Shades of Murder (The Mac Faraday Mysteries) (14 page)

He punched the dashboard of his SUV and cursed. He really liked the teamwork he was developing with Cameron—and it wasn’t only romantically. They were in sync—like he’d never had with any partner in the past.There was no room on their team for an obese, obnoxious, chain smoker.

“I don’t like it any more than you do, darling,” Cameron told him. “I don’t even know where she is. Priscilla said she was actually giddy about finding out that Jane Doe was Neal Hathaway’s wife and talked about how much money he has. I’m afraid of what she might do.”

“She wouldn’t!”

“She doesn’t think straight,” she said. “Everyone has noticed it since she’s been plucked down here, but no one has the guts to blow the whistle to have something done. Now, it may be too late.”

“Have you tried calling her cell?”

“She’s not answering,” Cameron said. “I’m searching her office now. Where are you? If I need backup, can you get here?”

“I’ve got your back, baby.”

He had her back more than she knew. He was watching when Priscilla Garrett broke the news of her betrayal. The two women’s body language told him that something had gone wrong. Cameron’s call served to confirm his suspicion.

Directly across from Joshua’s car, two men in a black SUV with Virginia plates had also watched the show.

We’re going to have a convoy. Them following Cameron, and me following them.

Joshua climbed out of the back of his car. Keeping low, he made his way to the black SUV, where he threw open the back door and jumped into the back seat.

“You know you’d get more information faster if you flashed your badges, introduced yourselves, and said please,” he told the two agents reaching for the guns in their holsters.

“Thornton!” the older investigator said. “Someday you’re going to get shot doing that.”

“You’d think after thirty years of doing this that you’d be better at tailing people—especially a state police homicide detective.”

Seeing that his partner clearly knew the intruder, the younger man relaxed and went back to eating the submarine sandwich and chips he had in his lap.

The older man in the driver’s seat introduced him. “Thornton, meet Special Investigator Kenny Hill, he’s my replacement. Kenny, meet Joshua Thornton, former JAG lawyer, now small town lawyer.”

Kenny wiped his fingers on a napkin before shaking Joshua’s hand.

“So Harry Bush is finally retiring, huh?” Joshua asked the driver. “I thought I’d never see the day.”

“Seeing the way you keep popping up after you retired what? Eight years ago?” Harry chuckled. “But I thought I’d give it a shot. My wife has been bugging me to move to a mountaintop in Virginia and grow wine.” He shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“This must be your last case. Ilysa Ramsay, I assume.”

“Talk about going out with a bang!” Harry laughed. “If I can nail Ilysa Ramsay, then I can go out a legend.”

Joshua said, “I assume when AFIS got a hit on Ramsay, some sort of red flag went up. Why was it flagged? What interest does the FBI have in her?”

Before Harry could answer, Kenny announced with his mouth full of lunchmeat, “She’s on the move.” He pointed with a potato chip. “And she’s got the skunk with her.”

“I’ve got her.” Harry started the car.

The three men watched while Cameron climbed into her cruiser.

“She still has grass in her hair,” Kenny said. “You’d think she’d clean up after tackling that dude a little while ago.”

“She’s hunting down her boss.” Joshua sat back to buckle his seat belt. “She’s inserted herself into this case and right now no one knows where she is.”

“Everyone and their brother has gotten involved in this case.” Harry pulled out of the parking space to fall in behind her police cruiser. “You do know your girlfriend’s crazy?”

“She’s not crazy. Her cat is.”

“Cat? I thought that was a skunk,” Kenny said.

“He thinks he’s a dog.” Joshua asked Harry, “Why do you say Cameron’s crazy? What do you know about her?”

“When that flag went up, I got backgrounds on everyone involved,” Harry explained. “Detective Cameron Gates. Widow.”

“Widow?” Joshua replied. “She was married?”

“Only for about four months,” Harry said. “Very sad. It was seven years ago. Her husband was a state trooper. He pulled over a guy for a routine traffic stop and got run over by a drunk driver that sideswiped him and the car he pulled over. Gates lost it.”

“Do you blame her?” Swallowing, Joshua understood why she never mentioned it.

“After months of one issue after another,” Harry said, “she took a year off from the force. Disappeared off the radar. Then she came back and has become a top cop. Only one reason she’s not in charge.”

“What’s that?” Joshua asked.

“She’s crazy,” Harry and Kenny answered in unison.

When he received no more details about their claims, Joshua went back to the case that had brought them in to tail Cameron Gates. “What interest does the FBI have in an artist?”

“If she was just an artist, nothing,” Harry replied. “Ramsay is more than an artist.”

“A spy?”

“I wish,” Harry said. “She and her partner stole classified information and
sold
it to the highest bidder—the winner in this auction being Al Qaeda.”

“And Neal Hathaway’s company puts up satellites that collect defense information,” Joshua said.

“Some of the most sensitive information pertaining to Unites States defense,” Harry said. “If Al Qaeda got their hands on it …” He shook his head.

“Is Neal Hathaway aware of what his late wife did?” Joshua asked.

“We could never prove anything,” Harry said. “She and her partner are that good.”

“Who’s her partner?”

Finished with his sandwich, Kenny pointed up ahead with his rolled up wrapper. “She’s turning into that little airport.”

Up ahead, the cruiser turned off the four-lane freeway onto Darlington Road, a two-lane access road to enter Beaver County Airport, a small county-owned public airport.

The cruiser was turning into a gate leading to a private hangar when a black Jaguar came racing around the corner of the building to threaten a head-on collision. Cameron veered to the right so hard the the tail-end of her SUV whipped around to send her into a one-eighty turn.

Harry had enough warning to swing the steering wheel in order to pull out of the way of the Jaguar, which flew out the gate and down the road.

“Talk about a bat out of hell!” Kenny yelled.

“What was chasing him?” Joshua turned around in time to check out the Jag’s Pennsylvania license plate. It read
SCALES
.

“Must be late for a meeting,” Harry said. “Hathaway has a couple of his company jets here.”

Kenny told Harry, “Hang back. She’s going to see us.”

“Do you think so?” Harry said with sarcasm. “Like she would have missed us just now.”

“That’s okay.” Joshua was dialing on his cell phone. “She wants me to back her up.” When Cameron picked up, he said, “I’m in the black SUV behind you with a couple of friends. What’s up?”

She answered, “I did some old fashion gum shoe stuff and found where Sherry had written on a notepad to meet a secret informant from Hathaway Industries here at the airport hangar to talk about the Ramsay murder. You would have been proud of me. I scribble across a used notepad to pick up the impressions from the note before. It said:

Hathaway

Beaver Airport

Hangar #3.

1:30.

She added, “I’m so good I scare myself.”

Joshua checked the time on the clock dashboard. It was quarter to two. “We’re late. The meeting’s over.”

A black Chevy with a dented rear fender was parked along the side of the airplane hangar. “Her car’s still here.” She pulled up beside it.

Joshua hung up the cell. “You might as well pull in next to her. I think your cover’s blown.”

After they climbed out of the car, Joshua introduced them to Cameron.

Irving stuck his head out of the cruiser’s open window. Seeming to determine that the two agents weren’t worthy of his attention, he curled on the passenger seat to go back to sleep.

Kenny noted the grass that hung from Cameron’s shaggy locks.

“How old are you?” she asked him.

While the young agent hesitated, she looking him up and down before smirking. “When you’re forty years old, I’d like to see you chase a nineteen-year-old perp two blocks and tackle him.” She pointed at the grass stains on her clothes. “These are badges.”

Agreeing, Harry told her, “He’ll learn.”

Her hand on her gun, Cameron went around to the front of the airplane hangar where the doors were closed. “Sherry,” she called. “Bixby. I know you’re here.”

Joshua drew his gun from his belt holster and followed her. The two FBI agents drew their guns and split up to go around to the other side of the building.

No cars or trucks were parked around the hangar reserved only for private jets belonging to Hathaway Industries. Since flights weren’t regularly scheduled, the hangar was vacant unless Neal Hathaway or one of his executives was traveling.

Joshua said, “Where did that Jag come from? If he’d just come in from a flight, then the pilot and other personnel would still be here.”

“Maybe he was rushing from a meeting, instead of to one.” In front of the building, Cameron placed her hand on the doorknob to test it. It was unlocked. She pushed open the door and dropped back. “Sherry, are you in there?” The only response was the call and flapping of birds up in the rafters.

Joshua gestured that he would cover her while she went inside.

Her gun pointed to the ground, Cameron hurried inside. “Bixby.” Her voice bounced off the far walls and the two jets parked next to each other. Tables, boxes, racks filled with a wide assortment of tools, equipment, and supplies lined the building. After the echo faded into the rafters, they listened to silence.

The two FBI agents came in behind them. “I think we missed your boss’s meeting,” Kenny said.

“I guess so.” Cameron turned around. “She must have gone with them.”

She stopped when she saw the blood splatter at eye level on the file cabinet next to her. “Blood.”

It was all she needed to say to signal for them to go back on alert.

Her attention now piqued, Cameron darted her eyes left to right and up and down. No longer focused on finding her boss, but the source of the blood splatter, what she had missed before now caught her notice. A cast off to the left led to the splatter on the ground and around the corner of a row of shelving, where it grew in volume in conjunction with the attack’s intensity. The blood splatter turned into a trail that ended in a pool where Sherry Bixby had collapsed face down with her head, neck, and shoulders bashed in.

Soaked in blood, the sledge hammer that had done the deed rested between her motionless feet.

“Oh geez!” Cameron lowered her gun.

Kenny choked down the lunchmeat that fought its way back up.

“She didn’t even pull her weapon.” Cameron noted the gun that was still in its holster on her thick waist. “She completely walked into this with no backup. Stupid self-serving bitch got herself killed.”

She pulled out her phone to make the call. While listening to the ring at the other end of the line, she turned to Harry, who was holstering his gun. “What interest do you guys have in Ilysa Ramsay’s murder?”

“We’re interested in what she was doing when she got killed.” Harry cocked his head at her. “What interest does a Pennsylvania State Police detective have in a Spencer, Maryland, murder? This isn’t your jurisdiction.”

“Huh?” Cameron replied. “We’re investigating the murder of Ilysa Ramsay that happened here.”

When emergency picked up, she turned away to report a police officer down.

Now it was the FBI’s turn to be confused. Harry found himself alone in his disbelief while Kenny went outside to lose his lunch.

Joshua said, “We need to have a meeting of everyone involved in all these murders to get everyone on the same sheet of paper.”

Chapter Seven

“There you are.” David O’Callaghan found Mac enjoying a before-dinner cocktail with Archie in the Spencer Inn’s lounge. In the corner booth reserved for the inn’s owner, they were sharing a cozy moment alone when the police chief slid into the seat across from them and cleared his throat. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Another part of Mac’s inheritance, the Inn rested at the top of Spencer Mountain, which was named after his ancestors, the town’s founders. The front of the stone and cedar main lodge offered a view of the lake below and the mountains off in the distance. While resting between boating, golf, skiing, mountain biking, hiking, or any of the other activities, guests could take in the view from the wrap-around porch. They could also partake of refreshments in the outdoor café on the multi-level deck, among the flora of an elaborate living maze; or, if the weather was too chilly, the lounge inside. For more formal eating, the Inn’s five-star restaurant offered legendary dining experiences.