It's Murder, My Son (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (41 page)

“Don’t make me neuter you!” Mac appeared at the top of the stairs.

The barking stopped.

Their host paused to smooth his hair, messed in the wrestling match, and straighten his suit. After composing himself, he strode down the stairs to join the party. The server met him at the bottom with a glass of champagne.

After a short conversation between Mac and his guests about the warm weather and the onslaught of summer residents returning to Spencer, the server returned to announce that dinner was ready.

Mac invited his guests to gather in the dining room where the Inn’s staff had prepared the table with the Spencer family’s century-old china. “You should be honored to know that this is the very first time I’ve eaten in this room. I usually eat in the kitchen.”

After holding out Archie’s chair at the head of the table, Mac sat at the other end. David and Yvonne sat next to each other on one side of the table while Travis and Sophia sat on the other.

The server brought out chilled copper salad plates. While she set one in front of each guest, Mac told Sophia, “We’re having salmon for the main course. Jeff told me that you’re a quasi-vegetarian. You eat fish, but no other meat.”

“Thank you for noting that.” She picked up her fork. “The media is always watching my waistline.”

Mac turned his attention to the rest of his guests. “I’ve learned a lot of little things about household chores since my divorce. Today, I learned that fish leaks. No matter how you wrap it, the slime oozes out,” he told them with a grin before sipping his champagne. “The Inn delivered the salmon this morning and I thought they had wrapped it up nice and tight. But when I went to make a sandwich for lunch I found that it had leaked onto my baloney. Even Gnarly refused to eat that slimy mess. The slime oozed down to the bottom of my fridge.” He asked Sophia, “Does that happen to you?”

Offended by the suggestion that she did such mundane chores as cleaning, Sophia said, “I never paid that much attention to the floor of our refrigerator.”

“You have a walk-in fridge,” David said. “I saw it. It’s huge. I’ll bet you could hide a body in there.”

“Why would I want to hide a body in the fridge?”

David said, “To slow down decomposition to throw off the time of death.”

Sophia turned to her husband. “What are they talking about?”

Travis glared across the table at David.

“We’re simply making polite dinner conversation.” Mac picked up the pepper mill. “Anyone want pepper on their salad?”

*   *   *   *

After dinner, Mac invited his guests into the study for cigars.

Gasping at the décor in the room devoted to Robin’s writing, Sophia clasped her throat upon spying the various weapons, research materials, and memorabilia of murder.

“This room helped to inspire Robin.” Archie handed Sophia a sherry glass. “Doesn’t Travis have a room—?”

“He wouldn’t dare.” Sophia gulped down a taste of the liquor.

After draping his suit jacket over the back of the chair behind the desk, Mac removed a box from the bottom drawer. “My mother was a closet cigar smoker.”

“Robin loved to smoke one every now and then,” Archie explained. “She had an average of five a year.”

David hung his suit jacket on the coat rack before taking a cigar from the open box. “I remember sharing a couple of cigars with Robin. Dad loved nothing more than a good cigar after closing a case.”

“Then we should have one, by all means, now that we’ve solved Katrina’s murder.” Travis took the cigar Mac offered to him.

Archie ignited a crystal cigar lighter and held the flame to the end of Mac’s cigar. After it caught flame, she turned to Travis, who had also taken off his suit coat. While she held out the flame to Travis’s cigar, she noted his bare muscular arms exposed by the short-sleeved shirt he had worn under the suit coat. His bronzed flesh was smooth and flawless.

“Hey, Travis, do you know what this is?” Mac had removed a book from a shelf behind Robin’s desk.

Travis smiled broadly when he saw the cover. He took the hardback and opened it. “It’s the first book that I autographed. ‘To Robin, My Mentor and Inspiration, With all my gratitude, Travis Turner.’ I dated it five years ago this summer.” He showed the inscription to Sophia. “I owe everything to her.”

“Can you do me a favor?” asked Mac. “I’ve never known a bestselling author. Can you read
A Death in Manhattan
to me—to us? It would be such a kick.” He turned to the rest of his guests. “How about it?”

After David, Yvonne, Archie, and even Sophia voiced encouragement, Travis accepted the invitation and took the book that his wife held out to him. Perched in a chair in front of the fireplace, he cleared his throat.

“A Death in Manhattan, by Travis Turner.”

He turned to the first chapter.

“The alarm clock blasted its way through Naomi’s dreams to jerk her out of a pleasant slumber to rejoin the world…” By the third paragraph, Travis was enthralled in his role of the author playing center stage to his private audience. 

“Preoccupied with the cats circling her feet in search of their breakfast, the old lady was unaware of the killer behind the curtain waiting for the opportunity to steal what was left of her miserable life…” Aware of another voice added to his own, Travis stopped.

Behind his desk, in unison with the famous author, Mac had been reading from a stack of typewritten pages. “What’s wrong, Travis? Why did you stop reading?”

Travis closed the hardback. “What do you have there?”

“Do you mean this? Oh, it’s just something the dog dragged in.” Mac restacked the papers. “Funny thing about this manuscript. Word for word it’s the same as
A Death in Manhattan
, except for the title page. This story is entitled
Murder in the City
and the author listed below it is Betsy Weaver.”

Sophia sneered. “Betsy was a no-talent writer wannabe.”

Mac held up the brown envelope. “We found this manuscript in this envelope, which had been postmarked and sealed ten years ago. Travis met Betsy seven years ago.”

“According to the math, Travis,” David said, “Betsy wrote your blockbuster three years before you met her.”

“Travis?” Sophia clutched her throat.

“It’s a scam,” he told her. “They’re jealous and trying to discredit me.” He pointed at the envelope. “They found this while searching Betsy’s place. Then they changed the title page and printed up a copy of
A Death in Manhattan
from the file on her computer before deleting everything. Why? Envy. That’s why.”

Mac slowly nodded his head. “And that would probably fly in the media except for one fact.”

“Betsy registered her copyright with the Library of Congress years before she met Travis.” Archie handed a copy of a certificate to Sophia. “Betsy registered ten books with the Library of Congress, and they have copies of all of them on file.”

Sophia argued, “But is it the same book?”

“It’s easy enough to find out. All we have to do is compare what Betsy had submitted to the Library of Congress ten years ago to what Travis sent to Robin three years later,” Archie said. “The title sounded familiar to me, so I went through Robin’s archives and found the manuscript he had sent to her. This hardcopy manuscript is exactly the same, word for word, right down to the title. Robin suggested Travis change it from
Murder in the City
to
A Death in Manhattan
. She also recommended having Naomi’s scoundrel love interest lose everything in the end.”

“So Betsy wrote the book. Robin wrote the title and changed the ending. What did you write, Travis?” David asked.

Mac answered, “His name on the cover, contract, and royalty checks.”

The set of Travis’s jaw told them all that they were on target.

“At one point in my mother’s journal,” Mac said, “she noted all the parties, personal appearances, and traveling that you did. She actually asked at one point, ‘When does he write?’ The answer is never.” He stood up and leaned over the desk in Travis’s direction. “You were the world-famous author. Betsy was the writer.”

Breathless with disbelief, Yvonne said, “Katrina was right. You’re a phony.”

Sophia sprang from her seat. Without a look back, she left the manor.

“Everything’s falling apart, Travis,” David said.

Mac explained, “Years ago, when you started dating Betsy to get in with her boss, she fell in love with you. She trusted you enough to show her books to you and you saw how talented she was. So you sent one to Robin, who saw the work of a bestselling author. When opportunity knocked, you locked Betsy in the bell tower, and opened the door.”

“Why would she have ever agreed to let him take credit for her work, especially when her books were winning awards?” Yvonne asked Travis, “Did you at least share your fortune with her?”

Archie said, “Betsy told her old boss in Hollywood that they were engaged.”

“We found birth control pills in her cottage,” David said. “You were sleeping with Betsy to make her think you loved her.”

Yvonne declared, “You’re nothing more than a common gigolo.”

“Do you think I enjoyed having to whisper sweet things into that cow’s ear to make her write for me?” Travis glared at her.

“You’re more than a gold digger, Travis,” David said. “You’re a murderer.”

Reigniting his cigar, Mac leaned against the corner of the desk. “Betsy had very low self-esteem. I can only imagine how Travis sold this crazy charade to her. She was ugly and he was gorgeous. The public loves beautiful people. No one would want to buy her books if they saw what she really looked like. But if the public thought her books were written by a hunk, then together they would go to the top.”

“And Betsy bought it.” Archie shook her head. “You must have done a real number on her.”

Chuckling, Mac said, “But then, two things happened. Niles Holt was murdered in Betsy’s back yard and she decided to write a murder mystery about the case. She started interviewing Roy Phillips and others in the community. Last summer, when Katrina had returned with her second husband, Betsy invited her to her cottage so that she could interview her. Seeing how hard Betsy worked on Travis’s books, and how little time and effort he put into them—”

“And knowing how he got through school making girls in love with him do his homework,” Yvonne interjected.

“—Katrina figured out his secret,” Mac said. “At the same time, Betsy, being the real murder mystery writer, began to suspect Katrina of killing her husband, just like my mother did, and told Travis about her suspicions.”

David picked up the story. “Now we have two people, each holding something over the other’s head. Katrina wanted Travis to use his influence to get the zoning changed on her investment property. Meanwhile, Travis wanted Katrina to…What?”

Yvonne asked, “What?”

David cocked his head at Travis. “Are you going to tell them what you were paying Katrina back for or should I?”

Travis laughed. “This is where you are all off base. Yes, Betsy wrote my books. I paid her very well for it.”

“With sex,” Archie noted.

“They were great books and she was very satisfied with me,” Travis said with a wicked grin. “But I didn’t kill anyone. I was with a lady friend when Betsy went off the deep end and took all those pills.”

David told him, “Your lady friend crumbled like a house of cards when I threatened to arrest her for accessory to murder. She admitted that you asked her to lie. You didn’t get to her place until twelve thirty and left before dawn.”