budge to allow room for him to sit on the love seat, David took the leather wing-backed chair next to the fireplace after pouring a drink.

“When did you get in?”

“Late this afternoon.” Mac sat up and turned his attention to refilling his snifter from the bottle he had resting on the coffee table.

“I picked up my new cruiser today.” David smiled like a child anxious to show off his new toy. “It has all the bells and whistles.”

“A boy and his toys,” Mac said. “You have that same expression on your face that Archie gets when she discovers a new gadget.”

“And you get when you read about a new murder case in the area,” David shot back. “While you’ve been gone, Ben and I have been working on our case against the Burton women. Roxanne is going to testify against Sabrina.”

Mac uttered an involuntary groan. “Now I’ve turned sister against sister.” He sipped his drink. The alcohol was failing to numb his nerves.

“You did what you had to do,” David told him. “Ben and I have a question that maybe you can answer.”

Mac said, “Shoot.”

“When Roxanne took that call from Cameron, and she got her first lead that Maguire had lied about his past, why didn’t she simply order a background check, which she was in the position to do, and then take her findings to the U.S. Attorney to blow the whistle on him? It would have achieved the same objective. Maguire would have been discredited and she would have been back in the running for deputy.” David asked, “Why the spyware and surveillance? Why did she have to come out to Deep Creek Lake to confront him face to face?”

Mac replied, “Haven’t you ever had a suspect that got under your skin so much that you had to see his face when you confronted him with the evidence that you’d collected against him?”

As much as he hated to admit it, David confessed that he had.

“If Roxanne had simply ordered a background check and taken the results to Hunter, then Christine would still be alive and none of this would have happened,” Mac said. “But she had to see his face, and then…I can imagine that famous Burton temper flaring when he laughed at her. When you think about it, they’d probably both be alive if Maguire hadn’t laughed at her.”

“That’s so often the case,” David said. “If only the victim hadn’t laughed. If only the victim hadn’t been there at this time, or did that back then. That’s what makes murder such a tragedy.” His curiosity got the best of him. “I guess the funeral didn’t go well.”

“It was an eye-opening experience for me.” Mac swallowed. “The pound of a judge’s gavel isn’t strong enough to break the bond of marriage. Maybe in some cases it is, but I wonder, in those cases when it does break it, I wonder if the bond was really that strong to begin with.”

“I think you’re right,” David said. “It’s all a matter of the level of commitment. Dad and Robin were never married. Their parents split them up before you were born. But even after years of being separated, when Robin came back, even though they never consummated their love affair because

Dad was married to Mom, there was a bond there that no piece of paper or gavel could strengthen or break.”

Mac took a sip of his drink. “Through this whole case, I kept correcting people. Christine was my ex-wife. She wasn’t my wife. We were divorced. But then, when I saw her in that casket, all I could remember was the girl I married and all those years—good years.” He sighed. “I never really got a chance to mourn our marriage. Things changed so suddenly. The day our divorce was final, I received all of this.”

He gestured at the richness surrounding him. “One day I was a bitter divorced man. Literally, the next day, I was a millionaire playboy. The funeral made me realize the good things, the goodness in the life I had before that’s now gone. My kids are grown and have their own lives. I’m not on the police force anymore. Everything has changed and I’ll never get it back, no matter how much money I have.”

Together, they drank in silence while staring into the flames.

David said. “You’re not the same man you were when you and Christine were married. You’re not even the same man you were when you drove onto the Point in that Viper six months ago. I haven’t seen you wear a faded t-shirt in weeks. Your shoes don’t have holes in them anymore.”

“Only because Gnarly chewed the soles off them,” Mac said. “I liked those shoes. They were broken in.”

David held up the bottle from the coffee table. “You’re drinking sixty-year-old cognac.”

Mac admitted, “As much as I don’t want to change, I can see that I have.” He grinned at him. “I like that you don’t give me speeding tickets.”

“Don’t press your luck.” David drained his drink. “Now that I know you’re all in safely, I should be getting home.” He slapped Mac on the leg. “Do you know what you need?”

“What?”

In the reflection from the flames, Mac could see a wicked grin cross his face. “A nice back scratch.” With a hearty laugh, David left.

Mac continued staring into the flames while he finished his drink.

Seeming to sense the lateness of the hour, Gnarly eased off the love seat with the gracefulness of a snake and stretched. He dug his snout down between the cushions. When it came back out, he had a teddy bear clutched between his teeth.

“Where did you get that?” Mac asked him as if he could answer.

The sound of his voice seeming to act like a gunshot starting a race, Gnarly galloped up the stairs to the bedroom. Before escaping, Mac saw a white price tag flapping from the bear’s toe.

“Gnarly! I’m going to kill you, you thief!”

Mac’s eyes rose up to the portrait over the fireplace. He didn’t know if it was the headache or the cognac, but Mickey Forsythe seemed to be smirking at him.

What do you have to feel so down about? Yesterday is gone. Time to open the door to today and tomorrow. She’s in the cottage at the end of the path.

Setting the bottle of cognac back on the bar, Mac looked out the window through the trees and saw the light on in the guest cottage. Sucking in his courage, he followed the path down through the rose garden until he came to her door.

Archie answered on the second knock. “Is Gnarly okay?” She was dressed for bed in her red nightgown and floor-length robe.

“He’s fine. Why are you asking about Gnarly?”

“Because he’s not with you,” she replied. “And since you’re standing here in one piece, I assume you’re fine.”

“I came to see how you were feeling.” He asked, “How’s your headache?”

“How’s yours?”

“I asked you first.”

“Well,” she drawled, “I was going to have a snack before going to bed. Care to join me?”

“What kind of snack?”

She held out her hand to him. “Strawberries dipped in chocolate. I’ve been saving them for you.”

“For me?”

“For us.” She reached up to kiss his lips. “Care to come in?”

Before he could answer, an acorn flew out of the tree towering above the cottage to bounce off the top of Mac’s head and strike Archie between the eyes.

Grabbing her face, she staggered backwards.