Open Season for Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery Book 10) (6 page)

The Next Morning

The delicious scent of a hot breakfast casserole in the oven greeted Mac when he and Gnarly returned from their run.

Every morning, without fail, by the sixth bong of the grandfather clock in the front foyer, Gnarly pounced on Mac to let him outside. While Mac was able to go back to sleep after letting the dog out, an hour later, Gnarly’s barking outside his window roused him to demand re-entrance, at which point Gnarly would order breakfast.

By then, Mac would give up on going back to sleep.

Such had been Mac Faraday’s life of leisure.

After his last physical revealed that he had gained twenty pounds since his windfall, Mac decided to use the early morning wake-up to add more athletics and get in some cardio before breakfast. A run served two purposes. One, it was exercise for Mac. Two, it served to tire the high energy German shepherd. By the time they arrived back at the manor, Gnarly would be ready to sack out right after gulping down his breakfast.

The absence of David’s police cruiser in his space in the garage told Mac that he had spent the night at Chelsea’s lakeside condo, which was steadily becoming David’s regular routine. Lately, he had been spending more nights with Chelsea than in the guest cottage.

While pacing in front of the garage to cool off from his run, Mac studied the empty space in the garage.
After all these months of living here while sleeping there, wouldn’t it be more convenient for him to start moving some of his stuff over to her place.
With a grin, Mac recalled how Archie had slyly started moving into the master suite one article of clothing at a time until circumstances forced her to make the big move all at once.

“David’s coming for breakfast?” Mac asked Archie after accepting her offer of a mug of hot coffee. “You don’t usually go to the trouble of making a whole casserole for just the two of us.”

“He’s bringing Chelsea over before taking her to work.” Her smile, broader than usual, indicated that she was definitely keeping a secret—a big one.

His eyebrow arched. “Do they have an announcement to make?”

Bouncing up and down, Archie uttered a squeal and clapped her hands.

“That’s what you meant when you told him that we were rooting for him when he was leaving yesterday.” Mac tapped the tip of her nose. “Why’d he tell you and not me?”

“Because he asked me to help him pick out a ring,” Archie said. “I sent him to your daughter. She’s really into that stuff, plus, I know she has a guy who designs custom jewelry.” She grasped Mac by both arms. “Oh, it’s so beautiful. It’s a full carat diamond that Jessica got with a really nice discount and the band is white gold. Chelsea has to love it.”

“She said yes?” Mac asked.

With a bark, Gnarly charged for the foyer.

Archie was close behind the dog. “Act surprised!” she ordered Mac.

“Why should I act surprised?” Mac fell in behind them at a more dignified pace. “You’re not acting surprised.”

Archie threw open the door and flew out onto the front porch. David had pulled his cruiser up to the bottom of the steps. Usually, Chelsea would wait for David to open the door for her, but not this morning. As soon as the two women saw each other, Chelsea threw open the door and jumped out of the cruiser. Waving her left hand, she ran up to Archie who grasped it to admire the new addition to her ring finger. All the time, they were uttering excited squeals and sobs of joy.

“How did he ask you?” Archie asked Chelsea, who responded with a tear-filled, unintelligible response.

Archie replied with a shriek and a hug before escorting her past Mac and inside the house to get all the details.

“I guess you did get lucky last night.” Chuckling, Mac strolled down the steps to where David was letting Molly out of the back of the cruiser. The two dogs went racing side by side around the house and out to the rolling garden leading down to the boulder lined shore.

“Congratulations.” Mac clasped his hand. “You’re a lucky man.”

“Don’t I know it,” David replied. “I’ve been granted a second chance with Chelsea and this time I’m not going to screw up.”

Mac said. “Hopefully, you’ve come a long way since you two were in high school.”

“I’d like to think so,” David said. “Is your offer to buy my house still good?”

“Sure. I’ll call my lawyer today to get started on the paperwork.” Mac clasped David’s hand. The handshake turned into a hug. “Have you set a date?”

They strolled up the walk to the steps leading up to the front porch. “Sometime in mid-September, after the end of the season and my next reserve tour. Only it’s not going to be like your and Archie’s wedding.”

“Why wouldn’t you want murder and mayhem at your wedding?”

“It sets the wrong tone.”

Chapter Six

During breakfast, Archie volunteered to drive Chelsea to Ben Flemings’ office, which allowed the two women more time to plan the wedding. This also let Mac and David scope out the scene of Ashton Piedmont’s disappearance sooner.

By the time they had finished eating breakfast, it was decided that Molly and Gnarly would play the role of flower dog and ring bearer. While Mac was certain that Molly, whom he called “The Stepford Dog” in reference to the movie
The Stepford Wives
, would do well in her role, he was not so certain about Gnarly. It was not beyond the realm of possibilities that Gnarly would outright rebel at the notion of marching with decorum down the aisle. Somehow, Mac envisioned the roof caving in on the “devil dog.”

The cove where Ashton Piedmont had disappeared was less than fifteen minutes from Spencer Point.

“Where does this Carlisle Green, the woman who Ashton was last seen with, fit into all this?” Mac asked while referring to the notes he had made from Ashton Piedmont’s case file. “She wasn’t at the Diablo Ball. Or rather, she wasn’t in the group that got banned.”

“The Greens go almost as far back in Spencer history as the Spencers and O’Callaghans,” David said. “They’re snowbirds from Arizona. I gave Carlisle swimming lessons when I was lifeguarding at the Spencer Inn back when she was a little girl.”

Knowing the term, Mac nodded his head. Snowbirds was the term used to describe seasonal residents. Like birds, they wintered down south, where it was warm, and then migrated back north for the summer months.

“Carlisle’s grandfather never went to college,” David said. “But Ellery was brilliant. Took what little money he had and made a fortune in the stock market. The Greens are billionaires. His son and daughter-in-law enjoyed the good life. Carlisle got tossed out of the best boarding schools in the world.”

“Tossed out?” Mac asked.

“Her parents finally decided they had had enough of her and shipped her off to Grandpa Green,” David said. “She was sixteen when they were killed in a hotel fire in Europe. Her grandfather was so broken-hearted, he died of heart failure nine months later. Carlisle Green was seventeen years old when she became a billionaire … and an emancipated minor.”

“I can imagine what would have happened to my daughter, Jessica, if she came into that much money at such a young age and had no adult supervision,” Mac said. “My son has always had a good head on his shoulders. He’d have been able to handle it … but Jessica, back when she was that age …” He cringed at the thought.

David was shaking his head. “I think that’s why she and Ashton connected. They both lost their parents and they were close to their grandfathers who they lost. Ellery Green and Ross Piedmont were both brilliant, down to earth men. Practically every morning, they’d be out on the lake fishing during the summer.”

“Then it would be natural for Ashton and Carlisle Green to become friends.”

“They lived next door to each other during the summer,” David said. “Carlisle was about three years younger than Ashton. But, emotionally, she was years older.”

“Why wasn’t she at the ball the night of the incident?” Mac asked.

“Most likely, she turned down the invitation,” David said. “The Diablo Ball was definitely not her bag. It was too tame for her tastes.”

The Piedmont estate had remained empty for five years. Even though the family lawyer had the grounds kept up in order to not let the property become overgrown, the mansion was eerily still and quiet.

Slowing down so that Mac could scope out the home of the subject of their cold case, David eased the cruiser past it on the way to the mansion around the bend in the lake shore road. Between the Piedmont and Green estate, there was a grove of trees and a stream that flowed into the lake.

“Carlisle Green makes Lindsey York look like a nun,” David told Mac out of the side of his mouth. “Every summer she’d come out here and raise Cain. Her neighbors would call the police almost every night because she’d have the music blasting and she and her friends would be skinny dipping off the dock.”

David turned the wheel to ease the cruiser between two stone pillars. They noticed piles of chopped brush, and a wheelbarrow next to the sidewalk that wrapped around to the lake side of the luxurious two-story stone house.

“I’ve always loved this house.” David shot Mac a wide grin.

When the cruiser rounded the curve of the heavily wooded drive, Mac could see why. The Green home was not your average mansion. One would expect a billionaire to have a massive mansion, or at least the biggest house on Deep Creek Lake. Such was not so with Ellery Green’s home.

While the lake house was large, it was not massive. From the exterior, Mac estimated it to be the same square footage as Spencer Manor. It was a guess, which was rough, considering that the two-story stone house was round with windows on every wall from floor to ceiling. Like Spencer Manor, it had decking all around from the front to the back. The sloping roof contained close to a dozen sky-lights.

Off to one side of the drive was a four-car garage with what appeared to be an apartment on the second floor.

“Very interesting,” Mac said.

“Wait until you see the inside,” David said.

“Is this Carlisle Green, witness-slash-suspect, still around?” Mac asked.

“I don’t know what happened to her,” David answered. “I know she hasn’t been to Spencer since Ashton disappeared. Probably hiding out in a country that doesn’t have extradition.” He brought the cruiser to a stop and turned off the engine.

They heard a chainsaw running when they climbed out of the cruiser. “Must be the yard man keeping the place cleaned up,” David said in reference to the sounds of outdoor work.

As soon as Mac opened the rear door, Gnarly leapt out and galloped around to the back of the house.

“Could Carlisle have killed Ashton?” Mac fell in behind David to follow him up onto the walkway leading to the dock and lake where Ashton had last been seen.

“Witnesses said they were having a cat fight.”

“Over what?”

The sound of the chain saw grew louder. Determining that the sound was from overhead, they shaded their eyes with their hands to look up into the trees lining the walkway.

“No one knows and Carlisle claimed she couldn’t remember,” David said.

The chainsaw cut off. “Look out below!” a woman yelled from up in the branches.

Leaves and twigs rained down on them. A thick branch crashed inches from Mac, who grabbed David by the arm and yanked him back toward the house. The heavy branch barely missed them.

“Are you okay, Chief O’Callaghan?” the woman’s voice called down to them. Camouflaged by the leaves and branches, they couldn’t see her.

“Yes!” David continued to peer up the tree to find the culprit with the chainsaw who almost crushed them. They were finally able to make out a pair of bare legs with the feet encased in heavy work boots making their way downward.

“I’m so sorry.” Focusing on the branches she clung to while descending to the ground with the agility of a monkey, she kept her back to them. “Lucky thing your dog came running by. I didn’t hear your car. I had no idea anyone was here. Unfortunately, I had pretty well cut through the branch and couldn’t stop.”

When she broke through the bottom branches to come fully into view, Mac saw that she was a young woman, most likely in her early-to-mid-twenties. She wore her dark hair short in a boy’s cut. There was not a hint of makeup on her naturally pretty face. Clad in shorts, with a heavy tool belt, and a tank top, she had a sleek, muscular build that came from hard manual labor—not the gym.

“Please accept my apologies.” She offered them her hand.

While David’s mouth hung open, Mac shook her hand. “Apology accepted. No harm done. I’m Mac Faraday, by the way. And you are …”

“Carlisle Green.” She cocked her head at David. “It’s nice to see you again, David. I see you’re chief of police now. I’m glad. You deserve it. I’m sure you’ll be able to find out what happened to Ashton—better than that other jerk who was running the police department before.”

David blinked.

Seeing that he still could not find his voice, Carlisle turned her attention back to Mac. “I assume you’re here because you’ve reopened Ashton’s case.”

“Yes,” Mac said.

The corner of her lip curled up. “I expected you yesterday.”

“Why yesterday?” Mac asked.

“That’s when I left the note for you at the Spencer Inn.”

“That was you?” Mac asked. “Are you behind the phony invitations, too?”

“No,” she said. “I believe that’s Jasmine and Rock Sinclair’s little trick.”

David finally blurted out. “What happened to you?”

Carlisle grinned at him. “I died. And then I was reborn.” With a wave of her hand, she guided them toward the dock. “Five years ago, I was a pathetic excuse for a human being. I had to be right here when my best friend died and I couldn’t help find out what had happened to her because I was too messed up. I admit it. I did have a little bit further to sink before my survival instinct kicked in and I voluntarily spent a year locked up in a rehab center rebuilding myself from the ground up.”

They came to the end of the dock. Wistfully, Carlisle gazed out across the water while she recalled, “There, I came to realize that I hated who I was. I hated what my life represented. I was so pathetic that if I’d died, all anyone could say about me was that I took up space and air without giving anything back. So—” She turned to them. “I died. If you don’t like who you are, then kill yourself and come back as another person. So that’s what I did. I cut off everything and everyone from my old life. I read. I studied and I prayed to God for a clue about what I could offer back to the world. I’ve spent the last three years growing up into who I am today.”

A crooked grin worked its way to her lips when she turned her attention to David. “I’m sorry for the way I treated you before, Chief O’Callaghan.”

“Forget it.”

“I’d rather not,” she said. “It was the height of disrespect—”

“
Forget
it.”

Curiosity getting the best of him, Mac asked, “What?”

“Nothing,” David said in a firm tone that demanded the subject be dropped. “Can we move on?”

“Where’s Gnarly?” Mac suddenly remembered the German shepherd who she had seen running under the tree. They hadn’t seen him since he leapt out of the cruiser.

Carlisle pointed. “He took off down the path that leads over to Ashton’s house.”

“Gnarly!” Mac called in the direction of the mansion next door. There was a bark from in the woods between the two houses. Mac went up the dock to corral his dog.

When he turned back to Carlisle, David spotted the dock to the property on the other side of the Green estate. “Have you seen the Landers since coming back to Deep Creek?”

“No,” Carlisle said with a frown. “I guess I’m too ashamed.”

“How long have you been back?”

“Only a couple of days,” she said. “Today is the first that I haven’t been dealing with jet lag.”

“Where did you fly in from?”

“South Africa,” she replied. “I’ve been working in partnership with a charitable organization that builds wells for villages so that they can have clean water. I’ve been living there. This is the first time I’ve been back in the States for years.”

Noting her firm body, with chiseled muscular definition, David guessed the help she offered in building the wells was hands on. He recalled that five years earlier, Carlisle was built like a rail; exceedingly slender to the point of borderline malnourished.

“Have you talked to Parker Lander lately?” Carlisle’s voice startled David out of his admiration of her transformation.

“We only just reopened the case,” David said. “I will be talking to him again.”

“Maybe he’ll know what Ashton and I were fighting about,” she murmured. “But …”

“But what?” David asked. “Have you remembered something?”

“I remember hearing a woman’s voice,” Carlisle said. “Ashton and
another
woman fighting. But Parker never mentioned another woman being here.” She shrugged. “I guess she could have been me. If Parker had heard Ashton fighting with this other woman and she left before he got here to break it up, he could have
thought
it was me.”

“Would you recognize the voice?”

“No,” Carlisle said with sadness. “It was a deep voice. Husky. Like a man’s, but definitely a woman’s.”

“Gnarly, where have you been?” Mac yelled when Gnarly came racing out from the woods and across the backyard toward his master. The German shepherd was covered in mud and dirt. “What have you gotten into?”

Carlisle laughed to see the dog playfully bounding toward his master with what appeared to be a tree branch clamped in his jaws. “If he wanted a stick to play with, I have plenty that I’ve been stacking up.”

Gnarly ended his run by jumping up to tag Mac in the chest and leaving muddy paw prints all over the front of his shirt.

“You’re going to have to clean him up before he can get back into my cruiser,” David warned.

“What do you have there?” Up close, Mac saw that the object was not made of wood. From a distance, its dark color gave it the appearance of a stick. Mac realized that it was, in fact, covered with dirt and discolored after having been buried for years. Wresting it out of Gnarly’s mouth, Mac wiped it off.

“David!” Mac turned around to hold up Gnarly’s find for the police chief to see.

David trotted up the dock to get a closer look. Carlisle was directly behind him. “What is it?” he asked Mac.

“I think it’s a femur.” Before Mac could turn to ask Gnarly, the dog was racing back into the woods. “Follow that dog!”

The three of them chased Gnarly down the path, where halfway to Ashton’s home, he darted off the path and up an incline. Over the hill, Gnarly zigzagged through a grove of trees until he came to a small clearing where they found that he had begun digging through rotted leaves and twigs, and a tarp that had been recently torn by a determined German shepherd.

David reached the grave first. Gnarly had dug away enough to expose the leg and pelvis. “It’s a body all right.” He grabbed his radio to put in the call.