Beauty to Die For and Other Mystery Shorts Read online

  “Mom’s jewels!” Millicent screamed from where she was in the crowd around the fallen body. “The Blue Starburst! I’ll bet she lied about that, too.”’

  Ben and Archie waded through the crowd to get to the parking lot.

  Mac ran down the stairs. In the foyer, he dashed around Frederick the butler who was about to close the door after Gnarly had run out.

  “You really shouldn’t be letting that dog run loose like that,” Mac heard the butler chastise him on his way outside.

  They could hear the screaming and cursing before they found them in the parking lot. A man in a security guard’s uniform was in a tug-of-war with Gnarly who had caught one end of his duffle bag in mid-air.

  “Give me that, you dumb dog!” In the struggle, the imposter guard’s cap fell off to expose the silver at his temples. He was the phone operator taking the phone-in bid for the diamond gown.

  Gnarly shook his head like a predator snapping the neck of its prey to tear open the end of the bag. Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires spilled out of the opening to scatter across the driveway and sparkle in the sun.

  “Mom’s jewels!” Millicent dropped down onto her knees to gather them up. “You thief!”

  The guard dropped the bag and turned to run, only to collide with Mac who grabbed him, whirled him around, and pinned his arm behind his back. “You’re not going anywhere. You have a lot of explaining to do. Starting with murdering your partner.”

  “That wasn’t me who killed her. He did it. He’s covering his tracks. That’s why I was getting out. I needed the jewels to pay my way out of the country before he caught up with me.”

  “Who?” Ben asked.

  A shot rang out.

  The security guard fell back against Mac. A growing spot of blood grew on his chest and drained down the front of his shirt before he slumped down to the ground to die at Mac’s feet.

  “We can’t detain these people,” Reginald Patterson told Mac and Ben after they had given instructions to the security guards, who had thought they were going to spend their day guarding an old woman’s belongings. “Neither of you have jurisdiction here,” the lawyer said.

  “We have two murder victims,” Mac said.

  “Which is why everyone wants to leave,” Patterson said.

  “If I was a killer, I’d be wanting to get out of here ASAP, too,” Mac said. “That’s why I have instructed your security officers to not let anyone leave.” He glanced across the porch to the two men chowing down on donuts and sighed.

  “You know, you’re going to look like a real boob if it turns out your friend is mistaken about the glass on that gown,” the lawyer smirked.

  “If she’s mistaken, why did the appraiser run?” Ben asked.

  “Who hired that appraiser?” Mac folded his arms and looked the lawyer in the eye.

  “I did,” he said. “I’ve used her before. She was very good at what she did and we never had any problem with her in the past.”

  “Didn’t you find it fishy when she said all the jewelry and artwork was fake?” Ben asked.

  “Celeste was having some financial difficulties the last few years of her life,” Patterson said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Everyone has. She had made some bad investments.”

  “Enough to sell off all of her jewelry and artwork?” Ben was asking when Mac’s attention turned to something else.

  His mind was working on the swindle. The phony operator was obviously talking to the man behind the swindle—the one covering his tracks. Across the living room, he saw Eli Harris, the investment counselor who had also bid on the gown.

  Mac was on his way across the room to talk to him when Archie intercepted him. She had her computer tablet under her arm. “I did a background check on our phony auction worker-slash-security guard. According to his driver’s license, his name is Clark Dunning. His address is the same as Brenda Collins. They were obviously living together either romantically or as roommates.”

  “Since they were both murdered, they couldn’t have set this up,” Mac said. “They were working with or for someone.”

  “I also found a fifty-thousand dollar deposit in Brenda Collin’s bank account.” Archie showed him the tablet.

  “Good work,” Mac said. “Now here’s something else I want you to check into. Reginald Patterson’s finances. Look specifically for an off-shore account.”

  “You think he did this?”

  “He’s a lawyer, isn’t he?” Mac said with a smile. “Call it my own prejudice. The first person I look to for a suspect is always the family lawyer.”

  “What would you do if I told your lawyer that?”

  “You don’t have to. I tell him that all the time.” Mac hurried past her to catch up with the fellow bidder, Eli Harris. “What have you heard from your client?”

  Eli Harris chuckled. “I really am an investment counselor.”

  “But you don’t have a client. Or rather, you are your own client. You wanted that gown for yourself—for the precious stones.”

  “I know every one of those diamonds, emeralds, and jewels on that gown,” Eli said. “I know every nuance of every one of them—as well as the sapphires and rubies on the other two gowns.”

  “Then you had to know Brenda Collins was lying,” Mac said. “Maybe you asked her to lie so that you could buy the gowns at a reduced rate.”

  “No.” Eli shook his head. “I had no inkling that Celeste Taylor was in possession of those jewels until I arrived a few hours ago. The money I was bidding was my own from my retirement account. When you outbid me, I got on the horn with a friend to see if he could foot me additional cash to buy the gown as evidence.”

  Mac cocked his head at him. “You’re an investigator.”

  “Was … with the Livingston Insurance company who insured many of the jewels and artwork that Le Chat had stolen,” Eli said. “I was sent to chase most of his stolen goods and I’m sorry to say he and Celeste Taylor had always managed to outsmart me. I ended up with my reputation ruined and forced into retirement. I really am an investment counselor, but I have always yearned to prove myself by catching Le Chat—even if he had retired forty years ago. I actually crashed this auction today in hopes of seeing the jewels and artwork, in particular the Renoir, to see if she had any of the pieces that Le Chat stole. Since she was his mistress, it was logical to hope that he had gifted her with some of his stolen goods.”

  He gestured at the jeweled gown on the stage. “I’m willing to bet every penny that I have that they had broken up the pieces that they stole and sewn them into that gown. I mean, they couldn’t sell the pieces as they were, they were all too well known.”

  “But if Celeste and Le Chat stopped forty years ago and he disappeared into the night,” Mac asked, “Why would Celeste Taylor have enough of the jewels to make up a gown?”

  “Good question,” Eli said.

  “Have you seen the Renoir yet?”

  “No,” Eli said. “That piece is one of the most famous paintings that Le Chat was said to have stolen from the National Museum of Art in Washington. It was one of Le Chat’s last jobs before retiring.”

  “If Celeste had the jewels, then it will be interesting to see if she has the paintings,” Mac said, “which Brenda Collins claimed were all copies.”

  Millicent led Eli Harris, Mac, Catherine, Ben, Archie, and even Gnarly who was back on his leash up the stairs to her mother’s room. Reginald Patterson brought up the rear.

  “I refused to sell the Renoir. Even though it is a copy, it was my mother’s most prized possession,” she told them as they filed into the room. “Brenda Collins didn’t have to lie to me about this painting. Mom told me herself that it was a copy she had made. The more famous well-known paintings that Mom had are all copies.”

  Eli said, “I noticed that most of those paintings you say are copies happen to be the very same paintings that Le Chat had stolen.”

  An expression of confusion crossed her face as Millicent turned on the spotl
ight over the painting that graced the wall across from the bed. It was of a girl sitting in a flower garden with a stream rushing by her. While Millicent stood with her hands folded in front of her, Eli Harris gazed at the painting.

  Slowly, he moved in closer. His mouth hung open. “My—”

  “I know,” Millicent said. “It’s gorgeous.”

  Eli turned to her. He closed his mouth, swallowed, and opened it again. “She told you that this was a copy? Celeste? Your mother?”

  Millicent nodded her head.

  Archie moved in closer to peer at the paint strokes. “I did some research on paintings for a book that Robin Spencer wrote involving an art thief. There’s a particular style that Renoir had, plus the age of the canvas.” She looked over at Eli, who swallowed.

  “Ms. Taylor, this painting is not a copy,” the investigator announced. “If I had a reputation, I’d stake it on it.”

  “But—”

  “This is the Renoir that was stolen from the National Museum of Art.”

  “Now wait a minute—” Patterson interjected.

  “But if Le Chat stole this and those other paintings,” Millicent asked, “why did he leave them with my mother?”

  “Does anyone know what Le Chat looked like?” Mac asked.

  “Celeste said in her autobiography that he was tall, dark hair, slender athletic build with captivating blue eyes,” Catherine said.

  “Like my father,” Millicent said. “Mom told me more than once that he was very much like my father, which was why she fell in love with him.”

  “Like your father who had died suddenly—the love of her life,” Mac said.

  “My father was the love of Mom’s life. That’s why she never remarried.”

  Mac asked Eli, “Did you ever lay eyes on Le Chat, or at least get his real name?”

  After a moment of thought, Eli shook his head.

  “But everyone saw Celeste,” Mac said with a grin. “She was an actress, a dancer, which means she was athletic. She had all the connections to get in and out of where these paintings and jewels were kept.”

  “Plus, these thefts were back in an era when no one would suspect a woman of being a cat burglar,” Archie said.

  “Exactly,” Mac agreed. “Notice that these thefts began after Celeste had retired from the business, after getting married and having a child. Suddenly, she was forced out of retirement by her husband’s sudden death. She was probably older than her competition.”

  “She talked about that in her autobiography,” Catherine said.

  “But being the mistress of a legendary cat burglar put her in the limelight both as a celebrity and actress,” Mac said. “Not only that, but it helped her to put aside a nest-egg to pass on to her daughter.”

  “What are you saying?” Millicent asked in a breathy voice.

  “Celeste Taylor was an actress. An artist. She created a fictional mysterious Frenchman who everyone would be looking for, and knew that she was attached to. They’d be looking for him while she—”

  “Pulled the heists,” Archie said.

  “Celeste Taylor was Le Chat,” Mac said with a laugh. “They were one and the same.”

  “But she described Le Chat and their international romance in detail in her autobiography,” Catherine objected with disappointment in her tone.

  “And no one ever lies in their autobiographies,” Ben said with a chuckled.

  Millicent let out a breath. “Mom could have done that. In the high society circles she mingled with, the right whisper in the right ear about her affair with this mysterious Frenchman, word would have spread like wildfire about him being Le Chat.”

  “Which put her on the A-list for the biggest galas to give her access to the expensive jewels and artwork,” Archie said.

  “Which was exactly what happened,” Eli said. “This high society starlet made a boob out of everyone—including me.”

  “What Celeste didn’t count on was a lawyer who would syphon money from her accounts in her later years,” Mac said, “forcing her daughter to hold an auction to sell off her treasures that she had preserved specifically for her.”

  “Now don’t you be hurling accusations,” Patterson said. “I had nothing to do with any of this.”

  Archie held up her computer tablet. “I’ve been doing a little checking into your finances while waiting for the police, Mr. Patterson. Interesting pattern I noticed. For the last ten years, ever since you became Celeste Taylor’s attorney, her accounts have had money going out while you have had money going into your off-shore account.” She told Millicent. “Your mother probably thought the money was going out for her expenses since your lawyer took care of the bills. That’s why you were surprised to discover a huge debt when she passed away.”

  “You creep!” Millicent slapped him. “And you brought that lying appraiser in here to cheat me out of mom’s jewels. She even told me that the Blue Starburst Diamond was a phony.”

  “The police are here,” Frederick came in to announce. “Would you like me to send them up here to arrest Mr. Patterson for murder?”

  “Only embezzlement,” Mac said. “They’ll be arresting someone else for murder.”

  When everyone turned to him, Mac said, “As Archie said, Patterson became Celeste’s lawyer ten years ago. I doubt if you’ve spent much time here at the mansion, where she had her jewels and artwork, ill-gotten goods.”

  “Correct,” Patterson said. “She only told me about her jewels and artwork, which she told me were genuine. I was as surprised as Millicent when that appraiser declared them fakes.”

  “But you hired her,” Millicent said.

  “But, Mr. Patterson, would I be correct in assuming you never took an inventory?” Mac asked.

  “Celeste said she had an inventory of her priceless jewels and artwork, which we would find in her safe upon her death,” Patterson answered.

  “According to that inventory, everything was genuine,” Millicent said.

  “I’d like to see that inventory,” Eli said.

  “I’ll be glad to show it to you,” she replied.

  “Celeste didn’t give the inventory to her lawyer for a reason,” Mac said. “Because everything was stolen. Even though the statute of limitations had run out, Celeste wouldn’t want the world to know about her having the paintings and jewels until after her death. Therefore, Mr. Patterson was unaware of the value of her stolen treasures. I believe, since she hinted to Millicent about a surprise after her passing, she wanted her secret to be revealed later. However, someone who was here in this house, for thirty years—Maybe he even got close enough to read the inventory himself, he learned her secret and decided to take advantage of the situation to profit from it for himself.”

  Mac turned to Frederick. “You were here when Brenda Collins, the appraiser Patterson hired, showed up for the appraisal. You offered her a bribe—a percentage of the profit if she said everything was worthless.”

  “You gave her a deposit of fifty thousand dollars.” Archie held up her tablet. “I found where you took fifty thousand dollars out of the trust that you inherited from Celeste Taylor.”

  Mac continued, “You even enlisted Brenda’s boyfriend, Clark Dunning, into the scheme to pretend to take a called in bid on the pieces that you wanted to purchase at a reduced rate. You couldn’t actually call in because you were working in your job as butler, which gave you an alibi.”

  “Phone records already showed that no calls came in for bidding at the time that the diamond gown was up for bidding,” Ben said.

  “When Gnarly and I upped the bidding too high, you delivered the coffee to Clark to tell him to drop out of the bidding. Your role as butler was perfect. You have the full run of the house while being invisible. I never even stopped to notice you when you were at the door when I was chasing Clark while he was trying to escape after you had killed Brenda when her deception was discovered. People would have noticed if the butler was seen chasing him across the grounds outside so you had to sto
p running after him and come back to find another way to cover your tracks. You did that by gunning him down from up on the verandah after we caught him.”

  “You can’t prove any of it,” Frederick said.

  “Actually, we can,” Mac said. “Gnarly tracked down the smell of the rifle that was recently fired to the grandfather clock in the hallway at the top of the stairs. Since you haven’t have time to change your clothes, I’m sure a test of your hands and clothes will show that you fired that rifle.”

  “Frederick,” Millicent sobbed. “Why? We all trusted you.”

  “You have no idea how much all those jewels and paintings, all of them real—that are scattered all over this mansion are really worth,” Frederick said. “But I do. I’ve had plenty of time over the years while cleaning them to find out for myself. Over three hundred million—and all Celeste left me was a lousy five million dollars as a gift for my loyalty all those years.”

  “So you decided to invest your inheritance in Celeste’s treasures and cut out competition in the bidding by bribing the assessor into declaring them as fakes and copies,” Mac said. “But when Catherine discovered they were real, your plan went south. You went into survival mode and killed your partners.”

  “I would have gotten away with it,” Frederick said, “if it weren’t for you and your stupid bird dog.”

  Mac and Archie came in from the front porch after watching the police drive off with Frederick. Reginald Patterson was hurrying back to the city in a race to beat Millicent’s auditors. At least he didn’t have the three hundred million dollars’ worth of stolen treasures.

  “Well, that was some auction,” Catherine said.

  They looked up the stairs to see Eli Harris descending with the Renoir in his hands.

  Ben jumped into lawyer mode. “What are you doing? The statute of limitations—”

  “I’m giving it back to the museum,” Millicent announced from the top of the stairs before following Eli down. “That’s where it belongs. We’ve already called the museum and they’re sending over two armed guards to escort Eli and the painting back. He is going to present it to the museum personally.”