The Murders at Astaire Castle (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (18 page)

“
I
can do that,” Mac said.

Bogie smiled. “That will solve all of our problems. Thank you, Mac.”

“But—” Karin stopped before continuing. “I need to get a job.”

“We need to find out who killed your boss,” Mac said. “All we need is a few more days.”

“And if you aren’t any closer after I spend a few days hanging out by your indoor pool …”

“You can go home with memories of a great vacation,” Mac said.

She gathered up her purse and closed up her coat. She regarded Mac with what appeared to be suspicion. “I can order anything I want off the menu?”

“Anything you want. Everything will be on the house.”

“Can I check in today?”

“Your suite will be ready by the time you get up to the inn,” Mac assured her.

If anything, she peered at him with even more suspicion. Her eyes narrowed to a glare.

“We do have some more questions about Lacey,” Mac asked.

“I do want to help,” she said.

“While working for her, did she ever mention or did you ever run across someone by the name of Taylor Jones?”

“No,” she replied without hesitation.

“Are you sure of that?” Mac peered closely at her.

“Now that you mention it,” she said slowly while tapping her lip with her forefinger, “There was a message that I took the day Lacey left to come here. It was a woman, and she was mad as hell when I told her that Lacey wasn’t there. She cussed up a storm and said to tell Lacey that Taylor had called and that she was going to kill the little bitch.”

“What was she mad about?” Mac asked.

“I have no idea,” she said. “But I remember she gave me the name of Taylor Jones.”

“How did Lacey react when you gave her the message?” Mac asked.

“Never gave it to her,” Karin said. “She was dead before I could deliver it. Guess Taylor Jones wasn’t kidding.”

Bogie paused in where he was taking down the information. “Did you get a phone number?”

“No, she didn’t leave one.” She sighed heavily. “I’d really like to go home. I don’t feel safe here. Wasn’t your police chief shot yesterday?”

“Yes, he was,” Archie said. “But Bogie is the deputy chief and they have the best security up at the Spencer Inn.”

“Isn’t that the Inn where a man was poisoned yesterday?” she asked.

“That wasn’t the fault of the Inn,” Mac said. “If you can help us catch this killer …”

“How is your police chief, by the way?” she asked.

“He’s going to be fine,” Archie said. “We expect that he’ll be able to come home tomorrow.”

“Then I guess this killer isn’t completely infallible,” Karin said before turning her attention back to Mac. “Do they have a salon where I can get a massage at the Spencer Inn?”

“You can get anything you want,” Mac said.

A smile crossed her face when Karin hurried out of the police station.

“Is that going to be a habit?” Bogie asked Mac. “You putting up witnesses for a vacation at the Spencer Inn?”

“I’m not as nice as you think,” Mac said. “Believe it or not, I have my own agenda. At the Inn, security can keep a close eye on her and report back to us. I believe in keeping suspects and witnesses close.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Are you sure you should even be up?” Chelsea held onto David’s arm to ensure he didn’t fall. “It was only yesterday that a bullet went through your gut.”

“The nurse ordered me to get up and walk.” His legs feeling shaky, David entwined his fingers through hers and clung tightly to her arm while they strolled down the corridor. “The sooner I get up and about, the faster I’ll heal.”

They formed quite a crowd in the hallway. Molly was on the other side of Chelsea and two uniformed police officers brought up the rear. Pushing an empty wheelchair, Zigler was ready for if his chief overdid it and needed a ride back to his room.

“As long as I have to walk the halls, I might as well go over to the psychiatric wing to visit Riley,” David told Chelsea. "Maybe he’s remembered something useful.”

“I tried to talk to him yesterday and he still didn’t recognize me,” she said.

“That was yesterday.” He stopped at the nurses’ station outside the doors that blocked off the psychiatric wing.

The nurse smiled at David while he signed the register. “Riley Adams? The expert from Boston is supposed to be here to see him tomorrow. He’s a little more lucid today. He’s not as violent either. But we still have him restrained. For your safety, don’t loosen the restraints.”

“See?” David said to Chelsea. “A lot can happen in one day. They’ve been adjusting his meds. Eventually, they have to hit on something that’ll work.” He let out a chuckle. “Look at me if you don’t believe what can happen in one day. Less than forty-eight hours ago, I was beating your butt in a foot race.”

The nurse gestured at the two uniformed officers. “Are they going in with you, Chief O’Callaghan?”

Leaning on top of the desk, David tried to pretend he wasn’t catching his breath. “No.” When both the nurse and Chelsea objected, he put out his arm to stop them. “I want to see him alone.”

“What?” Chelsea turned to the officers for them to make David change his mind.

“I want to see him by myself,” David said. “Man to man. Bud to bud. Maybe it’ll be less stressful.”

“If he remembers you.”

“I was his best friend.” David tightened the belt to his bathrobe. “Or maybe he’ll think I’m another patient. The last couple of times we tried to see him, I was in my uniform. That could have stressed him out and made him see me as a threat.” He shrugged. “Let me try this. I know what’s going to happen to him at the psychiatric hospital. He’ll be so pumped up on meds that we’ll never be able to find out what happened to Damian Wagner. We’ll be lucky if he’ll ever be able to remember us. He’ll be totally gone and right now, he’s the only possible witness we have left. If I can get through to him, he might be able to answer the question of why I got shot and Raymond Hollister was killed.”

Tears came to her eyes. “When you put it that way, I almost wish he’d been left out in the wild living like an animal. He was probably happier there.” She let out a laugh. “Riley always fantasized about being a werewolf.”

“Wolf man,” he corrected her with a brush of his finger across her cheek. “There’s a difference. I’m going in alone.”

Chelsea eyed the two officers.

“We’ve got your back, Chief,” Zigler said. “If you need anything, you holler.”

“I can take care of myself.” David stepped toward the door.

The nurse buzzed the lock to open the door for him to press on through.

With effort, David refused to let them see him lean against the wall, even though the sutures in his side were screaming in pain. At the door leading into Riley Adams’ room, he paused to clutch his side and take in a deep breath. Forcing a smile through the pain, he went in.

A day can make a big difference. In the two days since David had seen him, Riley had his face shaved and his white hair cut up to the bottom of his neck. While it was still long and wavy, it was clean.

The wolf man resembled the man who had been his friend—except for the ties that bound his arms and feet to the bed. He was grotesquely thin. David had noticed it before. Now, as Riley lay in the bed with his arms exposed out of the sleeves of his hospital gown, David was able to see the outline of his bones.

David swallowed the sob of sympathy for how his friend had ended up this way.

Riley turned his head and looked at him. The blank look dissolved as recognition came to his eyes. “David.” He cocked his head to the side. His eyes grew wide with bewilderment. “Have they locked you up, too?”

Realizing how it appeared with him standing there in his bathrobe, David grasped the front of his robe and nodded his head. “Yeah, but only for a couple of days, though. I heard you were here and thought I’d stop by to say hey.” He hugged Riley. On an impulse, he kissed his neck. He lowered himself into the chair next to the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Weird,” he said in a slow voice. “There are so many things going through my head and I can’t make sense of any of them.”

“What kind of things?”

“Lots of things.” Riley lifted his head and looked at him. “You look older. You must have partied too hardy. You look like hell.”

It took a full moment for David to realize Riley was talking about the Halloween party from which he had disappeared. “Thanks a lot,” he said with sarcasm.

“Hey, that was some party, huh?”

“Yeah,” David said, “Some party. Where’d you go? You weren’t there when it broke up.”

“I went to answer the call of the wild,” he said in a whisper.

“From who? Who was calling you, Riley? Who did you go with?”

“Nigel,” Riley whispered.

“Nigel who?” David asked.

“The white wolf,” Riley said.

“Do you mean the German shepherd that disappeared when Hindman killed his wife and her tennis pro?”

“His spirit lives in me now. They think I’m crazy, but it’s true. You believe me, don’t you, David?”

“Sure,” he lied. “Where did Nigel take you after you left the party? Have you been living in the castle all these years? What have you been doing?”

“Protecting our territory—the mountain.”

“The mountain?” David repeated with a cock of his head.

“It’s our job.” Riley shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head at the same time. “That’s the job of the alpha male, to protect and care for every living thing in his territory—which is Spencer Mountain. Nature only gives that responsibility to the strongest and most dedicated to keeping the balance of nature. When something comes in to disrupt the balance, it is our job to do what has to be done to get rid of it, to protect the others in our territory.”

“Seriously?” David tried to comprehend what Riley was saying. “What?” He decided to try a less complicated question. “Were you there when a man, he was a writer—”

“Damian Wagner.” Riley almost jumped out of his bed. “He understood Nigel’s and my relationship. He didn’t think I was crazy.”

“You spoke to him?” David fought to keep from jumping out of his chair.

“All the time,” Riley said. “He gave me food and wanted to hear all about our story and our legacy—that of wolf and man coming together as one to keep the natural order. He wrote it all down in his book. He dedicated it to me and Nigel.”

Unable to form one question when he had so many, David asked, “What?” It came out as a squawk.

“He said it was important to tell our side of the story and give it an ending—or rather a beginning. His book tells the story of how Santos came to be—almost like a prequel—but it is also the ending because that was to be his last book. It’s our story—Nigel and mine.”

“Damian Wagner told you all that?”

Riley was nodding his head.

“Seriously?”

“Don’t you believe me, David?”

David could only gaze back at him.

Riley looked hurt. “I thought out of everyone that you would believe me, David.”

“I do,” David said. “What about the other people staying with Wagner in the castle?”

“They wouldn’t understand,” Riley said. “Besides, they were evil. I don’t go near evil, unless it is necessary to protect my territory. I tried to once but—” He grasped his hip.

David lifted Riley’s hand and moved the blanket aside.

“Evil. I can smell it.” Riley sniffed deeply while David examined his hip. “I can smell it now. It’s here.”

David found a long ugly scar in a straight line. It was a healed over stab wound. “What happened to Damian Wagner, Riley?”

After covering the wound again with the blanket, David realized his eyes had changed. They were no longer calm. As Riley spoke, they widened gradually to take on a wild look. “Canines have a sixth sense. She’s evil, David. I never did trust her. I could smell the evil in her. I told Damian that. He didn’t believe me until it was too late.” He cocked his head all the way to the side, so that his head was almost sideways. “Why does no one believe me, David?”

“Not everyone is very open-minded, Riley.”

“I was right,” Riley said. “Damian found out that they had betrayed them. So he made sure they didn’t get our book. He was going to leave and he said he was going to take me with him because I was his only friend, but she killed him. She killed them all.” Tears came to Riley’s eyes. “If I was stronger, if I was a better alpha, I would have killed her when I had the chance.”

“That would have been murder, Riley,” David said. “The right thing would have been to call the police—”

“It wouldn’t have been murder,” Riley said. “It isn’t murder in nature. She’s an animal—evil, pure and simple. When the leader of the pack kills an evil animal that’s threatening the natural order—it’s justice. In nature, justice is swifter and not as complicated as man makes it.”

“Who is she, Riley?”

“The shape shifter.” He drew in a deep breath. “Can’t you smell her?”

“Shape shifter?” David had to hold his breath to keep from telling Riley to pick one horror or paranormal entity and stick to it. “Shape shifter? Are you serious?”

“She killed them all and then transformed into another shape and left.” His eyes were wide and red-rimmed. He grasped David’s arm tightly. His lips curled up into a snarl. “She’s come back.”

“Anyone here looking for a private eye?” Tonya called downstairs to the file room where Mac and Bogie were going over the case files for Damian Wagner’s murder. “There’s a Danny Foster on the phone. Says he’s got information about Raymond Hollister’s murder.”

“He was on the phone with Hollister for a long time the night before he was killed.” Bogie tapped Mac on the arm before hurrying up the stairs to his office.

“Foster used to work for the New York City police department until he retired and got his PI license. He’s been running background checks and finding missing people for the last fifteen years or so.” Bogie hit the speaker button on the phone. “Hey, Foster, this is Deputy Chief Bogart and I’ve got Mac Faraday, our homicide detective, here now.”

“Hello, Mr. Foster,” Mac said into the speaker. “Thank you for calling us back.”

“Anything I can do,” the deep low tone replied. “Your message told me that Raymond Hollister was killed yesterday. I’m sorry to hear that. I would have called sooner but I was on surveillance for another case.”

“Hollister was a suspect in the murder of Damian Wagner,” Mac said. “Back when Wagner’s daughter and editor were killed in 2002, Hollister was a person of interest. Since Wagner’s body has been found, the case is hot again. Hollister immediately came running back to Deep Creek Lake, even though he was still a person of interest. His girlfriend told us that he thought he had a lead on locating Wagner’s last book, and he was looking for a Taylor Jones. Is that why he called you? To locate Ms. Jones?”

“Damian Wagner’s last book was always foremost on his mind,” Foster said. “He about had a stroke when Wagner disappeared, and no one knew where the book was, or if Wagner had even finished it. He was hoping ideally that you had found the book, because it was legally his with Wagner dead and no heirs, or at the very least that you had found a clue to its whereabouts.”

“But we didn’t find it,” Bogie said.

“Yeah, Hollister told me that,” Foster said. “But he did find someone who he thought might know where it is.”

“Taylor Jones,” Mac said.

“That’s who he wanted me to find,” Foster said. “He was desperate to find her.”

“Who is Taylor Jones?” Mac asked while Bogie dug through the files in the case boxes.

“A ghost,” Foster said. “Let me explain. This wasn’t the first job I did for Hollister having to do with Damian Wagner. Back in 2001, he hired me to find Damian Wagner’s daughter.”

“He told us that,” Mac recalled Raymond Hollister claiming he had found Genevieve for the author.

“Wagner had really bad writer’s block ever since he got out of rehab,” Foster said. “So it was either start using and drinking again, or find a way to break through. Hollister thought that if Wagner’s daughter, who was now in her early twenties, came back to him that he’d break through and start writing again. So, Hollister hired me to find her.”

“And you did,” Bogie said.

“No, I didn’t.”

Bogie and Mac looked at each other. Mac broke the silence. “Excuse me.”

“Damian Wagner’s daughter was killed in a ferry accident in 1998,” Jenkins said. “That’s what I reported to Raymond Hollister. He paid me a lot of money to keep my mouth shut. So I did.”

“Why didn’t you come forward when it hit the news that Damian Wagner’s daughter was killed Halloween night in 2002?” Bogie asked.

“I thought that maybe she was adopted or …” Foster said, “it wasn’t my job.”

“Now help us to do our job,” Mac said. “Tell us everything you know about this case.”

“The other night, Hollister confessed to hiring an actress to pretend to be Wagner’s daughter in order to inspire him to write,” Foster said. “I tell you, I knew nothing about that at the time Wagner was killed. If I had, I would have come forward. I swear. This actress Hollister had hired—her name was Taylor Jones.”

“That’s why the DNA showed that the female was no relation to Wagner,” Mac whispered to Bogie. “She was a phony.”

“Hollister swears it worked,” Foster said. “Wagner was working on the book and didn’t suspect a thing. Then suddenly, everyone’s dead and a bunch of money from Wagner’s bank account went missing. Hollister thought at the time that Wagner had drained the account and took off after flipping out and killing the phony daughter and the editor, who must have witnessed the murder. But when Wagner’s body was found and it turned out he’d been murdered—Hollister went to Deep Creek Lake to find out what had happened and see if the book was found along with his body. He struck out. But he must have gotten some lead in Deep Creek Lake, because when he called me—it was to find this actress that was playing Genevieve.”