Beauty to Die For and Other Mystery Shorts Page 11

  “And when her husband died, you swooped in to bring her here and keep her safe.” Joshua dropped the letter onto the center of the desk. “What are your intentions?”

  “You just said it. Keep her safe.”

  “This is a family run company,” Joshua said. “Do you have any ex-wives or children—”

  “I never married,” Stan said. “Ashley was the love of my life. The only heirs I have are Tiffany and her baby.”

  Joshua leaned over the desk. “Mr. Frost, think about it. Who has the most to lose now that your daughter is on the radar?”

  Stan looked up at him.

  “You’re the president of a multi-million-dollar company,” Joshua told him. “You brought her in and made her your executive assistant. Don’t tell me that she’s going to stay that. Don’t tell me that you aren’t grooming her to take this chair when you decide to retire.”

  “No one knows that she’s my daughter.”

  “But you’re grooming her for the fast track.” While Stan stared up at him in silence, Joshua asked, “Who has the most to lose since Tiffany came here? What about your senior vice president?”

  “Not him,” Stan said with certainty.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “He’s dying,” Stan said. “Prostate cancer. He’s been out for the last six weeks. There’s nothing they can do. He’s got maybe another two weeks to live.” He added, “No one knows about it.”

  “No one?” Joshua asked. “Absolutely no one on this planet knows?”

  Stan hesitated. “Except the other vice presidents. Hannah and Walter.” He sat up. “Walter Bentley.”

  “Who will take the senior vice president’s slot after the current one passes?”

  “Tiffany,” Stan replied in a soft voice.

  “If she wasn’t here, then who?”

  Stan was silent.

  “Whoever that is, has the most to lose by Tiffany’s very existence,” Joshua said. “Or, in other words, that person has the most to gain from her murder.”

  The cell phone vibrated on Joshua’s hip. While Stan gazed up at him with wide eyes, he checked the text message on the screen. “Cameron’s in trouble.”

  The elevator doors flew open and the EMTs came rushing out with a gurney between them.

  “This way!” Beverly, the president’s administrative assistant, directed them down the corridor to the conference room.

  Lieutenant Dugan came out from the corner of the elevator where he had squeezed on. He followed the EMTs into the conference room where Joshua was bent over Cameron, whose body was crumpled in the corner. “What happened?” the police lieutenant asked.

  Stan, Hannah, Tiffany, and the assistant grabbed the opportunity to crowd into the doorway to hear Joshua’s answer.

  “She got jumped,” Joshua said. “She was questioning a suspect and somehow he grabbed her gun and beat her with it.”

  “We have serious head trauma,” one of the EMT yelled into his radio.

  “What about this suspect?” the lieutenant asked Joshua.

  “He got away,” Joshua replied.

  “Where were you?” the lieutenant shouted.

  “Hey, don’t use that tone with me,” Joshua said. “I don’t work for you. Cameron was here on her own time trying to help this woman and I was here because she’s my wife. Now my wife could die and you’re accusing me of—”

  “Coming through!” The EMTs plowed in between the two men with the gurney with Cameron loaded on it. Her face was covered with an oxygen mask. A bloody towel was wrapped around her head.

  Joshua fell in behind them to follow them out the door.

  In the doorway, Stan grabbed Joshua by the arm. “Where’s Bentley?”

  “Gone,” Joshua said. “And he’s got Cameron’s gun with him.”

  “If he’s smart, he’ll leave the area,” Lieutenant Dugan said.

  “I’m sorry.” Joshua pulled his arm out of Stan’s grasp. “I have to go. My wife needs me.”

  Joshua ran down the corridor to slip onto the elevator with the gurney.

  Tiffany clung to Stan Frost who turned his attention to the police lieutenant. “What about Tiffany?”

  “We’ll do what we can to protect her,” the police lieutenant said. “Problem is, we have a marathon going on in the area tomorrow morning and thousands of runners and their families have poured into the area. Most of my people are on crowd patrol detail.”

  “This maniac is loose with a gun!” Stan shouted. “He’s promised to kill Tiffany and her baby. She needs protection.”

  “I can stay with her,” Hannah offered.

  “Can you take her to your house?” the police lieutenant asked Stan. “Is that secure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take her there. Stay with her,” Lieutenant Dugan said. “Give me a couple of hours to switch some officers around and I’ll have someone there by eight o’clock tonight. I promise.”

  Stan Frost’s home was a sprawling five bedroom rancher in the suburbs of Pittsburgh set deep in the woods off the main road. By six o’clock, it was dark in the dreary winter weather. The trees looming over the rancher seemed to make it darker.

  At the sound of the doorbell, Stan put down the book he was reading and went to the front door to find Hannah waiting on his doorstep. Her briefcase was tucked under her arm.

  “I’m sorry to have bothered you at home, Stan,” she said in a breathless voice, “but after you had left, the auditor from the IRS came in. He says you had a meeting for six o’clock.”

  “That meeting is scheduled for next week,” Stan said.

  Hannah shook her head. “That’s what I thought. But he’s there and he won’t meet with me. I tried to tell him about what has been going on, but he says that if you jerk him around, then he’ll jerk you around. That’s what he said.”

  Stan glanced over his shoulder into the house.

  “How’s Tiffany?” Hannah asked.

  “She’s napping. How, I have no idea.”

  “Are the police here yet?” She stepped inside.

  He hesitated. “It’ll be another hour before they get here.”

  “I can stay with her.” She grinned at him. “I did used to be a Marine. I know how to handle a gun.”

  Stan shook his head at her. “You surprise me.”

  “What?” she asked. “That I’m woman enough to care, or man enough to step up to bat when I’m needed.”

  He took his coat out of the closet. “I guess I should go. Good-bye, Hannah.”

  “Good night, Stan.”

  Through the front window, she watched the tail lights of Stan’s Cadillac make their way down the long driveway and turn onto the road. After making sure he was gone, she opened up her briefcase. She slipped on a pair of latex gloves and took the nine-millimeter Beretta out. She checked the cartridge in the chamber and made her way down the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

  She found the guest in the last bedroom down the hallway, the room closest to the master suite.

  Slowly, she opened the door to slip inside the darkened room. She could see the form of the sleeping woman under the covers. Careful not to make a noise on the wooden floor, she crept up to the side of the bed, aimed her gun, and shot repeatedly at the bed.

  The room filled with the smell of hot gun powder.

  The sound of the gunshots was still echoing in her ears when Hannah became aware of the door to the closet opening behind her.

  She was whirling around when the baton hit her across the back of the neck to send her down on all fours next to the bed. The gun was kicked out of her reach. In the darkness, she could see two shadows standing over her.

  “Hannah Pickering, you’re under arrest for attempted murder,” she heard Detective Cameron Gates say as she slapped handcuffs onto her wrists.

  Cameron Gates? It can’t be. I saw her wheeled out on a gurney after Bentley escaped.

  “Attempted?” Hannah asked while Cameron dragged her up onto her feet. She looked over a
t the bed to see that she had blown away two pillows.

  Joshua Thornton flipped on the light switch.

  Hannah blinked at the light in her eyes. “You played me.”

  Joshua and Cameron laughed loudly. “Oh, boy, oh, boy!” Joshua said. “We played you good.”

  “Do I look stupid to you?” Cameron asked her. “I saw you flipping out when Josh and I showed up at the office today. Why did you think Tiffany wouldn’t go to the police? When playing down your terror game as a prank didn’t work, you knew you had to frame someone else. It was a piece of cake to slip that note into Bentley’s binder and then trip to dump it in front of us.”

  “Walter Bentley was the perfect guy to frame,” Joshua said. “He has a crush on Tiffany, plus he was your competition for the senior VP slot, which you knew was coming up. Due to your seniority, you were a shoe in until Tiffany Ambrose came to town.”

  “In your job as HR VP,” Cameron said, “even though Stan didn’t tell you he was Tiffany’s father, you were able to find that out with a thorough background check. You knew he was grooming her to be your boss and you just couldn’t let that happen.”

  “So you decided to first terrorize her in hopes that she’d go away quietly,” Joshua said. “When that didn’t work, you decided to kill her.”

  Hannah looked from Joshua to Cameron, who smirked at her. “I want a lawyer.”

  Joshua and Cameron were enjoying a romantic dinner in their booth at Cricksters, a retro cafe in their hometown of Chester, West Virginia, located directly across the Pennsylvania state line. After a filling dinner of deluxe cheeseburgers and chips, they were sharing their personalized sundae for two.

  Grinning, Cameron licked the ice cream and hot fudge from her lips.

  Joshua grinned back at her before turning his attention to the dessert.

  “Tiffany Ambrose had her baby this morning,” she announced. “A boy. Guess what she named him.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Jeffrey Stanley Cameron.”

  He laughed. “That’s a mouthful.”

  “Jeffrey was his father’s name,” she explained. “Stan Frost is her father—”

  “He told her.”

  “Yes.” Cameron smiled softly. “But she already knew. Her mother had told her everything before she passed. Tiffany didn’t know how to tell him. She didn’t know he knew.” She took another spoonful of the ice cream with a generous helping of hot fudge and whipped topping.

  “It’s good that it’s all out in the open,” Joshua said.

  “It’s never a good idea to keep things a secret.” She met his gaze. “You did see the background check on Hannah Pickering.”

  “Yes, I did.” He put down the spoon.

  “She was in the Marines, like Eddie Palmer,” Cameron said.

  “But they did not serve together,” he said.

  “She served in administration,” Cameron said, “human resources to be exact.”

  Joshua slowly shook his head. “You certainly do your homework.”

  “Oh, yes, I do,” she said. “Remember our bet?”

  He nodded his head. “Hannah Pickering was Eddie Palmer’s personnel officer in the Marines when he was arrested, tried, and convicted. His file, including the case file, crossed her desk. It is entirely possible—”

  “Conceivable,” she said.

  “That Hannah Pickering stole his MO.”

  “So the two cases were connected,” Cameron said.

  “Hannah had nothing to do with the Eddie Palmer case.” He shook his finger at her. “When we made this bet, we were talking about a friend or detective or someone who was involved in the case—”

  “We never said where the line was drawn,” Cameron said. “We said connected. Hannah Pickering was connected to Eddie Palmer. I was right, you were wrong. I win the bet.”

  Joshua fell back in his seat.

  Cocking her head at him, Cameron shot him a naughty grin.

  “What do you want from me?” He chuckled while he asked.

  She gazed across the table at him while she picked up the spoon from the sundae. One of her eyebrows arched as she slowly licked the hot fudge from the back of the spoon.

  The End

  LUCKY DOG

  A Mac Faraday Mystery Short

  This is going to be your day, you lucky dog.

  Lance Collins admired the clear blue sky overhead before pulling his black Ferrari into the last empty parking space. Rarely was such a prime slot, directly across from the Spencer Inn Sports Club staff entrance, vacant at ten o’clock in the morning.

  It’s a sign. Things are finally going my way.

  Fighting to keep down the wicked laugh bubbling its way to his lips, Lance grabbed his athletic bag and tennis racquet from the passenger seat and stepped out of his car.

  The feeling of good fortune took a dip when the hair on the back of his neck rose to attention. He turned around to find the source of suspicion in the form of a German Shepherd eying him from the front seat of a red Dodge Viper in the carte blanche of parking spaces—that reserved for the Spencer Inn’s owner, Mac Faraday.

  “What are you looking at?”

  The shepherd narrowed his eyes into a glare.

  “Mutt.”

  The dog’s snout twitched. His lips rose into a snarl.

  “My younger brother used to have a dog just like you.” Lance waved the racquet in his hand. “He bit me. You know what I did to him?”

  The shepherd bore his teeth.

  “I backed over him with my car … on purpose. When they found him flattened in the road, I cried along with everyone else. No one ever knew.” Lance’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “Take that as a warning, Gnarly. If I ever catch you in my sights, I won’t be tapping the brakes to slow down—I’ll be hitting the gas pedal.”

  Gnarly jumped up in his seat to lunge at him with snarling barks. Lance seized the opportunity to club him over the head with the tennis racquet. To the attacker’s surprise, the dog dodged the blow before leaping back to clamp down on the racquet with his jaws.

  “Give me that, you son of a bitch.” Keeping his grip on the handle, Lance pulled back in an attempt to retrieve his racquet while Gnarly shook his head like a predator snapping the neck of its prey. The dog’s teeth tore through the strings in the head of racquet.

  When it became apparent that he was losing the tug-of-war, Lance resorted to pounding his adversary on top of the head with his fist. “You damn son of it bitch. I’m going to kill you.”

  Gnarly dropped the racquet to respond with barks that sounded like his own canine version of curses and threats. Lance was in mid-lunge for the dog’s throat when he was pulled back by the shoulder.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Mac Faraday yanked him back to step into the midst of the fight. The sight of his dog being attacked prompted him to take on an assertive nature that the tennis instructor had never seen coming from the former homicide detective turned inn owner—all thanks to an unexpected inheritance from his birth mother.

  Wish I was an illegitimate bastard to a rich, world-famous mystery writer.

  Taking notice of Mac’s faded blue t-shirt with a worn police academy emblem on his breast pocket, Lance silently swore that when he received his inheritance, he was going to dress in a style more befitting his social status.

  “Your dog attacked me.” Lance held up the shredded tennis racquet. “Look at what he did. This is a three-hundred-dollar racquet. How do you expect me to give lessons to guests with equipment in this condition?”

  “Maybe next time you’ll think about that before trying to hit my dog with it.”

  Lance could see the German Shepherd, his tongue hanging out, laughing at him behind Mac’s back. Reminding himself that Mac had the power to fire him—and probably would—even if he was a favorite among the female patrons, Lance’s jaw clinched. “With all due respect, Mac, your dog came after me.”

  “And grabbed your racquet out of your hand to chew it
to bits?”

  “Exactly.”

  “All this without leaving the car?” Mac folded his arms across his chest. “He jumped out of the car, swiped your racquet out of your hand, and then jumped back into the car to shred it?”

  “You shouldn’t be leaving such a vicious dog alone in your car like that,” Lance warned. “Someone could get hurt, sue you, and end up owning this inn.”

  “Not if they’re smart enough to stay away from my car,” Mac replied. “Why do you think I drive Gnarly around with me? His pleasant odor and charming personality?”

  Judging by the low noise he uttered from deep in his throat before hanging his head, Gnarly picked up on his master’s sarcasm.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Lance was aware of Police Chief David O’Callaghan, his arms also folded across his chest, watching the exchange.

  It’s only a matter of time. Where Mac Faraday goes, Chief O’Callaghan is never far behind.

  “You don’t like dogs, do you, Lance?” the police chief asked.

  Giving up on pleading his case against Gnarly, Lance turned to answer. “What? Do you intend to charge me with some hate crime for defending myself against a dog that tried to bite me?”

  David observed the tattered racquet. “No, I believe Gnarly came out on top of that fight. I’m talking about Sparky. Your wife’s maid told us that Kim kicked you out after you tried to poison her Yorkshire Terrier.”

  Lance waited for the rest of the news. Where’s the rest of it? I know you have more to tell me. So say it. I’ve been rehearsing for this moment. Give me my cue and let the curtain go up on my performance.

  When it didn’t come, he asked, “You came out here to question me about Sparky? That was a month ago. Don’t tell me that bitch has decided to press charges against me for trying to kill her yip-yap.”

  “Is that why your marriage only lasted sixty-three days?” Mac asked. “Sparky never did like you. You made it no secret about you not liking him. So you decided to get rid of him.”

  David said, “The vet told us that someone had fed him chocolate. That’s why his kidneys were shutting down.”

  “No one has any proof that I was the one who gave it to him,” Lance said.