Shades of Murder (The Mac Faraday Mysteries) (10 page)

Mac shot a grin at David and Bogie over his shoulder. “How about your daughter-in-law?”

The corner of Neal’s lips curled. “Rachel has issues.”

David recalled, “Rachel was fighting with your assistant, Susan, when I arrived on the day of the murder.”

Mac asked, “What was that about?”

Neal shook his head. “Like I said, Rachel has issues. Susan has a few of her own. When you get the two of them together, they both have issues. Throw in Nancy Kaplan and it becomes a hot tub of issues. Ilysa was smart enough to stay out of it. None of them liked that.”

Chuckling about Neal’s frank response, Mac asked David, “What were Susan and Rachel fighting about?”

“They both said it was nothing. Rachel accused Susan of trying to leave. Susan said she was only packing her car for when she was released to go home.”

Mac asked, “When did you notice that the painting was missing?”

Neal’s eyes glazed over. “I didn’t. While I was waiting for the police to come, I remember Rachel coming in. She screamed, and then she ran downstairs. There was more screaming, and then an air horn…”

“Did anyone else come in while you were waiting for the police?” Mac asked.

After a long silence that seemed to fill the studio with the memory of the death years before, Neal Hathaway shook his head. Tears came to his eyes.

Bogie recalled, “The Kaplans arrived after our people.”

Neal found his voice again. “They were staying at the Spencer Inn. When we didn’t show up, Nancy called; and Susan told her about what had happened.”

Mac stood up from where he had been leaning against the breakfast bar. “You saw the painting the night before?”

“We all did,” he said. “Ilysa had been working on it all summer. This was supposed to be her masterpiece. It was going to be publicly unveiled at the Lourve the next month.”

“Everyone was here when she unveiled it?” Mac went over to admire the view.

Neal nodded. “Sunday night. After dinner. We had dessert and champagne here in the studio to celebrate.”

Mac moved the standing weight scale from where it was set next to the wall to the middle of the room. “Where was the easel when she did her unveiling?”

“It was over closer to the window. Between the windows and the breakfast bar.” He coughed. “I didn’t want to convert the studio into a fitness room, but Rachel insisted. She said it was a waste to leave it the way it was, since Ilysa was…”

Mac sensed Neal’s daughter-in-law permitted only the minimal amount of time for mourning before making a grab for the space—and anything else—for herself.

“Which way was the easel turned?” Using the weight scale as a substitute for the easel, Mac asked Neal about its placement in the room at the time of the murder.

“Facing the center of the room.”

“You said everyone was here?”

“All of us. Me. Susan. Rachel. The Kaplans were here, too. Victor was supposed to be here.” Neal added in a harsh tone. “I know he did it. He planned it this way.”

“How did Victor meet Ilysa?” Mac saw David cock his head as if a thought was nagging at his brain.

Neal’s tone was firm. “They grew up together in the same little village in Scotland. When Ilysa started selling her paintings, Victor swooped in to become her agent. But she told me that she wasn’t happy doing what she was doing, and she was going to quit.”

“Which would have left Victor where?” Bogie asked. “Sounds like a motive for murder.”

Neal said loudly, “Exactly!”

After allowing him to leave, Mac compared the crime scene pictures to the room as it was now. It was difficult. When she had remodeled, Rachel ensured the studio was barely recognizable of its former self.

“Her body was here.” Bogie gestured at the space on the floor in front of the scale. “Blood splatters started six feet in from the door. We believed her attacker struck the first blow to the back of the head after entering the room.”

“There was blood in front of the easel and some cast off around the base,” Mac said. “No sign of forced entry. Either the door was unlocked, or she and the killer came in together. But she was in her pajamas and bathrobe.”

David said, “The last time everyone saw her, she was going to bed. Neal Hathaway says they went to bed together.”

Bogie added, “But he wasn’t awake when she left. So he couldn’t tell us what time she came to the studio. The time of death was between midnight and one.”

“She came over here to the studio,” Mac said, “and she gets killed.” He went to the windows looking out on the lake to peer out along the shore to the main house. “The top floors of the mansion look right out here. She could have seen the thief stealing her masterpiece and came to stop him.”

Bogie said, “That’s what we were thinking. She comes in to confront the thief and he bludgeons her to death with the hammer.”

“Was the murder weapon hers or his?”

Bogie answered that the hammer used to kill Ilysa had belonged to her.

Walking the path from the door to the middle of the room, Mac stopped and pointed across the room to the kitchen counter located on the other side of the breakfast bar. “According to these pictures, her paints were over there, but she painted over here. That’s a long way to go dip a paint brush.”

David and Bogie glanced at each other.

“How did I miss that?” Bogie asked.

Frowning, Mac stood over the spot where Ilysa’s body had been found. “There’s no void in the blood spatters around the easel.” He showed Bogie and David the picture of the body on the floor in front of the bare easel. While they studied that picture, Mac handed them the other pictures of the blood on the floor around the easel. “There’s no blood on the painting, either. I tested it.”

“That means the canvas wasn’t near the body to catch any of the splatter,” David said.

Mac pointed out, “But the easel was right next to the body.”

Bogie said, “If it was on the easel at the time of the murder, there would have been a void in the blood splatter.”

“And on the painting,” Mac said. “There’s neither.”

“So where was the painting while Ilysa was being killed?” David turned around as if it may still be in the studio.

“Gone already?” Bogie asked.

Mac showed them another picture of the breakfast bar with an industrial sized role of wrapping paper resting on the floor next to it. “She was getting it ready for shipping when she was killed. That’s why Ilysa had put the paints over there—To make room on this counter to wrap up the painting.”

He went into the center of the room to reconstruct the murder. “The killer comes into the room and strikes the first blow several steps into the room. Ilysa manages to cross the room to here—” He stood over the spot where her body had been found. “—where he beats her down to the floor and kills her.”

He turned to the kitchenette. “The painting was up here on the counter. It may have already been wrapped up and all the killer had to do was take it.” He held up his finger. “Or … it was already gone and not in the studio at the time of the murder.”

Bogie asked, “Which was it? Was the painting stolen before or during the murder?”

“That’s an important question,” David said. “If the painting had already been stolen, then most likely, it’s not the motive for the murder.”

“If there’s no blood on the painting, it’s entirely possible that it wasn’t even in the room,” Bogie said. “That sends the case in a whole different direction.”

David and Bogie turned to Mac, who was staring down at the floor where Ilysa Ramsay’s body had lay lifeless eight years before. Abruptly aware of their questioning gaze on him, he responded, “I’m working on it.”

Chapter Five

“Hey, you,” Detective Cameron Gates shouted to Priscilla Garrett, the senior forensics technician in the crime lab, located on the ground floor of the barracks.

It was time for Priscilla’s lunch break, which she took as soon as the clock struck the hour and not a minute later for fear of going into nicotine withdrawal.

Cameron’s call across the lab stopped the buxom blond from shedding her lab coat and racing in her high heels out the other exit to the corner of the parking lot reserved for smokers. “What are you doing?” The detective sauntered the length of the lab.

“Lunch.” As if it were a jar filled with creepy, crawly bugs, Priscilla eyed the brown folder that Cameron had tucked under her arm. “Unless you’re here to offer to buy me a salad and bottled water, it’s going to have to wait.”

Cameron considered the suggestion. A refusal would be the wrong answer. Priscilla would be gone, and she’d have to come back later, which was not an option. Now that Jane Doe’s murder case was officially taboo, Cameron couldn’t risk talking to her when the lab was in full swing with big-eared forensics officers.

That morning at staff meeting, Lieutenant Sherry Bixby had made a big deal about no detectives reopening any cold cases without first clearing them through her. Cameron could feel all eyes on her. No one said the words, but the other detectives on the squad knew about which cold case Sherry Bixby was talking.

The order was meant for her.

Sherry doesn’t know me very well, does she? If she’s looking for a fight, I’m her girl.

Three hours later, Detective Cameron Gates was in the forensics lab offering to buy Priscilla Garrett lunch in exchange for a favor.

Her purse hanging by its strap off her shoulder, Priscilla asked, “What do you want?” Her low voice resembled a growl.

“I need for you to run a set of fingerprints through AFIS. We need for it to be a broad search to include the international database.”

Priscilla shifted her weight from one high heel to the other and cocked her head at the detective. “For that you want to buy me lunch? What’s the other half of the equation?”

“It’s Jane Doe’s prints. Victim Number Four. The Oliver Cartwright case.”

“Do you
want
to get fired?” Priscilla shouted before Cameron shushed her.

She pushed the forensics officer back down into her chair. “It’s evidence.”

“From a closed case,” Priscilla said.

“That’s a lie. Until her killer is caught, the case is open. It was never closed.”

“Bixby says the case is closed. Cartwright did it.”

“No, he didn’t,” Cameron said. “Bixby wasn’t on that case. I was. Gregory and I said from the get-go that it was a copycat. Jane Doe was a body dump. Cartwright’s murders weren’t. Now, I’ve found in the autopsy report that Jane Doe had European dental work. Suppose she was European? That would explain why no one here has reported her missing? Can you run her fingerprints through AFIS again and check the international database for me?”

A wide grin crossed Priscilla’s face. Her plump painted lips parted to reveal bright white straight teeth. “Why do you want to put a bullet in your career?”

“That’s not why I’m asking you to run these prints,” Cameron said. “Jane Doe was a woman just like you and me.” She pointed the corner of the case file at the picture Priscilla had of her teenaged daughter on her desk. “Suppose it was you. Suppose you were found dead in a field and no one bothered trying to find out your name. You just didn’t come home one day, and your family never found out what happened to you, because politically it didn’t fit into some bureaucrat’s agenda.” A sly smile crossed her lips. “Making Bixby look bad would be an added benefit.”

Priscilla looked around the lab to see how many of the technicians had returned from lunch. Time was ticking away. “How wide do you want me to cast the net?”

Cameron slipped the folder into her hand. “Let’s go for broke. Run a full search of the whole database. Thanks, Priscilla. You’re doing the right thing.”

“Haven’t you ever heard that good guys finish last?”

When Cameron turned to leave, Priscilla cleared her throat and held out her hand. “Lunch.”

Cameron slipped a ten-dollar bill into her palm.

“Have you seen the prices at Panera Bread lately?”

“Does he ever blink?” At his desk, Officer Eric Foster clutched his submarine sandwich close to his chest to protect it from Gnarly, who was perched and ready to pounce.

From the moment Spencer’s newest rookie officer had taken his lunch from the bag, Gnarly sat motionless like a statue. Refusing to lose sight of his target, he willed the food to come to him.

“Nope.” Mac answered the officer while keeping one ear in the direction of Bogie’s office where the deputy chief and David were meeting with another officer, Brent Fletcher.

When they had arrived back at Spencer police headquarters, David rushed Bogie into the office to talk to him in hushed voices. Then, they called in Officer Fletcher from where he was out on patrol. A few minutes later, Fletcher retrieved a folder from the file room, and returned to Bogie’s office where they closed the door again.

The desk sergeant, Tonya gave up a portion of her attention from a report she was working on to tell Officer Foster, “Gnarly doesn’t beg. He demands.”

“You can stare at me all you want,” Eric told the German Shepherd. “You’re not getting my sandwich.”