Shades of Murder (The Mac Faraday Mysteries) (21 page)

“Fifty-thousand dollars. You can count it.” His mustache grew wide with his smile of anticipation. He snatched the tube.

“I’ll trust you.” The officer stood up. “Nice doing business with you.”

When the tea man removed the cap of the tube and peered inside, the police poured in from all directions. “Police! You’re under arrest.”

The call startled the man with the goatee, but not so much that he was willing to give up easily.

“He’s going to rabbit.” David grabbed the door handle. “Told you so.”

Mac stopped him. “Wait for it.”

Crying out, the tea man made a run for it. Knocking a server with a tray full of food out of his way, he ran for the side of the cafe and took the path up the hill toward the parking lot. He headed straight for Mac’s SUV. After cresting the hill, he ran for the lot, and then darted alongside the car—only to slam into the driver’s side door that Mac kicked open.

The force of the door caused him to fall backwards and roll head over heels, with the tube toppling alongside him, back down the hill to the officers below.

“Not bad,” David said. “You caught him without breaking a sweat.”

Mac closed the door and sat back in his seat. “And you didn’t want to park up here.”

On the other side of the café, Joshua and Cameron watched the police officers chase after the man with the spiked hair. While the mob ran in one direction, they watched a man with dark hair get up from where he had been watching on a bench along the lakeshore. He quickened his pace toward the Jaguar parked next to them.

He was still watching to make sure no one had spotted him when he reached for the door handle.

Joshua gripped his wrist. “So we meet again, Mr. Scales.”

“Thornton.” He turned to find Cameron flanking him. “I was out enjoying the beautiful summer weather.”

“How long do you think the courier you hired will keep quiet under questioning?” Cameron asked him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Joshua said, “Things will go better for you if you come clean.”

“I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Then why are you paying people off and trying to buy stolen paintings?” Joshua asked.

Scales stuttered. “I-I have a client. Anonymous.”

“Do you mean Nancy Kaplan?”

“I’m not saying a word—”

“I know, I know,” Cameron said. “Until you talk to your lawyer.”

“Oh, Scales…”

George Scales whirled around to find that the police cruiser had pulled up behind them. Bogie was at the steering wheel. David held the back door open and the tea man was nodding his head at the lawyer. “That’s him! That’s the guy that offered me five thousand dollars to pick up his package for him.” the European accent had disappeared.

David gestured for Scales to get in. “Care to join us?”

George Scales whipped out his cell phone. “I’m calling my lawyer.”

Cameron told him, “Good help is so hard to find.”

Chapter Twelve

Under an arrogant exterior, George Scales’s nervousness showed in the tapping of his heels in the interrogation room.

In the squad room, Cameron and Bogie were racing to get the results of a background check on the lawyer, who had a long list of high profile clients, most of whom were government defense contractors.

Joshua asked Cameron, “Have you gotten any word from your people in Pittsburgh about Scales being at the scene when Bixby was killed?”

“We have the call from his cell phone to her throw away phone. But there was a call she received about ten minutes before that from another throw away phone. That call lasted about three minutes.

“That could be Kaplan,” Mac said from where he was sitting next to Officer Foster’s desk. “Hathaway told us that he called Kaplan and his lawyer to take care of it. If Scales was working on his own, and he didn’t kill Bixby, then that leaves Kaplan…or someone Kaplan sent.”

“Like his wife,” Joshua said, “She seemed awfully chummy with Scales last night.”

Cameron recalled, “She was the one that ordered him not to say anything—maybe she had her own reasons.”

“We have another off-shore account,” Bogie announced.

They crowded around the deputy chief’s chair to see the listing on his computer screen.

“Scales has over ten million dollars in the Cayman Islands,” Bogie said. “I also took a look at Peyton Kaplan’s account. That has only two million dollars.”

Cameron laughed. “
Only
two million?”

“I wonder how much classified information is going for?” Bogie asked.

Joshua leaned in to look at the computer screen. “Can you find out whose account that money came out of?”

“Let me do some digging.” Bogie bent over the keyboard to peck at the keys.

David recalled, “Peyton claims his money was inherited, and he was hiding it from his wife.”

“Hell of a guy,” Cameron muttered. “I don’t like him.”

Bogie yelled, “Found it. In both accounts, the money has been transferred from an online investment company. There have been transfers as recent as three days ago. The name on the account is Ann Scales, who resides at 1313 Penn Way in Pittsburgh.”

“Wait a minute. I know that address.” Cameron was inputting the address into her smart phone while Bogie read it off. She smirked. “It’s a nursing home. How much do you want to bet Ann Scales is George’s mother?”

“They’re laundering the money they’re making selling defense secrets through Scales’s mother,” Joshua said. “I wonder how many defense secrets they’ve sold to terrorists throughout the years?”

David said, “What do you say we go find out, Bogie?”

“Can I play the bad cop?” Bogie punched his hand with his fist. “I don’t like traitors.”

David patted him on the arm. “You can be whoever you want to be, big guy.”

“So, Scales,” David said when he came into the interrogation room. “You like paintings.” He tossed the Ramsay case file onto table.

With a hard expression on his face, Bogie struck an intimidating figure while standing in front of the door with his arms folded across his broad chest. David swung around the chair on the opposite side of the table from Scales and straddled the back. The police chief shot the suspect a boyish grin.

They came across as the classic bad cop-good cop.

George eyed the folder. “Of course, I like paintings.”

“Enough to kill for them?” David fingered the folder that rested on the table between them.

“I told you already,” Scales said. “I have a client who happens to be a big Ilysa Ramsay fan. I thought this was a legitimate purchase—” His eyes grew wide as they darted from Bogie’s scowl to David’s pleasant expression.

“If you thought it was so legit why did you hire someone to pick it up for you while you watched from ten yards away?” Chuckling, David glanced up at Bogie. The corner of the big cop’s lip curled to allow a low growl to seep from his massive chest.

As if ignoring Bogie would make him disappear, George Scales forced himself to focus on David. “My client really wanted this painting. Book me for conspiracy to commit burglary, and I’ll be on my way.”

“Ah, I’d really like to do that.” David shook his head while thumbing the edge of the case file without actually opening it. “But we can’t let you go anywhere. This isn’t a simple case of burglary. You’re looking at murder, my man.”

George’s eyes were focused on the folder. “No one was killed in that break-in.”

“Except Mac Faraday’s new boat,” Bogie said in a deep loud voice. “He was taking me out on it tomorrow, and now I can’t go.”

“I’ll buy him a new one.” His voice went up so high that it squeaked. “I’ll have it delivered ASAP. I’ll get him a bigger one. One more your size.”

“What are you going to buy it with?” David asked, “The ten mil you have in the Cayman Islands?”

At that, Scales face became paler.

David grinned up at Bogie.

In the interrogation room, Mac chuckled along with them. “We have him.”

“That’s what you’re afraid of people finding out,” David said. “That’s why you were so anxious to pay off Lieutenant Bixby toallow the Ramsay case to go cold. You couldn’t afford to have the authorities poking around too much.”

“Are you talking about that woman that tried to shake us down about Ilysa’s murder? I told you and that woman detective, she was already dead when I got there.”

“Why did you go there?” David asked.

“Because that was where she told me to meet her and take one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“How did you set up the meeting?”

Scales rolled his eyes. “Hathaway called me a little after nine o’clock yesterday morning at my office in Pittsburgh. He said one of your people was trying to shake him down by claiming that she had information that would hurt him or make him look guilty of Ilysa’s murder. He told Kaplan to take care of it—”

“Which meant what?” Bogie asked.

Scales sucked in a deep breath. “You met Hathaway. He’s the straightest of straight arrows. He wanted this blackmailer caught and locked up—after she told us who killed Ilysa.”

David said, “That was the last thing you wanted, because it might come out that you’ve been stealing government secrets from your clients and selling them to our enemies.”

“You have no proof of that.”

“Are you sure about that?” David leaned toward him and lowered his voice. “What if I told you that we have proof that you were in Deep Creek Lake when Ilysa Ramsay was murdered?”

Scales’s eyes narrowed.

In the observation room, Cameron asked Mac, “Do we have proof of that?”

“We can get it.”

Joshua said, “As slow as he’s answering, I think David’s bluff worked. He’s got to think about how best to answer. Continue denying any wrongdoing, or come clean and make a deal.”

“I did not kill Ilysa Ramsay,” Scales said. “Her team was supposed to be the best. They were highly recommended. But as soon as she married Hathaway everything went haywire. First of all, she disappeared and no one knew where she was. She was to meet Hathaway for a rocket launching in Arizona, but something happened and she didn’t show up. Hathaway was frantic.”

David asked, “Was that in June 2003?”

“It was right after they were married.” Scales shrugged. “Maybe. Then she showed up. I forget what she said had happened. But weeks of work went to pot. Then, Hathaway was working on this huge new system and I got a lot of interest in that. But then, things went real bad.”

“I know how that can be,” David said like they were two drinking buddies at the bar. “How bad did it get?”

“The worst,” George said. “That little bitch...She kept nosing around and asking questions. Next thing I know, she has my account records and a recording of me and Kaplan—Bitch!”

George dropped back in his seat and clinched his jaw.

“What type of recording?” When he received no answer, David shrugged his shoulders. “We found out about your bank account. The money is being transferred from your mother’s account. Now, considering that she’s a nursing home resident, we know the money is being laundered through her account. We’re going to find out, Scales. So you might as well fess up.” He leaned across the table and asked in a low voice, “Who have you been selling our secrets to?”

“It’s not from selling secrets,” George smirked.

In the observation room, Joshua’s eyes lit up. “Kaplan is on the board. Scales has all these executive clients—It’s insider trading. They’re doing inside trading under Scales’s mother’s name.”

It was as if David heard him on the other side of the two-way mirror. “The money was transferred into your account from an online investment firm. You’ve been playing the stock market in your mother’s name using inside information that you’ve been collecting from your clients on the boards of defense companies.”

George’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“Peyton Kaplan’s account is his cut from money that you made based on information he gave you.” David chuckled. “Ilysa Ramsay found out and blackmailed you two.”

“Kaplan never knew that I had hired Gruskonov and his team,” Scales said. “He thought I had gotten mixed up in it because of the insider trading that Ilysa nailed us on. I figured she would just play this game until she got the information for me to sell, but then—” He slammed his hand down on the table and glared at the police chief. “The little bitch turned on us.”

“How did she turn on you?” David asked. “Was she holding out for a bigger cut?”

“Worse than that,” Scales said. “She recorded everything. She was going to turn Kaplan and me in for the theft and the insider trading.”

“Guess that goes to show you,” David said, “there’s no loyalty among thieves.”

Batting his eyelashes, Scales said in a mocking tone, “She was in love.” He turned serious. “This was her last job for Gruskonov. She didn’t want to do it, but Gruskonov forced her hand, and then she turned the tables on us. As soon as it was over, Kaplan were to resign and go away quietly, or go to jail.”