Twelve to Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (9 page)

“Did you find any firearms that could have been the murder weapon used to kill the Stillmans?” David asked.

“No firearms, but still something interesting,” the sheriff’s deputy answered while leading David down the long hallway to the corner suite. Making sure no one went into the room, his partner was waiting in the hallway.

The three men stepped inside the suite. The deputy who had been waiting in the hallway went into the bedroom off to the left and held open the door for the police chief to enter.

“We found it in the closet.” The senior deputy told David while his partner slid open the glass doors of the closet to reveal a large canvas suitcase on wheels. He wheeled it out, lifted it, and placed it on the bed.

“Don’t tell me that there’s a dead body in there,” David said.

“Not yet,” the other deputy said. “Take a look and tell us what you think.”

The deputy who had taken the suitcase out of the closet unzipped it to open it. David stepped over to peer inside. As they had said, there was no dead body. The suitcase was empty except for a stack of heavy-duty oversized garbage bags, a roll of duct tape, and a pair of disposable plastic gloves still in the factory wrapper.

David glanced over to the luggage stand against the wall. There was an open suitcase on the stand with a pile of disheveled clothes. No clothes were hanging in the closet. He peered inside the bathroom to see a toiletry bag.

“Lenny obviously brought his clothes in that suitcase,” David murmured. “Who checks into a hotel with one big empty suitcase? Unless he’s planning to take something out with him that he hadn’t brought in.”

“Whatever it is,” the senior deputy said, “it needs a heavy-duty garbage bag and duct tape.”

David picked up the disposable gloves. “What does a stand-up comic need with latex gloves?”

“Pretty suspicious stuff if you ask me,” the deputy said.

“This suitcase isn’t big enough for both of the Stillmans, and no effort was made to conceal the bodies,” David said. “What, or who, was meant to leave this hotel in this suitcase?”

Chapter Nine

Downstairs, David found that the Wisp’s lounge was open. There were a few parties of hotel guests at various tables near the windows taking advantage of the mountain and lake view. Upon his entrance, the lively conversation stopped and heads turned to take in the uniformed police chief with a gold police shield pinned to the breast of his stark white shirt.

When David stepped up to the bar, the bartender, a young woman, hurried over. “I guess you’re here about the hostage situation down at the lake,” she asked him breathlessly.

“Actually, I’m investigating the murders that caused the hostage situation,” David said while thumbing through the pictures on his phone until he found the one of LeClair Dubois. “Did you work here yesterday?”

“I worked last night,” she replied with a quick nod of her head. “I served Lenny Frost about a dozen drinks, double scotch, straight up, until close to eleven o’clock, then the manager asked him to leave.”

“Last night?” One of David’s eyebrows arched. “Do you remember what time he came in?”

The young woman looked almost up to the ceiling to think before she answered. “I came on duty at six o’clock. I was here about an hour when Lenny Frost came in. We were starting to get busy. The reason he stands out is because I didn’t recognize him and he was flirting with me. The drunker he got, the more offended he was that I didn’t have any idea who he was. Then he got loud and nasty. He’s one of those mean drunks. You need to look out for them. They’re the ones that pull out a gun and shoot you for looking at them wrong, not that we get many of them in here—but the last place I worked…” She shook her head. “One of the guys at the bar told him to leave me alone. Then Lenny started picking a fight with him. I signaled for the manager, and he told Lenny to leave or he would be calling the police.”

“And you’re positive about the time?” David asked.

Again, she nodded her head. “If you want to be sure, you can check the security tapes.”

“Security tapes?”

“We have them all over the hotel.” She pointed up to the ceiling.

David recognized the small, shiny black half ball above his head that housed a hidden security camera.

“I’m sure the security video caught it all and it will have a time stamp,” she said. “Do you want me to get the manager so that you can see it?”

“You betcha.”

She turned to walk away before David stopped her. He held out his cell phone for her to see the image of LeClaire Dubois and asked if she recalled seeing the woman in the hotel before.

The bartender checked the image for a long moment before shaking her head. “I could be wrong. A lot of people come through here. Unless they’re a regular or threaten to wreck the place like Lenny Frost did, I don’t really remember them.”

“Really?” David said with a grin and a wink. “I guess it’s a lucky thing for Lenny that he got drunk and picked a fight. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have you to alibi him.”

“Oh, dear,” Archie gasped from behind her laptop at the desk in the squad room.

Tonya sat up in her seat. “What’s wrong?”

“I got a hit on the fingerprints Mac sent, plus the name on the driver’s license and facial recognition. I know who that woman in the bar is.”

“Who is she?” Tonya hurried over to read what Archie had uncovered. “She’s not in the bar anymore. She went to the hospital in an ambulance. Fletcher is there to keep an eye on her.” She peered over Archie’s shoulder.

“Sela Wallace, Burbank, California,” Archie read. “Thirty years old. She’s a stunt woman and an expert marksman. She specializes in stunts for fight scenes and participates in firearms competition.”

“I guess that means she would know how to use an assault rifle.” Tonya went back to her desk and picked up the radio.

“I wonder if she ever does any contract work,” Archie said.

“I need to warn Fletcher and the chief to be careful when they try to question her.”

David was walking through the emergency room entrance of the hospital in Oakland, Maryland, when Tonya called him with the news.

“That certainly makes her a person of interest,” David said. “Mac thinks he found cocaine in her purse. Lenny likes cocaine. Now we find out that she’s into firearms. No wonder she was so anxious to get out of that pub.”

“Well, according to what Archie has found out, this Wallace woman is a black belt in martial arts.”

David turned the corner for the corridor where the examination rooms were located. Fletcher and the sheriff’s deputy were waiting outside the door of the room where Sela Wallace was being examined by the doctor. “Martial arts?”

“She specializes in fight scenes in movies,” Tonya said.

“Lenny Frost has a black belt in martial arts,” David said. “Find out where she got her training. Tell Archie to dig deeper.”

“Will do, Chief,” Tonya said. “Be careful. And tell Fletcher to be careful, too.”

David thumbed off the call and stepped up his pace down the corridor. “Is Sela Wallace ready for us to interview her yet?’

“Nurse is still with her,” the deputy answered. “The doctor went to take care of another patient and the nurse said she would come get—”

“She’s been in there for an awfully long time,” Fletcher interjected.

“Well, we don’t have a lot of time.” David pressed through the door. Inside the examination room, he found the privacy screen pulled around the bed. With one arm, David swept the curtain aside to reveal the nurse strapped down onto the bed and struggling to scream through the makeshift gag made up of gauze bandage.

Before rushing to her aid, David whirled around to his officer and the deputy. “She’s escaped! Go find her!”

“Hey! Since we’re hostages, don’t we get food?” Bernie called across the bar to where Lenny was pacing on the stage.

It was the seventh inning stretch and Bernie was making plans to eat before the second game. “I mean, aren’t you allowed to call the police and make demands for food?”

“You’ve been doing nothing but eating and drinking ever since we got taken hostage.” Carl tried to stand up but, discovering that he had lost the feeling in his feet, decided better of it.

“Yeah, but nothing good,” Bernie said.

“You wouldn’t know it wasn’t good by the way you’ve been wolfing it down,” Carl argued.

“I think we’re running out of the draft beer,” Edith said. “After this last pitcher, we’re going to have to start on the expensive stuff.”

“You mean we’ve been drinking the cheap stuff all this time?” Bernie turned around on his bar stool to call over to Lenny. “What type of hostage situation is this? They’ve been holding out on us!”

“What do you guys want?” Edith asked in a polite tone to calm down the increasingly agitated hostages.

“Steak!” Bernie said. “And wine. Good wine. Not that stuff that comes in a box, either.”

With a wide toothless grin, Hap nodded his head.

“From the Spencer Inn!” Bernie wiped the drool from his mouth with the back of his hand.

Hap increased the speed of the nod of his head.

As if to voice his agreement, Gnarly sat up on the stool where he was seated, placed his paws on the counter, and barked.

“Steaks sound good to me, too.” Lenny waved a hand at Mac. “Make it happen. Call your people and tell them we want steak dinners from the Spencer Inn all the way around and some of their expensive wine, too.”

“And don’t forget dessert,” Bernie said.

“The police aren’t going to just send in steak dinners.” Mac turned to Lenny. “You need to give them something in return as a show of good will.”

“Like what?”

“One of your hostages.”

“Send out Carl,” Bernie volunteered.

“It’s up to the guy with the gun to decide,” Carl said.

“Well, it should be you,” Bernie said. “You’re the pain in the butt who’s been serving us cheap stuff during this whole hostage thing.”

“Well it being cheap didn’t slow you down in drinking all of it,” Carl objected.

“Now everyone just calm down,” Edith said. “Let Lenny decide who has to leave now that the good stuff is showing up.” She gestured across the bar to Lenny on the stage. “You decide who you want to kick out, Lenny.”

“Call me a chauvinist,” Mac said, “but I believe it would be best to let the woman go.”

“Why me?” Edith blurted out with her hands on her hips. “What did I do?” She looked mad enough to want to slap Mac.

“Don’t you want to go home to your family?”

“The only family I have is Carl!” She jerked a thumb in the direction of the bar owner.  

“I’m not your family,” Carl objected.

“I know, you old coot,” she said, “but you’re the closest thing that I have to a family and family sticks together through thick and thin, even if you are constipated and cranky.”

“If I’m the only family you have, then I sure feel sorry for you.”

“You should,” she replied. “Because I’ve been in love with you for twenty-five years.”

Sputtering and hissing, Carl covered up his face and rubbed his ears. “What has gotten into you, woman? Have you lost your mind?”

“Damn right I lost my mind!” she yelled while advancing on him. “I can’t believe it either.”

“Are you saying…” Carl wiped the heavy sweat from his brow and bald head. “All these years that we have been fussing and fighting with each other… it’s been—“ His voice dropped to a whisper. “—sexual tension?”

“What did you think it was?”

“I thought we just plain hated each other.”

“I wish,” Edith said. “How do you think I feel? Of all the handsome, decent, polite gentlemen that I have met in my life, I had to fall in love with a cheap, nasty, smelly old coot like you. Life sure can be cruel, can’t it?”

“I could say a few things about you, woman.”

She was now standing toe to toe with him. “Well, you better say it, because he’s shooting us at midnight. So I suggest you get it off your chest now.”

“I love you, too, you old biddy.”

She threw her arms around him and kissed him full on the mouth. Refusing to let go after all their years of bickering, she pushed Carl back against the bar, letting him go only when they both needed air.

“I guess the woman isn’t going,” Lenny told Mac.

“Then send them both out,” Mac said.

“I’m not leaving,” Carl gasped. “Someone has to keep track of the inventory these drunks are eating and drinking.”

“Then let’s send out the drunks,” Mac said.

“We’ll miss the game!” Bernie wailed. “You can’t make us go!”

“Send out the dog,” Carl said.

“I like the dog,” Edith said.

“So do I,” Bernie said. “Don’t you like the dog, Hap?” When Hap nodded his head, Bernie added, “The dog stays.”

“I guess that leaves you,” Lenny said to Mac.

“Me?” Mac clutched his chest. “I came in here to protect all of you.”

“Yeah,” Bernie said, “and you’ve been doing nothing but yapping all throughout the game. I vote that you leave.”

Hap nodded his head in agreement.

Lenny turned to Edith and Carl, who both nodded their heads.

“Sorry, Mac,” Edith said. “You just don’t fit in with us.”

“Sorry, Mac,” Lenny said, “You’ve been voted off the island.” He pointed to the exit. “Take your torch and leave.”

Mac didn’t think he would ever see the day that he was kicked out of a hostage situation. Sure, he didn’t want to be there. The last thing he wanted was to spend the rest of the day with an unstable man with a gun threatening to shoot everyone at the stroke of twelve, but he had to stay. He was the best hope these bunch of drunken lunatics had. They needed him to protect them. How could they not see that? He had to argue sense into their minds. “But—”

“Hey, who served that dog chili?” Carl bellowed when he saw that Gnarly was standing with his front paws on the bar licking the last remnants of what had once been a very spicy chili.

“I’m taking my ticking gas bomb and going home.” Mac scurried to the exit with Gnarly on his heels.

In the hostage command center, Bogie, the sheriff’s deputy, and Sheriff Turow stared out the window in stunned disbelief when Mac and Gnarly, their heads hanging in shame, came out of the bar. 

Bogie was the first to find his voice. “Did that really happen? Did our hostage negotiator get voted out by the hostages?”

“Yep,” Deputy Parker said. “Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome.”

“Only four hours in?” Bogie replied. “They just tossed Mac and Gnarly out for steak. I don’t think we should wait until midnight for Lenny Frost to shoot them. I think we should end this now and go in and shoot all of them for being nuts.”

Parker turned to Sheriff Turow. “Have you ever seen anything like this, sir?”

“Nope.” Sheriff Turow shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it—not in all my three months as sheriff.”