Old Loves Die Hard (A Mac Faraday Mystery)

  Old Loves Die Hard

  A Mac Faraday Mystery

  By

  Lauren Carr

  Old Loves Die Hard

  By Lauren Carr

  All Rights Reserved © 2011 by Lauren Carr

  Kindle Edition

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author.

  For information call: 304-285-8205

  or Email: writerlaurencarr@comcast.net

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  Printed in the United States of America

  To my son Tristan,

  You are the center of my universe.

  Prologue

  Georgetown, District of Columbia—Three Years Ago

  Does heavy rain affect the murder rate the same way a full moon does?

  Squinting through the rain flowing down his windshield like a waterfall, Lieutenant Mac Faraday pondered this question while easing his sedan around the emergency vehicles surrounding an SUV in the downtown parking lot.

  Mac hoped the patrolman in the yellow rain parka flagging him down wouldn’t comment on his car’s grinding brakes. Payday was Friday. Then, he could replace the brake pads. With his luck, the pads would wear down to the rotors first.

  “What’ve we got?” Mac blinked against the raindrops splashing onto his face and into his blue eyes while calling out the window.

  “Looks like a robbery gone bad, Lieutenant,” the officer reported. “One shot behind the ear through the driver’s side window. Wallet and watch are missing.”

  “M.E. here yet?”

  “Not yet,” the officer said. “Everyone is taking their sweet time hoping the rain will stop.”

  “Either that or they know something we don’t and are gathering the animals.”

  Before Mac could wind up his window, the officer cleared his throat. “Uh, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes?”

  “You should get your brakes checked. They’re grinding.”

  “I’ll do that,” the detective replied. “Thanks for telling me.”

  After parking between two patrol cars, Mac climbed out of his car and pulled the collar of his raincoat tight around his neck a moment too late. His auburn hair clung to his scalp while cold heavy raindrops formed a watery path down the sides of his head and the back of his neck to send a shiver down his spine.

  The forensics team parted when Mac jogged up to where they were searching the inside of a dark blue SUV that looked black under the storm clouds. The only one who didn’t move out of his way was the lifeless body slumped over the center console. The shattered glass from the window resembled a sequined baby blanket where it covered his black trench coat.

  Except for the stream of blood that flowed from the hole behind his left ear, Mac guessed that in life, he had been a good-looking fellow. His black hair had been neatly trimmed. Judging from his buffed fingernails, he had been meticulous about his grooming.

  The parking lot belonged to a six-story red brick office building. In a previous life, it had been an eighty-year-old tenement. After forcing the neighborhood unfortunates out, a group of entrepreneurs renovated the building to house judges and lawyers in posh office suites.

  Mac asked, “Anybody know who he is?”

  “Dylan Booth.” From behind his back, Mac heard one of the uniformed officers who had been the first on the scene answer. “He worked for Judge Randolph Daniels on the top floor. He was an intern.”

  “He was going to graduate from law school this spring,” another voice came from behind the officer. Drenched to the bones by the storm, a gray-haired man with a worn wrinkled face stepped up to the detective. He wore a light jacket over his security guard’s uniform.

  Searching for reasons someone would want to kill the law student, Mac asked, “Would I be correct in assuming he wasn’t working on any criminal cases?”

  “Nah,” the guard responded. “He did mostly research and stuff for Judge Daniels, and he worked hard.” Noting that it was Saturday, he went on, “He came in bright and early this morning. Left about two o’clock. He signed out at one-fifty-eight. He said he was going to finish up at home.”

  From where he stood, the guard glanced into the back of the vehicle. “Did you all find a box?”

  “Box?” Mac glanced over his shoulder at the forensics officers to see that they were also puzzled by the question.

  “A document box.” The guard held out his hands a couple of feet apart. “You know. The kind you carry file folders in. When he left he was carrying one. I could tell by the way he was carrying it that it was heavy. He must have had it full.”

  The uniformed officers and forensics team responded in unison with shakes of their heads to the inquiry about the box.

  “Do you have any idea what he had in it?” Mac asked.

  It was the guard’s turn to shake his head. “I assumed case files, being that he worked for the judge and all. What about his computer case?”

  “No laptop or case,” an officer within hearing distance reported.

  Mac summarized, “Looks like we have a missing laptop, watch, wallet, and mystery box. Very interesting.”

  He turned to the officers inside the SUV. “Did the killer leave anything behind?”

  “He missed his cell phone.” Like a prize, a young officer held up the phone encased in a plastic bag.

  Mac examined the instrument, which contained so many features that he had trouble determining which button to push in order to find the call log. Seeing his problem, one of the forensics officers took it and pressed a couple of the buttons until he found the log.

  “What’s the last call he made?” asked Mac.

  The officer read off the number. “He made the call this afternoon at one-fifty-two. Didn’t the guard say he signed out at one-fifty-eight?”

  Mac noted, “Then he made this last call right before he left.”

  “And he was shot shortly after two.”

  While the number was being read off, Mac had dialed it into his cell phone. “Let’s see who the last person he spoke to happens to be.”

  He pressed the phone to his ear. After four rings, a voice mail system picked up: “You have reached the office of Assistant U. S. Attorney Stephen Maguire…”

  Chapter One

  Spencer Manor, Spencer, Maryland—Present Day

  “Are you ready for a break?” Mac Faraday heard Archie call out before she came into view. The multi-colored leaves of the trees off Spencer Manor’s deck concealed her approach.

  A half-dozen lake houses growing in size and grandeur rested along Spencer Court, which ran the length of Spencer Point. The court ended at the stone pillars marking the entrance to Mac Faraday’s multi-million dollar estate on Deep Creek Lake.

  Six months earlier, Mac had inherited the stone and cedar home from Robin Spencer. The world-famous mystery writer’s sudden death from a brain aneurism had revealed the secret that forty-seven years earlier, as a teenager, she had given birth to a baby who had been put up for adoption. Her baby boy grew up to become a homicide detective named Mac Faraday.

  Marking his place with his forefinger before closing the book he was reading, Mac welcomed the opportunity for a cocktail before dinner. When he saw Archie jog up the steps leading down to her cottage tucked in the corner of the rose garden, he realized that he had been
waiting for her all afternoon.

  Archie Monday was in faded jeans and a rose-colored cashmere sweater that fit her slender figure like a glove. With her short blond hair and bare feet with nails painted in rose-colored polish, she looked like a sensuous fairy dispatched to spread red, yellow, and gold pixie dust on the leaves surrounding the manor.

  Mac had felt like the luckiest man in the world when he had discovered that his inheritance included a beautiful woman living in the stone cottage at the end of his back deck.

  Archie had been Robin Spencer’s editor, researcher, and personal assistant for over ten years. When the author passed away, she had left Archie the guest cottage to live in for as long as she wanted. The cottage and a generous allowance from a trust fund afforded Archie the freedom to take on freelance editorial assignments at her choosing. With a decade of being the right-hand lady to one of the world’s most successful novelists on her resume, she had her pick of only the juiciest assignments.

  This week, she was editing and proofing the last installment of a popular thriller trilogy. The second book in the series, which had been released the month before, ended in a cliffhanger. Now the public was clamoring for the conclusion. With the author and her agent breathing down the editor’s neck to meet the publisher’s deadline, and hackers lurking on the Internet to find out who had the final manuscript in order to leak the ending, Archie had been locked up in her cottage, glued to her laptop, eighteen hours a day.

  “I need air and an exquisite glass of wine.” She dropped down into the chaise across from him.

  “I have just the thing for you.” Trying not to look like he had been waiting for her, Mac casually strolled inside to the kitchen where he had been chilling a bottle of wine that matched her order and had a serving tray with glasses and shrimp cocktails waiting. “Do you think you’re going to meet your deadline?”

  “I always meet my deadlines,” she called back. “That’s why everyone loves me.”

  Her face lit up when he came out carrying the tray loaded with everything she wanted for her break, only for her expression to change to horror when Gnarly, the hundred-pound German shepherd that was another part of Mac’s inheritance, tore around the corner of the house and raced for the open door.

  The dog cut so close to Mac’s legs while darting inside that it was only due to some fancy footwork that he kept from dropping everything onto the deck.

  “What was that all about?” Recalling that she had seen a large bone sticking out of Gnarly’s mouth, she asked, “Where did he get that bone?”

  Too preoccupied with not spilling the pinot grigio to notice anything other than a furry blur that almost clipped his legs, Mac set the tray on the table. “I’m afraid to find out.”

  “Where has he been all day?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “It’s impossible to contain that dog. He’s smart. He’s determined and innovative. I have actually seen him studying me to determine how best to get around me.” He pulled the cork out of the bottle and poured her a taste of the wine. “It’s downright creepy.”

  She went over to the door and looked for where Gnarly had gone inside. She saw him burying something under the cushion on the love seat in the living room. “Mac, we don’t want the neighbors to get mad at us again.”

  “I’m trying to keep him entertained. I walk him twice a day.” Offering a glass of the white wine, he went over to her.

  “Why did he look so guilty when he went running into the house to hide?”

  “If we’re lucky, we’ll never find out.” They clinked their glasses together in a toast just as Spencer’s chief of police, David O’Callaghan, turned the corner to come around from the front of the manor.

  After giving birth to her son, Mac’s teenaged mother had been sent off to college to end her relationship with Patrick O’Callaghan. By the time she had returned to Spencer, Mac’s birth father had married and had a son.

  David followed in his late father’s footsteps to become the chief of police. Mac had learned from his mother’s journal that over the years, Robin had come to love David like a son, to the point of providing a trust fund to care for his elderly mother, the woman who happened to marry the love of her life.

  “Well, if it isn’t Spencer’s finest,” Mac called out.

  Without a word, Archie fetched a third wine glass.

  David’s attention wasn’t on Mac and his greeting so much as it was on Gnarly, who was bellying out onto the deck to hide behind Mac’s legs. “There you are, you canine thief.”

  “What did he do?” Mac wanted to know.

  “I got a call from the market in town.”

  “What town?” The closet market Mac knew of was across the bridge in McHenry, which was over three miles away.

  “McHenry,” David answered. “Forty-five minutes ago, someone walked into the market, went to the pet department, selected a large rawhide bone valued at eight dollars, and walked out the front door without paying for it.”

  Aware of the wet snout pressed against his ankle, Mac pointed out, “McHenry isn’t your jurisdiction.”

  “But our perp lives in my jurisdiction,” David argued. “Three and a half feet tall. One hundred pounds. Black, brown, and bronze hair. Brown eyes, and of German descent. We have three eyewitnesses who swear they’ll be able to pick Gnarly out of a line-up.”

  Archie was doubtful. “He walked in, took a bone, and walked back out with it.”

  “How?” Mac asked.

  David answered, “Automatic doors.”

  Mac pointed out, “But the pet department is all the way in the back.”

  “Yeah. They said he actually nosed through the inventory to pick just the one he wanted.”

  “Why didn’t anyone stop him?”

  “By the time the manager and clerks got over their stunned disbelief, Gnarly was long gone.” David pointed his finger at the shepherd hiding his face against the back of Mac’s legs. “You need to do something about your klepto dog.”

  Before Mac could respond Gnarly jumped to his feet, went on point, and barked to signal the arrival of a visitor. As if on cue, the doorbell sounded.

  “We have visitors,” Archie said.

  “Probably the FBI to pick up Gnarly for robbing the Bank of America,” David said.

  Grateful for the interruption, Mac went inside. From the back deck, he had to cross the dining room, up three steps and across the living area to the front foyer. Months after his windfall, he still had to get used to the vastness of his inheritance. The granite floors, antiques passed down through generations, authentic paintings including a Monet, leather furniture, stone fireplaces in each room, they were all his.

  He was still in awe of the painting above the fireplace mantle of Mickey Forsythe, Robin Spencer’s chief detective. The image was that of a man, dressed in stylishly casual clothes, sitting in a wing-backed leather chair. Gray touched the temples of his auburn hair. His facial features included chiseled cheekbones and a strong jaw. His blue eyes seemed to jump out of the painting. Mickey’s German shepherd sat at attention by his side.

  Mac wasn’t the only one who had noticed the similarities between Robin Spencer’s fictional detective and her long-lost son. Like Mac, Mickey was a homicide detective when he came into a multi-million dollar inheritance. Retired from police work, he spent his time solving murder mysteries with Diablo, his faithful canine companion.

  Sometimes the painting over the fireplace would make the hair on the back of Mac’s neck stand up. So much so that he had considered sending it up to the Spencer Inn on the top of Spencer Mountain to hang in the lobby across from Robin’s portrait.

  Mac sensed that Gnarly followed him more in need of his protection from the authorities than to protect his master from any potential danger that might be waiting on the other side of the door. As they passed the love seat in the living room, Gnarly, who had taken ownership of the chair, jumped up and peered over the back of it to the foyer.

  Through the beveled cut
glass in the door, Mac could make out a woman smoothing her hair and straightening her clothes in anticipation of his greeting her.

  A forced grin filled her face as soon as her eyes met his. “Mac!” she sang out as if no time had passed since their last meeting in divorce court when the judge had ended their twenty-year marriage with the single pound of a gavel. The year before that, she had thrown him out of their home.

  Feeling as stunned as the market manager when Gnarly walked in and walked out with his stolen goodie, Mac uttered her name in two disjointed squawks. “Chris—tine?” After staring at her long enough to determine that her presence on his doorstep wasn’t a nightmare from his imagination, he asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “I decided to come out for a visit.” When she craned her neck to see beyond him into the manor, he caught a whiff of the alcohol on her breath. She was wrapped in her decade-old blue trench coat. Under that, Mac saw she wore blue jeans over white athletic shoes.

  She had to be curious about what he had inherited on the day their divorce had become final. Out of spite, he wanted to tell her to ask their two children, both college students who had inherited large trust funds from their grandmother for their education. Since the home she had won in their divorce was over three hours away, she had to have driven quite a way to see what would have been hers if she had only stayed married to him for just a little while longer.

  Mac gave in to his manners. “Do you want to come in?”

  As if she feared he would change his mind, she hurried across the threshold into the foyer. “You look good. You’re tanner than usual. Have you been using a tanning booth or some of those lotions?”

  Showing her into the living room, Mac replied that he had spent a lot of time outside.

  “Golf?”

  “Tennis. I play twice a week.” He wondered if he should return her compliment by saying how good she looked. Catching his reflection in the mirror in the corner curio containing glass artifacts Robin had purchased during a trip to China, he had to admit that he did look good. The regular tennis games with Garrett County’s prosecuting attorney Ben Fleming kept him trim and fit even if he did lose the majority of their matches.