It's Murder, My Son (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (19 page)

“He’s not a killer, and Phillips is no police chief,” Mac said. “He doesn’t know the first thing about investigating a murder case.”

“But if he brings me enough evidence to take to a grand jury—”

“If there’s no real evidence, then he can’t bring it to you,” Mac said.

“What do you propose? I’m straight, Mac. I won’t be a party to anyone destroying or tampering with evidence.”

“I’m not going to destroy evidence—I’m going to find it. All I want from you is to hold off on indicting David with whatever circumstantial evidence Phillips brings you until I find out the truth about what happened. Think about it. If you indict an innocent man and then I bring in the real killer—which I will do—you’re going to look like a fool. Won’t it be bad enough when I make Spencer’s police chief look like an idiot? Do you want to be in that company?”

“You sound so much like your mother, it’s scary,” the prosecutor said. “How much time are you talking about?”

“How much time are you willing to give me?”

“Not much.” Ben groaned softly. “Don’t look now but Chief Phillips just walked in.”

Mac wished he had eyes in back of his head. “Is he heading this way?”

“Straight for me.” Ben whispered hurriedly, “I’ll give you as much time as I can.”

Phillips stepped toward the prosecutor with his hand out.

“Hey, Roy, how are you doing?” Ben greeted him.

“As well as can be expected with two less officers.”

“So you told me this morning.”

Ben directed him to a table away from the bar on the other side of the lounge. “Let’s have a round and talk about what we should do.”

With a glance over his shoulder, Mac headed for the exit at the opposite end of the bar. He saw Archie sitting with her back to Ben and Roy’s table.

“Excuse me, but I need to—” Before Archie could finish excusing herself, she saw three people come into the lounge.

She recognized Prissy and Gordon Hardwick. Their unpleasant demeanor contained an overabundance of smugness. Their companion was plump to the point of obesity. She wore her black hair in a bluntly cut bob. After leading the couple to the bar, she tapped Jeff Ingles on the shoulder.

 “Hello, Jeff,” their female companion said. “As the manager of the Spencer Inn, I believe these should go to you.” She extracted a folded bunch of papers from her purse and slapped him in the chest with them.

The Hardwicks smirked at the customers in the lounge.

“How much?” Jeff asked their lawyer.

“Seven million dollars.”

Jeff laughed. “That’s an awful lot of money to sue a group of people you hated to begin with for expelling you from their club.”

“We hated you because you hated us,” Gordon said. “You’re all a bunch of anti-Semitics.”

“Now you’re reaching. Nowhere on the membership application does it ask anything about religion. To tell you the truth, I thought you were a couple of atheists. You certainly acted like it.” Jeff scoffed, “You joined this club to get expelled in order to file this suit.” He dropped the papers onto the top of the bar. “It’s not going to work. I won’t let you use my establishment to support you in the high life.”

“We’ll see you and Mr. Faraday in court, Mr. Ingles.” The lawyer urged the Hardwicks to leave before engaging in any more sparring of words.

“What do you intend to do about them?” Ben asked the manager.

“What else? I intend to get rid of them.”

Chapter Nine

“The more I get to know people, the more I like my dog,” Mac told Ed Willingham in Jeff Ingles’s corner office off the Spencer Inn’s reception area. “And he stole my breakfast this morning.”

Ed Willingham had requested a meeting to discuss the Hardwicks’ lawsuit against the Spencer Inn. Again, Jeff Ingles dressed better than the Inn owner in a tailored suit made of a material Mac couldn’t identify. He had thrown on a red t-shirt, black jeans, and loafers without any socks.

Mac’s lawyer explained the Hardwicks’ agenda in simple terms. “They are willing to accept, and expect, a hefty out of court settlement to make this whole nuisance go away. Otherwise, they’ll drag it out as long as need be and drag the name of the Spencer Inn through the mud along the way.”

“But I—we’ve—done nothing wrong,” Mac argued.

“Of course not,” Ed said. “If it’s dragged out, then most likely they’ll lose the case. They’re banking on you paying them so you don’t have to be bothered.”

“I’m already bothered,” Mac said. “What do you mean ‘most likely’? I thought you said they didn’t have a case.”

“My firm handled the restaurant from whom they won the multi-million dollar lawsuit,” Ed told him. “The server tripped over Gordon Hardwick’s briefcase, which he had left on the floor where anyone could trip over it. None of us expected the jury to come back on the side of the plaintiff. You can never tell what a jury is going to do.”

“The Hardwicks were begging us to kick them out,” Jeff Ingles grumbled.

“Of course,” Mac said. “That’s why they joined the Inn the same week it hit the news that I inherited Robin Spencer’s estate. They’re banking on me rolling over and playing dead to avoid the hassle? They’re in for a big surprise.”

“This could get expensive,” Ed warned him.

“I once went to arrest a child killer who refused to be taken alive. He shot my partner before cornering me in a warehouse. My backup was nowhere to be seen and I had to turn off my radio so he wouldn’t know where I was. It was dark and I couldn’t see him.” Mac grinned. “He’s now six feet under. When I was broke I refused to go down without a fight. Now that I’m rich, I don’t plan to start.”

Ed slapped his notebook shut. “Then I guess I have to get to work.”

The manager said, “I can give you a whole list of witnesses who will testify to the Hardwicks’ shenanigans since being admitted into the club.”

“Thank you, Jeff.” The lawyer rose and shook the business manager’s hand.

With effort, Jeff stood up. In spite of his young age, he moved like an elderly man.

“Back giving you trouble today?” Ed asked.

“Rain must be on the way.”

“What ever happened with the woman who did that to you?” Remembering Mac’s presence, Ed explained, “A couple of years ago Jeff was on the wrong end of a hit and run. He spent a month in the hospital.”

“That’s terrible.” Mac now understood the hotel manager’s slow and sometimes painful movements.

Jeff said, “It happened right out here in the parking lot during the off period between Labor Day and autumn leaf peeper season. I came out the side entrance after locking up and heard this couple fighting in the garden. I remember hearing a woman running across the parking lot on the way to my car. Suddenly, this Ferrari came out of nowhere. The lights came on right in my face. I think she was as surprised to see me as I was to see her. She swerved and hit the brakes, but it was too late. She clipped me. I landed on the trunk of my car. Broke both of my legs and back. The doctors said that the pain in my back will be with me for the rest of my life. I have pins all through me.”

“Did they ever prosecute the woman driving the Ferrari?” Ed repeated the question that had started the conversation.

“No, they didn’t.” Jeff rubbed the scars on his hand and wrist. “But you know what they say. Pay back is hell.”

*   *   *   *

“I’m both surprised and saddened to learn that Patrick O’Callaghan’s son is a person of interest in these murders,” the voice identified as one of the leading members of Spencer’s town council announced over the radio while Mac raced along the curving road around the lake. “I never knew David very well. He always seemed polite—”

“He’s talking like I’m dead. Come on, Bill!” David objected from the passenger seat.

“—but then, you have to admit, there’s a lot of pressure living in the shadow of a dead man,” the councilman David knew as Bill Clark continued. “Ol’ Pat put a lot of pressure on his son to be aggressive. You have to be when you’re a cop. I used to worry that maybe Pat was teaching Dave to be too aggressive.”

“Bull!”

Mac punched the button to turn off the radio. “That’s enough of that.”

“Bill Clark and his cronies on the town council have tried and convicted me.” His passenger didn’t appear to be enjoying the wind blowing through his blond hair while racing through the Maryland countryside east of McHenry. Instead, David stared through the windshield without seeing the scenery.

“They’re the ones who’re going to look like fools.”

Mac pulled the Viper into McHenry’s airport. The small airport consisted of a building that resembled a warehouse and an assortment of private jets and planes used to shuttle the resort area’s privileged residents in and out of Deep Creek Lake at a moment’s notice.

 David asked, “What are we doing here? I thought we were driving to DC.”

“We are driving.” Mac climbed out of the car. “But there’s more than one way out of Deep Creek. Lee Dorcas could have made it back and forth between Washington and here if he flew.”

David threw open the car door. “Wouldn’t that have been expensive? He was a struggling musician.”  

“Who inherited a fortune.” Mac stepped through the hangar doors into the airport office.

In contrast to the sparse appearance of the airport, the office and lounge contained a sofa, love seat, fully stocked bar, and television. Busy, high-powered clients could conduct business at a desk next to the window looking out across the runway while waiting for their private flights.

A pilot rushed in from the hangar to greet the potential passengers. “Hello, gentlemen, welcome to McHenry airport. Where would you like to fly today?” With his slender build and smooth face, he looked barely old enough to drive a car. The gold pilot wings pinned to his breast pocket above a nameplate that read “Jackson” confirmed that he was a pilot. He told them that the private airline he owned and operated had been in his family for three generations.

Introducing himself, Mac shook the pilot’s hand.

Jackson’s face broke into a wide grin. “Robin Spencer’s son?”

“Yes. I was wondering—”

“I flew your mother!” Jackson interjected with youthful enthusiasm. “She interviewed me for some of her books. She mentioned me in
Flight to Death
.” He extracted a hardback from a bookcase in the corner that contained an assortment of reading material for waiting passengers. With pride, he opened the book to the acknowledgements page and held it out for Mac to read. “See? Jackson Langevoort. That’s me. She said I was an excellent pilot and thanked me for my wealth of information that helped her to write this book. I told her how to fake an alibi on a chartered flight. The killer booked a private flight for before the murder in his name and then had someone else show up and say it was him. I couldn’t believe it when she gave me one of the first copies hot off the presses and showed me my name in the acknowledgements. A big star like her.” He took the book back from Mac. “Of course, this isn’t my autographed copy. I keep that one at home and never lend it out.” He took a breath before asking again, “Where would you like me to fly you?”  

After explaining that he and David were investigating a murder in Spencer, Mac asked if Lee Dorcas had ever booked a flight with him to or from Washington, DC.

Jackson shook his head. “Never heard of the guy.”

Mac’s description of Lee Dorcas caused a different reaction. “Oh, yeah, I remember flying a guy that looked like that right after the blizzard. I flew him to Houston. Real odd guy. To look at him you never would have guessed he had money.”