5 The Murders at Astaire Castle Read online

  Mac grabbed Gnarly by the collar and held him back. “That’s no way to treat a guest.”

  Deciding the visitor was friend and not foe, Gnarly sat down with a whine.

  “Friend, Molly,” the white German Shepherd’s owner said. Patting her dog on the head, she gazed up. “Bogie didn’t tell me that the Spencer police department had a K-9 unit.” Seeing David, she locked her steel blue eyes on him.

  In the moment of silence between them, the electricity was palatable.

  Mac couldn’t imagine David being with a woman who wasn’t gorgeous. With his blond hair, blue eyes, and athletically slender build, the police chief had his pick of women. What red-blooded man in his position wouldn’t choose the most attractive beauties?

  Chelsea took striking to a whole new level.

  She was exceedingly slender—and flat chested as David had mentioned. Her platinum blonde hair, same shade as her brother’s, fell in a single wave to her shoulders. Her fair features seemed to border on albino, down to the lightest blue eyes that Mac had ever seen.

  “Hello, Chelsea.” Noting Molly’s service vest, David said, “I didn’t know the Attorney General’s office had K-9s, either.”

  “Molly doesn’t work for the Attorney General,” Chelsea said. “She works for me.”

  “Well, Chelsea, if everything is taken care of, I’ll be on my way,” a man in a suit called out as he came down the hall from the rest rooms. He was a tall, muscular, handsome man.

  Seeing the man who was obviously with Chelsea, David stood up tall and took on the stance of a man ready for a battle.

  “Roger,” Chelsea said, “This is David O’Callaghan, he’s the chief of police and …” Realizing she didn’t know who Mac was, she paused.

  “Mac Faraday.” Mac offered the man his hand. “And you are …”

  “Roger Bennett,” he said. “I’m a friend of Chelsea’s. I happened to be going to WVU for a seminar and gave her a ride.” He turned to her. “Do you need a ride to the hospital?”

  “I’ll give her a ride,” David said so quickly that everyone was startled. A glance from Mac told him that he had spoken too sharply. “I’m going there anyway to check on Riley, so I can drive her.”

  “That’s okay,” Chelsea countered. “Roger can drop me off at the hospital. It’s on the way to Morgantown anyway.”

  “Your message said you came here to the police station because you wanted to see me,” David said.

  “That’s done and over with.” Chelsea turned to Roger. “Let’s go.”

  David’s hands were now on his hips. “Why’d you come out here—”

  “Bogie told me everything that I needed to know about Riley,” Chelsea said. “Besides, you’re busy investigating the Damian Wagner murders.”

  “I’m going out to the hospital anyway.” David bit off every word.

  Mac could see Chelsea’s friend Roger becoming increasingly nervous by the police chief’s agitation.

  “After leaving the hospital I need to go find a hotel to stay at until I decide what to do about Riley,” Chelsea said.

  “I can take you to a hotel,” David said. “No problem.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Roger said. “I can go.” He turned to go to the door.

  “No!” Chelsea said. “Stay!”

  Like a little boy in trouble, Roger froze in place.

  “Roger will take me to the hospital and I can take a cab to a hotel,” Chelsea said. “That way I won’t be any embarrassment to you.”

  Judging by the emphasis she had put on the word embarrassment, everyone sensed that Chelsea had just ripped a bandage off an old wound.

  Roger waved his hand like a child trying to get the teacher’s attention. “I’d really like to leave now.”

  “Go!” David ordered.

  “Stay!” Chelsea said.

  David stepped up to her. His eyes locked on hers. “I’m driving you and that’s final.”

  “I’m not going to impose on you,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “You’re not,” he said. “I want to drive you.”

  She shrugged. “If you insist.”

  “Can I go now?” Roger asked.

  “Yes,” David and Chelsea said in unison.

  Not taking any chance on them changing their minds, Roger ran out the door and slammed it on his way out.

  David gazed down into her face. “Good to see you, too, Chelsea. You look great.”

  “You’re so full of it, David O’Callaghan,” she said.

  Aware of all the eyes in the room watching them, David stepped back out of her space. “You don’t drive anymore?”

  “The police told me I shouldn’t,” Chelsea said. “I was in a car accident seven years ago and was in a coma for four days. Since then, I have seizures. Not all the time. My last one was well over a year ago. But when they hit … That’s why I have Molly. She can sense when I’m going to have a seizure before it happens so that I can take my medication to stop it. Unfortunately, she can’t drive.”

  “All Gnarly can sense is the arrival of food.” Mac noticed that while Chelsea was stroking Molly’s head, Gnarly was licking her ear. Patiently, Molly accepted the ear cleaning. “Gnarly, stop that.”

  With a loud whine, Gnarly collapsed at Molly’s feet.

  “I can drive you anywhere you need to go,” Mac said, “unless David objects.” He smiled at the blush that came to David’s cheeks.

  “How about a motel?” In response to Mac’s shocked look, she laughed. “I meant for me to stay at while I’m here.”

  “What about your house?” David asked.

  “I sold that after Mom died,” she explained. “I had Riley declared dead three years ago and I had assumed he was. All of my Deep Creek Lake roots are gone.”

  “Since you have Molly and you probably don’t know how long you need to stay,” Mac said, “how about if you stay at the Spencer Manor?” He ignored the glare that David shot in his direction.

  “Spencer Manor?”

  “Mac is Robin Spencer’s son,” Bogie said, “in case you didn’t know.”

  “I’d take him up on that if I were you,” Tonya said. “It isn’t every girl who gets invited to stay at a mansion on the shores of Deep Creek Lake.”

  Chelsea still looked uncertain.

  “You’ll be safe,” Bogie assured her. “Mac’s taken.”

  “Very taken,” Tonya said. “He’s engaged to Archie.”

  “Archie?” Chelsea asked.

  “Archie is a girl,” Mac explained. “We have plenty of room and I don’t think Gnarly is going to let Molly go.”

  They found that Molly had lain down, and Gnarly had a paw draped across her shoulders and his head resting on her neck.

  “She is fixed, isn’t she?” Worry crept into Mac’s tone.

  “I hate to disappoint Gnarly, but she is,” Chelsea said.

  Since he had ridden to the station with David, Mac was stuck with going along with them to the hospital to visit Riley. Molly had to go wherever Chelsea went, and Gnarly wasn’t about to let the new love of his life out of his sight. Mac was delegated to the back seat of the cruiser with two large dogs. At least Gnarly let him have the window seat on one side, and, a true gentle-dog, let Molly take the other window seat.

  The on-duty working dog, Molly refused to display if the feeling was mutual or not.

  Gnarly’s panting was steaming up the right side of Mac’s face.

  “How did Riley look when you found him?” Chelsea asked once they were on the road running along the lake’s shore.

  David and Mac were quiet.

  “Surprisingly good for someone who has been living off the land,” Mac said. “I think he’s incredibly lucky to have survived all those years by himself.�
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  She looked over at David. “The news said he was eating garbage?”

  “We found dead animal carcasses in the garage where he seemed to have holed himself up.”

  “Then it’s true?”

  “What?” David asked.

  “Riley was living at the castle,” she said, “hiding out in the same place where Damian Wagner and those other people were killed. Did Riley do it?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what the news shows are saying,” she said.

  “I don’t go by what a bunch of talking heads say,” David said. “I go by the evidence.”

  “Well, if Riley was there…” she said, “and he disappeared before Wagner was there, then where was he when the murders happened—”

  “He could be a witness,” Mac said. “The MOs of the murder don’t jive with how Riley would have killed them.”

  “They found dead animals,” she said tearfully. “He must have killed them. How much of a jump is it, if he’s crazy, to imagine him killing—”

  “They had broken necks or bite marks on them,” David said. “He killed them with his bare hands—not the same COD as Damian Wagner. If anything, Riley’s a witness.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear you say.”

  In the back seat, Mac caught her sneaking a look over in David’s direction. When David turned his head to check the traffic in her direction, she jerked back and looked in the opposite direction.

  This is going to be fun. Mac smiled to himself.

  David groaned when he pulled the cruiser up to the hospital to find the media camped out front.

  “They all want to see my brother—the Wolf Man,” Chelsea said.

  David drove on past the crowd and turned the corner. “We’ll go in the back employee entrance.”

  Mac leaned forward in his seat. “Does Molly go everywhere with you?”

  “She goes everywhere I go.” Chelsea turned and tilted her head toward Molly’s red service vest. “She’s certified, so the hospital won’t have any problem with her going inside. They’ll see her vest and know that she’s a service dog.”

  “I’m thinking about Riley,” Mac said while David parked the cruiser. “He attacked Gnarly. Since he thinks he’s a wolf, he may try to attack Molly if you take her into the room.”

  “They have him tied down,” David said. “He’s also heavily sedated. Maybe he won’t notice her.”

  Mac stayed with Gnarly in the cruiser. Gnarly watched David and the white shepherd escort Chelsea inside. When the door shut, he let out a whine.

  “She’ll be back.” Mac patted him on the head.

  Gnarly’s ears perked up. Both Mac and the dog looked over their shoulders to see a man wearing a green jacket came around the corner and into the parking lot. He carried a red box with the logo of the local fried chicken takeout down the road. Between his arm and side, he clutched a takeout soft drink.

  Licking his chops, Gnarly stomped his front feet and pressed closer to the window.

  As he passed the dumpster, the man tossed the box inside, wiped his hands on the front of his coat, took the drink container, and sipped away while making his way to the hospital’s service entrance to go inside.

  With a sigh, Mac sat back in his seat and closed his eyes to catch a nap, which Gnarly refused to let happen. Whining, Gnarly gazed at the dumpster and then back at his master to tell him telepathically to let him out to get the discarded fried chicken bones.

  “No,” Mac said, when he received the message.

  Gnarly continued to stare at him.

  “I said no.”

  Gnarly stomped his feet.

  Mac answered with silence.

  Gnarly pawed at his arm.

  “Lie down.”

  Gnarly answered by charging forward and slamming into Mac’s body. Incensed, Gnarly stomped and pawed at him until Mac threw open the door in order to escape the attack. He rolled and landed face down on the pavement. Now free, Gnarly ran across the parking lot and hurled himself at the dumpster, only to discover that it was too tall for him to jump inside.

  Still on his knees, Mac laughed at him. “Serves you right!”

  A van rolled into the lot and parked next to the dumpster. Recognizing Mac, who was climbing up to his feet, a tall bleached blonde with dark eyebrows descended on the man who, according to their sources, owned the castle where the wolf man had been staying and was the one who had found him. She stuck her microphone into Mac’s face. “What was your first thought, Mr. Faraday, when you found a wolf man living in your castle?”

  Behind her, the camera operator focused in on Mac’s face.

  “I have no comment.” Mac turned around to see Gnarly circling the van and the dumpster.

  His lack of comment was not an acceptable answer for the journalists. Like a pack of wild hyenas who spot an elk separated from the herd, they stayed on him. “You had to have been aware of the bizarre history of supernatural occurrences at the Astaire Castle,” the journalist said. “In light of this latest incident, what are your plans for the castle?”

  “I plan to help the police find out who killed Damian Wagner and his daughter and editor.” With a wave of his arm, Mac gestured for Gnarly to come to him so that they could get back into the cruiser.

  “Does that mean you have ruled out the wolf man as a suspect?”

  Forgetting about Gnarly, Mac turned to her. “He’s not a wolf man,” he said with force. “You make him sound like some creature. He’s a man—just like any of us—only he’s sick—and keeping in mind that he is a man—a human with family who care about him—he and his family deserve your respect for their privacy while he gets treatment and becomes well again so that maybe—just maybe he can help us find out what happened that night when Damian Wagner was killed.”

  The journalist jumped on his statement so fast that her dark eyebrows jumped up into her bleached blonde bangs. “Then you consider him a witness?”

  “I have nothing more to say.”

  The camera operator burst out laughing.

  The journalist turned to the camera. “What’s so funny?”

  “That dog climbed up onto the car parked next to us and then onto the top of our van and dove into the dumpster,” the operator laughed, “and I got it all! I can’t wait to load this onto YouTube. Guarantee—this will go viral in no time!”

  “You were supposed to be recording me!” she yelled.

  “Aw, man!” Mac ran for the dumpster where Gnarly was digging through the trash with both paws. “I should teach you a lesson and just leave you there for the garbage truck to haul away.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Gnarly let out a long mournful cry from in the rear compartment of David’s cruiser.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Mac said to him from the back seat while holding his nose. “This is what you get for dumpster diving. You’re lucky David wouldn’t let me leave you there.”

  In the front seat, David smiled over at Chelsea.

  “Do they always argue like that?” she asked him.

  “Today’s a good day.” He was glad to see the corner of her lips curl.

  Chelsea had sobbed when she saw Riley, who, even in a medicated state, strained against his restraints to try to get at Molly. He growled and snarled until a nurse took Molly out of the room.

  Still, Riley, who didn’t recognize his sister or childhood friend, refused to calm down. He seemed to have forgotten how to speak—communicating only with barks and growls.

  A psychiatric specialist was traveling in from Boston to better diagnose his condition and recommend treatment. Until then, the hospital doctors were keeping him sedated and restrained.

  When Chelsea asked about her brother’s chances of ever returning to mainstream society, the doctor g
ave the standard, “We need to know more before we can determine that.”

  When he had escorted her out the back door, David found Gnarly in the dumpster and Mac threatening to leave him there while a news crew filmed it all. Chelsea sobbed in the cruiser while David chased away the media and Mac hauled Gnarly out of the dumpster.

  Hanging his head over the top of the back seat, Gnarly cried out again. Even Molly seemed to inch closer to the window to escape the foul odor of garbage permeating from his pelt.

  “Was it worth it?” Mac asked him. “Were those chicken bones worth it? When you throw them up, which you always do when you manage to steal some out of the neighbor’s garbage, will that be worth it?”

  Gnarly uttered a sound that resembled, “Umph!” and plopped down in the back of the cruiser.

  “I think he said it was worth it,” David said.

  “Not to me,” Mac said. “I’m the one who has to clean up after him.” With a mixture of snarl about Gnarly’s latest misdeed and disgust about the future mess coming, he slumped in his seat.

  David glanced over at where Chelsea was staring out the side window. She was deep in her own thoughts. “When do you have to go back to work?”

  “I can have as much time as I need,” she said. “Emergency family leave or liberal leave—they’ll work it out.”

  “The government can be pretty understanding about situations like that,” David said. “What type of lawyer are you at the attorney general’s office? Criminal?”

  “I wish.” She gave a hollow laugh. “I’m not a lawyer. I’m a paralegal. I do all the boring grunt work.”

  “Last I heard you were in law school,” David said.

  “I was,” she said. “I was in my second year. My mom’s life insurance only paid for one year’s tuition. I took out a student loan for the next and had been approved for the third year when some cheerleader texting her BFF went through a red light and creamed me. It took me a full year to recover.”

  “Couldn’t you sue the girl that hit you to pay for that year you missed of school?” David asked. “She went through a red light while texting.”

  “It was an accident and she was a kid,” Chelsea said quietly. “I only took what the insurance company paid out and they covered my medical bills. If I went for blood it would have meant the girl couldn’t have gone to college and I couldn’t do that to her—not for making a mistake that I know she’ll never make again.”