Twelve to Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (14 page)

Chapter Sixteen

The first thing Mac saw when he woke up were two lovely pools of emerald green floating in front of him. When his vision cleared, he could see that it was Archie peering at him from where she was resting her head on his chest.

He was home…in the comfort of his own bed. The night in the hospital was only a foggy memory.

A smile came to his face. “My favorite sight first thing in the morning,” he said in a raspy voice while running his fingers through her short blonde hair.

Then he felt a calloused paw on his shoulder. He turned his head in time to see a black snout followed by a long pink tongue, which traveled the path from the tip of his nose to both of his eyes.

“Ugh!” He pushed Gnarly away from where he had crawled up to place his front half on the bed. With his ears folded back, the German shepherd whined and tried to give Mac another kiss.

“He was worried about you,” Archie explained. “He let you sleep in and got me up this morning. He’s been sitting here staring at you ever since he came back in.”

With a tired sigh, Mac relented and patted Gnarly on the head. “I love you, too.”

Seeing this as a license to resume, Gnarly bound up onto the bed, pinned Mac down by his shoulders, and licked his face.

Retreating back to her side of the bed, Archie opted to save herself.

The pain from the bruise in his back where Mac had been shot traveled down his spine to his hips. With a cry, he shoved Gnarly away, only to have the dog push back and continue planting kisses in his ears when Mac turned his head. The love fest ended when Archie jumped out of bed, grabbed Gnarly by the collar, and dragged him, pulling and fighting, out of the bedroom.

Dropping back onto the bed, Mac gasped to catch his breath. Only then did he notice the sweet scent of roses. He gazed at the vase containing a dozen long-stemmed white roses on the dresser. Then, he noticed another on the end table next to the window seat. It took a full moment for him to remember ordering twelve dozen long stemmed white roses for Archie.

Was that really only yesterday that I did that?

Archie was giggling when she came into the bedroom and closed the door. She announced that Gnarly had found someone else to shower with affection.

“Chelsea spent the night tending to David’s wounds,” she said while climbing into bed next to him. “Molly is outside. So the two of them are chasing each other around the point.”

“Has he told her about Lady Tala yet?” Mac asked with an evil grin while thinking about Gnarly’s “indiscretion.”

“Don’t tell me that you’re capable of blackmail.” She climbed back into the bed, pulled up the covers, and wrapped her arms around him.

“How much do you think it would be worth to keep silent about Gnarly’s hounding ways? An extra hour or two of sleep in the morning?”

“Rather than pay up, Gnarly may decide to just kill you in your sleep.”

He was laughing when she grasped his hand and kissed him on the lips. “Thank you for the roses.”

“You are very welcome, pretty lady.”

Her eyes searched his. “Do you have any idea how much you scared me last night?”

“I scared myself.” He tucked the comforter up around her shoulders.

Glancing around the room, he barely recalled Archie bringing him home in the middle of the night after the hospital had released him. He had no actual memory of the shot that hit him in the back. However, the sharp pain in the back of his ribs was a firm reminder. He fingered the bandage that covered up the stitches above his left temple and tried to recall where he had hit his head.

Then, Lenny Frost came to his mind.

“Where’s Lenny?”

“Drying out at the hospital and getting three days of psych evaluation.” Archie rested her head on his chest while clutching him with both arms. “David has two broken ribs.”

“David?” Mac tried to sit up. “What happened to him?”

“Sela Wallace.” She went on to explain about David catching up with her and the fight that resulted in her death. “We think her brother is dead. The shooter at the pub wrecked a car registered to Zachery Harris while trying to escape.”

“Then the only ones left who can tell us what was behind the Stillman murders are Derrick and Lenny,” he said with a sigh.

“If they were involved,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s possible that Sela Wallace and Zach Harris acted alone?”

“Hard to say,” Mac said.

She grinned up at him. “You usually have such a good sense of these things. Could your concussion be slowing you down?”

“Not my concussion as much as Lenny Frost’s talent.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s a great actor,” Mac said. “I’ll give him that. The problem is figuring out what role he’s been playing. He’s brilliant. That makes it difficult.”

Draping a leg across him, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “Maybe it will all be clearer to you if you take your mind off of it for awhile.” She pressed her lips against his. When she pulled away, she searched his face.

He uttered a low pained moan.

She furrowed her eye brows. “What’s wrong?” Her tone was filled with disappointment.

He sighed. “Don’t take this the wrong way.”

“What?” she asked with a whine.

“I’m sorry, dear,” he chuckled, “but I have a headache.”

Filled with sympathy and disappointment, but amused at the same time, Archie sat up and slid over to her side of the bed. “The doctor sent home some pain killers. Do you want some?” After Mac agreed, she climbed out of the bed to go to the bathroom.

As soon as she left the bedroom, what sounded like a war between members of a dog pack erupted from the hallway outside the room. The chorus of growls, barks, and yelps escalated to a crescendo on the other side of the bedroom door.

Mac recognized Gnarly’s yelps. They were partnered with vigorous clawing.

Archie ran out of the bathroom. Before she could reach the door, it flew open. Gnarly had finally managed to pull down on the latch with his paw to open the door. With Molly nipping at his heels and tail, Gnarly flew across the room and dove under the bed where he made his den. He was crawling on his belly into his sanctuary when she managed to take his tail into her mouth and clamp down. With a final yelp, Gnarly yanked it away.

Instead of following in after him, Molly dropped down to stick her head under the bed and let off a final round of snarl-filled barks. When she finished, Gnarly replied with some high-pitched barks of his own.

Molly finished off the argument with one bark before turning and galloping out of the bedroom.

Holding a glass of water in one hand and the pain-killer in the other, Archie stood in disbelief.

Gnarly whimpered under the bed.

With a chuckle, Mac shook his head. “I guess Molly knows.” He held out his hand to Archie for the painkillers.

She dropped the pills into his palm and handed him the glass of water. “Women can sense these things.”

After washing down the medication with the water, Mac peered over the edge of the bed while handing her back the glass. Sticking his snout out from under the bed, Gnarly seemed to be checking to see if the coast was clear. Again, he uttered a long mournful cry.

“Well, Gnarly, old boy,” Mac said while reaching down to pat him on top of his head, “you and I are going to have to have a long talk about women, commitment, and fidelity.”

“Does it hurt as bad as it looks?” While Mac sympathized with David and how painful the bruise and cut across his cheek had to be, he couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips when he sat down across from him at the kitchen table.

It was almost lunch time, but they were eating breakfast. Since it was Sunday, Chelsea had the day off to tend to David’s wounds.

Mac had woke up a second time to the sweet scent of French toast and sausage cooking downstairs. It was liberally mixed with the smell of freshly brewed coffee. He threw on his bathrobe, hurried down the stairs and across the cool granite living room floor to the sunken dining room. From there, he had pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen where Archie and Chelsea were preparing breakfast.

Knife in hand, Archie was slicing through a loaf of bread to dip into the mixture of egg batter and orange liquor to make the French toast.  When Mac barged through the doors, she stopped with the knife in mid-air. “I knew the smell of breakfast would wake him up.” She flashed a grin at Chelsea, who was turning over the sausage links frying in a pan on the stove. “What did I tell you?”

Molly was curled up in the corner. Not seeing Gnarly anywhere, Mac assumed he was still hiding out after the argument with his canine companion.

That was when Mac noticed David, dressed in a fresh uniform, nursing a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. It hurt Mac’s face to look at the multi-colored bruise traveling from above the police chief’s eyebrow and down across his left cheekbone.

“It does hurt as bad as it looks,” David answered Mac’s question.

Chelsea delivered a mug of coffee to Mac and freshened David’s cup. “I still can’t believe a woman did all that damage to you,” she chuckled.

“She had a black belt,” David said.

“You’re a marine in special forces and a chief of police,” Chelsea argued with a good-natured tone. She winked across the table at Mac.

“That’s why I’m here and she’s in the morgue.”

“Hey, it happens.” With a chuckle, Mac took a sip of his hot coffee. “The first time I ever got hit on duty was by a woman who wasn’t much bigger than Chelsea.” He cocked a thumb in the direction of David’s petite girlfriend, whose tiny frame was as thin as a rail. “I tell you, I did not see it coming at all.”

Archie brought a hot plate with French toast and two sausage links over to the table and set it in front of David. “What happened? Was she a murderer?”

“Domestic dispute,” Mac recalled. “I had just graduated from the academy and was on patrol with my supervising officer. It was my very first domestic dispute call. Now, I knew that it was extremely easy for those types of calls to turn violent. But still, we got there and here was this big muscular guy in a dirty white T-shirt, and he was getting the daylights beaten out of him by his five-foot-tall wife. I mean, this woman was wailing at him. It was plain to see that she was high on something—the husband claimed it was crack and ordered us to arrest her—for his protection. When she refused to back down, I grabbed her arm and she spun around and—splat!” He threw up his fist to illustrate a punch. “She landed one right between my eyes.”

While they laughed, Mac added, “She couldn’t have been more than a hundred pounds, and I swear every ounce was in that punch. It was all I could do to keep from landing flat on my butt.” 

“Then what happened?” Archie asked while delivering his plate to him.

David slid the bottle of syrup across the table for him to use.

Mac poured the syrup over his French toast. “I’m counting stars and trying to recall why I didn’t want to go into engineering like my parents—my adoptive parents—wanted me to do. Then, through the ringing in my ears, I heard my supervisor yelling, ‘Faraday, get in the fight.’ That was when I saw that he had tackled her from behind and the two of them were rolling on the floor. Between the three of us, including the woman’s husband, I managed to get her cuffed and called for an ambulance. While getting her onto the gurney, she decked one of the EMTs. Since I was the rookie, I was given the duty of riding to the ER with her—laying on top of her on the gurney to pin her down in order to protect the EMTs.”

“Ah, the life of a rookie.” David’s tone was heavy with sarcasm.

Mac continued. “We got to the ER, and the doctor wanted to know why she was cuffed and strapped down. I told him that she was a danger to anyone and everyone and flipping out on crack. She needed to be tranquilized before we could let her loose. He reminded me that I was only a lowly uniform and he was the doctor. He ordered me to climb off her, unstrap, and un-cuff her. I told him that I couldn’t be responsible for what she did if I did that. He ordered me again. So,” with a cocky grin, he concluded, “I gave him what he wanted. I let her go.”

“What did she do?” Chelsea asked in a breathless tone.

“She broke the doctor’s nose.”

Chelsea and Archie joined them at the table. After some jovial small talk, Mac noted David’s uniform. “You’re not staying home to lick your wounds today?”

“Lenny Frost is only going to be held at the hospital for three days for observation,” David explained. “That doesn’t give me much time to figure this whole case out before he takes off.”

Archie pointed out, “If he leaves the area and you uncover evidence that he was involved in the Stillman murders, you’ll still be able to get a warrant for his arrest and bring him back.”

Mac glanced over at Chelsea. “He took hostages. Why isn’t Ben charging him with criminal contempt, brandishing a firearm, and menacing, plus endangering the welfare of a child? The bartender’s kid was there.”

“Look at it from Ben’s point of view,” Chelsea said.  “The hostages, the very victims in this case, felt comfortable enough to watch two ballgames—”

“They didn’t even notice when their captor fell asleep,” Archie said with a giggle.

“Plus,” Chelsea said, “they argued with the police when they interrupted the game to rescue them.”

“Not to mention that they actually voted out the very man sent in to protect them from the man with the gun,” David said, to which Mac groaned.

Chelsea continued, “When the jury hears that—”

“I get your point,” Mac said.

“Lenny’ll be charged with something, but most likely he’ll plead down to a misdemeanor and Ben will accept the plea to avoid an embarrassing trial,” Chelsea said.

David looked across the table at Mac. “You were the one who spent time with him. What do you think? If things had turned out differently, do you think Lenny would have shot those hostages at midnight?”

“He was unconscious way before midnight,” Chelsea smiled while pouring syrup onto her French toast.

“It was a very weird situation,” Mac agreed. “Lenny Frost is…” With a shake of his head, he returned to his lunch and took a bite from his French toast before asking David, “What’s your opinion of Derrick Stillman? He was the closest to the murder victims. He knew the security passcode. Maybe he knew he was under surveillance and used that to his advantage. He could have hired Sela and Zachery to commit the murders for him.”

“Maybe he drugged himself,” Archie suggested, “to divert suspicion away from him.”

David shook his head. “My gut is telling me that Derrick didn’t do this.”

“Maybe it’s not your gut but your broken ribs,” Archie said.

“Why does either Derrick or Lenny or anyone else have to be involved?” Chelsea asked. “Carson Drake’s children killed the Stillmans and tried to frame Lenny, who they blamed for their criminal father deserting them, which led to their mother’s murder. Sela was meeting Lenny at the pub to poison him and make it look like a suicide. When Lenny saw the newscast saying that he was the prime suspect and Janice Stillman had actually written his name in her blood, he freaked out and took hostages, which ruined Sela’s plan.”

Archie took up the story. “Sela got away by faking a seizure, and then coordinated with her brother for the both of them to try to finish the job by shooting Lenny at the pub before the police could protect him.”

“Except we have Sela with Lenny on that video shot two weeks ago,” David said.

“She was getting close to him so that he would meet with her, giving her the opportunity to kill him.” Archie looked to Mac for his approval of their theory. Instead of nodding in agreement, Mac was staring down at his now empty plate while listening to them. His expression wasn’t one of approval or rejection of their hypothesis.

“Archie, you said Sela must have met Lenny at the rehab center three years ago,” David said.

“Maybe that was what planted the seed for their plan,” she argued. “Most likely, he talked about his kidnapping in group therapy and blamed Carson Drake for setting him on the road to addiction. Only he didn’t realize his kidnapper’s daughter was right there.”

“Sounds good to me,” Chelsea said. “What do you think, Mac?”

“Yes, Mac,” David replied. “What do you think?”