Candidate for Murder Read online

  The only thing worse than one sneaky kleptomaniac canine is two.

  At that moment the two culprits were sitting at the table. Gnarly was licking the last drop of sauce from David’s plate. Across from him in what should have been Dallas’ chair, Storm was standing with her front paws on the table, finishing off her meal by lapping up Dallas’ champagne from the crystal flute.

  “You—” Unable to think of which nasty word to say first, David sputtered before working up to a scream that sent both dogs flying. The chairs were overturned in the melee that followed. David lunged for Gnarly only to have Storm cut him off, which caused him to narrowly escape falling across the table. By the time David was able to regain his footing, the shepherds were galloping up the stairs.

  Both plates had been licked clean. They’d even eaten the parsley garnish.

  “I swear!” Dallas was doubled over with laughter. “If they’d run any faster, they would’ve caught up with yesterday!”

  “Do you know how hard I worked to cook that dinner?”

  Dallas wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “Really, sugar, it’s your own fault.”

  “My fault?”

  “Even in the short time I’ve known Gnarly, I know he’s a thief,” she said. “If you were smart, you would have put them outside before leaving our dinner unguarded.”

  David’s eyes narrowed. “I did.” Pushing her away, he turned to the French doors leading out onto the back deck where he had put the two food thieves. One of the doors was wide open. With the palm of his hand, he smacked himself on the forehead. “But I forgot to lock it!”

  “Lock it?” Her eyes grew wide.

  “Gnarly can open doors, even doors with round doorknobs,” he said. “But he hasn’t figured out how to pick locks yet.” He picked up a linen napkin from the floor and tossed it onto the middle of the table. “Give him time. I’m sure if he sets his mind to it…”

  Coming up behind him, she hugged him and rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m sure they appreciated it.”

  “I didn’t cook it for them. All I have left in the kitchen is mac and cheese.”

  “I didn’t get a Brazilian wax job for mac and cheese,” she whispered before planting a lingering kiss on the back of his neck.

  “Storm is a good dog,” Dallas said during their drive up to the top of Spencer Mountain to the five-star inn owned by Mac Faraday.

  “She ate your dinner and drank your champagne.”

  “Only because she looks up to Gnarly. I’m willin’ to bet he started it.”

  Chuckling at Dallas’ bias toward her beloved dog, David turned the wheel to pull into the inn owner’s reserved parking space. Since Mac was out of town, David was sure that no one would be using it. Upon reading the sign announcing that evening’s events, David groaned.

  “What’s wrong, love?” Dallas reached across the seat to squeeze his arm.

  He nodded his head at the huge poster announcing the mayoral debate that would take place in the banquet room. “I forgot that the town council is hosting a political debate tonight.”

  “Maybe we should go see it,” Dallas said while watching the crowd of well-dressed patrons cruising past the doormen.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” David said without humor in his tone.

  There was puzzlement in her eyes. “Why not? I’m a journalist.”

  “Spencer is a small town,” David said. “The population is fewer than a thousand most of the year.”

  “And ’bout half of that population was raised on concrete in Washington.”

  “Didn’t use to be,” he said. “People only found out about Deep Creek Lake in about the last two decades. Then they started moving in with their mansions and their big ideas about having laws controlling everything from dog leashes to clotheslines.”

  “Clotheslines?”

  “Clotheslines, believe it or not.”

  Uncertain of whether he was joking, she looked him up and down.

  The corner of his mouth curled up.

  “Okay, lover, I’ll bite. What’s the thing ’bout clotheslines?”

  “This spring, the town council quietly passed a bill outlawing clotheslines within Spencer’s town limits,” David said. “No heads-up. No discussion. No debate. No one even knew they were considering it. They were very quiet about it.”

  Dallas’ eyebrows lifted up into her bangs. “Outlawed clotheslines?”

  David nodded his head. “Can you believe it? I didn’t know about it until the law, signed and sealed, appeared on my desk.”

  “How—”

  “Local residents living in this lakefront community are no longer allowed to hang their wet clothes outside to dry. It’s a lake community where many families do water sports. Now they have to keep their wet swimsuits inside, where no one can see them. The town council’s excuse? Outdoor clotheslines bring down property value.”

  “If you ask me, the folks on that town council are so low that they’d have to look up to see hell.”

  “You got it, babe,” David said with a sigh. “Within days of the new law’s passing—before most of the town’s residents were aware that such a law had even been proposed—the city folks bombarded my department with complaints about their lowbrow neighbors drying their clothes outside. The locals have been posting scathing editorials in the newspapers and on social media. I even had to break up a fight between an older woman who liked the smell of her sheets when they were dried by the lake breeze and a Washington lobbyist who didn’t want her dinner guests to see her neighbor’s bedsheets.”

  “Are you tellin’ me that the clothesline ban was the shot that started a civil war in Spencer?”

  “Spencer has been cracking down the middle for the last seven years,” David said. “The clothesline prohibition was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

  A grin came to Dallas’ lips. “Sounds like the makin’ of a hot debate.” With a playful punch to his arm, she giggled. “I can’t wait.”

  “I don’t want to go to the debate.”

  Dallas didn’t hear him. She was already out of the cruiser. With a tip of his cap, a doorman held the door open for her and took the time to take in a view of her rear while she trotted inside.

  When David caught up with her in the hotel’s lobby, where she was looking for the right direction to go in, he repeated his protest. “Wouldn’t you rather have a romantic dinner in the restaurant and then go home for dessert than sit in a stuffy banquet room watching two self-absorbed politicians spin one lie after another?”

  “Oh, come on, sweetie,” she said while brushing her fingertips across his cheek. “From what you just said, this is gonna be livelier than a buffalo stampede.”

  “I know both candidates,” David said. “Bill Clark is the head of the town council. He’s an arrogant bully who thinks he’s above everyday manners—unless he wants something from you. Nancy Braxton is a compulsive liar.”

  “In other words, both of them would steal the flowers off of their grandmas’ graves.” She grinned. “They’re politicians. Being crookeder than a dog’s hind leg is the first requirement in that job description.” Playfully, she grasped the front of his dress shirt and pulled him to her. She locked her brown eyes, which were the color of cognac, onto his blue eyes. After kissing him on the lips, she whispered in his hear. “Just ten minutes. Please. And then we’ll go have dinner, and…if you want…we can go back home for dessert, and I’ll do that thing that makes you—”

  David sucked in a deep breath. Dallas’ deep, raspy voice never failed to excite him, even when she wasn’t trying to seduce him. After letting out his breath slowly, he whispered, “Ten minutes. Not a second more.” He led her by the hand back to the banquet room.

  “You know what, darlin’? Back home, we don’t consider it to be a proper political debate until fists start flying.”

/>   The Next Morning—Spencer Police Department

  The jingle of the bell over the front door announced the entrance of the police department’s desk sergeant, Tonya. Startled out of the snooze into which he had fallen while resting his jaw against a cold compress, David looked up from her desk.

  Tonya slapped a paper bag down onto the desk in front of him. “I thought you could use this.” With a shake of her head, the middle-aged desk sergeant took note of the tear in David’s suit coat and of his disheveled appearance. Even his blond hair, which was usually neatly combed, was messed with a lock dropping down onto his forehead. His gold police chief’s badge was displayed on the utility belt he wore over his dress slacks.

  David peered into the bag and discovered that she had brought him a bear claw.

  “If anything, you proved your lack of partisanship to the citizens of Spencer,” Tonya said. “How many police chiefs would arrest both nominees for mayor—one of whom is destined to be your boss after the election?”

  “How many people running for office would get into a fist fight with their opponent in front of a hundred people?” Taking the pastry out of the bag, he grumbled. “Dad used to say that only a crazy person would throw his or her hat into the ring. So you know that by virtue of the fact that they’re running for office, every candidate is mentally incompetent.”

  “That’s why I don’t vote.” Tonya waved for him to get up from her desk.

  David almost choked on his bear claw. “You don’t vote! Do you know how many countries in the world have dictatorships where people don’t have any say in what the government decides to do? Your vote is your voice. You need to exercise it.”

  “It’s a right,” Tonya said. “Not an obligation.”

  “People like you deserve what you get.” David waved the pastry at her. “I don’t ever want to hear you complain about our country going to pot again.”

  The door to the police station opened again. Instantly, Gnarly and Storm charged in, practically dragging Dallas behind them. Once inside, she dropped both of their leashes and closed the door. Since he was in the midst of getting up from Tonya’s desk, David was unprepared to defend himself when Gnarly leaped from the floor to snatch the bear claw out of his hand. As soon as he noticed that his breakfast had been taken, David turned to lunge for the German shepherd only to have Storm dart between the two of them to cut him off. Without pausing, both dogs galloped across the squad room and up the stairs to David’s office.

  “They’re like the canine Bonnie and Clyde,” Tonya said.

  Seemingly unperturbed, Dallas set a lunch container on the reception counter. “That’s okay, my love. I brought you a better breakfast.” She didn’t notice the arched eyebrow Tonya was directing toward her in reference to the danish. “I felt so bad about our date gettin’ ruined last night,” she said, holding out an egg casserole baked into a single serving dish. “And you had to spend the night here with the candidates in jail—”

  “They’re still here!” Gasping, Tonya whirled around in her chair. “Do you want to get fired after the election?”

  “They both assaulted a police officer.” David pointed to the welt on his cheekbone. As he took the breakfast goody from Dallas, he gave her a soft kiss on the lips. “After spending all night listening to them blaming each other for getting arrested, an hour ago I called Fletcher and told him to come take over the babysitting.”

  Dallas followed David to the empty desk where he sat down to eat. “You would think that since they’re such highfalutin, important folks, people would have been here like that”—she snapped her fingers—“fixin’ to get them released.”

  “Their party bosses have been calling everyone on the town council and every other political office all night,” David said. “These two idiots are the cream of the crop. I can’t understand how anyone could’ve voted for them in the first place. I certainly didn’t!”

  “I know for a fact that Nancy Braxton didn’t legally win her party’s nomination,” Tonya said with a shake of her head. “My daughter-in-law works for the county clerk. She was there when they tallied the votes. The leaders of Nancy’s political party didn’t want her opponent to get the nomination. They felt he was too white and had the wrong genitalia to represent their party in this election. It’s high time for Spencer to have a woman mayor—even if that woman is an incompetent bitch.”

  “Are you saying that the party committed voter fraud?” David whirled away from his coffee mug, which he was in the middle of filling, to face her.

  “Tiffany told me that the vote was close and that the party leaders just tossed out about a hundred ballots for the other candidate. Nancy won the nomination by only sixty-four votes. If they had counted those other ballots, Braxton’s opponent would’ve been the nominee and would’ve won by around forty votes.”

  “Has anybody reported this? Why didn’t you contact the board of elections after you heard about it?” David asked over the top of his coffee mug.

  “And what would the board of elections have done?” Tonya asked. “They would’ve asked everyone who was in the room what happened. Everyone would’ve said that nothing happened, knowing that if they didn’t, they’d be blacklisted by those in that party who hold political offices. Worse yet, what if something had come of it? No whistle-blower wants to end up like Sandy Burr.”

  “Who’s Sandy Burr?” David asked.

  Tonya’s eyes grew wide. She turned to David, who was sitting at an empty desk, and Dallas, who was perched on a corner of it—one long leg draped across the other. They were both looking questioningly at her.

  Tonya had known David since his childhood. Over twenty-five years earlier, she had started working at the Spencer Police Department for David’s late father, Patrick O’Callaghan, who had been the chief of police.

  “Investigative journalist,” Tonya said, “who was found in a bathtub at the Lakeside Inn with both wrists slashed. The suicide note found on the bed said that he was sorry. The last person he’d been seen with was Nancy Braxton; they’d been in the hotel’s lounge about twelve hours before his body was found by a maid. He’d been doing a story about her charity organization. Your father, who’d only been chief for a few months at that point, and Bogie were the first on the scene. Burr actually told his sister and a couple of friends that if he ended up dead because of the story he was chasing, they shouldn’t believe that he’d committed suicide.”

  “Did Dad ever close the case?” David asked.

  Tonya shook her head. “He was forced off of the investigation by the state police because Nathan Braxton, Nancy’s husband, complained to the governor. Nancy felt that Pat O’Callaghan wasn’t giving her the respect she deserved. Since Nathan was the Redskin’s quarterback who took the team to the Super Bowl, the governor couldn’t yank the case away from us fast enough. The state police immediately closed it as a suicide—though everyone knows that it was murder and that Nancy did it.”

  Immersed in the story of the long-cold murder case, they all jumped when the front door opened and a short, exceedingly slender man with black hair and thick, dark eyebrows stepped in. With his slight frame, heart-shaped face, and dapper, tailored suit, he resembled a leprechaun. “I’m looking for Police Chief O’Callaghan,” he told, rather than asked, Tonya.

  A young woman with short ash-colored hair who was dressed in an ill-fitting pantsuit and flat shoes slipped in directly behind the leprechaun.

  David stood up from the desk where he was eating. “That would be me.”

  Barging forward, he extended his hand to David. “I’m George Ward, the state chairman for Nancy Braxton’s party and this is Erin Devereux, Ms. Braxton’s executive assistant. I understand there was an incident last night.”

  David answered him by pointing to the bruise on his jaw.

  “The bruise on his cheek came from the other party,” Dallas said.

  George la
ughed. “These political debates can get quite passionate.”

  “‘Passionate’ isn’t the word I would use,” David said without humor.

  “From what I’ve been told, Bill Clark started it,” George said.

  “Those sources are wrong,” Dallas said. “Ms. Braxton was the one who threw a water bottle at Mr. Clark after calling him a warmongering fascist. You can see the whole thing from start to finish on the video I uploaded to my blog this morning.”

  “Did you record the part where Clark called her a fat pig and told her to shut up?” Erin asked.

  “She needed to shut up,” Dallas said. “It was a debate and his turn to answer the question, and she wouldn’t let him get a word in edgeways. I swear, it’s like no one ever told her that it’s better to keep quiet and let people think you’re dumb than to open your mouth and prove ’em right. Every time she opened her mouth, somethin’ stupid came flyin’ out.”

  “I guess we know who the police department is supporting in this election,” George said. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”

  “Actually, you’re wrong,” Dallas said. “Mr. Clark isn’t any better. From what little I was able to hear from Mr. Clark, it was plain that if he had a brain, it’d die of loneliness. After seein’ those two in action, I’d vote for a snake before I’d vote for either of ’em. Snakes are smarter and won’t lie to you ’bout plannin’ to bite you in the butt the first chance they get.”

  Tonya let out a loud laugh.

  With a roll of his eyes, George dismissed Dallas as unworthy of argument and turned his attention back to David. “With all due respect, Chief, Ms. Braxton was simply defending herself, and you got in the way. She had no intention of striking you. That being the case, I can understand your arresting Clark, but Ms. Braxton?” He tsk-tsked at him.

  At the end of the hallway, the door leading downstairs to the holding cells opened, allowing loud curses from the cells below to float upstairs.