Twelve to Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (8 page)

Chapter Eight

Mac was not thrilled. If anyone was going to get out of the hostage situation early, he would have preferred that it was one of the drunken hostages enthralled with the game.

Not LeClair DuBois.

His gut told him that she was faking the seizure, which was followed by unconsciousness. If her plan was to get carried out of the bar on a stretcher, it worked.

The few times in his career that Mac had run into someone faking, he had learned how to test for lack of consciousness. A flick of his finger on the upper cheek would cause the person to flinch and open his or her eyes.

Not LeClair DuBois. She was that good. The twitch of her eyes was fleeting. Her hand tensed where he was holding it.

Mac’s first instinct was to call her on it.
Not here. Not now. Not in front of Frost and all these innocent victims.
Instead, he went behind the bar and wrote a note to slip to the deputy he spotted coming in with the EMT. Then, while they were tending to LeClair, Mac used her phony unconscious state to his own advantage. He searched the purse that had fallen to the floor when she launched her performance.

Mac’s gut was also telling him that she would be in the wind as soon as she got to the hospital, taking along with her the answers to most of his questions. That meant he had to gather as much information on her when he had the chance.

During the commotion of the EMTs checking out the fallen woman, Mac ducked behind the bar to search her purse. He had her wallet in his hand, and when he became aware that someone was watching him, he looked up to see a pair of brown eyes following his every move.

On a bar stool, Gnarly was sitting between Bernie and Hap. He had paused his snack of a big bowl of stale popcorn to eye his master. The two old men were torn between their ballgame and the woman being treated by the EMT.

“Is it legal for dogs to sit at the bar?” Mac asked Bernie.

“How old is he in human years?” Bernie replied.

“He’s three—”

“Which makes him twenty-one.” Bernie held out his empty beer mug to Mac. “As long as you’re back there, can you give me a refill?”

Mac shot a glance in the direction of Carl, who seemed to sense instantly what was happening. He hurried over from where he was watching the excitement. “You’re drinking all my inventory.”

“The man with the gun said we could,” Bernie said, “and he’s in charge.” He shook his mug to get Mac’s attention. “We don’t want to get the boss mad, do we?”

Not wanting to draw more attention in his direction, Mac snatched the mug from Bernie’s hand and refilled it. When he handed the mug back to Bernie, he found two more mugs and an empty pitcher lined up on the bar in front of him. Seeing that one of the glasses belonged to the bar owner, Mac turned to him.

“It’s my beer,” Carl said.

Once the hostages’ drinks were taken care of, Mac returned to searching the purse. He was running out of time. The EMT would be asking for her identification to take to the hospital.

Her wallet showed her identification as Sela Wallace with a California address.
LeClair DuBois is a phony name. I was right.

Spying her smart phone, he touched the screen to take him to the call list. Then he whipped out his own phone to snap a picture of the calls she had recently made. 
Someone on this list has to have a clue about what she’s doing here.
Since he had his camera on, he snapped a picture of her driver’s license, too.

The EMTs had the woman loaded on the stretcher. Mac was stuffing her wallet and cell phone back into her purse when his fingers came in contact with a small plastic bag. He pulled it out to see that it was a clear ziplock bag containing two to three tablespoons of white powder.

Cocaine? Maybe that’s why she gave me a phony name and wants out of here. Mac glanced across the pub in Lenny’s direction. She could be Lenny’s hook-up for a fix.

“Has anyone seen her purse?” Edith asked anyone who might be paying attention.

Shoving the baggie into his pants pocket, Mac held up the purse. “It’s over here. I moved it to get it out of the way.” He handed the purse across the bar to Edith, who had hurried over with a serving tray containing the wine glass that had fallen over when the woman collapsed.

Edith trotted over to give one of the EMTs the purse, and he placed it on top of the motionless woman on the gurney. The cook waited to watch them go out the door and then close it on their freedom before she returned behind the bar.

During the whole ordeal, Lenny sat on the bar stool in the center of the stage. Clutching the gun that rested on his thigh, he watched all the goings-on with a hate-filled expression on his face.

Mac put on a pair of disposable latex gloves from a box on the counter. When Edith came back behind the bar, he asked her, “Do you have any cocoa powder?”

She paused to regard him while he picked up the wine glass and held it under the counter light used to help read labels and drink mix instructions in the darkened pub. “Sweetened or unsweetened?”

“Unsweetened.”

Eying the detective studying the glass, she hurried back into the kitchen.

“I think Diablo wants another bowl of popcorn,” Bernie said.

“Of course he does,” Carl said. “He’s as big of a mooch as you two.”

Gnarly responded with a snarl.

“Figure it out yet, Mickey?” Lenny suddenly called out from his seat on center stage.

“I need to call my people.” Mac took the cocoa powder from Edith.

Curious to see what he intended to do with the powder, she crowded in close to him to watch while he dipped a basting brush into the powder and gently dusted it across the glass in search of a fingerprint.

“Go ahead,” Lenny said. “Tell them they need to get moving. You have less than ten hours to find out who set me up, or people are going to start dying.”

“What are you doing?” Edith whispered.

“Dusting for fingerprints,” he whispered before raising it to respond to Lenny. “Are you sure you haven’t met anyone here in this pub before, Lenny?”

“Positive.”

“Well, someone lured you here for some reason.” He turned to Edith. “Get me some tape and a white recipe card.”

“You’re dusting for fingerprints with cocoa powder?” She yanked open a drawer and extracted both.

“You’d be surprised what you can do with common everyday objects.” Mac tore off a piece of tape. “I once arrested a man for attempted rape and murder. He attacked his victim in the kitchen. She blinded him by throwing black pepper in his eyes. Then, while he was on his knees wiping the tears from his eyes, she clocked him over the head with a cast iron frying pan. He was still unconscious when I got there.”

“I like that.” Edith grinned. “Do you think that woman is behind all this?”

“Have you ever seen her in here before?” Mac asked.

“Never,” she answered. “We don’t get many of the big city crowd—just locals looking for a place to escape life.”

“I could be wrong, but I think she was coming in for more than the game.”

Bernie leaned across the bar to where Mac was easing the tape across the two fingerprints he found on the globe of the wine glass. Carefully, he lifted the prints to transfer them to the blank recipe card. “Hey, Mr. Forsythe, what happens if the second game in the doubleheader goes into extra innings? Do you think Lenny’ll wait until the game is over before he starts shooting? I really don’t want to die not knowing who won.”

“I’ll do my best to make sure he doesn’t shoot you until after the game is over, Bernie.”

“I’d appreciate that, Mr. Forsythe,” Bernie said with a grin. “I could tell you were an upright guy.” Signaling Mac with a thumbs up, he nodded to Hap. “Ain’t he a good guy, Hap?”

With a wide toothless grin, Hap nodded his head so fast that he resembled a bobble doll while duplicating his buddy’s approval with two thumbs up.

“Hey, Carl, Diablo wants some Buffalo wings,” Bernie yelled down to the end of the bar.

“Why don’t you just shoot me and put me out of my misery all ready?” Carl said to Lenny.

While their attention turned to Gnarly’s need for Buffalo wings, Mac snapped a picture of the fingerprints and sent it to David O’Callaghan.

Folding the recipe card in half, Mac slipped it into his pocket and stepped out from behind the bar. “Well, then, I guess we need to get this show on the road.” He tapped the screen to dial David O’Callaghan’s phone number.

After three rings, David picked up on his end. “Hey, Mac, how’s it going?”

Mac was aware of Lenny watching him from his seat on center stage. “The EMTs just took out one of the hostages.”

“Bogie told me. It was the hostage who made me ask what’s wrong with this picture. Is that her call log and driver’s license you sent?”

“Along with a recipe card,” Mac said.

“I forwarded them to the crime lab and Archie.”

“She’s in on this?”

“She’s faster than waiting in line at the crime lab,” David said, “and we don’t have a lot of time, even if they have expedited our case. I just now got the call that Doc is emailing over the autopsy report on the bodies. Ballistics on the slugs says the murder weapon is a twenty-two caliber assault rifle—an AR-15. ”

“Not your average handgun,” Mac said.

“Nope.”

“I think our suspect may be a drug dealer. I found something in her purse.”

“Drugs?” David asked.

“That’s right.”

“And Lenny has a recurring drug habit,” David noted.

“Exactly.”

“Which would explain why she was so anxious to get out of there when the police showed up,” David said. “She may not have anything to do with the murders or any of this.”

“Still…”

“I’ve already sent Fletcher to the hospital to keep an eye on her until I can get there to question her.”

“Good.” Nodding his head, Mac flashed a reassuring grin in Lenny’s direction.

“I’ve just pulled into the Wisp,” David said. “The sheriff deputies found something that they believe will help us in our case.”

“What’s happening, Sherlock?” Lenny snapped from behind him.

“Checking my messages for results from the ME,” Mac lied while turning around and tucking the phone into his pocket. “She has finally finished the autopsy on the Stillmans. The police chief is on his way over to talk to her. How have you been doing with your sobriety?”

Lenny laughed. “I’ll tell you what I told the doctors at my last rehab. I know I’m an alcoholic. I know I’m a drug addict. I know it and admit to it willingly. The thing is, I’m a
functional
alcoholic and drug addict. The operative word being functional. When I’m sober, I can’t perform. I need the stuff in order to perform at my peak.”

Thinking of the woman who was now on her way to the hospital after pretending to be unconscious, Mac asked, “Who do you buy your stuff from?”

“My addiction has nothing to do with this.” Lenny’s eyes narrowed down to tiny bloodshot slits. “I really thought you were brighter than that, Mickey. First time someone gets killed and you guys immediately pin the blame on the addict. Why is that? Is it because it’s so easy?”

“More like it’s often so very true,” Mac said.

“That reminds me of a joke,” Lenny said with a giggle.

“A joke?”

Carl groaned. “Oh, damn, the man with the gun has a joke.”

“I suggest you laugh,” Edith told Carl in a stage whisper from the other side of the bar.

“A guy walks into the bar.” Lenny laughed loudly. “Okay, he didn’t walk in, he was already there. One guy says, ‘I slept with my wife before we were married, did you?’ The other guy says, ‘I don't know, what was her maiden name?’”

Carl and Edith laughed loudly, at which Bernie, Hap, and Gnarly, wrapped up in the game, shot glares of annoyance over their shoulders.

In response to Mac’s expressionless face, Lenny said, “Think about it, Mickey.” He leaned over to add in a whisper, “Maybe you’re not as smart as I originally gave you credit for being.”

“Actually, I am.”

A Garrett County sheriff’s deputy was waiting for David in the parking lot at the Wisp.  Once again, his phone vibrated to signal a call. The ID read that it was from Agent Fredericks of the FBI. The deputy waited at the door while David took the call.

“We trust that you didn’t blow our operation while talking to Stillman,” Fredericks said when David accepted the call.

“No, even though I’m a small town police chief, do give me some credit,” David replied. “I’m wondering if you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

The agent scoffed. “Why would you think that? You don’t know anything about our investigation or the evidence that we’ve collected.”

“Do you have any evidence directly connecting Stillman to the drug dealers?”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“You have nothing,” David said.

“What do you have?”

“My gut,” David said. “This guy wants nothing to do with drugs. He’s so determined to stay clean that he doesn’t work at the club on Fridays and Saturdays. When do most of the deals inside the club go down?” The silence from the other end of the line answered his question. “I think someone is using Derrick Stillman for their cover.”

“Like who?”

“I don’t know,” David said. “His assistant, Zoe, would be a good place to start. He said she runs the club when he’s not there. I have another question.”

“What’s that?”

“Were your men watching the woman that Derrick Stillman met last night?”

“Of course,” Fredericks answered. “We needed to find out if she was connected to the drug dealers. Found nothing to suggest that.”

David asked, “Did she leave the apartment building during his date with her?”

“No,” Fredericks said. “They were both in until Stillman left around three in the morning. Why?”

“Right now, she’s here in Deep Creek Lake. She was one of Lenny Frost’s hostages until just a little while ago when she faked a seizure to get taken out. She’s on her way to the hospital by ambulance.”

“That’s weird.”

“You’re telling me,” David said, “Listen, I have a double homicide to investigate. I’d like to suggest that you ask your undercover cop to dig deeper and take a look at Zoe Reese, Stillman’s assistant, before you go arresting him and ruining his life and reputation. He’s already lost enough.”

“We’ll have a talk with our agent,” Fredericks said. “Just don’t be blowing our operation. Got that?”

“Got it.”

The sheriff’s deputy escorted him up to the suite that Lenny Frost had booked on the top floor. “Frost has the suite reserved through the whole weekend,” he reported. “He checked in yesterday afternoon.” He held the elevator door open for the police chief. “He was scheduled to check out Tuesday morning.”